001the presence of a quorum i'd like to call the april 26 2021 meeting of the acton-select board to order the town of acted in response to the coronavirus pandemic is currently following the guidance from the acting court of health massachusetts department of public health and the cdc the town hall is closed to the public this meeting will be streamed online on the actin tv youtube channel live and audio will be broadcast live on the radio on w-a-e-a-w-a-a-m-94.9 to participate remotely from the computer use the link to join the public meeting actingma.gov slash vos or from a telephone dial 646-876-9923 and enter webinar id 503-918-785 telephone users may dial star 9 to request to speak computer and app users may use the raise the hand feature to request to speak we'll begin with citizen concerns and
002i'd like to do it this evening in two parts um first um i'd like to we'd like to hear in citizen concerns from those concerns those citizens who have concerns not related to the status of the select board chair after those concerns are concluded i'm going to allocate 30 minutes for concerns related to the status of the select board chair uh speakers will be limited to two minutes and that will be a hard start i'm limiting it to actin residents only so when you come on please state your address the only caveat i have is uh i'll allow additional minutes so we have some sort of balance between the pros and cons after the citizen concerns are completed i'll entertain a motion from any board met select board member on the status of the select
003board chair the discussion will be limited to select board members only there will be no further public comment so with that said do we have any matt do we have any citizens who wish to speak on matters not related to the status of the select board chair we do have a few hands up mr chair but just to clarify did you say that it was two minutes for all public comments or just two minutes related to the status of the chair um uh it could be three it could be three minutes for the for the first batch of public comments two minutes to the status of the chair okay so we'll have fur here first from calling user number one please state your name and address when you are allowed to speak hello this is
004chair from west back and you're hearing me yes yes thank you um i would like to speak on the uh reuse of the 19 to 21 maple will you allow that fence yes i would like to speak on a couple of the warrant articles or are you maybe you're just talking about the order and thing or are you talking about recommendations and whatnot no recommendations thank you i would also like to speak on the shade tree protection policy the proposed shade tree production policy can i speak then yes and finally i'd like to speak on the idea of selling town land for development on number 11. can i speak then yes thank you okay one more thing it's related to the chair but uh it's not related to my opinion of the chair thing though
005i'll talk about that later i would like you to um expand the two minutes to three or even more if it's a person of color who would like to speak and share their feelings i hope that you'll do that it'll be two minutes for everybody okay thank you tara next we'll hear from franny osman as a reminder to everyone please make sure that your display name is your first and last name so we can call on you frannie you should be able to speak hi this is granny osmond 16 half moon hill acton i um called in about this about four six or eight months ago and i wanted to repeat my um opinion because every selectmen meeting this bothers me again it has to do with the format of the selectmen's meetings as webinars
006where the visitors the people in the audience can't see either who's there or how many people are there i would hope that with all the technology we have even with keeping with some safety guidelines with the help of i.t we can figure out a way that we can identify who's here um what you compare it to being in town hall it's sort of like just you are visible and nobody knows who else is there there's so much community work that takes place by seeing who's who just left after the sidewalk um discussion who's who's what is this big crowd that's here now then you talk to people in the lobby you talk to people outside we can't have all of that right now but at least it would be nice to know who else is
007there it gives people a feeling of camaraderie and you get to know your neighbors and i really want to request that you try to find some other format that's not as sort of power um you know just the the board sitting there looking at everybody else and um not vice versa so um with volunteer i don't want to force anybody to show themselves and i sure like not being heard it's so great to be here in my pajamas so that's all i just wanted to share with you thank you thank you franny next up we're going to hear from kai peng fu pain you should be able to speak hello can you hear me yes we can yes okay my name is kai bing fu and i live at 11 northern drive i would like
008to laser concern that about recently some harsh criticism over mr john benson recently to let our time in the direction no if you're talking about uh the status of the chair that would come in the next segment unless there are no further general public comments okay so you mean that i can talk later not now but this is for the reason i'm sitting and seeing this nonsense right you can speak to the status of the select board chair later uh this portion of the of citizen comments is limited general citizen comments other than the status of the chair okay so um okay so then i can type what time is your dependent schedule agenda no it would just be once general comments are over then we will take comments on the status of the chair
009okay sure let me know you can call my name okay i'm here yeah thank you okay uh next up is gonna be david fair david you should be able to speak thank thank you can you can you guys hear me yes yep um i i think it's regarded to uh comments you made mr benson am i in the right yet um matt is is there any way you can determine that we're finished with general citizen comments i can ask everybody to put their hands down if they are not waiting to make a general citizen's comment but aside from that it's kind of just as we go oh i can wait and uh maybe you can call me when it's appropriate i want to remember we will board we will yep i'll leave your all right
010we have one more dial and user if you could let us know who you are and where you're from you should be able to speak now are you able to meet yourself hi hello i'm not sure this is my turn i could not hear very clearly so but what i want to talk is about job i know for this item it will be after the citizen concern i'm going to wait until my name being called thank you thank you okay okay the other hands up are i believe related to the chair okay um okay so uh let's begin it's 30 minutes two minutes max per person heart stop okay we're gonna hear first from um kai peng fu okay i think you should be able to speak so my name is kaitlin foo and i
011doing 11 new norton july i would like to raise a concert about some harsh criticism season over mr john benson recently it allowed our time the direction of the divisions instead of unity in my opinion jung has made concrete efforts for towns diversity equity inclusion culture by taking their actions over the years joe and his wives reached out actively to the asians blacks and latinos in the town and encouraged them to take positions in the african community as a grandfather our bilateral grandchild i believe his concern with the systematically discrimination towards brex is also personal here in the staff asian history writing joe showed up twice to support our asian residents for the south asian hater library in the march elections john was somehow pictured as a laziest because of his comments on some leisure
012issues in the town i don't want to go to the details on whether his comments were appropriate or not but we can agree that the job didn't hurt people's feeling consciously instead he tried to encourage people of different ways to engage in honest accommodations people told me the definition of laziest has been shifted now the latest can be someone who unconsciously puts people by the lack of centering of their feelings on the people of color for example if you ask a second generation of asian americans said like where are you from would you speak good english this could hurt their feelings at this time i apologize for not giving a warning disney uh you are out of time okay yeah then no i'm fine but i just want to say that i think that i
013think enough you should appreciate that all that all the work work john has done and i appreciate this and i don't think he's a resistance thank you thank you next up we are going to hear from melissa brown melissa you should be able to speak good evening my name is melissa brown and i live on great road i'm calling again to express frustration with the remarks from the chair this time at the april 12 meeting it was deeply irresponsible to once again name and target a woman of color in our community mr benson has had countless opportunities to listen and learn from our bipark neighbors he has chosen to continue to commit harm mr benson must be removed from office immediately this is not cancel culture this is asking for accountability mr benson's right to
014practice his first amendment rights remains fully intact he is welcome to continue to express its views but must no longer be permitted to do so as chair of the select board refusal to take action signals the board's unwillingness to confront white supremacy tendencies within the board itself white silence is complicity black lives matter thank you thank you melissa next up we're going to hear from david fair david if you should be able to speak as a reminder to everyone please state your name and address once you are called on hey thanks everyone can hear me okay so 490 great road um i just wanted to uh speak up uh mr benson i've heard you say that uh you want to turn the temperature down uh the past few weeks you've been turning the temperature up
015and it's not right i know i heard you say you're an acting father fran is an acting mother the women that you spoke about are acting mothers and daughters as well you know we need to move forward together in creating a more inclusive and welcoming community together in a respectful manner you know during a pandemic it makes sense that folks would talk on facebook it is a democracy and we're free and that's what happens and we can all choose to support who we want to and who we don't i just think it was inappropriate for mr benson to make statements that he's made calling senator eldridge a coward and targeting multiple women of color in our community mr benson i think you ought to reflect on the big bird signs that are next to your
016signs that say be kind we got to be kind we got to have integrity even if we lose kindness is essential our kids are watching we need kind leaders and kind chairs and i know i've heard you say the board is ultimately a volunteer position i think it's much more than that i heard you say that you've spent over 70 hours a week on board related activity but not a single one of those hours was spent standing with those peacefully protesting all summer for racial equality in our community we need leaders who want to show up try to connect with residents not attack them in black lives 100 matter thank you very much okay next up we're going to hear from sahana pruitt so hannah you should be able to speak hi sahana parahed from
017blueberry pat i'd like to share my views on why john benson should remain on the board john is a kind of john is a kind honest and committed man who has devoted himself to a community as a select board member john has achieved an incredible amount over the past three years to gain stuff from almost 90 percent of town meeting attendees on various projects not a small feat at all that in itself speaks to how john benson has a finger on the pulse of the community and what is important to all of us he has always approached his job with compassion and actonians first on mind for these reasons and more i strongly disagree with community members asking for john to step down from his role as chair thank you select board member john branson
018for your service to acton moving on to some of the things that were written on various facebook groups let me tell you i have been short and appalled i have personally felt intimidated and yes i have felt bullied too there are many many many statements written not befitting of an elected or appointed member of a board or committee on these so-called private facebook groups it's a joke if anyone says it's private when there are four thousand or five thousand members in each of these groups we need to respect opinions of all and avoid hateful language i will conclude by saying i am a first generation immigrant from india in my experience i found many of our community members do not like to speak on public forums i would simply like to spotlight that the opinions
019of a small number of outspoken members should not be viewed as the voice of all thank you all right next up we're going to hear from leo foxman leo you should be able to speak oh that's my apologies i hit the wrong button leo you should be able to speak now okay you can hear me now okay leo fetchman write terrace i read the request by indivisible acting to have john benson removed as the chair of the select board and censuring his conduct john was accused of promoting anti-semitic behavior because of accusations against a local jewish religious leader john was defending himself which i believe everyone has the right to do just because the rabbi is jewish does not make the comment anti-semitic if that was the case then this request is anti-semitic because john
020is being attacked and he is jewish john benson was accused of slander but what he said was true there is no slander on the other hand statements that have been made by david martin can be considered slander during a december 18th meeting when referring to the individuals that zoom on the school committee meeting david stated these individuals have been egged on by anti-school committee mostly white men trying to reinstate the mascot david made this attack with no evidence on january 13th chief burroughs said that the investigation into the zoom bomber has identified a juvenile in arizona that has no apparent connection to active boxborough i wrote now that there's an alleged perpetrator that was behind the racist comments would you consider apologizing for your hateful comments during the bos emergency meeting david responded all my
021statements were true and correct and i fully stand behind them i had asked for evidence he had but he never responded to the request police reports that we now have show that the juvenile admitted to the zoom bombings he indicated that he had been dealing with at home and was depressed due to covet related issues of not being able to attend school regularly or see his friends he told his father there were no specific targets david had no evidence when he issued a slanderous comments and even after evidence came out showing that what he said was a lie he still stood by his comment if anyone needs to step down it is david it should be censured and removed as chair of the deic thank you thank you leah next up we're going to hear
022from stella co stella you should be able to speak hi stella co gus wood road um well i have read statements for indivisible acting area before the select board i have never made my own statement but i felt that i had to after the statements i heard made at the april 5th and april 12 select board meetings when a member of the select board speaks in their capacity as a town leader about personal grievances it is not in my opinion in the best interest of our town it discourages community participation as extremely divisive and non-welcoming when a member of the select board speaks in their capacity as a town leader and targets members of our community it is not in my opinion in keeping with any professional standards of conduct policy which i believe all
023town of acton employees are supposed to follow we must hold ourselves our colleagues and especially our leaders to a higher standard please let's remember that the individuals that were singled out based on hearsay are parents daughters sons friends a faith leader they are all members of our community harmful speech puts our neighbors our neighbors at risk we have to do better thank you thank you stella next up we're going to hear from linda vieira linda you should be able to speak ellen de vere from 441 great elmway mr benson has used his updates during the last two select board meetings to talk about personal matters instead of updating the citizens of acting about town business this was more than inappropriate and i will not refer to them as updates anymore but rather as speeches during
024his april 12 speech he recommended the first two chapters of the book how democracies die and cited from the book that norms and guardrails are concepts all of us need to understand i am in complete agreement that we all need not only to understand these concepts that hold our democracy together but we need to abide by them at all levels of government yet mr benson violated those very norms and god rails between private and public campaign and public office free speech and suppression during both of his speeches on april 5th and april 12th numerous times mr benson must be held to the standards he himself said we should all abide for by i therefore request that the other four members of the select board vote to remove mr benson from his position as chair and
025to censor his quote chair updates end of quote on april 5th and april 12th so that the norms and guide rails our democracy are upheld in our town thank you thank you linda next up we're going to hear from christine russell christine you should be able to speak hi my name is christine russell i live at 3-0 lantern road i am currently the vice chair of the acting finance committee and while i'm not here to speak for the finance committee or represent the group as a whole i am speaking as one of its members with their permission i would like to inform any who do not already know that isha gangoli are now a former member of my committee is the mother to lila ramachandran one of the four women mr benson named as the
026community leaders who he alleges acted inappropriately in the rut up to the town election unfortunately i will not get to continue working with isha going forward as she no longer feels comfortable or safe serving in public office in our community i ask those of you who are listening tonight to the words of your neighbors to keep in mind that regardless of whether or not you think the chair was justified in naming these community members his actions have resulted in a member of the finance committee feeling that it is not safe to continue serving this town isha and her daughter have also been left wondering if the seeming sudden uptick in cars passing slowly by their home is just a coincidence or as a result of the words of the chair it is clear from his
027willingness to name and point the finger at these women and to suggest that their advocacy for another equates an attack on him that he does not hear and understand the position people of color and minorities often find themselves in as targets of both covert and overt racism i do not believe that he would have spoken the way he did if he understood that there are people for whom change is unwelcome for whom white is safe and all who enter our town are expected to silently conform or move on these people i'm sorry to say exist in some capacity in every community in this country it is this very lack of insight into the racism that exists in our response inability or unwillingness to learn grow and step into the role of an anti-racist that i
028believe led to mr benson's loss in the election and this sort of behavior cannot be tolerated in town leadership i am truly sorry to see isis step down from our committee under these circumstances and i sincerely hope she and other strong voices in town are made to feel welcome serving acton as it continues to learn and grow thank you thank you christine next up we're going to hear from bridget chambers bridget you should be able to speak hi um i'm bridgette chambers from gristmill road um i have a few comments i want to make regarding um the april 12th meeting specifically um and i want to specifically speak up for kyra cook um kyra is a good person who has taken her commitment to this town to a new level by volunteering on our school
029committee she is a resident of our town and the mother of children in our schools with all due respect mr benson it was inappropriate for you to use your position as chair of the select board in the way that you did you essentially threw kira under the bus publicly and the rest of the select board with the exception of mr martin you sat there and you let him it was wrong second i think it's important for all of us to remember that our children are watching and learning from us as parents we bend over backwards teaching our children not to say or do something on social media or on video that they would not say or do to someone directly and yet here we are slinging insults and making assumptions about each other while i
030absolutely think it is necessary to have healthy disagreements and debates it needs to be done constructively so that it brings us closer together as a community lastly i think it would be a mistake for us to brush our issues under the rug and get over it so to speak it would be a lost opportunity it's important we face the hard feelings that exist in our community and take actions to reconcile and resolve these conflicts in a way that makes us better i wonder if there is some sort of mediation our town's leaders can enter into with each other in order to help resolve some of these differences such an example to our community would be very powerful richard you are out of time thank you thank you next up we're going to hear from janet
031odachi janet you should be able to speak uh yes jennifer dashi simon hapgoodlain thank you for the opportunity to talk i will talk fast i am very worried about the well-being of our town since last year advocacy for the worthy cause of racial justice and inclusion has degenerated into an intolerant hateful effort largely on social media to beat up on the selectboard chairman though he has served the town well for three years the attack dogs the attack dog strategy already has adversely affected the chairman's recent bid for reelection but the bullies want more a group whose members aren't even all acting residents is pushing for the chairman's removal from that position during the last two months of his term this effort is petty and goes too far let him serve out his turn in this
032toxic atmosphere if i still were on the board i'd likely be bullied for daring to disagree even slightly with local anti-racists who have shown themselves to be incongruously closed-minded by the way for the benefit of people on local social media who apparently don't know that the board has included non-white members like me a japanese-american maybe because i didn't make a big deal about it i was on the board for nine years from 2010 to 2019. when ching sung chong joined in 2015 the board was the most racially diverse one in acton ever the board also was gender diverse during my tenure with two to four women every year our community needs a substantial intervention and soon our elected local officials town and school should commit to addressing the division in rancor including among the officials
033themselves the two incidents of racial epithets during school committing meetings could have been a great opportunity for the two boards and entities i'm building am i done you have 30 seconds left oh okay i should have asked you about okay anyhow the the two the school committee meeting incidents would have been a great opportunity for the two boards and entities to collaborate on building broad-based understanding and support for racial justice instead school committee members took actions that undermined the relationship between the two boards and encouraged the hostile focus on the board chairman our town deserves much better i look forward to talking and working with others in town who share my concerns thank you thank you janet next up we're going to hear from rebecca wilson rebecca you should be able to speak hello can
034you guys hear me yes um i am rebecca wilson on wingate lane i am again calling in regards to the grossly inappropriate behavior of the chair of the select board mr john benson that he displayed at both the april 5th and april 12 meetings in no way did mr benson's complaints further the interest of the townspeople nor did they help address local issues by taking his time to air personal grievances it was a clear demonstration as to why he is unfit to wield the power his position holds more importantly by mr benson naming specific members of the community using his platform he created he is creating an environment of fear and discomfort for those he named it puts them in the very real and dangerous position of being made targets for abuse why should our
035neighbors be forced to live in fear just to assuage the fragile ego of one man i urge the board to do the right thing over 230 of your neighbors support his removal as chair black lives matter thank you for your time thank you rebecca next up we're going to hear from angie so andrew you should be able to speak hello everyone angie so to ramble way acting i'm here on behalf of myself and show my personal support for john to continue serving as the chairperson on the board i live in acting for more than 20 years i first know young through my running for the top position i was very hesitant at the time john was one of the very few persons who wrote personal email to to me even though he didn't really know
036me too much at the time i still remember the encouragement feeling that i saw the email it's a living proof that he simply support anyone who is willing to serve including carol cook later through working on the citizen petition for recreational marijuana john provided needed guidance to go through the account process later he congratulated the petition's passing even though he may disagree or disagree with the result with my experience with john he has always treated me just like anyone a human as the first generation of immigrants and the color woman with english not my native language i know the differences between when you are treated differently because you are colored or you are a woman or your dip or your different culture behavior behavior or english accent versus that you are treated as a normal
037person the respect is different believe me i know how it feels like and the differences racism is defined as discrimination or prejudice based on race in my experience with john there's no trace of that there's difference there's different differences between disagree with a person of color versus disagreeing with a person based on color thank you john for willing to devote your time to serve the town after you retire from your attorney career i know i can always go to you and for guidance and support and understanding the different perspectives so please continue serving as the chairperson on the board thank you thank you thank you angie next up we're going to hear from lauren morton lauren you should be able to speak has reminded everyone please rename yourself to your full first and last names
038hey my name is lauren rosensweig morton 26 marshall pass i've been in different positions in town for many years and full disclosure i worked on john benson's campaign for re-election i have to say that i have never seen so much rancor and downright falsehood stated by people on facebook or in any election ever i'm not sure if it was because of social media because of the pandemic um but i'm disappointed in how things turned out and um you know some of the posts if if there were teens watching this i really worry that of the example that you know was going on there of uh name calling and and other untruths and it was hard to dispute any of them because people would pile on and you know say that you were not telling the
039truth and they'd argue with you and you know which is i understand freedom of speech but um after a while it really got to be too much um i i did disagree with you know john then going after the election and calling people out but he was frustrated and in my opinion it was a mistake however it would be a huge mistake to remove him from office before the end of his term we can't forget his lifetime of public service to this town and his accomplishments in his recent term that were outstanding redesign of kelly's corner to make it safer for pedestrians and accessories to people with disabilities um it was something that languished for years and um it took someone like john with his vision and approach to make that happen also the north
040acting fire station um where you know lives will be saved because of the decrease in the time to help people now reasonable people can disagree about policy policy is the how of how you get things done if you look at john and examine his statements closely the what of okay thank you sorry no worries we're gonna hear from scott smyers next as a reminder to the chair we have approximately five minutes to remain in this segment on april 22nd indivisible act an area issued a letter to the board of selectmen later on that same day the deic had a meeting during this meeting the goal was to make a unified statement to condemn and demand the removal of benson from office now i learned all this from a resignation letter from mr simon lee uh
041who was at the meeting and was a member of this committee he insisted that he would like to learn more about both sides of the statements this request was denied then the commission started bullying mr lee that doesn't sound like inclusion to me for a diversity equity and inclusion commission why was the rest to judgment to remove benson who was already defeated in the election he's already on his way out but mr lee was was was was bullied at that point in the meeting uh and and was not uh allowed to make statements that would have been uh delayed delayed their the overall deic mission of the evening so i think simon lee's resignation letter is very important and telling of what's going on here in the culture of the town and the different aspects
042of this anti-racism uh and simon lee uh is right some people just want to mind their own business and live private lives that used to be okay but this is not appropriate for the anti-racist 30 seconds remaining their commitment to a bad idea has become dangerous and unhealthy benson defended himself in a professional manner these individuals who he named could not have a civil response but instead melted like ice cream in the stuffed sun thank you scott next up we're going to hear from jean khan john you should be able to speak thank you online road thank you john for your service for the past three years as selectable members and thank you james david john and dean for your service and the listening i do not believe that removing mr benson as chair is
043appropriate action for the stakeholder to take i watched a perfect selectable meeting recording including the public participation leading to mr benson's statement i believe that mr pence's motivation to speak out was to ensure that no further candidate would need to endure the type of attacks he perceived to have endured during the last election cycle the way he felt best to do that was to help members of the community accountable by calling them out not speaking out against those posts and they were happening in other words remaining as bystanders i do not believe that his statement came from a place of mars or hostility however i share the concern raised by others that mr pension should not name specific individuals in his statement so that the issues instead of the individuals become the focus redeeming civility
044debating issues and avoiding personal attacks are important issues for all actonians to reflect upon we are a diverse community and everyone carries with them a different set of lived experiences informing us of how we get about creating a more inclusive and tolerant community sometimes an individual solutions go astray but if that individual set up with good intentions we should not ostracize them or condense them but rather help them understand why 30 seconds cause of action only through productive dialogue and meaningful discussion we can improve and learn from each other and from our own mistakes i urge you to vote now on the possible motion to remove mystery fencing as a cheering mistake thank you very much thank you mr chair it's time for the segment set to expire at 7 40. would you like to
045take an additional public comment one more sure all right next up we're going to hear from nancy cochran nancy you should be able to speak okay um i'm speaking in support of john in recognition of the quality and quantity of work that he has done for the town of acton while as a select person people can say that there were hurt feelings on both sides after the statements and that very well is probably true however in balance and we must remember that we keep things in balance when we are in a uh political open meeting that john benson has been an asset to the town of acton and has worked tirelessly for the improvement of the community as a whole and has never been anything but responsive to his constituents i urge the board to
046recognize the performance of john benson as a person who is committed to each and every resident of acton and should not have this blemish on his service to the community thank you very much and uh please recognize that his service is worth restoring a level of dignity thank you thank you okay um uh then i'll entertain now a motion from any select board member on the status of the board chair david i move that we elect dean charter as chair of the select board with immediate effect is there a second oh second i'm just not a grant okay so let's go around the room for discussion uh david it's your motion speak to the motion please okay um thank you uh unless other members want to my intent here is not to review the detail
047of the chair statements that are passed to meetings however i'm very concerned that these unprecedented attacks on active residents and their effect on the reputation of our town and on this board statements like the chairs would not have been allowed at any time meeting by any of the moderators while i've been in town the the board has received almost 50 emails against the chair statements and a petition with over 200 signatures requesting that we take action this is more public input than any issue since i've been on the board dean i know you that you want to have a successful term as chair but that'll be made more difficult if this controversy continues for another couple of months i ask that you do the honorable thing now and accept the chair position to move us
048away from this these divisive actions uh joan you've been elected as selectmen five times um i think that you may be the only selectmen to serve in four different decades i know that you are that you care about the reputation of the board and our town where you've invested so much time i ask for your support to reinforce our reputation john as people have said you've done many things for the town and i think it would be better to remember those things rather than deal with this controversy for another two months i encourage you to move past this vote for dean to be chair and serve out the remainder of your time on the board jim i appreciate your support for this process and your second of my motion as a reminder to everybody um
049that it it in a non-pandemic pandemic year we would have a already taken this vote it's time now thank you jim um excuse me this is a this is a rough one some sleepless nights definitely um so i acknowledge that john has done an awful lot of good uh and that the the the first two years of his term were when he was not chair so people can get a lot done uh in the role of being on the board when they're not the chair i think the specific reason i'm in favor of having john not be in the chair is because i i'm still i'm still mystified at the at the choice to make the those statements um they they suggest some kind of i don't know i don't want to speculate on motives
050or or character issues or any of that i did they were just they were harmful uh and they were divisive clearly um by all the by all the conversation today um so i i think um having uh having dean b chair uh would be good for the next couple of months i'm in favor of it um if there are if there are board members who would prefer to think of this as a prefer to have a motion to make dean the temporary acting chair for the next two months that's another alternative that might be more acceptable for some the key thing for me whether we do as a as as you know as as as the uh the regular election or as a temporary thing is just to reduce the risk to the um the
051reputation and the integrity of what the board does um by having um by having uh by having by not having uh john in his current state which seems to have some unpredictability and unpredictability to it um be the chair and i also it's it's also a way for us to acknowledge the harm that was done uh i said i would like to personally apologize for my role in that thank you well as david said i've been around a long time and at one point the board voted did i not attend the water district committee meeting i'm not in favor of this motion i've known john a long time through the years he's worked hard for the town and if it weren't for the pandemic and the situation we're in neither of us would be here
052today so i think we should continue as we are i haven't always agreed with john and some of the things he said but i respect his contribution to the community and so i will not vote in favor of this thank you um david and jim thank you for your support on that i'm flattered um but i think it's a bit premature um you know if if the newly constituted board in july wishes to make me chairman i'd be happy to serve i've been happy to serve as vice chair and before that as clerk um let me let me give you a little background and my understanding of this i've known john for over 40 years and in all of my interactions with him uh formal or informal you know going out to dinner or having
053a drink with them or whatever and i've never heard the man make a statement that in the conventional wisdom would be considered racist or anti-semitic does not seem to be in his nature um as has been pointed out in the past john is actually a jewish descent his daughter-in-law is a woman of color he has a biracial grandchild frankly john is is somewhat more liberal than i am and and we've had some interesting discussions about that different points of view i think that this entire issue was overblown now that being said i'm not i'm sure that i would not have addressed the issue after the election in the way john did these are not the kind of statements that i would do but i'm not the same kind of person that john is nor am
054i the same kind of person that david or jim or joan is we all have to look at these things from our own points of view and our own feelings i think john obviously was was upset and angry and i think what a lot of us anger was based on the fact that there was a really nasty social media campaign that had gone on it's very hard to fight against and a lot of irresponsible statements were thrown around and i think he was trying to react to that if he had made those statements and not named people then he would be criticized that well you didn't give us any specifics you're just making big generalities so we named names now that's there's pluses and minuses for that one of the things that he did not
055do was he did not identify the folks by their race or their ethnicity those folks have either self-identified themselves or have been understood to be persons of color or or a jewish um so be it but to use turn around and to say that you can't disagree with me because if you disagree with me and i'm a person of color then you're a racist that's just what i call the nuclear option to throw that out without any backing whatsoever uh i think that's just a terrible thing to do and i think it's it's the opposite of where we should be going here in town what what's happening is that groups are turning on themselves we just heard recently uh tonight about a member of the finance committee dropping off i did read the rather lengthy
056letter that simon lee sent in to the deic where that group turned on one of their own members because he was not politically correct enough apparently and and joe dragged that man through the mud to the point where he resigned i'm very concerned about that because when we were when we carefully set up the structure of the deic we wanted to have a member of the board of selectmen as chair to sort of they say keep things within guardrails and apparently that's not happening um so i think i'll agree with other what other people have said that john has served long and hard putting huge amounts of work he is uh he's going to be gone in less than two months what this is looking at it looks like spite and i don't think this
057board should be motivated by spiteful behavior folks might criticize what john said i might criticize what john said but to take somebody off the board just as a uh as a final kick in the teeth that's not what i stand for and i don't think that's what the people of akron stand for certainly there are some very upset people people are very invested in this and i hope that as time moves on move on from this get into the next year we get into the new board we can turn the page frankly i think we've turned the page already just with the long discussion we've had already today but i will not vote in support of asking john to step down thank you are there any further comments from board members right jim um assuming
058just in case this doesn't pass in any form i i am aware that we will continue we will continue to work together um and that i i will take on a responsibility to speak up if i think any of the um any of the things we say are going beyond what we need to do as as board members and get into the realm of personal attacks so um whatever happens i i will i'll recommit to doing that and um [Music] so whatever happens here we are we're going to work together yeah i'd just like to welcome that from jim um you know a lot of the the platform jim ran on in the past was that you know he's a peacemaker he finds a way to to get people together on things and and i
059hope that he when he thinks i'm going off the rails i hope he will raise his hand and say something and uh you know i think that's that's a positive step i think we should all take the opportunity to check ourselves and to think before we take any actions and certainly i i welcome jim's uh offer to uh act as our better angel thank you so if there are no further comments uh david would you please call the role on your motion uh mr snyder grant aye ms gardner uh mr charter no mr benson no and i say i so that it fails three to two just want to say um um thank you and um i i intend to serve out my term as chair and do my part to get it get us
060through town meeting and exit graciously on june 22nd thank you all um if we could go to the um manager's update please uh thank you i believe there was one person that got held over they had a nun that was that we wanted to speak during open comments about another previous taco i'm not sure if that story she's still here mr manager they fell off of the meeting okay sorry about that uh my updates are uh mostly going to be covered in other topics in the agenda so i look forward to discussing them then um are there any member updates remember minutes david i just wanted to say that um train service uh resumes um in southackton on uh a week from tonight or week from today on may 3rd and the mbta is trying
061a different schedule they're doing a regular one-hour schedule throughout the day and so trains will come once an hour inbound and once an hour outbound um uh and i don't know i haven't looked to see what this schedule actually actually is but it'll be a certain number of minutes after the hour inbound a certain number of minutes after the hour outbound and so you won't even really need a schedule anymore you'll just be able to look at you're the big hand on your i guess people don't have big hands anymore um which is just just look at the minute past the hour and see um uh when the next train is coming um um so and right now the weekend service is not resuming but there are discussions about if that might happen so um
062just wanted to let everybody know strange service will be back thank you um are there any other uh jim um yeah i'd say i have one update from the uh some updates from the acting water district um so last week i talked about the drought conditions but there is other there are other things going on um newly elected officials were sworn in uh erica and merlin as a as a re-elected board member and bill mullen as the newly elected moderator barry rosen was elected as the new board chair the testing of those two new central potentials central act and wells appears to be going very well a number of 10-day tests have been performed and are the consultant is now tabulating the data from the testing uh if the mass dep does issue permits for
063one or both wells uh the water district will ask uh we'll ask the state for the that the permitted gallons per minute of the wells be added to the district's total water plumping permit uh let's see what else the construction of the new central action water treatment plant is ahead of schedule at this point the general contractor believes that they will have the plant operational in july and this is a big deal as it will allow us to move ahead with water treatment for those central actin wells and finally construction on the solar array on lossbrook road should commence shortly eversource has just given their okay for the second solar array on knox trail so the permitting process for that plant will now begin and when both solar arrays are complete the awd solar arrays
064will will will match their entire electricity needs um and that's all from the water district i had one more thing to say in years past the land stewards and a lot of other volunteers have been busily removing invasive plants from acting conservation lands this one here is garlic mustard um it's garlic mustard season now we have identified over 80 different locations on conservation lands where there are patches of garlic mustard and that's that's that's more than we can take care of ourselves so we rely on volunteers if you're interested in helping to pick garlic mustard anyone please contact me or go to the acton invasives.org website and there'll be a way to get a message to us and we'll happily put you to work pulling pulling uh weeds out of the woods thank you thank
065you adeen any update uh joan [Music] okay um moving to the new special business um this is a public hearing notice town of acton the acting board of selectmen will hold a public hearing on april 26 2021 at 7 10 p.m continued from april 5 2021 virtually on zoom https colons forward slash forward slash zoom dot u s slash j slash 5039-18785 on the application of old mill development trust for a site plan special permit number 0928 20-480 under zoning bylaws section 10.4x67 powder mill road map j3 partial 59 6. the application of the accompanying plans can be expected at the planning division office in town hall during normal business hours for information on how to participate remotely and to view the application material c h t t p colon forward slash forward slash d
066o c dot actin hyphen m a dot gov slash d s w e flash view slash collection dash one two seven seven the petitioner has requested a continuance to june 7 2021 at 7 10 p.m they inquired um as the reason for the continuance because there are several have been requested um the request in this instance is the applicant this is from kristen bouchard the applicant's engineer needs additional time to respond to the peer review consultant's request for additional calculations and they now intend to connect to awd rather than a well so they now need additional time to modify the plans accordingly so the continuance is until the 7th i should note that that is our last regularly scheduled meeting before june 21 town meeting unless we hold an additional meeting between two and seven
067to get this done uh the applicant should take note um that a new board um will be fully constituted at the end of june and i i don't know uh if if we can't uh finish it up while joan and i are sitting members i don't know whether you're gonna have to start again or how you're gonna have to deal with it so let's make every effort we're willing to have an extra meeting um to have a disposition of your permit request so um would i have a motion then to continue the 67 powder mill road public hearing uh to june 7 2021 at 7 10 p.m so move joan is your second dean um no further commenting actually i did have a brief comment if that was okay okay um the last instructions that
068we gave to the planning department a number of months ago were to attempt to draft a decision that was in favor and given how long this has gone on and how quickly it might need to conclude it seems like it would be very helpful for the board to also have a draft denial um so that we have you know different different options to weigh if we need to weigh them quickly so i wonder if we would like to ask the manager to have have the planning department work on a draft denial as well well i i okay we can do both um i don't recall that we asked that we took any sort of straw vote that would indicate a preference or um approval of the permit the way we left it was uh the
069town staff and the applicant were going to work attempt to work out some of the concerns that were expressed throughout the uh the first day of the hearing yeah they they have they have prepared a a draft uh acceptance um is that i'm not aware yeah yeah it's in the packet uh where it's in it's in the previous meetings packard so um [Music] it would seem it would seem helpful to also have a draft denial so that we can look at both yeah i'm not sure they um should have gone that far but um do both john so the the practice of preparing a draft decision uh comes back to a request of the previous board um where there was concern that the boy was being asked to make decisions without having a draft in
070front of them um we certainly could write two dark decisions for every project that comes before you but um i'm not sure that that is the best way to use use the time and i think the decision of denial is a much shorter document usually i would think uh maybe maybe if maybe there's a way that we can expedite the process of preparing that um if it's strong enough maybe we can just throw it in the packet for everyone i guess but either way i can talk to kristen about it but i just don't want to make it make a new precedent of doing two decisions for every item oh yeah yeah i'm not asking for a precedent i'm just thinking for that for this particular project it has taken long enough that it seems
071like there would be time to uh to prepare both yeah i just want to assure the public particularly um those uh members of the community who are opposed to the permit application that uh this board has not made a decision in favor of granting the permit and we um i think in what john was talking about from passport um we wanted a draft decision ahead you know if we were going in that direction we wanted to see a draft decision um ahead of the meeting uh when we'd be asked to approve it so um there's there's no tip of the hand here so if there's no further comments um david if you'd call the role on the continuance motion yes um mr snyder grant aye miss gardner hi this is uh mr charter hi mr
072benson hi and i say aye so that's unanimous okay thank you so uh would be the uh coveted 19 response update um mr manager thank you uh so as of last week um all members of the public uh anyone town or in the state that's 16 year old is eligible for vaccine uh so that's a big uh advancement in in hopefully people getting vaccines out there and continuing to positive trend for public health in terms of local cases here we are back into the lower teens for a number of active cases the actual number today is 13. current cases which is which is nice to see because if you recall earlier this month we were up in the 40s for active cases so hopefully this trend will um stay stay in the downward direction uh
073total cases to date 951. uh given that the public health metrics have trended in the direction that we are hoping we are proceeding of course subject to the board's approval right now uh to move forward with the plan to allow the public into the building uh town hall starting monday the third uh and in other buildings on a more limited basis but still letting more public in as you know we've been closed completely since march 13th of last year and we're excited to start laying people back in and interacting uh face-to-face uh socially distance of course with face-to-face with our residents and customers uh so that's the plan and i just want to check in again with the board to make sure that everyone's comfortable with with uh with moving forward george what buildings did
074you plan to open um in addition to town hall so um you know town hall will be open for customer service during customer service hours which as you remember is the late tuesday and then early friday and then regular days the rest of the week the library is opening in its schedule that previously set up with the limited browsing which is available on the memorial library website uh west acton i'm not sure if they're ready to change from their current status but that will be on their website as well smaller offices like the building next door are still kind of the ring a doorbell kind of thing before people aren't just going to be walking around there same with the recreation building over at 30 sudbury uh we're working on a plan for uh people
075to be able to access that building and do it safely uh there's not gonna be programming there's not gonna be lunch there's not gonna be coffee it's not gonna be the same uh as it was but you know if there's services that people need if they need to fill out a form if they need to talk to a social worker we're going to be open but you know programming will be outside uh still and we'll you know might mostly be appointments over in over in that building um i may have missed one public safety you know that's not really public the fire stations are no public so um apologize if i miss a missed any buildings um but yeah that's the plan okay john you had a question yeah okay okay any uh are you
076have further for any further update on covid is not saying uh just that you know we had discussed and presented that we're trying to form a nine town collaborative to use the kmart site as a vaccine um location uh we did have a meeting with the state last week and um they haven't given us an answer either way um and we're not hearing people having a lot of trouble getting access to vaccines as much as we did a month ago so maybe it's okay that we don't get this we're still we're still going to pursue it and and see it through um but you know i just want to give you that update that's still in the works uh we haven't heard a positive answer yet on that thank you david yeah i just wanted
077to say about that though um from the people that i know who've gotten vaccine you're right the vaccines are available but you know people are are driving a long ways uh uh for a vaccine typically at least you know people i you know chat with so i think there probably are quite a number of people that might not have you know uh access to a car or may not might have other time restrictions where it's difficult for them to you know to drive to worcester to boston or um you know too low so it might be useful to have something local maybe it doesn't have to be a mass vaccination site but it'd be nice if the state approves to have uh something local if anyone beats the category what you should subscribe please have
078them contact me um we can we can help them uh and also devin's devon's just recently opened as a mass vaccination site so that's much closer than previous options but you know we're still doing homebound vaccinations we're still finding ways to get people vaccinations working with active pharmacy so if there's people out there that don't have a way to get it please contact us call the hotline 978-929 6600 or email me jim um since you mentioned acting pharmacy i see that they are now also accepting appointments for giving the shop so through the through the state's pharmacy program they're now they're now able to provide that service okay so um item five will be presentation of recommended design concepts for reuse of 19 to 21 maple street thank you so this is a project that
079we've been working on uh i think for about half a year there's been two public forums uh we brought we brought in a consultant um nelson nygard and corey york our public works director has been running the project i believe corey and jason uh jason and corey can be brought in as panelists for this discussion let's see oh there's jason and um all right corey i'm gonna i'm gonna bring in jason do you want to uh give some opening remarks yeah let's get some quick remarks um like mark uh john said we've been working on this sort of through covid um we've had a couple public forums um they've done some data collection and we've had an online survey so we've gotten quite a bit of feedback um and so it's been it's been a
080very good process we've got a lot of uh comments and questions commuters neighbors um so it's been i think it's been a good process we've gotten a lot of information and we've kind of fortunately gotten to this point where we have a little final presentation to make so i'll hand it over to jason to start that jason please thank you very much um first of all i'd like to thank corey and john and everyone in the town for being active participants in our project work we're really happy to present their recommendations today for 1921 maple street and the improvements there very excited about it with that i will go ahead and share if possible a brief presentation to go through where we've landed with our our final recommendations sure so and so the purpose of
081discussion today is to present these recommendations to the board um this is basically the third public discussion of these recommendations and see how you want to move forward so jason uh thank you very much so i think uh many of you present here tonight may have been part of our prior public process but the plan for tonight is to really do a quick recap of everything that's led up to this point and then really focus in on the recommendations which we have to share with you today so i'll just briefly uh introduce our project team my name is jason navsam i am a senior associate with nelson nygard um i've been the project manager for this project on the consultant team i was also the project manager for the 2019 uh parking commuter rail parking
082study which sort of directly informed the work that we've completed for 1921 maple street we've been supported by bill schwartz principal in our boston office we've also been supported by our partners at niche engineering faysal husseini and john michalak who've provided engineering support brian gregory with perkins and wolf who has provided architecture and urban design support and then laura lopez associate with nelson nygard as well so tonight i'll go through um quickly the context for the project the results from the online survey in public forum number one talk about the original proposed concept options which have been presented before talk through the results of public forum number two and then deal with the preferred concept itself in terms of schedule we kicked off this project on september 9 2020 you can see we've had a
083series of public forums and then here we are today in april 2021 presenting our final recommendations so i do want to remind everyone that the the approach that we've taken for 1921 maple street is really to build off of the findings of the 2019 parking study um yes one of our primary goals in this work has been to understand how we can potentially add parking spaces to the 1921 maple street line but there were also a wide range of other recommendations that came from that study pertaining to pedestrian access and bike access and shuttles and things of that nature and we've tried to incorporate those elements as much as we possibly can into our final recommendations as well so just for some broader context in terms of why this project is so important to the
084town we understand that as of our 2019 study prior to cobed 96 of the commuter lot spaces were full as of 9am which led a lot of people to seek um or rely on access to reserve spaces which are primarily concentrated in the 1921 maple street live um however there were only 40 of those spaces and still are only 40 of those spaces so part of our recommendations involves seeing how we can reasonably expand those while still accomplishing our other mobility and access goals for the station and again looking back to 2019 there were a wide range of recommendations that came out of our previous study um again a lot of these don't directly have to do with parking but are more about multimodal access to and from the station and again you'll see how
085that's reflected in our final plan tonight so here's an aerial image of the site um you can see um the somewhat informal parking here the two major structures on the site we'll talk a little bit more about those storage shed area here and then here's the actual mbta station so the way this functions is again there's essentially 40 reserved parking spaces an informal pickup drop-off area here as well as more informal pickup drop-off taking place on the street you can see the one-way circulation here on maple street we'll talk about how that factors into some other recommendations as well and then the intersection with stowe street here here is the existing access point to the inbound platform um so again if you're parking far at the western end of of the site here that is
086a bit of a walk so we've tried to consider that and see what we can do to add easier access for individuals using this lot moving on we did pay special attention to what we call building two on the site this is the south acton lumber company building it is listed on the massachusetts cultural registry information system or macris with forms b and g this listing does not place restrictions on what can be done with the building in terms of modification or demolition however it does mean that the building has been recognized for its historic value uh by the community so we wanted to pay careful attention to this again in formulating our our final plan so i'll move through some of the results from our survey and our first public forum we did conduct
087an online survey um which received 288 total responses many of the individuals who responded indicated that they did use south acton station on a daily basis at least prior to covet when commuting patterns were more normal one of the most interesting findings from from this survey was this chart that you can see here where we ask people to really rank which elements or potential improvements for the site would be most valuable to them and as you can see here adding additional car parking was the number one most requested new feature but also coming in at a close second was an improved pickup drop-off area and then uh third was the potential edition of a coffee shop on the site um and then fourth a new direct access point to that inbalance station platform and then
088you can see a variety of other potential improvements were recommended as well so with those recommendations or proposals in mind we developed two primary concepts these concepts were intended again to potentially increase the number of parking spaces formalize that pickup drop-off area provide a new station access point that would be more convenient and then add additional bicycle storage as well so you can see here again the existing condition with the two buildings and the storage shed you can see right now there are four potential vehicular access points to the site moving on we'll show you the first option that was considered so this is what we call option one this is increasing the total number of parking spaces on the site um to 61 spaces so that's a gain of 21 spaces you can see
089um two primary rows of parking here as well as this extended pickup drop-off area and a new ramp and access point to the station here um as well as some potential additional commuter parking or parking for potential reuse of this building too this option does plan to remove building one as well as the storage shed but building two is fully preserved and then option two was another option that was considered this one is able to add slightly more parking with 65 total parking spaces and that is because it is adding three rows of parking uh two of them would be angled parking in order to fit within this layout and the pickup drop-off area is now shifted to the east behind building two so that was at the second option which was presented both of
090those were presented at the second public forum we also looked more closely at building two to understand its potential for reuse and any potential limitations there one thing that we noted is that any new use there might actually require parking so that would of course uh reduce the total amount of new commuter parking being added but might be worth the potential benefit of whatever that new amenity might be so moving on at public forum number two we found that concept one was the preferred option um i think the public demonstrated a strong preference for that option due to the better pickup drop-off location um indicating that that would make circulation a lot smoother which was a big concern um and also the idea that the additional few parking spaces offered by option two don't really
091compensate for the more challenging uh site configuration with that option we also heard public feedback uh pertaining to a couple of specific issues the first being the possibility for a solar canopy on the site um so we've looked into this a little bit more we'll share some images related to that and then we also heard about the importance of building preservation and a reaffirmation that building 2 really should be should be preserved so that was something that we heard loud and clear on the topic of solar canopies we provided some images here today these are new images of um you know what this could or should look like based on you know similar sites in the region on the left here you can see a small scale solar canopy and melrose on the right something
092a little bit bigger in amherst um and then two really much larger scale examples again one in melrose and then another uh in in amherst massachusetts so we wanted to provide those images for reference um you know if the town wants to consider um you know implementation of a solar canopy um this may be useful and then finally we'll we'll talk about the preferred concept itself so this preferred concept does look very similar to the option one which was presented at the second public forum you can see again uh the two primary rows of that reserved commuter parking the pickup drop-off area uh the new entrance to the station here and the accessible ramp uh a sort of dedicated entry plaza and bike storage area in this location preservation of building two and then um
093very importantly based on the feedback we heard um the intention here is to wrap the entire site in landscaping to really minimize uh the additional visual impact of that pavement expansion um again with this option we are looking at a gain of 21 spaces over the 40 existing for a total of 61 total parking spaces another element that we've advanced since the previous public meeting is implementation of a turnaround here at the eastern end of the site for individuals who may enter turn to the right um if they need to circulate back out without finding a space um there's a turn around that would be implemented here to allow for that movement another very important feature is the addition of new sidewalks um extending along maple street and crosswalk at stowe street to make this
094very important pedestrian and bicycle connection possible that also includes a slight realignment of the maple street and stove street intersection shifting it to the west to improve sight lines and create a more perpendicular intersection there and make that feel a little bit safer and again additional protected bikes or storage located here what we found is that the existing bike storage area located just east of the site is often full um so certainly we want to dedicate additional space to that as well so with that uh we'll present the um you know final recommended plan here which is giving us a more detailed look at what that option one might look like you can see the uh turnaround area that's been added here um the you know critical pedestrian and bicycle connections here um as well
095as um accessible parking spaces in this location and the protected bike parking here um so we will be passing on this finalized plan to the town for a final review but again we've strived to incorporate all of the elements that we've heard all of the comments that we've heard from the public and from the town throughout this process to add parking while making these other critical multimodal access improvements as well in terms of building 2 building 2 is recommended to be preserved we cannot say with certainty what sort of building reuse might be interested um you know in becoming a tenant at that location but we do have some images to share in terms of precedence for some similar buildings in other locations i think again we've heard loud and clear that a coffee shop
096you know is very appealing to many in the town uh potentially a bike shop as well and you can see some images here of what that could look like moving on in terms of impact to the surrounding roadways and the community we're um looking with this option at a maximum of 15 new am commuter vehicle trips and that's based on a 70 typical parking occupancy which we observed for this lot um those trips would be distributed across the existing riverway network so in doing so wouldn't place any additional strain on any specific turbine movements or require any additional traffic impact mitigation to allow the site to function in terms of visual impact we expect minimal visual impact assuming that we provide that robust landscaping which can fully wrap the site in terms of the historic
097character of the neighborhood again we expect minimal impact we are planning to preserve building two which is the only historically designated building on the site uh in terms of new vehicle traffic associated with the potential reuse of building 2 that would vary based on whatever potential future land use was there but that would be no more than 14 vehicles uh in the am commuting peak in terms of the total potential cost for the improvements we are estimating something in the realm of 1 million uh that would include demolition of building one the landscaping construction of the accessible ramps and stairs at that new access point it does not include the cost of any potential renovation of building two that again we'd just like to thank all of you at the town and all the members
098of the public um for being really active in part of this process i'm again very excited to present this final plan to you and happy to take any questions thank you jason were there questions or comments from members uh jim um yeah let's see uh first of all for those who might want to see uh what car canopies look like and don't want to travel far uh acton's congregation bethel o'keem has uh has recently opened its solar car canopies um and that's so it's it's a lot easier to go take a look at if people want to understand the visual impact uh of those of those features um and the other that so that was the comment the question was uh has there been is that has there been any attempt to estimate the saturation
099point for bicycle parking my observation is that every time we've added new bicycle parking it gets filled up and each bike takes a lot less room and is a lot less expensive to create a space for than a car um so i'm just wondering you know how how where could we possibly have additional bicycle parking um to you know take take advantage of getting another car off the road yeah that's an excellent question um i you know certainly agree jim that every time i've been to the site um whether it was back in 2019 or more recently um in 2020 and 2021 um that the existing bike parking is always very very full so i think we can accommodate a great deal more bicycles you know with the the recommendations that we've made here we
100do propose that any additional bike parking on the site is either fully protected as in something like a bike locker or uh covered um so that people really feel comfortable knowing that if they commute they're gonna get back and you know their bike's gonna be in good shape um you know i think there's additional space on the sites um potentially on on the eastern end closer to the existing access point to potentially add even more bike parking and then you can see there's an area here in front of building two as well that i feel um you know would be suitable for some additional bike parking as well so i think um you know if you were to construct this and this bike parking you know wasn't quite cutting it i think those are the
101areas i would love to to add more um you know it's your question on the relationship between um the vehicle parking and the bike parking i think um you know the town can strive to continue to add as much bike parking as they can until it stops filling up and i think ideally that will reduce um you know the reliance on on auto travel david yeah um a few uh short things um how would do you propose that uh bicycles get from the assabet river rail trail to the new bike storage are you suggesting that they come out of the rail trail turn left on the street right into the parking lot and go straight into the bike storage are you suggesting that the the new crosswalks are are also dual use like the the
102rail trail itself and people turn uh left into the crosswalk i'll call it and then right into the other crosswalk and then in yeah that's a great question david i think um you know part of the challenge in making a firm recommendation on that is that we weren't able to collect new traffic volumes at this intersection um given the fact that the computer activity in 2020 um you know has been so diminished compared to what we understand that it would be in the future um so i'll just preface my my response with that but i think looking at this um you know assuming that we have the width available here which i believe we do there's no reason why these can't function um as dual use as you stated i think that's going to be
103perhaps the best way to make sure that we have very minimal to no conflicts between bikes and vehicles you know traveling on on maple street particularly during commuter hours when there's just such a great deal of activity here um that may be the the best course of action great thank you just another question is has anybody spoken to the mbta about having access to the platform at the proposed top of the ramp or are we just assuming that the mbta would allow us to do that yes our understanding is that um you know the mbta is is certainly interested in these types of improvements so just for some context nelson nygard worked on a system-wide access study in close coordination with the mbta also i believe in 2019 and these sorts of multimodal access improvements
104pedestrian access improvements were recommended including you know for acton station as well so i think uh we fully expect that the meta would be um you know enthusiastic supporters of that new access point sharing information with the mbk as well so we've been up to date on what we're doing uh i spoke with them when we first started the process and the group that i spoke to had was interested in it but they had to sort of talk to their superiors and going they've be looking at their capital planning with that so they are aware of it thank thank you and and my my final question is could you talk just briefly about i i know you it wasn't in your presentation today but um it was in other materials that you've had about um
105possible layouts of uh tenants in the building actually i'm not so concerned about the layouts but i just want to understand um the quantities as i understood it that you could have two small uh tenants on the first floor with the second floor kind of being used as a stock room or you could have a large tenant on the first floor with an elevator and use the second one as a tenant as well second floor is a tenant as well is that correct yes that's that's absolutely correct and i believe that it's probably our public forum number two um where we discussed some more of the details on that so i would just refer everyone um back to that presentation for all the details but yes you're exactly right that is that is the configuration
106that we envisioned yeah i think the 64 thousand dollar question is you know our issue is finding tenants to go in there but um i i think that's you know that those plans are great um thank you that was all um dean or joan thank you i had a question about the landscaping could you put that slide back up so it would be around the whole parking lot so how would you get from the parking lot through the screening to the access yes great great question um so the new access point is i think where we intend you know the vast majority of users of the site to go right so we're providing pedestrian access there and making sure that that's as convenient as possible for people parking in this area i do agree however
107that if you park on the far eastern end of the site um you know it certainly is closer for you to then walk to that existing access point over here um so i think that is something worth considering um you know i know when again when we've been to the site you can sort of see the path that is created there just from people people walking in that direction and so i think there's a possibility that you could formalize that and you know sort of tie it in this way so i think that's definitely something um if that demand continues that that could be added okay hi dean yeah a couple of questions one you know i commend you for the uh the outreach that was done and those two forums that uh he ran
108were really well attended and lots of good points raised um just a question on the parking area itself was proposed and certainly corey and his folks in highway can give you some input on this is what are you going to do about snow storage um is there any the logical spot to put the snow story frankly is to push all the way down and dump it into the wetland but i know probably running into some issues with some of the other regulatory agencies on that um you know we haven't had any really bad snow years for a couple of years but from my recollection of what it was like with snow filled up in the larger line you know that's a big issue you lose a lot of parking spaces if you can't figure out
109a place to move it um and if you don't dump it in the wetlands you probably crush all the landscaping you put in so i think i'd like to have 40s input on that one yeah there's always that balance of of doing it i mean we have the 40 car lot now that we're um that we're plowing maintaining but we're definitely adding a lot more and previously or they need to maintain um but definitely something that we'll have to take a look at and a lot of the proposed that you see now the other limits near the wetlands doesn't change much where you see the existing pavement now um but we would have a lot more of the the classes and the walkways to uh to maintain as well so we are going to have
110to sort of take a really cancelled look at sort of snow storage areas and what landscaping we're putting in these areas um some of these situations too it gets into a situation where we have enough storage to do some stones but then we eventually have to go in and do just remove the smell and if we have a really bad beer and um drop that back to we do similar to what we do it must happen and things like that so but it will definitely be a consideration that we have to pay close attention to um so we will add 21 parking spaces is that correct that's correct okay and then building two was that gordon richards old old office is that the bit is that corey yeah okay that's correct okay and that's and
111that's an historic building yes that's on the registry of massachusetts register at the national registry okay and um okay and then the other building building one would come down in the in the proposal correct okay so what would you see as next steps great question um so i think again we'll deliver this uh final concept to corey and the town staff i think the next step is to review this validate how it's interacting with any other potential or proposed projects in the area which has been part of our process um and then you know pursue a contract um you know with a team to actually move forward and you know create a 100 design of the site and then ultimately construct the improvements great okay so are there any further comments or questions from members
112okay uh jason corey thank you very much there's one question from the public oh i'm sorry yeah okay i think tara was you should be able to speak now tara can you hear me now yes oh good okay uh thank you so much for letting me speak uh i'll be short i'm very much in support of this i think you did a fabulous job i'm glad that the historic building is being respected and i'm glad we seem to be focusing on accidents and these other towns can go to box throw and engage in shuttle which would have a lower carbon footprint i believe that parking won't be as much of an issue moving forward like 40 teleworking for managerial levels which is what most of the riders are in this area i'm fully in support
113of solar canopies and i think i believe they can be done within historic context i did a research a while back i will dig this up and send it along i pulled together a long list of historically sensitive designs i used to be on the historic district commissions i know something about it a little bit three can we move forward without worrying about building rio's plans a rhetorical question i'm not asking you to answer it now uh cafe and coffee shop you betcha i'd love to have two so they can compete and i would like to be uh um multiple shops not one anchor training because then you get stuck with them and like one of those shops the a student-run startup you know and then lastly can we hire him for a kmart parcel
114revisioning thank you very much for letting me any are there any other citizens who wish to speak we have an additional comment from franny osman sure frankie franny you should be able to speak hey randy osmond 16 half moon hill um oh i want to question the estimate that riot number of cars coming to the side won't go up that much it said like 15 more rides because it seems to me that in the morning people will want to drop people off on this side in the past it was not convenient it was unsafe you didn't know how to you couldn't get to the drop-off point easily now it will be easier and so i think that people will probably choose in the morning to drop people off on the inbound side here in the
115afternoon probably they'll go to the other side um i don't think this should be a problem personally i think that's to be expected at a train station and that um we shouldn't worry about it but i just didn't think that estimate was um necessarily realistic um i also continue to have slight concerns about the long distance i was just over there just an hour ago looking at the building i still think we should somehow manage to make a ramp from the building if it's used to the um platform unless the t changes their place that they open the doors which tends to be way up near the bridge um it's you know you have to hurry to get from your coffee or warmth all the way um back to that central place so either we
116need to work out with the t to open the doors down the other end of the platform or make it easier to get to the um platform and i just i every time we talk about this i must say um i'm the chair of the transportation advisory committee and we have continued to be concerned about the walking access not being safe on maple street i know people who live in the other end of maple street and sometimes they get a ride there because they don't feel safe getting to the train station especially in the winter i hope that while we're talking to the t we continue to pursue the idea of opening up the path along the tracks from the southbound platform or any platform to martin street now it would solve some of the
117pedestrian access that we have issues that we have up on central street and on maple street that's all thank you i think it's great um i really love the way you incorporated all the concerns and the ideas you came up with i don't think the number of parking spaces added is gonna make that much difference um i think that they always just fill up but i hope that tara is right and i know that um she has been hoping people do more telecommuting for many years and i hope that she's right and maybe we won't have full stations just so thank you okay can we uh any before david any further citizen uh comments we do have one more from kelly snow kelly you should be able to speak hi thank you um kelly can
118you hear me just check in yes okay this is kelly stowe 109 hayward thank you um i would just like to echo tara's comments on this absolutely 100 in support of it very impressed with the team that put this together i can tell that you were listening to community concerns and 100 agree have them take a look at the kmart parcel thank you thank you okay david i just wanted to say that in um in response to something that uh franny said for in rush hour trains um there are there are two different sets of doors that are open um near the front of the train that's near the canopy where the the existing entrance is on the south side here it's only in off-hour trains that they only open up the doors near the
119bridge so um usually in rush hour trains they open up three or even four sets of doors so i just wanted to say that so it's not that far from you know i guess fanny's assuming that was going to be a coffee shop and not a bike shop but um it's not that far anyway for during rush hour is there any further board member comments there's one more member of the public okay sure matt peter oliver you should be able to speak hi i'm uh cedar oliver i'm at 55 maple street i just wanted to echo the concern about pedestrian i think this is a fantastic plan fully in support but it's going to be very very dangerous if there aren't if the sidewalks aren't built on maple and or stowe street there we just
120had a 26 unit development put in near jones field there's a whole bunch of new parking spaces over at jones field there's going to be a large volume of people walking down stowe street and maple street and there's really no safe way to do that right now and and even trying to figure out how if i'm walking down maple street i'm going to get to that new entrance without encountering a large volume of cars it's it can get pretty scary in the winter so i think that's an additional thing that the town is going to need to think about is how do we provide safe pedestrian access enactment yeah sorry one more comment one thing i've talked with uh corey about before i i would love to you know we the the sidewalk along stowe
121street is in the queue um but but i would love that to be a 12 foot wide sidewalk so that um you could as in viewed as a spur from the azerbait river rail trail to the uh the playground area at the corner of uh stowe and martin so you could just you know if if what uh jason said a minute ago if that crosswalk is was a bike walk um that you you could actually you know to turn left and not not have to cross maple street just across street in that bike walk and then get on this bike spur down to uh the playground if you were a kid or just the coroner if you were an adult okay thank you last comments okay uh jason corey again thank you very much thank
122you yes thank you just just in terms of next steps um this is the final recommendation of our team so we will um you know we probably wouldn't move forward with the next phase of design until the board expresses its support for doing so which you you could we could schedule for another night if if that's what you'd like to do okay so um if i understood jason wright you would would be putting together the final recommendation right the final recommendation will basically be the plan that's shown on the screen kind of just in narrative form uh you know with some more details but i think in terms of what we would do next it would be to invest more in the next phase of design and then at the same time try to find
123ways to get this funded both with partnerships with our state partners and otherwise would you want our our vote tonight um that we support the preferred concept that'll be helpful yes if the board does yes okay um just for members would we be would you be ready to to give that support this evening can i see the thumbs up from david i ian has a question oh dean yeah i i was just going to uh make a motion that we uh formalize our support for the preferred concept they show all right dean's motion uh jones seconds is there any further discussion okay so david if you call the role please mr snyder grant hi uh ms gardner hi mr charter hi mr benson bye and i also say i see that's unanimous okay thank you
124thank you all right so um we're up to item six which is to review the town meeting warrant articles the annual town meeting that was included in the package over the weekend um and i have ever had a chance to take a look not the actual articles just um you know not the text of the articles but it's what the um what the lineup um looks like so we're looking at 39 articles and three petitions with 21 of the 39 articles uh being on consent um would there be any questions or comments from from members david so just for my memory in our very efficient annual town meeting uh last year what was the count of uh non-consent articles i think there were was it about 18 john or what do we whittle it down
125for less than that um mark do you recall the number that was in addition to the consent agenda don't recall but i can look it up right now okay actually if john's memory john benson's memory is correct it's very close because this one this draft has 19 so um uh so this might be a single night uh uh if we're just as efficient yeah there is potential for for some good discussion on a number of these articles so let me ask dean and i sat down yesterday uh you know looking ahead and to how we might um um divvy up uh responsibility for for article article presentations and let me just uh float what uh dean and i you know came up with for uh for the for the members um i would do the
126uh town budget um david would you consider doing a number three which is really two articles um uh it would be a uh the four items for for free cat from free cash for the diversity officer the tree assessment the dog park and the vacant storefront and um and then the more the trickier of the two would be the um the use of the stabilization fund um which would be um for about 650 000 uh which was just a 445 000 for um nine capital projects and 213 000 for the first year of borrowings um for the four articles that um dean will take on under under item four yes that'll be fine okay and um because we um i guess the tricky piece there is we'd really have to explain to the public why
127are we using the stabilization fund this year i i i think i have attended or uh all of the fincom meetings yeah maybe one i watched on video but i think i've one or two i watched that video but i've watched them or attended all of them so okay okay um because this is the first time we'll be taking money out um of the stabilization fund since it was established in 2016 and i'm not sure that many people recall what was the reason for the fund and under what circumstances may monies um uh be withdrawn but it it did respect a a request of the uh the finance committee then we uh start using you know uh some of that money and a less of a take on free cash um moving down the list
128um there's uh number 12 would be amending the zoning bylaw for the drive up windows dean would like to take that on um we thought for amending the general bylaws for the uh archaeological uh uh ceremonial stone landscapes that we asked um bob ferrara who's a member of the historical historical commission and has been the driving force in this article to see if he would be the presenter for us on it does that make sense yes that's fine right do we still need do we still need a selectmen assigned even if that selectman's not doing the uh presentation yes yeah yeah the historic commission is is dean's um is one of dean's committees and uh he has been in on all of the the arctic the the the article drafting with with me so yeah
129um jim would you take on 14 and 15. yep the regulation of fossil fuel infrastructure um and um and the um one is the home rule petition and the other is the general bylaw yeah it's got my name all right let's try your name all over um then the um uh um um the way we left it from the uh special time meeting in september we bring back the release of the restriction at 120 at 127 strawberry hill um road we prevailed upon the individual to not file a lawsuit that we you know bring it back and do a better job in presenting it this is jones really will name it it's jones corner there um is that what we're calling it jones corner well yeah well yeah she drove it home it's very dangerous
130um i think you should call it john's car jones corner okay that's naming rights um joan were you interested in that again or or yes you would like okay i'm willing to work with you on the the preparation of it okay because because they're just there there's history there that um you know caught us up and uh um you know there was things that if they there's some decisions that were made in the 1980s when things were done on some of a fast and loose basis that you know were kind of hard to explain last september okay um then note there were several citizen petitions um the the dog park the eliminate the dog park grant and matching fund and i think there also was a second piece to that to look at other dog
131park sites and not do it on main street that's going to be presented by matt poston we'll have to take a position um on that and uh um i i don't know what the rules of the road are going to be you know we would have an opportunity to say we're against it and um offer um a short statement so maybe joe if you would want to yeah i've been laboring with this for for quite some time um and then there are the uh the citizens to amend the town charter for the election of the planning board i don't know whether tara will be presenting that or alisson nickel um and then there's a non-binding resolution in case the amendment to amend the town charter doesn't pass the way it's going to explain um i
132don't think we need to do a um um um the rest are all consent articles so you know we as we get closer we could divide some of those bundling to take on a couple of them david john i could probably also do five there might not be very much to do on five but i'm happy to do five okay sure okay and and also i i don't think there's any participation on our side but i could be the selectmen assigned for six since i'm liaison to the school committee okay so you'll you'll do five and again i can be assigned to six but i don't think i'll need to do anything yeah okay okay okay and it's unclear on item 11 the land exchange that relates to sidewalks on taylor road and it involves
133a rather complicated land swap that may not be um on be ready um so were there any other jim yeah there may be um uh an additional warrant article related to the uh the grace uh solar arrangement um i've been working with the sustainability director and with john on options there and it looks like there might be something that would require town meeting approval so if that ends up happening i'd be happy to be the the select board member assigned oh sure okay okay any other questions from from the members i i i have just not that quite random question if it's too long i don't have to do it at now but i i knew this before and i members of the public may also be be interested can someone is there one or
134two sentences to tell the difference between a revolving fund and an enterprise fund john will get that answer to all of them yeah uh enterprise funds are like their own business uh and they and they have you can appropriate from them uh and they stay in place revolving funds have to be appropriate every year until meeting uh they have a certain limit um and anything unused it doesn't stay in there under a certain amount or a certain amount but i can give you something in writing that's clearer than that yeah okay thank you okay um were there any questions from the public on what the uh 2021 warrant looks like we do have one hand raised i believe it's terra nothing to do with alyssa she was thinking about it and uh decided i don't
135think that she decides to do this so it's all about me i mean not all about me i'm sorry i am the contact person for that um and that said i may be moving to passover i'm going to be discussing with some folks about some alternative ideas about elected or not elected if we can get some good planning going on relative to zoning to mitigate the harms of development and growth have a more just and environmental friendly society um i think that i would be willing to pass over on these so i'm going to be having some discussions and so i was just letting you know that okay well keep us up keep us informed in the loop um that's pretty good okay is there anybody else uh joanne barry would you have anything to
136to add his moderator um oh good um so i'm really looking forward to having a [Music] robust discussion on several of these items for anyone who's not quite sure if the meeting will be june 21st we're going to use the same format as we did last year with the inside outside options it is the longest daylight time of the year that does not mean we have to stay there for the entire daylight hours um i believe we can get this meeting done in one session unless anything drastically changes we will start at six o'clock um which should give people time to get home and get over um [Music] what else can i say oh for uh folks who are doing presentations um you folks plus any others who might be watching um we will once
137again use the videoed um presentations through um the help of actin tv and you would um i mean well that's not completely organized yet but we'll be looking to have those posted on youtube or in acting tv site by a week prior so folks can have time to review the material and ask questions and things like that um we will have moderators meeting june 16th which i think is the wednesday so that would be seven o'clock we'll use whatever the current protocol tells us is the way to do that zoom or in person um so anyone presenting this just to make sure that we're all good on the flow of the meeting got all the ducts lined up because your presentation should be done before that though at the meeting we're looking at five minute
138limit on presentation your your video can be any length just you know use common sense but no put no particular limit there but during the meeting um we'll go with five minutes and the usual two minutes from the floor if you're a citizen from the floor so i'm hoping that lots of folks will come and participate in this opportunity to um exercise your democracy and make the town more like you want it to be thank you very much okay um our next item would be discard number eight is discussion of of um of the response for proposals for the surplus property located at 26 carlisle road john thank you the town took through a tax title process and foreclosure process and property on carlisle road uh 26th carlisle it's abandoned home we issued a request
139for proposals and uh received one response from habitat habitat for humanity they'd like to build a single-family affordable home there um they've offered the town a dollar to purchase it um and there's all the details that they provided in a proposal which i hope we provided to you uh in advance of tonight if not i apologize and i'll send it to you but it's a typical business model uh for building a home uh they would look for funding and then use the habitat for humanity um way to do it um so if the town is interested in doing this and accepting a proposal like this what we would need to do is uh get authorization from tambien uh which is that which is one of the articles we already discussed in the previous item uh
140it's already as a facebook on the warrant which would authorize the board to dispose of it for this purpose um so the board i guess would has two options at this point it can make a decision that it wants to do this uh now pending town meeting authorization or wait for television authorization and then say it wants to do it if it's if so authorized so jones i've driven by this house many many times and i think we should go ahead with this the habitat for one dollar others david yeah i'm also in in support in general i have a couple of questions uh john majority i don't know if you know the answers to these um one is is habitat expecting to come back then to cpc for monies to renovate the house because
141they don't need its work um or are they getting getting using their own habitat funds for that so um as part of their proposal um they indicated that they would be seeking funding uh from um cpc and i just thought i'm just trying to find the exact amount that they would be looking for i believe it would be a hundred thousand uh i certainly will follow up on that and i apologize i thought we provided you with the rfp response in advance yeah i i have to say that i'm a little disappointed since the town you know basically is donating the land all by the dollar um that you know the the funds for their renovation don't come from from elsewhere i mean i really don't strongly object but i'm just kind of disappointed that
142basically the town has to fund the whole the whole thing um uh so uh the one other one other question i had um is this habitat house then sold or rented typically yeah i have the proposal over here okay by the way mark hall says there were just 11 articles not on consent last year wow that can be off line okay ooh hi um i i don't know whether we're voting on this tonight or after yeah would you want us to uh once we get the material we meet next week should we put this back on for next week so we could look at um the materials john has now that he can get to us and yeah i would love to read there are people okay all right so dean yeah i think just
143to follow up with david um you know as far as a request for a hundred thousand dollars from cpc for next year i think that's really ambitious on their part yeah you know that it's there's a lot of stress and demand on the cpc fund and i think we've made some some strong commitments to do more funding for the acting housing authority so certainly we should read the documents i don't have a problem with giving them the property for a dollar but they should not assume that they're going to get a 100 000 cpc because it just ain't there folks my apologies um why don't i take the opportunity to uh correct myself uh they will be seeking a hundred thousand in subsidy but uh 40 of that would would be something they'd be seeking
144from community preservation and 60 would be from achc affordable housing funds still 100 from the town so um you know what happens to the money that gets donated to habitat outside of hector you know you know anyway that's just my bias here i guess um so um uh jim um i'm sorry i had a somewhat unrelated procedural question you mentioned a meeting next week and i think i thought that we were meeting on first and third mondays but apparently that is the fur that's the first monday in in may oh yeah okay i'm doing the math wrong it's not quite because because last week it was the third monday but it paid patreon yeah yeah yeah no i got it now thank you okay so all right so we can put this don't put this
145back back on for next monday and if you can get us the the uh the habitats prospectus on the property we can make an informed decision um the proponent um the executive director of habitat is here tonight i didn't realize until just now um to speak to this and i i can um just ask that that she come back uh after that would be great yeah i'm sorry for the inconvenience man okay so um item nine is the review and consider proposed new select for public trade a public pre-protection policy uh john and cory and dean thank you um i believe that uh corey has put together a uh a little short powerpoint presentation that that i could use as son of a backdrop i don't have it i believe john's got it and i
146think corey might have it somebody wants to share the screen lori please jump in how you doing um yeah let me just try to share my screen here [Music] fine looking dogs are we looking at the presentation now not dogs okay yes all right yes okay thank you i'm gonna get started i can walk you through okay um so just as a little bit of background um the select select board policy that is in existence right now regarding public shade trees it was written by me back i believe in and uh what's happened now with the increased amount of intel development more stress and and need for a strong policy to protect roadside trees so next slide so here's here's one of the things that one of the real triggers uh the tree on the
147right was on pearl street and it shows what happens when you don't carefully monitor what developers would do so the new policy that that was in all of your packets uh was something that i've worked on with corey and brian hunt our new tree wood uh over a period of six or seven months i've received a lot of input from various groups i did get a you know a lengthy review from green acton which was very useful i did use as a sounding board for a lot of the questions and answers on this folks from the design review board so i'd like to thank them and acknowledge their participation things never get easier in the world of regulations the original policy from 1990 was two pages the new proposed policy was four pages so what
148does it do this policy only deals with the valuation and compensation for public shade trees as defined under mass general law chapter 87. so basically trees growing within the roadways it does not have anything to do with clearing limits on private property it does not stop clear cutting it does not establish tree buffer areas around redeveloped sites all of those are great ideas but and they should be considered by the appropriate board this is a very very limited uh policy it is a policy will be voted by this board hopefully tonight uh and you know based on the last one it continued on from year to year for 30 years but it could be amended at some point or rescinded by a subsequent board so it's it's fairly easy to get it passed it doesn't
149have to go to town meeting it's strictly the select board deciding how you're going to value a town asset and how are you going to get compensated for it a couple of the major changes between the old policy and the new policy the old policy it was interferential placement of trees under the new policy we do two inches of replacement for every one inch of removal it establishes the concept of critical root zone which is well-established agricultural practice basically it views unlike the developer that down on pearl street people have to realize it trees don't grow like carrots and utility poles the uh you have to maintain the uh the edges of the uh the root zone of the trees so we've got some policy about that it also uh works out a uh a
150situation as far as evaluation of trees uh new trees because of the uh the higher valuation we'll put on them through the new policy and the fact of doing two for one it tremendously increases the compensation of the town and we think it appropriately so for example the tree on pearl street that we saw a minute ago i think the town ended up getting about five thousand dollars back on it under the old policy under the new policy we get a little over nineteen thousand dollars back um one of the trees that was a subject of discussion on high street was about a thirty inch diameter oak um i don't know exactly what our settlement was on that but under the new policy it'll be about thirty thousand dollars that we recover so it creates
151a real incentive for the developers to save trees because they're gonna have to pay for them now the downside of all of this of course is that the value of the trees if they end up getting taken down the cost of that is going to get tacked onto the cost of the development of the house so a certain extent it does pump up the cost of a new house or new developments going in there just as most everything else that we do pumps up the cost the other thing that does is it establishes unique trade trees these are ones that this policy would not apply to be a way of establishing a more rigorous review with valuation tree using a consulting arborist and we might end up with even higher values those would be unusual
152circumstances because that's a very rigorous and expensive process and in many situations our base policy might end up providing more compensation of the town than something done by a consulting arborist so those are basically the concepts behind it a i'd be willing to answer any questions that people might have one of the other issues that has come up repeatedly was gee we don't know until the very end that tree is going to be impacted by development and what's happened internally is that now on the land use side they've established a check-off box for all site plan special permits with the question on it you know are there any public shade trees are going to be impacted they have to check that off and that serves as a queue that has also been voted in by
153the planning board a week or so ago or the subdivision control law as well so we'll get quicker notice of these things also land use and the rest of the regulatory folks have established a policy now where all of these kinds of developments are being reviewed by a much wider group of people specifically in this case the tree warden will get early notice of it and have a chance to perhaps find some ways to save a lot of these trees at least we don't get caught in a situation where we uh all of the other approvals have been received and then we have to do a tree hearing and you know we're playing catch-up so um that's the policy and i hope folks will support it okay are there questions or comments from board members
154joan no i'm i support it um david uh yeah no i i'm just losing i i i'd like to ask a question if i can sure please yeah um dean what's the relationship between the value and the replacement is it both or either or how does that work you know if if that developer on high street i think they were taking that their original plan took down uh a 24 inch oak and a 30 inch of both right so uh that's 54 inches of tree it's 108 inches of replacement tree um um uh you know is it that or is it the value of those trees you know you know 25 000 and 20 000 or whatever it is uh can you explain how that interacts sure so the routine method for a tree that's
155say 20 inches or 24 inches in diameter so it would not trigger what we're calling the unique tree category under those you you add up the number of inches you double it because now you got to provide two inches for every one inch that you take down and then you look at what is the value of replacement trees in the policy we've established that the replacement size has to be a minimum of three inches in diameter so you take a look at what the cost of the tree would be at a nursery and then you bump that up by 200 percent so you get a say a 500 piece of nursery stock you add a thousand dollars onto that for the installation cost so now you're looking at you know every three inch tree is
156going to cost 1500 and you just add those up until you come up to the number of inches that you're trying to replace i i see so that's in the in situation where you've got a you know what i call an average tree in those rare cases when we would trigger this unique tree category something that's truly massive or truly historic or a species of tree that does not formally grow inactive you would actually bring in a consulting arborist and they use policies and practices established by the council on tree and landscape appraisers and there are various techniques used to establish assessment of trees these are things commonly used uh you've got a casualty loss from a uh a car strike against a tree or something like that it's a very detailed process it's well
157established but you do end up having to bring in a consulting average to do that independently um so we would reserve those for the really what i call unique situations the commonly common situation is you just look at it and you figure out the price based on the cost of nursery stock and installation nice thing about doing it that way is that you check your nursery stock prices every single year so they get indexed for inflation so that you know 30 years from now when we're talking about this again we might want to change the policy but we know that we've we've indexed it and you know a 3 inch caliper tree 30 years from now might be worth instead of 1500 might be worth 5 000 so it automatically escalates over the years and
158that's roughly what we did in the past with the older policy uh you don't end up having to vote a new value of trees every single year it just follows the trend of nursery stock and construction thank you are there any uh questions further questions or comments from board members jim sure um i'm looking at comments on an older version of the policy and i just want to uh appreciate dean that a lot of these comments have already been taken care of in the in the current version we're looking at now so i appreciate that um i'm looking here through any uh others that still haven't been done um what is um let's see looks like sections is it still a section seven where you talk about cash contributions as an option uh yeah uh
159no it's not called eight uh so section eight b where it says make a cash contribution to the town um it seems like it would be wise to uh specify that that cash contribution would be um calculated um you know not just sort of made up on the spot but matching either uh clause seven which is the you know the unique situation tree or um it looks like clause six the one that uh that does the normal calculation um just just to make explicit that you know it's not just it's not just the warden making up a cash contribution it has to match the systems that are that are described above that's an easy enough edit to make thanks you've defined all these terms you stop referring to tree wardens in a without with a
160with a with a male pronoun um you know you've made all the fixes i was looking for here um the the only other thing here is if you could speak to um the difference between um thinking about but so when i think about trees you can think about their value obviously in a lot of different ways and the value that they're providing to the town one way is the is just the sheer volume of the tree in terms of how much it's sequestering carbon and in that sense uh you know a tree that's that's twice as big as a diameter that's twice as big has a has a total volume of you know way more than well maybe eight times as much if we're thinking about you know cubic and linear um and this system
161is is linear um and um if you could just speak to that because i know there'd been a lot of conversation uh uh about whether to use a from a cross-section method like you know the area of a cross-section considered at breast height you know whether that would be a more reasonable way of approximating the value of a tree sure well one of the things that we did with this new policy is doing the two-for-one replacement yeah so so we're trying to recognize you know not just the diameter but also the canopy up above um so we've pushed that the other thing that you'd have quite a bit of discussion with drv is how big a replacement tree should you plant in the site and they were pushing for you know four and five inch
162diameter trees but the problem you run into is many of the planting sites that we'd be dealing with would not accommodate initially that large a root ball of a four or five inch diameter tree also the availability of plant material in those sizes in the categories of what commonly gets planted along roadsides just wasn't that great so that's why we've used the three inch diameter tree you know ultimately you use the cross-sectional analysis if you do that and you apply that properly take the cross-sectional basis of the tree but then you end up having to do the full tree appraisal that we would use in the unique situations and you get a huge number based on the cross-sectional analysis and you think oh my god here's a tree that's worth a hundred thousand dollars if
163it was then we're gonna have to add a lot more money into our legal budget because some of these probably would not be defensible the other thing that happens is if you're doing this the more detailed analysis with the consulting arborist there are factors that you use to take away value from trees uh the contribution to the site uh some of the things about the condition of the tree species valuation all of these things degraded uh if the tree for instance has had a great deal of canopy loss due to trying to accommodate overhead utility wires yeah so you end up discounting that lot so yeah you can do it it's a much more detailed process and i think in the end you're probably not going to get that much more money out of it
164which you know is yeah i appreciate trees aesthetically but ultimately you end up having to put a dollar value on them yeah so that's why you know i think for instance that tree on uh on pearl street that uh you know under the old category it was five thousand dollars now it's almost it's 19 000 with that with the amount of money that you're going to get from that and the number of other replacement trees and young trees once they're established will grow quicker they will sequester carbon more quickly you'll have a wider range of trees in other locations rather than just the one that you've lost you might have 10 trees and other areas that are not well served with shade and with the benefit of trees so i think what we've got is
165something that's that's reasonable that can be worked with unique situations if they come up we can always deal with them under those truly unique things and finally the last section of the uh of the policy does make all decisions made by the tree warden are appealable to the select board so the developer can appeal the value or individuals who are interested in this kind of appeal that to the select board as well great uh appreciate that um i think a final follow-up question would be uh sure whether the uh the certified let's see sorry i'm scrolling back here in the unique situation where you have a full uh tree value appraisal uh uh i think what you've talked about is that you know that includes you know possible reductions based or additions based on location
166and condition and species and all that in that in that kind of full situation would they be typically looking at something a starting point that was more like a cross-sectional analysis um typically that there's there's probably six different ways of of deriving a an appraisal okay and you know the cross-sectional analysis is one of the many ways that it's used um and not all of these techniques are appropriate for all trees in all locations so yeah it's certain about you really have to defer to uh consulting harvest on these things yeah yeah and i really appreciate about this policy that you have you have this unique situation clause that i think that really helps uh deal with a lot of the concerns that if it's if it's a unique situation there should be unique special
167attention paid to it and i think that's exactly right and i'll note that that's that was one of the things that came out of the consultation that we were doing with the drbs so are we going to approve this uh just in one moment uh tara fredricks had a comment tara you should be able to speak thank you john can you hear me yes all right first of all i want to thank dean this is very exciting it is not enough and i get that but it's very exciting um all special site plan special permits yes more cost developers yep i appreciate the indexing i really do this is really good work um and dean i'm really really um i said it's proud that you went through the drp and worked with all these people
168it's really consensus building so we can talk about inclusivity another time because i think that i have lots of hope uh for a new collaborative world um and uh i'm good with the voting yes on this tonight but i don't think it's sufficient and i look forward to another phase two version oh i i appreciate the special tree situation but the likelihood of survival is directly connected to the value of the property um you know like for example on the prospect example on the green active memo those houses wouldn't be there okay if it was for if if you use the cross-sectional method they wouldn't have been able to put the driveways through they wouldn't have been able to put four units there i mean it was affordable but it is a construct to understand
169the the the big difference between allowing a tree to go and not allowing a tree to go you're talking about millions of dollars in products so 19 000 is nothing and so the drd is talking about 50 000 as a as you know a normal thing and so i feel like we need to get to that point and also you can use cross-sectional and then have a divisor and say divided by two um and maybe this is all covered in this special tree thing i don't know that it is um but i also as one other comment or question the two-year guarantee the drb landscaping guide there said that unless the contractor is held to a two-year guarantee that the tree could fail and by assuming that risk on the town side um that the
170town if it fails then the tree will never get replaced or whatever so that but by having the contractor have a guarantee um then that's on the developers side as opposed to the town assuming the risk and just getting cash um and maybe dean's taking care of that i don't know but i i urge approval of this and i also urge a more stringent phase two version of this to come up when we value trees more and you know hopefully we'll realize that we value them more so thank you thank you tara is there any any further public comments matt there is not okay any further comments from board members okay so uh dean would you like to make a motion to adopt the yes i i would like to move that the board uh
171adopts the policy on removal of non-hazardous public shade trees that was in the packet tonight with the the one edit that i will put in tying in specifically the details on the valuation that jim raised second second okay okay so any further discussion okay so david if you call the role please this would be the policy we've adopted on april 26 uh 2021. mr center grant hi ms gardner hi mr charter i it would have been funny if you voted no um mr benson hi and i also say hi thank you okay so um thank you dean so our our next item would be approve the date and location for the faulkner awards ceremony uh john i thank you um this is an item that uh we're still working on some dates um we think
172we can do it outside at the park uh pavilion like we did last or i guess that was two years ago um and we're gonna shoot for uh early june but uh sorry to say i don't have any dates for you to consider tonight unless there's i know the 21st is not a good night but is there anything else we should avoid no um do you want to um since we've all submitted our our nominee recipients um do you want to announce them say at our meeting uh next week on the third and we could notify uh our individual recipients just ahead of that at your convenience this week sure yeah we can do that i will um it makes sense yeah yeah okay so just you know individually just go ahead at your convenience
173and and notify and we'll make the formal public announcements um next monday night it's a it's you will see jim that you know recipients um very moved by the recognition and uh they will be there and they will have family members there and it's also it's incumbent on us we do a introductory remarks for each recipient and they do a response remarks it's good jim um yeah i'm really looking forward to this um i i i think i'm waiting to hear from lisa that she's heard from every board member and that um [Music] two board members didn't nominate the same person by chance i mean there are some people on multiple committees and it might be good to is uh available to you okay i will tell that person okay okay so um our last
174um business item would be to discuss the request from the resident um um to uh sell uh 301 arlington i believe the gentleman is here this evening uh dean you're quite familiar with the property um yeah i'm i am familiar with the property and you know just as a little bit of background this was some property that was has been was acquired by the town back in the 1950s and 1960s it it's basically it has frontage on arlington street it also has frontage up by massachusetts avenue there's some wetlands in there there's some drainage ditches a lot of this was land that was not easily developable under the environmental constraints in 1950s and 1960s i walked the site some years ago with mike gowing when looked the possibility of would it be acceptable for a
175senior center because it is you know close proximity to west acting village um but it just it would not accommodate that sort of structure um you know i it's it's not a one hates to call it a swamp but it's it's not a real desirable piece of land in its present condition let me put it that way um i i don't believe the town manager or any of his staff working for him right now has had the opportunity to put on the boots and walk around there so um certainly somebody would like to buy at some point we might think about making it declaring its surplus but i i think i would like to check with the town manager if he's had a chance to look at it think about it i don't think we
176should just react because somebody offers they want to buy it you know we as a board haven't really had a chance to analyze this and i don't believe the town manager or any of its staff have had much of a chance to to think about it so the last time i was on the site was probably close to 10 years ago that's kind of the background of it from my point of view um comments from board members jim um well i had a fun time wandering around there this afternoon um some some observations um the part that's at sort of at 301 itself uh has a sort of uh informal but well-developed uh small turnaround in it um it had a car a truck parked in it when i was there but there wasn't anybody
177in on the land so i think it's being probably being used informally by uh by some residents uh it's it's been collecting a fair amount of lawn clippings uh and trash over the years if you go in um it has a fabulous collection of garlic mustard which i resisted picking and it also has um an amazing collection of boulders it's it's it's sort of a wrap around site it it it goes in at what is notionally 301 but then it goes around uh two houses and then has another entrance uh way at the like where where arlington street kind of curves um so it's a very large site it's also next to another general municipal that site of extends that area between uh arlington and mass f um it looks like um sort of um
178it's a nice sort of play area or extra space for uh the residents there it's sort of like their big extended backyard i didn't see a lot of evidence of partying more just trash dumping so people are definitely wandering around there but i don't i don't know what they're doing there i also think that there's very little we don't really have a motive for adding additional um you know market rate residential housing there um so i i don't see any compelling motive to sell it at this time um the the gentleman i'm just blanking on on your name sir um who mike ewing mike ewing thank you yes i'm here i appreciate this and uh dean you did a really nice job of of uh selling down the the value of the real estate um
179i'll introduce myself and i'll tell you i'm i'm just a long time active resident i've been in town for 20 years i live in seven monroe and i would love to find a way to continue to stay in town in a much more modest and modern location close to west acton um i'm not a developer um i've walked the site and had the same reaction you did jim which is like it looks like someone's taken advantage of turning around in the in the property and dumping their their brush my intention would be to use what i see as the developer portion of the property which is that frontage on arlington street for a simple 2 500 square foot farmhouse very consistent with the neighborhood and develop one unit in that property in it in a
180way to have it you know a contextual be consistent proper development of that of that property and maintain the remainder of that location as open acreage for the you know the shade trees and all the other benefits that comes along with it so i don't come in with a an agenda other than to say i love this town i'd love to stay in town i'd love to find a way to do that in a much more modest modern way and and my ambition there is is just that so that's why i reached out and i appreciate you giving me the chance to to talk i think probably the best use of that location is for you know either continued uh non-use or a very simple use as i've described um as opposed to um you
181know a more dense uh potential use that that i know has been explored in the past senior center or other development like that david yeah i i you know said this before about other places in town i i really don't like you know when something just sits there and deteriorates you know i i i don't think that does anybody in town any favors and i would much rather have the site be used i would love to see us um declare it surplus um get whatever um maybe even on this at the annual town meeting get town meeting to uh uh allow us to um uh dispose of it how it makes sense and then ask people for proposals and see if we get a proposal we want to go with um so uh i mean
182i i agree with uh i think it was uh dean who said that that you know we don't necessarily want to take the the the first offer but i i think if this is just and i haven't i didn't get a chance yet to go buy this this property uh i i will do that but um uh you know if it's just sitting there i really i just kind of object to the you know letting that house just sit there until it falls in on itself and um so jim thank you dude just to clarify for david there's no house there currently oh okay i'm sorry then yeah it's just a piece of property yeah it's a piece of property it's growing uh a pine oak forest uh with some beaches in there as well
183well wouldn't so would there be um a gene i'd i'd like to uh to ask the town manager to evaluate it um have his folks take a look at it see if there's any possible use for it um i'm not opposed to uh to having it put on town meeting agenda uh to declare a surplus and to allow us to dispose of it just because town meeting gives us the rights i don't think we have to exercise those rights but you know from a timing point of view it might work out well i had not really thought of that until david brought that idea up um but i'd like to like to hear what the town manager might think about it john yeah yeah thank you uh for the opportunity we are we're heading into
184a pretty busy town meeting season and there are several projects that we're trying to advance and this one um hasn't been on the list until just a moment ago um so i don't know that we certainly will i'll do whatever i'm directed to do but i just wanted to mention that there are several other things that were um just barely keeping uh moving forward to get to this june 21st meeting but that said an authorization vote is simply an authorization vote and the board doesn't have to use that authorization if it doesn't want to any further comments david yeah i i wouldn't put this up at the top of the town manager's uh work list um but you know um uh you know maybe it's something we can think about over the next few minutes
185meetings and if it um fits and town staff gets a chance to look at it and you know i don't know where me or maybe it has to be done in a fall time meeting you know to determine whether it really has a potential use by the town hi jim um if the if if and when the manager and the staff do get a chance to take a look at it i'd encourage them to look comprehensively at both that parcel and the uh the general municipal parcel that's that's directly adjacent to okay mr ewing anything further i guess that's it thank you okay mr chair there is a request for public comment if you're taking it yes yes ma'am i believe this is tara you should be able to speak now tara please hi it's
186sarah thank you for letting me talk um would this require a tm post to a meeting vote well declared a surplus property yeah right so the way that we would dispose of a property like this is the board uh would have to declare it as surplus and and that could happen either before or after tom ying authorizes the board to dispose of it so the timing vote is required and in addition to attempting to vote the board needs to declare the property surplus does a town needing to clear the property surplus as well or just give us the authorization to sell it uh it gives you the authorization to sell it it's the board's uh decision whether it's surplus or not okay does the town meeting vote to give the select board that authority to
187dispose of surplus property happen every year is it in the charter or state law they well um there is a there is an article that provides for a normal tax title process to take place in the case of what we just discussed earlier tonight with 26 carlisle road where it's an rfp a special single authorization is required a straight tax title auction uh would not uh necessarily require that uh but you know if there's a specific question i can follow uh that's my that's my question and then i've got uh some comments here um i think it's about precedence to sell public land for residential building that both would increase cost to the town that's not affordable so public not a public necessity and then would probably be fired by gas if we care about
188our sustainability plan in the climate emergency i think it's an extra bad precedent to treatment as an asset to make money by clearing land and allowing more building for something that doesn't seem necessity we have no idea what the design would look like and no way to ensure that if it's an auction it would have to go to a highest price as there's no guarantee it would be one house a developer could come in and build whatever is allowed by it's owning if it's already open acreage and the channel can access it because it's public land it would then the public would lose that access i say we vote for continued unused but clean it up tell the neighbors that unless they clean it up it'll be sold and i'll bet you'll get cleaned up
189pretty fast okay thank you you'll leave the cleanup committee i'll i'll walk them around and give them flyers and say hey you guys gotta clean this up because it's gonna be on the auction block and they'll do it we'll count on you i will thank you all right well thank you any further comments from board members okay so um we're our last item of the consent items uh 12 acceptance of kelly's corner of right-of-way acquisitions at 247 and main street 13 approve executive session minutes march 15 2021. let's hold that please maybe executive session minutes yeah okay 14 uh declare town surplus equipment and materials department of public works and natural resources 15 committee appointment michaela moran associate member planning board a 16 one day alcoholic beverage license maria jairus stoschuk narrow park uh picnic
190pavilion june 13th 2021 uh 17 one day alcoholic beverage licensed deborah nolan narrow park picnic pavilion may 22 20 21 18 accept a gift recreation department for from seacrest and bloom to be used for constructing a dog park in acton 19 accept um uh gift recreation department for 65 gift basket from loyal companion to be used for constructing a dog park 20 accept gift recreation department for 42 dollars from the acting dog park committee fundraiser loyal companion to be used for constructing a dog park in acton 21 requests to dispose of obsolete items west acton citizens library um so do i have a motion to approve consent items and then 14 through 21 inclusive so move second okay um so no further discussion so if we may vote on that uh those consent items mr
191snyder grant aye ms gardner aye mr charter aye mr benson i and i say i said that's humanities okay jim for uh 13 approved executive session minutes march 15 2021. so um i was reading them and had a bunch of questions about the meanings of a couple of paragraphs and wrote about that to our clerk who uh david who started resolving the issues but it seemed like it would be more sensible to have a have a rewrite and a re-vote at a future meaning okay so we it could either be on the third or the 17th yeah okay so as soon as we get on it that's that's fine okay good so um with that that would conclude our business for the evening we meet again uh next uh monday night may 3rd at 7
19200 pm um so uh dean and john uh would you be available at four o'clock tomorrow for our uh agenda meeting to to square the four o'clock john does that work okay so um do i have a motion to adjourn thank you joan second champion sure nice taker okay um so david if you call the roll please mr peter grant aye ms gardner aye mr charter aye mr benson i and i say i as well okay thank you all good evening good night