001citizen concerns david is there anyone there there are a couple people with their hands up sure calling user please go ahead hi this is chair from west jackson i have a question and a concern okay please um the question is about the thursday executive session and i looked at the weatherview properties and it looks like there are four because they have to be listed like street address but it's i think it's like 19 235 but if you look on the gis system 19-35 has four properties and i'm sure i would like to know um which property specifically will be discussed on thursday that's my question then i have a concern after that uh john i believe it's 19 and 35 but i that's a good question i'll just clarify that with how it's listed but
002it's not it's my understanding it's 19 and 35. thank you that's what i thought i'm in favor of buying all of them even if you know just if it's useful fertilizing would be great to me that the cash paid pays for itself in the long run and we need that to preserve those houses but uh my concern was um i was uh forwarded a copy of the slide from the dei the diversity and equity and inclusion training and i was very disappointed and concerned that it looked like there was a political agenda being um that the ddi training was being used to promote a political agenda regarding housing and development and i thought that was unfortunate and i'm very concerned about that i feel like dei should be about dei not about mixing up uh
003new building uh versus you know if it was with the hpp talking about what we agreed or at least the state approved and the board of selectmen degree would be a focus uh but below 50 000 um that would be um inclusive but if it's just about promoting a good you know like rezoning in general for market rate that to me is not inclusionary at all also just as a note um a couple of black leaders have people of color leaders of color have told me that they don't appreciate um diversity and inclusion uh conversations um being linked to anything suggesting that um black people you know connecting black people with poor people and so i would appreciate just the recognition of this concern thank you very much uh next uh participant yep uh linda
004vieira please go ahead yes sir could you give us an update on the open event of the zoom bomber and that's the point during the meeting yeah john will be giving an update during uh his uh manager's update no nobody else john okay so uh we could move to the chairs update mine is brief um we will be having a um an executive session a standalone executive session on uh on thursday march 4th at noon and our meeting if you i think we've all gotten noticed are our meeting on the 19th that's the third monday in april april 19th that's the patriots day holiday so that moving would be postponed uh until the following monday the 26th so with that um john for your manager's update please thank you um so tonight i'm looking forward
005to presenting the uh time manager's recommended budget and uh just to reinforce the amount of support and assistance i get from all the staff i just want to make sure i took an extra opportunity to thank everybody uh for helping prepare for tonight a lot of work went into it uh we it turns out we had an extra few months because of the wait time how many worked out uh but we've certainly been busy doing a lot of other things so i appreciate everyone's assistance and i look forward to discussing it with you in a few moments a couple of things happening next week uh we're issuing three rfps for this position of real property one is piper lane for piper lane which is the house we're going to put an rfp out there to
006see if things interested in relocating it to their property or to somewhere uh 26 carlisle we're going to put it on rfprc if anybody's interested in acquiring that uh for some use of private use and the third one is three school street which we discussed last week uh we're going to try and put that on again and see if more interest comes in this time uh the we've been working very closely with the water district and its development team on its solar project and we pretty much wrapped up the process of putting together a pilot which i'm very pleased to report i want to thank cycling snyder grant for uh supporting uh those efforts and helping as the water district uh we uh came to an agreement i think makes sense for this project and
007also makes sense for projects that may come along later um so i'm excited uh that that they're supposed to be getting uh started before june or in june as early as june they could be breaking ground or putting things on ground i don't know if they're actually digging uh for solar um so that's exciting and then the third item is at the last meeting during open comments and just a few moments ago during open comments people asked for an update on the police investigation uh related to the zoom uh incidents at the school committee beings that happened last year the update is this uh there is no update to the investigation and because of a juvenile being involved there is very little that can and will be released i can understand that that may not
008um satisfy everybody's uh what they're looking for but that's the update um thank you thank you thank you john david i just wanted to ask um um the manager if uh uh they thought about reopening the the walk-up windows at town hall and i'll let the covid numbers appear to be getting a little bit better we will i look forward to talking with you about that during the question of the program but the answer to that is yes uh any other questions for john so then if you could go into members minutes uh jim um i don't have anything this week okay uh joan well one of our goals was the west acton citizens library and i think john will mention this but both boards have indicated that west acton will have access to minuteman
009library under the wing of the acton memorial library good um um david yeah i just wanted to say that a couple of weeks ago the superintendent announced that they've hired a principal for the high school um uh a woman named joni dean um and she starts at the beginning of the fiscal year on july 1st thank you dean nothing for me thank you okay [Music] we can't hear you oh i'm sorry um so first item under new business special business uh the covet 19 response updates john please uh yes thank you so as mentioned earlier uh the pandemic uh cases have been the coven 19 cases in the community have started to see a decline which is great great to see more and more people are being vaccinated and uh last week the governor announced
010some changes to how things are going to go in terms of the state reopening i think as of today certain capacity limits were increased uh in restaurants and in other venues and we have full details about that information on our website and the mass.gov puts out information daily on that we've also been continuing to work on vaccinations we've now done two we've completed two clinics and so as a result we're now getting the second doses for those clinics so we just are about to receive 100 doses for the second shots for the february 4th clinic where we did in partnership with the housing authority and we'll be getting more for that purpose as well we're working with many other communities in our region to try to form a collaborative to try to access more vaccines
011uh we submitted a request to the secretary uh and to the governor's office last week and uh we will let you know if uh if we hear back and if we're able to move forward on that otherwise we're going to continue to work on targeting uh populations in town that don't have access to vaccine otherwise we're going to partner with the acting housing authority to do another clinic there because the state recently announced that all residents at those facilities and staff at those facilities are eligible so that's a niche that we can fill uh while we continue to advocate for getting more for more of us so that's good news uh in terms of reopening you know this the state announced that they want schools to reopen in in a much more significant way in
012april and you know as an organization we've been starting talking about the same thing you know we would take it in a phased approach and a lot of things that we'll do or what we had implemented over the summer here when when the numbers are low again so things such as browsing in the library we'll look to start that probably uh around the end of march uh once we get that uh sorted out uh we're gonna do the take out windows again in behind uh for the land use and finance that probably won't be until mid to late march uh we want to get a couple more weeks behind us and also hopefully we'll get a little bit warmer for the windows to be open like that and the staff to sit there but we
013continue to service people that come to the building and meet them in the parking lot every day so it's worked out pretty well other items uh in terms of 30 sudbury and our human services operations over there the senior center i think we're really looking at a much more gradual approach the social service providers over there will probably start doing appointments only you know in march and april uh veterans laura ducharme um heather uh nursing services will will maybe do some more appointments on a case-by-case basis depending on what it is and then we're going to just gradually look at what the data says and what we feel comfortable with but as of right now you know i think we would be added on the board meeting uh before you before anything substantial changes uh
014or whether we're proposing to change anything substantial uh just to give you a quick update on the actual case numbers uh which i try to do at all these meetings uh we have uh we're in the 20s um 22 which is good news how many cases total since last march and and you said that um we'll be getting second doses for the two clinics and then was there an additional round of doses that we'd be getting for certain uh that hasn't been um finalized we've asked for it and we're collaborating with housing authority but we've we've learned not to announce anything until we have it you know in the fridge because there's so many variables that we don't want we don't want to um create expectations that aren't sure so that's the covert update generally
015uh any questions or comments questions or comments from from board members okay is there anything from the public on john's coven update no hands faced okay i'll have one short thing sure um we had a request from franny osmond that every so often we just let people know how many people are here at the meeting to recreate some of that sense of when we were all up in room 204 so i'm happy to say that there are 25 attendees at this meeting okay so um the the next item would be the vote to vote on the award bond bid for 14 million 795 000 dollars uh john so on friday we announced that uh s p reaffirmed our aaa bond rating which as you know helps us to secure very low interest rates when we
016go out to the market to issue bet and uh this morning we issued a very large uh borrowing and we as a result i think bill gray said we will see for excellent uh the work that we have to do the board has to do is to consider voting to um formalize the paperwork and steve barrett is here to leave all the particulars but again this is really good news uh we were budgeting a certain amount for for the debt service for the fire station and for some of the other projects and this interest rate uh is really going to help us because it came in below what we had been projecting so steve barrett i believe that you are in here somewhere there you are i see dismuted oh hi can everyone hear me
017yes we can uh thank you very much mr manager uh mr chairman board members uh it's really good to see you um as john said uh we floated uh a big bond issue and just to back you up a little bit um this is the bond issue that we had in line for last march on the pandemic hit the uh us bond markets were highly volatile and subject to change we were advised by our financial advisor to secure a short-term bond for a period of time and then try again and i'm happy to report that interesting enough the uh the rates we received on this bond were lower than i think we would have gotten last march you know at the end of the day it's almost a 15 million dollar bond issue it was
018broken up into a couple of pieces uh you know the main reason why we did that was one of the borrowings was for 19-21 maple street um you know municipal debt has to be used for municipal purposes not the kind of private gain for the municipalities um but there is a section of the law where we can issue tax-exempt debt on the kind of private activity rules and the way we looked at it is that 1921 maple street site um you know it's a very attractive very interesting site and you know in terms of the town's uses there um our ability to use the area or at least it is a coffee shop or some private activity you know we wanted to kind of give the town a little bit extra room uh in terms
019of purposes so we kind of split the bond issue out it gets a little bit into the weeds but um you know the primary uh purpose was for the north acting fire station that was you know probably 75 80 percent of the tire bond there was also some fire equipment some sidewalks and street improvements so um as john said we uh we went at it again we went through the whole process the rating process uh the aaa was reaffirmed um so we've loaded the debt and and so actually sold the debt this morning and i'm uh extremely happy to report that you know on the series a which is uh the majority of the bond the total kind of net interest cost was 1.87 you know there's different pieces in there but you know it
020kind of works like the financial advisor wants you to budget for four to five percent but you know at the end of the day we knew we could do better and as john said this is really good news for us um you know the issue is and i think i'm not sure some of the board members there's a lot of signatures that are needed one vote tonight that's needed in public session after tonight on wednesday the plan is for the bond council folks to actually hand deliver a bunch of other documents that myself and at least the majority of the board will be required to sign but those aren't in you know public session so what i need tonight is a vote and the vote is uh almost as long as maybe the budget you're
021gonna see tonight so with that i'll i'll get out of the way and if there's any questions i'll take them but this is a really good rate for our debt um the bond markets can get a little quirky and you know we're real happy to place this debt it's a real win for the town and um that's about all i have and if there's any questions uh i'd be more than happy to take it yes steve hold on are there any questions for steve jim um i know i should understand this so let's pretend that i do and i'm just asking this so that other people can find out um so i know that we have a debt override that we've passed uh both that town meeting and on the ballot box that allows us
022to you know raise our levy beyond um you know beyond the normal limits of the two and a half percent and now we've got a situation in which we're borrowing at more favorable rates than we were than we budgeted and what i'm not understanding is does that how does that impact um either our our our future budgets or our future uh thinking about uh our tax levy um what can you help me understand this steve yeah absolutely absolutely jim that's a great question so you know for the for the board the board and some of the people in the audience you know excluded that is a one-time addition to the levy over a period of time a certain debt so to your question jim i think the alg plan was carrying a three percent you
023know average rate for the north active fire station debt and in the alg plan it's shown as its own revenue source and its own expenditure source and and with excluded debt um if the number comes down basically what happens is the increase in the tax bill or the expected increase in the tax bill comes down so there's not really an impact on the budget but there is going to be a pretty good impact on the alg plan and it's going to pull down the um the estimated increase uh things have been kind of happening late in the day today i don't have the exact decrease for the alg plan i'll join mandrel you'll be and i will be working through that tomorrow and getting ready for alg thursday but in essence uh this will take
024the alg plan excluded the debt numbers for the fire station and substantially decrease them which will decrease the impact on the tax bill that's great thank you so much anyone else so um steve we were anticipating the debt on the fire station will be about three percent is that correct it is sorry and it came out the you said the the net of it is one point eight seven percent so when you said there were there were three different uh pieces to this are they all at one point eight seven percent well that no at this point yeah at this point you've stepped into the weeds a little bit you know there's some there's some uh shorter term debt in there but at the end of the day we we can say that on the
025fire station debt um that number three one point eight seven is going to be a good number that we can apply okay and and that and the fire station did was it was almost 10 million dollars in the entire blind issue okay uh um but there there's is is the one is the we'll be voting on a on a on a bill that's is it uh 12 million 985 000 yeah that's a great question and it once again it gets a little in the weeds but here's what happens in the bond market um acting has very favorable debt um you know these coupons range between two and four or five percent and basically when uh we got the call today on the bonds the bonds kind of spun about a almost an eight or nine
026hundred thousand dollar premium now the way state law works we could have had a bond at a higher interest rate and pulled in close to a million dollars in cash to be used as a premium john and i had talked over the last few months and you know my recommendation and john agreed was no let's buy down you know they call it resizing a bond issue so exactly at the time when the bonds when they called in their own results uh our financial advisor basically worked with the underwriter and the waiting bidder to say hey you know what we we're not going to borrow the on series 8 13.695 million chop it off pay it down and let's let's you know let's buy that interest rate down so that's essentially what happened and that's why
027even though the series a bond issue paramount was 13.695 million the vote on the series a is for 12 million 985 there's a difference of about 710 000. our premium i think was about 850 it was 860. they could only resize so much with the underwriters and you know and the different you know the bidders so they applied 710 000 of that premium to buy down that rate and um that's where we ended up with the 187 i think we'll still have maybe 100 150 000 a premium that will be used for bond issuance cost and down the road we can we can use that premium to offset other things that was the most that they could kind of size up with the bond issue but that's a great question and that's why the vote
028amount doesn't hit that power amount we told the financial advisor to pay down or resize that debt which essentially also brings the rate down okay jim um so we have this wonderful memo that's multiple pages and i would be happy to make a motion uh if someone could point me at which part of this multi-page document is the motion that should be made to me don't we have to vote on a number take a number of votes tonight it looks like well it is mr chairman and jim there's a vote of the voter selectmen uh which as jim says it's four pages long um i believe it has to be read i think you can point to the the power amounts and the dollar amounts as in the you know as in the document but
029i actually need unfortunately somebody from the board to uh read uh you know the clerk of the board of selectmen to read this vote all the way through and then vote on it but that that would be just one vote we need um and i believe you have that okay we have that document so what you're saying is uh uh david his clerk would need to read the four pages and then we can vote on it as a whole is that correct it is and that's the that's how that's how they make us do it that's fine i can read it quickly there is one hand up also john sure okay uh please uh tara please go ahead this is actually answered my question over email while he was talking if you can believe that
030that's what i'm working on but i'll ask you again anyway just for the best of anybody who cares um so first of all congratulations thank you uh and uh the question is what about the school debt and what about land buying land and housing trust etc can we get this kind of rate for other things that we might like to invest in our community thank you um steve yeah so you know school debt other than i you know in terms of the school debt i believe they issued debt last year about two weeks before we did they were able to get their debt issued i believe their total interest cost was two and an eighth two and a quarter percent so i believe we kind of came in under them um to your point about
031issuing debt sure if town meeting approves certain things you know we can go back to the market uh but they you know a town meeting approves all debt but it was a very good sale today so better than it would have been a year ago yeah it's yours yeah the um you know i think i think a year ago i was we were hoping at two and a quarter uh mr chairman um you know somewhere around that i think that's where the school ended up settling on on their uh debt issue but um this is this is pretty good news right now is real good news uh it's gonna help bring down uh the expected increase in the tax bill and you know it finalizes a you know two or three year odyssey for us
032where we had had some short-term we had some bonding authorizations or small amounts but we were waiting for a companion offering and then we got the size of the north acting fire station it was time to strike and again we were we were held at the gate for a year but a year later we we did just fine okay so so basically in in in in summary fashion the um um 14 million 795 000 that we're voting on tonight um consists in in one um long the the north acting fire station um um sidewalk um improvements um and fire equipment yeah absolutely mr kim it was um you know there's a few things in there there was the fire station there was some land acquisition for piper lane in kelly's corner there was a some
033fire apparatus street walk side improvements some kelly's corner design the hvac system uh for one of the fire stations and um some traffic design that was the 13.695 the other series was the 1.1 million for the 19-21 maple street land acquisition okay so there was additional so the other there were short-term borrowings that were rolled over into this yeah we had you know we received authorization of town meeting tomorrow we were advised that we needed some bandwidth some power amount to bring to the bond market if we wanted to get some rate so we kind of accumulated you know some some authorizations and then the fire station authorization allowed us to go to the bond market you know it they they you know these big shops that buy the debt they have to then go
034package it and resell it to consumers so it's tough to go out to the bond market for half a million or a million dollars i know that sounds strange but you know this the commonwealth offers a program state house no program but they affix a five percent rate to it so if we wanted to pay five percent we could have done that over the life of the bonds but we believed it was better and you know john was instrumental in this we we believed it was better to hold on and you know when we got the fire station that that was the real thing that made this go and uh here we are so it's so so it's 75 it was the fire station there were sidewalk improvements fire equipment there was a piece on
035kelly's corner and and what else no that was about it and it was yeah yeah there's you know six or seven items but you hit on all of them fire station you know piper lane kelly's corner uh there was two pieces of fire apparatus sidewalk and street improvements so you know there was you know a few things in there but again we cobbled them all together we we grabbed our bandwidth and then uh with john manderai's health we got to the markets we secured our triple a and um you know we carried it we carried the day right that's great so um we'll have david read the three and a half pages and then we'll take a vote ready evan yeah i'm i'm ready just one clarification steve do you want me to read the
036numbers or not you know i i don't think you have to read the dollar amounts in those amounts i think i would reference you know as stated in the in the vote of the board as follows and but i would read i would just read the words okay i'm happy to read the numbers if it's a legal requirement okay um i the clerk of the board of selectmen of the town of acton massachusetts the town certified at this meeting of the board held march 1st 2021 of which all members of the board were duly notified and at which a quorum was present the following votes were unanimously passed all of which appear on the official record of the board in my custody voted that the sale of the twelve thousand twelve million nine hundred eighty
037five thousand general obligation municipal purpose loan of 2021 bond series a of the town dated march 15 2021 the series a bonds to robert w baird and company inc at the price of 13 million eight hundred twenty one thousand four hundred and thirty and uh dollars and fourteen cents and accrued interest and he is hereby approved and confirmed the bond shall be payable on march fifteenth of the years and in the principal amounts and bear interest at the respective rates as shown in the document further voted that the series a bonds maturing on march 15 2041 march 15 2046 and march 15 2050 each a series a term bond shall be subject to mandatory redemption as mandatory redemption will mature as follows series a term bonds due march 15 uh in 2040 390 000 in
0382041 395 000. series a term bond due march 15 2046 in 2042 380 000 eighty 2043 thousand twenty forty four four hundred thousand twenty forty five four hundred and five thousand and twenty forty six four hundred and fifteen thousand series a term bonds due march fifteenth twenty fifty in 2047 420 000 2048 395 000 2049 405 000 2050 415 000. further voted that the sale of the 1 million 100 000 dollar general obligation land acquisition bond series b of the town dated march 15 21 to 2021 the series b bonds and together with the series a bonds called the bonds to fidelity capital markets at the price of one million one hundred and twenty nine thousand five hundred and seventy four dollars and twenty cents an accrued interest if any is hereby approved and confirmed
039the bond shall be payable on march fifteenth of the following years and then the principal amounts and bear interest at the respective rates as follows as as shown in the document for further voted the series b bonds maturing on march 15 march 15 2034 and march 15th march 14th 2037 and march 15th 2040 each a term bond shall be subject to mandatory redemption or mature as follows series b term bond due march 15 2031 in 2030 thousand dollars and twenty thirty one sixty thousand dollars series b bond uh series b term bond to march fifteenth twenty thirty four uh in twenty thirty two sixty thousand dollars in twenty thirty three fifty five thousand dollars in twenty thirty four fifty five thousand dollars series b term bond to march fifteenth um twenty thirty seven uh in
040twenty thirty five fifty five thousand dollars in twenty thirty six fifty five thousand dollars in twenty thirty seven fifty 55 000 series b term bond due march 15th uh 2040 uh in 2038 55 000 in 2039 55 000 in 20 40 thousand dollars further voted that in in connection with the marketing and sale of the bonds the preparation and distribution of a notice of sale and preliminary official statement dated february 22nd 21 2021 and a final official statement dated march 1st 2021 the official statement each in such form may be approved by the town treasurer and be hereby and hereby are ratified confirmed approved and adopted further voted that the bond shall be subject to redemption at the option of the town upon the such terms and conditions as set forth in the official statement
041further voted that the town treasurer and the board of selectmen be and are hereby authorized to execute and deliver a continuing disclosure undertaking in compliance with sec rule 15c 2-12 in such form as may be approved by the bond council to be to the town well which undertaking shall be incorporated by reference in the bonds for the benefit of the holders of the bonds from time to time further voted that we authorize and direct the town treasurer to establish post issuance federal tax compliance procedures in such forms as the town treasurer and the bond council deem sufficient or if such procedures are currently in place to review and update said procedures in order to monitor and maintain the tax exempt status of the bonds further voted that each member of the board of selectmen the
042town clerk and the town treasurer are hereby authorized to take any and all such actions and execute and deliver such certificates receipts or other documents that may be uh determined by them or any of them to be necessary or convenient to carry into effect the provisions of the foregoing votes i further certify that the votes take it votes were taken at a meeting open to the public and that no vote was taken by secret ballot that a notice stating the place or method of asset ascent assessing date and time and agenda for the meeting which agenda included the adoption of the votes above votes was filed with a town clerk and a copy thereof posted in a manner conspicuously visible to the public at all hours or on the municipal building at which the office
043of the town clerk is located or if applicable in accordance with an alternative method of notice prescribed or approved by the attorney general i set forth in 940 cmr 29.032b at least 48 hours not including saturdays and sundays and legal holidays prior to the time of the meeting and remained so posted at the time of the meeting and that no deliberations or decisions in connection with the sale of the bonds were taken in an executive session all all in accordance with uh general laws c 30 a 18 to 25 as amended and in accordance with the governor's emergency order dated march 12 2020 authorizing remote meetings during the kobe 19 related state of emergency if applicable thank you very much second okay i think we need a motion too we need we need a motion
044do we need to move each of these votes separately or can we move to all the votes as they did we've said we could we could vote them all as one so i think i think someone needs to to move to to take uh uh all the votes as i just read yeah uh i would like to move that we take all the votes as just read second is there a second okay is there any further discussion i just want to say that was really powerful magic spell that you just read david uh i'm not sure what exactly what it meant but it had it reverberated a lot it was clearly very a very effective and important spell but you missed him over a beer from rapscallion but you missed the second page and you
045want me to read it again okay so um david if you um with enough energy call the role please sure uh mr snyder grant aye ms gardner hi mr charter aye mr benson hi and i also say i so we approve those uh bond issuances unanimously um john when would you like us to come by and um and make the necessary signings so we'll be in touch with you when the documents are prepared uh i think it might be wednesday okay thank you very much board members thank you for the good very good work this job our next item is the presentation of the manager's proposed fy 22 budget and capital plan john hi um so can uh people hear me yeah all right good so i'm very excited to present this budget here this
046evening i mentioned earlier that uh preparing this budget was uh unique in that we were doing in the middle of a pandemic uh and we've done it sort of in a different process than normally we would but i'm really happy with what i think we're going to be presenting tonight and i really appreciate all the work that everyone did to help me get here across the organization the departments divisions staff in my office everyone's really been tremendous so it's been a great effort and um so the time manager's budget is a big deal it's one of the most important things i do and the first three times i've done it or maybe two all the previous times i've done it i've done it in the town meeting uh group 204 so i wanted to make
047sure that i kept that tradition so i'm here back in 204 i hope to see you all here again soon uh but i'm here tonight and uh it's nice to be back so another thing that i wanted to do and i asked the chair if it was okay is i have a lot of information to share with you about the budget and this is going to be the most content you've probably ever seen for an annual budget request and capital plan there's hundreds of pages of content and data and we're really excited to show it all to you but i think it's really important to take just take a moment and recognize all the work that we did this year leading up to this point and so it won't take long i promise but i
048just wanted to go through a couple images to take us back and again the pandemic isn't over we're certainly working very hard that you know vaccines are are just starting to uh work out for everybody but since this is a milestone i wanted to just mark it with with some reflection so i appreciate you giving me the opportunity um so you know one thing that we did uh throughout this pandemic is we found new ways to connect with people whether it's science that uh core york and a team of others put together and posted all over town to help run with people be safe or our social media campaigns to try to get people to wear masks we continue to find new ways to to do that uh you know our our employees uh we're
049out there out and about this is police officers meeting with the local business the one on the right is the fire department supporting the acton-boxborough seniors on their graduation their rolling rally graduation day so this is a vaccine clinic one of the few that we've held that were very successful our deputy chief and one of our nurses this is just some interactions we've had you know a lot of stuff in cars and outside uh helping people with drive-bys at the senior center helping different people in different parts of town another vaccine clinic a lot of team team members helped dealt with these clinics we had a huge response when we asked for help and it's been going really well and we hope to continue to do those we provided services differently with buildings closed we
050had to innovate and find new ways so we put some jersey barriers out so and uh some tents and we put people outside and provided customer service outside when it got too cold we moved inside to the windows and then as i mentioned since it's been frigid we've been meeting just meeting people periodically in the parking lot we'll continue to innovate uh we've you know a lot of different things just some imagery there's uh uh joan uh select selectmen gardner with uh doing the lottery for the small business uh grants uh that's one of the some of the gear that we got for our fire department to keep them safe and you know a lot of work we did with with different people uh the elections were a huge deal uh running an election as
051you know is a complicated and there's a lot of logistics running an election during a pandemic is so much more and so eva and her team and austin and gail and kristen alexander all the people that helped uh those things go smoothly it was all staff i mean we had a lot of great senior workers that were able to come out um who always do and we appreciate that they stuck with us but a lot of a lot of people weren't able to do it a lot of election workers weren't able to join us because of the pandemic and we had a lot of staff stepped in so it was really exciting to see again we this there was three elections so this was the the first one i showed was the presidential this is
052the presidential primary we also did in-person voting which was a huge task that took a lot of people and a lot of effort uh this was town meeting uh this was the second outdoor town meeting that we held in september and um you know these are pictures that i think we'll look at someday and it'll it'll really be it'll mean something special so i want to include some of these in this budget uh because it was a special time and i think we got a lot accomplished considering what we were the environment that we were working within this was the first meeting the delayed annual meeting that we held in june that was another inside outside this is the inside portion where you can see a few people were in there and this was the
053outside portion uh that day it was it was if you remember it was going to start to rain and we were getting worried that we would have to uh do something and fortunately the rain helped out or maybe it just drizzled a little bit and we tough through it another election again people working trying to make people safe and have the ability to vote and exercise their rights to vote we put signs up in every language to try to tell people that the building flows and direct them to resources we launched a hotline which was very successful in communicating to our residents and giving them support and assistance this is going way back to the last time the board was in this building as a group this is one of the last meetings that we
054held in here where the board declared a state of emergency retroactively and i think this is the a couple days earlier when we held the joint meeting with the board of health and and the board of selectmen to sort of sort this out i think the date was march 16th so it was right right in the middle of all this and you know we had some staff meetings this is when we were still meeting in carson without masks uh we had a great planning session with staff and and boxborough and active oxford regional school district so just a little refraction a little reflection of all the work that we did and it's not over um that that line graph is still uh going and we need to be you know careful and thoughtful about our
055residents and help help them get safe and vaccinated but i just wanted to take a minute to reflect on some of the great work that we've done in addition to this uh budget that i'm about to present so um on to the budget um actually not quite onto the budget uh one other thing i wanted to mention is that we did a lot to support businesses i think well we're very proud that we won the award this year from mass municipal for innovating and uh helping small businesses through some of our programs one thing i hope that everybody has the opportunity to check out is the video tour that we posted on our website uh this there's a little icon on the bottom here this is acting video tour that's right on our home page
056and if you click on it you can see different uh scenes in acting and different people in acting talking so it's really worth checking out so a lot of big events happened over the last year uh we did the ground breaking for the north acting fire station this is a project that's been contemplated for decades and we're very excited to to break ground on it and get started and if you've driven by lately you'll see that it's certainly underway uh so we had a great ceremony that day we did it safely we had town officials we had state officials we had former a former chief uh craig was there uh which was great to see uh we did we did a formal groundbreaking toss the dirt with a lot of people so it was a
057lot of fun and it was a great milestone and we're excited to celebrate uh with all of you ace of pilot house this is one of my favorite projects so i can't have a presentation without mentioning it but if you look very closely at this picture it's a before and after on the left is what it looked like a year ago and on the right is what it looks like now we've completed the selective demolition of that building and now we're very actively involved in the reuse planning it will be coming to the border selection this spring with some ideas on how to use that space as an amenity for the community and for the complex of the town hall and the library and everyone else that's here every day so some other recent highlights
058as we just discussed uh our aaa ratings were reaffirmed which is a big deal as you can see it led to some significantly uh lower uh interest rates uh we received a 2.75 million dollar grant from massworks which is something we've actually been applying for for three years so i'm really excited that we're successful this year uh we supported our residents in businesses through the pandemic we held elections uh we did some sidewalk work this is a section of great road that people are very excited to see built and we're working on other sections of great road and other places in town uh as we speak our police department achieved a very high honor a few weeks ago actually they received accreditation which is a very high standard of um professional conduct and policies that
059they uh have proved to this accrediting agency that that they meet the marks for so it's really exciting that they've they're very professional department and this is just another example of how we have a very professional department we acquired new open space on piper lane which was a town meeting vote last year we hired our first sustainability director which is a big deal she's already doing a ton of great work with uh i'm sure she's already talked to many of you about projects that we're working on it's great to have that resource here in town hall 1921 maple street that's a building that we acquired next to the train station we had a very impressive presentation from our consultants last week about some ideas that we have for how to reuse that building to maximize
060parking and then provide further creative use in the the main building so we look forward to talking to the border socket about that this spring as well and uh austin signowitz took the lead on an auction and we sold all kinds of old equipment uh from the public works yard and we generated more than 75 000 in a year that uh we needed revenue so that was huge and it cleaned up the yards over in dpw which was great so every year when we developed the budget one of the key guiding documents is the border selection goals and you know these are the goals i'm sure you all remember the short we have uh with 11 short-term goals and eight long-term goals and and when we develop the budget we send it out to all
061departments and say you know as you're preparing your budget requests make sure you're addressing these goals and they did a great job in doing that we have requests that i'll be talking about later that i think address most of the goals and i look forward to talking more about it with you one thing that happened this year is that we had this revenue come in from the federal government through the cares program and that allowed us to uh slow down you know right when this happened we took measures when the pandemic started just just under a year ago we put a spending freezing and a hiring freeze because we thought we would have to spend all of our money on all the things related to kobe 19. fortunately what happened was this this funding came
062in and all the expenses we had that were related to coven 19 we were able to utilize this funding to cover them which allowed us to maintain capacity in our operating budget and have a substantial turn back last year and all the expenses that we're incurring this year uh are going to be treated the same way and so as you can see on this table we received just over 2 million and we have about 490 000 remaining uh this year which we have until the end of the summer to spend that and it sounds like a lot of money but it's not because there's a lot of expenses that related to testing and vaccination and everything else that we'll be doing over the next uh nine months or so that this will be important resource
063for us to have to continue to provide relief from our operating budget so as i mentioned in the budget development process we look to address border selection goals we ask the departments to work on a long-term capital needs assessment uh targeting investments on things that help this better leverage coordination that we try to establish within the departments and several other um goals that the departments were given as they developed their budgets and you know as we worked on it there were challenges you know we had the pandemic and the concerns about what it may do to our revenues and our economic uncertainty uh the middlesex county pension assessment that continues to uh accelerate in the assessments we get this year this year it went up 8 which is almost is 367 000 which is a
064lot that's a lot um relative to our entire budget so that that's something that we have to work around we have a dam on the river street property that we're trying to use grant funding to help address but that is always a looming concern that if we're not successful getting grants we'll have to find ways to fund the what's needed there we have a few collective bargaining agreements that are not settled um the issue with the delay in issuing the debt actually worked out in our favor as steve just mentioned uh but certainly we didn't know that until today and so that's something that we were concerned about and that turned out pretty well um so i'm really excited to announce 10 10 um priorities that the fy 22 budget is going to address through
065investments we're going to invest in resources to support diversity equity inclusion efforts we're going to support the kelly's corner project by funding the pedestrian light poles we're going to continue to support sustainability initiatives to address our climate emergency we're going to add resources to the police department to support mental health needs we're going to propose to do the construction of the town center um construction in the intersection and the triangle to to rework that with with what was proposed and discussed recently we're going to advance the process for designing a new public works facility or a renovated public works facility we're going to aggressively pursue tree planting and maintenance programs we're going to continue to target economic development we're going to work on that dam on the river street property and we're going to turn
066that property into a historic park and we're going to continue to invest in sidewalks and traffic calming initiatives so i i encourage you to dive into the budget document which we'll be publishing tonight or in the morning which goes into great detail on each of these items and then tonight i'm just going to go into a couple of summary of a few of them the first is equity inclusion so the border selectmen in august established an equity diversity equity inclusion commission and in november adopted a policy against racism in that policy it said that the town and its actions budgets and bylaws and policies and purchasing decisions will continue to consider and strive to advance diversity equity and inclusion so in the in the fy 22 budget we propose funding to implement any recommendations that
067come from this diversity commission and their i think their reports are expected this fall we're also going to do a needs assessment of our organization we know that there's a need for some type of diversity officer or diversity physician in the organization but we don't want to just hire somebody and plug them in we want to take some time figure out how it fits in how it should fit into our organizational structure in the way that makes the most sense so uh we're going to do that and then if that all works out we would move forward on a recruitment process so that's uh that's the the goal there uh the the amount that we're dedicating towards that effort is eighty five thousand dollars um with kelly's corner infrastructure project the final local investment that
068we'll need for this project is to pay for the light poles which are considered non-participating items by mass d.o.t the state is investing nearly 20 million to re do that entire stretch of actin uh which you're all familiar with the project but one key component to the aesthetic and the safety and the the functionality of this project is the pedestrian scale level light poles there's a rendering shown here that we're going to continue to work on better renderings to share with you but basically they they tie together the safety and needs and make it safer for pedestrians help with traffic calming for vehicles and so how we're proposing to pay for this is that we are proposing to borrow five hundred thousand dollars and we're proposing to re-appropriate some funding remaining from articles that were
069approved in prior years and one of the reasons that we have funding available from prior year approvals is that we worked very hard to get massdot to understand how committed we are to the project and as a result they actually agreed to cover a lot of design costs that we initially thought we were going to have to pay for so it was it was due to our hard work that we have this extra resource freed up and we'd like to reapply it to help invest in these light poles which are a critical part of kelly's corner plan and so as you know this project is scheduled to go with the bid this winter the very end of the year and they should have a contractor on board and started in early 2020 and so we
070need to tell the state whether we're in uh in terms of investing in these light poles or not so it's a it's an exciting project and look forward to talking more with the board about this the next item is sustainability as i mentioned we have a sustainability director and we're going to fund uh that position in the 22 budget in a more formal way we're going to invest in a fleet replacement program to get uh to sooner get to the point where we have an entirely electric and hybrid fleet we've been doing a pretty good job uh particularly in police where i believe more than 50 percent of their their patrol cruisers are hybrid now we want to bring the rest of the departments along and so we're going to invest money in that every
071year in your capital plan we're also going to transition all of our municipal electricity accounts to the apc 100 green option there's an incremental cost to this but we believe given the uh the climate emergency declared earlier i guess last year and the policy direction for the board as it relates to the environmental sustainability policy that uh this uh investment is consistent with both of those concepts we're also going to look at more ev charger infrastructure and we're use we're going to use sustainability funding as matching funds for grants another very important thing that sustainability funding will be used for is to cover the incremental costs that are necessary to help make normal decisions that we make normal purchasing decisions uh to cover any extra cost to make the environmentally friendly decision and that's an
072important component because we're always trying to maximize the funding that we have and if we have this resource to help make sure that sustainability practices are implemented in purchasing it i think it will go a long way mental health resources for the police department so i'm really excited to announce that working with chief boros and the leadership in the police department uh we have established a new liaison program this program uh the purpose of this program is to partner with outside organizations and become create a very close relationship with underserved communities and other uh groups and just be out there in the community it's basically take it's community policing but to a whole new level and really being out there and getting more people involved in matters that the police department is working on and
073we have the staffing already to accomplish that it's just going to require a little reorganization which which is described in more detail in the budget we're also going to put some more funding towards our jail diversion clinician and continue to support programs such as domestic violence services network and communities for restorative justice the thing that's interesting about the mental health needs of our community is that if you look at this chart the blue line graph or the blue line on this chart shows the number of physical arrests going back 10 years and over the last three or four years we started tracking section 12s which is basically when an individual needs to be taken into custody to be brought to the hospital because they they may harm themselves or others and if you look that
074we're actually doing just as many section 12 responses as we are normal physical arrest responses so it really speaks to the needs that we have in this community and i think in most communities to address mental health needs and to provide resources to do so another another investment that we're uh proposing is to to do the construction of the proposed plans that were um presented recently for atkins town center the big change here uh would be to make one way would make it one-way traffic on concord road to almost make it serve as a rotary at that portion uh so that people are going one way there and there will be some significant changes to the curb alignments at the newtown road and woodbury uh intersections to make it much safer if anybody's ever pulled
075out of newtown road they know why we're advancing this design forward because uh it's it's something that people have been looking for and um it was a water sliding goal to look at this so we're proposing to invest in it this year through borrowing uh the estimated cost is 886 000 we're proposing to borrow for that uh to pay for the cost we're also proposing economic development initiatives i already talked about kelly's corner but we're also working with the town of maynard on a corridor study for a part of my corridor and we're going to use massworks grant funding to help support complete streets improvements along that stretch of road in addition to the sewer work that we're doing for that project we're also going to invest in wayfinding to support local businesses uh during
076the kelly's corner project we you know understand that sometimes during major construction projects businesses are impacted so we're being proactive and we're developing plans to try to help our businesses and marketing uh campaigns and if you look at the bottom of this slide you know how a lot of times construction sites have fencing and they just have green screens on the fencing we're proposing to put some something like this uh to try to make people feel like um this is even though this is a construction area this is still a welcoming place and it's an exciting thing and get people to be excited about it during the construction process we're also going to work to invest twenty thousand dollars uh to support vacant storefronts and use that funding as matching to a state program that
077we've been trying to access for a few years and we're gonna continue to invest in sidewalks which have an economic development uh benefit trees trees we're gonna we're gonna um through the projects that are planned kelly's corner being a major one where there's 168 plus or thereabouts trees being proposed we're also over three years going to plant 25 trees as part of the historic streetscape program funded through the cpa funds we've also started an adopted tree program where we're projecting about eight trees that we've planted this year we've already received seven uh requests so we have one more if anybody's interested and also there's a proposed project to add a lot of trees to jones field to help with shading and other benefits of trees over there so i keep talking about the budget book
078i encourage you to check it out there's a lot of good stuff in here we've tried to add a lot of data in a lot of um context and details so that people that really want to dive in have the ability to do that so i i should i don't expect you to read this slide because it's very small but if you when you download the budget book um tomorrow morning you'll be able to look at all this stuff and we have revenue assumptions we have detailed information about our tax levy and how it's calculated and different financial metrics that we have published sort of in places but the goal here was to get them all in one place so that as you're reviewing the budget you can also look at some of the financial
079data that's associated with our budget and what we're proposing another feature is we've added a lot of detail to the org charts and to the ftes it's very important to me to be as transparent as possible in our budgets and this is just another example of adding a layer of transparency to the process data metrics i showed you the police metric earlier about trends in arrests and section 12s and that told the story and it helped us understand why investing in mental health needs is important and we've included data like this in all of our budgets and all of our departments so that if we're proposing things or if there's things that we're trying to explain this the data that we're presenting is just another way for us to explain it to our residents and
080help them understand the services that we're providing on an annual basis we've been very successful in getting grants in every department um we all work hard uh we have some good grant writing uh talents in the organization and we're actually now tracking it uh in a grant tracker which we've published in in the new budget which i look forward to uh checking out and then a big effort which i think if i could do it all over again i probably wouldn't do a 10-year capital plan at the same time as a budget during a pandemic but uh this year we're very excited to uh release our first 10-year capital improvement plan and it took a lot of work from a lot of people we were able to work with the consultant through a grant we
081received from the community compact program the biggest part of it was a capital needs assessment where each department had to submit all their needs for the next 10 years and then in this document we've included our investment strategy over 10 years we've created a sort of inventory and asset updates so people know what what assets we have what buildings we have what vehicles we have what parks we have so that when we're talking about new projects they can compare that to what we already have so it's a really useful document this year but i think it's going to be even more useful going forward as we as we continue to update it and add new information to it so in the 10 year capital plan we received 123 project requests which accounted for around 68
082million dollars across all funding sources over 10 years so this is just a pie chart to show you kind of the mix of where things were a lot of it was vehicles and equipment and facilities there was some i.t and some transportation items the recommended capital plan that i'm recommending to the town um you know is 75 million investment over 10 years and that's a that's a sticker shot so hold on a second uh a lot of that is funding from other sources uh for example 16 or 17 million of that is the kelly's corner project and how it's funded from the state and then a lot of other of the funding is grants and other sources that are not part of the general fund uh and so in 22 there's 20.6 million in projects
083again kelly's corner is a large component of that and massworks is also part of that but from the actual general fund there'll be an impact of just over 1.2 million and we're recommending that uh we appropriate from free cash 793 997 for capital projects and the the capital plan will be published tomorrow as well with the full details of everything that's in there so here's the the main slide the budget slide so i talked through some of the investments i talked through the capital uh what we're proposing to do this year is an overall spending package that's a 2.5 increase over last year and the way that breaks down is our municipal operations we are able to hold to a 2.82 increase and that was not as easy as as it sounds a lot of
084departments had to make a lot of hard choices and they were very accommodating and helped us get to a point where we could get the numbers down we also fine-tuned our subsidies a little bit [Music] we've been doing okay in our subsidies and and we re looked at some of the numbers and we made some changes and reorganizations in how we do transportation as a result we were able to reduce that one to reduce that number a little bit and as i mentioned the the capital request uh is 790 000. so in total um 337 million 786 832 which equates to a 2.5 increase over last year um and here is uh the meeting room that's been vacant waiting for all of us to come back this is what it looked like for the last
085year so i thank you for listening i look forward to your comments and feedbacks and so this is just the beginning um my presentation to the board tonight is the first look at the budget i look forward to having a dialogue with the board tonight and then the finance committee and everyone else leading up to the process that goes to town meeting and thank you thank you for listening thank you so much john um questions and comments from board members thank you that was excellent presentation i really appreciate it yes john if you could just send your the slideshow to us this evening is that possible yes yeah uh jim um sure um well i'm really looking forward to you know diving into the whole budget book and and developing some more specific questions but
086um just a couple that have occurred to me uh as listening to this um i'm i'm wondering whether we're planning uh any investment in developing our um our uh tourism it seems like there's a history tourism industry that you know was particularly big and conquered in lexington and it should be big and active i mean you know we're awesome too in exactly the same ways as they are so i was wondering if that was part of the um [Music] upcoming investments that's a great question and that's something that i'm pretty excited to try to get into that level of planning what uh there is a few projects historic wayfinding uh that we're working on and also i was trying to propose a arts plan to help incorporate public arts in the community uh funding didn't
087really work out for for that and when it comes to requests sometimes i take mine off before others but what we're gonna do is that all the projects that i just mentioned we're going to try to incorporate some of those components into them and uh continue to look for ways to address that idea that actually is a destination or and it will become more of a destination um as we continue to provide these great amenities great um thank you um one other question um just sort of looking forward in the planning with the police department um so you talked about you know another person who's going to be part of the jail diversion program i'm wondering if there's planning for changes or funding associated with um first responders for mental health situations uh it seems
088like there's a lot of cases where um having people show up who aren't police or don't dress like police uh can help with de-escalation significantly and i wondered if that was part of the conversation that's happening absolutely that's the goal of the liaison group is liaison is going to be those people that don't necessarily dress like police or if they do they they um act in a way that they try to be more involved in things that police aren't particularly involved in i guess is the best way to put it and just regards to the jail diversion clinician it's it's a it's pretty horrible name for a position if you ask me that's how i had to call it the person in that role is does a lot of important work and we're actually sharing
089her with five uh several communities and so what we're working on with chief burroughs is we've added some more funding to that to try to get more of her time or all of her time which may not be possible but that's the goal um because i think it's an important service there was a nice feature in the um local paper this week that talked about this very thing and the work that they're doing and we want it to continue thank you uh joan joan any questions um david no nothing for me i need to read the whole budget book first okay uh uh dean yeah same thing it's a lot of reading a lot of homework to do over the next couple of weeks not as much as john's done but one quick question with
090the uh it's a very modest increase you're looking at i mean this is really very reassuring and certainly should strike a nice bell with the taxpayers especially with the tough situation a lot of people are in right now uh are you included in that budget are you providing any new employees or new positions so the in terms of new employees i mean one position that was added in 21 will be formally part of the budget um so that's sort of a new position uh it's more funding towards a new position the other position that we're proposing is 85 000 for diversity resource but again that's proposed as a capital item not as part of an operating budget because we want to do some work to determine what makes sense um and how it makes sense
091and how it may fit in best since the organization we may find for some reason that there's other ways that we can do it but i think what we'd like to do is hear from the deic and any recommendations that come from that process hear what the board has to say about those recommendations and have a resource to be able to implement anything that requires funding from that process and then as a separate process i'd like to do some work with an outside group to look at our organization the way it's set up and the needs that we have associated with diversity equity inclusion and there are needs we've we've talked about them um in different ways and uh we'd like to have a formal sort of look at that and what's the best way
092to address them uh with adding a staff resource so that's that's the project so it's not necessarily an fte but it's it's a capital request that certainly would probably lead to one thank you uh while we're on the deic i just wanted to observe that i attended the uh and participated in the uh training program last friday with i think about 50 fellow staff members and board and committee members and it was really well done um i think you know i three hours went by very quickly and i think there's a lot of things that could be followed up on but i i want to compliment you on putting that together and what a nice job they did thank you yeah you know the training is uh is important and we need to do it
093every year and the thing that that i i'm going to say tomorrow night when i introduce it for the second time is that we all come to this in different from different places and in different levels of understanding and the purpose of these trainings is to try to elevate everybody from from where they were to uh just having more knowledge about it so some people don't need as much training as others uh or their experience but i think it's great to have this and get all together it's fun even though it's a virtual meeting it's nice to be with a big group of people uh and talk about important topics so thanks for the thanks for that feedback well i think you know it just to follow up a little more i think you know
094they covered a lot of good material and uh and made some very interesting points that connections that people probably hadn't made in the past and he did it in a very nice non-threatening manner so uh you know i think i was certainly impressed with what a nice job they did with it so congratulations thank you yes i i was there as well and i uh john i i thought the um two people who ran the program the co-leaders were just um you know excellent and uh you know made you know i think you know all of us feel at ease and comfortable and willing to share and speak with respect to the budget um you said there were heart choices that department heads had to make what items didn't make it into the budget uh
095sure you know the fire department for a few years now has been looking for ways to increase staffing to help respond to the needs of the community and again this year we weren't able to add any more staffing we're in a position now that we have vacancies that we're trying to fill so as much as i think we you know we hope to try to add staffing at some point in the future um i think it's most important to focus on getting our our existing vacancies filled up and we'll continue to work on ways to um to help in that area going forward other other budget and project requests a lot mostly project requests that um didn't didn't make uh the final cut and i can go into more detail on that um afterwards but
096i think overall the department's understood i mean think about it but we started in march with a spending freeze and a hiring freeze so when i went to the when i issued the guidance on how to bring back the budgets i think they were already in a frame of mind where they weren't asking for new things um because of what we were up against uh so i don't think i had to say no to as many things they would have otherwise in another year because i think our staff did a really good job of understanding the uh situation that we're in and knowing that we need to try to deliver a budget this year that that isn't too much for burden was the one new position we added for fy21 was that the sustainability director
097yes yeah okay okay so uh david yeah i um i just wanted to ask you know as as you you know there were some promotions and things this year as you backfill those and as you look over the overall responsibilities um are any reorganization of responsibilities covered in your budget book like if you decide to move the responsibility for a particular operation from one department to another or change how it's staffed or something like that are those covered in the budget book so in the budget book we covered a few that we've already implemented some some reorganizations and public works and facilities that we've implemented to try to better align the needs with the resources but we will certainly always we always look at what we need uh after there's a vacancy that occurs and
098there has been a few that just occurred recently with some promotions so we look closely at that we haven't developed plans and put them in this budget but there's something that we're working on actively and i'll certainly bring to the board anything that we decide to do and to make sure that everybody's comfortable but that is an opportunity that we have uh it's nice to have that opportunity when there's a vacancy and we can really take a second look and and make sure it's fitting in the right spot and maybe use that resource in other ways if it makes sense okay well thank you any other questions are there any audience questions or comments nobody has their hand up by john okay thank you john oh what one hand just went up it's true okay
099oh i'm sorry tom uh tom guess there was one issue that had come up um i think with cpc asked if the 25 thousand dollar co um matching contribution um from the uh from the town for the dog park to match the stanton grant um cpc didn't seem to want to cover that they were looking for it to come out of the uh the town budget is it would that be included in the town budget your proposed budget don't know development of this budget uh that was a cpc request and we were focusing on other priorities uh it's news to me that that's not um being considered any longer by cpc um we certainly will address the needs to uh fund that if we have to and we have time if we need to make
100any changes tom tom collapse replays who is chair of the dog park committee yeah tom you just have to on me yourself sorry yes thank you john oh please sure so um the cpc has a you know tough decision to make this year specifically around funds for the recreation projects and so their request that the town consider covering the 25k match came out of that you know uh challenge that they're facing uh so it wasn't a we will we won't sort of think it was just uh can we look around and make sure that um we can get as much done as possible through all mechanisms i hope that makes sense okay so are we clear are we clear then dean as our right well just last week we heard the last of the uh
101the applications uh next week we have our first session where we start really digging into the projects that sort of a plenary session and then the week after two weeks after that we'll stop doing a spreadsheet and start to allocate money so there's been as far as the virtues of any particular project other than the questions that are asked during the presentations there's been no discussion whatsoever um no consensus reached it you know just our general guidance is that you know we've got a there's a delta of about a million dollars between what was asked for and what we have to allocate so um we've asked everybody to go back and you know fine tooth comb your projects uh shock your pencil as much as possible and if you can find some other place to
102get the money why this is a good time to stop thinking about that but no decisions have been made well with respect to the dog park since we sent that up as our top recreation project um should we and we wish to continue to support it um is there an expectation that the 25 000 stanton match should be coming from town funds i don't you know i i think that was a a point that was raised by one or two members but um and i think cpc appreciates the guidance given by the board of selectmen but ultimately the members of cpc are going to make their own decisions on it so we certainly see putting on my hand as a cpc member we understand what your priorities are um and and we'll deal with it
103accordingly but as you know john from your tenure on it you never know what's going to come out of it that's fair especially when this the the asks are one million dollars more than the funds available to give out okay thank you so are there any other budget uh questions from the audience john thank you very much if you would just send along your slide presentation tonight to us thank you thank you i want to take that opportunity again to thank the finance team and all the department heads for all the help in the manager's office uh you'll see the amount of production that went into it um and i appreciate all their efforts we thank you and the team as well okay um john i think you're back out um discuss the proposal to
104connect the west back and citizens library to the minutemen network and required multi-party agreement i guess i'll stay standing um so uh earlier this week or i guess it was last week uh we met with the board of library trustees for the active award library to talk about the idea of the west acton uh citizens library uh accessing the vast resources available through the minuteman uh library network um and doing so through the moral library's existing relationship so you're most people are probably familiar with it but minuteman network gives us people enacting access to books all over the you know the boston metro area we can get stuff from the boston public library and all kinds of different libraries all over the place through this network and west saxon doesn't have the system's library does
105not have access to that network they have the 7 500 books or so that they have and they're good books but they don't have access to this network that provides presidents in west acton and residents generally with access to more materials in that historic library so the goal was to do that for west acton to get the patrons that go there they access that ability to those resources the problem is it's cost prohibitive uh for west acting library to go in by itself it was i think 26 000 and then it was going to be 10 or 11 000 a year which is a pretty big expense for a small library but if it goes in as um underneath the relationship the memorial library already has the costs go down significantly i think to um
106to 16 000 the first year and then 2500 or so annually so a significant savings to cost pay significant savings to taxpayers uh if we're able to use that partnership to get access to those books and resources and digital materials the good news is is that both the citizens library trustees and the memorial library trustees appeared to be in favor of the concept conceptually i think they are both going to take a formal vote when they have a chance to further review the actual agreement that's required but i think it's really good news in terms of providing resources to our residents and it's good news for the citizens library who i think during the pandemic they really understood the limitations that were present when they don't have access to that network so it's good news
107it's really just an update to the board to make sure you knew that those meetings happened and that they will be happening and that sometime this spring i will i will be a party to a multi-party agreement uh with the if if everybody agrees the trustees from the royal library the trustees from the citizens library and the minuteman agency and then the town manager was a fourth party so i guess i wanted to check in now to make sure that there wasn't going to be concerns with me doing that uh before we go too much further along so is it a sense you you you want our sense as to um whether we would support this new arrangement yes please okay so uh questions or comments from board members jim um no no questions uh
108just the comment that i think this is a great move it's been a while coming and i'm really glad that everyone's done all the work necessary to to make this happen dean speaking as a selectman as a former trustee of the west acting citizens library i think this is great um this has been something that has been in the works for for years something we've always wanted to do and uh and you know i'm glad that the parties all come together i'm 100 in favor of it oh joan yeah i sit as the selectmen liaison to both libraries and i'm very enthusiastic that everyone is on board with this i think it's an important addition to the town uh david yeah i i also think this is a great idea give the you know the
109you know a lot of people live within walking distance of the citizens library and now they can walk and get a book from cambridge and so i think it's great yeah i served as liaison my first year on the board and um it serves two elementary school library serves two elementary schools and three neighborhoods and uh you know the thing it was lacking was really access to the minutemen network and this is the most you know the best bang for the buck the discussion i had heard was it's it's like during the financial crisis a non-bank bank this is a non-branch brand so but let's yeah i think we're all but we're all behind it so please go forward thank you for that feedback i'll report back on progress it should be next month or
110i guess this month or early or early april thank you okay so um uh item seven for tonight and this is a uh dean asks that would be put on the menu that's the drive up window zoning bylaw proposal dean thank you um i really asked for this to be put down as a placeholder um i hope to get a meeting together with kristin gucciard and robert hunter from the planning department that's not going to happen for another couple of days so i don't actually have anything to report i have seen some emails going around that there might be some people that you know have might be attending the meeting tonight might want to make some statements or they might have emailed something to us so certainly we could consider that uh failing that if
111we could just put this on as a placeholder for our next meeting why that would be fine that would be march 15th yeah that would give you enough time yeah i mean really i have nothing to report at this point okay is there anyone in the audience who wishes to offer opinions or comments on me there are no hands up john okay thank you so um then um sorry jim i'm sorry update related to that um uh i was charged with reaching out to the west acton village merchants association so they've been notified that this is on our that we are considering this i you know reported out on the the last meeting so um and and some of them are you know preparing uh feedback okay that's good so we'll if you let us
112know dave we could put it on for the 15th when if you're ready when you're ready but then item eight would be discuss the zoning bylaw electric vehicle parking station requirement inside gym place okay so um i think the the the piece in the packet here came rather late so let me give a very brief intro and then i think we should probably i should probably share a screen of that of that document um the so we do have a long uh we have a goal of um supporting um increasing electric vehicle charging stations uh at commercial properties uh we had a a bylaw we had a warrant article ready for the 2020 uh springtown meeting and then yanked it when we were when the board was trying to figure out how to reduce the
113time that the the town meeting would take um so that that that warrant article is ready to go if we want to do it again um i did a little bit of research uh without you know without without you know bothering the planning department uh to try to see if there were additional things we might want to consider um i guess i would summarize it this way there are other uh zoning bylaws related to electric vehicle charging stations in other towns and other cities in massachusetts and in other states and some of them raise issues that um you know maybe maybe were or addressed or not in our warn articles there's some technical things that i might recommend the the planning department look into if they want to bring this back um and i think
114the other thing we heard and also saw in other bylaws was whether we wanted to increase the numbers um why don't i share my screen at this point and i can show you some of the numbers here um let's see i can share for you if you wish uh either way that's well why don't i do it because then i can go ahead that's fine control the you know where it comes out um okay so let's share that okay so is that showing up now yep yep okay so this part is the zoning bio law that we have ready last year article 27 um that basically said you know if you're if you're if it's a new if it's a major change to your parking area uh then this bylaw comes in into account or
115if you have 26 to 50 spaces you have to have one ev charging spot uh 50 to 100 spaces have two spots and an additional charging station for each 50 after that um the other towns have different requirements uh here's an example of where was this one this is from this is from vermont a vermont planning agency who were who were proposing that the percentages be a little bit higher than that except in industrial zones where it would only be one percent uh you know so you know uh you'd need a hundred spots to require one um but in particularly in multi-household residential settings you want a higher setting because uh the primary the primary way people will be charging their cars is not when they're out for you know a little bit of shopping
116but when they're at home uh you know once they're at home they typically want to be able to charge overnight so you might want to have higher difference higher numbers there the other distinction they make here that i think is we might want to consider if we decide to go ahead with this bylaw and we want to give some guidance to the planning department is that there might be a higher percentage of ev ready parking spot so that would be spots that are wired appropriate for future uh you know adding future state future charging stations and it's much cheaper to put in the electrical infrastructure to support um you know charging stations at the time of the construction of the parking lot rather than having to you know dig up a bunch of concrete so
117uh it's appropriate i think to have a slightly higher requirement for uh how um how many spots are ready for evs potentially in the future um the other thing that was relevant here was that we we had uh some discussion about um internal spots you know garage spots and um i didn't get a definitive answer with my research because i'm no zoning expert but it appeared that it was possible that those those kind of requirements would be part of the building code which is beyond the scope of what we can do in our own zoning bylaw i'm not sure that's true but that might be worth discussing um and let's see so to summarize i recommend that we ask the town manager to have a staff develop an ev charging station bylaw similar to the
118one we had before with these possible revisions um also a waiver process or a lowered requirement for ev charging stations um where all the units are below market rate this this for example would have an impact at the at the main street um at the main street development where it would be appropriate to have some charging stations available but we might not need as high a percentage a number as we would in other stations we don't want to add extra requirements onto affordable housing they might choose to have them but we don't want to force them to spend more money in a case where you know it's difficult enough to finance affordable housing where all the units are below market rate um we might want to consider an increase in the requirement for ev ready
119parking spots but especially for multi-family housing with parkings outside um there was some technical points above that i just would love to have the staff review those um and also verify that ev charging inside is is the province of the building code if it's not then let's consider adding ev ready requirements for indoor parking as well and also finally it would be helpful to have um to have the staff look at and and we as selectmen might have an opinion as well about whether this is better placed on the spring 2021 town meeting or some future town meeting such as a fall special technique okay jim thank you so what is it you would like us to do uh this evening um i'd like us to consider asking the town manager to have his staff
120develop an ev charging charging station bylaw um and uh if that if if the board is okay with that then there might be some additional feedback we might want to give them these points one through four that i can review on the uh in the in the document i wrote so we would have to do the process over again from where we were a year ago yeah if there's changes to the if there's changes to the bylaw then there would need to be a rehearing with the planning with the planning board because this was an article that we took off to make uh to make sure we fit the meeting into one night and we didn't bring it back in the fall i'm sorry thank you dean i i think it's i think it's a
121good idea i think there's some great points here but i i'm really skeptical that this is something to get turned around in time for the springtown meeting called the early summertown meeting um especially if there's got to be another hearing i think you know just looking at the drive up windows consideration i think that hearing is going to be held like into march or early april and i i think it's a great idea but i think you know i'd go for the future town meeting and actually have the thing done right rather than hurried up now david yeah i i agree with uh dean that um you know it makes sense to do it right and do it once instead of doing it and then changing it again in a future town meeting one of
122the things that i think is extremely important is to concentrate on residences um i'm not even sure if there should be um uh you know we should take away the uh the requirement for affordable units i mean uh in new car sales uh electric cars plug-in cars are approaching five percent of the market and that's only trending up um and um i believe something in the neighborhood of three-quarters of the charging is done at home and so to me much more important than having more char i don't object at all to more charges in shopping centers but but much more important to that is in um you know any any residential developments have access and i don't think you know that that vermont number i think you showed us in the document uh was was
123eight percent and i don't think that's a bad number by the time you know this got all into place i think uh we could be talking about eight percent of new car sales uh being plug-in cars so um uh and and you know general motors wants to go to a 100 in 15 years and so um and they sell a few cars each year so um uh you know i i think it the residences is extremely important and the building code i think um is also really important but i think that's a as you kind of indicate that's a completely separate effort i think that can be done with a local bylaw or building code change but um uh i don't think it's zoning right it's a it's a uh i think we can do
124that in a my understanding anyway is we can do that in a bylaw um but i mean i could be wrong but that was my understanding but i think it's a completely separate effort it's not part of the same warren article indeed yeah just to amplify what david said i think charlie baker has come up with a a push to uh not allow the sale of any new fossil fuel fired vehicles after i think it's 2035. so you know where when you think of how long this infrastructure is going to be in the ground um and you know people on the planning stages to get this stuff done i think you know it's it's important that that we make sure that this infrastructure is going to be there so let's do it right and i
125especially like the idea about you know even if you don't have the charging stations get the conduit get the wire on the ground get everything ready so that as you need that capacity you can just plug in new stuff rather than dig up a parking lot thank you i agree there's one person in the audience with our hands up please and we currently have 21 uh attendees on the meeting all right deborah science please go ahead thanks david um i want i just wanted to say that i absolutely endorse the idea the ideas that jim put out in his document and to your point david it's not just gm there's another big maker they're they're really talking about going wholesale ev within what is this this is 21 within like five to seven years so
126the market is going to drive this as well as whatever sticks you know government may be exercising so i'm fully in favor and the focus on residents is important the focus on um readiness you know even if the charging infrastructure isn't going in day one the readiness for that is great the other thing i want to just say is that um when you know when whoever it is is going to dive in to the weeds on this in terms of these things in commercial settings commercial lots and that sort of thing i think it's really worth thinking about um both the levels of the charging and as that relates to how long people are going to be at that commercial site if people are going to be bopping in for 10 minutes in and out
127for 10 minutes because of the nature of the business it's pointless to have charging there no matter what because nobody charges for 10 minutes it's a joke but if people are going to be engaged somewhere for an hour or more then you know then that becomes a different thing also you know there are three levels of charging there's trickle which is 110 there's the level 2 which is 220 and then there's the dc which is the fast charging and there may even be some places where the dc charging makes sense i'm not saying that i know which is which but i just want people to be aware of all those variables when you're thinking about what makes sense where and how the bylaw gets written that's it thanks thanks debra dean yeah i think you
128know it obviously it's it's something for the planning department to get involved in but it also would be a great job for our new sustainability director to get going on it seen some stuff that she's already coming up with for some grand applications she's got so uh you know this is this is right up her alley okay so uh uh jim then just we will take no action on your well i guess what the emerging consensus i heard from the board was that um we would have would have done work with the staff to bring something to the to a like a fall town meeting and that he would have discretion about you know he and his staff would have a discretion about when to get going on it it seems like things are pretty
129busy right now it will take some time to do the right research so you know but if if we if we want to i think we could usefully communicate our enthusiasm about hearing back from him at some point on this may we do that dean and david and john thumbs up great okay so um our next item done is approve a letter of support for the dam and seawall grant yes uh thank you thank you i guess i'll stand up again um we're uh as i mentioned for the river street property uh the state has required us to remove hazardous portions of that dam we're in this uh 50 to 60 design phase uh for doing that the design is currently on hold uh as we sort out um the archaeological um study that we've
130started over in the area and as a result of that work we may be modifying the design to accommodate what we learned from that but in the meantime we're accidentally pursuing grant funding to help cover the costs associated with uh dam removal of portions of the dam that we do intend to remove and have to remove uh the grant i think is uh we're seeking a million dollars and it's actually required that we fund um 250 000 as a match and that's proposed in the in the capital plan um as a borrowing if we're successful with the grant seeking authorization to borrow that funding account meeting so this letter is just simply from the board of selectmen to express its support for pursuing that grant okay so the draft letter was in the packet um
131and it's for me to sign as chair are there any questions or comments on the on the draft uh joan did you have your no i was going to move to approve okay so uh if a move to approve the draft letter for me to sign his chair then was there a second a second thank you so uh if no further discussion um david if you call the role thing uh mr snyder grant hi ms gardner hi mr turner hi mr benson i i also say hi so thank you to the consent agenda um um i consent item 10 amended executive session minutes february 1 2021. okay that that is the only consent item we have what is your question team uh i i'd like to go over it one more time um and just
132take a look at the amendments and uh i'm sure i'd be ready to bring it back uh at the next meeting okay so we'll put it on for march 15 then thank you okay so um that is the end of our agenda um we will meet again in regular session two weeks from now on march 15 when we'll have the uh resumed um 60 67 uh powder mill road hearing so with that's it um may have a motion to adjourn and dave if you called the role for the last time this evening yeah mr snyder grant hi ms gardner hi mr charter hi mr vincent hi and i also say i so where are you okay have a good evening good night everyone you'll see all thursday yeah see you around that's noon time right
133yes new time you