[Speaker 12] (0:00 - 0:02)
I think we're good. We're live, yes.

[Speaker 3] (0:03 - 0:38)
Okay, thank you, Ethan. Welcome to the May 25th Select Board joint meeting with the Select Board Finance Committee and Capital Improvement Committee. The Select Board is coming to you from the Police Station Community Room and the other committees are coming to you through Zoom.

I'll call the Select Board meeting to order and I want to welcome Tim Dorsey of the Finance Committee to do the same for his committee.

[Speaker 8] (0:38 - 0:41)
I'll call the Finance Committee meeting to order as well.

[Speaker 3] (0:41 - 0:48)
Thank you. And Rich Freeman from the Capital Improvement Committee.

[Speaker 13] (0:51 - 0:59)
And Rich Freeman, I'd like to call the Capital Improvement Committee to order as well.

[Speaker 3] (1:02 - 7:08)
Okay, thanks, Rich. And we heard you on that one, but we are having trouble hearing you. I think because we are in person and there is a flag in the room, maybe we'll do a Pledge of Allegiance to start the meeting here in the Police Station.

So, Pledge of Allegiance. Before we get started, and I apologize to do this in a joint meeting, but I feel obligated in this public meeting, even though we're not in our usual days, to acknowledge the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas yesterday at an elementary school. I certainly don't feel incredibly comfortable talking about it, but I think it's important to talk about.

Last night when I was home, my wife asked me if I was going to have a moment of silence at this meeting. And actually, almost at that exact same time, I was watching television and I saw Steve Kerr, the head coach of the Golden State Warriors, speaking on this terrible tragedy that happened yesterday where he said a lot of great things, all of which I agreed to, but part of it where he said he's sick of moments of silence. And I feel the same way.

And we actually just had a moment of silence for a shooting in Buffalo. We had a moment of silence at our town meeting two weeks ago for another mass shooting event in Buffalo. I think there are a lot of people more qualified than I who have said a lot of incredibly important things about this over the last day.

March for Our Lives is an organization that was started by Parkland, Florida high school students after a mass shooting at their school. And they are an incredible organization working to make change. And I came across their statement and wanted to read that rather than say anything because I think it speaks for how I feel about this and then we can get on with our meeting.

So they say, our hearts are utterly and completely broken. This sickening tragedy is the violent reality we've grown up to expect. We deserve joy in life and we will fight like hell for it.

We mourn for those lost and wish peace for the families of children and teachers grieving in Uvalde, Texas. Here we are again saying the same thing. The disgusting and shameful fact in America is that another shooting like this was just a matter of time because of our political leaders' breathtaking disregard for our lives.

We are enraged at the politicians who stand in the way of life-saving change on both sides of the aisle. You've put a target on our backs. Let's be clear that this was a preventable tragedy.

The regular mass murder of children like this is only normal in America. You can't stop a bullet with thoughts and prayers. To honor those lost and save countless more lives, we need action.

We're dying while we wait for it. So I thank everyone for allowing me to indulge in that. With that, I think we can start our regular meeting.

So to start the meeting, I think we'll go to public comments. If there's anyone on Zoom who wants to make a public comment, please raise your hand. You can also make public comments by emailing me at nduffy at swamps.ma.gov. Okay, not seeing any. Okay, not seeing any. I think, Sean, I don't think you'll be upset if we, I think we'll do the town administrator's report after because I feel we'll do the joint meeting and then the FinCon and CIC can adjourn. So we're speaking on two agenda topics.

One is a discussion and overview of proposed land acquisitions. Archer Street, two parcels on Archer Street and one which is the Hawthorne property on Humphrey Street. And then we are going to be opening and closing our special town meeting warrant for the special town meeting on June 14th, which will be bringing up that acquisition as well as the capital article from our annual town meeting and some zoning changes that are related to the acquisitions.

So the reason we have the Finance Committee and Capital Improvement Committee here is because we are going to be discussing these acquisitions and provide an overview similar to what we provided at our meeting last week, but also we'll be providing an overview and introduction to the financial details as they are today to the Finance Committee and CIC. And this will be the beginning of the discussions over the coming weeks. And each committee will then be deliberating on these details up until town meeting.

So I think with that, I think maybe I'll be passing it to Peter to provide just a quick overview similar to what he provided last week on these acquisitions. Diane, did you put my presentation on the...

[Speaker 15] (7:08 - 7:10)
Yeah, I thought Angel had. Angelica.

[Speaker 3] (7:25 - 7:32)
Hold on, bear with us here. Is it on the flash drive? I don't know.

Did you put it on the flash drive?

[Speaker 19] (7:33 - 7:33)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (7:38 - 7:47)
I'm asking Diane if she put it on the flash drive. It's not going to be down below there. Yeah, Diane, just take the flash drive and see if you can put it back on it.

[Speaker 15] (7:48 - 7:52)
Which one are you looking for? It's the open space one, right, Peter?

[Speaker 10] (7:52 - 7:55)
Yeah, I think it's maybe it's the spelling. I'm not sure.

[Speaker 19] (7:57 - 8:00)
Give us one minute. Just give us one minute, please, everyone.

[Speaker 1] (11:31 - 22:10)
All right. Sorry about that. We're going to go through really fast in this because we actually went through this last week in our select board meeting, but we'll go by really quickly tonight for those that perhaps didn't see it.

I can't use this one because it's unbelievable. It's too complicated. I'm going to skip over our financial stuff.

We're going to proceed this... Sorry, following this is actually going to be a presentation on the financial side of things. Our town financial team.

You folks had seen this at town meeting. Perhaps now there's a more closer look. This is a GIS map that shows you in red the remaining developable, buildable lots in Swampscott.

It constitutes roughly 19 acres in total in Swampscott. Developable, buildable are different than spaces that are open space, spaces that are conservation area, that are wetland area or otherwise not buildable. Represents 19 acres in our community.

1.2% of the total land area is all that remains as developable, buildable land area in Swampscott. The select board has proposed the acquisition of three parcels of land. The first two being off of Archer Road near the Swampscott Lynn line off of Foster Road.

These two parcels together equal about 9.5 acres, which is 50% of the remaining undevelopable, buildable land. Breaking those parcels down a little bit further, it's approximately 5.033 acres in one parcel and second one is approximately 4.5 acres. We'll talk a little bit more about both in a minute.

The first parcel is 5.033 acres. It is currently owned by an individual in a trust. The town of Swampscott has over the last, in the near future, near past, has negotiated a purchase and sale agreement with the family that owns this property to purchase it.

There's a slide with a summary coming up and I'll be able to give you more details on the details for that. There it is, look at that. It's almost like I did this.

That is a purchase and sale agreement that should close by September 12th of this year, assuming town meeting approval. The purchase price under the purchase agreement is $400,000. The town does have the ability to conduct due diligence and any in-site investigations and other diligence that it seeks to do prior to purchasing the property.

The second property is approximately 4.5 acre parcel. This is a parcel of property that shows on our GAS and shows on our assessors map as having to do with paper streets. In fact, this property is completely undeveloped.

It has not been subdivided and these streets do not exist as they're shown here. In fact, most of Archer Street, which is shown here where you see my cursor, also doesn't exist. The portion in the red doesn't exist at all.

It is a paper street as well. This parcel is a parcel for which, since 2013, there have been numerous development proposals for the development of this property. Beginning in 2013, a proposal for 15 living units, which is an over 55 community.

Access to that parcel off of Vaughan was challenged and that project was never constructed. In 2019, the applicant came back and asked to increase from 15 to 22 the number of independent living units for the site and proposed, including in the project, 54 Foster Road, which is a single family house, and tear down that single family house so that access to this site will be obtained through that single family lot off of Foster Road. The planning board unanimously denied the subdivision approvals necessary to provide that access to the site.

In January of 2022, the owner of the property filed a project eligibility application with Mass Housing proposing a 40B project with 160 multifamily units on the project. Ultimately, Mass Housing, we were notified by Mass Housing asked the applicant to withdraw the petition and seek other ideas and not pursue that petition. On or about March of this year, the owner of the property filed another 40B petition seeking to build 44 units of housing here, mainly single family and duplexes.

Again, using the same access which the planning board had previously deemed to be unsafe and inadequate, but in the auspices of 40B seeking all the waivers necessary to allow them to use that access and to develop 44 units of housing on this property. Here are the details of that property. We do not, the town does not have a purchase of this property at this time, but conversations are ongoing and the goal is to reach mutual agreement with the property owner, assuming such an agreement is possible.

At our last meeting, Neil Duffy made a really good point and something that it's really important for people to understand is that our conversations about open space and our conversation about these parcels predate any filing of the 40B applications in early 2022. We had already been considering and prioritizing properties and doing the necessary due diligence on these properties. Certainly the filing of 40B applications makes it more real and palpable to those neighbors who would have to live through what I think would be unprecedented disruption in their neighborhood, so it's certainly something that we're cognizant of, but the decision and the focus on open space here predates those 40B applications.

The third parcel of land is known as Hawthorne-by-the-Sea. This is an excerpt from the assessor's map. This is not what you see there today.

There's a paper street on the property and the property is approximately 1.47 acres. This property is obviously well-known to all of us. This property, the town of Swampscott, has an agreement in place to purchase this property for a purchase price of seven million dollars with a deposit of a hundred thousand dollars.

As with the other properties, there is similarly a period of due diligence where the town will have the ability to perform additional investigations of the property to make sure that they fully understand the condition of the property at the time of purchase by the town. I think it's really important at this point to, as I've said before and I think I feel very strongly about, is this property and the 5.033 acre property that we also have under agreement. We have under agreement we have property owners who were willing to partner with the town and have challenging conversations because obviously these are valuable properties and important properties.

These agreements would not be in place without those property owners, the Haas family as to the Archer Road property and the Athenas family as to this property being partners with the town and being to roll up their sleeves and work very hard over many, many, many months to come up with an agreement that allows us to present to town meeting the ability to forever protect and maintain these spaces for public use.

The Athenas property, sorry I skipped over, it's scheduled to close October 31, 2022 assuming town meeting approval and then there is the opportunity for the Hawthorne to lease back and continue operating the restaurant for another year afterwards. This was a graphic that we showed last week just as one rendering, one of what could be endless number of ideas of what the Hawthorne property for example can be. This one shows parking spaces and shows a small building, maybe it's a park, maybe it's a park cafe or restaurant, maybe it's a bathroom house, maybe it has informal or formal staging areas and pergolas and so it is the intention of the select board to engage in a robust community dialogue to not unlike we did recently frankly with the Hadley school reuse to explore what are the possible possibilities and what is the community interested in us exploring before we decide how to proceed with engaging a designer to work with the town. Town meeting is not going to be asked to the at this town meeting any money to build a park or build anything here.

We'll be talking about the dollars and a little bit more. We will be doing some initial design and on that and we've already worked with our state and federal partners elected and otherwise to work with them and to begin developing a strategy to help you know endow this park and make this a forever gem for Swanscott.

[Speaker 3] (22:10 - 22:21)
If all the panelists can hit mute please. I think it Ethan it might be you are not on mute so if you can just hit mute thanks sorry Peter go ahead.

[Speaker 1] (22:21 - 27:15)
And the last thing just to go over which is related which will also be before town meeting on June 14th is a new proposed overlay district zoning overlay district for the Glover house. The opportunity in visiting with the famous family and their team gave us an opportunity to engage more robustly in the future of the Glover house restaurant site which has been closed boarded up and in an increasing state of disrepair going on more than two decades actually in excess of two decades at this point. As you may recall going back to 2019 the town with the blessing and the support of town meeting passed a commercial building blighted bylaw which allowed the town to begin to assess fines on properties that commercial properties that fell into a state of disrepair.

This property and one other property received fines with the hope that those fines would be able to spur a revitalization an elimination of blight certainly an increase in safety. That being said it's it's a stick we use the opportunity in the conversations with the famous family to really focus on the carrot right work with the property owners understand what can be a fine balance between what the municipal can be municipality can be okay with and what the owner is looking forward to doing the property. We use the opportunity to to have that conversation the famous have there is an agreement in place with a firm to redevelop the Glover restaurant and so before town meeting you will see a warrant article that represents a new overlay district that will reflect a proposed redevelopment of the Glover house restaurant site.

It is my understanding the planning board will be holding a public meeting I think on the 13th if I remember correctly on June 13th we'll be having a public meeting but we'll be meeting on this as well to make their recommendation about the zoning. The zoning will only impact the swamscot portion of this property which is 2.29 acres of approximately 4.6 acres Marblehead and Salem have different zoning it's for the applicant the property owner to work with those communities but they are confident that they have consensus as to a path going forward here that will allow us to get rid of the blight that this property has unfortunately become. Very quick synopsis of what that zoning is tonight's not really about zoning but just to give you a sense there's actually three three there will be three ways in which this property is zoned.

One is the existing baseline zoning which has been in place for numerous years which is a b1 district which allows the zoning board to give special permits for multi-family up to any number of units with a special permit from the zoning board. In about five years ago plus or take a few years town meeting approved what is called a 40r overlay district which was intended to spur multi-family and mixed use on this property. The overlay district specifically applies only to the Glover restaurant property and at the time the density allowed up to 68 units in swamscot.

It allowed 42 feet in height and it ultimately would result in 17 affordable units for the town of swamscot. In addition there's also a payment under a 40-yard district that town would have received or will receive from the department of housing and community development which is really a financial system that was set up in the statutory framework of 40-yard to reimburse communities for increased costs associated with creating this type of density and these types of projects. So that's the middle column there and then town meeting this town meeting in June is going to be asked to do the Glover multi-family overlay district which will increase the total number of units to 96 units which will allow for 50 feet in height.

Please the five stories is actually a mistake. It's 50 feet in height and it still requires 17 affordable units so instead of the 10 percent requirement which our baseline zoning has or the 25 percent that the 40r has this is a compromise in the middle at 18 percent of the units will be affordable and the town will still be paid by the applicant this time the same amount of money that it would have been paid by DHCD under the 40-yard district.

In this scenario the way it's drafted is that money would go to the affordable housing trust for them to use in the pursuit of increased affordability elsewhere in the town of swamscot. And that's where I'm going to stop and then we're going to turn it over to Sean. I'm taking that off so bear with me which presentations and Sean's going to do his.

[Speaker 2] (27:16 - 29:23)
Which one's you doing Sean? It's right there BOS meeting. So Diane or I'll take this let's just promote Mr. Luddy. I think he's broke. All right Patrick are you with us? Yep I am hello.

Okay I want to just introduce Swamscot's treasurer Patrick Luddy. Patrick is going to join me for some of the slides here. So you know why are we here talking about open space?

You know frankly open space in a town that is the third most densely settled town in the commonwealth is at a premium. We know that open space especially through the pandemic is incredibly helpful in terms of giving citizens a chance to really just enjoy the outdoors and enjoy a natural green infrastructure. We see less and less.

We live in a suburban footprint of the and frankly Swamscot lost sight of the master plan that would help us you know protect neighborhoods and really support a balance for open space. We know that it's important for the environment. We know that it's also important because our planet and our region is becoming more and more densely settled and crowded every day.

We're not just talking about today we're talking about the future and so some of our actions today have to help a future generation but we also want to promote a more social interaction. We want people to be outside. We want people to really enjoy places and spaces that are really important.

We also you know are concerned about the market. We're looking at a market that's changing. It's still an attractive market for bonding even though we've seen some rates go up.

They are not at historic highs but certainly you know this is something that we have to be mindful of.

[Speaker 8] (29:24 - 29:25)
Sean can I interrupt you?

[Speaker 10] (29:25 - 29:44)
I don't know if this is purposeful but I'm not seeing your presentation if you're trying to I'm sure Katie was going to correct you momentarily.

[Speaker 19] (29:45 - 29:45)
All right.

[Speaker 2] (29:47 - 31:23)
Does that look all right? You missed this awesome open space slide but we'll put this up on the website so folks can just take a look at it. Here's the market condition.

So you know overall interest rates over the last few years have been at their historic lows but rates are you know even though the Fed has moved rates up by a quarter percent and a half percent they're still not extraordinarily high so we're still in a very favorable period of time to look at using our debt service and the power of the town's financial position to acquire properties that would help us meet some of those broader master plan goals. Again this fits into the town's long or short-term and long-range plans to balance our budget and to meet the broader goals.

I think everybody understands that these are nice to do's over the last few years we've been focused on the must-do's. Get our budgets straightened out, stabilize the you know increases in our every single family tax bills. Over the last five years we've had historic stability and we're at a point right now where Swampskate has never been where we have financial reserves that are available to help us ensure that.

I'm going to ask Patrick to chime in and and help me present the following information on our financial position. So Patrick take it away.

[Speaker 5] (31:24 - 32:52)
Thanks Sean. Hi everyone it's great to have you all here to talk about this project. This is a big one so I'm going to highlight the debt profile of the town briefly.

We have approximately 88 million dollars of general general fund debt outstanding. Our debt limit is 171 million dollars so we're well below that and we have a debt service budget in the fiscal 23 budget that was just passed a town meeting of 6.8 million dollars and I want to highlight our latest bond issue that we did in March of this year 68 million dollars. We had a lot of conversation about specifically the school project which represents 60 million dollars of that debt.

We got a great rate, we went out to market, our credit rating was reaffirmed at double a plus which is a great place to be and in our conversations with standard and poor's when they do a detailed review of our you know credit worthiness they they highlighted in their comments the the strong local economy we have here in Swampscott, strong management, they commented on the financial policies that the finance committee and the select board have worked on and implemented and also just overall that our we have structural balance in our budget in our balance sheet and we have very strong reserves which continues to work to our benefit as we look at projects of this scope. So next slide.

[Speaker 2] (32:53 - 33:39)
Yeah I'm just gonna just highlight you know it's important to just look at the language very strong management and very strong reserves the rating agencies don't use very strong for many communities Swampscott was one of a few communities where they said look the work of our finance committee over the last five years and the select board and town meeting to really focus on building our financial reserves was extraordinary and I just want to highlight it's not simply a strong position you know we're in an extraordinary position because of some very difficult conversations very difficult negotiations and and efforts to really you know put Swampscott in a very

[Speaker 5] (33:39 - 34:53)
total estimated cost for this project is 8.875 million dollars and that'll be funded through general fund debt next slide Sean and that's appropriated annually in the operating budget of the town through the town meeting process next slide so when we talk about taking on 8.875 million dollars of debt there's different ways we can do that and we have to hash that out but being a land acquisition project we can bond this project for up to 30 years using general obligation bonds the timing of you know the larger portion of the transaction for the property we would need the bulk of these funds in our possession for an October closing date so you know we could bond at different times but October would be you know when we would need these funds by so we could do general obligation bonds in October of this year and that would give us flexibility in the sense that it can be structured so that we don't have a large principal payment until fiscal 24 or any payment in fiscal 23 actually so we could avoid principal payment until fiscal 24 or any payment in fiscal 23 looks like it is so I think we should be good

[Speaker 11] (34:56 - 35:00)
thank you guys just like everybody thinks you know that peter fixed that thanks

[Speaker 3] (35:01 - 35:15)
good job peter thanks for the record thanks for doing that for us all right so let's um presentation back up there i'm sorry presentation your presentation

[Speaker 2] (35:15 - 35:36)
nope all right patrick you're back talking about our fy23 recommended capital improvement plan

[Speaker 5] (35:37 - 40:09)
okay thank you thanks peter for fixing that um so i just wanted to highlight some details from the fiscal 23 capital plan that was in the warrant that we uh postponed to the special town meeting so um investments in facilities public safety public works community development um general fund borrowing authorization of 3.2 million dollars is is in the mix with this but um this represents investments in our sea walls and our facilities um our police station equipment so a lot of great stuff in there and we talked about that at length with the finance committee and their review so that'll be in the warrant and we can go to the next slide and um this is just an illustration of debt service so when we're looking at um approving the capital plan and approving uh the land acquisition we need to make sure that that fits into the big picture so um in the gray on the bottom is our existing debt service that those are loans that we've already taken out um that will be paying off um year over year in the orange hypothetically would be land acquisition could look differently depending on how we structure it um but just as a demonstration that's there and then the capital plan above that in purple and then we have other items we need to consider like notes we have outstanding and debt authorizations we have in the books that we haven't issued yet um so those are hypothetically there too so this fits and this this yellow dashed line right there um that's that's just a trend line it's if you grow your service two and a half percent each year when we're thinking about the budget um that's just a trend line for reference and you can see we wouldn't want to go you know above that without addressing it through um you know reserves or debt exclusion or whatever other means or conversations we would need to have if you go to the next slide sean it zooms in in the uh the next five years here so fiscal 23 this is the budget we just passed we budgeted for our existing debt service um and then you know you see the debt that we take on for the plan this year and potentially land acquisition and um the other authorizations we have that that fills that up um you know fiscal 24 fiscal 25 we're we're right there um so we want to have conversations about the plan going forward and um how we make all the projects that we need to do and would like to do um fit within our means i think we've demonstrated uh excellent you know forecasting and thought in constraint and budget growth and i think that with a mindset um being mindful of that of the budget growth and of the tax impacts as we have been over the last five years is going to help us achieve all these things um that we would like to do and need to do um and we're focusing on balancing um the short-term capital plan with the long-term needs of the town we're trying to i'm trying to work on a capital plan that's gonna you know address our needs for the next 10 20 30 years and that's kind of my my goal um in this role to always having a mind on the future and replacement schedules and things of that nature so um this is just a an illustration for you of how things may fit um and if you want to go to the next slide i just highlight for you next steps in the process here um closing and mailing the special town meeting warrant that needs to be done this week um and then we would go to capital improvements committee and finance committee meetings to deliberate and hash out the details of these projects um the merits and the financials and um ultimately we would go to special town meeting vote on june 14th um and then for land acquisition specifically we'd go through uh pre-closing due diligence ultimately we'd have closing and financing um and then any use of reserves that we decide on um would be voted on in a fall town meeting that's it

[Speaker 3] (40:11 - 41:45)
open it to any questions thank you patrick so um i actually have a question um and then i'd like to open it up if sean if you could put the reserves slide up there i just wanted to know on the screen maybe we might want to leave this up for questions but um yeah that one so my question patrick and sean and you probably can you may be able to answer this um without seeing it but uh on the reserves it says we're in excess of our guidelines can you just tell me for like for fiscal 22 like where does that sit in excess um in terms of for general stabilization capital and op-ed trust like can you just remind me of that if you know offhand do you all right one second while he's looking i guess i'll chime in

[Speaker 8] (41:45 - 42:05)
neil i mean i think the general stabilization is in excess of the guidelines i think the capital is in the guidelines it's within the range capital's within the range in general is above the range yeah not that much i think we saw it somewhere around 10.9 percent or something like

[Speaker 5] (42:05 - 42:29)
that yeah that's that's um that's correct tim so general stabilization if i use the the fy23 budget number we just passed um compared to that balance it's 10.7 percent um is where we're at and the guideline is nine to ten and then capital stabilization is at 4.9 percent um and the

[Speaker 3] (42:29 - 42:51)
guidelines two to four percent it is above it's above as well no yes and then on this on the elementary school how much have we committed yeah thank you committed to using from stabilization can you remind me of that or maybe someone on the finance committee knows that number

[Speaker 5] (42:53 - 43:30)
yeah so i can just comment on that so that we the iteration and analysis we did when we made the school decision i believe it was about nine hundred thousand dollars but we we will rerun those numbers because obviously we have the final debt service for that bond and then values will move so um you know ahead of a vote in in the fall there will be a you know affirming up of that number maybe less okay thanks patrick i have a question um the debt

[Speaker 4] (43:30 - 43:35)
service for the school did we came in higher on the debt service and we had forecasted out is that

[Speaker 5] (43:35 - 44:02)
true um yes the total interest cost was was above slightly correct but the amortization of the bond um may allow us to use less reserves on a dollar basis you know compared to our initial projection and we can we can talk more details on that right and you're going to double check because

[Speaker 4] (44:02 - 44:36)
my understanding was we had committed a pretty extensive amount of reserves to keep the average cost um the average liability the taxpayer down i think the average the average cost was going to be what 323 to the median house right yep in that range okay and then the the cost of this purchase is going to be approximately what to the average house did

[Speaker 5] (44:36 - 45:12)
have been 83 yeah my preliminary numbers and it depends how we ultimately structure it but you know 80 to 110 range depending on how we do it and that's without using any reserves marion so if we have excess reserves which i think we do and the town opts to apply those to reduce the tax impact further then it would be less okay i welcome questions from

[Speaker 3] (45:12 - 45:20)
finance committee and capital improvement committee um i don't know sean can you show me the participants some of the people are raising

[Speaker 9] (45:20 - 46:04)
their hands uh eric schneider hi i guess i'll start pat i guess this is probably a question for patrick now i know we talked a lot about how our reserves are within or exceed the guidance from the rating agencies um do you have similar information on um the debt service that we're currently that we're currently carrying over our revenues and how this proposed acquisition will

[Speaker 5] (46:04 - 46:42)
impact that ratio yes so um we are i want to say nine or ten percent of revenue is debt service currently and um if you look at that on a gross basis we apply reserves because although reserves are transferred to you know current revenue um they're not a revenue source it's something we already have on the balance sheet so you can look at it two different ways um but right now on a gross basis for between nine and ten percent what's the guidance from the

[Speaker 9] (46:42 - 46:55)
rating agencies for that um i i would need to check that eric and then um the debt service that was listed in presentation is that general fund like all our general funds or does it also

[Speaker 5] (46:55 - 47:07)
include the enterprise correct so if land acquisition this would just be um general fund debt service because um it doesn't relate to the operation of the water or sewer enterprise

[Speaker 9] (47:07 - 47:41)
but this the 6.8 million you that were in the presentation is that general fund debt service or does it also include the debt service on water sewer oh i'm sorry the the budget it's just that's okay six days just okay um i think that's

[Speaker 7] (47:41 - 48:14)
preliminarily i have others but patrick you said that you're putting together a capital plan of some sort or you have a capital plan for the next five years maybe do you know i guess my point my question revolves around that i'm wondering what our capital needs are for the next five years from the general fund only and what kind of dollars are we talking about how what does that look like when we look at a model out what the next five years are including this debt the way whatever way you think you've got

[Speaker 5] (48:14 - 48:33)
it structured right so we have a five-year plan that the cic uh recommended and that's in the warrant so i think what you're asking is modeling that out further to see what that looks like correct yep yeah so i'll work on that and we will talk about that in more detail in finance

[Speaker 8] (48:33 - 48:51)
committee i think would be good cinder cinder in particular are you talking about that chart that patrick prepared for us in connection with the school where it showed it showed sort of the um you know the impact for example of the future middle school project

[Speaker 7] (48:51 - 49:48)
on on our debt service well i'm really wondering what we think we're trying to fit in um well possibly without a debt exclusion i mean we've got so much unused money capacity that i you know when we really need a debt exclusion but i'm wondering what the impact would be including that school on the tax rate and including the other debt that we need that's going to be on the general fund and how we think we're structuring it not so much what we're listing but how we're going to finance what the structure of what we will be financing asked to finance in the next five or so years definitely including the school only because it would be nice to see how that fits into you know what is the plan for all the debt that we need or want to model out before we basically just keep authorizing debt not that you know not not so much specific to what we're being asked to authorize right this item but all of what

[Speaker 8] (49:48 - 50:31)
will be asked to authorize in the next five years right and even in even in this just to build on that and i guess for for reaction i guess is that same model will help us think about this year's article 11 i guess i i thought the i thought the notion here of keeping article 11 together with this discussion was that we might look at relook at article 11 recommendations and potentially you know depending on what the models show and what the what some of this analysis shows consider what the least priority of the current priorities are within article 11

[Speaker 7] (50:31 - 51:17)
absolutely would be worth looking at i guess my thought relative to what we're talking about right now is that um if we're going to take on whatever the dollar amount is of new debt for these land acquisition projects then it seems like you know it was not really on the radar that we should be tightening our belt relative to a lot of the other kinds of things that we think we're doing and figure out how we can afford to do all of it without you know figure out what it looks like and i think it'd be easy enough to model it you know with certain assumptions and this it'll obviously it'll keep changing but i think it'd be helpful to see um what it shows

[Speaker 5] (51:17 - 51:37)
and a model would show that i'm happy to work on that i think that's a great idea and i think i can bring that to the finance committee meeting in the next week or so and we can poke and prod at that as we do our other conversations i think that would be good yeah i would think not only

[Speaker 7] (51:37 - 51:53)
with the finance committee probably like it i bet tom meeting would like to to better understand how what we're talking about now fits into the bigger picture the cost of once this once this

[Speaker 4] (51:53 - 52:16)
this property or all three of these properties are purchased the the costs of renovating you know making things happen what about those costs where do we stand with that sean and how how will that fit into capital so i'm let me let me take a stab at that because

[Speaker 1] (52:16 - 53:45)
we talked about this earlier so we have on the on the archer road properties we anticipate those to remain natural forests with the possibility for groups like the conservancy or otherwise if they want to do trails or otherwise networks in there so de minimis costs in that regard for the hawthorne property we've already been and have arranged discussions with our federal and state partners to talk about opportunities to support the design and construction of these plans the the hawthorne property is not going to be a quick um again there's a closing there's a year where they're staying in occupation of the property and frankly this is a significant piece parcel that we're going to end up going through a rather significant community process than a design charette process that ultimately is going to result in what the town wants as the final use here and our expectation is working with the state and federal government to help us as much as possible make that a financial reality i will tell you that the our state senator today's notified us that he was successful in putting in a outside section for some small design dollars for open space for swampscott that's a drop in the bucket seth molten's office has actually been in touch with both sean and me already and want to meet to talk about a federal appropriation and they have identified some ideas to have that conversation with us so a lot of work to be done um no no clarity yet though on exactly how we're going to focus out

[Speaker 4] (53:46 - 53:54)
all right so i just think we have to make it clear that there could be a cost but we just don't know

[Speaker 9] (53:54 - 54:41)
a cost agreed is there a timeline potential i mean i know we have closing in october at the hawthorne they get to stay for another year and then that is probably close to the time when the hadley school will be vacant or around then you know do you anticipate that those would go hand in hand or look that as a whole and you know think there's going to be costs for maybe for the hadley and and then there's a spark

[Speaker 1] (54:43 - 56:44)
so i think the the answer of course one is going to be informed or at least knowledgeable about the other because they're not going to happen in silos i think although our board and we haven't talked about it at length i think the intention is that post town meeting we were going to pick back up the rfp process and the hadley reuse process which left us with some really good options and the select board is looking i think to move that to the next stage and to advance that dialogue so that will be happening and no doubt it will inform people's opinions and thoughts about what they want at the hawthorne how it will inform it i don't know but you know i'll answer for myself i think as though you know we're going to walk and chew gum here on these and i think us having the community process on the on the hawthorne is is not i don't think they're i don't think they're one has to wait for the other i think they can happen together and for us to begin the community dialogue and and solicit feedback from the community as to what they want to see that charrette and and advance that such that by the time we're making some decisions on the hadley we have greater clarity as to what the hawthorne is going to be in the future but i do think so look it's not to our benefit to delay on the community process for the hawthorne because it's going to be vacant soon later we don't um we're not buying this to have a vacant building we're not buying it for the o&m responsibilities of a vacant building so it's to our interest to work quickly but again i think this is a monumental enough space that i think us doing something halfway um because speed is is the most important thing or try and do it on the cheap because of money being the most significant concern they're all relevant concerns but this is monumental enough space that i think we can all point to spaces like this in other communities that you know by name because it is the space in those communities and so um we'll work to get it right um but i think we can do it kind of together with hadley and hawthorne again just one person's response

[Speaker 17] (56:50 - 57:05)
so just to get back to tim's point earlier are we intending to discuss items in the ci in the capital plan that we might want to reconsider or is that for like a future fincom discussion like not tonight meeting that so my understanding is the

[Speaker 1] (57:05 - 57:33)
recommendation is not that there is no decrease in requests for the annual capital items and that this is this request is in addition to um the capital items there's actually a couple of modifications which you guys will need to look at anyways in that capital request i think a couple of updates um but from staff could i ask sean this specifically the intention was not to decrease the current capital appropriation request for fiscal year 23 so i i i would continue to work

[Speaker 2] (57:33 - 59:06)
with swanskins department heads and and really think critically about maintaining a disciplined focus on on capital investments the town got in quite a bit of a bind for decades by not keeping up with capital investments in facilities and and we've begun to be more disciplined with our annual capital program we've tried to keep a measured discipline focus on on our annual request it fits nicely within the framework of a of a balanced capital plan where we're doing a lot of must do's within the capital plan and to somehow think we should just go back and hack away at a capital plan that we spent months developing because we're looking to uh make some extraordinary investments and open space that we have prepared for the last five years extensively for we we built up the town's financial reserves to be able to dovetail not only the the school project but a wonderful nice to do project that for decades the town has has not been able to advance because it just lacked the financial wherewithal you did not even have two hundred thousand dollars in reserve levy capacity to to acquire a property so we're now in a position to

[Speaker 1] (59:06 - 59:48)
to do that and i i'm just gonna say something a little differently this is not these are i'm i'm just going to be in my one position other these are not nice to do respectfully in a community as dense as ours and and i'm going to just talk about the archer neighborhood this is not nice to do this is what we should be doing and we weren't doing it because we weren't financially prepared we weren't doing it because we didn't have vision no one was even putting these on the table no one was putting these on the table so it's not that we didn't have the reserves and we all said oh we don't have the reserves we can't do it no one was even talking about it and and frankly generations before us didn't talk about it and that's how we ended up being so significantly where we are and we've all contributed to it as well and so i don't think this is a nice to have i think this is a must have quite frankly especially the archer more

[Speaker 8] (59:48 - 1:00:18)
than anything i don't i don't know i'm not quite sure what eric said but i don't think anyone was suggesting that necessarily i think the question on nor was i at least suggesting going back and hacking things up from the capital plan what i was suggesting was we should look at the debt impacts and see if there is a need to like you know it's prudent not to just say you can have it all right let's look back we gave we put more money into paving for example this year than was

[Speaker 1] (1:00:18 - 1:00:37)
requested is that required no no so i agreed that wasn't my i was actually responding to the town administrator who has multiple times called this a nice to have and i'm just respectfully disagreeing with that statement because i don't think it's a nice to have and i don't think the reason we didn't do it is because we didn't have reserves so that's all i agree with you

[Speaker 5] (1:00:37 - 1:00:55)
completely on the capital items tim i just want to comment um tim sent me a message so the reserves capital stabilization i misstated earlier i said we were at 4.9 of our benchmark but we are at um 2.54 and i just wanted to clarify that point for the record thank you

[Speaker 12] (1:00:56 - 1:02:24)
one question all right go ahead uh hey guys so i i guess just two questions here trying to keep it simple um number one for from the perspective of the capital improvement committee you know i think we want to understand sort of how big is the bucket we need to fill up with projects and then you know we can we can pick up the work of approving the plan that we that we deferred last time around so has the has the size of the bucket changed you know significantly because of this or are we just saying that we're going to fund this from the reserves and therefore you know the size of the bucket we need to fill for 23 is unchanged maybe i missed that i'm sorry and then the second question is you know should should we be taking a conservative case that assumes no additional revenue generated by any of these properties once they become town property right so if we were to put up a a business and that would generate some sort of tax revenue for for the town on and on either the anthony's property or the hawthorne property are we assuming a conservative case of no additional revenue because of the ownership of this or should we bake some of that into our projections thanks so um ryan i think those are

[Speaker 2] (1:02:24 - 1:04:11)
good questions when we look at um you know the loss of tax revenue certainly you know we you know we're mindful of that um you know over the last few years you know we've really focused on community and economic development and so we've seen a number of new business um opportunities in swansgate and so we're generating more non-real estate tax revenue and so i i think we can uh continue to focus on economic development and continue to look at year to year where we can build capacity and where we can find room for balancing all of the town's needs i think as we mentioned you know these these investments are critical for our master plan and they're critical for a town that is the third most densely settled town it helps us balance uh some of the broader responsibilities but i i do think there still will be room in our debt service to to meet some of these uh broader needs we're looking at um other ways to to think strategically about the town budget so that we can shift room within the budget to help balance um you know some additional uh capital projects that that we know are coming down the pipeline so um you know i'm i'm not worried about that i actually think that there are some really interesting opportunities as we've mentioned earlier in the meeting it may be you know we're going to have public meetings and public conversations about you know what type of uses uh will these properties um support i i i think you know certainly with the archer properties open space sounds like that's what they should be most suitable for but for humphrey street there may be some

[Speaker 3] (1:04:11 - 1:04:24)
unique um mixed-use opportunities ryan on the on the bucket question i'm i think the recommendation is not that there's a smaller bucket that you have the same bucket for fiscal 23

[Speaker 1] (1:04:25 - 1:05:14)
that you had uh prior to this i i also think it's worth and so look at that the select board at some point has to be saying these things publicly so i'm just going to take lead i'll just give my opinion you should assume no tax revenue from the athanas site after the sale in my opinion i think so that i i presently don't envision redevelop in a way that's revenue generating in a meaningful way for the town and i think it's a mistake for us to view this project that way because i think we can we don't need that so that's again just my view um i don't want to accept the expectation that revenue is this is going to be a revenue driver um the eighty thousand dollars a year that we're losing from the real estate taxes on the hawthorn is is inconsequential relative to the net gain to our community to to have this be um open community space and the

[Speaker 11] (1:05:14 - 1:05:38)
redevelopment of yeah peter should not be the only one saying this on the board so i will echo that i agree in my in my vision my personal vision for that hawthorn space the conservative approach should be taken that it will not be revenue driven yeah i agree with that yeah i i think

[Speaker 6] (1:05:38 - 1:06:37)
that if we could go back in time uh 30 40 years um and really uh reimagine and re-envision uh humphrey street i'm not sure um we would have we would have done what we did i think i just don't think there was any any planning any vision we were literally looking down at our shoe tops as building after building condo unit after condo unit was constructed um you know my vision if if we could wipe the slate clean you know would be a continuation of the harbor walk from uh from lynch or drive to the fish house uh and and the main the maintaining of that of that access with the ocean um we obviously didn't do that and this you know this uh transformative um acquisition of property is not going to is not going to change that it can certainly help to uh to remedy those those mistakes uh of the past as we as we look forward to the future i'd like to make a statement

[Speaker 7] (1:06:37 - 1:07:15)
about that i mean full disclosure i live in one of those condos but those condos are completely forgotten in terms of what revenue they produce for the town do you have an estimate of what all the condos on that side of the street on humphrey street generate in a single year in terms of property tax revenue for the town could someone from the administration figure out what that number is because i'd really like to know it without having to add up the the dozens of condo units to figure out what it produces because it's well in excess of anything that the hawthorne was producing well in excess of that i do you have a number peter for what's produced by all of how

[Speaker 1] (1:07:15 - 1:07:42)
many units are there's probably 60 i don't i don't i don't i don't we can i'm sure patrick can get that center i'm just interested as to i don't think if you if you heard david's comments are saying that the condos are the antithesis of what i think what he's saying is we in terms of community building and community spaces we gave up a lot of access to the oceanfront over the years by allowing development without maintaining public access and i think david was saying if we could run wind back time he would like to fix that but we can't do that but we can certainly

[Speaker 7] (1:07:42 - 1:08:03)
make sure we get the hawthorne site right well i'm not arguing about the hawthorne site but i keep hearing about how awful the condos are and i think they produce a lot more money for the town than the commercial side of the street does for the town i think and when we talk about a balancing act i think that we need to consider that i you know i just i think on a dollar to

[Speaker 1] (1:08:03 - 1:08:16)
dollar basis i think everybody will concede that point uh on a dollar dollar basis i believe david david speaking about something that transcends economics and it's about community and how we decided to build out our coastline is all he was talking about but on dollars to dollars you're

[Speaker 7] (1:08:16 - 1:08:50)
correct no i understand but i think it's important that we understand what the dollars are there and that what the dollars are from all the other kind of development and growth that we've allowed to take place in town which has generated all the reserve position that makes it so that we've got the kind of flexibility to do things like consider the acquisition of the properties at this point so i think i i mean i for one would like to understand what the property tax revenue is from that entire length of of condos that that the town enjoys from that it's quite a bit and i don't know i'd argue with you if we could go back 100 years

[Speaker 4] (1:08:50 - 1:10:15)
but you know we're not there so i do um have a different opinion than some of uh my friends here on the select board i would like to hear what the finance committee has to say after they deliberate um i'm not completely sold on 100 on park space down there i'm not sold on 50 park space but what i am sold on is having an open discussion um with the financial committees about what is in the best interest of that space and to really evaluate what the potential income could have been and what we're going to lose so that there's an open dialogue and that the community is involved in an open dialogue um i personally do like the idea of having open space but i do want to hear what people have to say i mean we do have to look and see what the loss of income is going to be so everybody knows what they're getting into and i i also want to see part of that property to have restaurants small boutique i mean i'm not talking about the whole property but my personal side to have something there that we could sit and enjoy um i just want to see uh rich raymond every hand up yes and that's that's me david

[Speaker 16] (1:10:15 - 1:10:37)
under under rich hey so i just want to understand so um the the decision that this ought to be uh largely open space so sean you just mentioned partial possibly partial use but it seems like the bias is towards having it largely just open space how how uh was that that initial

[Speaker 1] (1:10:37 - 1:13:26)
determination arrived upon so um david i think the answer is that again we we did we did welcome two new select board members during this process so i can't speak for those two they're going to need to speak for themselves the prior select board the majority of these negotiations happened um prior to this last election all let me just say this all the negotiations happened prior to last election um and so that board was unanimous in open space being the chief motivating goal here the goal on hawthorne was not trying just to trying to event uh oppose an apocalypse of a development right i mean we can go analyze anything that any member wants to analyze you guys tell us what the development scenario is is it 50 condos at 100 condos is 125 condos is it 50 000 square feet of commercial space whatever people want us to analyze as your best case case scenario for humphrey we can do that right um that though wasn't the driver for us the driver for us was um the significance and to david and neil if i don't say it correctly like change it correct me on this but i think it was the monumental importance of this site the what would clearly be five to ten years of political um um uncertainty about the future of the site as it went through a permitting process appeals process um and everything that would come with it and and the town's inability to effectuate control at the end of the day because the town has proven as other towns have been able to that in the 40b context we don't win and so it's not about affordable housing or not affordable housing it wasn't about it was really about saying let's control our destiny here and um there are other ways for us to get revenue um we don't we didn't feel like revenue was the chief driver here and this is a monumental open space uh piece for us and we had the opportunity to do that so at the end of the day it gets decided by two ways right the town meeting is going to have their say because they are the ultimate authority in in terms of it uh the select board uh and fincom has a recommendation cica has a recommendation the select board within the parameters of what town meeting approves is the ultimate decider right and and then we'll make that decision um but you know um as i've said i think there's a pretty exhaustive community process still to come here um as to where that will land we've expressed our opinions if the community comes back and says they want development on this property then i guess we're going to have to have a serious conversation about what development looks like because i don't know about the rest of you but i remember the temple well enough to know that we shouldn't be in the development business and i i am in the development business and i don't want us to be in the development business so so we can have that conversation but i i think that the prior select board was pretty unanimous was absolutely unanimous uh in in this regard but again to katie and mariel and you know i don't want to speak for

[Speaker 13] (1:13:26 - 1:13:48)
them okay thank you and um can the real rich raymond ask a question is that you rich it is me um so knowing that there's a timeline to get this on the on the warrant does the does the warrant have to reflect the actual vision and build or is it just the purchase

[Speaker 1] (1:13:49 - 1:15:18)
so the warrant language that we're going to be looking at tonight again their floor motions can change anything right so just what's going to be printed includes language that says the acquisition of the by uh to acquire by purchase gift emit domain or fee simple interest the following properties and then it says for general municipal purposes including but not limited to open space conservation and active recreational purposes and constructing maintaining operating repairing replacing improvements uh and leasing all lower portions thereon so it's it is a rather broad um certainly focuses on open space um it has been drafted by because we're not going to have our final answer we are cognizant about article 97 and and the constitutional constraints that when a town does dedicate something to open space that we will then need to go to the legislature for approval uh to change that and so prior to us going through a community process though we don't think it's prudent to for ask the taxpayers of swamps that to fund this property then all of a sudden relinquish control to beacon hill um so i think we have to go through a process and then ultimately uh put the restrictions um on the property that the community decides they want to put on the property not unlike we did for the hadley school as you may recall we haven't finished that process but we did go through enough of a community process where we have recommendations for the future of hadley one of which was it does not include market rate housing and town meeting supported the select board putting a restriction on the property prohibiting market rate housing and the select board did do that the first meeting after it was approved by town meeting so that deed restriction was put for example on that property yeah i'm just gonna

[Speaker 7] (1:15:18 - 1:15:24)
suggest that okay so we're good thank you peter can you just go over article 97 again just a

[Speaker 1] (1:15:24 - 1:16:06)
little slower what what makes it article 97 there uh article 97 of the constitution i'm sure i'm a poor job of it cinder but but in essence when a community um dedicates land to open space purposes in order to remove it from open space purposes the town has to go back to the legislature and seek the legislature through home rule petition approval to do so so for example the last time i think the last time we did this was for jackson park and the high school so we had to go to the legislature with a home rule petition to get the legislature's approval uh to remove portions of jackson park which were dedicated open space and use it for educational purposes so do we have

[Speaker 7] (1:16:06 - 1:16:18)
other so if so if you have article 97 land and then you want to use it for something else do you have to replace it someplace else in the community with article 97 no they're great but

[Speaker 1] (1:16:18 - 1:17:04)
great question we have lots of parcels that qualify for article 97 there isn't a formal one-to-one mitigation you would think that since you have to go through this process the legislature would say you're taking this land out of open space what are you replacing it with something but that actually doesn't really happen it's more of a political decision if the home rule petitions are supported by the community and the legislator supports it it goes through the process and most often is is supported without in-kind mitigation but it does make sense you would think they would ask for that my understanding is that they didn't ask we didn't have to do anything on jackson it's my understanding if others know differently please correct me we we got legislative approval but we didn't dedicate more land to open space in turn so and

[Speaker 7] (1:17:04 - 1:17:11)
i'm sorry you're talking it so is the article right now the motion is going to read so that

[Speaker 1] (1:17:11 - 1:17:23)
it can only be open space what it says for here is for general municipal purposes including but not limited to open space conservation active recreation purposes is that i think the operative

[Speaker 7] (1:17:23 - 1:17:31)
language at the moment so does it allow a small little restaurant like you picture on the like

[Speaker 1] (1:17:31 - 1:17:51)
you have on the picture it could it could be read that way yes i i assume it could be again so we're tonight we're going to i think because of timing for june 14th open and close a warrant but we're going to use the next two and a half weeks with you all and the community to work on what ultimately will be the motion language and and what we'll hope for you guys to be supporting

[Speaker 9] (1:17:51 - 1:18:20)
and make a recommendation with thank you can we talk back again about the capital projects so if you open and close the warrant with the amounts currently in there as we had voted on before the last town meeting uh if you close the warrant can we and if does that preclude us from changing any of those amounts before town meeting oh you can again

[Speaker 1] (1:18:20 - 1:18:53)
your floor motion will will dictate um what what numbers you want to bring to town meeting floor so you guys will have the ability to uh have your floor motion read however whatever your final recommendation is i do know again you guys aren't seeing i do note that there's a couple of new capital items that you'll need to look at that are actually in an updated article 11 so the numbers are different from what you looked at in addition to the park stuff you guys will patrick will be visiting with you on those um but again the printed warrants not going to

[Speaker 9] (1:18:53 - 1:19:15)
constrain your motion on town meeting floor yeah i see that they're highlighted and there's a star footnote uh correct so should it also have a star footnote for all the other items that that's what we voted on for the last town meeting or is that getting too nitty-gritty

[Speaker 1] (1:19:18 - 1:19:44)
um i think frankly it's probably better to just not have a recommendation that frankly the warrant article is granted that fincom and cic are going to report at town meeting and not a recommendation because in truth you haven't recommended this total package so i think probably should be drafted that you didn't we're we won't have a recommended either so i think that should say all the committees will report at town meeting if you feel otherwise by all means it's

[Speaker 13] (1:19:44 - 1:19:52)
your committees do we hey peter do we need anything from cic before the warrant gets

[Speaker 1] (1:19:52 - 1:20:03)
mailed out or are we just good for the floor no you're just going to need to meet and make your recommendation to cic and to society fincom so that they in turn can make the recommendation in

[Speaker 8] (1:20:03 - 1:20:17)
the floor motion that's right okay very good thank you but the select board's view right now in issuing this is that the capital article as previously approved shouldn't change and might

[Speaker 1] (1:20:17 - 1:20:36)
even be added to yeah so the warrant that i think was sent to you eric sounds like eric's looking at it so i think he's gotten it since we started this uh includes two additional capital requests and that's we haven't discussed we haven't discussed those two items yeah we have we haven't discussed them either right so they're they're put there by the town administrator in

[Speaker 3] (1:20:36 - 1:20:48)
terms of opening and closing the warrant jim i don't expect us to be removing much tonight so that it gives us the all the option to report on at a town meeting yeah i just want to make sure i

[Speaker 8] (1:20:48 - 1:20:53)
understood the sort of the bucket isn't changing the comment because it wasn't the capital article

[Speaker 7] (1:20:53 - 1:21:03)
indefinitely postponed so we didn't really make our motion to approve it yet we never made that chance to make a motion to approve it right i think you actually recommended

[Speaker 1] (1:21:03 - 1:21:07)
passage didn't you you recommended pass oh you were going to recommend passage that night correct

[Speaker 7] (1:21:07 - 1:21:24)
and you didn't that's correct we would have but then we were asked to indefinitely postpone it so we never did correct so we've never really done that yet well you certainly not said it publicly right yes well this change so i think it make it it sort of begs reconsideration

[Speaker 1] (1:21:26 - 1:21:46)
right yep so i think the comment to this article which is now going to be read as article three the capital article is now article three for the special time meeting is going to just say the finance committee will report on this article at town meeting does that that feel good for you

[Speaker 3] (1:21:46 - 1:22:20)
guys sure any other questions from anyone out there on zoom fincom or cic no i do i have one

[Speaker 4] (1:22:20 - 1:22:55)
question from um when i when i was campaigning i actually knocked on a couple doors and two people two individuals of deborah harris of lincoln house point actually was the first one who said um she asked about the possibility of ever having a land trust so that they could donate money in the future to someday buy um hawthorne so i think she was foreseeing something but is there any possibility that we could have a land trust in case but is that something that would have to be set out separate uh other than the town or is that something the town could do

[Speaker 2] (1:22:56 - 1:23:05)
how does that work if somebody wants to donate money to the town i would really ask them to contact me and i'd be happy to help them find a way to do that i think mrs

[Speaker 4] (1:23:05 - 1:23:11)
harris was saying that she felt that there were many um residents in town that would be willing

[Speaker 2] (1:23:12 - 1:23:32)
that's wonderful news but um you know we we do have the ability to accept donations and so um certainly we could set up a land trust and that could be a separate type of um special fund okay town could do that the town can we can figure out how to um identify a special fund

[Speaker 4] (1:23:33 - 1:23:38)
they can accept donations so i'll knock on deborah harris's door tomorrow morning that's great

[Speaker 1] (1:23:40 - 1:24:08)
maybe she's listening i was i was remiss earlier i think i mentioned it last week there is a resident who is actually adjacent to the 5.033 acre parcel there is a resident that is actually in the process of donating 10 000 square feet to the town which is contiguous to the land that we have under agreement and um so there is a donation as well that's happening so it seems

[Speaker 3] (1:24:08 - 1:24:32)
like we're um actually naturally segwaying into a discussion of the warrant so i suggest that maybe we do that um jintan and cic can certainly stay in the meeting um for that conversation but you can also uh during your meetings if you want to so i'll leave it to you before we start talking about the warrant

[Speaker 8] (1:24:36 - 1:25:35)
so that's the sense of the finance committee as a preference i'm probably gonna drop 10 personally okay and so just so we're all clear if we adjourn the meeting but a couple of us stay as long as we don't have a quorum i think we're okay is that sound right yeah you can say you just can't you just can't you just can't talk yeah it's a perfect scenario i'm gonna drop two tim and then can i get a motion from the finance committee for this for our meeting still moved for german okay uh let's see cinder hi eric cartman hi joan you made the motion i think like naomi oh naomi made the motion joan hi eric schneider hi matt right and i'm an eye as well

[Speaker 3] (1:25:37 - 1:25:44)
all right everybody thanks thank you rich uh same for you with cic

[Speaker 13] (1:25:45 - 1:26:07)
yeah so uh also cic uh looks like we're gonna pull a meeting together on june 9th and we'll send out the particular uh probably tomorrow so pat i'll follow up with you about scheduling that but for tonight's purposes um call it uh the meeting tonight and uh dave

[Speaker 8] (1:26:08 - 1:26:19)
rich just quickly can i jump in for a quick second now we're going to be meeting before that um you're well you know be probably helpful and welcome to have a liaison if that made so

[Speaker 13] (1:26:19 - 1:26:45)
that'd be great if you want to just send me the time and i'll send it to our group but i'll probably most likely try to be there as well okay great um sorry okay so i'm an eye for tonight uh dave hi kelly she's not on oh sorry and ryan yep i agree awesome all right guys everyone have a

[Speaker 3] (1:26:45 - 1:28:01)
great night thank you thank you all right so um warrant for a special town meeting on june 14th think the first order of business we have to open the warrant so do i have a motion to open the warrant for the june 14th special town meeting at small scott high school starting at seven o'clock to move is there a second second all those in favor aye okay great so why don't we um um our our goal here is to close the warrant um we're not we're not um necessarily making any motions for favorable action but we certainly can if you if you choose to um there's three articles on here um let's just start with article one and work our way through um i know that i i noticed on article one and acquisition of land on the third bullet um there's a reference to real property located at 54 foster road and i think we want to remove that and do we have do we have the warrant in word we do

[Speaker 2] (1:28:04 - 1:28:07)
i'd like to share the screen that warrants actually

[Speaker 3] (1:28:09 - 1:28:19)
i'd like to uh try to edit this in real time oh no sir oh yeah you know let's just put two

[Speaker 1] (1:28:19 - 1:28:35)
of us in charge of proofreading afterwards as opposed to having someone typing live right now it just okay that's how sentences inadvertently get deleted okay so i'm just i'm happy to review it with you okay and we'll just give the okay staff that we're good with it sure that's okay

[Speaker 3] (1:28:35 - 1:29:02)
i just that's fine i think it's just better i just want to make sure we nope i'm with you so that's one change that i wanted to make so so it would read um you know on that third bullet point inclusive uh assessor's tax map 7-250 through 7-255 inclusive and then it would just say which in total contains four and a half acres more or less

[Speaker 10] (1:29:05 - 1:29:17)
that's everybody the comment from fincom needs to be changed to fincom will report on this article i tell me

[Speaker 3] (1:29:17 - 1:29:23)
yeah and we'll keep rss reporting on it as well correct yes

[Speaker 10] (1:29:25 - 1:29:45)
the floor motion will include the final amount as you know there's no amount does anyone have anything else on article one i do think look at i think the the conversation about what the use of

[Speaker 1] (1:29:45 - 1:30:48)
hawthorne is is really important i mean they're all important and so i don't want to diminish it and i don't want to diminish the community dialogue of this but i do think it's important that and i appreciate what people said tonight is that we send um um i don't want to have this get stuck in a sticky wicket of people thinking that we're doing this because we wanted to redevelop the property that's not what the then select board was and again people have expressed their opinions so they can speak for themselves i just think it's important that we don't spend the next three weeks the community thinking women here are they just trying to redevelop this and and do something if the community ultimately wants to go that route and that that is clear then that's something different right but i think this warrant language here anyways and the floor motion may change right based on conversations with fincom this language here i think limits it for now which then at least is it's not totally restrictive but i think makes clear and i think our statements should make clear that we're primarily if not motivated by open space purposes and community purposes so that's

[Speaker 11] (1:30:49 - 1:31:40)
yeah i would like to echo what you're saying which is my initial gut reaction is this language that doesn't mean i cannot be swayed in a different direction but i would have to be shown the data for which we would say that financially it would behoove us to move in another direction um in a very great way there are some things here that just are not quantified by obtaining this space and there are benefits to the community that you know don't come from dollars and cents and tax revenue and um for me those points are worth more than um a lot of other things but i'm also practical so if you can show me those other things i'm not saying it can't be something else i am just saying the value is really high for me

[Speaker 6] (1:31:40 - 1:33:10)
in those other departments okay i think the unquantifiable benefit is is something that's that's incredibly important i think for for so long we've we've been focused on been focused on generating uh generating tax revenue and that's that's put us in a position where we have the opportunity to do something such as this but i think for i think as we look forward up from our from our shoe tops we're able to put people uh over profits and put and put open space we've under invested in so many things um but we've we've really under invested in open space and we've had opportunities to to acquire open space and we haven't um and i i really think that you know the this is a transformative acquisition there's nine and a half acres at archer street is going to allow a a green oasis within a very densely populated neighborhood um for for all to enjoy so within a within a short proximity you'll have you'll have uh you'll have those nine and a half acres you'll have the 47 acres of the harold king forest and uh and obviously you'll have the uh the beach and the waterfront and hopefully a uh a beautiful seaside park uh for all to enjoy as well so that's what i'm incredibly excited about uh too um but i look forward to community dialogue and discussion as to uh as to how we can realize uh that future vision of uh of that of that waterfront park

[Speaker 3] (1:33:14 - 1:33:29)
okay so so we're good with article one as is um select quarter report on it and we'll change it as committee will report on this article it's article two of the zoning um

[Speaker 10] (1:33:32 - 1:33:39)
we did have did see prior to this draft or

[Speaker 1] (1:33:40 - 1:33:56)
my understanding is that this does replicate the language verbatim in the appendix the appendix includes the verbatim language that the planning board is going to be reviewing and making a recommendation on i do think we need to just again add that uh fincom will report on this

[Speaker 3] (1:33:56 - 1:34:02)
article at town meeting now just now does fincom even report on it i'm sorry actually they they

[Speaker 4] (1:34:02 - 1:34:08)
don't necessarily report it's a zoning article that has financial impact so they probably will

[Speaker 3] (1:34:09 - 1:34:19)
i'm pretty sure they will report on it okay i mean i'm happy to leave that language in the warrant everyone's okay with that i'll just say the finance committee will report on this

[Speaker 4] (1:34:19 - 1:34:42)
that's how i'm eating because this is tied directly to the whole time no this is tied directly to the glover the blubber right but glover is tied to the whole yeah just so it's a financial impact article okay um third article is the capital

[Speaker 3] (1:34:42 - 1:34:51)
um items which is the same list it looks like but there are two additional items that

[Speaker 1] (1:34:53 - 1:35:14)
i was not aware of um so i don't know so i guess my question is have the tables been updated to the math politics and ties because the tables aren't highlighted so these all down here have been increased by 50 000 as the case may be uh okay so i think you got just on highlight and on asterisk yes yep

[Speaker 10] (1:35:15 - 1:35:20)
on the second page it's just the finance committee will report on this article at town meeting

[Speaker 1] (1:35:21 - 1:35:27)
you had on that uh so i think you gotta get rid of the comment too

[Speaker 10] (1:35:29 - 1:35:41)
since the above projects were recommended for funding i'm gonna have to start just

[Speaker 3] (1:35:41 - 1:35:46)
the comment cic will report in the finance committee will report yep

[Speaker 2] (1:36:00 - 1:38:02)
what are these new items so um we have a metco program that exists high school it came to my attention that uh there are opportunities for us to really improve that facility and really make investments that would ensure that um you know we um are are putting our best foot forward and making sure that those students are getting absolutely the best support that we could possibly give them uh this is a an important um part of our values and certainly uh i would not want one student that comes to this community um from um a great distance not to think that they would not be prioritized and frankly i wish if i had known about this sooner i would have certainly included it in my initial recommendation but uh it's not too late and i think following that same vein um recently i've been in touch with um both our uh veterans agent but also um patrick burke one of our veterans and they have asked me uh to consider funding for uh not just telehealth but some improvements to our bfw that really would help us continue our focus on providing broader services and whether it's um you know improving areas so that we can have additional veteran services brought in from uh state agencies or other groups the facility just needs some improvements and this gives us a chance i think uh for two of our most important um you know communities to to really let them know that their priorities

[Speaker 4] (1:38:02 - 1:38:08)
can you just say what a room improvement like i hear what you're saying but what is it so

[Speaker 1] (1:38:08 - 1:38:42)
no i think she's asking that echo so the medical program has a dedicated space in the high school and they've been dislocated from it um for other space needs and so they've been moved around in multiple years and that's a room where students that get here very early and oftentimes stay here very late to late night spend time and so it's i think to the redesigning it refurbishment of it that so this is going to be i think the second year in a row they've been moved so i think it's just resetting that and trying to make it a comfortable safe place for them again giving them back their dedicated space the move is actually back to their dedicated space but

[Speaker 14] (1:38:43 - 1:38:46)
hopefully hopefully not permanent dedicated space

[Speaker 3] (1:38:46 - 1:39:19)
yeah so i mean i think you know philosophically i don't love the idea of adding items onto the capital list at this point on a special town meeting but i've been not so rigid to not want to include these um and and let cic and fincom um review them and i think they are um priority and and low dollar amount so i'm okay keeping them on the list um if that's

[Speaker 10] (1:39:20 - 1:39:32)
um but i open it up to the board to discuss i agree with you completely you know yeah i don't

[Speaker 4] (1:39:32 - 1:39:41)
i really don't think it's really a choice i mean it's on the list it's on the list it goes it goes there and if the capital improvement committee wants to do anything they want to this list right

[Speaker 3] (1:39:41 - 1:39:52)
they can okay so so we'll change the language see we have to add cic report on this article and then we'll change the finance committee will report on the article

[Speaker 10] (1:39:55 - 1:40:05)
and that's it so everyone's okay with that so i would make a motion to close this warrant with

[Speaker 1] (1:40:05 - 1:40:16)
the changes indicated subject to before being printed neil and i will take one pass one more look at to make sure that these changes were operated just administratively just make sure

[Speaker 3] (1:40:18 - 1:40:44)
okay all those in favor all right can i get a second okay great so sean you'll send that off to our great and that's going out tomorrow right how do you do okay so um we have uh town administrator support if you want to go through that quickly sean

[Speaker 10] (1:40:45 - 1:40:53)
i feel like i'm torturing you sometimes um um

[Speaker 2] (1:41:01 - 1:43:56)
so i'm really excited to uh report that our new uh hr director and assistant um town administrator pecan started this week his office is located on the second floor in the former conference room right next to the town administrator's office you know i've also relocated bonnie lavoie's office um benefits coordinator down to the second floor so uh really you know pleased at some of the synergies between the town financing hr so um really going to be helpful to fill that position so uh on monday uh i had another regional meeting for the king's beach water quality study we continue to explore the various options that would help us define a least environmentally impactful solution i continue to really believe that perhaps a combination of a few of these options might be in the town's long-term best interest but certainly appreciate the technical analysis that is going into studying um the solutions some of these solutions are are very um innovative but all of them have significant costs that exceed um you know the funding that we've been able to receive today so this past year both lynn and swamps could receive 2.5 million dollars or 5 million dollars total uh you know to just uh look at some of the treatment systems you know those those systems range between five and six million dollars and ultimately you know extending an outflow pipe uh into the ocean to really think you know to really get the advantage of diffusion um and help protect that beach um for the long term i think is ultimately going to be what we need and those costs could range between you know 20 and 50 million dollars so it's going to be important for us to really understand that there's going to be no easy solution that beach is going to continue to be impaired this summer and that's a great frustration to many of us there is one option that may allow us to take advantage of existing infrastructure but we continue to work with dep and the epa to really look at at some of those short-term opportunities to you know get dry weather flows captured so that we can have it treated and safely return to the outflow i'm happy to answer any questions but i expect that you know we'll have a public meeting sometime over the next few months and really present some of the

[Speaker 4] (1:43:56 - 1:44:11)
preliminary findings to the public i have a question on it sean it is are there any marine biologists or anyone from northeastern working um with you on this or no but we have the head of

[Speaker 2] (1:44:11 - 1:44:33)
save the harbor save the bays as one of the key stakeholders i i would welcome um some folks over um from northeastern and uh frankly i'm happy to work with anybody that actually wants to help us um study and evaluate any of the opportunities to protect that beach okay um just one question

[Speaker 14] (1:44:33 - 1:44:38)
about about king's beach um is the is the chlorination facility currently

[Speaker 2] (1:44:39 - 1:47:14)
is it operational not allowed to coordinate um the um infiltration and outflow um because of mass dep and the epa's standards they don't believe that that is a safe environmental practice for the environment we were doing that for for years and it helped us you know protect the beach from bacteria no longer permittable we have asked them to look at that and perhaps as a short term you know allow us to treat the outflow to ensure public health is going to be protected but um you know they'll they'll get back to us on it thank you i'm really pleased with the work of chief chief caseta and our police department they recently held the town hall with sean residents and uh they're going to continue to head out and really engage the community our fire department is doing that as well with high five fridays and both departments have visited local schools and really working on a civic engagement maybe the select board should be out there joining them high five friday so uh our police department also have has started a new initiative drive for kindness all of our elementary schools are really getting um a visit officer our school resource officer bruce wilson who is doing an absolute um fantastic job brian sorry uh for um performing at random acts of kindness our high school seniors um have decorated boxes that look like these cars and certainly appreciate that lots of absolutely amazing recreation programs i think we have the biggest list of recreation programs i've ever seen in my five years this is pre or post pandemic i'm excited that this keeps getting bigger and bigger these are no cost and low cost activities i want folks to really take a look at all the events uh particularly you know um you know we have our pride day celebration on june 4th coming up in just a couple weeks we have a farmers market and lots of really um fun events um and uh you know our summer concerts will uh start uh shortly as well on june 26th

[Speaker 4] (1:47:15 - 1:47:20)
the summer programs go to the end of the summer or when did when do they end

[Speaker 2] (1:47:20 - 1:47:26)
summer programs uh for the summer recreation yeah yeah they're just six-week programs so

[Speaker 4] (1:47:26 - 1:47:33)
is there any way to get them down you know a few of them add to when school begins just

[Speaker 2] (1:47:33 - 1:48:30)
longer um yeah i do too and i'm absolutely happy to okay that's what people are asking let me work with um our recreation director i i think part of the challenge is and i've i've actually worked with a rec program and extended it by two weeks um you know it's it's hard for uh a lot of our summer employees uh are you know college students and we have to work within kind of some of the right well maybe if we can just see you know give it a shot programs um we have one of the we have one of the most affordable weekly tuition programs for um summer recreation i we've looked around and it's amazing how wonderful this value is when we look at the cost you know obviously our rec program is on a revolving fund and we have to make sure that you know it's it's all part of a financial plan but certainly happy to look at

[Speaker 4] (1:48:30 - 1:48:41)
that i mean even if kids are going back to school you might have parents or you might have parents who are saying listen i'll go out more a couple weeks i i'll bring this back i've asked our

[Speaker 2] (1:48:41 - 1:49:00)
recreation director uh for the last couple years to look at an after-school program i'd like to see this all year round i think our young citizens and our young families need uh more support and so i'm happy to kind of look at this and try to find ways to advance it to be clear you

[Speaker 1] (1:49:00 - 1:49:16)
she has been working on an after-school program so i don't want your statement to infer that you were asking for something you weren't getting you did end up in a before school before school program so i want to hear these things are in works and they're a lot of conversation a lot of good work happening and i just want to make sure we're being perfectly clear in our responses you're

[Speaker 11] (1:49:16 - 1:49:27)
right about extending the time out and she has explained the barriers for what she's up against but she's constantly pushing them um in order to take the program longer and make the programs

[Speaker 14] (1:49:27 - 1:49:37)
more valuable to the community so and i'm incredibly excited about the list of recreation events that are happening this is literally just what's happening in the month of june this doesn't

[Speaker 2] (1:49:37 - 1:50:53)
even take into account we've got a calendar for july and august and bill we want for september october november december and january we're gonna we're gonna keep uh these programs going because frankly they're medicine and they uh they help build community of all the things we do i i know it may sound um um it may sound sort of hyperbole but these keep these recreational events these no cost and low cost events do more to help build community than many other investments that we make in town and so they're they're they're amazingly important that's my report i'm sorry um lastly memorial day we have memorial day activities um we have the field of heroes on friday um this friday may 27th through monday may 30th these are the plaques of all of the veterans in massachusetts that have made the supreme sacrifice during our war on terror um we also have memorial day commemorating at cemetery on monday may uh 30th at 10 a.m

[Speaker 3] (1:50:57 - 1:51:04)
thanks sean well i think i'll follow up with an email on people's availability to try to attend

[Speaker 14] (1:51:04 - 1:51:11)
some of these events over the weekend i'm certainly in for the monday okay great also

[Speaker 11] (1:51:11 - 1:51:31)
i know the field of heroes is looking for volunteers at 5 p.m to help um create the field of heroes so that's on friday at 5 p.m if you want to volunteer i think it's just at town hall um so i know they are looking for folks if you're available and can help please support them

[Speaker 3] (1:51:31 - 1:52:47)
so david you're in and maryellen did you say you're going on monday too just like okay thanks that's good i may be there but i'm not clear um so um thanks sean um consent agenda consent agenda is designed to expedite the handling of routine and miscellaneous business of the board select board may adopt the entire consent agenda with one motion at the request of any board member any item may be removed from the consent agenda and placed on the regular agenda for discussion consent agenda items are to approve an msba project funding agreement to vote to approve a one-day liquor license for july 3rd um event um to the vfw post any event you're talking about um vote to approve a liquor license for um 1634 mid-area olc to sell bottled wine at the farm market over the summer uh three national grid petitions um a citations for retiring conservation commission members and vote to approve the regular meeting minutes of may 11th may 16th and may 19th motion to approve the consent

[Speaker 4] (1:52:47 - 1:53:06)
agenda hold on i just so there's a couple of the minutes i'd like to remove from there because we have a couple changes to the minutes and i have one question on the vfw liquor license yes you want to remove all the minutes just the vfw liquor license just to ask a question on that

[Speaker 18] (1:53:06 - 1:53:19)
sure um yes so why don't we just see what the question is and maybe we can oh but she wants to remove the minutes no i understand but we can just do a motion that

[Speaker 4] (1:53:20 - 1:53:30)
okay uh so on the one day liquor license it's just it doesn't have it checked off here under processing information it says liability insurance it says no so how does that affect the town

[Speaker 15] (1:53:32 - 1:53:36)
they're getting it she just told me tonight they haven't gotten it yet but they're in the process

[Speaker 2] (1:53:38 - 1:53:44)
yeah we won't issue it if we don't have a suitable um liability it just won't be issued

[Speaker 6] (1:53:44 - 1:54:04)
yeah i've been on i've been on phone calls with uh the veterans processing officials so with with patrick burke and um and with the commander as well as um mr jeffrey blonder with the dav they're working with their insurance they're hopeful that they're going to get that they're going to get that information they have requests and people out of town

[Speaker 4] (1:54:05 - 1:54:24)
that's coming that's it's eminent okay we got the month um and then what how is money collected with something like this actually that's that's a separate issue so forget it i just wanted to know about the the liability because that's that's what the question is here okay so do i have a motion

[Speaker 3] (1:54:24 - 1:54:40)
to approve the consent agenda with the removal of um the meeting minutes the three meeting minutes is there a second all those in favor aye okay so on the minutes maryellen so under may 11

[Speaker 4] (1:54:40 - 1:56:05)
um public comment sim cavalero 85 pine street asked if anyone on the board attended the cba meeting um she actually asked did anybody attend the zba meeting and did they have a comment but it's no you have here no one had but it's no one answered on uh under the town administrator's report increased radius for pre-blast survey to 500 and added language that allows residents outside of 500 to request to be added um i thought that was and i also think it says it on another page uh was added 500 and requests were up to a thousand number six fire department fire department has researched recent blasting projects and will be present at sb meeting to report we have reviewed the blasting logs for greenwood white court and few projects um it was we were going to but we never did but the minutes we well it says we have

[Speaker 2] (1:56:05 - 1:56:35)
reviewed we didn't review uh the fire department did and i asked chief archer to review that and they pulled out the records that um for those projects and did not see um the a number they didn't see complaints they didn't have a great uh compilation compilation of of complaints they looked at all of the logs blasting and they had all the records all right

[Speaker 4] (1:56:35 - 1:56:42)
we just never we just never we just never received any notes so good with that um

[Speaker 3] (1:56:45 - 1:56:55)
um here under are you still on the same minutes or um

[Speaker 4] (1:56:56 - 1:58:35)
on the same minutes it was so i'm looking at page one two three under three c3 yeah says here starting with the paragraph board members commented that they understand neighbors concerns if you go to the next sentence maryellen called brain tree to find out how their middle school project is going um just please add that maryellen also commented uh on six days a week construction would be too much for the neighborhood go to may 16th of may 16th under new and old business section a says these acquisitions are results of a lot of hard work and good discussions over long periods of time oh sorry may 19th okay everything yep good uh so under a these acquisitions are results of a lot of hard work and good decisions over long periods of time board has been meeting over a year potential open space you just please add that these meetings are in executive session so people don't think that

[Speaker 3] (1:58:36 - 1:58:40)
there's something the board has been meeting in executive session for over a year

[Speaker 4] (1:58:42 - 1:58:54)
and that is it for my changes to the minutes motion to approve the minutes as amended

[Speaker 3] (1:58:55 - 1:59:35)
for a second okay all those in favor we have some signatures that we have to before we adjourn i want to talk about schedule um show my understanding is that are we required to meet on the zoning i was given an email that requested that we have the zoning bylaw on our meeting for six one which

[Speaker 2] (1:59:35 - 1:59:41)
we don't have a meeting i can check with town council but i i don't believe that we that's a

[Speaker 3] (1:59:41 - 2:00:11)
understand that but i didn't have time we don't have to do that right i don't believe so okay so i don't think we need to meet next wednesday um six first i will miss you guys oh no that's fine that's great that's great yeah yes um and i don't know that we need to meet i don't know that we need to meet until until a special town meeting i do

[Speaker 2] (2:00:11 - 2:00:31)
think i will need to have maybe a zoom meeting of the board i have a additional offer for a department head that in the event that that comes together over the next few days or this week i will likely seek a zoom meeting of the board to help me yeah

[Speaker 6] (2:00:32 - 2:00:39)
what hey ethan go back on mute so sean are we are you recommending that we save that we save the

[Speaker 2] (2:00:39 - 2:01:04)
date for the first or the no i you know frankly i'll work with um i'll work with you my my thought was if there's a time that um may make some sense on a friday or a you know maybe not not a traditional meeting time i just may need um an hour of the board's time to help me with that

[Speaker 3] (2:01:08 - 2:01:25)
confirmation i don't i don't so that's fine i don't see an urgent need to meet until special town meeting for us i think we should plan on meeting before a special town meeting does anyone see anything am i missing something there i think i would put one on the calendar for

[Speaker 1] (2:01:25 - 2:01:36)
a week wednesday and put it there and then cancel it we don't need for this yes just because i said the eighth but maybe yes it's yeah i just there's enough moving parts and if there's feedback and

[Speaker 3] (2:01:36 - 2:01:43)
other things from committees or staff and so we'll plan on a meeting on or put it in your calendar for

[Speaker 10] (2:01:43 - 2:01:49)
six eight six o'clock yeah location let's cancel it if we don't need it let's say i totally agree

[Speaker 3] (2:01:50 - 2:02:22)
okay and then we'll meet before plan on meeting before special town meeting it may be only for a half hour um is there peter this question's for you um because diane had reserved space for meetings after a special town meeting do do we need to meet do you think it would depend on what happens at special town meeting but is there a need for us to meet somewhat immediately after the special town meeting like on the 15th to do anything maybe let me let me get back to you i'm

[Speaker 15] (2:02:22 - 2:02:34)
sorry i have to go refresh my memory both nights reserved and joe asked if we can cancel if we don't think we need both nights i reserved the 15th and 16th so how people put the 15th on

[Speaker 3] (2:02:35 - 2:03:03)
okay that's tuesday that's a that's a wednesday after it won't be a high school i don't think but well we'll find out but so we'll just just keep that penciled in your calendar that's a possibility so right now nothing next week possible eighth and then before town meeting and then possible 15th okay okay um that's all i have on that

[Speaker 6] (2:03:04 - 2:07:34)
select four times sure i have a few things uh first i've been working with uh with the housing authority and we had a meeting was meeting last night of uh of the housing authority board and you know there's a there's some good news uh that we have to report uh dhc allocated swamps got housing authority 172 000 um this amount will be used to cover the replacement of seven porches at delcan terrace particular project was projected to cost 183 000 but now that though 172 is going towards uh this project project's only going to use utilize uh 11 000 out of the capital improvement budget that's already been established also uh swamps cut housing authorities receiving our targeted awards that will assist in converting a number of units that are not compliant uh into uh ada compliant units as well as the main office backdoor ramp entrance so uh the meetings that are happening at delcan terrace will now be fully ada compliant and i just i just feel like i have to uh thank um deb newman for uh for her her contribution to uh to really pushing that uh that forward and providing comments there um i also have something that's that's not as that's not as nice um uh last night at the end of our meeting at the end of the uh housing authority meeting there's a statement read by the executive director uh she felt that it would be beneficial if uh if i read it tonight to the public and to our board um this type of incident should never be tolerated um for those who are deniers of uh of discriminatory behaviors um i just want to read this to you and put it in record um and this is from irma uh last week on tuesday may 17 2022 one of my staff members and i experienced firsthand racial and national origin discrimination someone sitting in this meeting tonight made some remarks that were completely discriminatory i have been asked by this person not once but twice how old i was when i came to this country the first time this happened was during a gathering when i expressed a little bit of my background this particular person expressed oh i did not know that you were from guatemala and proceeded to make some remarks about a visit in such country last week's remarks and questions were completely racist and discriminatory this person went on to ask me directly if i came to this country illegally or legally this person also asked my administrative assistant how old she was when she came to this country this is clearly racial and ethnic discrimination as this person repeatedly was saying such remarks but last tuesday the remarks went as far as asking me directly how i came to this country the situation made my staff member and i feel disrespected uncomfortable as this person's remarks were ignorant and insensitive i felt it was extremely important to speak about the situation tonight as these actions are not excusable and should not be tolerated currently my staff member and i do not wish to proceed with any legal matters against this individual my hope is this person will change its position of discrimination type of remarks and questions cannot ever happen again not towards my persona any staff member or any residents of the swampscott housing authority i would like to ask this person to carefully read title 7 civil rights act of 1964 civil rights act of 1991 and to contact tammy fame and eat the of swampscott's diversity consultant she stated in the march 9th 2021 lin item article she's already seen the town deal with months of racially charged controversies and protests she is trying to help the community to be better my race national origin and ethnic background does not make me any less of a professional uh and does not put me on a different social bracket than anyone else sitting here tonight all human beings deserve to be treated equally with dignity and respect regardless of their color race ethnicity national origin socioeconomic status sexual orientation gender age religion disability we all live under the same sky we walk the same streets what we are teaching our young people this needs to stop and this needs to stop today thank you um hopefully this made my fellow board members and those watching uh as uncomfortable as it made

[Speaker 1] (2:07:34 - 2:07:57)
me uh yesterday can i can i ask the questions yes i just want to make sure so this this was a statement when she said uh the meeting she's referring to a housing authority meeting with these things she's referring to yes i just i just yes yes you read it in the first person sorry sorry well i didn't i don't know it's okay i was not i was not swapping that's right this was a housing authority meeting where someone made comments yes apparently repeatedly okay i just

[Speaker 2] (2:07:57 - 2:09:15)
wanted you know it it's um absolutely um unacceptable that anybody whether they work in swamps get whether they work at the housing authority you know live in swamps and visit swamps get face that type of harassment that type of uh inquiry we will do whatever we can to help um the executive director armatures feel supported and feel as though we are here to help her stand strong and address that type of of um bigotry and and unkindness and frankly um unacceptable um behavior i just i with that said i i certainly will reach out to tammy faye many i certainly will um see what we can do to try to help address some type of of conversation with um irma and the board and members of uh the housing authority team to see how we can

[Speaker 14] (2:09:16 - 2:09:31)
address some of that um and you know the point of this was just for those who were the point of this was was one to support irma uh and her team and and and second to just

[Speaker 6] (2:09:31 - 2:10:04)
to just show evidence that this that to all the deniers out there of discriminatory and racial behaviors that this is happening uh and this is happening in our town and this is impacting uh people uh that are you know that that that work and and live um in our town uh and in these and in you know in these properties on cherry street on dory circle and on duncan so i really just wanted to bring it to the attention of of the board and and show my support of irma thank you

[Speaker 10] (2:10:04 - 2:10:18)
for raising it yeah thanks for sharing it david and thanks to irma for not letting it go it's certainly not her obligation to make the public but i appreciate that she's strong enough to do it

[Speaker 4] (2:10:19 - 2:14:34)
um anyone else have anything for slide four time um i do yeah all right thanks um so one thing that also helps create community is communication and um i've made a recommendation to the school building chair suzanne wright on may 10th asking if she could uh have the town website um have the documentation put full documentation on the town website versus a google document just to try to get everything on one site and make it really easy and to highlight the site by something a little different whether or not the site just says school building committee with a red dot so people could look at it um just to identify it a little bit differently um you know this is a hundred million dollar project that we should be pretty excited about and you know try to eliminate any um anxiety around it i think that would really help suzanne also recommended that at the end of select board meetings we should have um one or two minutes just to update what's going on she said we you know we have a representative i think that might be you peter peter are you the representative so if you could just say what's new or whatever then that's more information that gets out there i also um so that was suzanne's idea um my idea was also to have her meetings on um on zoom and her concern was that they have a large committee but i recommended this room um would also be able to be on zoom because it could a large committee so that was my recommendation uh for there um i want to thank the swaniscott police department for showing up in my neighborhood friday uh saturday night at 3 a.m we had um an unwanted visitor and uh it was pretty exciting down there and i i really appreciate always feeling safe especially uh in the middle of the night um i'd really like to request that information gets to us in a timely manner walking in tonight and getting the warrant uh as i'm walking in it's just uh it's just not not the way to go we really have to see things in advance um so we can process it think about it and then streamline um streamline proceedings and last but not least uh we're hosting the annual rabies clinic on june 22nd at 200 essex street that's the dpw yard in case anybody doesn't know 200 essex street dr arthur friedman will be volunteering his time as a veterinarian to do vaccines for dogs and cats please if you could please bring your cat contained that would be great the cost will be uh between 10 and 15 we don't have the um the final number yet from the uh the people that get us the rabies the clinic will be held from five giving you rabies maybe getting your cat rabies shots cats and dogs um the clinic will be between five and seven a rabies vaccine is good for just one year except if you can bring proof of another rabies vaccine and it doesn't matter when your animal ever had the rabies vaccine but if you can bring proof of that then dr friedman can extend it to three years and he really tries hard so if anybody needs help in trying to find their rabies vaccine maybe a town hall britney can look it up in the computer and she's really helpful there that might that might be a big help if anybody um has any other questions feel free to email me at me at marylandfletcher.com or call the board of health so it's this is i think our fourth or fifth year i don't remember but um it goes really quick there's never any big lines and everybody's really uh friendly so uh please come on down that's it

[Speaker 3] (2:14:34 - 2:14:50)
thanks mariana katie have anything carry all set all right motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second all those in favor all right thanks everyone i almost had your boxer yesterday yeah hold on

[Speaker 15] (2:14:50 - 2:14:57)
does it stop