[Speaker 1] (0:25 - 0:39)
All right. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the June 30th, 2021 Select Board meeting.

We didn't do this last week because we're totally out of practice, but our tradition typically is to rise and join the Pledge of Allegiance. So please join us.

[Speaker 11] (0:42 - 0:55)
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[Speaker 1] (1:01 - 2:29)
Staying with being out of practice in these live meetings versus Zoom, last week I mentioned we were going to do public comment. I explained what public comment is. I told people how to chime in on public comment, but then we ultimately never did public comment.

So I apologize for that. Next up will be public comment. We are still doing a hybrid model here, so there are those of you joining us on Zoom, and there are those sitting in the room with us tonight.

Public comment is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to the Select Board about items not otherwise on the agenda. There are two ways to speak to us, three ways to speak to us about public comment. If you're here in the room, we would ask you to come forward to the microphone and feel free to speak.

We ask that comments be limited in duration, not be political statements, and any questions or comments regarding town personnel, please direct to a Select Board member or the town administrator outside of a public meeting. The second way in which to make comments if you're on Zoom is to raise your virtual hand, and we will call on you and allow you to make your comment. And the third way is if you're joining us not in person or not on Zoom, you're welcome to send me an email at my town email address, which is p, as in Peter, spellios, the word spell, I-O-S, at swamscottma.gov, and I will look at my emails and share comments as they arrive. With that being said, anyone like to make a public comment? Come on down or raise your virtual hand. Hallie, I can't see virtual hands, so I'm going to trust you to tell me when to raise your hands up.

[Speaker 20] (2:30 - 2:31)
Do you see the attendee panel?

[Speaker 1] (2:31 - 2:56)
Oh, there we go, I do see that. Thank you, I appreciate that. Perfect.

All right, I don't see anybody at the moment. I will check emails and chime in if I do see an email come in on public comment. Before we get to new and old business and the meat of our agenda, I wanted to turn it over to our town administrator briefly.

I believe there's a video you wanted to show. There is.

[Speaker 5] (2:57 - 4:32)
You know, we are in the middle of a little bit of a heat wave, and I thought it would be fun for us to envision that we were out with our fire department last night getting a little bit of a cooling off. I wanted folks to really get a sense of what type of fun we can have as we deal with the heat. I want to thank the members of our fire department, but in particular Chief Archer for coming up with a really wonderful idea to give our citizens a little fun and share a little bit of a civic life that we have.

We had over 300 of our young and older citizens go out and catch a little rainbow and cool off on a very hot day. These are really great pictures, and I know a lot of folks really enjoyed coming out. You can anticipate we'll have a few more of these events, and if it gets hot, please follow our social media for some of the updates.

I can't think of a better use for a fire truck on a hot day.

[Speaker 1] (4:35 - 7:19)
Aside from the fighting fire truck. Aside from that small thing, you're right. If it's not needed for that, this sounds like a good use, right?

I agree with you. All right, thanks to everyone for making that possible. A lot of great positive feedback, and it seems like the kids really enjoyed it.

All right, we're going to move on now to our new and old business. Briefly just to share with people at home and people here what's on the agenda, we're going to start with an update from our representative, Alice Stein, from the Massport Community Advisory Committee. Alice was with us a few weeks ago updating us, and since then there has been additional information provided to Alice and the advisory committee that she thought was important to share with us relative to flight patterns and how changes in flight patterns may impact Swampscott in particular.

After that, we have a conversation relative to a review of the draft site plan from Calix Peak for 16 New Ocean Street. Following that, I'm going to ask the board's indulgence to take some things out of order. I would like to then have a conversation about the new elementary school costs, and we have our town treasurer and our director of finance joining us tonight to update us about some modeling for the new school debt costs.

They did a great job Monday night with the finance committee, which is a carry-on from a joint meeting with the Select Board Capital Improvement Committee and Finance Committee on June 14th, where we most recently visited with the new projected costs, looked at debt amortization schedules, and the impacts to the tax payers. Following that, we will then have a conversation and update on traffic advisory and pedestrian safety issues, and then from there we have a discussion and potential vote to set a special town meeting for the new school, the debt exclusion, and a town-wide vote date for the debt exclusion for the new elementary school. Last but not least, we have a discussion and potential vote on end-of-year transfers.

Today is the last day of fiscal year 21, and under state law I believe we have until July 15th now for the Select Board and the Finance Committee to vote on end-of-year transfers, to balance the books and close out the books. So with that, I want to invite, I think Alice Stein is joining us via Zoom, and invite Alice to join us and give us an update and share with the community some new information. And Alice, if there's anything you would like us to do, perhaps write a letter or make a recommendation based on what your thinking is, please let's end tonight with that so that the Board can take the necessary action tonight if the Board is to do something.

[Speaker 2] (7:20 - 9:55)
Certainly. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.

So thank you for letting me join through Zoom. I'm actually out of state. I'm in Florida right now.

So we're having our own heat wave here. I know you guys are in the middle of one right now. I'm swamped, Scott.

So one of the things that I want to bring up to you is at the time that I did a briefing before the Select Board, it was prior to the meeting that took place on June 24th with the Mass Support Committee. And at that point is when MIT had shared their findings on the implication of the new procedural changes that would impact Runway 22. Runway 22, and I just want to kind of not everybody's familiar with this jargon that we use in this committee, is where there are a lot of arrivals to take place that go and impact our coastal region.

And there was some confusion in the community and there was some perception that FAA had clarified at the last time I had briefed with the Select Board that there was some procedural changes that had already taken place. And that's why folks that were living on the coast and in Swamp, Scott, had the perception that, in fact, there were a lot of planes going overhead. The FAA did address that concern.

There's been no procedural rollouts of any kind. They are technically not allowed to do that without briefing the committee that we take part in the Mass Support. We call it the MCAC.

So the reason why I want to talk to you today, I think it's very important, because at this point we are at an impasse and we have information to make some sort of potential recommendation to our community. So here's where we stand today. There's a lot of discussion about making procedural changes to how landings occur and how the approach of the pilots would take.

So the conversation was around something called RNAV. And what that really means is instead of going straight in and planes flying overhead, they would use waypoints or little beacons to guide them in flying in as it relates to the arrivals, which has obviously an impact on our region. And at this point in the game, Ali, do you mind just have that slide that I shared with you just to show everyone how that would impact if that specific procedure was adopted?

[Speaker 20] (9:56 - 9:57)
Can someone just tell her I'm getting it?

[Speaker 2] (9:57 - 10:17)
Yeah. Oh, I heard you, Ali. Ali, thank you.

I heard you. So I want to show you the slide. It's from the presentation deck that we were listening to at MIT.

It shows you the implications of this new procedure for arrivals over Swampscot.

[Speaker 20] (10:17 - 10:21)
Alice, can you tell me, did you send me a slide or is it the PDF that you sent me?

[Speaker 2] (10:21 - 10:31)
I sent you the PDF and then I also sent you, it's literally an image of the slide deck that was embedded. I don't know if you can access it now. If not, I can talk to it.

[Speaker 20] (10:31 - 10:35)
I have the PDF in front of me. If it's in that, then I can just show it. Okay.

[Speaker 2] (10:35 - 17:01)
So do you want to go to page, one second. If you go to page 73, take a look at, now click at that and see how that. So what the procedural change is advising us to do, and the basis for any of these procedural changes as it relates to flight paths is always to create more equity.

You probably hear about Milton, Hyde Park. They have a lot of problems with traffic overhead. They're constantly being inundated with planes flying overhead.

So there, I would say in my opinion, worst case scenario, we, thank you so much. Thank you, Alan. We're not there.

And my concern with presenting this to you today is I don't want Swampscot to be there. So if you take a look at, again, it's a little bit, are you guys able to see it? It's a little bit not crisp.

Oh, now it's a little crisper. You guys can see what the MIT study is proposing. They're proposing that by moving the arrivals, by implementing the procedural change using RNAV, which again, it's just a fancy way of saying there is a different way of landing a plane.

By changing that procedure, they are saying that by moving it further north over the water, over the causeway, you're actually going to have a greater impact on Swampscot. So if you look at, what they did is they took data points from 2017, because obviously the pandemic volume for flights is not, it's not really a reflection on normal volume. So they took data sets from 2017 to show you specifically what the implication would be if this specific procedural change would be rolled out.

There is a caveat to this, which is when we talk about arrivals, this potential procedure is not necessarily common. It's only implemented for 25% of landings. So this is not a carte blanche type of procedure.

It only has implications on 25% of landing procedures that are impacting our region. But with that, you can see if you compare the 2017 baseline to where we are today, using the old procedure, the straight-in procedure of landing the planes, if you look at the 22L, which is the name of the runway, the arrival proposal, you can see that it's going to have a greater impact on Swampscot as far as noise is concerned. Other implications as it relates to environmental stress, anxiety, the other implications that come with noise have not been fully documented as it relates to this.

So with this in mind, and Ali, I'm going to have you go to also a different slide. So this is the implication of this procedural change if it does take effect on Swampscot. So you can see right now that it does contribute to significant amount of noise.

There is a benefit to Lynn in this whole change. There's a benefit to Lynn. So in terms of equity, we're meeting that equity objective, but it has definitely a significant impact on Swampscot as well as Nahant.

So take a look at, if you don't mind, Ali, referring everybody to page 68, where you can see how Nahant will be affected if we went to a full day use of the procedure. So you can see around the causeway, you're also seeing increases of noise. So if you look at the 2017 baseline, and you look at the 22L arrival proposal, you'll see there's going to be a lot more noise impact on Nahant.

And then Ali, I'm going to have you turn the screen over to one more page, which is page 90 of the PDF, which shows if Swampscot, if only this procedure was used in the daytime. So there's quite a bit of difference. So the nighttime arrivals, the volume is significant compared to the daytime arrival and usage of this procedure on runway 22.

So you can take a look here. There is still quite a bit of increase in overall, obviously, noise impacting Swampscot if there is only daytime use. But still, it's significantly less than if there was full-time usage.

So I just want to present this to the Select Board, get your perspective on it. Having reviewed all this data, my suggestion to the Select Board is that we, I understand there's a whole equity benefit analysis to this proposal. I understand it benefits Marblehead, it benefits Lynn, it benefits parts of Salem, but it does have an implication on Swampscot that's not necessarily positive.

So I believe that it's my recommendation to suggest potentially opposing these changes. And if you look at another thing, Ali, on page 10 of that PDF that I shared with you, it gives you an idea of how the FEA makes decisions on procedural changes. Right now, we're still in the community.

Do you want to go to page 10? Yeah, thank you. And scroll down so they can see the graphic.

Perfect. So you can see here, this is how they make decisions. We are now at the place of, we are literally in the community feedback loop, and we're looking at the noise impact in terms of the decision-making process of this.

So we still have time to voice our concerns to Massport, to the FEA. And I suggest we do this, just because based on where we're headed with this, I feel like it's something that we need to be very aware of as a community, and we should make some potential noise, if you will, pun intended there, about how this is not going to be a positive impact to Swamscott. And it is going to have an impact on those living on the coast in Swamscott.

So do you guys have any questions? I know that was a lot to digest.

[Speaker 1] (17:01 - 17:08)
Hey, Alice, before we go to specific questions, are there similar graphics and information showing the change in Marblehead and Lynn?

[Speaker 2] (17:09 - 17:12)
Yes, it's all in that PDF, and Ali has it.

[Speaker 1] (17:12 - 17:24)
If we can, Ali, let's go back to it. So 73 was Swamscott, 68 was Nahant. Alice, do you happen to know offhand what Marblehead and Lynn were?

Let me, one second. No, you've been impressive. Page 10 is the community process.

[Speaker 2] (17:25 - 17:31)
These are the ones I've been looking at. So let me, okay, so let me, yeah, if you look at the content page.

[Speaker 20] (17:32 - 17:34)
I'm moving very slow.

[Speaker 2] (17:35 - 17:42)
Yeah, let me just, so it tells you, yeah, you're right there, see? Yeah, exactly, 66.

[Speaker 1] (17:43 - 17:44)
And Lynn is 65.

[Speaker 22] (17:45 - 17:45)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (17:51 - 18:04)
So can we use this, just let's use this one as an example. Can you help me for the two boxes, one over the other on the right-hand side, help me understand the N60 change versus the 22L arrival proposal?

[Speaker 2] (18:05 - 18:14)
So look at where the primarily, a majority of the noise is going to be, where Marblehead's going to be impacted by noise. It's primarily over the water.

[Speaker 22] (18:15 - 18:15)
Yep.

[Speaker 2] (18:15 - 18:19)
Right, so it's not really impacting residents.

[Speaker 3] (18:19 - 18:25)
Can you just, sorry, what is the N change though above? What is that representing that's different?

[Speaker 2] (18:25 - 18:40)
So this is referring to, okay, so this, the N with the 60, that's referring to the decibel level that they use to calculate noise disruption. That's their barometer noise, decibel noise disruption.

[Speaker 1] (18:40 - 18:41)
Under current conditions.

[Speaker 2] (18:42 - 18:43)
Correct, correct.

[Speaker 1] (18:43 - 18:43)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (18:44 - 19:10)
So, but if we talk about, if we talk about the 2017 baseline versus the 22L arrival proposal, and you superimpose this map on the Marblehead town map, right, you can see that the noise that's impacting Marblehead is completely over the water. So for them, this is their impact.

[Speaker 3] (19:12 - 19:15)
But it's, okay, it's not an improvement.

[Speaker 2] (19:15 - 19:43)
It's impacting, it's impacting water, meaning it has environmental impacts. But in terms of the residents and specific noise that would potentially come up as an output of this, they're not, it's not, it's not occurring over specific residents. It isn't, I'm certain there's environmental impacts here that have not been 100% studied yet by the FAA.

They're in process now. But you can see it's primarily over the water.

[Speaker 1] (19:43 - 19:46)
Allie, will you go to 67, please? Oh, sorry, 65.

[Speaker 5] (19:51 - 20:31)
So I had a chance to talk to Alex earlier this week and last week, and I asked specifically, hey, it looks great. Marblehead impact is going to be over the water. Why can't the impact on Swampskip be over the water?

Why are we flying over one of the most densely settled communities even more? You know, the impact to human beings certainly has to be taken into consideration. You know, planes have other impacts than noise, and it just doesn't seem, you know, prudent to me that they wouldn't look at ways to move that flight path out a little further.

[Speaker 3] (20:33 - 20:37)
Did we, did you explain why they are making these changes?

[Speaker 2] (20:38 - 21:12)
It's always to improve efficiency of the carriers. And it's also for liability and safety. I mean, that's the other thing.

I mean, that's the business they're in. They're really, really adamant about, obviously, safety, and they believe that this is going to be also promote equity in the sky, because their big push is always they want to be able to evenly distribute the impact of flights above residents.

[Speaker 1] (21:12 - 21:18)
So can you, so in your view, just looking at these four communities, do you see equity?

[Speaker 2] (21:19 - 21:27)
I see some equity as it pertains to Lynn, but there is definitely a disbenefit to Swampskip.

[Speaker 1] (21:27 - 21:40)
Right, so equity as to the four communities, not individually. I see equity for Nahant, the causeway, which has no one living on it. I see equity for Marblehead, the water, which has no one living on it.

And I see equity for Lynn, which is now going to be predominantly the water of Lynn.

[Speaker 2] (21:41 - 21:43)
Correct, but a disbenefit for Swampskip.

[Speaker 1] (21:43 - 21:51)
So Swampskip is the one that's on the side of creating equity at the expense of others, if we're just looking at these four communities.

[Speaker 2] (21:52 - 22:32)
Yes, absolutely. Okay. There's also a slide that I'm going to have Allie show you.

Perhaps, I'm not sure she's able to access it. It's actually an image of the slide that shows you how many individuals have a benefit and disbenefit in Lynn, to give you a sense, and maybe perhaps, Allie, it's something you can share with the select board after the meeting, but there are actual numbers that MIT compiled that shows where the benefit and disbenefit is to Lynn, and the number of residents impacted. I think it's really valuable for you to see that to get a full picture, but we are holding up the olive branch at this point.

[Speaker 1] (22:36 - 22:38)
Yep, just bear with me. Allie, isn't this the stuff that you had sent?

[Speaker 20] (22:39 - 22:42)
No, I think this isn't it. Alice, isn't it a slide deck that you said you sent?

[Speaker 2] (22:44 - 22:45)
It's an image of the slide deck.

[Speaker 20] (22:45 - 22:48)
I just don't know. I don't know. When did you send that?

[Speaker 2] (22:50 - 22:58)
I sent it to you, again, probably 30 minutes before the meeting, just to kind of give you... I can try to send it to you again.

[Speaker 20] (22:59 - 23:05)
Yeah, if you could. All I have right now from the email you just sent was the actual PDF, the document.

[Speaker 2] (23:06 - 23:08)
Okay, so it's embedded, so you may not be seeing it right now.

[Speaker 20] (23:08 - 23:14)
Gotcha. Okay, let me look. When you say embedded, you mean like there's a link somewhere?

[Speaker 2] (23:14 - 23:17)
No, it's embedded in the actual email as a jpeg.

[Speaker 20] (23:18 - 23:19)
No, I don't have it.

[Speaker 3] (23:19 - 23:34)
Oh, wait. Hold on. While Allie's looking, can you just explain, I'm sorry I'm not able to follow this on the first run through, you were saying that we're discussing a 25% implementation of this change, is that...

[Speaker 2] (23:35 - 24:07)
No, just from a volume standpoint, if you look at arrivals, this procedure is used for 25% of landings, would be used for 25% of landings. So they use other procedures, but if you look at normal flight volumes, this procedure, they're calling RNAV, would be used only for 25% of all landings. So it's not something they're using 100% of the time, they're only using it 25% of the time when landings are in process.

Does that make sense?

[Speaker 3] (24:09 - 24:09)
Yes.

[Speaker 2] (24:10 - 24:10)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (24:11 - 24:17)
So all of those different graphs are referring to... Yeah, that's what I was thinking she was referring to.

[Speaker 20] (24:17 - 24:18)
Do you want me to share this?

[Speaker 1] (24:18 - 24:19)
Yes.

[Speaker 3] (24:20 - 24:27)
So all of the graph with the four, the page with the four graphs on it, those were all referring to 25%?

[Speaker 2] (24:27 - 25:04)
Correct, yes. Thank you, Allie, wonderful. Okay, so this is very important because it gives you an idea of this concept of push to create equity in the sky for everybody.

But you can see that the implication of daytime, if the change was going to take place, you can see that there is a disbenefit as well as a benefit in land during different parts of the day, daytime versus nighttime.

[Speaker 11] (25:09 - 25:21)
So I have a quick question. In your experience, have you seen a situation where one community is substantially disadvantaged to the benefit of others?

[Speaker 2] (25:22 - 25:59)
Yes, and I did send a letter to Sean Fitzgerald to take a look at. And it's a letter that was written about Milton, and Allie can share that with you as well. But pretty much the letter, the ethos of the letter is that, you know, that the government, I mean, government's looking for more equity in terms of how they approach procedures.

Does it really supply procedures? So that's, unfortunately, what the situation is that we're in.

[Speaker 1] (26:00 - 26:03)
More equity, though, in the context of finding greater efficiency for the airlines.

[Speaker 2] (26:03 - 26:04)
Right. Correct.

[Speaker 1] (26:05 - 26:07)
So it's driven by greater efficiency for the airlines.

[Speaker 2] (26:08 - 26:09)
It's always, absolutely. They're number one.

[Speaker 1] (26:09 - 26:42)
Okay, right, but I just want to, I don't want Massport to feel valiant in anything they're doing here and make it seem as though they woke up and realized, geez, it seems equitable the way in which we do flight maintenance for the residents of these communities. It's how do we make fly time shorter, how do we pack in more flights, and how do we use less gas to do these things. And then once we get through the capitalist objectives, we then say, now how do you humanistically do it to piss off the least amount of people so politically we can pass this?

Is that a fair, maybe blunt analysis?

[Speaker 2] (26:43 - 26:46)
Very blunt and well stated, yes. Okay.

[Speaker 5] (26:46 - 27:27)
So Alice, we talked about the MIT group really studying, geez, how much more would it cost the airlines to bump it out over the water off of Swampscott's coast and really do the alternative analysis and commodify the value of impacting this community in a disbeneficial way. To me, that analysis should be done, and we should know, if they're going to change that flight path, how much are they going to earn as a result of this? Because everybody in this town is going to pay that price.

[Speaker 20] (27:29 - 27:30)
What do you want to say?

[Speaker 1] (27:30 - 27:33)
Oh, this is the screen? We're still sharing the screen? Gotcha, okay.

[Speaker 3] (27:33 - 27:33)
You want me to stop sharing?

[Speaker 1] (27:33 - 27:36)
Yeah, no, I can't tell, but it's hard for us to know if we're seeing this.

[Speaker 3] (27:36 - 27:56)
Alice, I'm sure this is beyond, I'm not sure actually, otherwise I wouldn't ask, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's beyond the level of information that you're receiving. But when we talk about efficiencies, how much more efficient are they looking? Is this like a matter of a minute or two?

I mean, it doesn't seem...

[Speaker 2] (27:56 - 28:50)
So you bring up a really good point, because for them to measure efficiency, they're also looking at things like, they have to do a feasibility study to make sure that it can actually be rolled out without any safety precautions, any human error. So whenever they are proposing these things, those other aspects have to be fully vetted. So even if we move the flight procedure to waypoints that are, let's say, 15 degrees further to the water, for example, that has to be fully vetted in terms of the FAA.

So those are things that have to be fully vetted. But I think it's worth, what Sean said, I think it's worth pursuing, because we are, again, we are, unfortunately, it's to detriment of our coastal community.

[Speaker 17] (28:52 - 29:00)
I was just going to ask, sorry if you mentioned it, what's the timeline on this process, on this community input process that we're in?

[Speaker 2] (29:00 - 29:26)
We should have something to them before September for feedback. Because this is at this point, the sooner the better, in my opinion, because this is really coming off the coattails of the MCAC community meeting. I think the sooner the better, but it looks like our ability to communicate our concerns and voice our concerns we have until September, but I would do it sooner than later.

[Speaker 11] (29:27 - 29:59)
I mean, again, to Sean's point, the additional study to determine what the impact on the efficiency of the airlines would be to move this flight pattern literally less than a quarter of a mile to the ocean, I can't imagine, we do a lot of work with airports, I can't imagine that's going to have a fundamental financial impact for this small little piece of deviation of airspace. I think being able to quantify that is going to give our objection credence.

[Speaker 3] (30:01 - 30:14)
Well, presumably, I would have thought that they would have done the feasibility study for over the ocean to have a comparison, but I guess they just look at a direct line and it's obviously more efficient, so they don't veer off.

[Speaker 1] (30:14 - 30:25)
No, I think that seems, I mean, Alice, I'm interested in your response to that, because I assume they're just doing vectors and they look at it and they say, well, this is the more efficient vector, so we're going to look at this, as opposed to the other ones. Right. Is that essentially accurate?

[Speaker 2] (30:25 - 30:59)
Unfortunately, Peter, it's what you're saying, which is, you know, they have, instead of using straight-in procedure, they're using the RNAV, which is the waypoint procedure. So it's very much, as you said, it's very vector-based. And they're doing, I mean, that's why MIT has been doing this for years.

They've been working on this study for years. And this is finally, they've produced their findings. And it's all mathematical.

It's all, they're calculating how this can be done and how this feasibly can be done based on what you're describing. But, again, they are relying on existing waypoints for this specific recommendation.

[Speaker 1] (30:59 - 31:29)
So to help bring this to kind of a head for tonight, I guess what I would like to suggest is, and I think if I'm hearing everyone correctly, I think what I would like to suggest is that two members work with the town administrator and Alice in crafting a response and then bring that back by the end of July, have that response approved by this board to submit, and let's get something out by the end of July. Alice, does that schedule sound reasonable to you?

Absolutely. Does that work for everyone?

[Speaker 3] (31:30 - 31:32)
I mean, I'm opposed to it.

[Speaker 1] (31:32 - 31:34)
You're opposed to the proposal, not the letter.

[Speaker 3] (31:34 - 31:42)
Yes, but we haven't quite clarified. It sounds like we're all on the same page, but I just, I'm just vocalizing that so we make sure.

[Speaker 1] (31:43 - 32:02)
Yes. So do I have two volunteers to work with Sean and Alice? Don is one, or unless he's thinking he's two volunteers.

A month ago I was the weight of two volunteers, but I'm not schizophrenic. Anyone else want to work with Don? Otherwise I will do it.

[Speaker 3] (32:02 - 32:03)
Yeah, I'm happy to.

[Speaker 1] (32:03 - 32:53)
Okay, Polly and Don. Great. We'll work with Alice and Sean.

And I guess what I would say to you is I think Alice and Sean, and I think you're hearing strength and conviction, right? And directness and assertiveness is probably the tenor of the letter as opposed to letting nuance and niceties lose the message on this. And then we'll review it and formally approve it later in July to get it sent out.

I would also ask probably Sean and maybe the two of you as well, maybe to reach out to our state senator and our state representative and let them know where we're at and to ask them to similarly express their concerns on this.

[Speaker 5] (32:54 - 34:00)
Sound good to everyone? It does. Alice and I talked about reaching out to the legislative delegation, and, frankly, all of our governmental representatives.

You know, this really, you know, look, we want to be clear. We actually like the idea that, you know, there's environmental justice for disaffected communities, but it doesn't seem smart not to understand why we can't protect Swampskate from the impacts of fuel and noise and other known contaminants that affect our air quality. There needs to be a serious understanding of how all of these ills are going to be thrust upon this densely settled community, our children and our families, and this doesn't present in a way that makes it sound like it's been thought through.

So we will be happy to get that information out and really notify everybody of the seriousness.

[Speaker 1] (34:00 - 34:15)
Great. All right. Alice, thank you for taking time out of your trip to join us and bringing this to our attention.

This is great. This is exactly what we need, and your advocacy and just your informing us is great. So thanks for working with the team on getting the letter out, and thanks for spending time with us tonight.

[Speaker 2] (34:16 - 34:16)
All right. Thanks, everyone.

[Speaker 1] (34:16 - 34:17)
Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (34:18 - 34:18)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (34:18 - 39:40)
All right. We're going to move on now to continue a conversation which the board has been having over the last 18 months regarding the reuse of 16 New Ocean Street. This will be no less than, I think, the eighth time the board has reviewed the reuse of 16 New Ocean Street.

It went through an RFP process and ultimately awarded an RFP to Calix Peak for 16 New Ocean, and part of the lease, which was entered into previously and approved by the select board after community input, was a requirement that prior to seeking approvals and obtaining approvals for tearing down the existing liquor store and rebuilding was for them to come back to us for site plan approval. Calix Peak, my understanding from staff, is Calix Peak has filed preliminary site plans and approvals for the town, but in order to proceed needs the select board to provide approval of the current plan. Previously, Calix Peak had provided and the select board did have an opportunity to chime in on comments on preliminary plans, and also at that time staff sought feedback from the community.

There was a number of comments that came back, particularly relating to a sitting area, removal of a sitting area, and how the building will interact with some adjoining streets. Tonight we're going to take a look at the current site plan being presented and suggested by Calix. I will say the site plan does address something that this board had previously made.

Two things in particular. One, this board did do a site visit and met with residents of adjacent streets to talk about the plans and to understand the potential impact and concerns of neighbors. It was important that deliveries for the new business by Calix Peak were taken off of Curry Circle.

C&L Liquor currently gets deliveries both on Curry Circle and on their existing parking lot. And two, the board was interested in potential improvements to the intersection of Pine Street and New Ocean Street, which if you've traveled it once, you've traveled it probably one too many times. The way in which Pine Street and New Ocean come in is closer to a 45 degree angle than it is a 90 degree angle, still causing high-speed turns off of New Ocean Street onto Pine Street and continuing of high-speed vehicles down Pine Street, and at the same time crossing the current entranceway to the Veterans Center, creating unsafe situations.

So the board had asked Calix to make some suggestions about how to improve the safety of that area. Calix's plan does present some changes to the way in which Pine Street will meet New Ocean Street in a way that would create a more conventional 90 degree turn and create some traffic calming and also is now suggesting a change in the curb cut for the Veterans Center and for Calix Peak to share a curb cut going forward. And tonight that's the main difference in the plan that the board is seeing compared to prior versions of the plan that we've seen.

This proposal for a shared curb cut has been made by Calix Peak. The board may recall and members of the public, if you have been following us, may recall that Polly Titcom and I were designated as the two board members to help staff advance this project. Upon hearing about this proposal from Calix Peak, through staff, we requested that Calix Peak meet with all the organizations in the Veterans Center to share their proposal and to get feedback from the constituents and the stakeholders in the Veterans Center about this plan prior to bringing this plan to us for our consideration.

Polly and I had the opportunity to meet with some of the stakeholders this week from the Veterans Center and I'm really pleased that several of them are here tonight to share feedback so that we hear that feedback and make sure we understand what's working, what may not work, what needs to change to make sure that they're satisfied, which from my perspective, and I think I speak for Polly as well, is a prerequisite to us supporting the current proposal.

So with that, I know that we have representatives from Calix joining us virtually and I think we have council joining us physically. I think, I'm trying to figure out who's presenting, Marzi Golaska, our Community and Economic Development Director is here. I think Marzi, for the sake of expediency, I want to just share the plan.

You can update us if there's something I've missed, but what I would like to do is just highlight the Pine Street and curb cut changes in particular because those are really the things that have changed since the last time this board has seen it. I want to hear from, if Calix has anything to add immediately, but then I really want to focus on the Veterans Center and I want to hear from the stakeholders and hear their feedback and their comments on it to make sure that that is fully vetted before we, and then if there's others that are in attendance, I do see on Zoom, I do see a couple of neighbors from Curry that we had gotten to know through the process and I want to make sure we welcome them to have an opportunity to comment as well. Do you have a microphone there?

Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (39:42 - 40:07)
Just a couple of things, if I can add. The Calix Peak team will actually do the presentation and they're online, so, Al, if you can promote Bob Zarelli, Michael Dryden, Pete D'Agostino, and I think that, if I'm just missing anybody, Dan is here, and then Erin Carachillo, if she could be promoted. And also one thing that I would not want to remiss, that in addition to the improvements that will be made— One second.

[Speaker 1] (40:07 - 40:15)
Joe, can you create volume in here? Can you create volume in here? I'm sorry.

Thank you. Go ahead. Sorry, Mark.

[Speaker 6] (40:15 - 40:25)
So, in addition to the improvements that will be made by Calix to the site, the town is also committed in work making improvements to Curry Circle that you— Can you hear me now?

[Speaker 1] (40:25 - 40:27)
No. Keep talking. Joe's testing it.

[Speaker 6] (40:27 - 40:28)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (40:28 - 40:31)
Oh, there we go. That's a little much now. That's a little bit too much.

[Speaker 6] (40:31 - 40:49)
There we go. That's great. Thank you.

So, I just mentioned that in addition to the improvements that will be made by Calix to the roadways to Pine Street and the Ocean Street, the town will also be making improvements to Curry Circle, sort of improvements to drainage and roadway, as well as some changes to the intersection.

[Speaker 1] (40:50 - 41:17)
All right. So, thanks. So, Mr. D'Agostino, welcome. I appreciate you being here, and I know that others from your team are here as well. I think what would be really helpful for us tonight is let's put on the site plan. We have gone through this previously, so I really would, in particular, like you, you can give a really quick overview of the site, but really focus on the Pine Street and New Ocean, the curb cut, and the parking and how that's all going to work would be really helpful.

[Speaker 4] (41:18 - 42:18)
Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to the members of the board, appreciate the opportunity to appear before you tonight. Is Allie able to bring up the site plan?

And while she's doing that, I'll introduce her as a team. Erin Brockbo is here, CEO of Calix Peak. Mike Drayden is also here, who is our civil engineer, and probably most appropriate to talk through it.

I did hear your comments that we want to get to the public feedback as quickly as possible, so we'll keep the overview brief, highlighting the items you indicated. Also, our architect, Bob Zarelli, is here, as well as Council Dan Cahill, and Nancy are both available in the room should we have other questions. So if we could, Mr. Chairman, bring up the site plan. And I can do that, as well, if that's easier. Okay. And I think we can go to the next page.

Allie, thank you so much.

[Speaker 1] (42:20 - 42:22)
Allie, do you mind closing your right-hand margin, please?

[Speaker 20] (42:22 - 42:23)
I don't know how.

[Speaker 1] (42:23 - 42:24)
Right there, it says close.

[Speaker 20] (42:25 - 42:27)
Is that going to close everything?

[Speaker 1] (42:27 - 42:27)
There you go.

[Speaker 20] (42:28 - 42:33)
I'm wondering if it actually does make sense, Peter, for you to share it, to share your screen.

[Speaker 1] (42:34 - 42:36)
Well, I'm not on the Zoom.

[Speaker 20] (42:36 - 42:37)
No.

[Speaker 1] (42:38 - 42:44)
Oh, Peter D'Agostino. Peter D'Agostino, that's a much better decision, because Allie knows better than to ask me to share anything.

[Speaker 20] (42:45 - 42:51)
I don't know if we'll have better graphics on mine. It's just that if you're moving around, it might be easier for you to do it.

[Speaker 4] (42:52 - 42:53)
Sure. We're happy.

[Speaker 20] (42:53 - 42:54)
See what it looks like.

[Speaker 4] (42:57 - 43:41)
We're going to go to the proposal. How does that look on your end? Looks great.

Okay, good. So I'm going to turn this over pretty quickly to Michael Drayden, our civil engineer. And Mike, if you could, focus on the two primary changes here.

One, the Pine Street intersection, which is significantly improved in safety, as well as the movement of the entrance to the Veterans Center, which obviously is significantly safer. And then the addition to all the curbing that goes around the property now, where currently it's just an open path, sort of, if you will. So with that, Mr. Chairman, if I could, I'll turn it over to Mike Drayden to take you through these items. Please. Good evening, all.

[Speaker 9] (43:41 - 43:42)
Can everyone hear me? Okay.

[Speaker 22] (43:42 - 43:42)
Yep.

[Speaker 9] (43:43 - 47:44)
Great. So I think the chairman actually teed things up quite nicely in his summary. To start with the Pine Street, new ocean street intersection.

Pete, if you could just go to the next sheet. It shows it in its entirety. Quite simply again, as the chairman had pointed out, vehicles traveling northbound on new ocean street, take that left-hand turn onto Pine street at a very high rate of speed.

And I've been to the site three times and I've seen this occur every time I've been to the site. So we were tasked with coming up with a geometric change, if you will, to act as a traffic calming measure. And the options are fairly limited and it's a very common sense approach that you see before you.

We've tried to do to create a 90 degree T to the extent that we can. We'd love to have a bit bigger radius on that, but we don't want to impact the north side of Pine street. So again, we've just introduced some new curbing.

Created a little bit of a landscaped area that you see there. Remove the old pavement markings, put in some new stock controls, stop bar on the pavement, a new stop sign. And this will go a long way to force cars to slow down when they make that left-hand turn.

It will also help vehicles exiting Pine street onto new ocean. So you won't have to sort of look over your left shoulder to see oncoming traffic. You'll be teed up at a 90 degree angle.

You'll be able to see oncoming traffic in both directions as you approach new ocean street. Also part of the offsite improvements. Well, let me stay on this exact spot for a moment.

You can see where it says remove existing pavement. That's where the existing curb cut is for the VFW. And it just further exacerbates that traffic condition.

You have this high rate of speed, and then introduce a curb cut into that mix, which further reduces safety. So it makes perfect sense to me to consolidate that curb cut and create a new curb cut, a shared curb cut, as far away from the Pine street, new ocean street intersection as possible. So that's what this plan reflects.

Also proposed offsite, you'll see the shaded areas. Pete, maybe you could go back to sheet C4, the previous sheet. That linear shaded area that you see is new sidewalk paving as well as new vertical granite curb along the entire frontage there.

As you may know, you can probably imagine, the CNL, particularly the CNL package store, it's sort of an open curb cut. It's a free for all, if you will. There's no real definition in circulation.

So what we wanted to do is really define that shared curb cut and prevent, again, that open curb cut that exists today. So that will vastly improve vehicular safety, pedestrian safety, and also aesthetics of the site along the frontage of new ocean and Pine street. So the parking is accessed, again, from that central curb cut.

We're showing 12 parking spaces. And again, the shading that you see is essentially the new bituminous concrete paving. The white area is the existing paved area.

So the new paved area consists of 12 spaces. And then there's an additional six spaces that are proposed to be leased spaces. Yep, Pete is pointing those out now.

For a total of 18 new spaces for the Calix facility. That leaves another approximately 18 spaces for the VFW. The VFW lot is not currently striped or sort of formally striped.

So we would like to bring some organization to that area. So we do have an even split, again, of 18 spaces on the VFW property or site and 18 dedicated through Calix. Happy to answer any questions that you may have.

[Speaker 1] (47:45 - 48:14)
So Mr. Dryden, a couple of questions. And then I want to see if the board has some initial questions and then ask the Veterans Center. Help me go around.

Will you go back to the prior sheet, please? Or actually, the next sheet, I guess. Maybe it's that one right there.

Help me what happens when we get to Curry Circle. And I think you're showing a discontinuance of the granite curving as you go into Curry Circle. What's there now?

I think there now is nothing because it's a big parking lot. And what's going to be the finished condition there?

[Speaker 9] (48:14 - 48:55)
That's a great question. There is nothing there now. It's sort of a flushed paved condition.

So you can essentially drive right across that triangular shape today. So there's just an edge of pavement there. There's sort of a gutter line, if you will.

You can actually see it. It's labeled gutter line. It's a dashed line.

What we propose to do along that area is to simply bring the lawn area up. There's a slight modification to the gutter line just so that that gutter line is not on the actual site. You can see just to the bottom where the Curry Circle angles.

Yeah, the gutter line is actually on the site. So we would propose to just move that gutter line out slightly and then bring the lawn area to a flushed condition to Curry Circle.

[Speaker 1] (48:56 - 49:01)
For those of us that are not familiar with the phrase gutter line, can you tell us what a gutter line is?

[Speaker 9] (49:01 - 49:19)
Yes, it's essentially just a low point where stormwater travels. As it flows off of the center line of Curry Circle and then off of the site, it flows to that gutter line. Generally, to the right of the page, there's a catch basin out at the tip of the site that that gutter line drains to.

[Speaker 1] (49:19 - 49:51)
So it feels to me that by not putting curbing there, understanding there's a gutter line there, but by not putting curbing there, we are inviting the possibility of cars pulling over and using that area as a quick pullover and a place which is more feasible for people to do things when they're visiting Calix and finding parking quickly or doing things that otherwise does not seem appropriate to me.

So is there a reason that we cannot be... I understand the grass going all the way to the curbing, but is there a reason that we cannot be extending the granite curbing similar to what we're doing elsewhere?

[Speaker 4] (49:51 - 50:10)
Mr. Chairman, if I could jump in there, we had proposed in response to neighbors' feedback a landscaping that side. So it had a more residential feel. We have some images of what that landscaping on Curry Circle would look like, if you'd like me to share.

[Speaker 1] (50:10 - 51:01)
No, I appreciate that, and you did, and you really do landscape, and I think that was responsive, Mr. D'Arestino, but that landscape doesn't sit immediately on the edge of pavement, and so there still is a portion which is grass before you get to what I'm going to call your vertical vegetation, as opposed to your horizontal vegetation. That, to me, seems like it's... It feels like Curry Lane became the back of a building, if I kind of be direct about it, and it feels like curbing and having granite curbing going around there is appropriate.

Understanding that we're not extending the sidewalk, I understand why we're not extending the sidewalk there, because it's a sidewalk, frankly, to nowhere there, because there isn't sidewalk all the way down, nor is there width for sidewalk all the way down Curry, but it does feel like having the grass go to curbing is an appropriate finish detail, as opposed to having it just blend into asphalt.

[Speaker 4] (51:04 - 51:17)
Yeah, that's something we could look at. We also have a culvert that runs under there that may prevent the installation of curbing, so that's just a change we'd have to evaluate if it's feasible.

[Speaker 1] (51:20 - 51:22)
Mr. Dryden, do you have any thoughts about its feasibility?

[Speaker 9] (51:22 - 51:50)
I was going to say the exact thing that Pete just said. There is a culvert there. We know the horizontal extents of the culvert.

We don't know how high that culvert is or how shallow the cover is over it, so other than that, there's really no reason we can't extend curbing. Once we learn a little bit more about that subsurface culvert, I think we can give you a more definitive answer, but I think it's a good suggestion, and I certainly understand why you raise it as a concern. Great.

[Speaker 1] (51:50 - 52:03)
My second two things. Those six additional parking spaces that Mr. D'Agostino went over, my understanding is those that aren't shaded gray are intended to be employee parking for Calix, not customer parking, correct?

[Speaker 4] (52:05 - 52:06)
Correct. That's correct, Mr. Chairman.

[Speaker 1] (52:07 - 53:15)
And the line between the... Now I guess I want to turn a little bit to some of the things that... I'm going to turn it over to the Veterans Center, but the line between the gray shaded in the parking lot, the gray shaded to the non-gray shaded area, I think there's a strong preference in between the parking spaces specifically, exactly where Mr. D'Agostino's cursor is. I think there's a strong preference to create some type of physical divide between those so that it doesn't appear to be a continuation of the customer parking and that you folks revise the plan slightly to show a physical divide, hopefully something aesthetically pleasing, a physical divide with appropriate signage that makes clear that anything past outside of the gray area is not Calix customer parking and that that is Veterans Center parking, I think is a really important element here.

And I believe you might have already had a similar conversation with the Veterans Center stakeholders, but I want to make sure that you hear it from us as well and that's something you're comfortable understanding that we would want to see a revised plan. And again, when I say us, we would want staff to make sure the plan was revised to reflect that.

[Speaker 4] (53:16 - 56:22)
Right, yeah, Mr. Chairman, we did hear that comment and we provided some feedback back to the Veterans Center. We have, you know, I would call it a couple of open items with them, certainly some detail for working. We've proposed two options on dumpster placement for their dumpster.

We met on site and went through everything with a couple of representatives from the Veterans Center and we've talked about a couple of locations for the flagpole. So the flagpole currently sits right here where my cursor is and we, just as a placeholder, put them there. But when we were on site, we thought we might actually want to put them more along this edge.

So we've been working with them. I think generally speaking, we're down to some very specific details that we need to just do some follow-up coordination with. The feedback on the providing something here, we talked about whether we could do a fence or a hedge.

Our answer is sure. We just want to understand the implications to parking, snow removal, and dumpster placement. So that's an ongoing conversation and we look forward to continuing to kind of just work out those final details.

But all of it, everything we've spoken about with the Veterans Center is very doable. So it's just a matter, if you look over here, we said maybe put the dumpster here, but it could go here as well. So that's just something, really, it's more a matter of their preference.

We talked about moving the artillery piece that currently sits about here to this area. They thought it as another option could be placed in this area. But those are just very minute changes.

They don't change the overall site layout or site plan, but we would certainly work with them. These are very much the Veterans Center preference. We just proposed some options.

And same with the flagpole. When we were on site, I think generally we thought putting them over here a little bit more would be more aesthetically pleasing. So all the kinds of details that we're going to keep working on, very much at their discretion.

And there was another application that could eliminate a parking spot by putting something here. So ultimately, we're in agreement with all the options that we've all spoken about. We just got to work through finalizing the details with them on those items.

And one other thing I did want to highlight, Mr. Chairman, you made mention earlier of the loading and unloading. At some point, there was a discussion about loading into the back of the building from Curry Circle. The neighbors did not want that at all.

And I just wanted to highlight that. The loading area has officially been moved now to the front of the building and will be conducted from the parking lot. And this area of the building, which is a little bit of an addition from the original proposal, includes the sally porch.

So the vehicle would pull in, unload, and leave. So there's absolutely no business activity proposed along Curry Circle any longer. And I know that's one of the things we heard from the neighbors, and we've addressed that.

So hopefully, that answers your question. Certainly some details to work out with the Veterans Center, but nothing we're opposed to doing.

[Speaker 1] (56:22 - 57:20)
It's just a matter of preference. So assuming we get comfortable, and again, I want to say it again, the Veterans Center feedback tonight is going to drive a lot of this conversation. And assuming we get comfortable with it, I just want to, and I think I heard it in what you just said, but I want to be really explicit about it.

We're going to need to ultimately revise the lease, and that revision to the lease, which will come back to us, will need to reflect all the details that you do finalize with the Veterans Center, and we're going to want that to be in the lease. And I'm sure you're not going to have a problem with it, but I do want to let you know that we recognize that all the details and the discussions based on the conversation that Polly Tickham and I had yesterday with the stakeholders of the Veterans Center, that they're ongoing, and it seems generally in a productive way that we're going to want to make sure that they're all codified in writing as obligations going forward once all the details are finalized.

[Speaker 4] (57:21 - 57:44)
Certainly, and in addition to that mechanism, we would obviously update the site plan that will ultimately at some point go before the ZBA. We would update the site plan to reflect those final details with the Veterans Center, and that would be ultimately what would be approved. So there would be a couple of mechanisms by which we'd be accountable to those changes.

[Speaker 1] (57:44 - 57:53)
So I want to go to the Veterans Center, but I want to first see, Polly or other board members, do you want to ask some questions now before we go to the Veterans Center? By all means, whatever you'd like.

[Speaker 3] (57:54 - 58:40)
I have two quick questions that, just if I can ask on the Veterans Center's behalf. In terms of their, they get deliveries of trucks several times a week. Some of them are 60-foot trucks.

Is that correct? And so I just want to make sure, I'm sure this has been engineered, but if we can confirm that the new entrance with especially the turn into the Veterans Center with that new proposed pavement marking, that it's just sufficiently wide and angled for a truck to be able to get in there, not just the garbage truck, but again, delivery trucks, and be able to turn around, especially if there's people in the parking lot at the time.

[Speaker 4] (58:41 - 59:50)
Right, yeah. So the VFW now, because there's a fence here located about where my cursor is, don't hold me to it, but generally speaking, this area, the only entrance for delivery trucks would be in here, and this would be the movement area for the delivery truck. So this, the entrance changing doesn't change the movement area for their delivery trucks.

You couldn't put an 18-wheeler in here and turn it around, but we talked to Mike and he can answer this question himself as well, but just for efficiency, a general box-type delivery truck that most, you know, what's the word I want to use? Deliveries. Yeah, delivery services wouldn't be able to use this entrance in this parking lot like any other normal businesses.

These are all standard width entrances and stuff. So there's really no change to the capabilities. They couldn't have pulled an 18-wheeler in here before to turn it around, and that hasn't changed because we don't have more land.

But the same size trucks that would have been able to maneuver in this area previously could still maneuver in this area.

[Speaker 3] (59:54 - 1:00:24)
Thanks. And then my only other question for now is, let's see. What was my other question?

Oh, snow removal, you mentioned. What is the plan for snow removal? Is your intention to remove the snow from both lots since you'll be doing your lot and some of the lot will be your parking spaces, or have you had that discussion yet or thought process?

[Speaker 4] (1:00:24 - 1:01:31)
They raised the question on snow storage. We did show snow storage along this area here. This is a proposed landscape area, which could change if we put in a fence or something here, but under the current proposal, this is a landscape area.

So we can put snow storage here, and in an email I'd sent to the Veterans Center yesterday, we also indicated that in the event that we had some successive days of snow and or a large nor'easter that would require the removal of snow from the site, certainly that's something that we would have to do just like any other business would need to do. So we have really two plans. One, to store normal, what I'll call normal amounts of snow, reasonable amounts of snow in this area, and then for some longer period snowstorm or successive events, we would have to have it removed so that we could keep the parking open.

So I think that's pretty standard practice of how we would operate. But we didn't have a further discussion relative to that particular item beyond our saying, hey, these are the two things that we can do.

[Speaker 3] (1:01:31 - 1:01:47)
All right, so I just want to clarify. I apologize. The payment of snow removal, will you be paying to remove snow from the entire lot, including the VFW lot?

Is that your intent, or is it just to stop at your parking spaces?

[Speaker 4] (1:01:48 - 1:01:53)
We didn't get into that level of detail, so I guess that's just something we would have to talk about.

[Speaker 3] (1:01:53 - 1:02:19)
I mean, I would obviously suggest that it makes sense. I think if Calis is using those spots as a sort of, you know, to plow the whole thing, but I have no authority there necessarily. I just, I think, you know, you'll already be doing it, and six of the spots will be in the VFW lot.

So I think that's something the VFW would be very appreciative of as well.

[Speaker 4] (1:02:20 - 1:02:26)
Yep, and again, those are the kinds of details that we'll certainly codify, you know, prior to getting our approvals through the ZVA.

[Speaker 1] (1:02:30 - 1:04:13)
Other questions before we, I want to invite the Veterans Center representatives. I'd like to hear from them. Donald, you're good?

Yeah, I'd like to hear from them. All right, so we don't have any formal setting here. You all have microphones, just so you know how the microphones work.

If they're green, it means they're live, and if you push the button and they turn red, it means that it's muted temporarily. And so I think there's multiple microphones. I want to invite whoever wants to speak and share comments.

Tonight, we want to hear your preliminary feedback, and we want to hear items. This is not, there is going to be, assuming the board is, assuming you express comfort in continuing the dialogue and assuming the board similarly feels the same comfort that you, there is going to be, Polly and I will be continuing the dialogue with you and staff and Calix staff to make sure the details ultimately get documented and meet all the agreements. Tonight's hard.

I think we should talk about the things that you want to talk about, but in terms of resolving them and finalizing them, that all needs to be done, and I want to assure you that assuming you're comfortable and assuming the board is comfortable, that process will happen, and nothing will be finalized without those details being finalized to your all's satisfaction so that we make sure we address them. So with that, Patrick, I don't know if you, what we would ask is that you just introduce yourself, including your stakeholder group. We know that there's a number of groups that call the Veterans Center a home, and so it's helpful to not only know who you are, but also, you know, the constituency and the group that you represent.

I guess I'm going first.

[Speaker 14] (1:04:15 - 1:06:03)
You don't need to sit. You can sit. It's okay, Patrick.

All right, well, hello, everybody. My name is Patrick Burke. I live on Windsor Ave. I'm a member of the VFW, the Disabled American Veterans, and also the American Legion, so I have my hand in all the organizations that are doing great work down there. As far as this interaction we've had with the CALEX team, it's been very positive. They've been engaging. They've listened to the feedback of all the groups, and they've been responsive.

So not speaking for everybody, but just for myself, it seems like there's no major objections. There's certainly a lot of details we need to iron out. You know, we just talked about snow and barrels and dumpsters and parking, but it doesn't appear at this point to be showstoppers, but the devil will be in the details once we go further down the line and see where this goes.

But, you know, part of our thought process was when we looked at this, is that this gives us an opportunity to be part of a positive change for the whole neighborhood, to fix that corner, to give the residents a little bit of relief for that raceway. So kind of a win-win for us. We're certainly looking forward to see how it comes out, but as of right now, it seems like it's a very good collaboration, and, you know, we hope to keep it up.

And, you know, as you said, we'll work out those details, we'll put them on paper, and then we'll go forward from there. But just, you know, thanks to them for the way they've reached out and met us at a drop of a hat, and also to my colleagues here from the Veterans Center to do all the meetings. So it's been, so far, so good.

[Speaker 1] (1:06:06 - 1:06:06)
Thanks, Patrick.

[Speaker 18] (1:06:10 - 1:07:17)
Don't all fight for the microphone. All right. I completely agree with Patrick.

Malcolm, do you mind just introducing yourself for people that may not know who you are? Oh, I'm sorry. My name is Malcolm Moon.

I'm the commander of the VFW Post 1240. I think Patrick is right about the fact that I think it's been a very positive meeting between ourselves, the Board of Selectmen, and, believe it or not, one of the biggest things that I am taking out of this is you are calling it the Veterans Center instead of the VFW. I've been fighting for that for years, and I guess it finally sunk in.

And as far as attractive trailers go, we've been talking about alternatives to that, except we're kind of worried about the people on Pine Street may not like a 60-foot trailer across from their house, but at least the trailer can park here, unload, and take off without a huge amount of problems because turning a 60-foot trailer around in our parking lot is a challenge. And basically, I think this is a positive thing for both us and the town.

[Speaker 1] (1:07:18 - 1:07:19)
Thank you, Malcolm.

[Speaker 19] (1:07:25 - 1:08:30)
Hi, I'm Andrea Gail Bennett. I am a Lynn resident. However, I am a stakeholder in the Veterans Center.

As the past commander of the DAV, the Disabled American Veterans, and the current treasurer and adjutant, I'm definitely a stakeholder. I'm pretty encouraged by the things that I've heard from Calix. They seem to be cooperative and wanting to do the right thing for the town and for the area, and I will underscore everything that Patrick and Malcolm said.

I'm very encouraged, especially about the safety issues. That Pine Street, Ocean Street corner is just horrendous, and so the fact that they are going to make adjustments to that, I'm very encouraged about that. I will say that, as they said, the devil is in the details, and there are several issues that we do need to hammer out that we will negotiate and move forward.

So I look forward to that. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:08:30 - 1:08:39)
Thank you. Mr. DeAgostino, do you mind stopping the share of your screen so people can see each other better on Zoom? Thank you.

I appreciate that. No worries. My apologies for keeping you.

No, it's okay.

[Speaker 21] (1:08:43 - 1:09:29)
Hi, Nelson Leon, Senior Vice Commander, VFW Post 1240 Veterans Center. As a construction worker myself, I've seen all too many times where what an engineer wants, what a project manager wants on paper doesn't always happen because of site conditions. So I would be very interested in keeping a close eye on how things play out because that's the time when money comes to play, schedules come to conflict, people want to cut corners, and that's where we might get the bottom out of the stick there.

Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:09:31 - 1:09:32)
Anyone else?

[Speaker 10] (1:09:40 - 1:09:41)
Green is on.

[Speaker 1] (1:09:42 - 1:09:42)
Green is on.

[Speaker 10] (1:09:44 - 1:15:19)
Well, John DiPietro, I'm the adjutant of the Post 57 Swamp Squad, and a lot of things that were mentioned tonight and were talked about last night about turning corners, where the flags are going to be posted, where our howitzer will be posted, and so far nobody has given us any good reason to believe that they're not going to cut corners. And one of the corners that we came up about is someone mentioned about putting the flags in the front of the building facing Pine, and it was brought up about the wires in the trees on the streets, which would be very impractical at this point, unless somebody decides that they want to move the wires and take the trees, and I doubt that that's going to happen. So that's one issue that we've had, and those flags were put there for that purpose, where they are.

The howitzer itself was brought down from Fort Devens with a lot of paperwork and concern, and those that brought it to us from Fort Devens picked that spot where you see it, because it was the most easiest to get to if they had to take it back, put it back in the service. I can reassure you that it can't be used the way it is now. It's been very well welded, all the movable parts.

There are no real spots to tell unless they take and put it over to facing the post from Pine Street on the right-hand side where the piece of grass is. That's been mentioned. That was mentioned today at the post, and it didn't get discussed totally.

I don't know who knows, but Fort Devens required us to put that platform on there. It's two feet deep concrete with rebar where they would bring it to us, and obviously my commander, who's sitting two doors down here, had to sign for it. So his safety and life, or whatever you want to call it, is on line for it, and we can't put it in his yard, my yard, or anybody else's except where it is.

If it's moved, we have to notify Devens that we've moved it from where they designated it, and if those parking spaces are given, they won't benefit us. They'll only benefit the people that are moving in next door. And as far as snow removal, it's been going on for the last 20-odd years when the post reopened, and the trucks that we're talking about, the 18-wheelers, do make the turn coming in off of Pine Street.

Not easily, but good drivers can put those things in the backyard, and they are. Coming off of New Ocean onto where they want to designate a new opening won't be as easy as it sounds on paper. I've worked in that area for more than 40-odd years, and I've watched the traffic come and go and go and come.

I do not see many cars coming off of New Ocean Hot Street from Paradise making right turns onto Pine. Maybe one at the most, maybe two. And most of the time, they go straight off of New Ocean and into our parking lot as members to use that parking lot.

Coming out of the parking lot at that point has never been a problem, except for the amount of traffic that's on the road now. And I can safely say my boys have been taught to look both ways before they enter. Most people do.

Some people just... And that's what makes the problem. Coming out of our parking lot into the parking lot that they want us to use, which would make a double left turn going right or left, wouldn't be much easier, especially with cars coming off of Pine or up New Ocean.

And in my lifetime, I haven't seen anything to fix that in that area. And I must have put a bridge, and I'm being facetious. So that's what I've got to say, and you can put it all together, or everything that's been said here tonight.

And from my past experience, some of this will work, and some of it is just paper, as they say in my world.

[Speaker 3] (1:15:20 - 1:16:00)
Great. Thank you so much. Does anyone else from the Veterans Center want to say anything?

No? Okay. No problem.

I know it's like a burden to have it in front of you. Yes, right. Thank you.

Okay, so I do see somebody, one of the attendees, Irene Pepperberg, has had her hand raised for a while, so thank you for patiently waiting. Do you have a comment about the Veterans Center parking and Calix's proposal? Yeah.

Can you hear me?

[Speaker 13] (1:16:00 - 1:17:40)
We can. Thank you. Okay, so Irene Pepperberg, I live on 30 Curry Circle.

I think you all already know that most of us on 30 Curry Circle are absolutely up in arms against this because of what it's going to do to our little street that's a residential street, and we are hoping to keep it residential. Our two main concerns are, you know, you're talking about all this parking and this, that, and the other thing. How are you going to prevent people from parking on Curry Circle?

We have almost no parking as it is. I mean, I can't even trim my bushes in front of my house because my neighbors are parking in front of my house, okay? There isn't even enough parking for the people on the street.

And also in the winter, they also throw all the snow on that point where you're having this little, you know, boat sit, okay? And it's almost impossible to make a left turn or see, you know, to make a left turn out of Curry Circle because, you know, you can't see what's going on. So, you know, I can't tell what you're doing to make it easy to make that left turn possible, and I also really don't see what you're doing to make it impossible for people to park, you know, to keep them out of our hair, luckily.

I mean, we don't have that kind of trouble with the liquor store, and we never had. I've lived here for 20 years. But this looks like a whole new game plan.

So those are my two questions.

[Speaker 3] (1:17:41 - 1:18:31)
Thank you, Ms. Pepperbrook. I think to the snow removal point, and we can let Mr. D'Agostino maybe address this more, but it does seem that if there isn't a room in the tip to park, to put the snow where they had before, you've created to compensate for that, that berm, the snow storage area in place. I don't know if that exists now or what that area is now.

If that's already snow storage and then we're taking away the ability to do storage on the peninsula there, then perhaps there's a bigger concern. But can you speak to how you arrived at that area and if you think that's going to be sufficient compared to what's there now for snow removal?

[Speaker 4] (1:18:32 - 1:20:14)
Sure. This came up previously at another meeting, and DPW was also part of that conversation. And our understanding was street snow was being pushed into those areas, particularly at the triangle there.

And so by creating a curved, granite curved sidewalk area, they won't be able to push the big piles of snow off of the street into the tip of the triangle, if you will. So I know DPW was on one of those meetings where this was discussed, and certainly this is a vast improvement. You won't have street snow, and I hope you know what I mean by that, pushing the street snow off of the road into that triangle.

That will no longer be possible. So the only snow that would be at the triangle is whatever fell there by nature. There wouldn't be any pile in the snow.

So I think it makes that left turn and trying to see over a snowburn, it eliminates it. You couldn't put snow there anymore. So it very directly addresses that concern.

And then as it relates to the parking on Curry Circle, we've eliminated 100% of the access. So right now there's 100% access from the site to Curry Circle, and after this project, there would be 0% access from the site to Curry Circle. I think going from 100% access to 0% access was something that we really knew we needed to do, and that's why we proposed the layout in the way that we've done.

[Speaker 3] (1:20:15 - 1:20:30)
So just to clarify, so when you were saying you had spoken with Geno Preston from the DPW, can you clarify for me again what concerns he had in terms of the town's snow removal from Curry Circle?

[Speaker 4] (1:20:30 - 1:21:05)
It wasn't a concern. I think it was his understanding that snow was getting pushed off of the road into that triangle. The neighbors had raised the issue about the snow banks being too high, and Geno had mentioned that he thought that was because they were piling snow from the road there.

So this was a while back, so I don't remember every detail of the conversation, but this would eliminate that concern, and it was something he'd committed to at that meeting on improving anyway because he didn't want them to not be able to seal those snow banks. So this really just supports that effort, if you will.

[Speaker 3] (1:21:08 - 1:21:16)
Ms. Pepperberg, did that answer your question? I know you might not find the answer sufficient, but did it answer your questions at least?

[Speaker 13] (1:21:18 - 1:21:32)
Okay, but with the Dory thing there, will we be able to see how to make that left turn out of Curry Circle? I mean, it doesn't take much to make that kind of difficult.

[Speaker 4] (1:21:34 - 1:21:35)
Mike, I think I saw you talking, but you're muted.

[Speaker 1] (1:21:36 - 1:22:48)
So can I just ‑‑ bear with me just for one second. I guess I want to suggest here, just so residents understand, this project, once it leaves us tonight, is going through site plan review and a regulatory process, and this is the exact type of thing the planning board and other boards are going to with staff recommendations. And the only reason I'm raising that is not because we're trying to pass the responsibility on to them.

It is their responsibility, and frankly, I don't want there to be a conception that we are doing site plan review tonight, because I think there are a number of these questions that are really good questions, and I don't think we're ‑‑ I believe the reviewing authority should be, with the technical assistance of staff going through these, I think that question about the Dory is a really great one. And so I just want to set expectations that I think they have to go through a process and satisfy multiple boards here, including the Conservation Commission, I think, and the planning board, through this process.

So happy to have you guys answer it, but I think the answer is you know that you need to make sure the site line is there, because the regulatory boards are going to make sure of it, but I think Mike Dryden alone is going to make sure of it, but I just ‑‑ I think the real answer to you, Ms. Pepperberg, is it's going to get ‑‑ there are going to be site lines, because it will never get through the regulatory review.

[Speaker 13] (1:22:49 - 1:22:51)
And what about the bus stop?

[Speaker 1] (1:22:55 - 1:23:01)
I can't speak to the bus stop. Someone from Calix or Mr. Dryden, you have to speak to where the bus stop currently is and how that's being treated.

[Speaker 9] (1:23:03 - 1:23:09)
I don't see how this proposal in any way changes the bus route as it functions today.

[Speaker 13] (1:23:10 - 1:23:18)
So you can still be able to stop, and people will be able to get on the bus at that same spot?

[Speaker 9] (1:23:20 - 1:23:33)
Yes. The bus may just have to stage at the edge of the curb versus perhaps on that sort of triangle that you saw on the plan. But other than that, there's nothing else that would impede that bus stop.

[Speaker 1] (1:23:33 - 1:23:59)
Great. Can I just ask to make sure staff, community development staff hears that question and make sure that question is confirmed through the process, the formal approval process? I see MD Islam.

MD, how are you? I'm good. How are you?

I'm doing great. Thanks for attending tonight.

[Speaker 15] (1:24:01 - 1:24:31)
No, thank you. Thank you for coming to the site once, Peter, with your team to visit and hear our concern. And thank you for listening, too.

I see some of the accommodation there, for sure. But the two concerns, one of them I have a concern, the other one I had a question for Margie. I know Margie talked about there are some plans for improvement for the drainage and with the Curry Circle on the street.

Is there a timeline on it, like when we can see those improvements coming to Curry Circle?

[Speaker 6] (1:24:33 - 1:24:46)
I know that the DPW director is planning to go out to bid or solicit proposals for the roadway work as part of the annual street paving process, and that would be done shortly.

[Speaker 15] (1:24:47 - 1:24:51)
So we should see something by end of this year or before end of this year?

[Speaker 6] (1:24:52 - 1:24:58)
Yes, I do believe so. I know that the DPW director, Gino Cresta, is on, or he was in the meeting. I'm not sure if it can be promoted.

[Speaker 1] (1:24:58 - 1:25:37)
So I think the only thing I would say about that MD and Margie is I would want to make sure that any things that are done right now, taking consideration they may be disturbed by the construction of 16 New Ocean, and frankly, they should be sequenced. I understand there may be anxious to have them done as quickly as can be, but to have them done and then be undone because of adjacent construction isn't, it leaves Curry Circle not in as good of a condition. So therefore, I just ask to make sure that we're timing things to make sure that maybe there are things that can get done now, but there may be other things that need to wait a little bit just because things are going to get torn up because of the construction.

Sorry, MD, do you have another, a second question?

[Speaker 15] (1:25:37 - 1:26:19)
Yeah, just a quick concern. I think Irene talked about it really is that I know on the corner, we talked about that you completely 100% closed with soft light lighting and other stuff on the corner, but I'm not sure it's still having just the garden line would be enough for anyone just going park on the corner and go around to somewhere else for employee or anybody else. So I would take a look if there is anything.

I see there is a six foot high solid barrier PVC fence on the corner, which is good, but I would try to take a look to see more so that people are not really parking on that corner. That's pretty much it. Thank you so much.

[Speaker 1] (1:26:19 - 1:27:39)
Yeah, I understand. And my hope is also that curbing also helps deter that because there won't be space for that as well. I do think what's not shown in the plan is certain things that the town and later on tonight, we're actually having a conversation about pedestrian safety and traffic.

When we were out, I believe Neil was with us and David maybe, and staff were out that day. And I think we talked about things like signage that makes clear that deters people from driving down that street thinking that somehow there's parking or access to anything beyond the residence and also restricting parking on street for residents only in that area. Whereas we may not universally like that idea for a lot of streets in town.

This is a very clear, limited dead end street. And if you're going down there, you're only going down there because of the residence and it's narrow width. So there are things that we're gonna look at and the town unilaterally, frankly, because the town owns this property, we can do a lot of things unilaterally, I guess.

But on this regard, there's things MD for Curry Circle that we're gonna come back and have staff come back and visit with you all on in terms of restrictions on the use of the street so we leave it better than perhaps the situation today. I see Marty Geeran and I apologize, Marty, if I pronounced the last name incorrectly.

[Speaker 12] (1:27:43 - 1:27:44)
It's fine. Can you hear me?

[Speaker 1] (1:27:44 - 1:27:45)
We can. How are you?

[Speaker 12] (1:27:46 - 1:27:49)
I always say it's guarantee without the T.

[Speaker 1] (1:27:50 - 1:27:50)
All right.

[Speaker 12] (1:27:52 - 1:29:36)
I'm fine. Thank you. And thank you for letting me speak.

A lot of MD just referenced an email that I had sent to Marcy earlier. I think it's, you know, that you mentioned all these improvements that are gonna be done by the town and that the fact that you need to have them done, of course, not when it conflicts with the construction, but, you know, without it being in writing, it makes people wonder. And the only other thing I really, you know, we've talked a lot about, or you talked a lot about the New Ocean, Pine Street intersection.

The only fatal things that have happened on 1A in this section of town have happened at Curry Circle, either 20 feet beyond Curry Circle, 20 feet the other way, but it's all been at Curry Circle. So the importance of, and it hasn't been from people coming out of Curry Circle, it's been that the roadway bends at that point and people just hit the pole, they hit each other. You know, there have been three since I've lived here of people lying in the street dead.

So I think that these concerns that Irene brought up, Irene Pepperberg brought up, the others have brought up about coming out of Curry Circle mean life and death. And I think that you have to really understand that. And thirdly, the snow, well, the snow, I'm the one that said it was the state, it's the state trucks that dump the snow in Corning, not Gino.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:36 - 1:29:41)
Oh, I apologize for misrepresenting Gino. Thank you for clarifying.

[Speaker 12] (1:29:42 - 1:30:44)
Yeah, it's the state trucks. The last snow that we had, they were turning around in that parking lot and dumping it again. So that was the concern for me.

I would also like to just mention about communication. The fact that we didn't know about this meeting until a couple of hours before it happened is unfortunate because I think other people would have liked to have heard what I've heard, which for the most part is positive, I have to say. So I would ask that Marcy or Sean or whoever's job it is, Ali, I don't know whose job it is, to let us, Peter, you mentioned it going to the various subcommittees and different planning committees, zoning committees, whatever.

If we can be alerted to that when it's happening, it would help both you and us get rid of any bad feelings.

[Speaker 1] (1:30:44 - 1:31:04)
Yep, understood, Marty. There are public notices to abutters and abutters to abutters for the regulatory hearings, but we'll ask staff now to not assume people and we'll make sure all the Curry Circle neighbors and the Pine Street neighbors are receiving notification. Points are well taken.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

[Speaker 12] (1:31:04 - 1:31:05)
Thank you, thank you, that's it.

[Speaker 1] (1:31:06 - 1:32:14)
To board members, other questions or comments for tonight, again, a lot of the regulatory things, they're going to go through a site plan process, but tonight is really to just basically give approval of this site plan subject to regulatory review. And as I said before, the additional details, there's a lot of details to be worked out, especially with the Veterans Center, and Polly and I have committed to facilitating resolution of those with staff and with the stakeholders of the Veterans Center to make sure that that's documented and made clear so that everyone has comfort about them. I do really appreciate hearing from all the stakeholders, not just the Veterans Centers, but others in the community, the recognition of the need to make certain improvements to the surrounding streets and things of that nature.

All right, we're going to take one more comment and then we're going to move on because we have a big agenda here. So Len Russo, how are you? Hey, Peter.

[Speaker 16] (1:32:16 - 1:33:24)
Sorry, can you hear me okay? We can. Yeah, thank you.

I'm good with all the plans. I understand what's happening in the Veterans Center and all that, but I just want to reiterate what Marty said. We live on Rock Ave, as you know, and that street is a one way.

So the only way out of our street is straight down onto New Ocean, right across from that location. And that is a very dangerous bend. So we have talked about also some improvements or some way from a public safety standpoint so that people weren't live parking on the street or just circling around and cutting down into that.

I mean, people cut through this street because of the congestion on New Ocean now and all the other ways to cut over there. And I'm just really concerned because the accidents that do happen, happen on that curb. I don't know if there's a way to flatten that out or some thought about in the public safety review, how we'll prevent people from live parking or just looping and looping to try to get straight across into that parking lot.

[Speaker 1] (1:33:24 - 1:34:33)
Yeah, thanks, Len. We're going to talk, I mentioned earlier, about some pedestrian safety and traffic initiatives. I do think staff should hear very clearly tonight the need to make sure that we're looking at, the project is one thing, but there are certainly parking regulations and other traffic regulations surrounding this property and the adjacent streets that the staff should be making recommendations back to us for changes in connection with this process and not just assume the project has taken care of it. But we have the responsibility for those adjacent streets, so there'll be more dialogue and we'll make sure you're aware of those dialogues.

All right, to my colleagues. Questions, comments for tonight? Then hearing none, is there a motion then to approve the site plan subject to finalizing details?

And ultimately, coming back, there'll need to be a lease amendment to reflect putting in writing some of the details relative to specifically about the Veterans Center and the use of a portion of that property as well. So this is like the longest...

[Speaker 22] (1:34:33 - 1:34:37)
I was going to say... I forgot that I was doing a motion. I just did the longest motion ever.

[Speaker 1] (1:34:38 - 1:34:45)
All right, well, that's what happens. So something along those lines. The most important thing is the approving subject to a lease modification.

[Speaker 3] (1:34:46 - 1:34:51)
With terms that are agreeable to the Veterans Center. Yes, exactly. So moved.

[Speaker 1] (1:34:52 - 1:35:34)
Second. Any questions or comments? All right, before we officially leave this and take the vote here, Mr. Torelli, I want to let you know that I appreciate your design and you bringing a better entrance to Swampscott with this building. Admittedly, we made the bar pretty low for you, but that being said, you exceeded well beyond that low bar and I appreciate your skill and your talents in bringing them and helping us make this part of Swampscott more welcoming and not a back door because it's not a back door. It's a front door to Swampscott. So thank you very much for that.

[Speaker 18] (1:35:34 - 1:35:36)
Well, you're very kind to say that. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:35:37 - 1:36:13)
And to staff, I do want, we're going to talk later about traffic safety. We are going to want to talk about Curry Circle. We're going to want to talk about Pine Street.

There are other things beyond what Calix will be doing with Pine Street and New Ocean Street that we should be addressing specifically on Pine Street as well. Although we didn't hear from residents on Pine Street tonight, there are, this is not going to solve the Pine Street speed issue. There are other things that we can talk about later.

So with that, all those in favor? Aye. And none opposed.

All right. Thanks everyone for being here. Thanks for your time and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Have a great night.

[Speaker 3] (1:36:14 - 1:36:15)
Thank you. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:19 - 1:41:41)
We're going to move on now and have a conversation, no vote tonight, but a conversation with regard to a continuation of the discussion of the debt projections and costs associated with the new elementary school. And I'm grateful that we have our finance director and treasurer with us tonight to help us through this conversation. The board has in their packet materials that the treasurer prepared to help us continue a conversation that we all started back on June 14th.

Sorry, I shouldn't say started. We most recently continued on June 14th, but we started in late summer, early fall of last year. Just to set the table again, in late fall, early summer last year, the initial projections from the school building committee and the design team was a cost of a school of approximately $115 million.

Let me say $107 million in 2020 dollars, which if escalated to 2022 dollars to start a construction would be closer to 117 to 120 million dollars. The final budget came in last month by the design team and the school building committee at 98.35 million dollars in 2022 dollars. So about $20 million savings from the initial estimates that the finance committee, CIC and select board viewed in 2020.

In June, on June 14th, we began looking at debt service projections and the potential use of the town stabilization funds to reduce the impact to the taxpayers of the new school. Tonight, we're gonna continue and share some updated material which the treasurer prepared and shared with the finance committee at their meeting on Monday night. I will say two very big pieces of news that came out of the MSBA vote on June 23rd.

First is the MSBA increased its maximum grant amount to the town of Swampscott by upwards of a million dollars over what we previously had projected for our internal analysis and that was a pleasant surprise. The MSBA voted to increase their hard cost cap reimbursement from $333 a foot to $360 a foot. It's still subject to an overall cap but that increased significantly the amount of grant reimbursement that the town of Swampscott is entitled to.

Secondly, although not specifically, they weren't saying it specifically from Swampscott but they certainly noted is that the average cost of a school going through the MSBA process over the last two years has been $529 a foot. Swampscott's school is coming in at $500 a foot which is a 5.5% decrease from the average over the last two years with the MSBA. That's really important and I really want to take a moment to thank the school building committee and the design team for going through the effort which was weeks in the making of endless meetings and going line item by line item, discipline by discipline to find the places where the budget was out of whack or the scope was not meeting the needs of the community and they were able to do that without reducing or eliminating programmatic needs or plans for the school and do it in a way that's financially responsible and shows that we are proposing to the residents of Swampscott a cost effective solution for a new school. So thank you to the school building committee and the design team for all their effort getting us here. With that, I want to invite Patrick Luddy, our treasurer, to walk us through and I think Patrick, you tell us where you want to walk through.

I don't know that we need to go through all these scenarios. This is just an update tonight but I think in particular the one which you used with all your charts consolidated might be the appropriate graphic maybe to start with and kind of talk through. I was really pleased and I welcome your thoughts as well and feedback from the finance committee.

I think there's a recognition to the credit of the financial team that the amount of reserves that the town of Swampscott has relative to the amount of reserves that we did not have in 2014. When people ask what has changed more than anything, the school proposal is different. It's a better proposal.

It's in a better location. It has better ideas but one of the things that people aren't talking about enough is our financial preparedness for the school compared to 2014. Our reserve accounts did not exist in 2014 and so I think tonight we're going to not only talk about what the cost will be of the town's portion which is roughly $64 million but also how to offset that by the strategic use of reserves and you presented some materials that show the ability to significantly reduce the cost of the school to taxpayers combined with the fact that this is a record low interest rate environment and so our timing in 2021 is infinitely better than 2014 in this regard. So Patrick, it's all yours. Yes, I think Patrick, do you want her to put that up on Zoom or do you want something else?

[Speaker 7] (1:41:41 - 1:49:21)
I'm just going to briefly go over the reserve assumptions and projections and then I'll get right into the updated scenarios that we have up on the board here. So we brought this before you and the Capital Improvement Committee and the Finance Committee a few weeks ago with some preliminary projections for reserves and this is the baseline for the scenarios that you're going to see up on the screen. The Finance Committee suggested some adjustments to the assumptions in the reserve projection.

So when I brought this to you before, the Stabilization Fund, we were estimating a 5.8% return on investment based on experience. The Finance Committee wanted to go a little more conservative with our assumption for investment income so I adjusted this down to a 4% return on investment annually and then we also want, when I first presented this to you, there was no annual contribution budgeted in this projection so the Finance Committee wanted to show a consistent contribution so I put $250,000 annually which is in line with our past practice for contributing to our Stabilization Fund.

So those are the two major changes to that projection for that particular reserve fund which is what we're working with for all of these working examples. I'll just comment in Fiscal 22, we're projected, based on these assumptions, to have a reserve balance that is 11.3% of our budget. That is above our guideline which is 9-10% of budget that's established by the financial policies that we all recently approved.

So those are the updates to the reserve projection and that's going to feed into our scenarios. Something else important to note with these projection scenarios that are a little different than what you saw a few weeks ago in that this financing scenario assumes $60 million of borrowing in Fiscal 23 up front to maximize the interest rate environment. So we would get a 2.5% rate we're estimating on that which is, there's significant savings about $3 million, a little over $3 million over the life of the debt and interest expense. So that's an opportunity we would really like to take advantage of. So that's reflected in this projection and then we're also still assuming two rounds of bans. We'll do a ban in 24 and a ban in 25 for $4 million as opposed to $5 million in the previous projection that you saw and that's reflective of the MSBA increasing our estimated reimbursement for the project by approximately $1 million.

So those are the financing assumptions behind these projections. So Ali has eight charts up on the screen here. Some of these were presented to the Finance Committee on Monday.

So that's scenarios 1 through 7 at the top and then on the bottom left of the screen scenario 2. These were presented to the Finance Committee and based on feedback from them I've come up with refined scenarios 4, 6 and 8 which are refinements of 3, 5 and 7. So I'll just walk you through these briefly.

So scenario 1, that reflects no use of reserves. So this is your representative of your tax impact to the median single family home for the life of this debt. So this is peaking out at about $425 annually in fiscal 25 without any use of reserves.

So we're trying to apply the reserves here to mitigate that. Increase, you can see those peaks and valleys so it's kind of sporadic. So what we've been tasked with here is to level that out to make sure that we have consistency year over year while still staying within our guidance for using the reserve fund that 9 to 10% of budget.

Scenario 2 here, $365 a day. So applying $365 a day, $365 a year tax impact. That's utilizing $1.78 million of stabilization funds. That's something that was presented to you before. It looked slightly different because the structure of the debt was different when we spoke a few weeks ago. But that's still in the mix.

And then I'll just bring you right to 4, 6 and 8. Scenario 4, this represents an impact, maximum impact to the median single-family home taxpayer of $340 a year. That requires $3.9 million of stabilization to be used from fiscal 24 through fiscal 30. And your balance in the stabilization fund never goes below 10%, which is the high end of our guideline that we established. So that is possibly a conservative option. We can call it that.

Scenario 6 is a little more aggressive. We're using $4.48 million of stabilization from fiscal 24 to fiscal 30. And in that scenario, we're never drawing down our stabilization balance below 9.5%, which is the mid-grade on our guidance. And that's going to achieve a maximum tax impact of $327 over the life of this debt service. And that is going to present between years fiscal 25 and fiscal 35. And that is because we're applying stabilization through fiscal 30, but our debt naturally levels off at $327 from fiscal 30 to fiscal 35.

So by applying stabilization funds in those key beginning years, we can actually keep this impact level for 10 years by applying stabilization through five years of this debt. And then for scenario 8, that's your most aggressive option. Aggressive, keeping in mind that the assumptions for the reserve fund are conservative and that our reserve balances likely will be higher than what I'm using to project this, so this might not be all that aggressive when we take that into effect.

But for this example, scenario 8, we could apply stabilization in the amount of $5.93 million over the course of about 10 years, so fiscal 24 to fiscal 35, and that'll achieve a maximum tax impact to this median single-family home taxpayer by about $300. So the impact will never exceed $300, and that'll get you through fiscal 2034, and then the debt naturally drops off. So this is the only scenario I'm presenting right now where we're applying stabilization beyond the fiscal year 2030, and that accomplishes your undercutting that natural level off that I mentioned in scenario 6.

So these are some of the more refined scenarios that I've developed based off the feedback from both the Finance Committee and the Board of Selectmen and Capital Improvement Committee at our initial meeting.

[Speaker 3] (1:49:24 - 1:49:30)
Can you just clarify one thing? Go ahead. The last thing, it undercuts the drop-off?

What did you just say?

[Speaker 7] (1:49:30 - 1:50:10)
Yeah, so just to clarify, in scenario 6, I'm suggesting applying stabilization through fiscal year 30, but the net tax impact is leveled through fiscal 2035, and that's because we're applying stabilization specifically to align with the natural leveling off of the debt from 2030 to 2035. So without any reserves applied in those years, it would be flat anyways. So we're just lining up with that to eliminate any sporadic changes in the tax impact for this debt.

[Speaker 3] (1:50:11 - 1:50:18)
I mean, scenario 8 seems good. We're done.

[Speaker 22] (1:50:18 - 1:50:21)
I agree. All those in favor? Aye.

Opposed?

[Speaker 1] (1:50:22 - 1:50:28)
This is my kind of conversation, so I'm not going to whip off anything you're saying. We're good. We're good.

[Speaker 3] (1:50:30 - 1:50:32)
Yeah, that's right. That's my presentation.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:33 - 1:50:37)
More importantly, Polly decided when she was right. I mean, like, that is...

[Speaker 3] (1:50:37 - 1:50:38)
That's the shocker.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:38 - 1:51:06)
No, it's not the shocker. It is, like, the important part of this is that it's, to your point, like, yes, it's the most aggressive, meaning we get closest to the bottom lane of our rank, but we are still sitting in a situation where we actually, for the most part, don't even get down to 9%. There's one year we get down to 9%.

Right. Only one year, and we are still just... I mean, when I say sitting on it, I don't mean this pejoratively.

We're still sitting on $8 million of on-tap reserves.

[Speaker 22] (1:51:06 - 1:51:07)
Well, we're still...

[Speaker 1] (1:51:07 - 1:51:17)
In our lowest year of just general... I mean, it's... The whole thing is stacked.

The power of reserves and stabilization...

[Speaker 3] (1:51:18 - 1:51:24)
Well, the difference in a half a percent for an average taxpayer, the average taxpayer is huge.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:24 - 1:52:30)
So for residents at home that can't see this, and this will all be made available on the town website, to give you a sense, project scenario number 8 creates between a $300-a-year median tax impact for a $98.35 million school through the year 2036, and then at 2036 going forward, we're down to closer to $220 going forward. By way of example, the high school, which was a total of roughly one-half the amount of this current school when we did the high school back in 2007, the debt service for the median single family was closer to $400. So we're building a school for twice the cost, potentially almost one...

potentially 25% cheaper for the median single family tax bill, which is staggering. It's a combination of favorable interest rate environment and the use of stabilization funds, and it's staggering like the delta.

[Speaker 3] (1:52:31 - 1:52:41)
Now, dare I ask here, this is outside of Patrick's realm, but this is considering what construction costs are projected to be?

[Speaker 1] (1:52:41 - 1:52:57)
Yes, so the way in which the MSBA and the 3011 form requires you to build an escalation, and so all the pricing that came in, the two estimates that come in, and do it include escalation, so all the numbers here include basically through 20...

[Speaker 3] (1:52:57 - 1:52:58)
Does that include, sorry.

[Speaker 1] (1:52:59 - 1:53:03)
That and significant contingencies, right, are baked in the budget.

[Speaker 3] (1:53:03 - 1:53:08)
Because like right now, cost of lumber, like just cost of materials is...

[Speaker 1] (1:53:08 - 1:54:00)
Yeah, so great, like really fair point. So I will say having reviewed it, it's a conservative budget, and you can actually go on the MSBA website, and this is the number we have to approve, but that doesn't mean it's the number we're expending. If you actually look at the approved budget versus the bid budget, right, once they go out to bid and they back, you see on average about a 5% difference over the last, I think, couple years is what they were talking about last Wednesday on the 23rd, but you can go on the MSBA to see the difference, and that's purposely because these numbers are purposely conservative because they bake in contingency, and what you don't want to do is go get town approval for seven-eighths of a school, right? And so there's a lot of good news here, and this is the most conservative side of it.

I think this is great.

[Speaker 3] (1:54:00 - 1:54:38)
I mean, this is really exciting. We're in good shape. I think it's nice work to Sean and everyone.

I mean, I'm being lighthearted about it, but seriously, this is totally impressive, and Patrick, I really appreciate how clearly you've laid it out and in how many different ways you've laid it out because it's so easy to compare and get a good grasp. So I appreciate the presentation, and I... So anyway, I think it's all very exciting, and our most extreme scenario seems totally prudent.

Not extreme.

[Speaker 11] (1:54:38 - 1:55:03)
I think what's interesting, and where most people when writing this are skeptical about municipal finance, and projects like this typically come closer and closer to vote. There's always price creep, right? We're going in the other direction.

Every time we have an update, the picture improves substantially, so this is terrific news, and again, it's due to a lot of hard work from very talented people, so...

[Speaker 5] (1:55:03 - 1:56:13)
I just want to thank Patrick and Amy. It's a lot of work to really put together this type of analysis, but I know we talk a lot about stabilization and the reserves, but really what has been in play is planning and really thinking strategically over years and looking at contracts, looking at budgets, really managing government. It didn't just happen, and when I think back on the number of really critical conversations that we've had over the last few years, the tough decisions that helped us build a stronger financial footing for Swanskip, it really, the credit belongs to a lot of really important partners, and that goes to our unions, to our service contracts and other areas of our government, so it really reflects a mindfulness in how we manage all these responsibilities.

[Speaker 1] (1:56:16 - 1:56:48)
So there's no vote needed tonight. This is really an update for us. I think that the goal is, I think we wanted to ultimately approve, and this is going to take us right into our next thing.

We're going to want to approve the warrant and make recommendations earlier than later this summer, so we're going to talk about a revised July schedule before we leave tonight, but this will ultimately culminate into a recommendation. What did you say? I said, sweet.

My interest in meetings.

[Speaker 9] (1:56:48 - 1:56:49)
More meetings.

[Speaker 1] (1:56:49 - 1:58:35)
No, no, no, no, no, no. This is actually going to go the other way. We're actually going to decrease meetings depending on how we do tonight.

Yeah, no, my interest in meetings is waning with the temperature, so I'm like, okay. So with that, I do think it's worthwhile. Patrick, let's look at a package of this to get on the town website, please, and also share with the SBC so that they can post it as well.

So with that, there are two things for us to do tonight, and again, one is to establish and to vote to establish as a special town meeting date Monday, September 13th as the date of the special town meeting for approval of the debt exclusion required for the school, and number two is to approve Tuesday, October 19th as the date for the town-wide election for approval of the debt exclusion as well. So those are the two things we have confirmed with the town clerk that there's no conflicts or holidays conflicting with those dates and with the moderator as well to make sure that worked for a town meeting date.

For residents that are listening and interested, this is going to be a debt exclusion. This is not a scenario where the town is looking to approve the school without a debt exclusion, and that will require approval of town meeting and approval from a town-wide vote on the dates that I just articulated. So with that, if there's no questions or comments about the dates, is there a motion to approve those two dates?

So moved.

[Speaker 3] (1:58:35 - 1:58:35)
Second.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:36 - 1:58:40)
Any questions, comments? All right. All in favor?

[Speaker 3] (1:58:40 - 1:58:40)
Aye.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:41 - 1:59:19)
All right. Thank you very much. We're now going to...

I want to invite Marzi Golaska, our Director of Community and Economic Development. I think she has a brief presentation on the efforts of the Traffic Advisory Committee. If you recall, I can't remember how many months ago now, but almost two years ago now, this board revamped the Traffic Study Advisory Committee.

Marzi, I don't know if you actually have the charge in your slide presentation, but there was a specific charge given to... It's okay if not, but the board... There it is.

Look at that.

[Speaker 6] (1:59:19 - 2:00:01)
We created a mission. As you recall, there was a... It's a mission-driven committee, I think.

So as you can see here, it listed the mission of the Traffic Study Advisory Committee is to provide technical review of any resident, business, or staff request to evaluate traffic or parking issues within the town. And then the committee may make recommendations to the governing bodies, such as the Select Board, police department, school department, or Mass. Department of Transportation.

And the committee is dedicated to making Swamps Guard safe and traffic-friendly community in which to work, live, and visit. And the committee... If we can go to the next slide.

The committee is made up of eight members.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:02 - 2:00:17)
Marzi, can I... I'm sorry, I'm going to interrupt because I don't believe that mission reflects everything the Select Board voted on. I believe there was a provision that actually had the...

not just responding to the requests of people, but also the ability to identify and bring to the Select Board certain initiatives. I just want to make sure my memory's clear on that.

[Speaker 6] (2:00:21 - 2:00:23)
So the committee may make recommendations.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:24 - 2:00:28)
Make recommendations. As long as it's not... Make recommendations, but it's not just in response to...

[Speaker 6] (2:00:28 - 2:00:30)
Right, not just in response to...

[Speaker 1] (2:00:30 - 2:00:30)
I just want to make sure.

[Speaker 6] (2:00:30 - 2:00:52)
Yeah, so there may be two different... As you see, like, the two different paragraphs that were included as part of the mission. So the first one would be to actually listen to the comments or issues that are brought to us from the residents of the business community to address those issues.

But also at the same time, make recommendations and really overall look at the issues that the town is facing and make recommendations.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:52 - 2:00:53)
Thanks, sorry.

[Speaker 6] (2:00:55 - 2:05:07)
So unfortunately... So anyways, just to... If we can go back to the membership of the committee.

The committee is made up of eight members. There is a representative from the police department, the fire department, the Department of Public Works, community development, the disability commission, and there are three resident members that are appointed to the board. And to date, or actually since the mission has been updated, so that would be last year, 2019, the committee has been meeting.

This year alone, or since January 1st of 2021, we had about four meetings. The meetings are well attended. We seem to receive a lot of feedback from the residents.

To date, we have approved two issues. One of them was a handicap parking space at H Hillside Avenue and a request that we came to this honorable board to receive the approval for a no right-hand turn on red on at Reddington Street, as I'm not sure if you recall. In addition, we receive a lot of concerns from the residents and I just kind of listed the major issues or major concerns that we have heard and will try to address.

And the issues really deal with traffic and in general, parking signs that we received over or close to nine requests that really deal with traffic and signage. And that would be signage on Greenwood Ave, Puritan, Norfolk, Ingalls, Salem and Essex Street. There were also, we received many concerns about traffic calming measures and we received many requests for speed bumps, for speed tables, speed boards to really look at the speed limits within the areas.

And that was from residents of again, Franklin, Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, Puritan, Burrill Street and Salem Street as well. We also received requests for assistance with crosswalks. The request was to place better sort of signage and ability to safely cross the sidewalks by residents.

There is technology such as the rapid flashing beacons. As you recall, it's just really signage that when activated, it flashes and brings additional warning to cars that are driving by to slow down and allow residents to cross. And that request was made for areas of Humphrey Street, again, Essex Street, Salem Street, Paradise Road.

So you can see that most of these requests are made for the major thoroughfare within the town. We also received several requests about designated bike lanes to really extend them in the areas that we currently have and to actually include new designated bike lanes on Essex Street. We also, again, heard from residents who are concerned about safety to their property as well as pedestrian safety and they requested Jersey barriers.

Those requests were made from residents of Essex Street and they were at two separate segments of Essex Street. We also receive our request for new sidewalks that we are looking at and that will be to put a sidewalk along Salem Street. If you recall where one Salem Street is, there is a strip of grass along the segment.

So we're looking at the ownership to find out if we can put in sidewalks there to really create better traffic flow, actually walkability to Vernon Square on both sides of the road as well as access by residents of one Salem Street. And that is my update. I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:07 - 2:05:10)
So Margie, this information here, this is for 2021?

[Speaker 6] (2:05:11 - 2:05:11)
Yes.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:11 - 2:05:21)
And so tell us this, we revised this committee back in 2019, correct? Yes. And so tell me how many meetings since 2019 has the committee had?

[Speaker 6] (2:05:22 - 2:05:42)
In 2019, we probably had about three or four meetings and it was due to COVID. It was difficult to, believe it or not, even though during Zoom, it should have been much easier to have a quorum, to be able to have a meeting, but unfortunately that was not the case.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:43 - 2:06:08)
So I think that when we originally approved this, we actually asked that all recommendations come to us, both ones that are voted unfavorably and the ones that are not voted unfavorably. And so I can only remember one meeting since 2019 where we've ever had the committee come to us and share with us any recommendation that didn't vote to approve. So is that, should we assume that that's the only recommendation that they haven't approved since 2019?

[Speaker 6] (2:06:09 - 2:06:14)
That's correct. That's the only recommendation. There are still, we have a lot of outstanding issues right now.

[Speaker 1] (2:06:15 - 2:06:20)
So I really appreciate the, let me just ask, so who's the chair of the committee?

[Speaker 6] (2:06:21 - 2:06:22)
I am the chair of the committee.

[Speaker 1] (2:06:22 - 2:11:59)
Okay. I really appreciate all the hard work, but I'm just, and I appreciate that COVID presented challenges. I don't see tangible evidence through town that this system seems to be working and I'm not putting it on you or the representatives of the committee, but I guess I want to challenge us to rethink how we're doing this.

The town administrator for 24 months has been talking about pedestrian safety and I don't believe that we can point to a single meaningful initiative. Yes, there's a handicap sign and there's a no right turn sign, but I don't think that's anything for us to be proud of as a select board, meaning that we're addressing pedestrian safety in this town and I'm speaking to the town administrator as much as anybody at the moment, to be honest with you, because that's how this works. I don't believe that we have shown in a tangible way a seriousness that reflects the rhetoric that has been used to ask the town to approve a $100,000 traffic study for us to revamp a whole committee, for us to ask residents to donate their time and get feedback.

I haven't heard a single initiative the committee came up with on their own that has been presented to us to vote on, but yet we all know all the issues in town. We know where the safety issues are and I appreciate the discussion about the pedestrian beacons, but where are they? We haven't had a request that we've had an opportunity to say yes or no to.

We haven't been asked for capital. We've gone through multiple capital cycles at this point and we haven't had one, not a single one for capital on it here. We're talking about Pine Street tonight and those residents have been living with a thoroughfare for how many decades?

Decades. And in my six plus years, I haven't heard a single recommendation from our police department. I haven't heard a single recommendation from staff to say, well, why don't we put a stop sign at Erie or Superior or Huron to at least slow them down.

A stop sign, which is what, $150 and maybe some man hours to put a stop sign up? We have Burpee Road, which we just had an incredible ribbon cutting. For a building that came up beautifully.

And we've been talking with the neighbors about doing $50,000 or maybe $100,000 of improvements. That project got built faster than we have advanced conversations about safety on that street. And I'm sorry that I'm being really direct.

They built an entire building faster than we advanced any conversation about public safety on their street. And that's just not okay. It's just not.

And I'm embarrassed. I'm responsible. We're responsible.

It's not just staff, it's all of us. It's not okay. Something has got to change.

And I don't know what it is because I really thought revamping this committee was gonna change it and it didn't change it. It is crazy to me that we haven't had a single recommendation from the police department. The ones who are on the street every single day, seeing things, seeing the problems and knowing things are broken.

Not a single recommendation has come to us. But then in the past week, I appreciate that people recognize that there was an issue on Puritan Road near Eisman's Beach. And I appreciate that someone decided to take initiatives and put up two speed bumps.

Those speed bumps should have been there years ago. Not those speed bumps because those speed bumps were small and narrow and cause accidents with bikers. Especially when they're put up and there's no sign that's saying, warning, speed bumps.

And so while I appreciate the idea and I don't want my words tonight to cause anybody to take initiative, I want the initiative. And I want smart initiative. But we've got to figure something out.

And it is a we. It's all of us. Walker Road, I appreciate what we're doing there.

It needs to be made pedestrian safe. It's not. It is just not pedestrian safe.

And I appreciate the test. And the one-way test, I think, have been great because we've made great data. That roundabout was a complete mess.

Not in an idea, it was an execution. The people that set it up, from the town staff and the police staff and others seeing it, you didn't need to pass it more than once to understand that the cars could not safely turn around it without doing multiple turns in the middle of an intersection. And we can't be doing, we just can't be doing this.

And so, again, I'm not saying this to deter the initiative. I'm saying it to increase the challenge to all of us because I think we have fallen down on this. And the few things that we've done, I'm grateful for.

I really am. I appreciate that we've been able to address some of the concerns. And I don't believe, I think you've heard me in the past say that everything needs to come to us.

Yes, we're the superintendent of the streets, so technically a lot of things need to come to us. But there are a lot of small things that can just happen, right? And I want them just to happen personally because we have too much going on here and you guys have great ideas and go do them, right?

But something, I'm gonna stop here. Something is being missed right now and it's on us and I don't believe the town is safer a few years later, the pedestrians, than it was and I think that's got us changed now. So let me just stop there and welcome anybody on the board.

[Speaker 11] (2:12:00 - 2:13:22)
Peter, I appreciate that and, again, no disrespect to the people that have been working on it. But I think what we really need and what I've kind of been expecting is literally a pedestrian traffic study master plan, which includes, again, we've got a waterfront master plan that includes grandiose and includes simple. We've got a development master plan.

Why don't we have, many of these issues we know, recognize they've been issues for decades and, again, you said some with a comprehensive plan, some are easy fix, some are more complicated. But the status quo is kind of unsustainable as we keep continuing to have incidents and we're just not, the system isn't currently working because we're not coming up with the solutions that we need and we're not implementing enough. And some, we've got to do some immediate triage and some are more complex issues like the crosswalk in front of the church.

But, again, I think it's not as though we're creating new issues. It's the same, we're creating generally the same issues unless new issues are being created by a new development or something of that nature. But a lot of these are generational issues.

So, I'd like, personally, I like the idea of a master plan with a deadline, a relatively short deadline, but I don't know what the fix is either, Peter.

[Speaker 3] (2:13:26 - 2:15:53)
I really appreciate what you share, Peter, and I, I always talk about burping around, but it is an example of, I am frustrated and disappointed with the, and I think I speak for the neighborhood, with that, with the development that's happened and then sort of an inconclusive or underwhelming response to traffic safety as a very dangerous treatment. I'm just giving that as a personal example of understanding the impact of your quality of life and safety and everything for anyone else who lives on the numerous other streets in town that are really dangerous, too. I don't know, I agree that it's not, the system currently isn't working how it's set up, and I don't quite know why.

I'm wondering if it would be helpful. I understand why the Traffic Advisory Committee is made up of town officials because they have the expertise and they have the right kind of questions in mind. At the same time, I think A, they all have a lot going on, so I think the time that they're able to consistently dedicate understandably, like truly, truly understandably, isn't as much as maybe an independent advisory committee.

And then second, I think just by human nature, if I were the DPW person, I'd be thinking about the speed bumps that people want. It's like, plowing around that is not good. Or the police officer who's like, we shouldn't put that there because we don't have enough guys to drive around and enforce that parking sign.

So I get why, but I don't know whether there's so much insight into that that that might sort of impact the progressiveness of some of the change. I'm thinking out loud. I hope that's okay.

So I don't know whether it's more, maybe we have more residents or maybe it's a committee. Again, just throwing ideas out there. And then we run it by sort of some of the town staff that's on it.

And it's vetted sort of at a different level with that just so maybe things can get pushed to at least off the initial platform and then sort of more closely vetted, I don't know, at a later point. But those are my only thoughts.

[Speaker 6] (2:15:55 - 2:16:15)
Well, one thing if I could just add is that the town is just preparing to go out to bid on the annual contracts for roadway, for street repair and paving and sidewalks and things like that. Burrill Street is definitely on the agenda.

[Speaker 1] (2:16:17 - 2:16:18)
Burpee, you mean?

[Speaker 6] (2:16:18 - 2:16:19)
Burpee, I'm sorry.

[Speaker 1] (2:16:19 - 2:16:37)
So can you speak to specifically what's happening at Burpee that's traffic calming or pedestrian? Nothing's been brought to us. So I'm just curious as to, I mean, speed has been the biggest complaint I think universally.

So what speed-wise is being done as part of this?

[Speaker 6] (2:16:37 - 2:17:07)
Absolutely. I'll be happy to do it. We had met with the residents and the consensus has been that the funding that was allocated as part of the Michon project that the residents, that we would install sidewalks for pedestrian safety on the opposite side of the road.

As part of that project, DPW is preparing to repave the roadway and install speed bumps on the road as discussed and requested by the residents.

[Speaker 1] (2:17:09 - 2:17:35)
So are these things that went through the Traffic Study Committee? Or are these things that didn't? Just help us understand the process, for example, if this is the first I'm hearing about speed bumps going forward, I actually heard, I believe, that there was opinions expressed in town hall that speed bumps weren't going to happen and something else was going to happen.

So what you're saying tonight is encouraging to me, but just so you know, it's the first I'm hearing and I'm guessing others might be hearing.

[Speaker 6] (2:17:35 - 2:18:43)
Well, I apologize for that, that perhaps you weren't aware. We did hold several meetings with the residents, with the neighbors, to really build consensus and really understand of what the neighborhood concerns and the issues have been. And the proposal is a result out of the meetings that we had had with the neighbors.

So obviously we realized at the beginning there was only $50,000 that was allocated to neighborhood improvements. So the two issues that were the biggest concerns were pedestrian or ability to safely walk or pedestrians on the street and definitely traffic calming measures. The DPW department actually did secure or have some additional funding.

So we thought to make the biggest and best improvements it really is wise to do the entire roadway improvement project, fix the road, fix the sidewalks and really have a comprehensive plan that will really complement the new school and some of the improvements that the town as well as the developer and the neighborhoods and the neighbors have been making in the neighborhood.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:44 - 2:18:48)
Great. So is there a plan that you can send us that shows those improvements and the speed bumps that you are against?

[Speaker 6] (2:18:49 - 2:18:50)
Yes, I can send you a plan. All right.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:50 - 2:18:59)
That would be great if you can send that to us. So I think that there are I'm sorry. Let me just stop you.

Neil, did you want to I don't mean to kick in.

[Speaker 17] (2:19:01 - 2:19:49)
I mean, it just I don't have an answer like anyone else. But I mean, it seems like the way this committee is operating right now is it's very reactive. I mean, it seems like it's waiting for requests.

And I don't think that's the way if we're looking for more quicker progress that it needs to be much more proactive. So I don't know what the current structure of the committee is what's getting in the way of that or just the lack of meetings or whatever it is. But just seems like you don't need to wait for a resident request to address a lot of the issues that are around.

Other than that, I don't have anything else to add.

[Speaker 1] (2:19:52 - 2:22:51)
So I think there's I think the money for the Michon was set aside as a result of a project that doesn't I believe street safety is independent of that. The town's responsibility for street safety is in addition to that. Not that.

Right. And so isn't it great that there's a project that has some mitigation dollars to be able to do more because more needed to be done there. But we still own the responsibility of the baseline safety issues.

and I think what I'm I guess so I appreciate that. I look forward to seeing that plan. But I think in the short run, I think I would suggest two changes in the short run.

Number one is first of all, ask that the select board receive monthly updates of every request made the status of the request and any initiatives being discussed by the traffic advisory so that we are made aware of that. And then number two is and I tried to look quickly look up here. I don't know if we actually have a liaison to the traffic study advisory committee.

But it's time for us to have a liaison and someone who actually will be able to attend those meetings as opposed to just facilitate those meetings just because I do think it's important to I think it's serious enough and they're advising to us for the most part for us to see the workings and understand and maybe witnessing that is going to help us come up with some ideas together with you Margie and Sean and the committee itself about how can we reformulate things to make it effective. We understand it's tough.

It's a volunteer committee and we also understand all the staff to Polly's point have other responsibilities and you Margie burned it at both ends and do yeoman's work and saying for many of the people that are on that committee but that doesn't negate the need for us to be doing this. If anything it highlights the need for us to be doing it differently. And so for now I would ask I please the end of year shuffle we're about to see some pedestrian beacon lights being proposed and I couldn't be happy about that.

So but for now I think I would personally like to leave it with asking for those two things if you all feel comfortable with those two things as immediate things to change and then ask the town administrator to come back to us at our next end of July meeting and come back with an update and a response as opposed to responding now because frankly I don't I don't know that there's much response to have right now.

I think what is happening is really clear and I frankly I'm afraid that I'm going to hear any response now is defending what's happening now and I frankly just if you would like to speak Sean absolutely. But I'm also going to let you know I believe the current inaction is indefensible but for all of our part we're all a team and it's just indefensible.

[Speaker 5] (2:22:52 - 2:24:19)
Understood. And so what I just want to convey is that I accept responsibility and I accept the state of the reality that we literally asked for $100,000 out of a capital improvement plan and we've spent little of that on real investments that would make this community safer. You know I drive through the intersections and I look at faded crosswalks and I look at wide areas that really strike me as unsafe for pedestrians and it is troubling to me.

You know I frankly will redouble efforts. I do think the committee is reactionary and I do think that we can expect more. I think our public safety departments know best where the critical public safety risks are in this town to pedestrians and I will demand that we get feedback from them that helps us invest wisely in projects that will keep our citizens safe.

I'm not sure we need more conversations. I do think we need more bricks and mortar investments and I will come back with projects that will help us make this community safer. Thank you.

[Speaker 11] (2:24:21 - 2:24:48)
Thank you. Marsi, since you're here, well two things. obviously as the chair if you have any suggestions I could consider it great.

Also just make a note one situation getting exacerbated is Philips if people cut through from Atlantic and go to Philips and we now have six families on the street and kids are out there with bicycles, and there was a car that went up the street and was done 65 miles an hour. So, just put that on the list, please.

[Speaker 6] (2:24:49 - 2:24:59)
I certainly will. I think it's both resources to make infrastructure improvements, and really enforcement, because that seems to be an issue, too. So, I'll reach out to the police department and really work with them.

[Speaker 1] (2:25:03 - 2:25:06)
All right. Thanks.

[Speaker 3] (2:25:06 - 2:25:06)
Thanks, Margie.

[Speaker 1] (2:25:09 - 2:26:00)
Last on our new and old agenda is a discussion of year-end transfers. I'm going to suggest tonight that we ask questions and kind of go over the materials that Sean has provided for year-end transfers. The Finance Committee still needs to act as well.

This does need to be approved by July 15th, and you're going to hear shortly my suggestion that we're probably not going to have a full agenda meeting before July 15th, but that will necessitate at some point a three-members meeting, just have a quorum to approve the final, and ask that – my preference would be that we don't vote until FinCom has an opportunity to review and ask questions, and they'll do those as they want to do, and then we follow their vote. But I would ask that three of us will probably ultimately need to meet to have a single agenda meeting for approval of the year-end transfers before the 15th, if that works for people.

[Speaker 3] (2:26:00 - 2:26:04)
I agree. FinCom should weigh in first before we do that.

[Speaker 1] (2:26:04 - 2:26:12)
All right. So, Amy. You can either talk about year-end transfers or traffic.

Your choice.

[Speaker 8] (2:26:12 - 2:26:33)
We have pedestrian solar signs on this double, so I only have them on both. I think, apparently, they'll indefinitely be the pedestrian signs. But it's, you know, good for livelihoods to transform itself into that.

[Speaker 1] (2:26:36 - 2:27:03)
So I don't think so, because I don't think, frankly, it's going to be legible to anybody who's looking at a screen right now. Yeah, so I think – but also for the cable folks, it's not legible either, to be honest with you, because it creates so much detail. So I guess, Mike, the way in which to do it – Amy, you tell me if you want to go through something more formally or to have board members – do board members want to just ask questions or hear line by line by line by line of this?

What is helpful to board members to just go to questions?

[Speaker 8] (2:27:05 - 2:27:29)
I do just want to let everyone know that if you were looking at the full spreadsheet, the color-banded rows are the rows that have to be voted on. Those are the legal lines. The white lines are there just to provide additional detail.

If you're looking at the memo, they're all colored lines. And either way, color is what you're voting on.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:30 - 2:27:39)
All right. Do you want to go to questions? Do you want to go through line item explanations?

[Speaker 3] (2:27:40 - 2:27:50)
I have questions, but I don't – I don't – Is this our main substantive meeting on this? Because then I would think going through would be helpful.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:51 - 2:28:00)
It will be our main substantive, but again, it's – I'm deferring you all. I went through it already with FinCom, so I – but I deference to you guys.

[Speaker 8] (2:28:00 - 2:28:12)
If you guys want to go through it line by line, we can do it, as opposed to just asking questions or – Or I can go on, you know, for the next 25 minutes, diatribing about every single line.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:14 - 2:28:15)
All right. So let's do this.

[Speaker 8] (2:28:15 - 2:28:16)
There's an in-between, I think. Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:17 - 2:28:34)
In the interest of hoping to make a decision here, let's do the abridged version and focus on – We can do the top five. On the bigger line items that are the bigger concerns, and particularly ones that would otherwise seem like why didn't we have it right in the budget?

[Speaker 3] (2:28:34 - 2:28:35)
Yes.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:35 - 2:28:36)
And what went wrong?

[Speaker 3] (2:28:36 - 2:28:36)
Surprising.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:36 - 2:28:37)
Just that we didn't have it right, right?

[Speaker 3] (2:28:37 - 2:28:38)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:38 - 2:28:41)
I think is where I – and then we'll redirect you to other ones if you didn't talk about them.

[Speaker 8] (2:28:41 - 2:30:20)
It may or may not be too inappropriate. So the biggest elephant on the list is the employee group health insurance, which we will need a $215,000 transfer into this line. This was, as you heard throughout the year, we were saying our health insurance was trending over, prompt us to do a deeper dive reconciliation as to why that was happening, if our enrollment was up – our original assumption was enrollment was up due to COVID, a lot of family members losing their jobs coming onto our health insurance, turning people who weren't on our insurance into family plans and such. That was the original assumption, and that was what the assumption was going into the reconciliation to prove out how many new employees went on, how many new family plans, as those are the most expensive.

It turned out we had two new employees on as a net, so that was obviously not what happened. And that was something – I did the full reconciliation. I shared it with Martha Seibert as well because we were concerned that the driving force may have been on the school side.

As we dove into it, we went back to the original forecasting sheet and noticed a formula error in the Medicare Part B premiums. It did not multiply by 12. So it was – It's like a system error?

No, it was in Excel.

[Speaker 1] (2:30:22 - 2:30:24)
You can call it a system.

[Speaker 3] (2:30:24 - 2:30:28)
But it wasn't just mis-entered?

[Speaker 1] (2:30:29 - 2:30:34)
No, it was a human error in Excel. Okay, that's what I'm getting at.

[Speaker 8] (2:30:35 - 2:30:56)
Yeah, so it only accounted for one-twelfth of that cost in that line, which resulted in a little over $400,000 in shortcomings. But ultimately, we were able to cover enough on our own, so we were only at $215,000 that's needed in this line.

[Speaker 1] (2:30:58 - 2:31:04)
So because you had excess already in that line and you're roughly half of it.

[Speaker 8] (2:31:04 - 2:31:22)
We do build into it that we assume all new hires will come on with a family plan so that we aren't caught in this position. This was corrected before we went to annual account meeting with the budget, so our fiscal 22 budget does not present the same problem.

[Speaker 22] (2:31:23 - 2:31:23)
Gotcha.

[Speaker 8] (2:31:25 - 2:31:29)
So I will not be here next year asking for the same reason.

[Speaker 1] (2:31:31 - 2:31:35)
Unless we have a bunch of new... Go ahead, let's go down your list.

[Speaker 8] (2:31:36 - 2:33:07)
Okay, next is our legal counsel tied in second, third place for $45,000 needed. The bulk of the $45,000 was an additional $25,000. Because we were without an HR director, we did need additional legal support in our HR consulting support.

That was $25,000 of it. The rest was just an increased utilization of town council for routine government matters and town meeting. Specifically, they have to review the wording on all the zoning by-law changes.

And that was a significant amount of articles, as you remember, so a significant amount of back and forth. Next, we have everyone's favorite, the solid waste and rubbish removal, also at $45,000. This was an increase in the tonnage for tipping fees.

The tipping fee is $75. And our trash tonnage is down 7.9% over last year, but the recycling tonnage is up 22% over last year. So while it is...

It still costs to tip the tonnage, it is pointing that the residents of Swamps Creek are recycling significantly more than they are throwing away.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:08 - 2:33:24)
Can you help us understand, please? I know that's not before tonight, but what was the revenue that was obtained through starting when the new policy went into effect of overthrow bags and what that revenue was and what, if anything, we had projected for that budget year?

[Speaker 8] (2:33:24 - 2:33:38)
We didn't build anything into the budget this year for it. We are budgeting $200,000 in fiscal 22, but last recall, we have over $45,000 in revenue from that.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:39 - 2:33:55)
Over $45,000? So the point being is that this additional cost, even though technically it's an end-of-year transfer and revenue is not in play here, there actually is an on-budget revenue item which is there and partially established to exactly deal with increases.

[Speaker 8] (2:33:56 - 2:34:02)
Yes, so this is a net effect even though on the book it is not netting.

[Speaker 1] (2:34:02 - 2:34:27)
So does that mean that this is the process for that every year, or does that mean...? Until we create a dedicated fund for that revenue, it goes into the general fund, so it doesn't get to directly offset. It will come out in end-of-year pre-cash balancing acts and we'll end up having to do this end-of-year shuffle until we fix that.

[Speaker 3] (2:34:27 - 2:34:53)
And also the Solid Waste Advisory Committee is on that, and also, you know, understanding, which the committee will also look at, SWAC, is that what I'm calling it? Very sleek. Um, the, um...

So we want to make sure that it's not dramatically over the amount of fees. So we have to... This SWAC committee will be doing that analysis.

[Speaker 8] (2:34:54 - 2:35:04)
And we do have for a budget presentation for Fiscal 22, we do have the solid waste revenue separated as its own line, so we'll be able to see that at a glance.

[Speaker 1] (2:35:06 - 2:35:07)
All right, Public Works Science.

[Speaker 8] (2:35:07 - 2:36:44)
Yes, so, um, at the request of our Town Administrator and Director of Public Works, after reviewing the pedestrian traffic study, um, there's a request for four sets of pedestrian solar LED flashing traffic signs, which are the ones suspended on the tall poles, the yellow pedestrian sign with LED flashers around it and a solar panel at the top. Um, the crosswalks of those are... The crosswalks that those are going to be put on is still in discussion.

Um, the intention is to make sure that these school crosswalks are safe, as well as other key areas around town. And I would say our fifth highest would be the Harbormaster Equipment Maintenance, um, which was discussed at Monday night's Finance Committee meeting. We did have a catastrophic engine failure of the engine on the Harbormaster boat, and since it is summer and peak time, and this is a public safety issue, um, it is important that we get this replaced.

It has already been deemed, um... not advantageous to replace or repair this engine, as it would just cause more engine failure shortly down the line, and would in turn cost more. Bill Waters, our Harbormaster, was on the Finance Committee on Monday to talk more on that.

Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (2:36:45 - 2:36:58)
I'm not sure that this matters in the end, given the time of year here, obviously, while we're talking about this, but, um, this to me just seems like a reserve fund.

[Speaker 8] (2:36:59 - 2:37:11)
And it could be. Um, the only reason it's not is because we have the money within the operating budget. Um, Finance Committee did declare that it would have been worthy of their Finance Committee reserve.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:11 - 2:37:55)
Well, and I just... I mean, we just had that conversation about pedestrian safety, um, and I see that there's, you know, $33,000 being put to that, but this is an exam... I guess, again, I don't know.

Someone would have to do the calculation or follow the path for me with how it comes out in the wash with the $25,000 coming from the shuffle, you know, I guess because... Whatever. I-I understand it.

At the same time, if the $25,000 could be added to pedestrian safety, and then, you know, it was... it's used by the Finance Committee reserve fund to fund this motor, assuming FinCom would support that, it just seems like... I don't know.

[Speaker 5] (2:37:56 - 2:38:13)
Um... So my thought, you know, with the reserve fund is that those typically should be, you know, extraordinary, unanticipated, um, uses that, you know, if it becomes too convenient to look to the reserve fund, it'll be used for just about anything.

[Speaker 3] (2:38:13 - 2:38:14)
This isn't just about anything.

[Speaker 5] (2:38:14 - 2:38:54)
Yeah. Understood. But, you know, we have tailings...

We have unexpended tailings in the operating budget. We should always look to our operating budget to fund, um, you know, the annual needs that we have. And-and really, the reserve fund should be for truly, um, things that we cannot, um, manage.

Um, you know, I would look, you know, um, at that as really spe... you know, really extraordinary, uh, needs. You know, things that would happen either through, um, a weather event or some things that we just couldn't anticipate.

[Speaker 3] (2:38:55 - 2:39:06)
Yeah. I mean, by its legal definition, everyone knows it's, like, ad nauseum. But it's unforeseen or extraordinary, right?

So it doesn't have to be extraordinary. But, um... And unbudgeted.

[Speaker 8] (2:39:07 - 2:39:08)
What's that? And unbudgeted.

[Speaker 3] (2:39:09 - 2:39:42)
Yeah. Right. Yes.

Um... And I just think we finished... This is just an example, but it happens to be the timing, a really important conversation about pedestrian safety and your own taking responsibility, which I'm not even suggesting you necessarily should have.

I just... But even you're recognizing that that needs to be a bigger focus. So it would just seem like an opportunity where it could have, like, doubled the funding toward that, for example.

I don't know when the motor became, you know, dysfunctional or how long we've known. What did it happen over the winter?

[Speaker 8] (2:39:42 - 2:39:49)
We could have addressed this January. I'm sorry? Tuesday after Memorial Day.

So, like...

[Speaker 17] (2:39:49 - 2:39:51)
Two months ago. Yeah. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (2:39:51 - 2:39:52)
No, like, yeah.

[Speaker 17] (2:39:52 - 2:39:53)
A month ago.

[Speaker 3] (2:39:53 - 2:40:14)
A month ago. So, anyway. I just...

I guess I... Again, I don't know, because of the timing of all of this, that it would have mattered because of how the reserve fund functions and how it's, you know, part of the... It's part of the planning every year.

But, um... Anyway, that's my thought.

[Speaker 1] (2:40:15 - 2:40:20)
Other questions on the transfers for now? Nope. Nope.

[Speaker 14] (2:40:23 - 2:40:23)
All right.

[Speaker 3] (2:40:24 - 2:40:33)
Yes. Oh, I had a question. I'm sorry.

Just the partial vacancy and assessor role. Can you just... Is there, like, an update on what's happening with that?

[Speaker 8] (2:40:33 - 2:40:54)
Yep, so we have our assessor. He started with us in January. So this is just the vacancy from before he was hired.

And he is hiring an administrative assistant, which the interview process has ended and I believe they have extended an offer. So... Okay.

We're just waiting on that person. Great.

[Speaker 1] (2:40:55 - 2:40:56)
All right.

[Speaker 8] (2:40:56 - 2:40:57)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (2:40:57 - 2:41:24)
Amy, appreciate it. Thank you, Amy. We're gonna go on to the consent agenda.

Consent agenda is an agenda designed to activate the handling of routine miscellaneous business of the board. The board can adopt the entire consent agenda in a single motion and vote or at the request of any board member. Any item can maybe remove from the consent agenda and placed on the regular agenda for discussion and vote.

Tonight we have three items on the consent agenda, two votes to accept a gift for the Windsor Avenue Playground and one vote to approve a common victor's license for Zest Friends located at 286 Humphrey Street.

[Speaker 3] (2:41:24 - 2:41:26)
There's four. There's the minutes too.

[Speaker 1] (2:41:26 - 2:41:31)
Sorry. And there's four. A vote to approve the minutes from June 16th, 2021.

[Speaker 3] (2:41:33 - 2:41:35)
I move to approve the consent agenda.

[Speaker 1] (2:41:35 - 2:41:42)
Second. All those in favor. Aye.

All right. We're gonna move on to the town administrator's abbreviated report.

[Speaker 5] (2:41:42 - 2:44:02)
Sure. So I'm pleased we have a new HR director, Ms. Tanya Chalup. Tanya is an attorney.

She brings an extraordinary amount of knowledge. She is actually acting as the human resources director for the town side of the government in Middleton. She's also the assistant town administrator.

She'll be starting on Monday, July 19th. I'll be sure to invite her to a select board member at the end of the month. Library is open to the public.

For general browsing, we do have an event tomorrow at 6.30, a reading of Frederick Douglass' What to the Slave is the Fourth of July. This will be a reading by a number of individuals, and we will think more intently about, you know, our Fourth of July. So the fireworks this year are not happening.

But I just want to, you know, just bring word that fireworks are illegal. We do get a lot of complaints from residents, and we will be out patrolling and enforcing aggressively illegal fireworks in town. So if folks do hear them, they can call 911, and we will be responding.

So please do not light off fireworks in Swampstead. We're a densely settled town, and we do not want to have an accident. We do have a senior abatement program.

We have paired 15 seniors, and residents are able to get $1,500 in abatements. Lots of busy things happening down at our senior center, and we encourage folks to reach out and connect to some of the programs. And lastly, I joined Mayor McGee of Lynn and Tony Bartlett of Nehant and joined the Greater Lynn Chamber of Commerce of State of the Region at the D'Alessio Country Club.

It was great to kind of see a lot of the regional business leaders gathering again and, you know, enjoyed catching up with some of my colleagues. I haven't seen them in a little bit.

[Speaker 11] (2:44:06 - 2:44:57)
I've got one thing, and I apologize if this was brought up at a prior meeting, but I think if the town is going to be, you know, continuing to have protests, which I suspect we will of all kinds, I think, and this came up in our conversation with the interim chief, I think it would be prudent for us to establish best practices and policies and procedures for those protests, not... I'm sorry. That's okay.

Not having anything to do with affecting First Amendment rights or things of that nature, but I think just guidelines, regulations that also will give the police, you know, some guidelines on what they can enforce and what they can't. So I don't know what, you know, where the next step lies, if people think that's a good idea, but I just think that's something we probably should consider or I'd like to see us consider.

[Speaker 5] (2:44:59 - 2:45:44)
Don, I had a meeting yesterday with the command staff and Chief Kurz and Chief Madigan. We talked about that very issue, and I do think that there will be some new ideas that will be presented that will help us address public safety and the safety of our officers. We have been in touch with our legal counsel almost weekly to discuss, you know, what actions the police can take and what rights its citizens have to protest, and it does present some complexities.

We're certainly looking at ways that we can balance some of those responsibilities.

[Speaker 11] (2:45:44 - 2:46:06)
It was interesting to just hear his comments, having been the former police chief in Durham, where they were able to find a balance between, you know, certainly as a university conservative town on a university campus, they had, you know, many different protests of all different kinds, and they were able to find a balance between, you know, allowing and encouraging protests and yet having some rules and regulations for public safety.

[Speaker 1] (2:46:06 - 2:47:32)
I do think, Don, I think we all received an email from a resident, sorry, not a resident, but someone asking about signs on the monument and things of that nature, and in that email that not resident person indicated specifically a conversation that that person had with a police officer, a specific police officer, and in the email, that resident sorry, I keep saying resident, that woman said that a police officer specifically told her that the select board had instructed them not to enforce town bylaws, and so I wanted to give this board a chance if any one of us want to acknowledge being that select board member that told a police officer not to enforce our bylaws, now might be a good time for us to acknowledge it. Otherwise, I think so, we should be really clear and maybe the police department should be very clear that no one has instructed anyone not to enforce bylaws, and I think it's unfortunate if that's, if that communication really did happen and it was a very specific the woman did not, she wasn't short on specifics as to who, how, and when that conversation happened I think it's really unfortunate that if the police department is going to use the select board or a town official as the reason they're not enforcing or trying to moderate and mediate circumstances, I think that's unfortunate, so to be clear the expectation is that uniform rules are enforced and done it in a way to minimize conflict and and keep peace and order

[Speaker 22] (2:47:32 - 2:47:33)
I agree

[Speaker 1] (2:47:35 - 2:49:32)
Other questions other statements for select board time Really quickly, Polly attended I'm sorry, Polly can you answer that? Polly attended and I attended a Mass Select Board Association event today on mental health and policing, and we heard from the crisis management team crisis intervention team from Bookline, which was really impressive about their efforts in integrating mental health services and mental health response with the police force and having the CIT training involves having districts having at least 20% of their officers trained in crisis intervention, we also heard from a triumvirate of communities and it's worth mentioning the communities because I think it's really interesting, it's Deerfield, it's Greenfield and it's Montague and I specifically point out Montague because they have entered into a three town agreement where they actually have a public health professional who rides with the Greenfield police and is dispatched, and not just to Greenfield but to Deerfield and to Montague as necessary when situations arise to reduce the number of section 12's and mental health incidents in their town, and I mentioned during the event and I want to mention now if Montague can figure out how to successfully integrate mental health services and support in a way to reduce the number of section 12's and to help our residents with mental health needs then surely Swampscott can figure it out as well, and there's a lot of grants and a lot of opportunities and I'm hopeful that that's something that we as a town can look at, this presentation is a webinar and we'll send you the link when it becomes available, it was really it was neat hearing those public safety officers all speak about it and with the passion that they all spoke about it so I thought that was great Alright with that

[Speaker 3] (2:49:34 - 2:51:01)
I just want to interrupt you so I just, yes it was really interesting and I will just say also Greenfield has a lot, is a community with a lot of mental health challenges in a way and so I think Montague being a very small, with an amazing bookstore by the way, it's at a mill it's really cool, and Deerfield being smaller towns to join with a larger town is a really good collaborative regional effort that we could, you know, Swampscott being a smaller town but being with Salem, Lynn and other communities in the area that we could partner with on an initiative like that, even if you know, I think there's creative ways of doing it so I think it is a really exciting prospect and it was the second of a series of four webinars on police reform and I attended the first one and it's been really interesting so I think what the MMA put it on as Peter said and so when those come out I think definitely it's worth having out just it's really interesting just to think about it's a really great comparison to what other communities are thinking about and it's always good to get kind of like best practice ideas in any way but this happens to be going on right now and the only other thing I would say, I don't think we've had a meeting since Juneteenth, right?

So I think we were almost all there

[Speaker 20] (2:51:01 - 2:51:02)
not since Juneteenth, right

[Speaker 3] (2:51:02 - 2:51:07)
it was awesome and that's kind of a really inarticulate way

[Speaker 1] (2:51:07 - 2:51:09)
of saying

[Speaker 3] (2:51:09 - 2:51:49)
it was awesome it was really awesome just really good speakers with amazing messages and just really heartfelt and passionate and Sean gave a really pepped up introduction and the energy was great, it was a beautiful day lots of activities things for every age so just really really proud of the town for putting that together and celebrating that and making that a priority and looking forward to making that an annual event, tradition, I don't know what the proper word would be

[Speaker 17] (2:51:49 - 2:51:51)
holiday, celebration, it's a holiday

[Speaker 3] (2:51:52 - 2:52:08)
so it was just really great, so thank you to everybody who was part of making that happen, more than I could name now but I just want to recognize that so thanks

[Speaker 1] (2:52:09 - 2:52:19)
Thanks So to the board, I'm going to make a suggestion that we have our next whole agenda board meeting on July 21st

[Speaker 3] (2:52:25 - 2:52:26)
Ally has

[Speaker 1] (2:52:26 - 2:52:33)
moved that, is there a second from someone? Order I think somebody approved I'm suggesting

[Speaker 22] (2:52:33 - 2:52:34)
that 21st

[Speaker 1] (2:52:34 - 2:52:46)
There will probably need to be a one agenda meeting with three members just to approve before the 15th In concept July 21st seem okay

[Speaker 22] (2:52:46 - 2:52:47)
Yes

[Speaker 17] (2:52:49 - 2:52:51)
If I don't need to be here in person it does

[Speaker 1] (2:52:51 - 2:52:53)
Yeah I don't think you need to be here in person

[Speaker 17] (2:52:55 - 2:52:57)
I'll be away that week

[Speaker 1] (2:52:59 - 2:53:13)
So why don't we if you're okay with it, we'll tentatively have that be the date and I think it's going to give staff a breather of preparation for these meetings and we'll have a full agenda come that day

[Speaker 22] (2:53:13 - 2:53:13)
Sure

[Speaker 1] (2:53:13 - 2:53:21)
Alright, with that, is there a motion to adjourn? So moved Second Good night everyone