Acton Select Board Meeting - March 6th, 2023

001[Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] the time and the presence of quorum in fact College March 6 2023 meeting the act and select wood to order we will start as we always do with resident concerns any residents who have issues they'd like to raise with the board that are not addressed on the agenda please step forward yes hi it's Tara verdicts from Mass Ave and I have two concerns I'm not asking for a response tonight just to think about them and the first one is about when the town attorney gives their opinion about something I think it's important for people to understand that the Acton town of is a corporation and the town attorney is hired by the corporation to represent the corporation's interests it's not representing the town's people the voters at large

002and so it's important to understand that that is a perspective a legal perspective and there can be many other legal perspectives that's the first thing so I think it's important for our elected officials to both understand how the law works and I really appreciate that you got the draft denial letter for the uh Memo from the or ask for that for blu-ray because I think anything that's controversial should have a draft denial letter that's my first comment my second comment is relative to the select board goals um I'm concerned about last year where the town manager as much as I respect him submitted his own goals and I feel like he should go through the select board members just like everybody else as opposed to sort of acting like a sixth selectman select board member

003by presenting a long list of his own goals which I feel like his proposed budget already has the goals and that's his chance to present goals so thank you very much for listening thank you will you be taking comments and questions from the public during item 11 that's the pfas item the Sewer Commission item yes we will be okay I'll comment then then thank you question about the citizens Library will you take comments from the public at that um uh when the after the people present or speak yes okay um oh sure good evening Martin Benson 21 Deacon Hunt Drive uh this evening I have a few questions for the select board to consider last year on April 22 2022 the town of Acton held a ceremony to celebrate Earth Day however earlier that week

004on Monday April 17 2022 the town neglected to hold its annual Patriots Day celebration Patriots Day is a legal holiday in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts commemorating the Colonials participation in the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19 1775. these battles were the Catalyst for the American Revolution which ultimately led to the birth of this great nation further this holiday has significant importance to the town of Acton as Acton's Minutemen company led the attack on the British at the old North Bridge three actin residents Captain Isaac Davis Abner Hosmer and James Hayward lost their lives fighting that day and they are now interred beneath the monument on the town common for decades the town of Acton has celebrated this holiday and provided public address systems for the ACT for the acted Minuteman company reenactors last

005year the Acton select board which was chaired by Mr Martin never publicly discussed the cancellation of patriots day at any of its meetings and it's unclear how this decision was reached as it is now six weeks from this year's Patriots Day does the town of Acton intend to organize promote and hold a Patriots Day celebration on April 17 2023 if so will the select board also commit the town to providing public address systems at the Town common and the Isaac Davis house for the minutemenry and actors use so that everyone can equitably hear the heroic stories of Our Town heroes secondly on December 19 2022 this board voted to illegally remove Dave longer from the actin 250 anniversary Committee in direct violation of his first amendment rights that evening during public participation I asked Town

006Council to cite the legal authorities which permitted the select board to take such action the chair ordered Town Council to provide a list of these authorities to the town manager who was to subsequently forward the list to me to date I have yet to receive any correspondence from any Town representative citing any legal authorities which granted the select board the power to remove Dave longer from the Acton 250 anniversary committee does the town still intend to provide me with such a list of these authorities third at the select board's last meeting on February 2nd 2023 the new diversity equity and inclusion director was introduced and then spoke before the board as the town operates the polls and counts the ballots of the citizens of Acton for local state and national elections Town employees have traditionally

007and for good reason stayed nonpartisan and apolitical however interstatements the new Dei director discussed promoting social justice which is both a political philosophy and movement further she acknowledged meeting with multiple political groups including the acton-boxborough racial Justice collaborative and the Acton Democratic town committee however it's my understanding that there's been no communication between the Dei director and the acting Republican Town committee that doesn't seem very inclusive how is it appropriate for the town to employ an individual to promote political movements and to work exclusively with just one political party lastly on February 10 2023 in case spr 230175 the Secretary of State ordered the town of Acton to provide me with the response to my records request submitted on April 20th 2022 which is compliant with the public records law and its regulations within 10

008business days this was the fourth time that the secretary of state has issued this order presently 15 business days have passed since this order was rendered and the town has still not provided me with a response of any kind if all of the records pertaining to my request have been provided then the town should not take issue with the requirement of providing a detailed response which is compliant with the public records law Mr manjarati does the town intend to issue such a response which is compliant with the law further Mr manjarati is it possible that some records relating to Patriots Day 2022 may have been mistakenly excluded from the batch of Records which the town released to me in response to my request to 420 2022 thank you thank you as you know it's not

009our practice to enter in a dialogue with this but I will update you on one or two issues I am scheduled to be meeting with some other Town officials on March 16th to discuss the planning for the Patriots Day celebration and certainly I personally am very interested in in making sure that that's a successful celebration um the other questions you've raised are matters which I will discuss in conference with the town manager thank you for your comments hi Alyssa Nichols School Street I wasn't planning to speak tonight but after that comment I just wanted to provide some information for folks who are listening the Patriots Day events were not canceled last year I'm a little confused about what role the town government has played in the past it was my understanding that all of the

010Patriots Day events were planned by the Acton historical society and Iron Work Farm our farm is the stewards of the Faulkner Homestead and the Jones Tavern Acton Historical Society is the steward of the Hosmer house there seems to be quite a bit of confusion in town the Patriots Day trolleys that used to happen people are under the impression that that was a town paid for and organized amenity no that was provided by the Acton historical society and ironwork farm I'm especially confused because Mr Benson was actually at the Patriots Day ceremony at Fox her Homestead because I saw him there there was a parlor concert on Saturday April 16 2022 there was the annual Robins ride with the act and Minute Men on Sun On Sunday April 17th and on Monday April 18th at the

011Faulkner Homestead there was the Patriots Day ceremony there were a couple of years that those events were canceled because of the pandemic but those organizations are the the folks that are are responsible for the annual Patriots Day celebrations in the town of Acton thank you I just want to say that um racial Justice is no more associated with one political party as is misinformation is associated with one political party and it's not um a political policy as much as it is a human right so thank you thank you quickly thank you to respond to Miss Nicole I was actually speaking about the morning where they celebrate the Minutemen leaving and that is traditionally organized by the town I wasn't talking about the activities later on in the day at Faulkner house during that day there

012were no sound systems which the town had always historically provided and this was noted by a number of individuals thank you thank you um noting the time we do have a some time public hearing so we will defer managers update and the comments from the individual members until later on in the meeting it's now 7 10 pm under Mass General Lodge up to 140 section 58 the act and select board will hold a public hearing on March 6 2023 at 7 10 pm in the Francis Faulkner hearing room 204 Acton Town Hall 472 Main Street and by video conference and call in for a class One auto dealers license from a governed Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram of Acton located at 196 Great Road Acton login instructions for computers can be found here from a computer

013please click on the link to join the public meeting actonma.gov meeting POS or from a telephone dial 646 -876-9923 and enter webinar ID number 918-785 telephone users may dial Star 9 to request to speak up to joining the meeting computer and app users may use the raise hand feature to request to speak I understand Zach Cassidy's regional vice president from McGovern Auto Group and should be here or virtually to present his application sir please step forward hello good evening good evening so explain to us what you're doing and why uh we are buying uh the current actin uh Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram um from Coleman and Bill and uh we're going to be bringing McGovern Auto Group uh Jeep into Acton we currently have Acton Subaru up the road a little bit and we're going

014to be selling and servicing and selling parts to the local community and everyone else that we service okay thank you I just a clarification I know lots people heard the name McGovern everybody's ears perked up so this is this transfer of license is for an existing dealership and has nothing to do with proposed development at nagog Park that's correct thank you okay questions from the select board David hi good evening um good evening do you are there any plans to physically change the building or the uh the structure of things there no everything's going to stay the same okay thank you other members of the board questions from members of the public they seeing none I'll entertain a motion David I'm sorry there is a hand online okay uh Matt okay yes yes indeed um

015yeah I have a semi question perhaps but there is a lot of concern about the upcoming web development in nagon and I wonder if there is any opportunity here for the board of Selectmen to negotiates some restrictions on what might happen there as part of this licensing hearing well Governor's about to make a really big footprint in town and um that seems like something I might want to be discussed in the larger context okay thank you for your question uh there will be a site plan hearing on the nagogue park development on April 28th I believe um a very very preliminary uh these two applications are not linked and cannot be related to one another but thank you for your question David I moved to approve a class One auto dealer license from a governed

016Dodge Jeep Ram at 196th Great Road get a second second moved and seconded a discussion from members of the board Jim um it seems incumbent on me to say something about the destructive impact of automobiles in Acton but I totally understand that that's unrelated to what we get to actually vote on here tonight thank you uh all right we've got a motion it's been seconded all in favor of the motion please say aye opposed abstentions approved unanimously thank you sir thank you for your time and our best wishes with your business thank you very much okay um now 7 15. have another legal noticed hearing under Mass General Law chapter one for yep that's 7 20 the next hearing 720. okay so uh we will ask for any uh manager update thank you I have

017uh several things I'll be talking about later this evening but I did want to mention that the ASA Parlin project the yellow house behind Town Hall that I refer to as Ace of parliament some people call it something else we're in the process of selecting a new architect the architectural team that we had on board do the delay in securing funding the actually Prince the principal architect and only architect retired so we're in the process of getting another architect so if you know anyone out there that's looking for a really cool project to build a community space out of what is an eyesore please tell them to download the RFQ and or contact me with any questions thanks thank you any comments uh or member updates David yes on a sad note yesterday I went

018to a memorial for Don Wong um Don was a a fixture in town and you know I she was involved in so many things some of which I had no idea of I was involved with her in in in several things so I'll mention a couple of them one is she was a founding member of the deic um second she was she was instrumental in the uh Chinese bridge and Chinese Garden at the Arboretum um and uh and and many many other things she was she was tireless um is is very sad yesterday and very sad this year ago thank you uh updates from other members imager um just want to Echo what David said about Don she absolutely like you said was a fixture in town um and will be sorely missed and also

019um I felt like it was prudent for one of us like board members to also make a note that social justice is not a politicized thing um if anything like was mentioned it is a human right um so I'm really glad that our new Dei director brought that up and looking forward to seeing her work in town around that thanks thank you I just wanted to mention that our economic development director uh Julie Pierce has is hosting um uh manufacturing resource and career fair that's happening tomorrow from three to six um it's a free event it's uh where it's taking place at the Human Services building and you can you know explore career you know new jobs they have a resume workshop and an interview Workshop if you want more information you can reach out

020to Julie thank you Jim um those of you who have had any involvement in housing issues over the years have had conversations with with with Robert Whittlesey um he's nationally known affordable housing expert and has been involved in Acton's affordable housing work for for decades as well you may be familiar with Whittlesey Village which was named after him not at his request but um but because of recognizing all the stuff he's done um Bob passed away this week and he'll be he'll be missed sorely thank you all right um noting the time 7 20. under Mass General law 140 section 58 the select board will hold a public hearing on March 6 2023 at yep wrong notice there we go ask General Law chapter 140. section 40 the actin select board will hold a public

021hearing on March 6 2023 at 7 20 PM in the Francis Faulkner hearing room 204 Acton Town Hall 472 Main Street and by video conference and call in for a livery license for Rasheed transport Incorporated located 57 Hosmer Street Acton login instructions for computers can be found here from a computer please click on the link to join the public meeting actonma.gov meeting slash SB or from a telephone dial [Music] 646-876-9923 and a webinar ID number 503-918-785 telephone users may dial Star 9 to request to speak after joining the meeting computer and app users may use the raise hand feature to request to speak so you'd have the applicant come forward or raise their hand if they're out there virtually okay I guess we might be holding this over until our next meeting David would you

022like a motion to continue please um is 7 10 okay and on the 20th another cut another time um or 705. I moved to uh to continue this uh hearing on the Liberty license application to our meeting in this room on March 20th at 705. I get a second I'll second Ed all in favor please say aye aye aye opposed abstentions thank you all right under new and special business item five presentation from Acton conservation Trust Mr chairman Joe Cooney to present yes please it'll take you just a second to become panelist okay okay hi my name is Joe Cooney I'm vice president of the Acton conservation trust Susan Mitchell Hart president and Dave Hart the clerk are also here today and uh we wanted to take this opportunity at we asked Dean and he

023agreed to put us on the agenda just so that we could do a little recap of some of the activities that we've done recently and I know you have a number of land preservation projects on your docket that you're considering and I just wanted to explain some of the history of act on some of those properties as well as make an offer of assistance moving forward as those deals you know come to fruition at the appropriate place and time so if there's any questions you can always visit our website at inconservationtrust.org has it has a link on to all the act and trails and history and uh discusses all of our events but you know it it sounds kind of obvious but why protect open space and I think having that conversation even as obvious

024as it sounds is important because we're competing for scarce resources that we have a lot of priorities here all often you know approached with various trade-offs and decisions and so I wanted to to go through some of the the talking points from the land plant trust Alliance and some of the priorities that they point out to that they're involved with preserving open space certainly clean air and water are important important to everyone and the open space the ability to have groundwater recharge instead of parking lots and to provide access to to clean air makes actin a very special place to live and something something that we all value um the open space Also fights climate change in the way of uh carbon sequestration the trees and the just being a habitat for a variety of

025wildlife in the in the ecosystem and then having public access to open space ensures Equitable access we all certainly found out how important having access to open space was during the pandemic and we were very lucky to be able to have that recreational opportunity when everything else was shut down uh I mentioned about the providing the habitat for the plants and Wildlife the wildlife corridors that we have through town enabled by open space and it um you know it provides for whether it's pollinators Birds the entire food chain that contributes to what we need to support and then it's a promise to Future Generations we certainly are enjoying the work of uh previous select boards previous members of town committees who have put in the work to give us the open space we have today

026and so that's a that's another great promise so in acting conservation trust is a non-profit or a 501c3 and we operate as part of a broader land preservation ecosystem and what we mean by that is we can't do it on our own we work through town committees open space committee CPC the land stewards certainly with the select board to achieve these goals and we'll we'd like to act as a catalyst along the way to see how we can help in some cases we have funded appraisals very early in a Project's life or we make referrals or we consult with landowners about the various options and so these things can take multiple years decades even to come to fruition but we were patient and we continue to to work with land on owners to explore the

027possibilities of how we can get to a successful outcome and then we also perform broader Outreach to the community because it's important that when things do come to a vote whether it's a town meeting or recognizing the upcoming act and water district meeting that there's a an awareness that we can help build around projects that are coming and so we hold a variety of indoor and outdoor events walks and talks are our annual town meeting is this Sunday at 1 pm in this room we'll have eyes on owls so they'll have a number of owls right here in this room so we welcome you know any of you to come register for that and join us here um as well as anybody who's uh in the room or or listening on the phone again put

028acting conservationtrust.org to uh to register for that Susan Mitchell Hart puts out a weekly events of Interest email which catalogs a tremendous number of things for people who you know are interested in conservation and open space and finally we fundraise for projects so we raised money for uh towards the purchase of the Agricultural restriction at Stonefield Farm we raised money to contribute to Piper Lane we've raised money for a number of different projects over the years and so that's inter that's closely related to the Outreach is to to do that so at the appropriate time and place we would love to fundraise for any of the projects that are um that are upcoming this is just a recap a recap of the in just the last year some of our recent events um we did

029a winter tracking walk at the Nashoba Brook and um cooperating with the water district we did a couple of very well attended 549 Main Street walks we've had a member appreciation astronomy evening up at narrow Park so I won't go through and read all these you can see that that we've been very busy and we have a very active and engaged board there's no paid staff so it's all the volunteer efforts of the Board of Trustees and so I wanted to just explain some of the this is a little bit more of the nuts and bolts of what a conservation land trust is because it's an important part of how we do what we do so uh there's a long history of land trusts in Massachusetts and the trustees are probably the the you know

030leading example of that over 100 years old and with a number of local local properties like the Cordova Museum and the uh the the in Lincoln the sculpture Gardens the the out in Harvard the um fruitlands so um they they sort of set up this this model Sudbury Valley trustees is a regional land trust that we work close quite closely with and then um virtually all of the surrounding towns around us with the exception of Maynard have a conservation uh land trust that focuses on their community and so we can own land outright and some of those land trusts do that but more commonly we hold a conservation restriction and that conservation restriction is an important part of how we do land preservation in Acton because if we use Community preservation act funds the town

031ends up owning the property but can't hold the conservation restriction and so we've served that role on eight properties with two more uh pending and so that's a permanent restricted use of the permitted and restricted uses of the land and we're a member of both the land trust Alliance which is a National Organization and the Mad Massachusetts land trust Coalition where we can work with these other land preservation organizations and professionals to achieve our goals that's important because we follow their standards and practices to the best of our ability and we can tell our donors that that we're a professionally run organization so these are the the 10 eight actual and two pending conservation restrictions we we hold it's not a one-to-one mapping with the the um with the Acton Trails map but it gives

032you an idea of the things that acting conservation trust monitors on a annual basis and we look for conservation restriction violations and where there are have been some we follow up to get those remediated and so um I just included some some pictures here I mentioned the 549 Main Street walks that we've already had at wetherby Woods we've had many years of contacts with the um the owners and The Heirs we invited them to bring their oxen out from Shirley and do an oxenpool event or 40 people at that event that was fun triangle Farm Lane you've recently heard about we visited that property with the owners and Jamie Eldridge to walk it understand it it really shows out on the in the upper right corner of the Acton Trails map where you see Camp

033act and that white block right above that that's the triangle farm and it just is a missing piece of the puzzle up there with uh with Camp Acton so hopefully you know we've got a lot of things going on but hopefully we can find something to do there to help preserve that and build on that Conservation Area um so uh thank you for your time and uh I I'd be happy to answer any questions okay thank you uh questions from the board David I I don't have a question but I just like to reiterate uh three things that Joe said is that you know that that ECT often gives the town uh leads on available lands to conserve which is you know that those leads are invaluable the events are which I've been to a

034number of are hugely fun you know they're uh you know Joe had a list of them and I would recommend if you looking for something to do on a weekend that's a that's a that's a great thing and and the third thing is they they fundraise for us when we um uh you know acquire land and so they they contribute to the um the purchase of the land I thank them for all their work thank you thank you comments from other members of the board amateur thank you that was a really great presentation my question is um in terms of kind of the goals for 2023 and um looking at maybe even long-term goals what would you say um act prioritizes um in terms of those goals well certainly the um we're very interested in

035the projects that are on the immediate you know that are under negotiation in terms of Main Street whether it be um that that I would put those as one and two and that they they combined to create a great Corridor along the Bruce Freeman rail trail and the shoba brook and would be uh things that we we certainly would prioritize including to the point of thinking about you know making multi-year commitments to to get them done they're that you know valuable and um I think it's uh you know we're not going to have those those types of opportunities every year thank you friend question when um a property is co-held with Sudbury Sudbury like Valley Trust as a regional trust what what does that mean so the holder of a conservation restriction is obligated to

036monitor that every year and so where we cohold it we'll go and we'll do that collectively with SVT so normally we'll just jointly schedule the visit the purpose of those co-health things is in case one of these organizations goes away I mean these these obligations are in perpetuity and you know acting conservation trust is very strong right now but you know that doesn't mean that 20 years from now it's going to be you know at that same ability to continue on and do its obligations so the we certainly hope to be here and be doing that but sometimes the landowner will request that another group comes in to cohold it to give it more of that protection over the Long Haul thank you yeah thanks excuse me other questions well thank you for coming in

037thank you for your time we hope to continue to cooperate thanks okay next uh we have a presentation from the group uh come home to Acton uh this is a project that's been ongoing for uh a couple of years now uh attempting to build a uh an accessible home for a uh disabled service member and they're actually building on a piece of property which was had been owned by the town it was transferred to the organization so Mr rubner Mr Jensen police a thank you to the board for giving us 10 minutes of your time tonight I want to give you an update on the come home to uh acting project project was started I've marked in Andy's wife you know to bring a veteran um um a disabled veteran to um home to act

038into a home that he was going to build the project was started they did the site work put the foundation in and then Mark tragically passed away covet hit in the project was put on hold for a couple years now JB Builders Mike jeans and his sons often to take over the project and they started it last spring and it's just been amazing what the uh what they've done the building community offering that time their resources and their their supplies it's incredible I have a picture to show you this is where the house is right now and you know it's pretty impressive where it's gone in a matter of six seven months you know my involvement with the project I asked Mike if I could go up and help for a day he handed me

039a nail gun and after ducking a few times after me put nails in and almost hitting him and then it was all maybe social media and then uh you know my Facebook I follow 10 people Dino one of them I don't know why and and um social media so I told the Andy and Mike that I'd be a voice for the project and not see what I could do so that's what I'm up here being in is being a voice for the project I don't know what the town can do to help now it's at a point where you know we've been working with James McRae and the Veterans office who's been outstanding through this process he helped you know Mark and Andy at the beginning and um now that we've got the thing going

040again he's working with uh Laurie Trahan in her office to see if we can get channel 5 back out there to do another segment on it and um I don't know if there's any way the town could help us by because is that if we could get people to go on and donate at the site and there's a place where you can apply if you know someone that that would be a worthy candidate for this project so I have you know what you're probably going to be seeing a lot of this around town hopefully you know when it's a QR code that you can scan and we'll go right to where the application is to to sign on to the project and um you know where you can go on to donate it goes right

041to that site so I don't know if that's something good bad or ugly that the town can do you know at this point you know it it's the funding is going down from the initial funding and we're trying to revitalize that part of me questions okay so I guess the question is what's your what's your goal for funding how much what's the Gap that you need to fill Mike what do you think we need going forward about eighty thousand dollars yeah we're hoping that we can furnish the house too that is something that we're doing and we're hoping that we can get an applicant you know and pick out the family that's going to be there so they can help pick out the furniture and all that stuff so you know they it's unbelievable you

042know as I stated what the building Community has done and what they've offered to really help cut the cost of this project down in the last eight months so it you know we're I think there's like 40 or 50 000 left from the initial funding that they did with it and now it's going on from there to probably another 50 000 probably gonna need okay um Mr manager did you think it would be appropriate if we could circulate some of those posters around some of town buildings and and get some uh see what we can do to boost this yeah we can look at that if the board recalls there's been several instances where uh the organization donated materials I think there was some surplus material from a few years ago so and as mentioned

043James McRae is doing a great job advocating for this project and supporting so we'll continue to do that thank you well thank you Jim um does that this does the same QR code help for um uh getting people to a place where they can donate money to the project yes yes great yep so it's on both there's a place so you can go to where the my uh GoFundMe page is and there's another part that has where you can go to fill out you know to be a candidate to get the house okay well I'll do what I can to put it through my social media as well excellent you have more than 10 followers I I think so we'll find out I still got to find out why Dean's there I I don't even

044figure that one out so so yeah I I mean the town unfortunately is not in a position at this point to offer you any funding um you know hopefully your project will be done before time comes around for the next round of CPC grants but I you know if you don't manage to bridge the gap by then you know a year down the road or eight or nine months down the road I think you know I would encourage everyone to uh you folks to look for a CPC Grant and certainly you know we want to use the good officers of the town to uh to promote this and and I will certainly do so um that would be great whatever you could do to help us because like I said the Project's hopefully going to

045be started back up very shortly and you know it it's probably going to be done hopefully by the summer that's the goal which would be outstanding that'd be great well hope it hopefully everybody's online is watching that dialing up right now uh David yes we should be able to publicize this through the town social media as well outstanding you know so uh we and they have more than 10 followers okay okay great thank you for coming in yeah thank you so much thanks for all the work you guys are doing all right um item seven we're going to be interviewing candidates and appoint two West Acton citizens Library trustees tonight there has been some interest in this uh I'll read through the process that we're going to follow it's identical to the process that we

046went through in August member of the select board and the one remaining West Acton citizens Library trustee should meet together in public session to evaluate nominate and appoint trustees to fill the vacancies until the annual town meeting in May 2023. process should be chaired by the select board chair candidates who have submitted letters of interest in the position will be given time to present their qualifications candidates shall be reviewed in random order each candidate will be given five minutes to introduce himself during that time the candidates should discuss their qualifications any prior Library experience how they would assist the library in the transition with new staff and any ideas they have about improving the library's experience for the public members of both the select board and the West Acton citizen Library trustee will be given

047an opportunity to ask questions of candidates starting with questions from the trustee after the boards have asked questions comments and questions from the public will be accepted with a time limit of two minutes per public comment same procedure will follow for subsequent candidates this point the public comment period will be closed combined boards will deliberate members of the board will vote by roll call with the president the president West act and citizen Library trustee voting first a simple majority of the combined boards is required and since we have an even number that's going to end up having to be a four to two vote case retire there will be a runoff election with the candidates with the highest vote counts person the highest vote count will be the appointed interim trustees keeping with what we

048did back in August uh Annette lockery is the one present trustee I'd like to have a net come forward um and uh sit with the board all right uh any questions from the members of the board about how we're going to proceed all right like a random choice uh first uh candidate I'd like to have come forward would be Niles Smith hello um thank you for taking the time uh to consider me as a trustee for the West Acton Library um in summary I'm just going to read off from the letter that I sent um I believe where I hope that you've all read it but this is really just for the public I live in Acton and I'm proud I'm proud to call this town my home my entire life I've known citizens Library

049since I was a child I volunteered weekly from elementary school to high school the library is personal friendly and evolved to meet the needs of West Acton this library is a special place it would be an honor to work with the other trustees Library staff to preserve the unique citizens Library experience I am motivated and excited to contribute to the success and future of this Library I have worked for the deputy mayor of planning and economic development under mayor Mario Bowser of Washington DC I've experiencing sorts and grants and managing the customer relationship management system for the Grameen Foundation my years of working in the private public and non-profit sectors have given me an exceptional skills set coupled with my strong ties to this community positions me perfectly to serve as the citizens Library trustee

050thank you um let's start with some of the questions unless you you know elaborate on your letter at all no okay uh Annette lochery you could start off with questions how old were you when you started going to Citizens Library I don't even know if I can remember that far back it was a long time um started out living in Indian village and that was the first place that um I ever like rented books from um and just loved it so much that starting I couldn't even tell you exactly when elementary school but every Wednesday I'd walk over from Gates and help Shelf books and get some time to read what do you like most about the citizens Library how personal it really is and how well the Librarians were able to get to know

051you um and I really feel a strong connection there my brother during Scouts we helped renovate it so it's much more than just a library to me it was really Someplace Special I remember when you did that thank you okay uh questions images thank you um hi nice great to see you um so first of all thank you for um writing the letter sending it in um and sharing it with us today my question is um one thing that um and this is a standard question I'm gonna ask all candidates but can you speak about how you hope to work cooperatively with staff and I think for me that's the most important thing moving forward that there is a good staff Board of Trustees relationship so can you tell me um specific things that you

052would do to help bridge trust and work cooperatively with staff and you know help to respect each other's boundaries in this process oh sure yeah I think number one is listen um they obviously really know what they need and that in my position would be to help them attain that and beyond that it would be to collaborate with Memorial Library as well um and so that there's like a strong system between them and then obviously just like showing up putting in the time and learning as much as I can um and coming out with the new ideas um some of the things I personally like to do is improve processes through technology and I'm hoping that there's ways that we'll be able to incorporate that maybe streamline great thank you thank you other questions from

053members of the board thank you uh let's let's open it up uh any members of the public have any questions or comments they'd like to make okay you're getting off easy all right sounds good thank you very much we'll go to the next candidate thank you uh forgive me if I mispronounce this Divya is I don't know whether I noticed but she was sitting I went to sit with her when I got here she has two children and got a call from her husband about 15 minutes ago that he had to take one of them to the hospital they've been in India for the past two weeks they came in late last night and one of the kids is sick so she had to go home to be with the younger of the two I

054have something she wrote um so if it's okay I'll read it to you please do her name is Divya Georges and this is what you wrote I'm Divya resident of Acton since 2016 and an active member of the library Network the town has to offer the little bit the little but significant history of the West Acton citizens library and its founding was indeed one of the many things that prompted me and my partner to live in Windsor Avenue in West Acton I'm the mother of two I'm a mother of two and have been beneficiary of multiple programs offered at the library for kids and adults over the past 10 years since we've been here I would extend my I would extend I would like I'm sorry I would like to extend my involvement from a

055benefiting citizen to helping run the library and its Affairs be it in the form of programs to be offered managing the trust fund upkeep and decision making and most of all I believe a library plays an important role in the community and also shapes the community's needs in many regards I would be engaged in the policies of citizens library in this exciting time when we have seen it evolve to be part of minimat network and continues to adopt more changes by keeping the communities needs in check and that's what she wrote thank you all right um we will move to the unless anyone in the audience has any comments he'd like to make uh any personal knowledge that might have this candidate okay um next I'd like to hear from Tara Fredericks hi thank you

056very much for considering me for decades the library has held a special place in my life from sitting and keeping the library workers company reading quietly in the wonderfully appointed reading room buying books and promoting the library Services I love this little Library and want so many of the things that the prior trustees want I also want to find to help wait five find ways to minimize costs and the staff burden required to help run the library and of course to nourish new ideas I believe I have the skills and the personality necessary to find Solutions and build consensus so you asked for ideas I didn't I missed that part of the thing so I'm going to say a couple of things more surveys and to increase engagement I love doing surveys and I'd be

057happy I'd be you know willing to volunteer whether you pick me tonight or not easier the room to use the rooms at night and maybe a volunteer key access policy for evening use grants I love the idea of going after grants leveraging more volunteer time I feel like people have missed that the prior librarian didn't really engage that way and I feel like people miss that more engagement with Gates and Douglas because Niles brought up the kids coming from school and I think that that's a really important thing to to increase cooperating with staff and community and communication and collaboration that's all sounds Grand this all said so basically I volunteer because I didn't know how many people had volunteered or whatever or who did and I want to make sure somebody was volunteering and

058if you choose someone who's similar to Prior trustees um in demographics and Etc I hope you choose me but I want to shift the focus from myself I actually want you to appoint Niles and Divya Niles and Divi are patrons of the library and have key skills and a fresh perspective with them you have a unique and wonderful opportunity to create what could be the first Library Board of Trustees in the state that is controlled by people from diverse cultural backgrounds the importance of Shifting the power Dynamic to people who have diverse backgrounds cannot be underestimated libraries are like a vital organ to the community and for such a body to be so diverse is exciting and for that reason I urge you to appoint Niles and Divia and pointing Niles especially who had enabled

059diversity of gender and age diversity new ideas are needed to resolve conflicts and to nourish the library its plans and its services and Niles I believe Niles and Divya will bring these ideas to the board please appoint them to light citizens Library Board of Trustees thank you thank you questions of this candidate from Annette first no questions uh questions from members of the slackboard thank you okay questions or comments from the audience okay thank you uh Russ Lowe only about the individuals and that time has passed hey I'm russello one Freedom Farm um I've liked loved libraries all my life I think all the candidates here have too I um after college I worked at litera library it was part of a Kennedy School of government worked there for one year just doing circulation and

060then supervising students um uh in grad school I worked at northwestern's science library for a short spell that I had a software long software career in software as a software engineer in the last six years I've been doing it in the Clinton Public Schools so working with with the technology and teachers so some of the I did the first Lego League robotics kind of stuff some of that could be done with activities at uh at citizens Library I love to be a trustee to keep the library friendly and welcoming as it is as it as it continues I hope it continues to be used by people of all ages um I've only used the citizens Library since I kind of I'm still Consulting so since I kind of semi retired it was halfway between where

061I live and I would drive to I had to drive to both libraries so I would tend to drive to AML get the read magazines get away from the kids um but my son went there as part of the Boy Scout project that you've heard about so I picked him up there my wife and family went and used it and I since I've retired I just love going there it's such a such a great place I'd like to continue it let it continue to be a place that when you walk in everybody knows your name I love the way Lauren said that the other night and I think that's something we all like to see so when I heard about the trustee opening um I had a friend who is a librarian she said the

062first thing you should do is talk to the librarian find out is there are there any issues with the trustees yeah there's some issues so so um that was interesting to talk to Annette I talked to Doc Curtis the past um board member trustee rather um let's see I ran into pamelin at the library talked to her um I just try to find out as much as possible about what's the issues are with citizens library and got many different perspectives so I think I can be a rational person about this and help the board to kind of get this thing resolved I'd be very interested in what the article might be on the I think you said there would be an article on the warrant about the library I'd be very interested in knowing what

063that would be but I know this just you guys want some clarification on this so it's a very valuable resource I just want to help it keep going thank you Annette foreign okay I think you'd like to elaborate on or okay okay Jim hi Jim um hi thanks for thanks for volunteering for this um just an answer to your question about the process with town meeting um we recognized when the last time we talked about this as a select board that um what's more important is the is is is the is the outcome of a good uh consensus building conversation between the trustees and staff and you know to bring something together and whether that means something comes together for this town meeting or for a future town meeting we're gonna we're gonna let the

064process drive that decision not not force it to be in one town meeting or another so um this is a this is this step of of you know filling up the trustees uh is a you know a key first step to be able to uh you know really engage in that conversation so I appreciate your willingness to to serve thanks you imagine thank you I think it's really great that you've spoken with current and past trustees staff to get a better sense of what the core issues are um regarding now that we've kind of almost moved to the next step of our transition when it comes to our operations with AML and citizens so um similar to the question I asked before I'm wondering if you can elaborate on what you think are ways for

065us to work towards working cooperatively with staff respecting boundaries and really making sure that like Jim said we are trying to build a consensus and a path forward that serves Our Town best right I I think we need to start to work with AML as best we can to work together to solve these problems I don't see us I I expect we're not going back to being the Auxiliary Library we once were as good as that was I think we've made the transition to AML running the operational part of the library so what role does that have for this trustees it's to support the librarian there in any way we can um but it's not to run the day-to-day operations that's up to up to the expert Librarians as far as I know I I'm

066not an expert at that so but I do want to just support them and what they need us to do um and I think I'm creative and can work with the staff I've worked with large organizations and pretty calm and reasonable and all that good stuff have to do that when you're in I.T so with students and teachers so I think it could work thank you questions from other board members questions from the audience please please come forward thank you for volunteering the question out there for you is what is your vision for the West Acton library in the future and the second question is how old do you feel and support low-income people continuously going into the library and making free copies because some of them were told to stop doing it and I

067think that's a human right okay I know there's an issue with uh copier there with using it they were sent over to the Pharmacy I think to try to use that Library I know copiers from copies are expensive I don't know um I don't have the history of why they stopped or when it was started Etc but that is something the library should be free it should be free our copies part of what a functioning Library supports I don't know does AML support free copies you know don't think so so I don't know but it could be something that we looked at it's a good issue um what's the vision is sort of I wrote some things down um create a specially friendly welcome me Library there's many services possible to continue the tradition of

068library-led activities especially for early literacy provide access to a wide variety of books especially newer books that might have a long wait list at the main library provide access to the miniman library Network it's something that makes me pop down there to get books out instead of the AML provide a computer usage which it has and continue to provide books to homebound seniors those are some goals that I want to continue with the library thank you question any other questions from the audience hey thank you Mr Lowe thank you okay and Annie Shannon hi good evening those were some tough acts to follow some very qualified people I will be honest up front I don't have any direct experience working for a library you know other than as a patron I've been to the libraries

069but I moved to Acton um 2020 so just about three years ago now and I've been looking for something to become more active in the community and you know when I heard about this opportunity I thought that might be a good fit um I love books probably a little bit too much my husband might say so anything that I can do to sort of help spread you know that around town I'm I'm I'm totally game for uh I do have some education and professional experience that I think could be useful back in 2008 I graduated from law school and so I have a comfortable and you know familiarity with reading legal documents contracts regulations statutes I'm familiar with those and can help you know read and Implement them as necessary I'm no longer actively practicing

070attorney I've spent the last 12 years or so I'm in various forms of business Consulting and I'm currently working as a program manager for the Avida silgen company celebrating our 400th year this year and in my role there I I work with a lot of different areas of the company and try and bring people together and get consensus around project timelines and budgets and and all that stuff so I feel like that's that skill would also transfer into this role and I think like like Nyle said I do a lot with bringing technology and process improvements in my day-to-day job and so that's something a skill that I would I would like to bring to this as well um thank you for your consideration thank you Annette hi there I appreciate the chance we had

071to chat when you called me um quick question have you been to Citizens Library what's your thought about it um I I have been to the library I went to a couple of the book sales that they had there um and I I really like it I love the building it's a fascinating building um and I also I forgot to mention I do have experience um sort of helping my old church become registered on the national register of historic places and participated in that effort about 12 years ago now so I I and we live in an old house so I understand the trials and tribulations of older buildings but they're worth it thank you foreign thank you um well first of all um it's totally fine if you don't have years and years and

072years of going to a library it really is experience can be measured by time but it can also be measured in other things as well it really is about the quality of that experience and it's very non-linear so thank you for sharing that you're a patron and that's kind of um your vision and Outlook into the library my question is um very similar to what I've asked before um how do you plan to work with staff cooperatively um especially um in terms of respecting boundaries and making sure that we're helping staff do their job without um overstepping and really just being respectful to the best of our abilities in our capacity as elected officials uh yeah so I think the biggest thing is um to respect the The Librarians and the staff that are in

073the library every day and are the ones that are you know dealing with um with whatever the issues they might have uh to really listen to them and trust them that they know you know what what problems that they may be having and I think you know one thing that could serve to be a voice for them um in in public forums or places where they maybe they don't want to speak but they want this concern to be raised um you know that's something that I could help with I think thank you comments questions from other members of the board questions or comments from members of the public thank you for your time I have the same question that I just said to the other gentleman what do you envision for the West acting library

074in the future and what's your feeling towards residents low-income residents usually from Windsor that go and make copies and we're told not to um to me it's a human right but I'm curious to know thank you um thank you um yeah for my vision so you know as I said I I don't have a ton of experience in this area so I think I would first kind of start and you know listen to the other trustees and the staff and the public as to what their vision is and how can we help you know bring that to fruition as for the issue with the copiers I'm afraid I don't have any information about that so that's something that I would have to um you know consult with other members to figure out a solution for

075thank you thank you any other questions from members of the public okay thank you very much all right uh in accordance with the procedure that I outlined earlier uh we're cutting off we know further public comment at this point and we'll deliberate as a combined board uh entertain any questions comments um just a general discussion before we start entertaining nominations great question I my concern was Divya not being present and um I don't know I can we extend this to our next can we extend this to our next meeting when she can be present I feel like she doesn't have full representation I think that's a very very legitimate point I'm sorry she she had to leave I completely understand me too but I'm still sorry that that people couldn't ask her questions yeah so

076uh you know I think we've got two conflicting issues we certainly want to give everyone a fair shot uh as a candidate but on the other hand you know the uh the trustees have been without full membership since January I think you know we need to move forward so John I saw you reaching Mike yeah I just just to note that at the last uh temporary appointment of Trustees there were candidates that were unable to be there that night as well and unemployment was made okay yeah Jim um another comment on that same issue I think Divya uh did a good job in her letter that you read to explaining who she was and what her qualifications were so I I feel okay about proceeding with a vote that includes her because I I feel

077like I've you know I've heard from her I'll be honest um yeah so I think that um Debbie's statement was really good um and and so grateful for her writing that especially with her family emergency going on which we all wish her the best of luck with um but for me I think having a good understanding of divya's approach with working with staff is truly what is going to govern my decision and so the fact that I wasn't able to ask her about that or the fact that we weren't able to hear more about that is for me that's the that's what I'm basing most of my decision on um so I don't know this means we extend or I don't know um if there's a possibility of maybe holding like a special meeting just

078to like you know sometime you know this week next week to kind of talk this over um once we have the chance and maybe Divya could come to that special meeting and then afterwards we could have a discussion but I don't know I'll I'll default to what you all think is best I think she would appreciate that as I said she we just came back from two weeks in India and her child has been taken to the hospital so yeah fully understand it and family comes first I think she would accommodate whatever works for the board to yeah to have to answer questions and all well I I think I'm I'm the same mind that Jim has expressed uh I think I've got a good feeling uh from devious original comment was sent and and

079certainly what uh she submitted that uh that Annette read to us so I think I can evaluate the uh the candidate properly I don't think it's even the existing candidates who are not really subjected to rigorous cross-examination I would say so I I would prefer to move ahead but certainly um I can be swayed by uh comments or other members of the board David um I I think it's important to move ahead just because the time is tight with town meeting right um already we're down to just you know a month and a half or so of them serving in this position if we wait till our next meeting you know then it's just one month really um so I I'm in favor of of moving ahead okay and yeah I'll just reiterate what David

080mentioned was that you know these are very temporary positions um we're going to need to have three trustees uh nominated to be voted on a town meeting so I think the uh for such a temporary position um and I don't think that uh you know someone being appointed under this process necessarily gives them great Credence as an Insider candidate since they probably will only have two meetings before go to town meeting and their terms will either end or continue um yeah I'm not going to be taking public comments at this point they I I am we are going to be the I will read to you the process that I read out before thank you uh I don't think so no we'll we'll discuss that after we determine who the candidates are going who we're

081going to get through this process here and then certainly yeah yep thank you I think I've got consensus um from three members of the select board that we should continue the process with the information that we have in hand so I'd like to move ahead with that um any other discussion of any particular candidates from members of the board David so I I'm not I don't know about any particular candidates or maybe I could say you guys talk about that at the end but I think to me the things that I'm using to judge here are first of all the needs of the residents um services in in recent years have gotten better there when I first was a member of the board people complained to be about the services at citizens Library they no

082longer do and so I think it's important to continue in that in that Trend second is um image has been pointing out a number of times the the working relationship with staff is is critical here um uh and and that that's a you know a very important judgment uh point for the the people on um who have been uh made them uh themselves available for this position and and lastly I think the the role of a trustee is is important you know I think that trustee here is by you know um as is any board is is a high level um position right they set the tone um uh and um uh the direction but not involved in any implementation and I think that that's that's quite key thank you comments from other members of

083the combined boards imager um yes and then um to add to the list that David pointed out I agree with everything and I think the other thing um that I'm also considering is the diversity of candidates um not only just from an identity standpoint but also from an idea standpoint and what they bring to the table in terms of their experiences um with the library book personal or professional um so that's another thing I'm thinking of as well foreign thank you all right so I think what we'd like to do is uh I'll entertain nominations like have one candidate nominated we will vote if that candidate gets four votes um that candidate will be brought in as trustee and then when that's all done we'll go to look for a second nomination um so it

084won't really be a a head-to-head competition Jim um there was also a part of your process that talked about ties and tie breaking uh so I'm thinking that means we need to know all the votes first so we know if there are ties like if we get you know three people that get four votes then we'll need to tie break at that point so I we may need to go through uh you know any candidate that gets a a nomination and then go back and look at the results but I might I might have been misreading your process foreign what what my plan was is just to consider one candidate at a time and that candidate either gets four votes or more and if that candidate gets the four votes that's as far as it'll

085go so if you have any particular candidate that you particularly favor and you want to have them considered early in the process I would suggest you come up with that nomination sooner rather than later imager also just a quick procedural question is it we're voting twice so we vote for the top two that we prefer so we'll I'll ask one nomination one nominee um will vote and after that's been settled either that person will become the trustee or not and then we'll ask for a second nomination that person will become a trustee or not we'll work our way down um and obviously we've anybody that's going to get the position is going to have to get four votes so I know I I think I've I think I've been quite clear so once again I'm

086going to ask for a nomination from some member of the board that will come up with a name all this is a combined board vote so we'll be looking at a winning candidate we'll have to get four votes if the first nominee does not get the four votes we'll ask for another nomination may I nominate no you you know let me breathe I'm sorry if you I thought you had finished so I said is the process clear okay I will entertain a nomination for one trustee David I nominate Russ Lowe excuse me I think I I think I spoke first David I think I I asked first if I may speak oh I'm sorry I will it's my birthday and I think that was in there okay and we all wish you a great birthday

087um David I did air in this because the next sentence down here I said members of wood will vote by roll call with present wacl trustee voting first so using that process I think I must defer to Annette to make the first nomination thank you my pardon David I'd like to nominate Niles Smith okay uh amongst the board images yeah so I had the chance to meet with Niles I think that he um I I love that he has a personal connection with citizens library and I think that having more youth voices um on a board like the Board of Trustees for Citizens would be valuable and based on Nile's response to working cooperatively with staff I would support um I would support voting for Niles thank you comments from other Jim um I think

088all these candidates are are strong um so I I'm not too concerned about uh although although I think our process is slightly flawed but that's okay it's I think it's good enough because we have good candidates and we also have the chance to um uh you know have a different slate potentially for the town meeting um so I'm I'm yeah let's let's proceed Niles was one of those wonderful people foreign a second okay Al Schmidt nominated and seconded uh we'll put it to a vote all in favor of Nile Smith is a candidate please say aye aye opposed Nate extension I so we have we we have four so Niles is our first trustee [Applause] all right I'll entertain a second nomination David I nominate Russ Lowe I will second that nomination discussion amongst the

089board images yeah I'm in the few seconds that I've had to like try to think through because I think that Jim is right we have some really great candidates and thank you all for coming today um I I think the I think for Russ the thing that um really made me happy to hear was the fact that he did reach out to staff he reached out to current and previous trustees um to really understand the concern when I spoke with staff um he asked really great questions to try to dig deeper I thought his uh his answer to my question on how do you want to work with staff was good um you know making sure that we respect boundaries um so I I would support um voting for Russ as well foreign thank you

090comments from other members all right we'll call for a vote all in favor of Russ Lowe say aye aye opposed opposed abstentions abstain all right well look up your rules on extensions yeah well let's let's go through this again and we'll do a roll call vote just so that we're clear here um so can't receive Ross Lowe Annette how do you vote it makes it easier I could abstain if that helps your accounting or categorization if stain is fine okay one extension David I vote I am although I came up oh abstain although I okay um so the three abstentions three eye votes in my opinion Russell was our second trustee how's that sorry I just sorry just a quick question so maybe what we could do is wait because I would be interested in

091like nominating someone else and seeing and going through the roll call see if they get a higher vote that's actually like a 42 majority or I think that makes sense David so an abstention means you go with the will of the majority and here that's what abstention means and so the uh the majority is three nothing no no four is a majority yeah he did it's we have a in my opinion we have a majority vote here um is just the same as if we if we didn't have a full board here Mr manager would you like to give us some Parliament parliamentary advice well um I think when you abstain the question is does that change the Quorum of the board and it doesn't you're still here you're just not participating in the vote

092um so that's not a legal opinion it's just an observation I'm sorry I can't help you I can look into it but I wasn't prepared to address that type of thing so I guess on that logic because I I am also not an expert on this but if work if so with six of us so if we're like for us to have a quorum for this board it would have to be would it have to be for in order for our Vote or would it be because with the select board when it's the five of us a quorum is three it's very straightforward but in this case what is the actual core um I think is my question what Dean said four was was going to be a nominating amount when when someone abstains it

093means they go with the will of the majority so for example in a normal select board meeting if the vote was two to one with two abstentions it carries can we do the other people and see if we get somebody else with four but that wasn't the process that's what Dean set up with four people had to vote for somebody to get nominated so yeah again that when someone abstains it means they go with the will of the majority there very well um one would not think that a library trustee position would be this controversial but um and again this is from a position that's going to last a month and a half so this is not a hill that I intend to die on um and I hope nobody else wants to either uh

094so I will uh considering that the uh the discussion and it seems I don't have majority support from the rest of the combined boards we will entertain another nomination I'd like to nominate Divya please Divya okay um do I get a second I'll second okay um comments from members of the board images yeah I um well first of all um divia's comment was amazing um her statement was really good um I think for me the biggest thing is I need to know how to be able to feel and what her stance is working with staff and how she'd want to be cooperative and because I wasn't and it is completely not on her this is all circumstance related but um I think what I would probably do is save my vote for potentially another person

095and then I can connect with Divya one-on-one I already sent her an email prior to this um so can definitely reach out um and see if she would be interested in serving on citizens when we do our actual town meeting um but for now I would have to vote for people who I was able to to hear that answer from so that's kind of my personal reasoning with how I'm going to be voting thank you comments from other members of the board Jim yeah I'm I'm I'm noting that you're the you're the uh liaison to the citizens Library so um I want to weigh your thoughts particularly you know heavily so um so thank you I'll I'll be waiting to know how you vote I will be voting the same way thank you okay we're

096done with comments do the roll call Annette yay David hey Fran nay Jim uh could we have images vote first okay image of so much power I'll abstain for this one Jim I'm abstaining Dean is night all right and it's saying a uh another nomination yeah um I'll entertain um Annie chenin okay I need a second second moved and seconded discussion yeah um oh sorry go ahead they totally jumped the ball though and I apologize um I was really excited by um Annie's comments I think that her um legal background might be really helpful especially um in this situation um as we are making the transition and really trying to support um citizens um operationally um working with AML um I think that she brings a really good background as a patron to Citizens um

097so yeah I would be happy with her I'm serving as a trustee thank you another comments okay and that how do you vote oh it's my birthday that's true okay yay David okay pardon me yay sorry Jim hi uh images I as well and I will abstain so we have five votes for Ann Shannon that should end their process [Applause] thank you and for the successful candidates for the unsuccessful candidates and for members of the general public we are going to be uh we're going to be looking for nominations for uh town meeting to vote in three trustees and in addition to any nominations comes beforehand there are nominations accepted from the floor and Chang that was my question because there have never been nominations for the trustees from the floor so what you're saying

098is that at town meeting you're going to have nominations for the trustees from the floor that's they they always ask if there's any nominations and nobody ever comes forward but to certain with a possibility ah thank you have you told the town moderator well I've been going to town meeting for about 40 years and that's kind of the standard wording so somebody should pay attention to it I guess thank you all right to uh to Niles and Annie welcome and thank you and to uh Divya Russ and Tara thank you for participating in the process thank you okay next item of business is we're going to be reviewing the citizens part petitions and I'm going to go in the order they appear in a town meeting warrant and the first is a citizen's petition submitted

099by uh inquiries to Alyssa Nicole to talk about sewer commissioners uh same sort of process we'd like to move this along fairly quickly thank you Alyssa Nichol from school Street this will be a lot better when there's a slide but I'll just read the petition to see if the town will conduct an objective analysis either by establishing a working group or committee commissioning a study or engaging a consultant to determine the pros and cons of creating a Sewer Commission independent of the select board or an advisory sewer committee or take any action related there too so this article does not suggest what the analysis what form the analysis will take so it could be a working group or committee made up of volunteers or staff it could be directing staff to conduct a study it

100could be engaging a consultant to perform the analysis if there are any costs associated with this exploratory effort funding might come from a grant the study could be conducted by a self-funded agency such as the metropolitan area planning Council or funds could be turned back taken from the turn back at the end of the fiscal year and allocated by the town manager um I think a big question on everybody's mind is what do other towns do because we know that in Acton the sewer Commissioners are the select board um their uh there's no list that I've been able to locate that tells me what percentage of towns in Massachusetts have separate sewer commissions so my Google search turned up lots of different results for towns sorry excuse me Alicia oh in in back Tara so

101I I would hope that folks would provide the courtesy to the speakers and if you've got conversations take them outside thank you please proceed thank you so some towns act like Acton does where the select board serves as the sewer Commissioners so for instance Maynard Belmont and Hinsdale were towns that I found did that interestingly I think it's Belmont they have separate meetings so there's a meeting of the same people but it's just a Sewer Commission business having independent commissions is more like like the water district acts as an independent legal entity that's more common for cities and not Municipal not not towns sorry there are many towns though around us and in other parts of the state where there are two separate bodies so for instance Concord Harvard Shirley Lunenburg Groton Mashpee Medfield Pepperell

102Cohasset Milford Rock Rockport they are distinct bodies so they're different individuals than the select board one town Leicester actually was one town that had an independent water Sewer Commission but they're moving to be changed over to a town operation they they had a very complicated system with seven distinct water districts so these towns have a town entity which is a separate body than the sewer than the select board but they have a separate finances just like Acton the sewer Enterprise fund so another question is why is it important to take this up this issue in actin um it's my understanding that very few select board members are elected to office with the skills and the expertise to act as sewer Commissioners or even the knowledge that they will be acting as sewer Commissioners we're lucky

103right now to have a former DPW director a civil engineer but usually people that run for select board are not necessarily thinking I want to be a sewer commissioner the duties that all of you have are vast and Broad so while you're fulfilling all of those other obligations the Sewer Commission business is is coming onto the agenda just three or four times a year whereas an independent body that's a statutory Body Town entity would be meeting regularly in these other towns they meet every other week or once a month so they there would be the ability to build up that expertise not only attract the expertise through an appointment or if you choose if the results of this study would be that we should elect this body that would attract a certain kind of person

104with an expertise but also it would be building up this expertise in the individuals over time because they're dedicated solely to the Sewer Commission business another reason that it's important for us to take this on is because we've seen recently two failed town meeting votes to expand the sewer first Spencer Tuttle Flint did not meet the two-thirds required vote at town meeting and then the West actins who were expansion a whopping 75 percent of town meeting voters voted nay and we although we have created committees to advise the select board during those expansion processes I feel that it's really worthwhile to look at establishing an independent body that would be um Can there would be some continuity and they would be taking this business up regularly not just in a moment when a decision needs

105to be made and speaking of decisions that need to be made there's a lot of decisions that are going to be coming up and and the town is going to be facing one of them is how to manage the insufficient Wastewater discharge capacity at the municipal plant because now there are a little less than 5 000 gallons per day discharge capacity and one-third of the parcels or 280 Parcels in the existing Sewer District have not yet hooked up and will need to one day when their septics fail scale another decision that's going to be facing the town is the question of Wastewater solutions for Great Road so Wright Pierce's study of great water Great Road Wastewater Solutions is something that is a really important decision it's going to be impactful financially and it's going to

106take a lot of viewer time if you're still acting as sewer Commissioners and it would be great to either create to look at creating a sewer committee that would be advising you or take that off of your plate so that is the impetus for bringing this citizen petition to the town meeting okay thank you questions from members of the board Jim um just a question about the process are we also voting tonight on whether to recommend these or not that would be good okay images thank you um that was a really comprehensive really appreciate it and also breaking down how many towns do this and and the rationale for having separate boards or have a separate sewer commissioner oversee this work my question is in terms of the selection criteria for this or how this

107process would undergo to my understanding you're envisioning this to be an appointed situation where we would appoint people to serve on the sewer commissioner and if so what would those um what would those criteria be based on what you think would be best and if it's elected then one might think that we have the same problem in terms of just kind of like making sure that the people who serve have that level of expertise but I'm assuming you mean that they're going to be appointed so sorry that wasn't clear I'm not suggesting uh that it be an independent body or an advisory committee that it be a point if it's independent that these folks be appointed by the select board or they be elected that's not what I'm here to to or I will be

108bringing to town meeting just that this is worthwhile taking a look at and objectively analyzing it okay got you and then if it's okay for a quick follow-up in terms of um who would be making that decision I actually don't know would that be a select board decision um if like so say we passed this a town meeting in terms of what those next steps would look like would that be it's like board working with staff to try to figure out how that would work I I think based on previous citizens petitions after we see how this if this gets to town meeting and well we'll get to town meeting if it passes or fails it would certainly be a subject that would be discussed in the board when we do our goal setting in

109probably June so it's it's advisory in nature last year there were a number of citizens petitions that were passed um some of those ideas brought forward in in the goal setting process some made the goals list and some didn't other questions David um so uh first one follow-up to Jim's process question are we voting on the recommendations one at a time after each speaker are we going to do them all together is uh in the list with everything else I think what I'd like to do is we'll hear from all the speakers we'll get that done then as a board we will vote to either recommend or not at the same time we would uh see if we got any volunteers that wish to be the select board contact Point okay um so uh just

110my um just some comments on this I I uh I think of actually a majority of the things the sewer Commissioners do even more than technical is financial right from everything from settings to a rage to deciding whether we borrow and uh how how much we spend on an expansion and that kind of thing and I I think it's a little awkward to go through another hurdle right to go through another level of approval because anything that's Financial has to go through us on its way to town meeting on the other hand I'm I'm happy to hear from you know what what town meeting has to say and um you know uh I think that's fine okay comments from members of the board comments from the public yeah sorry Jim oh just a quick comment

111um so one of the reasons that I'm in favor of this study uh and in fact having a separate uh board um is that the financial interests of the both of the sewer Enterprise fund and of the people that use the sewers people that use the sewers are not a majority of people in the town and I I like the notion of having a board of people whose specific Charter is to look after those interests I think sometimes oh well you know I've been on losing sides of votes on this but I think sometimes we we trade away uh the interests of this sewer for other very laudable goals but in this like this recent affordable housing discussion back and forth so I like the idea of having a board that's has a specific Charter

112focus on the interests of the sewer users okay climates from the public hi I love this for the reasons that Jim and Alyssa stated I am a former select person and I felt like what would happen with the sewer rate decisions we'd get something from staff and we basically spend like two minutes at the board looking at it and a bunch of minutes out by ourselves looking at it and scratching our heads not knowing what's going on so I love the idea of people who are really focused and do that work I love the idea of the Sewer District people playing a big role in that analysis and making decisions on the future that it impacts their their wallets I also like the idea of having like a water green Active water Committee Member or

113something you know like a variety of interests that would sit on such a board but again this is I think it's non-binding is that right so it's non-binding just says do a study and I think it's a wonderful idea thank you very much thank you any other questions all right um we will move to the next um which is uh Madeleine Cruz be it resolved this town meeting requests like board to find a way to ensure that all officials are anti-bias training Adeline would like to come forward hi I don't have anything prepared but I can say that um the reason I came up with this for an article is far too often we have accepted things that shouldn't be accepted from people that are staff members or are on boards and committees and at

114the end of the day as a woman of color I have fought way too hard to um feel accepted in this community and I think we need to step up our game and lead by example for other communities and say enough is enough we cannot continue condoning bad behavior neither from people that are staff members or volunteers as board or committees or the public there needs to be respect equally from everyone in this community and again far too often people like me are marginalized and it's not fair I want to feel welcomed every time I come here or in any opening settings where people are having open discussions it is completely unacceptable and we shouldn't wait till somebody decides to sue us because eventually that's exactly what's going to happen so why not take the

115opportunity and train and teach people with anti-bias course how to be acceptance of people like me and others like me okay thank you um questions or comments from members of the board imagine Thank you Madeline um so actually it's interesting because I had started a draft of it and I remember like reaching out to you and being like oh you have a Citizens petition going on about this and so um I know that um there might be a way um I wouldn't I actually don't know the procedure of how this would happen but um if there might be an amendment to um reviewing the current draft that we have or something along those lines um but yeah that was something that um I had a question about in terms of what might be good next

116steps foreign I think you might be referring to the next citizens petition this is the one on training the next one's the one on the code of conduct oh okay no that is my that is my bad that is my bad yes um so anyway I I I'm I'm supportive of of this again I'm interested to hear the discussion at town meeting so um just a clarification um you seem to imply that you've experienced bias from staff members or committee members in the past and have those instances been brought to the attention of the deic or our newly hired Dei director they're not Implement I'm not implying it actually did happen and far too often a lot of people don't want to accept it because it's not them it's a reality that happens it happens

117in this room it happens with you and it has happens with other people and and anti-bias training will protect all of us equally and no I haven't brought it to the attention of other people because when I did email the select Board of a certain treatment that I got I never heard any feedback so um when you're trying to make movement because change is needed and your voice is not heard this is the step that a person like me has to take questions comments from members of the public Alyssa Nichols School Street um I'm definitely in support of this anti-bias training I've done some myself one of the trainings that I did was offer to all staff and volunteers on boards and committees um to your uh to your query Dean I think it's an

118important thing to to talk about the fact that we do have structures in place already for instance we have a deic we have a select board that is open to receiving feedback and now we have a director of Dei I think that the training would provide something that those aren't set up to do and that's prevention so if we are all undergoing this training we have to do the open media law training we have to do the conflict of interest training so that we can do our jobs well and part of being on a board or committee or being an elected official doing your job well is to to eliminate you know some to whatever degree you're you individually can can manage um through the through this kind of training to eliminate those biases so

119if we can prevent it then we don't need to take that step of reporting it to the the structures the very structures that are in place thanks thank you hi um I'm here to stand in Testament that I thought I was all that and I thought I knew enough and I had some anti-bias trade in some decades ago blah blah blah and through the urging of some local RJ race Justice people here I I got updated training I read Abraham because I read a lot and I'm continued to read and I'm so surprised at how much I don't know and I'm so glad that I'm absorbing this information and I feel so much better that I'm a better Community member and uh the things that I personally have heard at um meetings uh is has

120shocked me um so I'm not going to name call people out in this meeting but like someone said something and then people went and they said um excuse me I'm personally offended by that and the person's like oh you don't want to be PC here I can say what I want free speech well these are officials and I do not think that that kind of behavior is acceptable for officials and so I totally hardly support this petition thank you comments from any other comments from the public okay um show the next uh it resolved this town meeting requests just like what the Institute a more comprehensive code of conduct for officials Helen yes this again has to do with pasts um situations that our town has faced and money that lawyers have had to be

121hired to help stop people for pursuing I've been to meetings personally where things that are being said are so freaking offensive to the bipoc community and it is unacceptable that we tolerate this for both board members staff for committee members or even the public a code of conduct is something that I've seen many of towns have already implemented and including other countries and again this is a movement for change for a better tomorrow where every single person that is present in a board meeting or committee meeting feels safe and by doing that we have to implement code of conduct for all not just for one person thank you comments from members of the board Imager that I'm on the right article um genuinely meshed the two in my brain because they are very similar and

122they think they come from um really important places of making sure we're all keeping ourselves accountable as a community to being as inclusive and supportive as possible so yeah I think that um to my previous point which now applies um in terms of that we have since we now have a draft of the code of conduct that has kindly been reviewed by Town Council it's been reviewed by a few other people as well I'm wondering in terms of next steps what that might look like if we wanted to suggest an amendment to the current article um or kind of what would be the best way to approach that foreign I think a couple of thoughts that I've got on this uh I did read the draft that you've prepared um and I have I think

123there's lots to discuss there um I think the the certainly some parts that I would agree with I think there's some parts that I think are fraught with danger um specifically once you get into these issues with so-called hate speech at what point is there hate speech it's undefined in the U.S Constitution um at what point could a board or committee decide that you know are you going to have a majority of the board decide that something that one member says is hate speech and it becomes hate speech Just because the majority of the board votes for that I think these are some uh some serious points of discussion and contention that we have to review with the proposed code of conduct so I would strongly recommend against I don't see that there's any way

124that you can link your proposed draft with the citizens petition the two of them should stand on their own I would also observe that any of these policies which might be approved by this board unless you're extended by the export they basically expire so one board cannot bind by policy a subsequent board looking at the nature of you know the world changes so I I have some real problems with the uh frankly with the draft that you've got um so I don't really think that there's any way that that you can link the two of them but I'll ask for questions from David well I I think it's a practical matter that's that's exactly right so first of all the citizens petition is done right it's got ten signatures on it it can't be changed

125for this town meeting someone could offer an amendment on the floor um but then you have to decide what that means right so this is a resolution and so you just be adding the text of the code of contact to the resolution which might be fine I mean that's something you've you or somebody else wants to operate from the floor um uh and the the things that town meeting would do other than a resolution is a bylaw could be drafted if we want it but usually these things are a matter of policy at the select board level and so those are those are are are independent and that they're certainly not it's not conflicting with this um this comedian resolution so I think they're they're independent and it gives us a chance when it comes

126in front of the board to for us to debate you know the the pieces of this um I do think um though Dean that a policy is in place until a future board changes it you're absolutely right so 10 boards ago they passed a complete streets policy which as far as I know is still in effect I mean we could vote next meeting to cancel that but um uh it's you're right that we can't find it but it's it's I don't believe it expires the policies stay in fact until a future board changes though um anyway that's my understanding so I I think you know that again to sort of Heap onto this the proposed code of conduct is several pages and I I don't see any way that we're going to be able to

127attach that to this petition and then face the possibility of wordsmithing it at 10 o'clock at night on the second night of town meeting Jim thanks for bringing this forward Madeline and I'm sorry you've you know you've experienced those kind of really uncomfortable painful harmful kind of comments from you know this board and other boards and you know and probably from me but I think you would tell me if it was for me I hope you would um um for me the uh so I've been I looked at the the the two the two things we have that are like codes of contact the early uh visitors code of conduct which came in which came into effect so that we could clarify you know the right the right of a chair of a meeting to

128throw someone out if they're being you know you know really awful and there's also a professional there's a staff code of conduct uh but it's it's on it's not really well known among the volunteers who are technically Town employees but don't normally get a copy of that code of contact so I think this is a really needed thing um the other comment I have is this which relates to both of these conversations is that um for me the the most valuable Parts about this are the conversations are the sitting down and like you know not particularly the exact wording of a particular code of conduct but sitting down among groups of people who can listen to each other and talk through you know well what you know what what do you need and what do

129I need and what does that other person need to feel respected and safe um that that to me is where the magic happens that's the that's where the learning happens it's different than um you know because I think some people think both bias training and and code of conduct training means um you know some know it all is going to be in front of a room and tell us all what to think and I know you know that that's not what it is but um we're gonna we're gonna hear statements from town meeting about how you know this is going to be indoctrination and this is political and you know uh for me that's not the point the point here is um you know talking through what we need together to be to be you

130know respectfully listening to each other and I think this is a great step in the right direction thank you yeah and I just want to point out that it's not just about me it's our community it's things that have been said in the past um I've never been more disgusted listening to a past presentation where the n-word was used in the school committee where people of color and blacks were referred to a shopping list as a shopping list once by a board EX board member and those things are unacceptable and this is what has led me to say we need to step up our ball game Guess a code of conduct might exist but it doesn't reflect for the current need in today and um you know going back to what Dean said um freedom

131of speech does not mean that you get to use derogatory words to criminalize someone for the way that they look especially their skin color that there's a fine line of you saying you don't like me and then there's another fine line of you Crossing it and calling me an n-word or better yet I was referred to as a tar baby once when I was applying for the Human Services committee and I might not necessarily know who the person is but I would love to because I would just kiss them in the forehead and offer them a hug because you know sometimes I feel that people that hate the color of my skin or someone even darker than me they didn't have enough love and and it's we should be embarrassed that in today's day and

132age um that we have someone that could even use that terminology towards a person like me last year um it's it's disturbing it's it's wrong so there might be people that will disagree to agree but the point is we can no longer keep tolerating stuff like that not from anyone here or anybody in the future or anyone present to just come and participate okay thank you comments from members of the public I just wanted to express support for this and the previous citizen petition that Madeleine presented I pretty much Jim sort of said it all it doesn't feel to me like um it's about saying what people can say that we're going to say you should say this but it's all about us talking as a community about what's a respectful way of treating each

133other and um how we can make everybody in town feel welcome so I welcome that kind of discussion at town meeting thank you next what these two said and then also um we have a public shade tree policy that was voted on by a select board and then we respect that for years to come okay so there is a way to have a policy that each time this policy is implemented the select board chooses to respect that policy and so um at the minimum of policy now I'll move on to top meeting articles top meeting articles have been passed in 1962 citizens library for example everybody's looking at that a lot and and if you think that that doesn't matter excuse me if you don't think that uh a policy or article that's voted on

134by town meeting matters today for anti-bias training or for code of conduct then the 1962 citizens petition doesn't matter either so so let's be careful about saying that just because it's in one town meeting it doesn't matter for the next town meeting or the next select board we still are respecting these things because we respect that a group of people hundreds of people got together and said yay on something so the next part is Tom meeting can vote to amend a petition I believe a petitioner can move to pass over so if she decides that you know whatever you're doing is satisfactory she can move to pass it over everybody will vote for that because they want to go home but I believe that for the next two weeks you guys can add warrant articles

135to the town warrant up until March Mark's not here but up until I think it's March 23rd or something like that so um yes that's that okay staff versus public so I think that we have a higher standard I think than staff for staff to have than the public that comes in is all outraged about something you know and that um the pub the chair of a meeting is governed by Mass General law and can stop the behavior so if they have training good training about you know harmful behaviors then they can engage in stopping that behavior me personally when officials are trying to silence me when it's my turn to talk I can get loud we all know that right so if you have a code of conduct that says that I can't speak

136louder when someone's interrupting me you know what I mean like like let's let's be real about the officials treating people properly and respectfully so they can speak so so that if they're upset they can continue being upset and um just because they have an opinion about how something stinks and how the town has done this and that and then they say oh well that's an attack on you and so you have to be silent well no that you're here to hear our input and so if you feel attacked because we don't like your work that's what we're here for is to tell you when we don't like your work so anyways I'm in full support of this and I hope that you guys find a way to work together yes make it a policy yes

137bring it to town meeting I'll vote yes thank you foreign thank you next citizen petition be it resolved this town meeting requests the select board to find a way to reduce the transfer sticker price for low-income residents Madeleine um this or an article is because as you all know I am a resident of the Acton Housing Authority so I am low income and far too often I find even when I live to Yankee Village that you know a household to five has more trash than a household of two and uh the other thing is um actin is huge on making sure that we fight climate change and you can't teach a certain group of people to fight climate change if you're not teaching the other people how to do that and by other people I

138mean the 30 of actin residents are renters and if you go to most of these rental units they are not following policy when it comes to recycling having a reduced price because I can't afford the regular price will ensure that I'm trying to make it more green and better for our world by going and dropping off my thing like my recycling or my extra trash instead of putting it somewhere that it's not supposed to go not that I would do that anyways but there are people who do and it's just another way of incorporating more renters to participate in what we are trying to fight which is climate Justice thank you questions comments from the board David yeah I'm interested again in hearing what uh what town reading has to to say about this I

139will note that there's a 10 recycling sticker um uh so uh which is pretty affordable but that's all I have to say yeah I think you know my own point of view on this is that in order to we have to generate enough money from sales transfer stickers and bags to fund the operation of the transfer station so in order to lower the fee for one group of people you have to raise the fee for other people so I think you know there's got to be some balancing there um I I think it'd be interesting to get some input from staff on this is to you know what the potential Financial consequences are of this and I do you know acknowledge David's comment about the uh the recycling sticker which is a pretty cheap way

140to go um but and I think you know I suspect that they're in addition to renters there are a number of other low-income folks that might be able to benefit from this obviously and this is the devil in the details depending on how this goes ahead how do you determine low income you know how is that process going to work but oh defer to staff on that one those are my only comments um comments from members of the public about this all right I support this one too yes ten dollars is ten dollars but from my understanding a lot of apartment buildings have limits on what you're allowed to throw away so they have to go to someplace else to throw a bag of trash away I also feel like people that are throwing trash

141away would be able to or should absorb and should I know is a big word but we're trying to discourage trash encourage recycling so the more we can press up into the trash the money into the trash and lower and make it free for recycling so that then the trash people are saying oh man this trash bags getting expensive I guess I better not throw so much stuff away or buy so much stuff so I throw stuff away so I am in sort of those things oh in terms of how determining low income I believe that there's a process already uh Laura descharm has a process for determining when somebody can have benefits there's also the assessors has various programs that determine when somebody is eligible for a tax refund and here of course I'm

142going to pitch if you are having trouble paying your taxes please go see the assessor there's the exclusion 18 or whatever it's called chapter 18 and there are ways to reduce your taxes if you can't eat thank you thank you I just wanted to point out Dean that it's not just about renters it's about obviously there's a lot of elderly in our community that are also low income and it's not just about recycling like I said before I only have one bin that aha gives people at Sasha blais and then we have our small little recycling bin and I have a toddler and as you know toddlers use up a lot of diapers and wipies and I far too often I find myself trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my trash

143because um I do have consideration for the trash man and sometimes my garbage bags are piled up on top of my next to my bin and it's a way to just like help not have that overflow it eliminates from animals coming in and you know being destructive with our trash so it goes far beyond just the ten dollars I've had my middle daughter I broke my TV I don't have the 25 dollars to recycle my broken TV I had to ask my mom to please help me and she took it and paid for it Chelmsford it shouldn't be that way I shouldn't have to ask somebody else to come in from another town to do that so it goes far beyond just a ten dollar sticker yeah I could afford an extra ten dollars but

144I can't afford the overall which is like a hundred so I just wanted to point that out to you thank you Jim um this reminds me of the the the tensions we have in our goals with the with the property tax system where um you know we wanted we want to both support uh seniors in particular as you know sort of in the lifestyle of being in the life cycle of being an actin uh you know we often end up with seniors who are in you know houses that are large tax bills that are large incomes that are small but we also want to be um you know protecting those people who have low income of any age so there's a mix of programs at the property tax level uh they're in our property tax

145programs but at the transfer station the only program is for seniors those you know there's a this is this was the first year we only had to pay ten dollars to get my annual sticker it's awesome but I I'm not really sure I'm the target audience there I'm not really sure that you know that I needed to pay that much less uh but um there certainly are seniors who do need that and they're also low and people that need that so I think this is a great thing to take a look at thank you okay um next to reduce the amount of food waste is town meeting requests the select board to bring to a future town meeting a change in the bylaw and Order Institute Town policy which would require multi-family housing owners to

146ensure on-site access to composting facilities for renters to use Madeline and again this has to do with not just my personal opinion but of others like me um if I would have known how much compost helps our environment I would have started doing it a long time ago but I don't have I just recently started learning about it because of Housing and climate Justice for acting and um again if we are trying to make our town Greener then why not go full Notch and teach others on how to do the same thing whether you're low income or you own your own house and I just want to remind everybody that even when you're low income you're still paying taxes through your rent also um like I said if there was a way where we can

147get people free buckets to do compost and figure out a way where we could um take that compost and dump it somewhere what helps the environment or try to get a company to come in and pick them up for free or something I think it would mean a lot of growth in our town because it's not just particular to one group of people it's all of us working together to ensure that we fight climate change and this is part of how we do it which is composting thank you any comments uh from the public thanks I love this idea the food just melts into the ground it's wonderful the worms love it my garden loves it my flowers love it and so the problem that I found I didn't realize that everybody didn't do it

148because a friend of mine who lives in an apartment building said they don't allow it they don't allow it because the Board of Health says it's garbage it's not compost and so we could change that by policy the Board of Health could vote majority and change that and allow that for all residents as by right uh it doesn't always have to be a you know big plastic container or a bucket that gets taken away by a truck it can be just a pile in the back that's got a fence around it and uh so I urge us to pass this um our divorce like slug over to endorses thank you so much thank you I have Franny Osmond 16 Half Moon Hill I also support this and one reason is the educate we can get

149a big bang for our buck when we do things with our multi-unit buildings um that renters comprise about 30 percent of our town and we can this is a big big way to make change to do this and I know from personal experience it was those um Junior High kids I forget what they were the black gold team or something like that that finally got me to start composting um so it really just takes some education as has been said so I just think it's a really good thing and I want to comment on this thing of having citizens petitions for a while we didn't really and occasionally there would be one often just by one person um and then we've started to have them and I was thinking for a while like oh no

150let's not have citizens positions let's always go through committees but I realized at one of the last Town meetings that it really is an opportunity for us to all chat about things and talk about something that we otherwise wouldn't have rather than just leaving it to be hashed through at a committee so I'm sort of excited about some of these thank you next be it resolved this town meeting request a select board to find a way and or ways to oh sorry how's that I could just project too um I'm curious if other towns have implemented a a process for composting um I think the uh once you have compost from multiple people you don't know what's in it it is obviously a pest attractor um I would like to have I'd like to know

151more detail on the logistics and uh as I said earlier whether other towns have successfully implemented this what is the cost to the landlords going to be I'd like to see that kind of detail thank you all right next article 45 be it resolved this town meeting request a select board to find a way and or ways to slow the increase in the number of new single-family homes well they sent him a PDF oh I handed you guys the thing so this first one is about the quantity of houses and um so by slowing the rate of new single-family homes there are multiple benefits that we could achieve for effectively free you know less carbon footprint less destruction of land less traffic less less less anyway so this is just to see what other people

152think it's been mentioned a couple of times and that's it what yes okay thank you yes thank you uh comments questions from the board comments and questions from the audience okay thank you very much next be it resolved at this town meeting requests the select board to find a way and or ways to reduce the size of single-family homes this is the same thing reduce the carbon footprint reduce the land destruction so these are different all three of these are different methods or just uh topics so we got quantity we've got size and the next one's about Odd Lots uh and so these are we're just seeing what the what the tenor of the town is is the town sick of all the development or not you know just to see what they think um

153I'd be okay just moving on to the next one which questions or comments for members of the board on the audience no this next one is uh you have a picture on your uh I gave you a picture and it was a picture of the Hawks Crest 74 Main Street where the developer had very odd shaped Lots uh you know basically squiggles and you know big long skinny pieces that went over here and over here like this where you basically have to go like this to go on your property stay on your property line so um so an architect said that other towns don't allow this so I would like to know whether the town needing voters want us to stop that too so this is just that same thing just to get a sense

154of the town okay thank you questions from members of the board David no question but I thought we considered this at one point I don't remember what happened I remember the you know a minimum width for a lot in a zoning article but I don't I don't have enough memory to say whether it passed or whatever I believe it was a Citizens petition a year or so ago about um land clearing limits you mean no there was one of both light sizes and configuration I don't know but the last one I did was too complicated so I broke it up into three Ah that's it basically I took feedback from people who just like scratched their head and it's too long too many sentences and commas and so I said all right let's make it

155simple do you want to limit quantity do you want to limit size do you want to limit odd-shaped lots and then we'll just see what let's see what they say okay thank you Mrs any comments from the audience on that one you're all non-binding and they can be Exempted for affordable housing Exempted for you know non-gas fired single-family homes or you can be Exempted anyway this is just the idea of do we care to stop the destruction thank you or slow it thank you article 48 um non-binding resolution renters access to confidential Health Department inspections hi um so this Warren article is via housing and climate Justice for Acton and the idea started yes with my experience as you all know and it's not to degrade an entity it's not to degrade a landlord it's

156simply finding a way to create um a safety protocol for Acton residents renters when a tenant makes a goes to the Board of Health and complains about something being wrong in the apartment we need to remember that they live in their homes and sometimes you could go to your landlord and your landlord simply doesn't listen to you and that affects your health and that's what happened to me whether people like it or not it's a reality and it affected my son and my son is now two and a half he's going to be three in June but the reality is due to part of the condition from my last unit um the one before the last one he ended up being in the hospital six times and out of those six times four of those

157visits were we left week-long stays at the ICU it is wrong to assume that when somebody goes and calls the Border Health that the Board of Health just because um of uh how was I told uh sorry it pisses me off to this day I try not to but it's it's hard because I'm the one that has to watch my son not breathe um but when I when I went to the offices to file a complaint um and and I want you to know that this is not just a particular issue to me it's happening to other people in town I was told that they were going to come in and do an inspection um and I was satisfied with that because that's what needs to happen is you go in and you do your

158inspection if you find your findings you send those findings to the landlord and if you don't find a finding then you know there's no need to move forward right because that's what they're there for that's what the board Health was designed for however when you have someone from the Board of Health call a landlord because of relationships that they want to keep build that's not protecting the resident that's protecting the landlord and then and when something in their home is affecting them that's what you have to abide by yes it's true there is no bylaw there is no law that says that they can't but there isn't no law that says that they can and by experience again as much as people hate it the reality it did happen to me and we have to

159make it better for all when I got the call that the Board of Health informed my landlord and then my landlord called me while I was in the hospital with my son can you imagine the nerve wrecking experience that I had while I was watching my little boy in tubes on a ventilator that's not cool we got to do better and by doing better we have to acknowledge that we can't just keep protecting one population and not the other all we're asking for is here is that when our report is filed that no one needs to contact a landlord unless there's findings that's it okay thank you uh Jim um so Madeline so this comes from hcja and I and I see that um Mike owing's name is is is is on there at the

160bottom um will you will you both be cooperating on creating a presentation for town meeting or or how's that going to work out it's just confusing it's wonderful to see you but I was confusing to me I couldn't um do the presentations due to prior commitments but we already have um a presentation which I have on my laptop right now I just um found out that we were gonna do to talk today um without contacting Lisa and you know I apologize for reading my email late but I already have my slides um that hcja already worked on for this presentation and a summary great thank you thank you comments from other members of the board from the public I'm in full support of this thank you thank you all right um non-binding resolution beat resolve

161this town meeting request the select board to ask the Kelley's Corner steering committee to review and update the February 4th 2016 Kelly's County Improvement initiative plan this year and to work with the planning department to develop an updated draft zoning plan for Kelly's corner Penny hi Franny Osman um in 2016 the Kelly's Corner steering committee brought some zoning issues to town meeting they didn't pass by a very close um vote it was almost two-thirds so it was a majority but it didn't pass and then as far as I know it just sort of stopped we haven't been developing our ideas for what we want as a town to see um the Kelly's Corner report which looks like this but it's a big report that came out this is green when you look at it online

162um it's the Kelly's corner Improvement initiative and it was based on a lot on of Acts in 2020 goals and the idea was to develop Kelly's Corner into a mixed-use town center and Transportation Hub with a lot of walkability Etc and what's frustrating is that we just it didn't pass and then we didn't go back and try to morph it a little bit and bring it back it's just so it's been seven years and we now have all the infrastructure going in thanks to a lot of funding from the state and we are seeing improvements so we'll have good walking we'll have good bike paths hopefully maybe the traffic will go smoothly through and not be idling but I'm afraid we're going to be building a sidewalk to nowhere there's a lot of reasons I

163care about Kelly's corner I even though I have a lot of opinions I don't want them to enter this I want it to be just open to the town to talk about do we want to go back to the Kelly's corner steering committee and say okay let's update this plan um some of those things that have changed are those great housing that's been built and is being built including McManus Manor and Tavernier place there's been completion of and improvements to bike trails there's a large parcel owned by Stop and Shop that has been vacant and right now apparently I there's a special permit to put in um has that been applied has okay well I I didn't know where I got the information I just saw it written that there was a special permit to

164put in a Stop and Shop and two other stores and I'm afraid we're going to end up with more big parking lots and not the walkability that we wanted we also have a senior center which has a 10-year lease and that lease is up in 2026. and we pay 196 000 a year for those first 10 years if we renew it for five years that goes up to 227 000 for the next five years and it's way on the edge of town which fits with something that we have we do we have these sort of false decisions we have to make where we say do you want this do you want it here do you want it with all these conditions or do you not and if you see if the town votes know then

165we have nothing and then if we go yes we have all the quirks of what we have so we had and lovely Senior Center but it's way on the end of town and it's not necessarily the right future so here we have this big middle of town and then the last thing that's come up is the MBTA communities act or it's also called 3A where we have to find 50 acres that zoned multi-use multi-unit housing so for all these reasons I think it's really important and what this asks for the citizens petition is that we get going that we ask Kelly's corner and again the reason I had to do this is because I felt sort of helpless as a resident I would come to this planning board I'd come to the select board and

166say before the meeting I think we should do this but the words were said and then nothing happens um so that's just sort of a question about how residents can sort of make something start to happen again so let's start working with Kelly's Corner again thank you questions comments from the board questions or comments from the public the Kelly's Corner committee you like what's going on Kelly's Corner then thank them um Big Lots lots of Paving it's one thing that Franny and I agree on we should have maybe bought that parcel and we'd know what to do we can figure out what to do with it but anyway I feel like there's a very expensive project to redo the zoning we're already doing Powder Mill Great Road and we have things languishing like the rehab

167trust almost a year it's just getting started land clearing limits just getting started waiting for volunteers to do something these are things that we could be spending the money on instead of War Zoning for more luxury housing because that that what the committee did was a luxury excuse me whatever market rate condos four stories hundreds of units on on those Parcels of unaffordable gas fired anyways um I've talked about false decisions I think this is a false decision because we don't have to do this we could be spending the thousands of dollars doing something to meet actual needs for people who are living here right now that uh Kelly's Corner thing that lost didn't was not for anything that was actually affordable for people that are on the housing waiting list thank you so I

168urge you not to recommend this time thank you all right uh to my fellow board members let's work our way through these regardless of anything we vote tonight I believe these will be on the town meeting warrant we should be prepared for them so I think I'd like to do two things first I'd like to go through here and get volunteers from the select board to volunteer to be the contact person for these citizens petitions so the first one would be for the the non-binding resolution on the sewers did anybody like to take that on we'll get Jim Dave we could see what other ones hey John I'm sorry I'm Mr chair there is an item later on this agenda to review number 13 and and there are citizen present or resident and staff presentations

169that still haven't been presented I wondered if the board would consider talking about this as prior number 13. or or just as I don't know if I'm allowed to make those type of suggestions but just an idea the uh I think that's a good idea because this is going to take a while and uh thank you for bringing that to my attention yeah let's get the staff out of here so they can charge into work at seven o'clock tomorrow morning you're a people person John so we'll we'll defer on that on item eight and we'll go to 809 discuss uniform signage proposal for the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail so so director Corey York is here but it looks like there are friends uh in the in the house so I'll defer to the chair on

170this one looks like Europe Paul foreign I live at two Shady Lane I am also a member of the board of directors of the friends of the Bruce from unreal Trail um I'm going to give a little history lesson um just to give you some background on what I'm asking for tonight um that in 2007 before the Chelmsford Westford section of the rail trail was converted from rail bed to Rail Trail the friends group sponsored a multi-town meeting to discuss common rules to be used in all towns and there was an agreement at that meeting and the signs that went up in Chelmsford and Westford conformed to that agreement when the Acton section was built somehow acting got different set of signs we're still not sure the process that did that and then when the

171Concord section was built a third set of signs went up and recently and conquered a fourth set of signs went up apparently by a different governmental organization that didn't like the third set of signs and we realized some time ago that we would be better off on the rail trail having common signage and common rules so this past summer thank you that's exactly what I was looking for uh we realized last summer that it would be good to get try and get the towns together and agree on common rules and come up with common rules signage a meeting was held in mid-september the 15th representatives from all the towns along the trail Corey was there Kristen was there I'm not sure if detective Stackhouse was there or not he may excuse me um and um

172so there were agreed rules you can see the list of the eight rules there um and we at that time uh the the facilitator the meeting sent out a note looking for the towns to go back to their governmental bodies looking for concurrence with these rules uh and uh that's what I'm coming to you to ask for you 49ers concurrence with the rules that that um Corey and and Kristen participated in the meeting to agree to there's a follow-up meeting on the 23rd of March to talk about the format of the signage uh once all the towns have had a chance to talk about whether or not they agree with them and as part of that the facilitator has asked the participants if there's any other agenda items they want to put on that follow-up

173discussion but what I'm here to ask tonight is for you to review if you're to concur with the work that Corey and Kirsten did and agree with those rules and then we will arrange for the signage to get put together and given to the town of dpws to install okay um questions comments from Jim um thanks for doing this work uh I don't my guess is that we don't have anything particular to offer other than Ascent um just and thanks David uh yes uh hi Paul did you did you say that yeah the friends are providing the various talents with designs in the the town just put them up once the signs once the the multi-town group has agreed on what the signed format will be the friends group will pay you to have the

174signs made and we'll deliver them to the town dpws okay so I I think this is is great my only very slight uh objection is just um one of the things that kicked this off for acting was the the woman who got hit on the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail which I guess you could say was by speed and I know that speed is on your to-do list um but it was also due to kind of passing too closely and um maybe just in general being discourteous I don't know and I don't know how you put that in a sign exactly but um I didn't see that in reading through the materials ahead of time that kind of situation represented in any of the the memos produced here in the in the list of future discussions

175so I don't know if you had anything to say about that I think that kind of situation needs to be discussed somewhere right you know and there must be a way of succinctly telling people not to you know if there's not enough room to not pass to do within a foot of someone else I wasn't at the meeting so I can't speak to it but it was a lengthy meeting there was a lot of stuff discussed at the meeting uh that didn't make it into the rules because this is what they agreed to I think there are some very important topics that need further discussion that the facilitator has suggested that the members of that that multi-talent committee add some topics to the discussion of the next meeting including speed and enforcement and courtesy and

176how do you deal with that as I said the last time I was here it's very difficult to deal with Bad actors but something needs to be done I don't think I said that strongly enough I think perhaps I glossed that over something something occasionally needs to be done with a bad actor and I don't know what that is and I don't know that it can be done under traffic enforcement or if it needs a special bylaw I don't know what the rules are about that um but it's it's certainly a problem uh even if even if it happens once a decade it's a problem acquainted that the be nice sign didn't make the list I think Emily might know if that was discussed Emily did we talk about be nice at the at the

177multi-town meeting did they discuss be nice Emily teller I'm the Westford one of the two Westford friends and I was at that meeting um yeah they did talk about that and they talked about be kind and they talked about different levels of speed limits or whether to put speed limits up and a lot of it is about enforcement you know John Stackhouse was there saying we can't enforce any of this you know even if you put up speed limits and there's still ongoing discussion about the speed limits but as far as the action tonight you know there you guys have eight list of rules here there is some questioning about whether to put the Bold ones in one sign and the other the non-bolted ones in another so there's a lot of formatting still to

178go on and what's important but it's just hard to enforce civility as as you've been discussing tonight with all kinds of interactions you know it's hard to do that I'm not saying that won't happen but what we're asking tonight acted in Chelmsford are the only two towns that haven't um accepted this report yet because we haven't had time to present it to you and we're hoping that you will before the 23rd so and this is kind of what it might look like those are the ones that are on phase one but again the group that's coming together we'll talk about design and size and those details that you fortunately delegated people to do that too so you don't have to do that thank you so there are our advocates for be nice don't give up

179on it so I guess Fran oh yeah um I just wanted some clarification the group that met was that Nashoba Regional Greenways or a totally different group of towns talking about signage and bike connections this is a group of Staff members from each of the towns through which the Bruce Freeman rail trail passes okay okay so it was a group of Staff okay so that's different the other one is a group of residents um and as Nashoba Regional Greenways has been working it's been hearing about the standards for signage from the state that the state is trying to come up with standard signs but maybe that's just like the style of sign but I'm just wondering if this fits with any state standards that they're coming up with all right I don't have an answer

180that I'd be guessing if I said anything okay because I hope I apologize for not knowing but okay I just hope it all comes I mean I definitely think you should just vote this and move on but I am just hope that we get as standard things as we can thank you all right um so our request for tonight is you want us to approve the this signage or what exactly would you like from the board I'd like your concurrence with the work that Corey and Kristen did and and John stockhouse did at the meeting that we can put these signs up on the trail in Acton simple enough I want to change a motion Jim um I move that we accept the proposed set of eight rules as written oh second okay moved and

181seconded discussion all in favor of the uh the motion please say aye aye aye opposed abstentions thank you thank you for your time hey uh item 10 update on Garden field project oh thank you I just wanted to take a moment to provide aboard the board with an update director York is going to join us in a moment virtually uh but I will steal his headline we the project is out to bid uh and we have we're hoping to get bids in on March 22nd and we just have some final permitting things we're working through Corey thank you yes good evening um yeah just to give a quick update on the project we've been working with the recreation department the friends of the playground Walton district and we've recently met with the Conservation Commission so

182we've been able to work through a lot of the um one of the design issues we've got a workable plan um we've gone through the stormwater permit review and the conservation permit review so we've just been trying to balance the needs of the water district the Conservation Commission and the playground group so I think we're close so we're hatching out those final details with the with the storm stormwater design but as I think as I heard John talking we we did release the bid and we've been talking to the playground installers so um our plan is to have bids come in late March and then be able to get this project moving the spring this is our objective so um we've been keeping the playground installers involved in the process so they they understood our

183timeline and everything that was going on so if it was anything that red flag for them that they could reach out to us so um I think it'll be a good project and we're looking forward to moving forward as soon as we can okay thank you um so I I attended the most recent Conservation Commission hearing on the storm water issues and you know it almost seemed like you're an impasse I think the other members of the the select board might have been watching this as well um it seems like we're in a situation where we need to take the the runoff water from that stormwater Detention Facility and it's either going to go in a location that the Conservation Commission feels uncomfortable with or towards a an unused well drilled I believe in the

1841980s by the as an exploration well by the Water District that they feel uncomfortable with so can you give us any insight on how that's going to play out yeah it's kind of an interesting challenge we are trying to weigh sort of the needs of all these different entities we we had a meeting this morning with the playground group our Engineers the manager's office was there so we were talking through some options I think the part of the some of the rationale of the Conservation Commission was looking for was some um some additional data to support the logic's request as far as keeping the site right now predominantly drains towards the rear of the site but there's an isolated wetland um I think some of the prior design versions that we had was proposing the

185outlet pitching easterly um directly onto the water Glen which they had some concerns relative to water quality and attenuation as it heads towards the potential Well site that they have so um we're working on some scenarios and I know we met with the conservation agent spoke with him following the meeting so I think we have some good ideas when we reach out to the man at the waters direct to follow up on that and working with um thought it was there experts as far as the drinking water qualities and attenuation of the stormwater recharge so we're hoping to have a General consensus of our next steps in the next few days so that we can get this information together and get it to the commission for the follow-up meeting on the 15th so um so

186we have some work to do but I think we're I think we're going in the right direction just a matter of pulling all the pieces together so um you know for the the edification of the general public and we're we're talking about storm water that might be coming off a playground in a small parking lot into a an underground detention leeching Galley as I understand uh with a potential for overflow in the 100 Year storm is that basically what we're talking about here that is correct Javier as part of the playground design is um the installation of some parking all the that area so we have a a subsurface drainage system that will collect that runoff have some pre-treatment in compliance with the storm water standards and then has a subsurface chambers that would infiltrate

187back on the ground based on our based on the design or any design even when we have these still entertainers you always want to have an outlet to loud discharge um in the event that it does get full um as part of our design there would only be flow out of that pipe during the 100 Year design storm just a little bit coming out so it's just a matter of how we how and where do we discharge it and in a manner that's reasonable to the Conservation Commission as well as reasonable to the water district so and then trying to preserve the park as best we can so we can retain the as much of that green space in the rear of the property for use of the park but also for future events I

188know they've wanted the farmers market there things like that so trying to find a compromise between sort of those three entities that kind of works for works for everyone and kind of get hopefully get a compromise that we can move forward on that so essentially the the main question is revolving around where that with that drain Outlet goes and directs the runoff so that's the piece that we're trying to figure out right now show the the is the original design for the drainage outfall going to the east towards the water district property that would discharge about as I understand about 750 feet away from the exploration well the water district put there in the 1980s correct yeah I think that's what I was what Matt was referring to he was depicting where the Well site

189is and and that particular Well site is about 200 feet from the runoff from State Highway um I don't know if I I don't know if I know the exact distance but it is much closer to Mass Ave than the Gardner field location okay and I mean one of the concerns I think we'd all have um if that area ends up becoming a an actual well certainly is is salt sodium runoff is there any proposal that you're aware of to routinely do winter maintenance and sand and salt the parking lot that has designed at Gardner field currently right now um now at most we typically plow but I don't I think with the concerns that we have at these locations um we likely might not be salting it just strictly a plowing operation okay thank

190you John thank you I just I'm optimistic that we can sort through uh we talked about some Creative Solutions this morning and I'm optimistic that we can bring those forward when we were setting the agenda last week I just wanted to make sure that if there was anything to talk about tonight that we had the opportunity to discuss with the board uh there isn't a specific ask that I have at this time other than just making sure that the board is aware of the status and that we're we're moving forward and and I'm optimistic and hopefully uh the experts like Corey and others can help sort out a way to to get this thing permitted so that when we have the bids our contractor can do the work thank you Jim a couple questions um

191I assume from looking at the Timeline that we've let go of the notion of the farmers market using Gardner field this year right it's now it's a Target possibly for next year yeah they've already requested to use the the area from last year great um and the other question was um I'm thinking like other Parks this is going to be a Dust to Dawn wait dawn to dusk operation and does that mean that we're not planning for large large Lighting in the in in the field that's correct yes before I got involved in the project but it was a lot of discussion with the neighbors so there's there's no Lighting on the park so strictly um you still dark yeah okay thanks okay uh David hi um I'm also optimistic that we can figure out

192a solution here I mean even the Conservation Commission has multiple needs that they need to figure out like recharging the wetlands behind the the park and um you know the the main thing that they're they're dealing with is the prohibition against the structure inside 75 feet but they do allow a discharge within 75 feet but this one has a structure it's just it's just complicated right so um and uh but I think all those things can be can be figured out um and you know and I think everybody's in uh you know willing to work on it so that we can figure them out um I do want to say about the the farmer's market you know I to me that that is a you know for next year that's a you know a point

193of discussion um I think this is a pretty compact area and I and I would be pretty concerned myself about trucks tearing up the the park when it gets up that Park to if they have to pull trucks off the parking lot or you know are they gonna have the people walk on the paved part they're gonna have the trucks parked on the paper part and the people walk on the the the the grass you know I I think there are a lot of questions here to be answered before we would allow the farmers market in and I also think that they've in the in the Elbow Room that they have at the Elm Street location they've grown into that space right and um I think I think it might be hard for them to

194uh to shrink back down again but anyway that's a question for next year thank you any other questions from the board I guess we're all set uh thank you for the update great thank you John item 11 thank you um item 11 is sewer Commissioners business so you can adjust your hats to the Sewer commissioner hats that you have and this is a follow-up on discussion that we had with the water district about a year ago about a pilot program where it was going to be discharging to our Adams Street Plant and it was a pilot program that was supposed to last for about nine months and we're we're just past that point so Matt Mosteller the new officially the new director at the water district is going to is here to give an update

195on that and we also have Jack troydell from Warden and Curran uh to oh well you actually have a Sewer Commission set sorry very good um sorry uh Jack troyal from wooden Carter is here who can just talk about some questions that have come up recently about our pfas sampling program and we have Ellie Anderson from the finance team if if there's any Finance questions that come up so we're fully prepared to have a discussion about this at uh at this hour would you like to hear from the water district about the pilot program first or an update from Jack troyal on the pfas sampling program generally uh let's hear the update about pfas okay Jack please okay um thanks John so as Sean was mentioning the water district did begin that discharge in January

196of last year so it's been going on for um pretty close to 12 months um and that discharge is about 5 000 gallons a day or about four to five percent of the flow at the Wastewater Plant um the pfas sampling uh began at the Wastewater Plant in the summer of last year and we're we're doing quarterly sampling um we did collect a sample recently but we don't have that data back so we only have two rounds of data to report um the the samples we did have one sample where the influent was a non-detect um but that was more of a lab issue um so I would say that the influence is in that 20 to 30 parts per trillion range and the affluent it is in the close to 20. um cars per

197trillion so a small amount of that pfast that comes into the plant is removed in the Wastewater sludge and the sludge concentrations are about 37 to 45 parts per trillion these values are fairly typical for Waste Water a lot of a lot of facilities are just beginning to to sample as required in their nifties permits you have a groundwater discharge permit and mass dep doesn't currently require this sampling um and just as a refresher we are reporting the pfas six um data which is comparable to what you hear on drinking water supply um so the the drinking water limit is 20 parts per trillion um there is some ongoing discussion with the US EPA um it was my understanding that they were going to actually give an updated number um or or some kind of

198updated requirements this month so we are expecting to hear that um over the next few weeks but there is an expectation that that drinking water limit number probably comes down a little bit so we'll see what that what that turns into in the next few months um as a as a matter of you know kind of what's coming in and what's going out of the plan um we are we are within you know normal range for areas that have P fast in the groundwater um and there was a study on near local streams in Eastern Massachusetts and a lot of the streams are in that 15 to 30 parts per trillion um of pfas so a lot of a lot of what we're seeing in the Wastewater is you know kind of as expected and

199similar to a lot of that background data um another question that has come up is you know where does that sludge go from the treatment process it goes to the greater Lawrence Sanitary District for processing so they anaerobically digest it and they create a reusable biogas that they use for a combined heat and power system at the plant so there's a bit of reuse there and then the the solids are I think dried out and land applied um so kind of reuse to the best of its ability but that's kind of the ultimate disposal for solids and obviously the waste water is discharged into the ground okay thank you Jack um could you just repeat for me um after the the biogas is collected and there's still some solids what what exactly happens to solids

200after they've been dried um so the solids are are dried and they're either used as a landfill cover or they're land applied and that's all driven by the GS glsd um and and I guess how they're using it so that's the the um actin holes two to three loads of sludge um to the greater Lawrence Sanitary District um every month for disposal okay thank you uh questions of Jack from other members of the board Jim um let's see can uh can we get sent to us uh the complete set of readings I think what you mentioned was sort of the averages and there was some issue with the influent measurement was that a non-detect both times um yeah sorry so the first data point in August um was 29.38 for the data or for the

201influence and then on November it's non-detect but I think it's about it's it's going to be in that 20 to 30 range um but because there were some solids in in the Wastewater they had to raise their detection limits so even though it's non-detect that's not you know it wasn't we we can't say that it was really low we just know it was below what they can detect which is kind of also a reminder that you know a lot of these numbers are at the detection limits and the thresholds for sampling and then when we try to sample waste water there's a newer methodology for sampling Wastewater to get more accurate results so some of this is a bit of a work in progress um I don't remember how many weeks ago we collected the

202third sample but we're still waiting on that through the lab so a lot of the labs are backed up because um a lot of the Wastewater nifties permits have started requiring it literally in the last like month or so um so they're they're they're seeing a lot more um demand um and what do we know about how to characterize the uh pfas in the 5 000 gallons a day that we're getting from the Water District it has sampled that I don't have that data right in front of me but I think it's the rounds sorry we can ask Matt that's fine okay and the last question was um you used one of these acronyms and maybe you could spell it out for me nifties so yeah the nifties are the the US EPA um um

203it's it's the first surface water discharge permit they're the only permits that require um pfas sampling so wastewater treatment plants either have to discharge to groundwater or surface water so if you discharge the surface water in those permits they're requiring pfas sampling so that's a little bit ahead of what massdep is requiring for the groundwater discharge permits so grow our discharge permits you don't have to sample for pfas we anticipate that that's coming um but that's not currently there thank you other questions from the board the public Terror yes um I have a question again about the um wherever the dried stuff was and the reason I'm asking is because I I watched a documentary about the solids the dried solids from Manhattan sewer system was being packaged as fertilizer for McDonald's and other food

204manufacturers I guess they're called now and so I would like to know what you mean by land applied I have another follow-up question but land applied what can you clarify what that means I I mean land applied would be um exactly what it states um I don't know exactly where or how um glsd is disposing of that sludge but I know they're using it for landfill cover or it's land applied um I can all I guess I can expand on that a little bit more that Wastewater sludge disposal is um is becoming more challenging with pfas the state of Maine right now is currently kind of experiencing a crisis because they've limited um the disposal methods and then their single disposal method has an issue right now um so it's it's definitely a thing we're

205monitoring and trying to um you know make sure we have solutions for a lot of our clients but over the next year or so we do see a lot of sludge disposal costs increasing to account for some of the limited means of of what can be done with it thank you and just an example is some facilities that have incinerators that does um cleanse the pfas it removes the majority of the pfas um from the sludge when it's burned but for instance Maine has banned incineration of solids so that's not a disposal method for them thank you I think we're learning a lot from what's Happening there and we'll see how that impacts our industry here in the next year or two thanks because it's all full of pfas and pharmaceuticals and and so leaching

206into the ground just affects somebody else's drinking water I'd rather drink our own in this sense as opposed to having somebody else have to drink it but um I have little trust in the feds because they are controlled by large corporations and the the same regulating agencies thought pfas was fine thank you curious to hear what Kim says I have a lot of faith in her work and research thank you um other questions from the public Kim yes I'm uh Kim Cassens from Pope Road um and thank you Jack for your report to us I would really encourage you to dig deeper into what is happening to our sludge reminding us all that Lawrence is an environmental justice community and we want to be careful that we're not sending our pollution that we don't want

207to have in our town um to their town to be spread out on their land and speak um sneak into their groundwater um I had a another question um so I have the pfas data um from the influen and the effluent and um I also have the Acton water district um tfas values that were taken um in the end of July and the beginning of on the middle of August sort of before right before and after your August sampling and um I know this is only one data point it's not a lot to draw conclusions from but the pfas level in the influent coming into the plant was higher than the pfos value in the Acton water district being served at that interval of time so that suggests that people in Acton are are putting

208additional fifas into their Wastewater as for example from personal care products or from their cookware or from washing clothes with um with water repellent surfaces in their washing machine and I'm wondering if there's any way that you can extract any kind of fingerprint from the nature of the full distribution of different pfos types that you get to to make any kind of inferences about where that additional fifasa is coming from yeah we haven't yeah we haven't investigated it um in that level of detail of looking at the the fingerprint there um but I'm a little disappointed that I don't have that third round of data because that was going to shed some more light on um the Upstream um Wastewater from the majority of the Town that's not influenced from the water district discharge so

209that next quarterly data will give us a better Insight on what that looks like yeah but you're right there's there was pfas in a lot of different things in all of our households and that some of that could be a source um so I'm really glad that you're going to be sampling quarterly and I wonder if you're planning to coordinate your sampling with Acton water district quarterly so timing of their sampling so that you know um you've got the um amount of fifas coming in from the tap water to compare um in a in a in the same time slice as the water district sampling we haven't coordinated it um I think that we could look into that um a lot of times it's more interesting because we have to be careful that we account

210for the time of travel from what comes from a different Source like that to when it goes into the plant and then also when it leaves the plant so there is um you know a certain amount of detention time to through the plan um but yeah we could look in to see if that makes sense to line up the samples and you mentioned that um uh at present it's only the um wastewater treatment plants that have a surface discharge that are required to sample for pfas um but that you're expecting that um down the road will come a requirement to sample for fifas for water districts I mean wastewater treatment plants that have um um groundwater rapid infiltration beds then following that one presumes that um eventually there might be regulation about releasing pfas into

211into the Wastewater stream into the effluent what would be involved do you foresee that coming and what might that be involved is some their capacity to treat at that level and how much does that cost yeah that there there's a lot of speculation in that answer um we we really don't know um that's something we've been looking at and trying to track it for the last year or so um I I the one point I do have is I think removing it at the source is always going to be the less expensive um alternative um so removing it at the end of the Wastewater Plant is going to be substantially more expensive than trying to get it out of the drinking water all together but I think before we see any Wastewater limits coming out

212I think we're gonna you know there's going to be that update for the drinking water number so I think that's going to be first and then we'll we'll see how it goes and and figure that out but I think right now there's a lot of sampling that's being reviewed and understood and trying to figure out the best approach um but as I had mentioned before though when you look at all the the nearby streams the acidic you know Upstream in Downstream of the Wastewater facilities the streams already um you know above our concentrations um for a lot of the time so I think that's that that you know it's what is is the cost worth it to try to remove all of the pfas um knowing that it's in the groundwater and the surface water

213yeah but well certainly see where that goes over the next year or two okay sorry so the drinking water is certainly you know coming I think very soon and then the the biosolids the sludge is kind of the next piece and then also as you said the Wastewater discharge limit um at some point thank you hey any other questions oh um Matt I believe we have one uh person wishing to speak from online we do Mr chair Richard Kelleher Richard you should be able to speak hello thank you um I'm concerned that with all these issues with pfas that the town hasn't looked into the really long range prognosis in other words um I'm afraid that you know we don't know if um we are going to be able to dispose of it as we

214just talked about uh we don't know if the stand what the feds are going to do in terms of the tightness of the standards and it seems to be getting worse uh we don't know whether we want to even maybe go further than the minimum requirements because it's you know it's our health and uh you know I feel I have a sense that the the feds are you know they're they're reacting because they have to do something but I'm not sure it's enough to make us really safe I'm not you know I I maybe I'm being overly cautious but I there's so many unknowns in this whole issue and um I'm wondering if I had heard rumors that we were thinking of perhaps joining mwra because there's apparently no pfas or I can't imagine no

215pfas but very little pfas in their water of course that may not stay that way forever so um I just wonder if there's a long-range plan for the Water District to deal with the worst eventualities that might happen and to be prepared um that's thank you very much that that's my question thank you Richard um I I think you know that just getting a bit far afield um and a lot of these questions are really going to have to be dealt with by the Acton Water District John I think we've got Matt mossler yeah I believe I believe so oh there he is good evening folks thanks for having me um Dean I agree we are getting a little far afield um just as a reminder before I kind of share um how our our

216pilot program is gone um you know tfas is much bigger than Acton so when we start talking about long-term ramifications um you know this is not unique to act and so I'll just remind folks of that whatever problems that we were up against right now are being multiplied throughout the country so I just want to share that um I also just want to confirm some of the things Jack said lab capacity lab quality issues are very real we struggle with that every day so when we talk about pfas levels at the park petroleum level there is a lot of room for error in those numbers so anything that we do talk about may not be all that meaningful so since uh last year about this time we did start discharging our cleaning waste from from

217the water treatment plant located off of Powder Mill Road or behind Powder Mill Plaza we have seen about a two-part petroleum reduction in the pfos concentrations in our plant during that time period some folks may say two parts per trillion that's not really meaningful um I'm here to tell you that it has met the difference between supplying 80 percent of the community with compliant water versus not supplying the community with any compliant water so we feel that this pilot of discharging to the Wastewater system has been effective we've very much appreciated the town allowing us to do that and we very much appreciated working with the treatment plan operators at the Wastewater Plant to meet their needs during times of high flow and we we would like to be able to continue this relationship of

218discharging um and working with the operations staff until we can get a pfas treatment system in place at our plant one of the questions that I believe came up was what kind of concentrations are we discharging from our plant into the the Wastewater Plant or into the sewer collection system on average we we see about 15 parts per trillion so sometimes that number's been higher sometimes it's been lower but on average we've been seeing about a 15 part per trillion discharge to to the Sewer certainly we look forward to seeing additional Wastewater data as it's generated um the final thing um that I will just say um in terms of uh sources in in the Wastewater system um again we're we're putting out about 17 parts per trillion um in the drinking water based on

219some of the influent numbers um I think Kim brought it up uh we certainly are seeing higher numbers um coming back to the the treatment plant um through through the Wastewater collection system and it goes beyond some of the items that that Kim rattled off that may contain pfas floor waxes are a huge contributor pfas so any commercial or institutional building that's using floor wax maybe a contributor I just saw this week that toilet paper um is in and of itself a source of pfas so there's there's a lot of factors uh going on there um that that we all as a society need to be thinking about um I'll open it up for questions if Jack or the board or the public has anything they'd like to hear more about David uh thank you

220Matt um just to confirm before you were discharging um uh this uh pre-treatment water or what I'm not sure what you would call it uh you used to do uh ground infiltration is that correct and you are concerned that the pfas would make its way back into the well is that correct yep so um prior to to discharging to the plant um some of our waste was going to the the sewer but um a majority of it was going to an on-site infiltration Basin that was um just about 500 feet from one of our wellheads okay and um did I also hear you say that once you add pfas treatment to the drinking water that the need for discharging into the Wastewater system would end that that theoretically would be the plan so if we

221can treat at the source um you know we we wouldn't be as concerned about what was coming in in our raw water um although by the time that happens um our groundwater discharge could potentially um have some some regulations on it as well then ours would do as well so sorry but it's it's whoever discharges into the ground um you know so I I I'm I'm in in favor of of this arrangement I think it's a good arrangement but I do think that there is uh we have to discuss the the cost of the for the amount of water discharged um but other than that I'm I'm I'm I'm supportive of this concept and I I'm I'm the kind of incredulous in some ways that the the EPA is is dealing with the pp passes

222and afterthought and uh somebody or a couple people have alluded to this you know uh that rather than removing uh you know making it not legal to have P fasting cleaning products or or clothing or cookware or toilet paper um so um I mean I don't I really don't understand why that is is still allowed and we're working on Country-Wide dealing with a pfas problem foreign can you remind me what the rate was negotiated for the the for this discharge into our into our plant and um with the status of payment is so that that's um a good question Jim um and and that sign that uh the town manager and I have been having a discussion around um it does appear that um for a while um during the last calendar year we were

223you know not being billed for the increased flow it does appear that sometime around October we we started to catch up on that um but that that's an on ongoing conversation I do know um that we're being charged um I believe the highest um rate that that the Sewer District maintains um but I think there's been some question as to the the volume um that that's being charged me thanks so that's probably the uh industrial rate or um yeah okay so and there's been some problem with with billing um but now that's being caught up on or or what are you are you going to be are we is the town able to bill you for the stuff from before October so maybe that's a John yeah so I I so as you know I

224spoke with Matt yesterday or sometime earlier this month um about this question and there is I'm looking at a rate structure maybe Ellie you can confirm this but I see three rates residential commercial and school and there is no industrial rate or and I thought that industrial rates weren't created because industrial flow wasn't anticipated or or allowed um but I think that so I think we're this is being charged I believe the residential or the commercial yeah so it's um being charged with the commercial rate just like any other commercial customer um my understanding is that at the beginning when South Acton water treatment plan was coming online there was some discussion about creating an industrial rate to accommodate there connection but I think it was ultimately decided to charge them at the commercial rate

225the same as any other type of facility yeah and I will just say one one thing about what we are discharging um it's effectively drinking water um it doesn't have a lot of solids to it um originally the the sewer connection to our plant was actually to dispose of um solids that we were taking out of the drinking water um that actually hasn't occurred other than to test the process so we're essentially giving you a pretty clear solid spree product into the sewer system yeah I mean um oh sorry can I follow up okay um the you know our discharge limits are about you know water but it doesn't matter whether it's you know dirty or not it's all cleaned up by the time it gets discharged so I am concerned about the um you

226know 5 000 gallons a day against our discharge limits I remember those cool charts we got from Jack uh that showed all the different you know the different things that were getting us close to our limit and if we added a bar for that discharge it seems like things would be really pushed up against uh you know what we're allowed to do so um um so I'm looking forward to more analysis and more recommendations from staff on whether we should continue this because I am concerned about that the impact on um you know as as other users come online um you know when when do we hit a danger point thanks thank you John do you want to comment on that and well in terms of the status of the pilot um you know and

227I I think that given the the constraints that we're concerned with are not I mean they're coming but they're not here today and that this this Arrangement is a pilot um I think that their staff would be comfortable with some extension of that pilot with the understanding that it's it to be discussed again and evaluated to determine whether it makes sense to continue and you know maybe if the district has its system in place it won't be necessary maybe it will but those are all things that a pilot allows us to continue to explore I am concerned about the billing but I'm also confident that we can figure that out um so is there anything else on the operational impacts of this that we were worried about other than just the the cost David I

228have one follow-up question Matt I know that now in the in the correct me if I'm wrong this is just my understanding yeah you're you're working on adding uh pfas treatment to the central actin plant if I'm not mistaken is there also a work scheduled for the South Acton plant for pfas treatment so right now we actually just opened bids for a treatment system for pfas at our North acting facility we just completed shortly after the New Year a a test of filtration Technologies for the Acton Center plant and we completed that same testing over the fall for the South Acton plant so those have not gone to design we're still awaiting the reports from our engineer for those two facilities but we will be asking voters to support systems at those other two locations

229and then the presumption would be over the next two plus years we would design and construct those if we get voter approval um thank you um so um again I think it makes sense to continue this at the at the commercial rate but I would like to see a regular check-in you know every six months or something we revisit whether it's still in uh mutual interest to continue doing this um and and to check up when pfas treatment might be added to the South Acton plant and and what the current you know various levels were I think it's worth revisiting from time to time you know I'll concur with David I think you know a couple of things um understand that you know this could not be the ultimate solution eventually you know the as

230the needs in the town increase uh for flow the water district is in some danger of basically being kicked out of the plant just because we can't accommodate you any longer and then I think the other thing that's really important um certainly to all the users of the system is we need to get current on those payments so I think and and also I think probably a a six-month check-in you know maybe sometime in the Labor Day time period might be a good time to kind of put a placeholder in there to think about reviewing this um by that time she'll also have some more updated data from from the pfast testing at the wastewater treatment plant as well so give us another couple of data points to work on yeah uh comments from the

231public uh yes just two questions and then a short comment um the 15 parts per trillion being put into the sewer uh does the commercial rate differ depending on how much pollution and effect you're putting down in the drain I don't I'd like very I'm I was kind of never thought about it before should we be charging different for different types of pollution that's going in and I guess that's not a question I don't need an answer for that um but there was a comment that I thought I wrote down exactly as it was said and it was about the meeting their needs at the sewer so this so the active water district is doing something to meet their needs did I get that right is there some kind of thing that acting water district

232is doing to meet the sewer system's needs so you know that comment was around uh periods of five flow or if there were operational constraints at the um with the Wastewater facility they would call us and they would say hey if you're discharging can you stop or can you put it off for for some time period got it thank you and then Alaska was just a comment about mwra the plans that I've seen are you know 10 15 years in advance and I don't want to drink pee fast in the meantime I'm perfectly happy to invest in plant so that we can control the quality of our water locally thank you thank you John do you have anything more to add or are we pretty well done with this no I think the the you

233know the status of the pilot was that it it's still it's still going on and if that's uh if the board's comfortable or the sewer commission's comfortable with that then we'll keep rolling with that and come back if there's any issues in the meantime and if not six six months from now or so okay seems like you've got folks knighting a scent so I think we're good okay thanks thank you Jack thank you Matt thank you oh okay Matt congratulations on your promotion to uh District director thank you Jim okay um looking at our agenda um I'd like to move item 14 up slightly Out of Water um so that we can let Matt Liebman try to get some night's sleep so item 14 discussed requests for reimbursement for building permit application from Matthew leaveman

23427 Tuttle Drive John do you want to start off or you want sure so uh fee permanent requests fee permit refund requests or something that happens in the billing department three or four or five times a year um and a lot of times when the building counter staff say yeah you just have to fill out this form the person says never mind or whatever so the board sees not as many as uh are asked for downstairs but in in some cases like the the one before you or that we brought to the board last week the information is presented and the request is brought forward the request here was to refund a building permit for 221 dollars and part of the rationale was that a subsequent permit was paid for which was another 105 or

235106 dollars and um the recommendation that was on the consent agenda last week was for the first permit to re to be refunded at the amount of 50 percent which would have in the end made the total permit fee paid to be uh slightly less than the original around 200 and um you know less than the original I'm sorry my Math's gone so uh that was uh held off of the consent uh for more information I'm not sure what more information that the board would like for me I can tell you that from a staff standpoint if the goal of fees is to reflect the staff time utilized to process the permit I can assure you that more than 326 dollars and staff time was utilized to support the applicant and his contractor and various

236other components of this project so that's that's the information that I have uh related to this okay thank you Jim I want to add a little extra context too from um looking at previous requests that had shown up to the board um so let's see um John I know and I sent this to your office but I think we I think we it ended up not in the packet is that right yeah you sent me a handful of uh past requests but I believe there are more than that so it wasn't something that I was ready to research and and and say is official sorry okay no that's fine I'll just summarize here and then we can put it in the extra information area where we typically put stuff that's you know after after the

237meeting or too late to get in the packet um so um four of the most recent building permit fee fund requests um the last the first three were all done they were all on consent and they went through there were things like um the customer filled out and paid a permit fee the electrician came in and filled out another permit and paid a second fee and the request was to refund one of the fees um another one that just went through on consent was um the customer filled out a permit paid a fee The Building Commissioner did a little bit of analysis and told them about extra work that would be needed to be code compliant customer decided not to do the work and ask for a refund that request was approved as a consent

238item now these are back in 2017 2016 both on 20 in 2017 with a different Building Commissioner the the more recent one we had two one that went through and one that got stopped the one that got stopped we didn't actually say no what we said was we're not going to take any action on this and I think that what came out of that was that um was that we didn't we don't really have a good guidance on when to provide refunds and when not to and when provide partial refunds you know we know some of the factors sort of intuitively but we do so I think we tonight we can either if we come to an easy and quick decision about you know this 50 refund or something we can do that but I

239think it does call for a a future uh you know maybe some recommendations from staff or guidance to us that we can review about the general concept of giving permit refunds the other thing that came up in in talking with Matt was there were a lot of concerns about um uh the staff either presenting information that was confusing uh or not getting back to Matt so so there was a certain amount of you know sort of a feeling of being misled uh and a feeling of being uh um not used well and I didn't I I encouraged Matt not to go into that too deeply at a big public meeting like this but instead I asked John if um if if if Matt and and staff could sit down I'd be happy to be there

240to just sort of go over the miscommunications and possibly learn from them so um that's and that's something that John was was very open to which I really appreciate so there may be some other so I think that's that's one of the two follow-ups that might happen here though there'll be a follow-up meeting uh with with staff and there'll be I hope if the board approves this concept of some conversations about you know what our general guidelines so that we can make these decisions with with less pain thank you thank David yeah I um I don't I don't believe in you know in refunding the permits I mean this is how what we use to fund the the the the the building department and um you know whether somebody decides to build or not some

241of that money is is already expended uh by the by the the building department and I think you know take someone's time to do an analysis to say well maybe we didn't spend 30 or maybe we didn't spend 50 or maybe we didn't spend 60 percent that's not worthwhile I mean I think it's not a reasonable expectation that you get back party with your permit fee if something doesn't go go through I mean I I just don't um I don't see that it takes it takes too much time the the some of the others that I have been involved with I mean some of the ones you mentioned were before any of us were on the board um that I've been involved with is where we allowed a mistake to happen like we allowed dual

242payment okay that's different than this right if we allow someone to pay their uh elect you know electrical upgrade permit twice you shouldn't have allowed them to pay it twice right um that's different right so we give them back one that they shouldn't have had to pay for it's like being double charged on your credit card of course you're going to get one back this is not that and I I don't think that we should be you know nickel and diming the building department to get you know small amounts of money back friend I think I have a question for John I think this is for you what what is the policy or protocol or um because it it's nagging at me that we did give some refunds back at some point and then are

243saying no no not for this one I think moving forward we have to come up with a plan that just like no refunds period it says that on the application oh okay it says they're non-refundable it says I read on the application and I think the the process that we would develop in their rare circumstances where there is a clerical mistake or other circumstances that weren't the consideration for a few waiver it's not something that I can do it's not something the billing commissioner do best to go to this board to say uh there's been a request for a refund and here's some information about it this is our thoughts on it what do you think and that's what we did in this case um and that's where we are Matt please come forward thank

244you for the opportunity at this late time thank you Jim for characterizing the situation and in the last week since I found out about that we were going to be on the docket found out a little bit more information and and the headline is that I accept this 50 percent refund because that's fair and that's exactly what I was expecting um the information and the scenario that I think Jim mentioned about one of the refunds where somebody was charged twice for the same project is very similar to this that's how I feel that this was um a little bit of background as you probably saw in the perm in your packet that I all the information was submitted by me in my building permit application excuse me my building permit application and I felt like

245for whatever reason the town was stonewalling slow walking whatever asking for more information and it was frustrating to me as a town resident it wasn't until my contractor got involved he said Matt let me take care of this he submitted the exact same information he got a building permit in three days and he had to pay as you've mentioned about 106 dollars so that's approximately 50 percent of what I paid and that's my goal in this situation was to make sure that my app my contractor did not pay I don't have any control over that but my goal was that he not pay because I'd already paid and so this is equivalent to that so I accept this 50 refund and I think at this late hour I think that's what we should all agree

246on so I think that's a fair decision oh and the fact that there was a president um even though it was only before the previous Building Commissioner I think that tells tells you a lot too thank you thank you so Mike my recollection is that the recommendations from our Building Commissioner was a 50 percent refund no he I um he he said um if you're going to refund it please know it he said I don't recommend a refund he said if you do wreck if you do end up refunding it just know that we spent I think 65 of the time which I just made the math easier um if we were going to go against them either way I just wanted to have to use your math instead 50 so it's my recommendation just

247to be clear okay thank you uh I'll entertain a motion from any member of the board Jim oh let's try um recommending a 50 rebate on that uh on the original permit fee thank you uh can I get a second on that okay can't get a second on it um someone like to pose a separate motion [Music] oh I'll defer to Jim you're closer um uh one the last the thing we did with the last time was we voted to take no action in the hopes that someday we'd have a policy that would help us clarify these cases and I think that's a fine that's a fine next step is to is to take no action with the thought that we might reconsider this someday if we had a policy thank you can I get

248a second on that Cheryl second there okay moved in second to take no action on this request um for the discussion all in favor of the motion to take no action please say aye aye uh nay abstention one eight thank you okay uh we are back on to the discussion of the citizen petitions they said I would like to do first is um assign a uh a select board member to each one of these so I'll accept volunteers uh let's get these warrant articles done the uh okay uh the uh sewer commissioner citizen petition anybody volunteer for that oh give it to David um anti-bias training hold on I'll volunteer uh code of conduct you say we're I'll volunteer for that too okay um transfer sticker price reduction the low-income residence okay Korean gets transfer

249and composting um slow increase of new single-family homes Okay non-binding resolution regarding health inspections okay Korean and Kelly's Quantum Improvement initiative looks like looks like David all right together there's a there's a handful of others that we didn't assign for at least one the number 38 we haven't designed number 38. okay ranked Choice voting good we've got Jim we have any others maybe that is the only one I thought I saw another bike but no I don't think so okay all right um well I guess the next step is to [Applause] is the board ready to uh to come up with a recommendation on these or would you prefer to defer until our next meeting sorry I think it's going to be a long one because we've got the discovery way but no no public

250comment just asked deliberate just deliberation yeah we can talk a lot though yes we can what else do you have foreign what's the wishes of the board do you you want to think about these some more do you want to make a recommendation tonight or whatever your call whatever I'm tired either way okay um let's go for it um we'll do our recommendations get them out of the way um may I ask you one question first do we have all the final text of everything I mean I I have to say that I have I read the warrant before the last meeting I have not read it again between the last meeting and this one and my only concern about making recommendations is whether I have the the current info Jim the nice thing about

251dealing with the non-binding resolutions is we do have all the language and it's all finalized so going through those we definitely have final language oh we could do those today that yeah and then do the rest next meeting yeah I'm just going to get fine let me get these done sorry my misunderstanding yeah okay um the uh sure uh commissioner uh citizens petition I'll entertain a motion who I'm sure I'll move to support that okay uh Jim moves to support we have a second I'll second okay moved and seconded any discussion all right all in favor will you say aye I I all opposed A abstentions I'm going to abstain abstention so we've got a three one one so it will go on as recommended by the select board um anti-bias training no entertain a

252motion I'll move to recommend oh yeah sorry I'll move to recommend it uh as a slip or in recommendation second moved and seconded a discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed I abstention zero so four to one goal is recommended 42 code of conduct entertain a motion I'll move to recommend second I'll second moved and seconded discussion all in favor say aye aye aye opposed hey extensions narrow the Owen is recommended transfer sticking sticker price uh I'll entertain a motion I move to recommend I'm gonna get a second second moved and seconded all in favor say aye yes please sorry to me this one is odd because there already are discount prices for for seniors and Recycling and so um I'm going to abstain from this just because um I think this isn't specific

253enough to to to to support I mean I I don't I'm happy to hear what town meeting has to say and and can consider another class of people that gets a discount but um you know I just think it's uh we already have some programs in place which cover um some of which the proponent talked about maybe not not everything but maybe two-thirds of what she talked about already is in place so anyway okay thank you any other comment all right all in favor of the motion say aye opposed eh extension I'm going to abstain okay it'll go in as recommended composting facilities I'll entertain a motion I'll move to recommend okay I get a second I'll second moved and seconded discussion yes um this is actually just a general question and I I should

254know this better so I apologize but in terms of the infrastructure required for like a composting facility do we I know one of the residents mentioned um just like doing research into like what other towns have done um and so um I think that'll be important um but yeah just trying to find a way to make it work logistically um because I know that composting facilities um do require a pretty heavy initial investment and also regular maintenance to make sure that it's it's functioning so um something to think about just from a logistics that standpoint but I do think that this also does align with some of our sustainability efforts our climate action plans so um I think it's it's kind of well within that okay uh Jim something that other towns have done is

255required their trash haulers to offer pickup composting not everyone has to buy into that but if if a if a you know if it's offered for a an apartment complex we could you know there could be ways of putting thumbs on the scale to make sure that happens um and that that would be to me a good out potential outcome of a strong vote on this at 10 meeting just because yeah exactly composting facilities are tricky to do well um and you know folks like black Earth composting are providing that for people who go to the transfer station already but for some people you know getting the stuff there is a burden so having a pickup system is is very helpful sorry um not to make it along but um since um but I know

256that here it specifically says to ensure on-site access and so I wonder what the current language if it would require us to have life I think it's it's non-binding so we can take the sense of it and and do with it what we think is sensible and we would have the strength of the vote to help us understand how much people care about it sounds good to me we really at this point we cannot change the wording of the of the petition okay uh we've got a motion in a second all in favor say aye aye aye opposed right abstentions a the winner is recommended um slow increase of new single-family homes get a motion sir I'll move to recommend you get a second Charles seconded just to hear the vote okay moved in second

257discussion Jim um to me all three of these are in in line with goals of our comprehensive community plan which talked about reducing the growth and size of single-family houses and you know encouraging instead um you know more concentrated growth in existing built areas uh in multi-family housing so I think this is sort of a missing piece of of how to implement our comprehensive plan not that I have any particular good idea about how to implement these things okay further David so I just don't sorry a little bit more discussion too um so the only way for us to implement something like this is through zoning right I I don't think there's is there another mechanism I uh yeah you can you can have plain old bylaws that aren't zoning bylaws that you know restrict

258things um um you can also do other things to other bylaws can can indirectly reduce the number of single-family homes um such as you know adding adding additional requirements but yeah could be done either zoning through a bylaw a regular bylaw okay further further comments all in favor of the motion please say aye I like I've watched it here I'll do a roll call here David Christine hi I'll vote no okay so that's two two zero two two one so then it's two two or two one okay okay got it yeah yeah okay great okay we're going as recommended um resolved to reduce the size of single-family homes get a motion oh I moved to recommend I'll second moved in second to discussion an example of what does this indirectly is for example the new

259stretch code which has more stringent regulations for houses over four thousand square feet so it discourages larger homes David you know from my my sense is that the reducing size is actually more supported by residents from you know from conversations I have so um you know I think some people are specifically not very happy huge um uh houses you know it just actually adds to income disparity and it adds to it takes a plot of land for three people living there and you know all sorts of things okay uh would you vote all in favor say aye opposed I abstentions and go in as recommended um odd shaped Lots I'll move to recommend a second I'll second moved and seconded discussion um this has been done successfully in other towns I think it's a fine

260model to follow okay uh take a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed I extensions okay um Health Department inspections your emotion a move to recommend second second moved and seconded discussion David so I I read this the text this I don't know how many times um it's not even clear to me exactly what's asked for here the fact that it's non-binding I guess makes it okay I think I understand this the sense of what's was you know being asked for but it's very very difficult to discern to me anyway uh what what's being asked for I think people are just asking to know when there is a health problem in their building kind of thing so um it could have been one of those one sentence ones like we had for all

261the other ones but um this one is very odd to me again because it's very specific in a lot of things It quotes a section of Mass health code and you know I mean I understand the sentiment I I probably will decide it probably will vote for recommending this but there's too much detail in this you know I I don't want to take my positive recommendation as endorsing the whole language here because I think what's intended is again some sentiment and I don't agree with some of the language and and a lot of the language I can't say what what we're endorsing um and but anyway I I kind of have to go with and as town meeting to go with um some understanding of the language not written so that's difficult I think okay

262call for a vote all in favor say aye aye aye opposed I extensions zero golden recommended article 49 Kelly's Corner Improvement initiative move to recommend second moved and seconded discussion all in favor say aye aye opposed aye extensions zero okay done with those um approved film permit John so this is something that we discussed briefly at the last meeting which was last week and I've we added more information to the packet to show exactly what we're proposing if you saw that information it's a it's a set fee structure that I think it was 250 for our big production 150 for a small production zero for a student production and there were other things in there that I hope you reviewed and I hope you support this Julie worked hard on it one of the many

263things he's doing to try to create some vitality and not just businesses but in the Arts in this community okay thank you David so I think the memo most recent Memo from truly also said I thought it still left as an open question whether it was a daily or a one-time rate do you have an answer to that or do we have to recommend something here in our discussions it's like um hold on because it makes a huge difference in the cost I mean if we take something like Labor Day what would they hear two and a half weeks three weeks three six is the latest venue it's it's um to charge a flat fee for the entire production rather than per day to reduce the Regulatory and fee burden on the creative economy so

264yes so it's a single fee fine thank you okay Jim um the only part of this that I had a hesitation with was the recommendation number three to uh for the fees to be put into a fund specifically to support the programs of Economic Development the problem I have with that is that fees are designed by law to cover the costs of services so the notion that there would be extra money left over to support other things I think is not consistent with the intent of the fee system so I think if I I think just having them go into the general fund is fine and that general fund should also be paying for the costs of you know supporting the the permits thank you okay discussion David I would just say whoever makes a

265motion said what Jim just said okay uh let's backtrack here we have a motion that we're dealing with and this is okay construct one please because uh Julie's written this out really well uh so I'm going to combine uh three out of four of these so I would move that we charge a flat fee for an entire production and that we charge larger production companies a larger fee according to the schedule shown here um and that's it that covers it the fees the fees as usual go into the general fund well I I'm not comfortable that frankly um because I view this as more equivalent to um building permits Wetlands permits that sort of thing which um go to support directly the efforts of the Departments um you know financing a great deal of our

266conservation operation off Wetlands filings fees we are taking revenue from our landfill solar project and we're putting that directly into an Energy Efficiency fund which we're using other other places the I think you know certainly building permits electrical permits I think none of these fees are excessive it's not like there's some windfall of 250 dollars for a single fee and I just think that it's it's appropriate that we have that money to directly support those operations without going into the general fund which then gets divvied up and eventually two-thirds of it ends up going to the school district who have occurred incurred absolutely no cost of this so I would I would oppose um your motion okay um I'm happy to uh to amend it um I'm no expert on you know Finance here um

267just that the fees go oh sorry maybe John has a comment on this I I guess I if you're considering changing and and trying to incorporate uh item number three I would just I would recommend that your motion be explore the feasibility of doing that because it's not something that we can just do without creating a whole new thing so I think that I I appreciate the board's maybe supports it doing something like this but have the motion not say that it's going to go there but identify a way for that to happen you know ask us to do it but not say that it's happening as you stated fees do have to go to general fund unless there's another specific place for them to be we have authority to put them in a different

268place like the Energy Efficiency fund was created by town meeting and approved by the state legislature which gives us the authority to do that which is great and so if this is something that takes off we could do the same but until then it does have to go to general fund we could treat it like we do the dog park and just kind of say we're bringing extra Revenue will account for that in the budgeting next year that's sorry to complicate that that's very helpful I'm not an expert in this so I'm possibly I'm either changing my motion a little bit or we're going to hear from a resident whichever whatever you want to do next and change your motion okay so this would be changing the motion so the first part is the same

269the second part is the same and uh we would also explore the ability of the town to put the fees into a fund specifically to support the economic development efforts about right second okay okay moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed extensions okay thank you cons consent agenda this is long good luck are you going to take it got to take a drink with this one okay item 15 and accept meeting minutes February 6 2023. item 16 mcrs request to increase one-time Cola increase I'd like to hold that please and I'm 17 Point Leo foxman is a full member of the Acton nursing service advisory committee with a term to end on June 30th 2026. item 18. appoint Anne for his associate member of the 250 committee and and Ironworks Farm representative

270with a term to end on September 30th 2026. 19 approved one-day alcoholic beverage license for Lynn Tran at narrow Park on April 2nd 2023. item 20. for over one day liquor license alcoholic beverage license but St Elizabeth of hungry Parish on March 11 2023. 21. approve a one-day alcoholic beverage license for St Elizabeth of Hungary Parish on April 29 2023. 22 accepted donation from Sorrento's Pizza for two thousand dollars to support the 2023 summer concert series on special events item 23 accepted donation from Seacrest and Bloom LLC for one thousand dollars to support the 2023 summer concert series and special events item 24 accepted donation from Roche Brothers for three thousand dollars to support the 2023 summer concert series and special events 25 accepted donation from Enterprise Bank for three thousand dollars to support the

2712023 summer concert series and special events I'm 26 accepted donation from Oak Hill mulch company for 500 to support the 2023 summer concert series and special events 27 accept donations from Concord tea cakes for 500 to support the 2023 summer concert series and special events 28 accept donation from eccle Hogue and O'Connor for one thousand dollars to support production costs for the 2023 summer concert series and special events item 29 accept donations from Sutherland Realty Group slash Keller Williams Realty Boston Northwest for two thousand dollars to support production costs for the 2023 summer concert series and special events item 30. accept donations from Workers Credit Union for one thousand dollars to support production costs for the 2023 summer concert series and special events I'm 31 except donation from Daisy Hill Farm for three hundred dollars

272to support the Acton Pride Festival I'm 32 except donation from the United Church of Christ for one hundred dollars to support the act and pride festival item 33 except conflict of interest notification Sam bourgeois and 14 authorized acting community housing Corporation additional funding of one hundred thousand dollars to the Tavernier Place project okay I'll accept a motion to accept items 15 through 32 inclusive and 34. so moved second moved and seconded all in favor accepting those please say aye aye opposed extensions okay item 16 fear hold yes um I mentioned this to fincom at their last meeting and I would like to get fincom opinion or just a reaction before we vote on this I understand there's no real hurry we don't actually have to take action on this until June so um I would

273like to take no action until to give fincom a chance to voice a recommendation okay um I'll publicly disclose that mcrs is Middlesex County Retirement System I am a recipient of funds from that that I've deposited in plus they've been matched by the town I'm one of 192 present town of Acton retirees receiving those benefits and one of about 6 000 people in the entire system I've spoken Town Council and she's felt that the group being represented is so large that my vote is not see not significant but um is not enough to preclude me from dealing with this matter so I intend to act on this matter and I have further last week submitted a disclosure form to the town clerk's office so I feel that I can address this issue you know I

274think yeah maybe we've got some time that we can talk about this but I have spoken with the chair of the finance committee and and have invited them to come here to uh to discuss this and what I the feedback that I got back was that they weren't particularly interested in having a joint meeting with us um and I really don't see any particular need to delay action on this so I would I would personally be in favor of voting to approve this questions or comments from other members David yeah I just I just want to say I think that the the logistics of you know having the the fincon members come here on our schedule it's just it's just a thick co-working thing this is also to me as maybe not worth having a

275joint meeting for but I I would I would still like to hear the recommendation so I I don't know Mr chair if you want me to make a motion out to that effect I will or if someone else wants to make fun uh the the thing is if we vote to approve and it fails tonight I don't think they want that so I don't I don't know what you want to do I could move to take no action for a month until we get um uh to give income a chance to respond or however you want to handle it I would uh I would be content with uh holding this over until our next meeting which I believe is what the 20 20 yep so I would move to take no action uh tonight and

276to wait until our next meeting okay you got a motion a second moved and seconded all in favor of uh holding this off until our next meeting we say aye aye opposed abstentions and I'll abstain thank you um item 33 Jim yeah um so this is um sambajwa's conflict of interest form um and um I I found it really interesting I thought it was worth talking about as a board um and it could be that Sam is still awake and still on the call and might be able to speak to with this himself I don't know is he okay okay that's fine he had a he had a pinched nerve anyway I was hoping he would just go to sleep but um but let me just describe this particular case uh and uh you know

277then we can talk about it together um so this isn't a this is an amendment to a pcrc that's you know run run by frequent developer Steve Marsh and um the the the the potential conflict here is that Steve Marsh is um uh Sam and Steve that have uh have had a number of past Financial connections um and in the future it's likely that um Steve will be chosen to be the developer for a pcrc a project that's going to be right on Sam's land so there is is a potential concern that you know having him vote in that he'll be not able to render a fair decision uh since he you know has some you know involvement with with Mr Marsh um so you know he wrote up this um this this request for

278a determination I spoke to him because I wanted to get clear on the details and he said yeah I'd be happy to abide by whatever the select board thinks um you know he understands the concern he also thinks that he'll be able to set aside his own particular interests in in you know making a a determination on this particular pcrc Amendment um so I thought it was worth talking about all right discussion from members of the board um yeah I think personally I think that I thank him for bringing this forward I think it says a lot about the man that he brings us forward you know to be fully transparent um and I think that in itself um makes me content that I think that he can act in a responsible fashion representing the

279taxpayers on future actions with that particular developer so I I don't have any problem with accepting that conflict of interest statement comments from the public yes I was at the planning board meeting when Sam initially said that he would prefer to recuse and then Town staff convinced him into saying that it was an appearance of conflict to me his intuition was that that it was not appropriate for him to vote and I honored I felt that this is an honorable thing to do because just because this day allows you to go ahead and vote on your friends project your your contractors project I feel like we've got to hold ourselves to a higher standard than what's what we can do as opposed to what we should do and his initial intuition was that it was

280not appropriate and I know that after the lawyers talked to him and everybody talked to him that he's like okay with this as an appearance but I feel like his initial intuition said more to me than um what people can get away with thank you and I urge you not to vote for this thanks thank you immature um sorry I should know this but um how many members does their planning board have five okay so he would be one out of five okay thanks and they're this particular pcrc amendment requires a a super majority of members so it'll it would require all four of the remaining planning board members to agree for the amendment to go forward David I mean I I understand that the there's the you know appearance that there could be a

281tit for death here um I I you know I think Sam's probably okay to set that aside and so um but I find it in this written determination at the end of the thing and I don't know if this is what we are agreeing to it says I have determined that the financial interest is not so substantial as to be deemed likely to affect the Integrity of the services which the municipality may expect from the employee well I have no idea the size of the financial interest right um and so I think that's an odd statement for me to agree to bring um I I would agree to a statement that says um you know we believe he's honorable or something and can set this aside but um I feel it's odd to say that

282we've determined that this I mean it's similar to what you just said for your other thing that your interest was so small but we don't know whether um Sam could be having a contract with him for hundreds of thousands of dollars we don't know what that is um and so I I don't want to say that I have determined that the financial interest is not so substantial and I if we strike that and if that works I'd be happy to say that but I'm guessing that that determination then doesn't work anymore if it had a different reason I would be happy to say that um same so I said even the third point of view here I'm sorry about making it more complicated at midnight okay um so let's let's have a motion in a

283second we accept this conflict of interest notification or not I'm pondering um David's helpful comment and uh although it was confusing to me but uh it does the language here does seem to imply that this particular statement is the one that we have to agree to by General Law chapter 268a um yeah now on the other hand the financial interest that Sam has in this actual pcrc amendment is is nil I mean he doesn't he doesn't own the land he does not he doesn't live near this particular location so it's not that there's a direct financial interest it's more there's this indirect interest that if is you know it that let's think about the scenario here um um Marsh will somehow punish his friend if he votes against him um and you know not offer

284him good prices or or the reverse that Marshall will say you know hey I can you know I can offer you a ten thousand dollars off if you vote for this and although I have problems with Marsh from time to time I don't think he would ever say that out loud um so I'm confused if we if we're saying that that language means that financial interest that Sam has in the pcrc I'm okay agreeing with it if that's the if that's the understanding um again I'm sorry for confusing this no no it's okay it's also that it's late is there a deadline on this for the planning board do you know when they're considering this um I know I'm not sure John do you have any information about when the planning board is looking at

285uh special permit pcrc special permit pb19-2 yeah okay well I'll I'll move that we accept this determination let's see how the vote goes and and I'll second that with the understanding that this we're talking about the financial interest in the pcrc yeah okay moved and seconded all in favor of accepting the conflict of interest notification please say aye aye aye aye opposed extensions okay uh I moved to adjourn so John could I get a second second third hey all right all in favor of adjourn at 11 45. please say hi hi opposed extensions thank you