Acton, Ma Select Board Meeting 10/18/2021

001i've repeated myself many times during select board meetings that is important to have discussions of the issues brought before and by the select board the reason i keep repeating myself is because nothing has been done to improve communications i'd like the opportunity to have a discussion because many times questions have been asked and not answered and many times the select board members have had the last word and community comment has been silenced just take the meeting of october 4th mr cadillac try to get the chairman's attention to make a comment during the deic report discussion but the chair told him that no more comments were being taken i also had a question but new is not going to be allowed which is why i'm going to ask it now during the select board meeting discussion

002of the deic report and recommendations himaja made a comment with no details to back it up she said i want to note that there were some pretty harmful things that were said today harmful this is exactly why we need to continue to have this on the agenda there are still so many misconceptions and so much misunderstanding in our community around the importance of talking about diversity equity and inclusion i do agree with you that we should be talking about it so please answer my specific question what were the harmful i mean harmful statements made during october fourth meeting were the statements actually harmful or were they statements just offering the opinion that was different from yours if this is not and answered now when could it be discussed and by the way why aren't we

003also concerned with diversity of thought another word for freedom of speech thank you thank you no uh you can um if you're done that's fine she can answer during her member minute if she wants um we don't usually answer questions now or i will send a email to this uh the board sure and if you can i'll be more than happy to talk to you on the phone take out the coffee for lunch i just wanted to get a better understanding of what was harmful thank you um thank you all right charlie one second i'm charlie catlike puerto right i want to continue a comment i was going to make at your last meeting where you mr martin made a fairly long speech about your reasons for wanting to have the membership of dic be

004blacks and people that have come here from other countries during that speech you made the following statement if we made the dic proportional to the population in town and made it more than two-thirds white those two-thirds white people don't have any experience in any just discrimination that is what you said first of all a minor point you're saying the dic must not be proportional to the population as opposed to everything else that i suppose we will hear must be made proportional but that's a sort of a minor point uh you refer to white people that's a quintessential use of skin color as a racist comment for white people and you dismiss them as being incapable apparently of any knowledge experience in discrimination that's several thousand ten thousand perhaps of the population of this town and

005i am one of them now i am not going to speculate about the experiences of the other thousands but i can tell you that your statement that i don't have any experience in any discrimination is not true you basically don't know anything about me but you're willing to make that statement that's wrong what you're doing is perpetuating the differences of opinion in this town not solving the race problem but perpetuating it that's also wrong so i don't know what your reasons are everybody can decide on their own but to dismiss the majority of the town the way you did by their skin color i find it very difficult for anyone on this board to support that statement and i hope nobody does thank you [Music] matt you can you call the people online please absolutely

006first hi can you hear me yes um i i'm agreeing with leo that we have some communication problems with a different type i continue to see no change in the setup of select board meetings and i'm here to again say that i don't feel that the citizenry the public has full participation we can't see who's in the room we can't see who else is listening in on the zoom which is analogous to being in the room you could have a screen showing you what's happening in the room right now we just see you and it's even slightly hard to hear the other people so i i'm gonna keep reiterating until um there's more better participation by the public in our select board meetings thank you bye thank you we have uh sarah weber okay please

007go ahead or something um matt can we go to the next person please certainly next we've got collin user number one hi this is tara from westbackton can you hear me yes thank you yes yes um so um based on the comments i just heard about um the racism or lack thereof or you know um representation of the majority being you know important to consider i think that this is really a great um opportunity to uh it's a great evidence of of the need for anti-bias training so and maybe the public would like to enjoy some of that together as a group and we can discuss afterwards um and uh my comment actually was about the arpa funding and to see if you're uh going to allow comment about the arpa funding during the opera

008funding comment i mean excuse me agenda item yeah i may allow short comments at that time when you say you may um then that may mean that or it will yeah it could very well mean that this is our last opportunity to make that comment here in uh the resident's concern portion of the agenda i just said me because i was giving myself a little room depending on the schedule of the meeting but um yeah i will allow short comments at that time thank you so much matt do you want to try sarah webber one more time certainly uh it looks like sarah's unmuted sarah would have to try again can you hear me yes perfect so this is sarah webber nine to go away acting so your microphone is very bad we can hear

009you sometimes i don't know if you're leaning away from your microphone or i'm on my mobile phone okay it's better now okay okay try this again it looks like you're muted again sarah yeah i muted because i'm trying i called him by phone as well i'm just trying to get this to work can you hear me yes okay great i'll speak up loud sarah weber nine tuple away in acton i've been a resident for 29 years and um my question i emailed the select board either last week or the week before i'd like to find out how i go about getting the elm street tennis courts converted into pickleball courts so um uh you know this is not a time for questions you can make your remarks that you'd like to see them turned into

010pickleball course okay um i will do that i would love to see them turn into pickleball great showing that comes out wednesday evenings to play the courts themselves are very much cracked and it would be a great time to turn that into pickleball there are no other public pickleball courts in acton and it is the number one growing sport in the country uh and i would love to see those turned into pickleball courts thank you all right next up it looks like we've got stella steli you should be unmuted or you should be able to unmute hi um stella co 11 guswood road and i just wanted to say how much i appreciated the support for the deic it's the last meeting and all of the discussion and i um i didn't hear all of

011the earlier comments just part of them but i was very discouraged to hear what an earlier commenter had to say and um i think that our current dic represents may not speak of course for all of us but does a wonderful job representing voices that are not heard and i think that it's we've done a good job of course we can improve but i hope we continue with the deic thank you next up we've got linda window you may go ahead linda vieira north acton and i would like to bring up the possibility of having some kind of mailing go out to all the voters in acton to let them know when the town election is and who's running because there's absolutely no publicity provided by the town and even on the website there's not

012a list of candidates and who's running so i'd like to um i sent in a request to the select board and i'd like to see if that uh something that some of the money that we've been given uh can go to for a mailing especially since the election this year is not going to be at the usual time that it is please consider making the elections more more publicity so that you can have a greater turnout and more people will be participating in the town thank you thank you i just want to say three things about uh three clarifications on that the date of the election is the same as usual the date of the town meeting is not so that the date of the election uh next year will be the last tuesday in

013march the date of the town meeting is may 16th which is more than a month later than usual the we were looking into moving the election already on the town calendar linda is absolutely correct that in previous years we have not always had those on the calendar but they are already on the on the calendar and finally um uh we can check with the town clerk who'll be on a little bit uh later with us but i believe it's possible for everyone now to um get a ballot mailed to them for every election in any given year so um i you know we may not need notification postcards everybody can get the ballot directly um thank you um if you want to speak please go to the podium and um once there's no line at

014the podium i'm i just am ending public comments so please don't wait at your seat if you'd like to speak please come here please line up here hi hi my name is madame cruz i reside at two town house lane in acton since october of 2015. the apartment i live in is a part of the yankee village condominiums but it is owned by the town the active housing authority along with two other units in the vicinity sorry i reside in my two bedroom apartment with my three children ages 15 6 and 1 and my fiancee who moved in and was added to my lease september of 2018. my reason for writing this letter is to share my story of how the acton housing authority has discriminated against my family and i but to also express

015the poor conditions of the unit that needs major renovation and how we we've been denied the right to being treated fairly and with dignity in a non-biased non-discriminating way as any other human being this is a call for help i would like justice for how wrongly we have been treated this is a plea to be treated with basic human decency no person of any color race shape economic levels sexuality religious beliefs and or any disability should be treated the way my children fiance and i have acton housing authority should not provide basic human decency only when it's forced by law it should be the standard i cannot remember exact dates however sometime in 2011 i applied for housing here in acton and waited it was when i had my second daughter in october of 2014

016i started to truly struggle with finances when i went back to the acting housing authority to ask about my status of my application i was informed i had no application this made no sense to me i asked to i was asked to resubmit a new application and was then again added to a waiting list after a year i was offered this unit where i live now i was given the opportunity to look at the apartment before accepting it my immediate i had immediate concerns it was on the third floor as i was a single mother of two children under the ages of 10 as any parent can assess who carrying a stroller or car seat up and down three flights of stairs with a second child until multiple times a day poses a significant challenge

017however my biggest concern was the carpet it was clearly very old i have severe asthma with many triggers one which is carpet fibers and dust the carpet itself was at least 15 years old adding to allergens it is it produces when i was when i brought up my concerns i was told that if i did not take the apartment i would be moved to the bottom of the list and it would take years before i had before they had another unit available for my daughters and i i was a single mother paying twelve thousand dollars in rent a month i only brought home about four hundred and ten dollars a week after taxes i had to put my health and other concerns aside and do what was right for my daughters i had already waited

018four years for this opportunity and i had no choice but to accept i moved in in 2015 less than a month after moving in my true nightmare started the tenant below me who is who was also in acton housing authority tenant started harassing us she made noise complaints if you have ever lived in one of these units you know the ceilings are thin you can hear the footsteps of your neighbors above you yet she complained about my footsteps earlier in the morning when i would get up to go to work at 4 30 a.m she complained about my daughter's plane she complained about people visiting me she complained about everything she complained at every opportunity each day the harassments escalated the tenants sent strangers unknown non-tenants to harass my daughters and i i avoided going

019home because of the constant harassment doing so caused me to go into one of the greatest financial burdens i have ever experienced i bought a car in february of 2017 and because i avoided going home by december of 2017 i already had put 30 000 miles in my new car it was it wasn't literally a year and my engine blew i could not even cook because of the way i was being accused of the things that were beyond my control if i cooked while my children played in the living room she would bang my door and complain about my footsteps in the kitchen and the sounds of my daughter's playing and reported me to housing housing would send letters threatening eviction the harassment was daily she used she used objects to pound on the ceiling

020so we could hear and feel them above she would bang on my door she told me that the acton housing authority informed her that the best thing to do was call the cops on me she told me that the acton housing authority informed her i'm sorry that the best thing to do was to call the cops on me because they would be a third party we all know calling the cops would have put me at risk for eviction acton housing authority supported the harassments with calls phone calls letters and emails this tenant caused my children and i to become depressed and home and hopeless she even used the fact that her sister was in acton housing was an acton police officer to intimidate me my final breaking point was this was when this tenant opened

021her door as my daughters and i were leaving to go through laundry in chelmsford and she began screaming at me in the hallway in front of my daughters she called me degrading names her body language that day scared me i do believe i meant to do i do believe she meant to do bodily harm to me and my children this was the day i went to the police station and filed a complaint i emailed the director at the housing authority while every complaint the tenant made against me was supported acting housing has to this they never responded to the police report none of these incidents emails calls bias treatment discrimination harassment lies and undignifying ways that my children fiance and i have been treated should be acceptable here are some more of the awful unfair

022things that have happened to me also special rules seem to have been put in place that apparently only applies to my family and i based on the report from this tenant i sent a letter in i was sent a letter april of 2016 from the acting housing authority accusing me of having a man in my unit playing video council games at 11 o'clock at night in 2016 i was single i did not even own or have any game system in my unit also i was never up at 11 pm because i had to be at work for 5 30. my daughters were in bed by 8. i was told by the housing i was not allowed to have any visitors without providing names addresses prior to their visit at that time i occasionally worked evenings

023and had my family members watch my daughters my family my family was worried about being targeted by acton housing authority the neighbor the police would no longer and they would no longer babysit because of that i had to take my daughters to be cared for somewhere else home somewhere else from home on my working weekends it became depressing not seeing my babies for two days twice a month because they could not be babysat at our home i became a mom to have my children spend time with me i enjoy my children no one can ever bring back those lost moments for me acton housing authority accused me of disturbing the peace for vacuuming at 4 pm i was told not to allow i was told i was not allowed to vacuum facing eviction i had

024to stop vacuuming to accommodate this tenant my asthma and allergies got worse and not to mention that the carpets became disgusting the building i live in is old and has plumbing issues at any given time including today a leak is being investigated at least twice a year we get a letter from the water company stating that there is a leak of unknown origin in our building however i've been accused of purposely flushing clogged toilets which caused water damage to the apartment below i was not home when these incidents happen i had to stop flushing toilet paper after normal use because i was and still am petrified of being accused of purposely causing issues with overflowing and leaks into into my apartment or the one below it is disgusting to have trash can in my bathroom

025to throw away poopy toilet papers because the negligence of a landlord fixing the plumbing issue acton housing authority has sent me unprofessional bias unfair letters emails leaving voicemails accusing me of issues of broken piping bad plumbing and improperly sealed unattached toilet we had a meeting on june 19th about the toilet issue i recommended that the acting housing authority instead of openly accusing my family i flushing a clogged toilet when we are not home or purposely causing leaks as if we were idiots to please have someone go and check the seal or the flagel the acton housing authority stated um director stated that in her 14 years of being a director she had never heard of or seen a toilet clog or have water leaks etc because of basil or a fragile she told us it

026was our fault and we needed to stop causing clogs to be clear each time there was a leak housing would come into my home and check the toilet we were not home at these times no foreign objects were found were ever found in my toilet how was she to know or better yet what right did she have to accuse us i was mortified that she actually told my fiance and i during the meeting that we were at fault of these two of these issues needless to say as she told my fiance she would have one of her maintenance workers come the next the next week and no one ever showed up it has taken two years of through this issue to be somewhat resolved and that is because the inspector that came on june 18

0272021 and even after when the acton board of health however we still cannot flush toilet paper down our toilet the entire time the toilet was very obviously not sealed and completely unattached from the floor the toilet basically was sitting unattached on a hole in the floor unsurprisingly the inspector found the toilet was broken and would cause flood flooding when used normally another time the and again the acting housing authority accused me of doing it how do i control all pipes from bursting how am i supposed to report something when i am not home i arrived home at 6 00 pm and it was the tenant below me that informed me of what happened he she she told me that the acting housing authority went into my unit emergency or not i have a right to

028know when someone comes inside my home i was never informed by a call at the time it happened i had not had a working refrigerator since i moved in instead every year they would just change the gasket around the fridge door and ignore me when i told them that my food was freezing it didn't matter if i changed my setting to below five or above it would either freeze everything completely or it would just freeze what was in the back i had to choose to have either no food inside just milk perfectly positioned at a setting of five so it would not spoil this however was not practical i threw hundreds of dollars if not thousands away because the food would freeze it wasn't until nine september 29th of this year 2021 that they replaced

029the refrigerator and that is due to the fact that i complained to the acton border health the acton housing authority has had an inspector come to do yearly inspections in 2019 2020 inside the unit the inspector told me that i needed to clean my stove i told him i do clean but i can't control things that have been there since before i moved in burnt stains it is an old small stove the stove is so small i cannot fit a normal baking sheet inside i cannot even cook a normal turkey the stove needs to be replaced with a modern sized stove it doesn't have to be fancy just a normal stove a normal one he said i needed to do a deep clean in my carpet i gave him the history behind and told him

030i could not vacuum because it was disturbing the piece of the tenant that used to live in the unit below he did not listen to my concerns of the mold issues in the bathroom or how the fridge was freezing my food nothing that i mentioned to him regarding my concern was acknowledged finally i had another inspector this year in june 18th of 2021 he gave the acton housing authority maintenance staff immediate orders in my presence of the things that needed attention for fixing and only a few were done one thing he mentioned were calling a plumber in because the toilet was moving and i told him about the leaks the water issues coming from the toilet and how also how i could not flush toilet paper down the toilet he mentioned repairing or fixing the

031refrigerator fixing the broken cabinet drawers in the kitchen fixing the broken screen windows and removing the bathroom tiles in the tub and seeing what was causing the mold he said specifically do not just re-cock it he ordered them to call an electrician to repair the issues of with the outlets some had no panels and were not working sadly this very same inspector asked me in my own home not speak spanish this inspector literally turned around in my home to say english please this is so rude and so wrong i speak two languages at times when i feel uncomfortable anxious or nervous it is what i do i was speaking spanish because i could and it was with one of the maintenance workers in the end the only they only replaced some of the broken screens

032called the plumber and again replaced the gasket on the broken refrigerator they had plenty of time to do what was needed and failed to do so this is why i went to the board of health of actin i have never been provided a copy of an inspection report i have never been given names or companies or contact information of any of the inspectors they have never given me a card or identified themselves since i moved in every year after my inspection my bathroom has been re-caulked re-caulking a bathtub every single year is not normal especially when there are visible signs of mold and clearly issues with water damage around the tub that leaks into the unit below when i questioned why they needed to keep cocking instead of taking care of the issue i was

033told not to interfere with the job of maintenance staff i have been asking since 2019 for the mold issue in the bathroom to be fixed i am highly allergic to mold my son who is just a year old is having issue with his respiratory system because of the mold and the carpeting since april of this year he has been rushed to the er three times each time he has been admitted with respiratory distress due to the environment where we live i stated that i stated this to previous inspectors including the one recently on june 18th who agreed with me that the tiles needed to be torn down and the tub needed to be removed so they could fix whatever it is leaking and causing the constant bone growth instead i've been told to clean the

034tub with clorox sorry it is mind-blowing how on top of everything else now i get told how or what i should use to clean with i am highly allergic to clorox i cannot use it to clean how i clean my bathroom has nothing to do with why the mold keeps growing it is an issue that needs to be fixed it's in it's been ignored and looking for a cheap way out by caulking or insulting the person that lives in the unit by telling them how to clean the mold does not solve the mold issue blaming a tenant or her children for water leaks does not solve the problem this clearly needs to be done correctly their poor judgment lack of ethics and accusations do not solve the issues in the bathroom the leak from the

035toilet since it wasn't sealed has caused a new bathroom sink to also rot alongside the bottom now once again that too needs to be replaced this entire bathroom needs to be gutted and redone putting a band-aid on issues that needs full repair and blaming a tenant is unacceptable i have been asking for two kitchen drawers to be fixed they are still broken no one has handled it the other does not open at all on june 18th the inspector told the maintenance staff to take care of the issues the cabinets are stained they've been painted over with gloss the magnets that keep them from closing do not work properly all the heating baseboard covers in this unit are broken they are falling off constantly some give more heat than others you can literally see that they

036have been painted over and over with debris on them same issue with the window seals in the kitchen you can visibly see the laminating floor peeling and coming out the floor no matter how much i mop it is permanently discolored and always looks filthy the floor is missing pieces it needs to be replaced next to the refrigerator is a one foot by two hole in the wall and that has a cover this cover came off through the hole i can see the bathtub the space is full of dust molds and heav and the haven of rodents we when i asked the cover to be replaced they ignored me and for that fact i had to already put i already had put heavy duty packing tape in them to hold the cover in place but recently

037because of the border health of acton they've installed screws to hold the cover in place the kitchen counter is swollen and elevated from the corners to the end you can see it lifting finally after complaining they put in one a new one however it's doing the same thing the edge of the counters between the stove is broken the caulking around the sink is practically gone now mold is growing there too the company that installed the counters left holes in the walls which also just which allowed disgusting bugs to come out once again i complained but it was not solved until the actin border health came the electrical outlets in the units all need to be updated and replaced i have mentioned and showed the issues to the staff i have explained to them that when

038i plug in something it spits it back out or at time it just creates sparks this happens whether i use both outlets or one the outlets behind the refrigerator has no panel fix it was recently fixed because of the actin border health i have videos to show anyone that asked me the inspector on june 18th and the acting border health came that came on september 20th for a brief inspection agreed that these outlets needed to be fixed and electricians should have been called in as of 10 7 2021 they brought an electrician he placed most of the outlets except the ones in my bedroom the one in my room with will be replaced when the electrician comes back to install a new bathroom fan that was ordered to be cleaned by me the carpets in

039this unit are beyond disgusting they are old and i cannot vacuum for a total i could not vacuum for a total of three years i swept them but that wasn't enough i hired professional carpet cleaner he stated that if he had known the conditions of the carpets in my unit he would he wouldn't have accepted the job he stated that these carpets need and should be replaced when i asked to be transferred because of the health issues i i have from living in a rugged unit i was ignored when i asked for the carpets to be replaced with hardwood floors and tiles or anything other than carpets i was ignored and told no even though it affects my health and now my sons when i asked about how many times the carpets has been changed

040i was told it is original it is the original carpet this building was built in 1967 when the acton housing authority brought me to court for non-payment of rent in i was forced to retract my statement from mentioning the carpet issues in my unit by the acting hackton housing authority director i agree because i was afraid of eviction the building loses power on a regular basis last time the power went not even the hallway emergency lights came on i just want to mention this because i find it important when i added my boyfriend to the lease in september of 2018 my rent went from 900 to 15.85 just for one month for the month of september of 18. i was also questioned by the assistant director after she received my paperwork to add my boyfriend

041why he was using his debit card so much in the in acton if he lived elsewhere and if i am sure he wasn't living with me sooner the audacity of such a question angered me i felt they were rude and so inappropriate my my fiancee works in acton so my rent went up from 900 to 1585 because i added him right underneath was a new lease from 1585 there was a new lease for october 2018 for 1810 i was so lost i could not understand how we had such an increase so quickly i did my recertification right before adding my boyfriend so none of my information changed during the recertification i gave them all his information and paperwork the conclusion was 15.85 so why one month later is it 1810 i live in a two-bedroom

042one unit in one bathroom unit a three-bedroom two-bathroom fully updated unit with hardwood floors in the same building rents for the same amount these units are that that unit is beautiful compared to ours nothing may send to me when i called and i asked the assistant director why she stated that she just types the numbers in and that the system does the rest it seems odd that the system printed two leases unsure of the legitimacy of her answer uh and how wrong it seemed we refused to sign the lease we paid 1810 for months in hopes of getting answers we struggled with our other bills food and daily living expenses all while dealing with the continuous bias treatment of the actin housing authority if this was all happening at the same time the tenant below

043me was harassing us with the support of the actin housing authority dealing with all these insane issues left us feeling more and more overwhelmed it took me until may of 2019 to figure out what was happening thanks to a friend that knew about the breakdown from how rent is calculated the actin housing authority removed my day care payment i was paying my mother 225 a week for the care of my daughter the rules say you need a third party letter to provide child care a letter from my mother should have been fine but the acting authority had made special rules for me the sudden increase to 1810 for rent was because the acton housing authority suddenly and without notice removed my daughter's child care from the rent calculation after months of accepting my mother's letter

044the acton housing authority changed its minds and increased my rent my mother only agreed to watch my daughter if i was willing to pay her the same amount i used to pay for her daycare action housing authority used the same letter right right before i added my fiance they used the same letter when i added my fiance so why the change in the amount i paid her from one month to the next how do you how do they have the authority to make such special rules just for me i went into the office on june 13 2019 to discuss with the acting housing authority director and the housing attorney all the the housing attorney all of the issues mentioned above and more the meeting was horrible i have never been patronized insulted humiliated the way

045both of these women made me feel every time i brought up a concern a concern up or argued as to why we shouldn't they shouldn't accuse me of the things i was told i was i was shut down i was told i was wrong and that they were right because of who they were she insisted i did not know what i was talking about she said i couldn't pay my mom and it was written all over the lease it is not when i told her she was wrong and i could and i could pay anyone i wanted to as long as they didn't live with me she said that was not her problem she said if i didn't sign a repayment lease i would get evicted i wouldn't be allowed in a shelter she said

046that what happens when you live in public housing and get evicted she said i was wrong to accuse her of being biased towards my family and i and i just didn't want because i just didn't want to pay my rent i clearly told her she was wrong and she had and was continuing to treat us with discrimination and the only person in that office that has never failed us to treat us with human decency was amanda eldred eldridge she she looked at me and told me that amanda was nice and did her job because as a director she tells amanda what to do she said if it weren't for her making amanda do her job my children would never get the gifts the community gives during christmas time she and the lawyer both told me

047that i was lucky to be where i was and paying what i was paying because market value for this apartment was two thousand three hundred and twenty five dollars per month i they told me i couldn't be transferred into a different unit until all the amount amounts old was paid i asked for proof of all these things and she stated in this meeting and never received anything instead i had to sign a repayment lease in the amount of 1906 per month they also refused to answer me as to why lance's federal garnishment from his paycheck was a was non-deductible as far as i know and looked into it into it if someone is paying for student loans which isn't which is for education it should be he is not getting that money back that's income

048we did not see no again no answer i want to emphasize that by no means am i looking for pity i just want justice for my family and i i want what what i want what has happened to us to be corrected we should have never experienced such awful acts of bias discrimination and harassment i have always been a hard worker and done my best so there is no excuse for a group of professionals to behave and treat any average poor person of color like me and my kids the way these people have i have tried my hardest to fight for justice by going to the boston housing discrimination office and filing a complaint unfortunately because of my learning disabilities in covid i did not submit enough proof and they closed my case leaving the

049acting housing authority to continue being biased towards us the acton housing authority submitted an affirmation statement to the boston discrimination office i was appalled at how they lied about us they said that the tenant below me that used to harass us was moved because of all the leaks we were causing in the unit the truth is that tenant was moved because she no longer needed a two bedroom as her daughter had moved out the water leak issues have nothing to do with me they wrote in their affirmation that my family and i were nothing but trouble and constantly disrupting all of my neighbors i have collected letters from neighbors stating the opposite they even went on to say that two of their employees had black spouses and children to justify the bias way that they

050treated me seriously you can have an entire black family and that does not stop you from being biased i am an american born woman of color and latina i am human we all are i stopped paying rent thinking i would be helped clearly that mess that mess put me the because of the mess that put me into i want to pay the correct amount of money old not what they say i do because they made special rules for me can you imagine these two women went as far as bringing up the fact that my daughter what my daughter's old daycare took me to court for non-payment yes they did because i took my daughter out of the place because something happened to her there and i could not prove it so i stopped paying them

051yes they brought me to court but i paid them and i did not think this was any of housing the acting housing authority's business this was a very delicate issue for me that involved a lot of tears and stress how dare they all while i still had to pay my mom for gas food etc i did not and do not deserve to have ever been treated the way they treated me and my children my fiancee lance is a white american and a veteran he clearly noticed how i was treated differently than him in both of the meetings we had in person with the acton housing authority the condo association trustee named victoria has openly discriminated against me and my family every time i was at risk to be evicted by the acton housing authority they

052would tell victoria and the information would then be shared with other acting acting housing authority tenants if the things that i have mentioned are not a form of being treated poorly with bias discriminating ways and negligence then i don't know what else can be it is absolutely without a doubt that we need a system that is that isn't based isn't biased and unfair i want justice i want peace i do not want to see my baby struggling to breathe i do not want my 50 year old to continue sharing a room with a six-year-old our request to move has been denied we were told in may of 2018 that because my oldest daughter turned 13 we would be moved because of the age difference since then i have had another child and my fiance move

053in i want change not just for me but for all that might live here in the future that they never have to encounter such hatred bias and injustice i want no one to be fired but i do want to see people take accountability for their actions i have done my part to do the best version of myself for me for my children and the ones that i love and all that i come in contact with i had a horrible surgery gone wrong in july of 2019 leaving me out of work for almost 12 weeks and causing me to have a hematoma and an abscess it required two hospitals taste at two different hospitals because of the negligence of one doctor that doctor dismissed my pain after surgery and accused me of seeking opiates i am

054allergic to opiates i almost died and i was readmitted to a hospital one week later that experience alone left my children and i traumatized i had to wear a drain for 26 days i have been treated badly so many times in my life but i have never been treated but i have never treated anyone badly because of what has happened to me so what this so what is the excuse for the way the acted housing authority has treated us the way they have there is none there is no excuse for a group of people who are professionals working to help low-income people to behave so poorly it is unfathomable it is unacceptable i truly pray and hope that you all can see what has happened to my family and i and i never will never

055stop until every one of them is held accountable i will walk to the governor's office even to the white house to make it to make my story known we need change to our broken system enough is enough you cannot keep accusing people of things that they don't do because you do not want to fix the things that need to be fixed it is unacceptable and i want to make it known that since the acting board of health went my refrigerator has been replaced like i said some of the outlets have been replaced and i just got an email from mrs cronin today letting me know without even asking me if it's okay that uh someone's coming to retire our bathroom for two days which is the 20th my daughter's 16th birthday and that thursday what

056bathroom am i supposed to use in those two days where am i supposed to go thank you for listening thank you miss cous could you stay just a minute up here thank you so much for taking the time to prepare all that and and and letting letting us know um and i'm really sorry for your your experience and um and we'll look into that i have your email address um if would you be uh willing to leave your phone number with the town manager before you leave the auditorium and and somebody will get back to you thank you thank you i'll hug her later please can you can you just turn on the microphone there you go thank you i haven't had um as much time to to prepare um but i'm here to speak

057up for madeline um i also live at two townhouse lane in the same building as madeline crew as madeleine cruz and i moved here about a year a year ago i learned madeleine's story bit by bit mostly by observation and asking questions the first issue i learned about was the refrigerator and it was hard not to notice a neighbor that was constantly throwing away as much food as she was throwing out and for a family that's low income that's a ridiculous amount of money to have to spend on food so i asked her about it and she told me that her refrigerator has been broken for four years but acton housing insisted that it worked so a little bit of my background i'm an air force veteran i was an aircraft mechanic and i also

058have two engineering degrees i didn't need any of this to see that a refrigerator was broken it was broken right so half the food would either freeze um some of it was room temperature just like a clearly very obviously broken refrigerator so i thought that this was some sort of error you know on the behalf of housing they you know maybe nobody looked at it or somebody didn't know um but during my time there i see maintenance go into her apartment and come out after she's shown them this clearly broken refrigerator and they tell her that it is not broken i i just i find i find this absolutely amazing um that this could happen in acton it it makes me embarrassed honestly like for the community that we could gaslight somebody that way um

059the toilet and so [Music] even like after that i was still thinking like there was some some mistake somewhere like some some error but after the toilet it it just you know made me realize that there was seriously something go something going on in acting housing so like i've been in her bathroom and the toilet just completely unsealed like it wobbles on the floor it's it's not attached so it's just it's just sitting there right um so of course it leaks the other thing is in our building it was built in the 60s it's got constant plumbing problems i've been for it here for a year and we've gotten about three letters from the water company saying that there's some leak somewhere in the building um that you know they want us to figure out

060where it is actin housing is currently investigating a leak in a unit that's not that far from madeline's where they had to put a hole in the wall and try to find out where it's coming from the apartment above mine had a leak behind the shower that uh you know there was water coming from somewhere that open up the wall go behind the shower and figure out where the leak was coming from so just and this is just in one year and in this time period knowing that there have been three other leaks in other units in the building there has been no person ever blamed for their leaks that's never happened the only person i've ever heard of that happening to is madeline she's the only person that has been blamed for the leaks

061in her unit like knowing that the building has plumbing issues knowing that her toilet is broken knowing like there is physically no seal on her floor like the the water has leaked enough from it not being sealed that is eaten away at the hardware on the toilet so that like it can't be attached properly anymore sorry it just it's very it makes me very angry and then the cost of the unit so the apartment that she was talking about was mine so my apartment it's a three bedroom a two bathroom it's it's it's nice you know like it's all right it's got you know wood floors and i think when i moved in there last year i was paying a little over 1900 a month that is the same thing that she was paying for

062her 1960 um like it's got cabinets that are broken the floor like the the carpet is seriously carpet from 1960 um the like the the issues in the bathroom nobody would rent that unit at all for like anywhere near i i can't i can't say the number but it is not 1900 i don't know what needs to happen but somebody needs to actually look in the apartments and make a decision as to how what the genuine market value is worth because that's not like what we should be charging people for affordable housing if we're going to make it affordable it should be affordable it shouldn't be some crazy number that they come up with based off of some apartment that has marble countertops and you know a hardwood floor and something nice as i've gotten

063closer to the situation uh madeline has shared some emails and messages with me um they constantly make appointments at times like she was talking about they don't ask her like hey can we come by on thursday like is that okay with you no they just simply inform her of when they are coming and they tell her that we will let ourselves in if you are not there um one time this happened not that long ago her as she said her son's having breathing issues at one point she had been in the hospital for two days with the baby for his breathing problems this is what precipitated her call to the um health department uh acton-house and heard about the health department call so this is after i think five years of not having a working

064refrigerator they suddenly decided that day they wish to give her a new refrigerator right before the um right before the health inspection so uh madeleine had to give me a letter to give to them because they're supposed to at least give her 48 hours notice before coming to her apartment which they did not do um basically they said we're coming your house right now if you're not there we're letting ourselves in and we're making these changes that we wish to make so yeah madeline gave me a letter to give to them because clearly she could not be there i sat outside of her apartment they came about an hour and a half late to make these changes to her unit provided in the letter and they they did leave but if had i not been

065there they would have just been in her house making whatever changes they wished to make without any you know conversation with the tenant and how that would impact her additionally they would have tried to recall kertub not dealing with the leak that obviously existed behind her bathroom that is causing the mold which is you know what has happened in a few other units in the building which is not only bad for her is bad for the entire building the fact there's been a leak back there for about three years that nobody's done anything about but i don't have a snappy closing or anything i just want to say please fix this thank you for taking the time to support ms cruz i um i actually had something i wanted you please oh i'm sorry about

066that um david fair at a 490 great road across from junior's pizza which i love the hawaiian small wine but anyway sorry um i had something i wanted to talk about but i don't even care about that anymore i we need to listen uh to madeleine i mean this this is we can do much better than that and i think we this is the answer this is what we gotta do you know we gotta listen and i would urge everyone if you're just signing on right now rewind back and please listen to what our this citizen said of acton it's important um i don't care what i was going to say i just want to listen to madeline's please thank you i don't know if you shut that off no yes please thank you thank

067you everyone yes we will we'll go to the the public hearings and come back to the um um the items uh the other items in the beginning of the agenda the the the first um public hearing is the acting select board will hold a public hearing on october 18th 2021 at 7 40 p.m in the francis faulkner hearing room 204 at the town hall 472 main street acton and virtually actonmod.gov slash meeting slash bos on the application of 145 great road llc for a use permit a youth special permit under the zoning bylaw 3.5.5 and 10.3 at 145 great road map f4 parcel 37 application materials and how to participate remotely are available online at actontown hall at acting out dot gov slash d s web slash view slash collection dash thirteen nine ninety six

068slash collection dash fourteen thousand mr manager thank you uh we have uh the applicant here with us to present their application hi everybody hello can you give me okay yes good evening i am alicia bisconi from key point partners um we represent 145 great road llc which is also known as brookside uh located on great road in acton um i am with um our property manager chris serrano from key point partners and our tenant who will be presenting after me rob represents our new tenant at x golf what i can do for everybody here if it's helpful i can just kind of walk you through a little bit of the history of brookside so brookside is located on great road and it's about 75 000 square feet it's a retail center anchored by trader joe's

069a few years ago with the neighbors in acton we were able to rezone the property into limited business use so the property has been and was designed for a retail center right now we have a mixture of trader joe's staples and other smaller retailers so the goal when it was rezoned is to allow the center to um re-tenant itself to meet the market and then as we all know uh as we rolled through and are now re-emerging through covid what we found that that property experienced the impact of the covet effect on the retail side in that it lost two of its larger dry goods tenants and that being pier one and joseph a banks so the what we noticed um and what happened in covid for the properties that we manage on the retail

070side is that not only as we're re-emerging um the pool of retailers now have changed um so in an emerging through post-covered world um the tenants that are re-emerging are those that are family oriented uh those that have some sort of a experiential focus to it and on the other side the tenants that are now coming into retail centers is more family friendly food as well the property was lucky enough um to have that type of attendant which is in harmony with the active master plan but also in harmony with the neighborhood and that's x golf um i'll let rob introduce his company for you but we're here today because even though we feel that x golf will support the neighborhood and will also support is very family friend friendly it conflicts with the commercial

071recreational uh bylaw in your by in your zone but what we believe is that um not only was the property designed well to handle such a tenant um we believe that it is in harmony with your master plan but also it's the best and highest use of the retailers today uh in this post-covered world if that makes any sense so before we came in front of you what we did was we met with the the town departments um and that we wanted to make sure that a the use fit um but b that we were in compliance so we are um we meet the parking requirements we met with the board of health explain the use we meet with the septic requirements so everyone in the town has helped us shepherd along this use so

072that we're here just asking for approval for their special use just on the commercial recreational side so i'll pause for a moment if you have any questions and if not i'll turn it over to rob to talk about x-golf itself let's complete your presentations and then we'll have questions at the end perfect okay so my name is rob granahan um uh i own x golf in weyland and um i'm really excited about the opportunity of opening one in acton i think it's an awesome location and i think this community fits perfectly with what we're trying to do so um i do have some slides i don't want to take up too much time but the slides do kind of help um you know show some pictures so you can get a sense for what it's

073actually like um so let me see if i can do this yeah please go ahead share subscribe okay so um here's background about me i live in concord i grew up in concord um spent a lot of time in acton uh you know back when they had uh pizza hut and uh you know some of the other things and i was a member at quail ridge and my kids have spent so many hours at uh at the teamwork so um anyway love acton have uh i've been here a lot um anyway so i grew up here went to school here uh got in the navy was a pilot in the navy for a few years and then got out got my mba started working in investment management i wanted to do something in golf so

074after 22 years i said you know let's find something that makes sense x golf kind of has turned into that thing i spoke with them for a few years and we decided to open the first one in massachusetts and weyland and despite the pretty bad timing with uh kovid it's been really fun and um customers have been really very very supportive so uh i think like i said i think it could be the same in actin um so x golf is a probably the only national indoor entertainment um um simulator business for golf um and it's it's early stage so they're only you'll see the map in a second but they're pretty small so um it's growing fast but you know that it started as them creating the best simulators you could have um they

075are extremely accurate um and then you know with our focus as the operator um to provide a family-friendly indoor golf experience um focusing on entertainment with food and beverage offerings so um we you know we we try to make the experience as best as best as it can be here's the map of what x golf is there's you know probably doubling every year so even though it's small so this is some pictures of the outside of weyland um it's you know it's a clean look the signs are pretty you know they're they're noticeable but they're they're fairly subtle so they're not kind of in your face um and then the indoor um so basically it's a big open box um with simulators that are pretty big so these simulators are 15 feet wide by 25

076feet deep um and i guess the lower left probably shows the best best view of that but um they're big enough so you can swing a club and have some people sitting in at the chairs or at the couch and the way it works is you bring your clubs or you rent clubs with us and then you actually hit a golf ball with your club into the screen and then pretty much instantaneously the computations are made and the ball shows up on the screen flying through the air in pebble beach or hazeltine or whatever course you happen to be playing and it's really fun so um it's very addictive people usually play the courses but you can also take a lesson or do a clinic or [Music] just practice we have a virtual driving range

077that you can practice um and they're uh rented by the hour so um it's you know not by the person so you can go by yourself or with other other people too um just some pictures steve's the guy in the center he's our our pro he's very busy teaching lessons and he does all the clinics too and the kids uh come in for the clinics it's really fun because kids love to be able to hit golf balls on on greens and they can't do that much out in the green grass world so it's really fun golf leagues and tournaments are really really popular and as part of what x golf does it becomes a big part of it these are weekly leagues um it can be husband and wife or friends from work or buddies

078or uh just whoever you make a team and you play on a weekly league and it's you know fairly competitive and people try to get better and they try to win and there's playoffs in the end and and trophies so these guys are all winners they all have trophies um and like i said the um you know husband wife or or just friends from work it's everyone can have fun doing it um which kind of leads to this this slide which shows i i i was really surprised at how broad the appeal has been um but that you know the left slide shows the you know kind of extended family with the grandparents and the grandkids and everyone in between playing at in the same bay which you really can't do anywhere else you can't

079even do that in in greengrass golf so um it's it's kind of it's really nice you have the couples in the middle that's that's a it's a fun outing and then the father-son on the right just shows you can have fun no matter what um even if your your child is just learning um these are our two busiest events um just to show some scale for how we're not really that crowded um it's a it's a big uh footprint and yet um since the bays take up most of the space and you usually have about four people per bay um it you know it doesn't get that crowded this surprise party obviously was pre-covered it was um our biggest event we've had and uh the corporate event was 40 people during the day that that

080was really successful i think that was probably a few weeks before kovid shut us down but it was uh it was a fun event nonetheless um but yeah so they they come in there's a lot of room to spread out and um you can still still talk to each other this is a sample menu of the food so it is food that you can eat while you're playing golf you can think about it that way so pigs in a blanket mozzarella sticks and chicken tenders you know you're not coming to x golf for a steak or something fancy you're you're just coming to eat something while you're playing golf and uh it's it's actually good food i uh you know i've been impressed the pizza is probably my favorite thing but it's uh you know

081i'd stack it up against some of the other other folks out there but it is simply made it is heated in a high speed oven um it only takes a couple minutes for each item so it's it's it's very easy for the staff to do it and bring it out pretty quickly what else here's the proposed layout you can see the bays are pretty obvious where all the red all the red electronics are so eight days for simulators and then in the middle is the check-in area with the bar and then the prep and storage behind it and the bathrooms behind that um it's it's pretty wide open so you have a lot of room to kind of put your clubs down and settle down um and it's it's i think it's really nice that

082way um and and you know the staff is you know can see everything that's going on too so that makes it what makes it nice um our proposed hours is these are hours wayland so nine to ten nine to eleven on on saturday and sunday and then nine to nine on sunday um but our busiest times are week nights for leagues so our leagues just started this week actually in wayland um so we're pretty booked up at night but um uh weekends again for open play now this is during the season obviously so um that's our busiest time too and so weekday mornings and afternoons it's it's not as busy and so we try to do lessons and clinics during that time and i it sounds like that fix fits well with some of the

083other tenants at brookside um since our our busier times are when they're either closed or getting ready to close and then seasonality you can probably guess summer uh with the warm weather if you can play outside you're probably not going to play inside um and then winter's our busiest time uh and then fall and spring it depends on the weather these are comments from the neighbors in the weyland town center um jose is the uh the gm at the local which is a restaurant right there um he's a supporter of ours and then nancy nancy's uh i think our closest neighbor and she's been really supportive and helpful um and then sarki sarkeesian is the weylandtown planner he's he's been very helpful during covid with you know helping us figure out how to um you

084know deal with all the restrictions and figure out ways to make things work so he's been it's been great and then last pages are google reviews so uh just leave it at that but again very excited about the opportunity thank you are there other parts to the presentation or this is all i have okay um is that all that you had as well alicia yep correct any any uh questions from members of the board jim um this is the question from the capacity there and how much of the remaining capacity the x golf has taken up on a good note of health we the property is actually on a fast system and the property was originally designed to have a restaurant it was supposed to be in the corner this quadrant the right hand side

085but then probably a decade ago by now there was the original i want to call it organic kitchen that was on the far left hand side so as a result we actually had a wet use capacity so that we ran all the calculations but because it was originally designed in we still have plenty of capacity for robbed use for rob's use but also future use there's probably upwards to i think it's um the mid hundreds gallon per day that we have um still in capacity above and beyond the forecasted retail use for any of these existing um and that includes our newest tenant who will be boston market and x golf will be subdividing the existing pier one box if that makes any sense thanks no more questions you just answered my question i was

086just curious about the relation to boston market it's it's it's going to be a separate entity it's a separate entity it's not inside x golf correct it's adjacent to so the original pier 1 box in round numbers was about 11 000 square feet so x golf will take approximately 7 800 square feet and then remaining will be the boston market so it's not the boston market of old um it's the boston market of new which is more of that quick serve um less than 17 seats boston market it's it's the it's the newer version excellent and you don't need a cart a golf cart which is cool you um so a few questions um one um this was touched upon um slightly with um discussion on the base but any coveted considerations um that would

087be good to know about um and kind of changes that have been made in light of that um the second question was um as people know um restaurants are big uses of users of water and so i was wondering if there was a water study done and then um the third question is a clarification question um so in the special permit um you have i it was kind of hard to read so i was wondering if you could clarify the numbers that you have for total parking spaces provided on-site total parking spaces dedicated to proposed views that exist and total parking spaces dedicated to proposed use on page 20. sure um rob do you want to handle the first two questions and then i'll go in on the parking calc uh sure um so for

088kovid um so so we we as you can imagine we did a lot of uh we did a lot of everything so we we came out with a so in wayland i'm talking about so what we have done since the beginning is we're going to adhere to whatever um the you know cdc and the governor and the town say we should do and so from the beginning that's kind of what we followed um but then we tried to do more than that so when you know masks were required we required mass when um we had uh you know one we put partitions between the bays we put basically partitions all around the bays we added um some air purifiers we um we still actually have the temperature scanning station which is actually pretty cool people

089just use it anyway just uh because you can get a quick quick um temperature i use it every day but anyway it that's right when you walk in um but but we did a lot and we we had to deal with a lot and frankly i really credit my team for for having to change course every time something new came out and our capacity went to 25 and things were tough and you know mandating masks and these you know 19 20 year old kids are telling 68 or people that got to put your mask on and and they did it and they did such a great job so i'm really proud of them um but so yes so to answer your question basically we do whatever we can do and then we try to do

090a little bit more to make people feel comfortable because we know that's the only way they're coming i know there are people that aren't coming in because they said i'm not going to come in until after this is over and that's fine but for those that still feel comfortable coming in we want to make them feel comfortable coming in and want to come back so that's really try to try hard to do that um the next question was the water study i didn't do a water study we we have had numbers um in weyland they they um were asking about that but they uh so i i found out what the folks in michigan did they're kind of they there's a bunch of x golfs in michigan and they gave us some numbers but i

091honestly don't remember what they were they weren't they weren't that much we really don't use that much water for for us it's mostly um just bathroom use um there is some cleaning that's done but it's like i said with the food it's it's not a lot of food um you know just in percentage basis food is less than five percent of our revenues so it's really not that much um and uh most of it is is people come in and play golf so we don't use a lot of water so on the i'm just bringing up my chart on the um parking side um the chart that i have in front of me we estimate that we have approximately 330 spaces in the plaza doing the calculation based on three three spaces per thousand that

092would equate to about 228 spaces required so that we would have a surplus of 102 spaces at the center anyone else d um uh so uh i don't have any questions uh any questions from members of the public or comments okay i don't see any um any objection to closing the hearing uh closing has been moved is there a second oh something um all in favor of closing the earrings say aye aye any opposed um just so everyone knows here what we're what we're voting on well first of all the reason for the the vote is that um this uh limited business allows specific uses um turns out that um uh the boston market is allowed by wright but it's a sporting commercial thing is not on my right that's why they dated a special

093use uh permit and approval of the special use permit is based on whether it's consistent with the master plan is in harmony with the purpose and intent of this zoning bylaw will not be detrimental or injurious to the neighborhood in which it exists is appropriate for the site and complies with all applicable requirements of the bylaw so that that's what their this what what our approval means there's a draft [Music] decision in the packet uh and if we're in an agreement with that we could move to approve the um [Music] special use permit as drafted show moved is there a second a second uh all in all in favor of approving the specialist permit is drafted say aye aye any opposed okay it's approved thank you everybody we appreciate it we'll we'll see you guys

094in just a few minutes again i think for a couple more hearings but uh for now we have to move on to our our our next hearing under mgl 140 section 58 the acting select board will hold a public hearing in room 204 at actontown hall 472 main street on october 18 2021 at 8 p.m on the application of garage hail llc for a class ii auto dealer's license at 465 great road acton matt zero one seven two zero from a computer enter the link uh activemad.gov meeting slash bos or from a telephone dial 646-876-9923 and enter in the webinar id 503 telephone users may dial 9 to request to speak after joining the meeting computer and app users may use the raised hand feature to speak so is there a presentation here john from

095garage hill i believe so yes um mr patel mr patel mr testing hello you're good oh hello everybody um no i i actually don't have a presentation currently um we're building um a website online and we're just kind of getting it off the ground but we want to be able to start doing uh electronic sales of cars and just make it just an easier process than having to go to a dealership and go through the whole hassle just with covid nowadays and a huge car shortage um it's it's kind of been a very difficult experience for a lot of people so um assembling a team and doing everything digitally and this is kind of the beginning of it all okay so this is this is all used cars right for a class 2 license correct

096and um the um will you be showing people cars on site do they or or is it completely done online completely online okay and and the delivery of cars how is that to handle uh there's a service there's like several services that do that okay and so that no one comes to the site to pick up their car no but i mean we can just make that available uh i i have storage facilities uh that i'm looking at securing possibly if you know we need to store cars but um for the most part you know these type of peer-to-peer transactions are very easy to to to do online uh using docusign um and all types of vendors lenders everything's digital now so um i think we're going to be able to do everything like very

097little overhead and um that's that's essentially the goal um we want to make it on an app you know and just like vroom kind of a competitive room have you guys heard of car carvana has physical retail presence but um you know there's a company like vroom that just went public um and they're completely digital so competitors like that uh shift uh there's really not much of a a market space here uh yet in the new england area so i think i think we can really have a big shot at um doing something like that uh my family already owns a convenience store on great road um and so we're there a lot all the time um and yeah so this is still the the beginning of it all so i didn't i didn't i

098didn't know what to expect um and i didn't have any presentation prepared but um you know if if that is something that um anybody would like to see you you don't need any i have to have a presentation i was just not giving you the opportunity if you had something i just have two more quick questions and i asked the other members of the board will you be storing any cars at this site no i i might take them there to photograph though okay that's fine yeah and you won't be uh this there's no um uh auto repair associated with with this site no but i've got you know network of lots of different shops that are prepared to help you know any type of onboarding of inventory so um yeah okay any uh great

099questions from other members of the board friend did you have a question i was also going to ask if the cars were going to be stored so that was my question and it was answered anyone else uh jim um so the the business address is is acting convenience as well is that is that the store that yeah yeah so i just assumed you know what while i'm running the store um i i could just use the office in the back and do all my website administrate work there and pretty again like i said leave all my overhead very low and work remotely as pretty much we've all been doing for a large part um a lot of this was born out of kind of an uh just trying to predict the future of where this

100is going being in retail you know um and seeing the shift in traffic um coming and going you know it's uh kind of almost been like a force of uh just searching for something that would um be able to generate business uh and fill in the gaps you know what i mean but it's becoming something a lot bigger uh and i'm excited about it yeah well so my hearing about it big business model i hope i wish you great success thank you so much it will be i'll open up it to the public for any comments or questions if you're online please raise your electronic hand um this is just a quick question um but it says here that um you don't have any employees working under you so right now you're just solo correct

101okay got you got you and um the second question which is more of a curiosity question but um in terms of the cards that you saw have you thought about um looking at it through the lens of sustainability and have you are you trying to promote evs and things like that actually the first car is a tesla model three um and so yeah that i'm starting with that one um today and they're very limited so that's that's the other thing is it's it's becoming rather niche um and they're they're the most popular anyways um and i feel the best and most proudest and most confident in them so um yeah great question and thank you for that because that's uh that's actually a big part of it all um unfortunately we couldn't just do exclusively

102that just because there's just not enough inventory of tesla's um to make the business sustainable and solvent but um it's definitely our priority it's good to hear thank you thank you i see one hand from a member of the public uh matt could you allow that person to speak on user one you may speak hi this is tara from westback and i just have a couple of questions sure go ahead and so um how so there'll be some value that will be created which is great sounds like fun um and maybe some activity but of course they're across the town whenever there's more activity and so we've got to decide whether this is a community value or you know just a private profit value and so um i'm wondering if like a restaurant they uh

103there's a tax on um restaurant and meals which comes back to cover the costs of more heavier business activities and so i'm wondering whether the um online revenues would play a role in the appraisal or assess value of the property thank you i'll take my answer offline do you hope that changes the appraised value no that's not something that i could answer at this time no i'm not sure okay any other any other questions or comments okay um uh seeing none i'll take a motion to close the hearing so i it's been moved is there a second thank you very much everybody for everybody's time thank you um so it's been uh maybe seconded to close the hearing uh all in favor of closing the hair and say hi any opposed the hearing is closed

104um and now i'll take a motion to approve a class two auger dealer's license for garage hail and 465 great road enough is there a second please seconded okay it's been made it made and seconded uh all in favor of approving the class two license say aye aye aye any opposed it's approved thank you very much okay we'll move on to our next hearing uh notice this here by given under uh chapter 138 section 12 of the general laws that the select board will hold a hearing in the francis faulkner hearing room 204 in the atkinton hall 472 main street acton and virtually at actonmad.gov slash meeting slash bos or from a telephone dial 646-876-9233 and enter webinar id 503-918-785 telephone users may dial star nine to request to speak computer and app users may

105rate use the raised hand speaker to request to speak um on october 18th 2021 at 8 10 p.m on the application of rfg golf llc for an all alcoholic beverage license located at 145 great road acton map the application is on file in the select board office and may be viewed during normal working hours okay um mr manager good evening yes we have my name is elizabeth and i am here on behalf of rfg golf llc doing business as x golf and acton um i have a couple of procedural questions for the board the first is would the board be willing to adopt the facts as recited by mr granahan in the earlier uh special permit hearing or would you like a recitation of the facts um i i think we can just use the

106facts says from the earlier hearing any objection to that from members of the board okay good thank you and my next question is um following this hearing is a hearing on the common victory license application uh the facts will be the same would you like me to address that separately or combined with this this hearing um you you can do it combined and then we'll do um separate comments from the public okay thank you so just to to hit on a couple of points this is an application for an all-alcohol annual on-premise license at 145 great road in acton um and as mr granahan recited to you he's proposing an indoor golf training facility that's going to be very family friendly he's going to offer instruction club fittings leagues and tournaments and incidental to the

107golf training purpose is a food and beverage service included in the application you'll see a menu for um x golf in wayland which will be the same menu in acton and i can just read quickly for you uh but the menu will be relatively simple but my understanding it's a very high quality bar food um the breakfast menu includes a breakfast sandwich hash browns uh they have appetizers and sweet treats of an ice cream sandwich hot dogs chips and salsa a charcuterie board soft break baked pretzel cheese quesadilla things in a blanket mozzarella sticks chicken tenders chicken wings yeah so in addition to that they'll be offering beverages and our request is that the board approve an application for all alcoholic beverages to be served with when customers come in to play a round of

108golf um the proposed hours of operation i believe rob recited to you earlier are 9am to 10 pm monday through thursday on friday and saturday an additional hour so 9 00 a.m to 11 p.m and then on sunday from 9 a.m to 9 00 p.m the seating capacity is to be determined but we are seeking a maximum seating capacity of 57 and a maximum occupancy of 60. rob is the proposed manager of record he's the manager of record at the weyland location he's a u.s citizen and is tip certified he has been the manager of record in weyland for since its opening two years ago and that location has not had any violations so rob is familiar with the eebc's these regulations and we prepared a written policy for his employees with regard to the

109sale and service of alcohol and you have that in the application packet we believe that the x golf location here in acton um would nicely accommodate this this service the nearest section 12 licenses here are the atlantic sea grill at 77 great road which is kind of licensed since 2014 and wrapped scallion at five strawberry hill road and that was issued in 2015. rob showed you some of the comments he's received from the railings location but the wayland location has received great reviews um you can see from those comments that the neighbors feel so there's a great partnership between the x golf and their retail neighboring retail businesses they send each other to each other's premises and so there's a nice relationship and it builds a nice sense of community and business in the area

110another comment from another neighbor was that rob is a dedicated manager and entrepreneur it's a family-friendly crowd with children parents couples in small groups and then again the wayland town planner said that the business was literally a game changer in bringing more folks to the town all very positive another factor to consider is traffic we don't believe there will be any increase to traffic uh x golf's busiest hours are after 6 p.m on weeknights and then also on saturday afternoons which we feel is compatible with the other retailers in this shopping plaza and that there's a parking lot in front of the plaza which will accommodate all of the ex-golf patrons noise is another factor to consider and we see no evidence that the granting of a common victoria or all alcoholic license for this

111establishment would increase the level of noise music will be played at or about conversation level and deliveries occur about once a week mostly between the hours of 10 a.m and 2 p.m this is a modest size the square footage is 7244 square feet to accommodate the golf simulators but in actuality the capacity is much less with about 60 people or less and the sort of operation that carries the license the reputation of the applicant um as stated previously rob's other location in wayland has a stellar reputation it's been open for two years and um has had no problems whatsoever with glowing reviews and um rob has no criminal background uh and in terms of notice to a butters um there were no church schools churches or hospitals within 500 feet of the premises and so

112in in summer in summary we asked that um a the board determined that a looker license at this location is appropriate as well as a common victoria license at this location and we respectfully ask the select board to grant an annual all-alcoholic beverages section 12 license as well as a cd license to rfg goal thank you thank you uh very thorough i just have one one quick question um maybe i should have asked this during the the last presentation i think the access is being improved from the sidewalk out front is that correct maybe that's part of the plaza's work rob can you answer that question are they are they improving the walkway that goes from that corner of the building to the sidewalk so i think you'd have to check with alicia um she

113did mention this last time we spoke that there was um i think a petition to add stairs in where um that corner is that the corner you're talking about where um boston market will be that's what he's talking about there's stairs and then an accessible walkway i think um i just i saw the drawings for that i just wanted to make sure that those plants were in place for access to uh to expo but yeah so our main entrance will be the pier one main entrance so that won't change so there i think they're adding a new door for for and i shouldn't speak because i don't know but i think that's the plan is to add a new new door for uh boston market but we're we'll keep the same main entrance that pier

114one had okay thank you alicia do you know the answer about the walkway from the street yes absolutely so we uh because we're subdividing there's a great change um for the new for the elevation of the two new doors um we had replaced the sidewalk from the corner of trader joe's um through to around to the front of staples we will take at that break we'll now replace the sidewalk from that corner down to what would be the now the end cap the end wall but because we are changing the grade we then are going to be modifying that corner um to then modify the access down to 119 and then fully replace that entire sidewalk great thank you daddy i just wanted to fully understand that thank you any questions other members of the

115board please yeah no no questions uh it's a great presentation i'm really excited uh with tax golf and and this related use um you know not only because it's nice to welcome some new businesses in town but the possibility that we can start drawing some more clientele into the plaza and all along route 2a so i think it's a it's a great move i'm very much in favor of this yeah jim um maybe this is a question for the manager um i'm wondering what our channel full looker license situation is that's something that lisa tommel tracks very closely and she's telling me that we have more than enough to cover this and at least a handful of other businesses if you want to tell your friends to come to acting okay thank you i'll take

116that as a as a message to consider getting into the little business um one question i have is maybe this is a combination of a food question and uh and the ex golf which is okay so i show up to x golf uh i'm in a wheelchair and what's my experience gonna be like do i can i get around everywhere can i is there a way for me to use the golf the golf clubs and so on um so there is yes um the the one piece that we would need to make sure we have is a ramp to get up onto the um onto the stage so i don't know if you remember the picture but it the stage is about oh i don't know eight inches off the ground where you hit the

117balls compared to the to the floor and so um i've spoken with other um ex-golfs that that have this and they have a ramp that that allows people up other than that there's um there's seating there's access um we plan on making the doors automatic we actually did that in weyland um as well that was part of the covid um you know didn't want people touching things and so we made the doors automatic we'll probably be doing the same thing in um in actin if we can and uh so yeah it's one level so there's no no change to the to the grade the bathrooms obviously are are up to code too so you should be able to do that thanks so much that's a question thank you um and jim i really liked that

118question um and it's good to know that accessibility um has been taken as a priority um my question is um what inspired by public health um so based on the menu i was wondering if um there was any nutrient information um that would be uh provided to people who come in um and also how are food allergies handled um so uh food allergies are the the um on the bottom of the menu it says please inform the server if anybody has an allergy and we handle that the uh um [Music] the other question on nutrition we haven't we haven't gotten into that to be perfectly honest um i uh you know probably should do some research on that and and allow that to be posted too um but i'd have to learn learn more about

119what what we should post so something for us to think about yeah that would be great to look into thank you i'll open it up now to members of the public if they have any questions uh leo please go ahead your thoughts reaching right terrace question if i'm traveling around town with my wife she says ah i need paper i need ink and i want to shop at trader joe's and i'm from with her without playing golf can i walk in have a beer and a snack mr green anne yes um so we expected that to be a bigger part of the business in weyland than it has turned out to be so so um and when we have a small bar and um it is really not used that much so but yes you

120can do that you can walk in um sit down and have a drink or have you know food or whatever um but most people come because they want to play golf um there are a lot of places there are a lot of places to go and have a drink or have food but i think the uniqueness of x golf is that you can play golf so i think that's what most people do thank you i wouldn't use that machine it's just i'm not much of a shopper and i get bored and you can sit in my car and read my kingdom so i just want to know if there's another option for me actually you can play golf you can play golf [Laughter] thank you um this is alyssa i am used to zoom and

121you can't see me but you can see me now so i'm alyssa nichol um from south acton school street i'm fully in support of x golf my my husband isn't is a golfer i was just stopped short by the comment that this uh business is more than it's not within 500 feet of any churches and i know that the concord they act and conquered chabad is across the street from the shopping plaza the powers gallery is across the street but they act and conquered khabad is next door and it looks like it's about 500 feet so i'm not pointing this out because i think that there's any issue i just want everybody to be aware that there is a religious group that meets across the street thanks thank you uh liz lashway is that a

122problem is that something that you have to notify if someone you have to notify you it's it's not a problem everyone within 500 feet has been notified of the hearing so there's no um there's there's no problem um but uh there's no there's no problem i apologize if if i i missed that i went through the um the um the five the butters list that was provided to me from the assessor and uh no churches schools or hospitals uh appeared from my perspective on that list but everyone within 500 feet was notified of the hearing today thank you i see no more uh comments in the room and i don't see anyone online so i would take a motion to close the hearing so moved is there a second second motion been made and seconded

123to close the hearing all in favor say aye aye any hostess okay uh the hearing is closed um and now now we'll uh vote i will take a motion uh uh for a section 12 all alcohol beverage license uh by uh rfg golf uh 145 great road in acting show moved second motion has been made and seconded uh all in favor of the motion is red say hi hi are you opposed uh it's granted thank you and we'll move right on and i thought if uh what you said uh earlier uh liz last week that you you don't need to make any further presentation uh we'll move right into any uh questions by the uh well actually i need to to read the uh the notice um the active select board will hold a public

124hearing on october 18 2021 at 8 20 p.m in the francis faulkner hearing room 204 at the town hall 472 main street acting and virtually www.activemad um i think that's wrong it's slash meetings bos or from a telephone dial 646-876-9923 and enter the webinar id 503-918-785 telephone users may dial star nine to speak computer and app users may use the raise hand fake feature to speak online our on the application of rj rfg golf at llc at 145 great road acton under section 140 of the massachusetts general laws for a common viddler license application can be inspected in townhall during normal business hours okay so i'll take any questions from members of the board for the presenters questions sure we started in the slow process of moving away from fossil fuels in actin because of

125the climate emergency so we can't require you to use gas or not but i am curious and i'm happy to provide any you know more pressure how will you be heating the food it's electric so it's a single uh high speed oven maybe two high speed ovens they're they're about three by threes you see them at subway and dunkin donuts and starbucks they're you know pretty small um but yeah it's it's it's electric um i don't know if they make gas versions of that it's called a merry chef other like a turbo chef oven um but again that's probably something to look into but um i i haven't seen one i know that's good electric is better yeah other questions all right um i just say again for members of the public any any questions

126or comments i see none in the room i'm not online so i'll take a motion to close the hearing is there a second second motion has been made and seconded all in favor of closing the hearing say hi and um now i'll take a motion um uh for a common viddler's license uh for rfg golf llc at 145 uh great road in acting is there a second second motion has been made and seconded all in favor of approving license say aye aye hi any opposed uh it's approved thank you thanks so much thank you mr manager uh when are you opening we hope to open um early 2022. that all depends on construction timeline so as soon as we can thank you good luck thank you very much okay we'll return to the portion of

127the uh agenda before the hearings mr manager i'll jump right to your update thank you uh so a few things uh the great road revitalization plan was completed uh through the dhcd grant funded program the local rapid recovery that report is posted online and we'll do some promotions this week to push it out to everybody so they can review it it's got some good information in there for us to use going forward a public hearing for the hayward road intersection is being planned for november 1st which is the next select board meeting that's an intersection that many people have asked about so that's will be a first look at some of the design concepts that public works has been working on an opportunity for some public input i wanted to mention and thank uh sustainability

128director baseraf and the team from mapc and other uh volunteers who helped with an open house event this past saturday at nara park that we think there was about 150 people there uh and it was a great opportunity for people to discuss and and help engage on on climate action planning and we'll be sharing the results of that work uh this this shortly regarding covid cases are down to eight right now in isolation which is a trend we hope continues heading down downward and i wanted to mention that there are many things we did in the last year and a half to respond to the pandemic one particular thing that i'm proud of is the actin town services hotline this is a group of employees who it wasn't any of their particular jobs but they

129all stepped up to staff this hotline to make sure that residents with questions about covid had someone live on the phone when they called and so since april of 2020 this this group has handled 2500 calls uh and of course the first month or two it was uh is this are we allowed you know is there a mask here is this when's this business going to be open is the library going to open it was all stuff like that that we were dealing with before but now it's more general customer service items which i think is providing a very valuable service to the community so i wanted to take a moment to thank the 23 employees that have been staffing this hotline for the last 18 months or so and all led by kristen alexander

130who's our gis officer but he's al she's also been the hotline coordinator so in addition to kristin we had tara mcnell kathy breest kim bricker kim clark brian cody austin saganowitz linda dalamore marianne fleckner justin flynn jennifer friedman aaron green yashera gonzalez kim gorman maura haberman olga camille becky leblanc elora overstreet mary lou rapucci way sun lisa tommel denise whitney and terry sabrowski so thank you to all those folks for for helping us out [Applause] thank you does anybody have a member remember a minute dean please yeah i've got i've got three items uh i go through fairly quickly uh on saturday in addition to the work that andrea basara was doing with the climate action plan i was pleased to see that she was out breaking up styrofoam boxes down at the public works

131building and it's nice to see that the white collar people weighed right in with blue collar people from dpw so i was very pleased to see that and it seemed like they're doing land office business there secondly one of the items that we might be discussing tonight is work at the ace of parliament house the design review board is actually going to be reviewing some of the plans in this room on thursday night so certainly uh you know public are certainly welcome you usually don't see a lot of folks at drb meetings but this might be a great time for people to express their wishes and finally the acton conservation trust on saturday gave the carol hawley environmental stewardship award to bruce rachman who has done a huge amount of work building bridges and boardwalks

132and all sorts of construction projects throughout our conservation lands including most notably and most obvious the the china trail bridge at the arboretum was something that he built and uh you know bruce and the rest of the land stewards have done a great job and certainly bruce was well deserving of that award that's it thank you anyone else hi jim um i didn't have anything when i showed up but a couple things to come up um the first thing is um i didn't want people especially mr foxman to be left with the impression that it was only himeja who thought that there were harmful statements made at the last meeting so um i'm happy also to meet with you and chat and you know we we actually know how to walk from one house to

133the other so yeah yeah good um the other thing was just um just what an how heartbreaking it was to hear your story madeline and i'm really glad you came to us and uh i know that the you know the board members and the staff here are committed to figuring out what's what what what's gone wrong and figuring out how to fix it um it was uh it was very it was very odd to go from you know hearing malin's story to hearing about um you know you know golf simulators so i i'm you know i i didn't take that out on the applicant because i know it wasn't wasn't their fault but it was just astonishing to go to get to get the extremes of you know um you know a crappy apartment in

134townhouse lane and um you know a really upscale establishment for you know people who dress you know extremely well and pay money in order to play golf inside of small building um it's just quite a contrast for me i it's i i love that acton has those has you know all sorts of people in all sorts of places but it was hard uh to make that change thanks thank you anyone else remember a minute i just want to echo what jim just said the transition was odd but yeah um jim thank you so much um and i echo you 100 i actually felt like i was being extremely diplomatic when i said that there were harmful statements said um so i look forward to our conversation um and madeline your story just underscores the importance

135of talking about the discrimination that happens in this town and it occurs to people like you who's had their voices silenced by institutions within this town and it's absolutely not okay and so i look forward to there being a discussion around investigating this further and for us to hear as a select board updates on this um so yeah that's that's what i have to say but i really hope that we as a town continue to make inclusion a priority it is always it always has to be a priority and i feel like i get really exhausted saying this every single time but that's exactly why we have to say this every single time so thank you thank you so much for being here and for your bravery yeah um i i'd like to ask the

136manager if he might be able to characterize exactly what involvement the act and select board could have uh regarding situation that's under the control of the housing authority which is an independent commission uh well it's certainly uh something that the board of the housing authority could hear and and i think it would be appropriate place for that complaint to be brought if it hasn't already if i said that correctly uh but i will investigate anything the board wants me to so if you want me i will thank you yeah i think that frankly there's quite a number of things that we can do i mean we heard a number of them and ms cruz's story uh for she said uh several times that um some things were not corrected until the board of health came

137out um some other things she mentioned are um uh you know as far as the um uh escape lights working during power outages that's an issue for the fire department um there are there are other other things she mentioned that might apply to different board departments and also um we could we can act as as mediators between uh ms cruz and the housing authority um so you know i i think there's actually quite a bit we can do i also want to say that you know i can use the words black and white without being racist there's nothing inherently racist about those words and i stand by my statement that a white person cannot know racism um it's just not possible we can learn about racism you can spend a lot of time i've spent

138personally spent a lot of time trying to understand racism but i don't think we can really know it you know so that's my opinion i'll stand by that opinion thank you so much david um okay we'll move on um the next thing is to discuss the new uh voting precincts and i think we're going to have uh our town clerk uh eva is uh in the virtual audience if we could elevate her to panelists um basically the map that the board reviewed recently uh we wanted to bring your attention to some changes and how it impacts some of the discussions are happening with the state legislature as it relates to redistricting eva there you are hi eva would you mind if i ask you a quick question before we started on the precincts early on

139in our comments someone was was saying that we should send out notifications when we have a town election i just wanted to verify with you that anybody in town can sign up to have a ballot mailed to them is that correct yes right so you know not only they know the notification they can get the thing that they need to mail back um to actually vote yes thank you um please go ahead with your uh and tell us about the new precinct okay so i will do my best um i know that kristin alexander is on as well um to help me with some of the gis information in case there's any questions on that so the state has every 10 years does a repre precincting 10 years ago we added precinct 6. we're only

140allowed to have um a max of 4 000 voters per precinct we were getting pretty close to that um which created the additional precincts so we will be going to seven precincts um and that's what is gone to you right now is to approve that map that we've um put forward forward to you um the map went through um our gis coordinator as well as um our engineering department to look at the lines to see if the lines fell in an appropriate way and we believe that they have in the way that we're presenting them to you that's what i have great um i assume that everybody has seen the new precincts uh in um in the uh in the packet i just wanted to say because i asked that that's the question is um

141uh as of earlier today the legislature had not assigned our precincts to the representative districts yet now so right now we're three and three in um in between the two which is the uh fourteenth middlesex and the thirty-seventh middlesex um uh we uh uh obviously we won't be evenly divided well four and one well i don't know uh i know that um that the precincts are being moved so maybe it won't even be close to you but anyway they're not they're not assigned yet any any questions for the town clerk uh jim um maybe both since you seem to just speak on this topic maybe this is a question for you but um is it is it always the case that the uh state representative districts are dividing strictly along town precinct lines or is

142that a whole separate process that i can't answer that i don't know it as far as i know that they've always been along a precinct line i think this this is the first year that it's seems to be different my understanding is that that they are using the i'm sorry 2010 maps so the older precinct maps is what they're following um instead of the new ones that we're doing now thank you so it's a little bit of an iterative process with the state other questions and we don't need to vote on these right here do we need to approve them no any action you just take tonight people need the board to take tonight is there any action you need the board to take yes they actually need to vote to accept the map as

143we have presented it to them um and i know it within the packet there was a letter that they would need to sign for us to send to the state okay um but before we do that i will take comments from members of the public on the new precincts if you're online just raise your electronic hand in the room please go to the podium so i don't i don't see any any thank you um matt could you let linda please speak certainly linda you've been unmuted uh linda bear north actually i'm just curious how many voters are in acting um and how many would be in each precinct so we currently have and i'm estimating because i don't remember the exact number i'm estimating about 16 000 and we're looking at i believe um [Music]

144per precinct including the seventh precinct okay thank you you're welcome any other questions or comments i'm sorry just signified um so sorry so you said there are 16 000 voters and and how many per precinct um they're they're putting in as of the 2020 um census about per each precinct including seventh precinct great thank you so much you're welcome just so you know the exact numbers are in the pack okay um so um uh i will take a motion to accept the new uh precepts as defined in the package so moved and there's a second second okay the motion has been made and seconded um uh all in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed great the motion passes thank you thank you everyone okay we'll move on to the arpa funding

145we [Music] finished up last time where we voted on um all the items and um we isolated the ones that received um four votes um for uh from at least four votes from from members of the board um the town manager took that information and produced uh a proposal um uh john i don't know if you want to uh speak to that sure thank you so uh using the uh the boards uh voting uh process that started during the duration of the previous meeting and all the feedback that was received in addition to that in public uh what was produced and presented to the board for its consideration tonight is a american rescue plan investment uh investment plan and the the the basis of this plan is that uh it's i'm recommending that the board

146consider allocating portions of the funding for fy22 and fy23 um right now it's october uh so we we're one quarter of the way through a year through um fy 22 and so i'm recommending that you allocate funding for the rest of this year and for fy23 and i'm recommending that the rest of the years uh be held in reserve any funding designated for those years be held in reserve so that the board has the opportunity to be able to react to any needs that emerge or change as as the years pass through but essentially the the plan that was in the packet recommends an allocation of around five million dollars out of the uh seven million that the town is receiving and the and that the rest of it be held in reserve um i'm

147happy to go through each line item of the investment plan if you'd like and i have more details on each item if there's any questions about the items uh in the investment plan so the um uh we'll we can just talk in just a minute about going through each item if members would like to do that the first thing i would like to do is just to confirm um one outstanding thing from last time and that's that the the two million dollars for funding the school district which the um in the town manager's proposal has a million this year half a million next year and half a million in in reserve um uh i just want to confirm that we with a thumbs up thumbs down that we want to do that during the meeting

148um last time himager was momentarily offline so only four of us voted so i just wanted to confirm uh you know some interesting thumbs up thumbs down that we're all okay with the two million dollars or at least four of us are okay with the two million dollars know i know dean you you were not at least last time okay but you are friends okay so like that's that's that's four of us um how would you guys like like to do this right so this is basically what we voted last time i'm happy to go down each item in the manager's plan or we can as necessary if you guys want to bring up individual questions or uh comments or proposed changes we can do that it seems to me that i mean again i'm

149very happy to go through line by line if everybody wants to do that but or we uh but it might be more efficient to do it on an exception basis if people have questions or comments dean please yeah i uh i think it's a pretty good balanced approach that the manager has taken and i it certainly reflects the will of the vast majority um i the only question that i've got is uh p9 regarding the silver main extension um that everything is being put in reserve could could you explain the process behind that mr manager um is is there going to be more study or is there going to be more public discussion of this or how do we get to a decision on that yeah thank you for the question uh so for p9

150that was to construct a sewer main extension to the actin housing authority site at 364 main street and to provide opportunities for other properties along the way to connect the purpose of this project was to construct the sewer main the town received the housing choice grant in the amount of 165 thousand dollars to do a feasibility study to see if it's feasible to connect over the bridge uh we just completed that feasibility study we're scheduled to present it to the board on november 1st so i think um we have uh you know we haven't had a chance to have that report really uh reviewed and considered by the board acting as sewer commissioners that's the primary reason that it was in reserve we also in addition to the feasibility study we have about 140 000

151remaining in design uh funding if we wanted to move forward if the board wanted to move forward we have the funding to design it um so the cost to do this connection if you read the feasibility study it's it's penciled in at 1.4 million we round it up in this case because things get more expensive every year at 1.5 we we believe or i believe that having a sewer connection for this property would create more flexibility for how the housing authority building is constructed and also provide for more flexibility on how the rest of the public property on that parcel is used by the town either now or in the future great thank you so also i just want to say in our last meeting that didn't meet the threshold of four of us and

152i also want to clarify in the town manager's plan in the fy 22 or fy23 columns what we'd be approving tonight is for the town the town manager would be authorized to release those funds when those projects came to fruition right so they if they're ready to go they meet the letter of the harpa law he can release those funds the reserve amount would require an additional vote by us so the you know any fundings for future years or if we want to add something we we could do that out of the reserve with an additional a vote and there's nothing to say that we um you know we don't have to wait two years to do that right we could do that before two years so yeah some more procedural questions about what what

153being in reserves mean um it seems like it would also be an option for the board to decide well this money's in reserve for this thing but now we understand a situation we'd like to move that out of that category and put it in some other reserve or put it to some other use is that is that still a valid option in other words putting something that's only funded by reserves isn't committing it committing us to do that particular thing is that true i that is true i think that's those amounts there are kind of a reminder to us that you know should we want to dip into the reserves and put that someplace that we had been thinking about putting 300 000 here or 500 000 here we could we couldn't do that if

154we you know did something else right right so it's kind of a reminder to us but we we could do that okay um another procedural question um it seems like there is um if i'm if i'm understanding the math right there is money that we've accepted that is not allocated or recommended for reserve the the subtotal of the reserve items right now is 1.35 million and the total funding available for reserved items is a little over 2 million so my understanding it right that there's you know around 700 000 that is in some sort of like super secret reserve or extra reserve or where's that money so it's um it's not super secret okay i figured it uh so the the the reason that it's shown in gray uh on this table that's that was

155produced as part of the plan is to show that it's it's a reserve it's a placeholder in some cases where the board uh held the vote at last meetings and and i think there was support in the amount of four members for a specific amount uh that is the specific amount shown in reserve and other cases where i wasn't able to determine the the consensus of the board it's simply shown as a reserve amount and so that any of these numbers in reserve uh are subject to the priorities of the town uh in the future and you know this is something that the board would would review on an annual basis if not sooner uh depending on how quickly these new needs emerge or as needs shift but it's important i believe for the board

156to sort of set the framework of this is what we know we know the things and this is my recommendation but you can change any of these numbers shown in black and white uh but the sort of what's in black and white is sort of the framework what's in gray is what we think we want to do but that there's a lot of opportunity to make sure that any other needs are covered or priorities may shift if necessary so that the full seven million isn't committed uh in one evening so if i could just make an additional comment so that 700 000 would cover all the things that just have the word reserve in them in the you know as opposed to a specific value in the last column right but there's not enough for

157all those right you know 700 000 would not cover all those uh um so uh you know we need to um you know to the extent in future years or future you know at some point in the future we we want to fund some of those using the 700 000 we can distribute them among those but probably not all of them or we could take some from some area that we had previously you know put in a specific value but we could change that value got it thank you did you have more questions jim yeah one more follow-up question which is um how do you want to handle a discussion about items that aren't listed on the proposal but that you know that we had discussed previously that having quite made the threshold i'll come

158back to that in just a minute and we and we can we can talk about that yeah you ready yeah um also just a quick clarifying question um so for the reserve items um if we voted as a select board to approve um funding allocation to a certain item could that be used for fiscal year 22 or 23 like it could it could apply to any year um you know i think it probably could but these are the two years that we're expecting them to fall the the reserves are for the future but it could be again in any year right so if we um i don't know got to next spring we could prove something for fiscal 23 if we wanted to do that got you okay so we see like and like if

159we see a need right now for like a certain item that's something we could vote on at like a future select board meeting sometimes that's correct or or as jim is maybe going to be doing in just a few minutes um suggest that we modify the plan a bit right we could add another line to the plan we could change a five to a six you know somewhere in here or something like that so um if um you know uh we'll see what what changes you know you guys would like to make tonight and then my goal would be if we don't have uh too many changes tonight that we we vote on this vote on the plan as modified or as not modified um jim first um friend did you have any questions then

160jim do you want to make a proposal or discuss a particular possible change yes um an item came up late in the process uh about transportation um and one of the reasons i think i was the only one that voted for it was because there wasn't a lot of detail involved in it and also because there was the the chance that the way it was described implied that we would be hiring a driver or drivers and we didn't want to have uh hiring in the uh you know in these items if possible because it created a requirement for you know continuing to hire them in the future that wasn't funded by arpa so i wanted to make a pitch for putting money in reserves putting the transportation item back on the plan and putting it

161in the reserve column there are a lot of transportation programs that can use support from the taxi voucher program which will be you know which is has some funding but will be running out of its funding there's micro there's a little micro transit options there's the option about having what you might think of as a chaser van a small chaser van that would expand the capabilities of the fixed route program to make it more flexible there's any of these programs typically the way we've done them is we've contracted for services you know either with the rta our regional transit authority or with a private entity like so that any of those programs that required additional people would not be hires by the town it would be simply services provided by a private or public agency

162i think that transportation people who rely on public transportation are in very dire straits they are they have been really hurt badly both by the pandemic and by the way that the pandemic shut down a lot of our transportation options so i'd like to make room for bringing back building back those transportation programs in a way that meets more needs and since we don't have a we don't know which specific program that belongs in it seems like putting it in the in the in the reserves column to be considered with all these other things uh would be uh prudent so it's what i wanted to recommend so i uh personally i think that that's a good idea you know i i completely agree with you that the you know the the transportation is critically important

163and that but that what we had um in the run-up to the um the arpa priorities was not detailed at least for me was not detailed enough to vote on right um in fact i saw a contradiction you know as you said it's you know some people have been hit hard by kova they really need transportation yet the the highlight of the request was for electric fans and um the fact of the matter is we can serve people who've been hit by covid with gasoline-powered or diesel-powered vans i think electric fans are a good thing but it's a completely separate issue it doesn't have to deal with you know the the power source of the vans doesn't have it all to deal with serving the people who have been affected by coving right so at

164least to me and so and and also some of the things that were talked about using those bands were the programs that i had heard were less successful right so i uh for me i didn't have enough information but i am i would be happy to add a line um uh with the uh original request with just the word reserve in the in the last column um is would everybody else be okay with that yeah and i actually wanted to add to that and i just wanted to also thank franny um for the additional information that she sent i had a chance to sit in on a magic meeting which is the minuteman advisory group on interlocal communication and that was really eye-opening there's a lot of towns that are currently using their arpa funds

165for transportation and i think that um adding a line um to our current proposal on transportation is a fabulous idea so uh in the way we did the the others can i just get a thumbs up thumbs down from members to add a line to the plan so i got five thumbs up for that uh john are you okay just adding a line with no no allocation in fy 22 and fy 23 um um and um and and reserve in the final column that says something like transportation programs yes so in in my sheet the one that i used i had it as p99 because it wasn't not wasn't assigned a number so uh you could look at my my scene it was because it was not in the um the town manager's original list

166of possible priorities and so i added it to my spreadsheet as p99 okay um is there anything uh john the the original request amount was 450 thousand dollars jim um in the description of um the the big regional school district item um it lists the um the priority items that are supposed to be part of that and there is an error in that list and it might impact our decision making process so i wanted to note that p 38 p 39 and p 44 are actually not school district items if we wanted to fund them we would at least that's in the in the spreadsheet that um that jason had and that that david had those were not listed as school district items so if we want to fund them we would need to take

167them out of that clump and consider them right i think those might have been overlapped because like especially p third 38 and 39 were items for community benefit um p44 also could be considered an item for community benefit but i agree that maybe we should delete those from that list so p38 it shows up two lines below that so that that is a typo that was included there and just to clarify a large portion of the child care subsidies that we have been providing do go to um the school district for all day k all-day kindergarten tuition or extended day tuition so it is uh supporting school district programs but yeah it doesn't need to be in there twice certainly great um in addition p3 and p4 are marked as school district items so it

168seems like we should probably list them so that the schools could my understanding is that maybe i should take a step back here my understanding is that we were we were going to allow the school district to sort of pick and choose among these items or make proposals to us about how to spend them or how does that how is that going to work so the reason why i proposed this last time is it was very difficult to figure out how we would coordinate with boxborough on an individual program it seemed to me that there were two reasonable ways of handling that acton would pay for some programs in their entirety and boxborough would pay for some programs in their entirety or we the two select boards would have to choose the same list and

169we'd pay for them 85 15 um both of those were really difficult to coordinate and besides that it didn't allow and and also at that time the school committee had not prioritized the proposed list from the superintendent so that list that the manager got was from the superintendent the school committee has since worked on the priority of that list it's in the packet of their last meeting you can go look at it um i might even be able to find it uh if i've seen it in my mail yeah okay so um the the the school committee has has prioritized those but this program would be that the um the school district would request anything that they wanted out of the two million dollars divided up into these fiscal years and as long as it

170met the letter of the law um we would approve that grant okay then this sounds like more of a a a bookkeeping uh correction just to add p3 and p4 there so yeah i think that's right you got that too perhaps the entire description uh isn't necessary and it could just be acton-boxborough school district requests for example fine by me yeah okay um so that does leave us to consider if we want to uh fund p-38 p-39 oh p-38 is already funded p-39 and what is p-44 so p39 last time only got three votes okay so if we're going to go into the three vote things that is a very deep hole right and i would prefer not to do that because if we take our three vote things we're already over subscribed and we

171have nothing for future years um and we can always come back to the p3 things when we have a little bit i mean sorry the three vote things when we have more perspective but i mean given that i i certainly don't want to go through i would propose that we not go through all of them great but i mean if you have a specific one that you want us to consider tonight we can add a line like the transportation line i don't even remember what p39 is sadly so i don't know whether i want to advocate for it or not workshops and programs related to mental health equity and empathy oh wasn't that one of our short-term goals i think our short-term goals had social services oh okay um but i mean this is it

172related to it certainly but again i'm hesitant to choose one thing that had three votes without broadening it to look at all the um all the things that had three votes because who's to say that this one of all the three vote things is the highest one of the three vote things um so um okay got it yeah um yeah actually uh a quick question but actually kind of related to jim's question if there are any three votes that we want to re-poll people for given this new reserve system could we do that if you have a specific thing that you think is you know you we want to ask us about i'm i'm fine with that i mean um you know especially if you if you think that um it it is you know

173more strongly supported by the board than than the other three vote things right so yeah i was personally thinking about um p20 updating the existing complete street plan to improve infrastructure for pedestrians bicyclists and motorists um just kind of in line with strategic planning and increasing accessibility throughout town i was wondering maybe if we re-polled and see if we get more than three that might be helpful okay do you want to just before we do a thumbs up do you want to say why and try to convince fellow board members to your point of view sure absolutely um so for me um i think that we should um reconsider this one just because um you know we we currently have a complete street plan but i think that it could definitely be improved and added

174upon and thinking about how we can make our town um a more friendly environment for pedestrians and and people who use um these common spaces i think is is very much in line with what we're talking about when we're talking about transportation um and improving the quality of our town um and i think that you know this is an important step to um being able to make our town more equitable in many ways okay um uh john can you correct me if i'm wrong that the complete street plan is something that um updating it is something that has started and this is enough money to finish that effort is that right or am i it's um well we annually review our complete streets programs and and plan for capital planning but there was an actual

175study that was done with the consultant to create the prioritization and that hasn't been updated since 2016. and so this would be an opportunity to sort of look at all the needs that we're aware of given all the you know we're doing our we're doing road safety audits and intersection designs and complete street designs all over town sort of taking all of that information and looking at it with one lens instead of in isolation focused on specific initiatives like we have been so it's something that we would do and try to do but there hasn't been a concerted effort with an outside independent uh consultant to do it we just kind of do our best uh to do that every every year and and if we did this would this be uh from your point

176of view an fy 23 thing it would be something that we would do next year yes okay so um any other comments on before i ask for a thumbs up thumbs down on p i'm sorry i lost it 20 p20 dean please yeah so as i see it um we've got it listed as as reserved so i thought did i miss it yeah p20 is is for reserves so um you know if you want to move it instead of a reserve put it into 23 that's one question but i i suspect the town manager might have been thinking about maybe finding some other sources of funding to do that upgrade that could come around uh yeah it was it was something that potentially has an opportunity to be funded otherwise maybe we just leave it

177the way it is yeah i missed that too the only thing that i'll come back to in just a second the only thing which i would like to to bring up and so far it's [Music] funding the private nagog wastewater treatment plant infiltration improvements seems like it might not fit into the what's legal under the arpa law but i'm wondering if we want to put that um you know 300 000 in reserve so that it can be it's it's john's told me that's still under investigation and so if it if it it does end up being um legal is that i missed that as well so i think yeah it's in there for 150 in fy 23 and then the rest in reserve uh i have had additional conversations with our financial consultant it wouldn't

178be eligible uh one of the main criteria for investments in wastewater and water is it has to be eligible under the state's drinking water loan program or whatever whatever it's called but it could be potentially something that we do out of revenue replacement but there's only there's only a capped amount of money that we have we've calculated to be two point uh [Music] 2.25 million that we can use on this list for revenue replacement items so you know i think it would have to be something that we look at carefully and make sure that it doesn't take away from the other revenue replacement items that the board has already approved so that's why i have it in there as 150 with the rest in reserve so that we can figure that out as time passes

179and more information for example we just got guidance from the state at five o'clock this afternoon and i've reviewed it quickly and most of it is consistent with what we've been doing but if if it wasn't i would have been uh concerned okay good um okay so that that to me is fine the way it is any anything else someone wants to bring up adeen yeah again going back to the uh this uh the school allotment we've got p-44 that actually is related to uh the acting water district pfas which shows further up on p 44 as well so right that's another one that that's the one of the ones that jim crossed out yeah okay yep oh so um in his first comment jim jim said that these things were not related to the

180school district oh okay and so we took them out of that and then actually the the manager said probably the whole description of that one needs to change so i actually had a quick question about that item um so i was wondering um what the justification was for the allocation of 450 for fiscal year 2022 and then the rest in reserve um was the water district consulted at all with that distribution uh yes so i've been working with chris allen the director over at the water district on exactly what they're planning to do with the two million dollars that was requested at a recent meeting and basically they're going to work on a plan to add uh equipment to the north acting plant to mitigate pfas it hasn't been designed yet um and they haven't

181started the design and there hasn't been a source for their us the rest of the money in terms of it being 6 million so this 450 000 is the cost to design the improvement with the idea being that if if we use this funding to help them get the design shovel ready it would put them in position to seek other funding and if the board decides to allocate the remaining 550 out of the reserve if it's going to make a measurable difference to what they need to do the board can decide to do that at a later time great thank you and jim i think i think i only have one more question about an item that's not on the list and this was b this would be p12 which is the actin water district

182water main upgrades in kelly's corner which they'd originally asked us for and then they said no we'll we'll happily withdraw this we'll find a way to fund it because really what we what we desperately need money for is that the pfas and they're still going to need to do that um you know and if they were withdrawing that request just in the hopes that we would actually listen to them about pfas we've actually listened to them about pfafs we've actually allocated them that money and i i wonder if that uh if we want to add back in that 100k um for the uh for that expense which will happen when um you know kelly's corner is is opened up i second that 100 percent so it that that in my mind is is a water

183district expense first of all i think opening up the streets and everything is covered as part of the project they had wanted to do some upgrades while the streets were open that's really up to them right um uh you know there are lots of upgrades that they do and they're you know they were made a separate fiscal entity it's not up to us to fund them right um uh you know they're i mean they were made a separate fiscal entity for a reason right um that was the decision made before any of us were involved in that so um you know i don't think we should be funding every every thing i mean i think the pfas thing is a special situation uh for two reasons one is the pfas has only hit us for

184the last couple of years you know where we didn't know about it before that and um and secondly uh if the bipartisan infrastructure bill passes congress uh we want to be shovel ready to be able to to do that um the treatment of the pfas right and so if they if we're if we're able to fund a design out of these monies that'll put us in a good position to be able to um uh for them actually to be in a good position to request a grant to to fund the entire plant so um i'm i'm happy go ahead sorry you're finishing dean please go ahead yeah i i'm gonna agree with david on this one i mean the hundred thousand dollars it seemed like kind of a flyer they sent to us you know

185what they really want is pfas and we're addressing that not to as much as they would have wanted but we're taking good stab at it they have a source of funds which is the ratepayers and i gotta figure that hundred thousand dollars spread out amongst the ninety five percent of the users and acting you know that's going to be a penny on your bill so i i i think we probably got other places that would be more important to place this money just if i could speak to the responsibility question part of the issue here is that in the design of our kelly's corner plan we've placed um islands and other pieces of the infrastructure in such a way that their the the existing pipes have a really high chance of being crushed or damaged

186and that this was not wealth there was not sufficient communication between the town and the water district on this on this design matter so we are in effect causing this need to happen um so that's why i think we bear some responsibility for paying for it i don't this might not help at all but can we move p45 150 to p44 i i mean [Music] i mean combine them combine them well if this doesn't go this might not go is that am i not understanding that so the board can move any number from anywhere on this chart to another place on this chart but i would just note that several items are requested from several entities and very few were withdrawn this is an example of one that was withdrawn [Music] yeah i get that

187and and i i think that's the normal quest i mean the same thing happens to the sewer pipes that run under kelly's corner right um and there's not a special allocation to the um the sewer reserves the revolving funds for the sewers to to pay for those either right so i i think that's just a normal course of things and i think again the p fast thing is this is a new thing an unexpected thing um that that's that's a bit of a a different story i think uh just add a little bit more nuance to um jim's point um so based on the conversations i've had with um the awd commissioners um it seems that you know the allocation of 100k for kelly's corner was only a fraction of the cost of what it

188would actually cost them um to remodel that area um and and this is something that is inevitable and is is going to happen um so just add other context and it was a priority and it is a priority for them to to do it um but you know with the pfes issue it it came down to priorities so this is still a priority for them and if we could fund it that would be great but um definitely it's it's up to the consensus of the board for sure but so i i the standard for me is we'd be saying that that's more important than all these other things that we didn't that got got three votes last time i just don't see that um i i if you guys want to do a thumbs up

189thumbs down on this that that we can do that i i think to me i'd want to make sure that it was um more important than the all the other things we didn't include in the in the original voting right there's a hope there's you know what about ten things or something and maybe a few fewer that got three votes um you know uh you know all those i think were important things um so what would people think we wanted let's check and let's let's check and see where we're at happy to be out voted again it's not just the vote on this thing right if this passes does that mean we should revoke all the three vote things no i'm this actually had zero votes because we we didn't even consider voting for it

190because the water district had withdrawn it so i think this is a special case okay okay then why don't we see a show of thumbs two up so that's that's a two-vote thing okay anything else here i just said some questions on some specific items but i don't have any other overall questions about new items i'm also going to take short remarks from the public do you want to ask those questions before the public comments from the manager that's fine i'm happy to wait i'll get i'll get my my notes more clear anyway okay um if if people have um short comments i'll i'll take them now we're already running very late you know i'd like each comment to be less than a minute please hi franny osman this will be very short thank you

191for putting transportation back in and i just want to clarify that there are two very um different parts that are both important one is making our vehicles electric and getting a smaller vehicle which is more nimble and can replace some of our big ones chugging around and taking too long and the other was improvements to the and making more flexible the fixed routes so anyway thank you thank you alyssa nichol um i have a clarifying question the items that are on this one page uh chart are these um all going to be approved tonight or are some of them coming off so i think the the vote that i would like to take tonight is to adopt this plan which says that the things that are on this the one pager that have um allocations

192in fy 22 or fy23 are approved for funding okay things that have have just a number or the word reserve in the reserve column would be subject to a future vote so not the north north treatment plant that is still under investigation but the other two sewer items only received two and three thumbs up but they are both on this list so are those i i don't have it in front of me so i don't know if it has a number or reserve but i'm confused by the threshold that you applied at your meeting two weeks ago being four thumbs up why these two items are on this list so i i think that in the case of the um the sewer item for going um uh crossing route 2 for the aha project that

193has no monies allocated out of reserve in here and it's on this list because it was actively under debate during our last minute okay um so um and hopefully that answers your question yeah that does um so i just wanted to say one thing i know you've heard a lot from me on sewers in the survey and email and and here at the mic but just something to consider is that the actin housing authority although it will not have to pay a sewer betterment will have to pay sewer usage as long as that building has residents there are lots of people my neighbors on school street who have not hooked up yet to the sewer because they just replaced their septic before the sewer was laid down 20 years ago i have a neighbor who

194just hooked up to sewer a couple of years ago because she was getting some work done on her driveway and it sounds to me similar to the kelly's corner infrastructure initiative is going to be ripped up anyway why don't we take the opportunity to do it so she paid that betterment fee along with maintaining her septic as soon as she hooked up to sewer her her wastewater treatment bill tripled so just keep that in mind for the actin housing authority thanks thank you um matt could you take the online request please absolutely first up we have somebody as the active dog partner okay good evening this is tom gilsby sorry for the moniker mix up can you all hear me okay yes okay great thank you so just a quick um message thank you again

195for all of your hard work and the late night on this i am again a supporter of p9 i think the town manager's comments early on about p9 in terms of the benefits and flexibility to multiple projects within the town uh speaks well to why that hopefully can be potentially reconsidered i believe at the last meeting it was you know uh not everyone had a chance to sort of fully consider the item etc so that might be um something warranting a little bit of a quick review and then i personally am in favor of this because of its uh strong infrastructure nature i think that a lot of the ara arpa funds are you know spread across multiple different areas but i think infrastructure is an important one of those very consistent with how um

196the monies were were set for people to use and so it's a it's a nice solid infrastructure type project and i thank you for your consideration uh thank you john i just want to say two things um uh one is uh i think at our next meeting we're going to be having a sewer commissioner's meeting where we'll be presented with the feasibility study of this um and secondly i just wanted to make sure and i checked on this and i realized that it needs further work um and i know i've spoken to you about this um that these the this the septic system that's proposed for the aha project needs further further understanding right i don't believe that it will be mounted 10 feet above current grade i believe it'll be mounted uh about four

197feet to five feet above current grade um so because the groundwater there is about uh four to five feet below current grade so um uh i just wanted to clarify that thank you david yeah um some good discussions have been taking place and we're very appreciative of that thank you next caller please uh matt absolutely next stop calling hi this is tara from west action can you hear me yes so i'm concerned because of similar things that alyssa had said that their items the sewer uh p9 only got three votes yet it's suddenly on the plan and i would urge you that if you do decide to give that money to the development that the developer be required to provide more uh 30 median income or else give money back because they got the grant

198they got the property they got all this money from the town with the understanding that they had to pay for the septic so if they aren't going to pay for the septic and i i do have concerns about the ongoing costs but that aside if you decide to um give that money to that development that the money should come back to uh us the town as or or to the affordability levels as opposed to going into the developer's pocket uh p11 uh that's the uh great road sewer got only two votes so why is it even in the plan it's my studies indicated that the business users that voted for that indicated that they were not told that it would cost them money first of all they sold it was free and then if you

199look at the actual survey results it seems that it wasn't as popular as the pro sewer people would have led you to believe uh and it seems that if we want to spend money on businesses that we should give it to rent relief or sustainability as opposed to you know real relief secondly when somebody's talked about the reserve i think it was um john mangerati the town manager uh and said what we think we want to do and i urge you to be careful with what goes into that reserve as as long as i don't think you want it to be uh indicated that that's a plan uh and then the last thing is that i'm in support of transportation item and more rent relief over a sewer studies this is money that's supposed to

200be used for helping people now who've been hurt and the logic of not doing transit is supportive of the same logic to not do the sewer um so i i am in support of transportation because that is more current and more immediate but i am most in favor of immediate relief to the people who have been hurt the most the rent relief thank you so much thank you next up we have stella hi um i just i know this is kind of late in the game but um senator sonya chang diaz released a arpa spending rubric and i hope that as you're making final decisions you'll kind of rate our decisions against that racial equity scorecard thank you next up we have kim hey this is kim castings from uh 294 pope road can you

201hear me yes i'm speaking in favor of p44 the pfas at the north acton water treatment plant i just wanted to point out that this very day the environmental protection agency has released a um an agency-wide plan for a roadmap for pfas remediation which just reinforces the wisdom of the decision that you've made today to allocate money to pfas mitigation locally and also i'd like to encourage you to come through with the remaining 450 000 dollars which is in the grade category when the time is appropriate for that thank you and the last remote user we have with their hand up is erica hi good evening this is erica amirlin with nagoya treatment facility thank you for keeping us in consideration i just wanted a little bit of clarification on the status of our item

202given the legal question that's open at the time so we're going to have to work with you further on that and fifty thousand dollars in next year um and the rest in reserve but it ha we have to come up with a a mechanism by which um uh that's legal for us to fund you okay thank you yeah i am available for a future conversation thank you yeah so we're studying that with our the the expert accountant the accountant who's an expert on on arpa and as the as the town manager um mentioned there the revenue replacement category is a more flexible category but there's a cap on the total percentage there and so it may be able to be put there um but uh we're still looking at that okay great thank you so

203i think i think that's the last um uh comment so anybody sure um i i wanted to note out loud and thank the town manager for changing the p11 description uh taking out the word sewer and changing it to improving wastewater infrastructure that gives us the flexibility to understand if there's you know local package treatment plant solutions if there's waste water treatment district solutions you know there's a wide variety of ways of dealing with wastewater that aren't sewers and i appreciate that that's in there it helps me change my sense of support from no way to uh yeah okay any other comments before we vote just a really quick thing um thank you stella for pointing out the scorecard that senator chang diaz put out i was just reviewing it and i think it's so

204important that we continue to look at it from an equity lens and really making sure that the items listed here are really targeting the hardest hit populations and that we're doing our due diligence with that so thank you thank you okay i would take a motion to adopt the plan from the town manager with the addition of the the the transportation item as discussed and the change to the school district just description as discussed so moved is there a second yes second okay um himachal moves dean second um um all in favor of um this plan say aye hi any opposed it's adopted unanimously thank you and final uh item for tonight other than consent items um is the discussion of the street trees on on high street uh this item was added to the

205agenda by jim and fran so if would one of you like to thank you okay sure i mean i actually wrote something up so why don't i run through it um so i i asked for the step i didn't know that fran had to um because i think the board missed some steps in our handling of the bumblebee way tree removal and i thought reviewing and discussing it might help us understand you know what went wrong or how we can avoid similar problems in the future and the topics had a lot of public involvement uh including a lot of letters to the board so i thought a public airing of the process would be helpful um first a bit of background because this issues had some twists and turns so we have july 21 2020

206there was a combined planning board tree warden hearing to determine if seal harbor development would be allowed to remove the two street trees on high street as part of their recently permitted development it was adding a new street bumblebee way connecting to high street the tree warden okayed the removal of the two trees a 35 inch oak and a 44 inch oak questions were then raised about whether one or more appeals had been registered about this decision on time and in the right manner which would have stopped the tree hearing and moved the hearing to the select board so the select board met on august 10 2020 and we discussed the tree hearing process and eventually reached an agreement with the developer that adequate notice in fact had been received and that a tree hearing

207would be held by the select board august 24th so then we get to august 24th the town manager announced that an agreement had been reached with the developer to not remove the trees and to move bumble bee way a bit so that it wouldn't go directly through the large tree there was a concern raised that the new location would still tend to create a lot of stress and damage on the trees the developer put some money into the tree fund and agreed to pay for removal of the trees if they failed before 2025. then the issue sat there and the trees sat there and continued to grow for more than a year until a new resident of bumblebee way because now it was actually having actual real residents living there came to the board in

208july july of 26 asking us to revisit the situation because the trees were creating line of sight safety issues at the intersection of bumble bee way and high street they described quite eloquently the process of you know creeping up around this gigantic tree to see if a car was coming at them and you know they'd say yeah probably not and then dash out it didn't seem like a great situation there was a range of opinions on the board about how to proceed but the board was able to agree that the town manager should work with staff and the developer to bring back a possible resolution of this problem to the board then at our september 13th meeting the manager reported as follows manager and tree warden worked with the developer and the resolution they identified

209is to have the developer remove these two trees they are not in great condition as far as trees go and the police department confirmed that they create a hazardous condition the developer will be planting six significant trees four maples and two oaks at locations to be approved by the tree warden to continue the corridor of trees on high street so here's where i think things started to go a little bit wrong i mean we didn't have a discussion or vote among the board about whether this resolution met with the satisfaction of the board we also didn't have this topic on our agenda so no one in the public who might have wanted to speak up about this was notified in addition in my member minute after acknowledging the manager's report and noting the solution was

210not one i had been advocating for i said i was still glad the issue had been resolved because of the safety issues so i was misremembering our process at that point i was thinking that we had actually delegated this to the town manager that didn't have to come back to the board um and my statement along those lines might have led other members of the board to think that we didn't need a formal vote by the board that we'd the manager and as a final part of this cascade of errors the september 13 minutes which i'm responsible for um did not reflect the manager's statement and my response so when a couple weeks later the trees were taken down we started getting letters questioning how this decision had been made people were astonished because they

211couldn't they could they didn't see anything in the minutes that said we decided this um so what now so i have submitted amended minutes for september 13th that we can approve at our you know uh next meeting in november that include those items um and um and i just wanted to apologize for my mis remembering the process we'd agreed on and implying that we didn't have to have this discussion um and i wanted to apologize to the people that were you know astonished and upset to find that the trees were removed and no idea why or how that had been uh decided and i get i just was wondering if uh you know my fellow board members or the manager or the public had any additional reflections about the process well i think you know

212the last couple of years has been such focus on on street trees and i think it's going to happen more and more frequently as as more of these little subdivisions get put in uh you know around existing trees and existing infrastructure i think you know one of the things we did it recently was we we established a new policy select board policy for evaluating you know value of trees so i think that's a good start i think we've alerted the uh alerted the staff on all levels um especially the planning staff that this is a a major issue and that you know it's it's very difficult to there's i've read a lot of uh of emails back and forth about people saying well you should you should hold the hearing on the trees first before

213you hold all the other hearings but i know from speaking with town council it gets a little bit complicated as far as the timing in which for instance the planning board has to act on certain permits and i know conservation wants to take the first bite at it and everybody wants the first bite at it so i think you know we have to realize it we have to be sensitive to make sure that all of these interests are represented and i think you know town staff has certainly got the message i know that the tree warden now is is much more intimately involved with the review process of these things so i think these things get flagged earlier on and i think you know the kind of discussion that we had with the new resident

214bumblebee way and the information he brought forward is probably the sorts of things that we should have spoken about more clearly in our first hearing to you know visualize these things and visualize the problems with not only the condition of the tree and accept you know the the professional opinion of our tree warden but also we should have visualized more carefully what sort of traffic safety issues we're going to have so i think you know a lot of things that should have happened earlier in the process ended up happening later on and and we all looked uh we all kind of stumbled around in the dark so uh you know i think it's it's regrettable i don't from a professional point of view as a certified arborist i don't have any problem with the decision

215that was reached and that the trees should have been removed but i do regret that it it was a really messy process that should not have gone awry the way it did uh sure so uh with the varying um circumstances surrounding this tree over the last year and a half my obligation ultimately fell to safety and that's why a decision i made that i brought forward to the board for feedback uh felt was the right thing to do so i just like to say that i attended the original planning board hearing and objected to the tree removals from the beginning in fact i might have even been the first one my goal at that time was to make sure that there were some substantial trees that replaced the trees that needed to be removed i

216mean i think that you know all of us who have a place to live in town trees were taken down to make that place to live right it's just the fact we we it's you know trees were taken down for every one of our houses um and and um but to me it was you know from i'm a nearby neighbor i'm not a legal or butter but i'm a nearby neighbor and i i wanted to make sure that the the trees were replaced um after that the um well the developer refused actually then and and then they they moved the driveway and i asked the question in the first tribal uh tree hearing at the select board about the sight lines and i felt that i was given a deceptive answer frankly from the developers

217engineer that there was no problem in the sight lines which was obviously not true um and you know you know frankly i didn't take the time to review the design at that level of detail myself possibly i should have reviewed it myself but but i i didn't um and the the i do think it's important the the the changes that um dean proposed and that we adopted to the policy i think those were not in effect when this this project started and i'll say finally i don't think that there were errors in the end of the process um um you know i don't think we can ask you know from my point of view we asked the town manager heard all of our comments and we asked the town manager to negotiate um a solution

218we can't ask the town manager to negotiate a solution and then veto it right that gives him no basis for his negotiation right so either he's negotiating the solution or we're negotiating the solution right if we don't trust him to negotiate this solution or don't want him to negotiate the solution then we should have the developer in here and we'll negotiate all five of us right um but once it's negotiated having it come back to us for a veto that makes no sense to me at all um because what's what's being negotiated right so i don't agree with the the comments about the the end of the process being flawed but i completely agree that it's it's been a hugely messy process i feel deceived by the developer um and i um i think that

219the new street tree policy is better than the old one other comments i just wanted to add that it's sort of frustrating and was wondering if there was a way to come up with a process when a developer first comes to you know present his plan and i too knew that the driveway was supposed to be in a different space i don't know if it was supposed to be between these two trees but i don't know what makes something change in a design fashion i think the topography of a plot that's being developed everything on it should be considered initially so i i think originally the driveway was where there is a stone wall and the stone wall would have had to be moved and that was part of the original planning board hearing and

220i think um i couldn't swear to this but i think in the original design this stone wall moved and just one of the trees was affected in the in the end because of some of the objections they moved the driveway to a place that they said didn't have any sight line so they could save both sideline problems so said they so we could save both trees but we turned out and then not being able to save either tree um imagine yeah i just actually wanted to echo what fran said um i think that or i guess also kind of just a question you know what is our textbook definition of how to deal with these situations because kind of like what dean said this isn't going to be a one-time issue there are going to

221be you know situations where we do have to consider the removal of trees um whether it's for public safety or other reasons but we should if we don't have a process yet established one that gives ample time for public feedback one that allows us to reach to our different committees and ask for feedback in an appropriate amount of time and one that allows us as a town to kind of make a decision before potentially hearing biases from the developers or other people kind of involved in on the project i think that if we don't have a process established that kind of takes that into account we really need one so just there is a a process and actually unless it's appealed to us it doesn't involve us it's just a planning board process and um

222the the the policy changes uh we made what were they dean at the very beginning of this year that you proposed and we we adopted them which we uh really are very helpful where we change the value of the trees when they're removed so that the price that the town happens has to be compensated if a developer takes one of their trees hadn't been changed in a long time and we made a change and the replacement trees uh yeah the uh there are two laws that that govern this that are really not particularly under the control of the select board one is mass general law chapter 87 which sets up that's the shade tree protection act goes back to 1889 that it sets up the way these hearings are held the way the the postings

223are done so there is a state law that governs that and it really the select board only gets involved if there's an appeal which is what happened there the other law the state statute fails me at this moment but it's a scenic roads law which is a state enabling legislation which the town is accepted for certain roads and that's really under the control of the planning board so you know certainly there should be a lot of more involvement and you know when things get tangled up like this they do come to us but a great deal of the the road map for how all this goes in is actually set out in state statute i can ask a quick clarifying question yeah um that was really helpful information thank you so my question is in

224terms of the hearing as established by this chapter what what are the current guidelines for that hearing is there a certain amount of time that's defined before development takes place for a public hearing to occur [Music] yeah the those timelines are actually laid out in the state statute at least as far as chapter 87 goes the tree has to be posted for hearing at least two weeks in advance notice has to go into a paper local distribution on two successive weeks trying to find a a matter of doing that now with not too many newspapers available um and then i believe there's also some provision for posting in a public place which when i was doing it we posted downstairs here in town hall that's all set up state statute and it's sort of similar

225time frames that set out under the scenic roads bylaw anything else jim just a final thought of appreciation for people thinking all this through um and a couple of final thoughts one is that the the um the process that we were in in 2021 actually wasn't even a shade tree hearing shade tree hearings happen when a developer an owner comes to the town and says you know i want i need to take this tree down i want to take this tree down in this case it was a resident who didn't own the trees or didn't own the development who came to the town and said this is a safety issue um the town can decide to go ahead and take action on a safety issue without a formal shade tree hearing um so we get

226to make up our own process here um the uh the last thought i had was david i'm reflecting on um like what happens sometimes in our executive sessions where we're you know going through tricky negotiations with with other parties we often lay out um you know general senses of where we want the negotiations to go have the professionals go off and do it and then they have to come back because we have to approve the final settlement the final agreement and i i looking at the so i don't think that's a ridiculous process i don't think it's ridiculous to send our staff out to try to negotiate something and then still come back to us for the for for an okay or not um and when i look at the both the i looked at

227both the tape you know the youtube and the the minutes which aren't always the same but in this case they both said uh that this matter will come back to the board you know to be looked at so you know i still think there was a misstep in that left part um i i agree i agree with the sense that dean and david has suggested that you know if we had had that discussion uh you know probably would have agreed with the plan it might it wouldn't have been a unanimous vote but you know at least three to two or four to one so i don't think the end result was any different because we missed this step of having it on on a on an agenda and actually taking a formal vote but it

228was um it was still a misstep uh that didn't allow us to hear each other's voices and concerns about it uh and potentially the voices and concerns from the public about the particular the particulars of the settlement you know we never really talked about whether you know is how big is a significant tree and is four oaks and two maples the right mix and you know i mean there could have been a really interesting and important series of questions but we missed that chance this time i don't think we'll miss it again because you know now we've said it out loud that was it thanks everyone thank you going through this with me all set to move on great okay uh we'll we'll go to the consent items now um i'll read them please say

229hold if you'd like to to hold one of them uh item 10 approved meeting minutes september 20th and october 4th 2021 11 approved executive session minutes october 11th 2021 item 12 approved letter of support for american rescue plan act arpa funding from the minuteman advisory group on enter to local communication magic 13 uh a committee appointment christopher hardy full member economic development committee term to expire june 30th 2024. i'll put a hold on that oh uh committee reappointment uh thomas p beals full member board of registrars term to expire 2024. number 15 approve updated recreation commission charge number 16 approved grant of easements 288 main street that's it and so um i will take a motion to approve items uh 10 through 12 inclusive and 14 through 16 inclusive show moved um uh is there

230a second second okay uh all in favor of uh approving items 10 11 12 14 15 and 16 say aye aye aye any opposed okay um item 13 france so i just wanted to um have a change full member to associate that's it okay should i read the whole thing i can do that yeah i'll take a motion to uh approve committee appointment christopher hardy associate member economic development committee term to expire june 30th 2024. someone wants this one so moved um is there a second second uh all in favor say aye aye aye aye opposed that passes i will take a motion to adjourn so moved second i