[Speaker 21] (0:18 - 0:19)
Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (0:23 - 0:35)
With the indulgence of the board, we're going to take a few things out of order tonight. So I would recommend that we start with the designation of early voting location and schedule followed by the Veterans Crossing lease. Any objections?

No.

[Speaker 22] (0:36 - 0:36)
All right.

[Speaker 5] (0:38 - 0:40)
So I will kick this off.

[Speaker 6] (0:40 - 1:30)
Mr. LaLiberté. Yeah, Mr. LaLiberté, the floor is yours. Thank you very much.

Just going to go over a few things with everyone tonight, more for informational purposes for the Board of Selectmen, and then one vote, one quick vote that I need from you guys. But basically, what I'm just going to go over is the changes due to the Votes Act, which was signed on June 22nd, 2022. Yeah, you can skip to the next slide.

Yeah, so I'm going to go over what we're proposing from the Board of Registrars and myself for a couple of scenarios for early voting. Vote by mail, police detail, which now becomes the Board of Selectmen's responsibility to make sure it's staffed.

[Speaker 19] (1:32 - 1:34)
I'm really sorry. Can you select for me? Apologies.

[Speaker 6] (1:34 - 8:43)
Sorry. Select for it. My apologies.

Sorry about that. No problem. My apologies.

And then I'm just going to go over a few of the new deadlines and stuff like that. So on June 22nd, 2022, Governor Baker signed Chapter 92 of the Acts of 2022, also known as the Votes Act, what's being called in the media. There are several major changes that happened for every election now.

The voter registration deadline has been changed to 5 p.m. on the 10th day prior. It was previously further back. This allows people to register to vote up closer to the election.

Early voting has now been standardized with absentee voting. There used to be two separate ways people could request ballots. There's still absentee voting, which applies to people, which has some differences for people who are out of country, how they're allowed to get it, people who have been admitted to the hospital and other things.

But for the majority, the vast majority, more than 90% of the people who will be voting by mail, they'll be doing early voting by mail. To request an early vote by mail has been changed to 5 business days prior to the election, which will almost always fall for both the town of Swampster and for state and federal elections will be the Tuesday beforehand, unless there is a holiday like in September, then it will fall back to the Monday beforehand. It now is also required for all federal elections, all state and federal elections that we have early voting and early voting in person, early voting by mail and early voting in person.

And then it also, much like the polling locations where we have it at the school, you can't election here within 150 feet, which makes people stand by the street to, if they, if they're supporting a candidate or correcting signatures, the same thing will now apply to the town hall when we have early voting there, which has become the default location for all early voting. Just a few requirements to be being aware of under the law, because Swampster falls at about 15,000 people, give or take per our last federal census. We will be required to be open during our regular business hours for the state primary for the, for the week prior to it, as well as at least one day on the weekend for a total of a minimum of three hours, but also for a total of six hours for the weekend.

So we can either do one day at six hours or two days at three hours or more should we decide to do that. I have a few proposed things I'll be talking with the board of registrars about, about setting for early hours. First is the doing six hours on just one day on Saturday.

And then I'll regularly schedule business hours and an extra four hours on Friday, just to give people another chance to vote. You guys all have in your packets, the cost breakdown for that, what it will cost, assuming that we pay our poll workers the same way we pay them for a normal election, which is at $15 an hour. That being said, many of them do work for senior tax credit.

A lot of our poll workers are senior citizens who have the time to come during the middle of the day. So they work for senior tax work. So there's a little bit of flexibility, so to speak, and I am encouraging people who have that option to take that option, though some regular volunteers with the town, so they do have either hit their hours or don't own their home, so it doesn't do any good for them to do that.

But these are all, all these numbers are based on assuming everyone will be taking $15 an hour as opposed to taking the senior tax work off. The second schedule is alternating and doing, it's a little bit more time, it's alternating weeknights to go a little bit later to allow people who work from nine to five to get in and have a chance to vote. This is the one we are partial to.

We'll do that way. We'll be open for eight, two nights during the September, and again, we'll do the same thing in, basically our plan is to do the same thing in November, but it'll be over two weeks. So we'll have two days, one week, three days the next week to have the same thing.

This will obviously cost a little bit more money, but I think in the spirit of allowing as many people as possible to vote, it's the best option. And then finally, we quiet Saturday hours and then do an every night till eight o'clock. I think with the alternating voting, we are giving people as much opportunity as possible or not, while trying to be conscious of the money that we'll be spending.

So this would allow for more hours, obviously, but at the same time would cost more money. Yeah, like I said, just a few variances, and in addition, in the past, the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office with the auditor, or the auditor has deemed that this was an unfunded mandate and has allocated money in the past to reimburse us for this, as well as for some of the postage, or most of the postage that we put out to the town. Everyone who puts in a ballot, the town is obligated to send to them a ballot.

So that costs 81 cents right now at current rate that the town gets. So that is, so far, we've entered and in the process of sending about 1,500, we expect that number to go up for ballots for September and even more for November. So hopefully, in the past, this has been something that the town's getting reimbursed for.

So hopefully that will happen again, but for the points of this, assuming we are not until we actually see the money from the state. Thank you very much. That's a brief overview of what we're doing.

I'll be having a meeting with the Board of Registrars tomorrow at 4 p.m. to finalize everything, in which case it will be posted at the required locations on the Secretary of the Commonwealth's website, our website, town hall, and a few places around town, along with the warrant that hopefully will get signed tonight by you all for the actual election. And so, as I said at the beginning, I have just one, and I sent the language. I don't know, Sean.

[Speaker 3] (8:43 - 8:44)
Yeah. I'm sorry.

[Speaker 6] (8:44 - 8:48)
I have the language here if you want it. You have it? I have the language.

Okay. Yeah.

[Speaker 7] (8:49 - 8:55)
I think it's in the green folder, too. There's a signature page in there. I'm not exactly sure.

[Speaker 2] (8:55 - 9:12)
So, David, can I ask you a question? Yeah. That's a question.

Yeah, go ahead. Jared, tell me, so you said that it's required, early voting is required. Excuse me.

Let me go back to your slide. Your slide says early voting is now permanently required for all presidential primaries, state primaries, and state elections. What about local elections?

[Speaker 6] (9:13 - 9:23)
That is up to the discretion of each individual town. We have to have the board of the town, constitution, board of registrars, and vice versa.

[Speaker 2] (9:24 - 9:30)
Can that be codified in a bylaw, if town meeting approves a bylaw requiring? Can you find out the answer?

[Speaker 6] (9:30 - 9:31)
Yes. I will find out.

[Speaker 2] (9:31 - 9:45)
Can you find out the answer to how to apply that in a bylaw, if we wanted to make it permanent, as opposed to not the whim of any? I believe you can. I don't see why you couldn't, but I will check and confirm that.

So we're voting on which option here? Is that correct?

[Speaker 6] (9:45 - 9:48)
No. You guys are on the police detail.

[Speaker 3] (9:49 - 10:25)
So there's language that Jared submitted that just reads, vote to approve a sufficient number of police officers at the polling locations, at every location they're in, to preserve order and to protect election officers and supervisors from any interference with their duties and to aid in the enforcement of laws regarding to elections as required by Section 72 of Chapter 92 of the Acts of 2022. So what Jared is looking for is the board to approve that language that I just read and pass that, and we'll be compliant with the acts.

[Speaker 6] (10:25 - 10:42)
You'll be compliant with the acts, in which case we can then, you guys vote to staff it as needed, then I can work with the police department and make sure we have the typical number that we always have, which I don't have in front of me, but usually it's a police officer at the polling location, each polling location. This year it's easier. It's just a year.

[Speaker 2] (10:43 - 10:50)
Yeah. So, but the proposed schedules and costs, how is the determination made as to what the early voting hours are going to be? I'm sorry, I missed that.

[Speaker 6] (10:50 - 10:56)
Yeah. So the Board of Registrars will be meeting tomorrow to set those. I'm just, I'm soliciting input.

[Speaker 2] (10:56 - 11:35)
Yeah, no. So I guess in that vein, and if it's a non-binding motion, but perhaps we do a motion, I would suggest option three, which is the greatest number of hours and greatest availability, including in the Saturday thing, I think is so vitally important. So again, it's non-binding for the Board of Registrar, but I would want them to not feel the pressure of a couple hundred dollars in a budget, the voting matters, it could be exponential this cost, and I would still support option three.

I would make a motion to just let the Board of Registrars know the select boards is supportive of whatever option, but is encouraging the greatest number of hours and option three represents that in the packet here. Do I have a second?

[Speaker 22] (11:36 - 11:36)
Second.

[Speaker 2] (11:37 - 11:38)
All in favor.

[Speaker 22] (11:39 - 11:39)
Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 2] (11:40 - 11:40)
Aye. Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (11:42 - 12:05)
We also need to vote on the voting, just to read it again, vote to approve a sufficient number of police officers at the polling location at every election they're in to preserve order and to protect the election officers and supervisors from any interference with their duties and to aid in enforcing the laws related to elections as required by Section 72 of the Chapter 92 of the Acts of 2022.

[Speaker 18] (12:06 - 12:07)
So moved. Second.

[Speaker 5] (12:08 - 12:12)
All in favor. Aye. Aye.

Thank you. Thank you, Jared. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 6] (12:12 - 12:13)
Thanks, Jared.

[Speaker 5] (12:13 - 12:14)
Thank you for your time.

[Speaker 22] (12:14 - 12:16)
Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (12:16 - 12:28)
All right. All right. We are now going to move on to the, to the Veterans Crossing lease.

We're going to take this out of order. John, are you going to be handling this?

[Speaker 3] (12:28 - 14:37)
Yes. As a follow-up, the Board has asked to discuss this every meeting until we actually get a contract. I did meet with KP Law a number of times to see if we could just simply extend the lease for the VFW.

Unfortunately, because it lapsed during COVID, the town has to comply with Chapter 30B, and that requires an RFP. We can be very specific about the RFP, and we can identify veterans groups, but we have to go through that process, and it does involve issuing a formal RFP and noticing it. We will do that over the next few months, but certainly, this is an extension.

I originally was told that we weren't able to extend the lease, but they have researched the legal standards, and they have presented us with a one-year lease. I've reached out to Commander Burke, and he is here tonight with a number of the cadre, including the Vice Commander and the Quartermaster, so I would encourage the Board to vote to authorize the extension of the lease, and we will continue to meet with members of the VFW and a number of the veterans groups down at the Plumsket Veterans Crossing. Over the last year, we have been able to identify a number of new revenue streams for the Veterans Crossing and the VFW, including monthly rental payments from the cannabis company that is opening up, including the $50,000 that was approved at this year's special town meeting.

So this is really an extraordinary time. We have new leadership and some extraordinary individuals that are really making a commitment to expand and reach out and support our veterans. So with that, I would encourage Commander Burke to come down here and share a few remarks and talk a little bit about how important this lease is and some of the work that you've been involved in.

[Speaker 12] (14:43 - 16:04)
Thank you. First of all, my name is Patrick Burke. I live on 215 Windsor Ave. I'm the newly elected commander of the VFW. I want to say thank you to the entire Board, to the town, to Sean for getting us to this point. It's been a lot of work, a lot of effort on everybody's part to get here. The history on all sides has probably been not where we want it to be, but here we are.

We've got a very good group, as you said. We've got the VFW, the DAV, the American Legion, and we're trying to revive the Marine Corps League down there. So we're trying to work together to bring services to all of our veterans.

So we really appreciate the partnership and reaching out. So again, just want to go forward in the most positive manner we can. Not going to be perfect, but I think with the communication we've all established now, I think we're a lot better off than we were.

No, I know we're a lot better off than we were a few years ago. So looking forward to working with everybody here on getting that long-term lease that solidifies a home for all of us. Again, not just the VFW, but DAV, Marine Corps League, American Legion.

We're all brothers and sisters in that same fight to deliver services and take care of our men and women who have served and given so much to us. So just want to say thank you and appreciate the lease. Looking forward to the longer-term one.

Absolutely.

[Speaker 3] (16:04 - 16:38)
Patrick, nothing more important to this town. What you have done to help our veterans and to help lead that agency has been nothing short of extraordinary. It's those relationships that you make and leadership that you're providing.

The fact that we had our first veterans concert this summer was amazing. I look forward to seeing many more of those. And really, whatever we can do to really help support your efforts, we're here to really make that Veterans Crossing as great as it can be.

Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (16:38 - 17:06)
I echo those sentiments. It was a joy to work with you, Commander Burke, and your team for the fireworks festival. I think it was incredibly successful, and it was just an incredible community event.

I look forward to doing more. Let me know how I can help and how the rest of the board can certainly help the veterans. Any other questions or comments from the board?

[Speaker 4] (17:06 - 17:14)
I just have a question. Not for Commander Burke, but could you just go over the timeline again on when the RFP is going to be released?

[Speaker 3] (17:14 - 17:27)
KP Law is drafting the RFP at this point. I expect to get something back from them over the next two weeks, and we thought sometime in September we'll release the RFP.

[Speaker 2] (17:28 - 17:31)
It's got to come to us, though, correct? We're going to have to vote to release the RFP.

[Speaker 3] (17:31 - 18:26)
That's right. We'll have an update early September, and we'll certainly work out some conversations. Last week we had a really terrific monthly meeting with a cadre of the Veterans Crossing representatives.

We do have a number of stakeholders, and over the last week I had a number just pop by and meet with me. I've updated Commander Burke. Look, we've got energy and activity happening in that center like never before, and I think it's going to be important for the board to meet with Commander Burke and perhaps all of the stakeholders as we think about releasing this RFP and really make sure that we all have a clear expectation of what this RFP is going to solicit and how we're going to continue to synergize some of the work that we have ongoing at the post.

[Speaker 12] (18:26 - 18:36)
Yeah, that's certainly our focus is to expand upon what we've been doing, deliver more membership services, all of it. So looking forward to working with you guys.

[Speaker 3] (18:37 - 18:43)
All right. Thanks. So we need a motion to approve the lease, and we can sign it tonight.

[Speaker 2] (18:45 - 19:23)
So I just want to make sure that we're really – I do want to be, to Mary Ellen's question, really specific about a timeline here. I'm glad we're doing the year extension, but I don't want the year extension to make us feel like we have a year to do the lease. We don't.

It needs to happen now, right? I mean, so now, politically speaking. So I guess if we could be really specific and state that we would like to see the first reading of that RFP, our first meeting of September, just kind of give the town administrator a little bit more of a nudge to give a specific meeting date.

I don't even know what the date is, but whatever our first meeting in September is, to have the first reading of that, that would be great, just because it takes time, right?

[Speaker 4] (19:23 - 19:42)
I have a quick question. Are we obligated to actually have a lease, or if there was – I mean, I know, David, you had brought up that there had been a trade for land versus a property. I think that building was built by veterans.

Is that correct? So that's actually your building?

[Speaker 12] (19:42 - 19:53)
Yeah. In 1995, there was an agreement between the VFW and the town. It was an exchange of six lots up on Foster Road.

[Speaker 5] (19:53 - 19:54)
And Carson.

[Speaker 12] (19:54 - 20:48)
And Carson. So the town got those, and in exchange, we were going to get that land. And what happened, apparently what I've heard is there was some contamination found, and at the last minute, the official transfer fell through, so the VFW didn't end up getting the property.

We ended up getting a 25-year lease. So we gave the town, the VFW, and it's one of its World War II members, gave the town those leases, which the property, the town went and sold those, in a sense had that revenue from those, and we, in exchange, had a 25-year lease for $1 a year, and we've maintained the building, et cetera. So if you go back in history, I mean, the veterans, certainly in 1995, they gave a lot to the town, so it's kind of clear that we get a long-term thing for all of our veterans.

We don't have to fight this battle every five years, every year, et cetera.

[Speaker 4] (20:48 - 20:59)
So my question is, is equity, you know, was your trade, is there a 99-year lease? I mean, are there different levels of leases that can be looked at?

[Speaker 2] (20:59 - 21:25)
A select board only can do a 25-year lease without, I think, going to town meeting for a longer lease, but we can explore it. I think town council has given us conflicting advice over the years about our ability to lease to nonprofits, and hell if I'll ever figure out what their advice is because I just got to ask the question once and just take the first answer. If they're saying we have to do an RFP, great, but there may be an ability to do a much longer one.

We should ask town council specifically.

[Speaker 3] (21:25 - 22:20)
So I've gone through this with town council. I asked them to help us find any way to extend this lease, and they said the only surefire way not to violate 30B is to go out to RFP and specifically identify that we want this property to be used for veteran services, and this will help ensure that we at least have a 25-year lease for the VFW. They did mention that there have been a number of case law examples of nonprofits, including veterans groups that have had municipally-owned property that have been challenged for not complying with 30B, and so I just want to make sure that we're as diligent as we can so we can put this to bed for the next 25 to 30 years.

That said, I'm happy to get a more detailed legal opinion from town council about why we simply can't offer them a 99-year lease because I would recommend that if we could. Amen.

[Speaker 12] (22:21 - 22:25)
I'll be a lot older in 25 years. I don't want to do it again.

[Speaker 3] (22:25 - 23:09)
I will say that I've asked our building commissioner and our facilities director to go and walk through that building and do a complete building assessment so that we can be a partner and we can work with our veterans center agencies to make sure that we have a capital improvement plan for that building, including ADA accessibility, including the potential to look at any type of expansion that could help us continue to use that space for other purposes than just simply the ballroom, even though I have no objection to the ballroom, with the caveat that we have to have some other program. Sure.

[Speaker 12] (23:09 - 23:25)
It's a vibrant canteen, but we want to build around it and continue with all those other services. No issue on that end. We collectively, all those groups, are going to do that.

We're going to do the right thing for the right reasons and, again, appreciate the partnership. We'll get it.

[Speaker 2] (23:25 - 23:48)
I would make a motion to authorize for the select board to enter into a one-year extension of a lease real property for the VFW property, terminating on, what is this, August 31st, 23? August 3rd. Sorry, August 3rd.

[Speaker 10] (23:48 - 23:49)
We'll terminate on the 2nd.

[Speaker 2] (23:51 - 23:51)
Oh, what's the date?

[Speaker 10] (23:51 - 23:52)
I guess one year.

[Speaker 2] (23:52 - 23:56)
Gotcha. There you go. So terminate on the 2nd.

So fine, August 2nd, 2023.

[Speaker 19] (23:58 - 23:58)
Second.

[Speaker 2] (23:59 - 24:04)
Can I say one thing before we do it? Wait, do we also want to include a timeline?

[Speaker 5] (24:04 - 24:05)
I don't know.

[Speaker 2] (24:05 - 24:09)
He heard it. Putting it in a vote doesn't necessarily. Did you hear it?

[Speaker 5] (24:10 - 24:15)
I did hear it. I wrote it down. We want the first meeting in September.

September 7th is the first Wednesday.

[Speaker 2] (24:15 - 24:41)
Can I just say one more thing? Sure. And to give kudos to David Grishman.

Every single conversation that David's had with me in two and a half years of being on the board has asked me when we're going to do this. So, David, you have annoyed me substantially, but I appreciate your persistence, and I know the veterans do as well. But from where I stand, you're the one that kept it on everyone's radar.

So thank you. All those in favor?

[Speaker 5] (24:41 - 24:43)
All right. All in favor?

[Speaker 12] (24:43 - 24:44)
Aye.

[Speaker 5] (24:44 - 24:46)
Aye. Thank you. Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (24:46 - 25:02)
So we can sign it. Patrick, if you want to come down, do you have your commander and quartermaster? Yes, you can keep the pen if you'd like.

[Speaker 21] (25:47 - 25:50)
I'll be back later. I don't know. I'm just curious.

[Speaker 3] (26:02 - 26:12)
Sorry, we'll have Jack at the meeting.

[Speaker 12] (26:13 - 26:15)
We'll get out of here. Sorry, everybody.

[Speaker 3] (26:15 - 26:25)
If you guys could come over here. We have a reporter that wants to take everybody's picture. So Mary Ellen, I have to...

[Speaker 18] (26:25 - 26:25)
Yes.

[Speaker 3] (26:42 - 26:45)
You guys get it. You got everybody? All right.

[Speaker 4] (26:55 - 26:59)
I'll look over here now. Hold on. This reporter's getting it.

[Speaker 18] (27:00 - 27:17)
Perfect. Thank you. Thank you again.

Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (27:19 - 27:42)
Okay. Thank you. All right.

David, we passed down that other memo. There you go. Pass that down.

While you're doing a meeting. All right.

[Speaker 5] (27:42 - 27:45)
Yeah, so now we'll be moving on.

[Speaker 2] (27:45 - 27:58)
Wait a minute. Somebody took my pen. I have your pen right here.

We're signing with your pen. I haven't voted on that yet. Yeah, but I'm anticipating the one-day liquor license for First Church is not going to be that controversial.

[Speaker 10] (27:58 - 27:59)
I'm just saying.

[Speaker 2] (28:03 - 28:05)
Yeah, no, I got you. Order.

[Speaker 10] (28:06 - 28:08)
Here, give me my pen so we can carry on.

[Speaker 5] (28:14 - 28:15)
All right, you ready to resume?

[Speaker 3] (28:15 - 28:15)
I am ready.

[Speaker 5] (28:16 - 28:29)
All right, great. We're going to move on. We're going to talk about.

We're going to have a presentation on traffic patterns and changes for the Hadley Blaney School and authorization of the Swampscot Police Chief to manage the Hadley Blaney School traffic plan.

[Speaker 3] (28:30 - 29:52)
All right. So tonight I've asked Chief Casada to be here. We have had a number of public meetings to talk about the importance of pedestrian and public safety for our temporary transition to the Blaney Street School.

Swampscot is a complicated network of neighborhoods, and there's no easy way to handle the day-to-day decisions that are going to evolve in terms of how we meet public safety. I thought it was important that we delegate the authority to manage the day-to-day to the Swampscot Police Department, but in particular to Chief Casada. There's no day that is going to be the same.

Weather patterns will change. We'll have funerals. We'll have other activities in town, and we want to make sure that from a day-to-day and month-to-month and week-to-week basis, we have the ability to flex our public safety function.

With that, I've asked the Chief here tonight to talk a little bit about the work that his department has been involved in, and I will seek the board's support for delegating the traffic management responsibilities to the Swampscot Police Department.

[Speaker 2] (29:52 - 31:05)
Can I just, before the Chief goes here, and I appreciate you framing it, but for residents in particular, we've gotten a lot of correspondence, and I will just express my opinion before you go, which is it's so hard for me to understand your streets. I barely understand my streets, so I'm going to support the recommendation to have the Chief be the one that really works with the neighborhood and make sure, first and foremost, it's safe. That's the paramount concern.

And so I want to make a motion and see if it's seconded, and then we can have the presentation just to make clear kind of where the board's going here, but I think it's really important to support the idea that we're delegating this to the Chief because it's a public safety thing as opposed to, I don't want to call it a political thing, but I don't feel equipped to be deciding which street which way.

We trust that you'll listen to residents as well and understand there's got to be some compromise, but public safety can't be the thing that we compromise on that. So I would make a motion to delegate authority on a temporary basis for the Blaney School traffic patterns to the Chief of Police. Sorry, there's a motion?

[Speaker 5] (31:06 - 31:39)
Of course there's a motion. Yeah. The select board adopts the following traffic regulation.

The select board hereby delegates to the Swampscot Police Chief the authority to implement a traffic safety plan, which may include but is not limited to parking restrictions and the rerouting of traffic along Blaney Street, Humphrey Street, Reddington Street, Rose Street, Rockland Street, and King Street in order to address public safety concerns, improve traffic flow, and alleviate congestion that shall remain in effect while the Blaney School is in use and until the new elementary school is open. That would be my motion.

[Speaker 10] (31:39 - 31:42)
So moved. I just have a question about the motion.

[Speaker 5] (31:42 - 31:42)
Sure, go ahead.

[Speaker 10] (31:43 - 31:53)
Is the intention that whatever we delegate the power to the Chief and then whatever the Chief decides reverses upon the opening of the school?

[Speaker 3] (31:53 - 32:07)
Yeah, that's right. As soon as the new school opens, that delegation will disappear and you as a select board will retain your prerogative to.

[Speaker 2] (32:07 - 32:18)
Now, I think that Katie's asking a slightly different question, which does it automatically refer to today's traffic patterns? Or does it stay with the revised traffic patterns until we return it?

[Speaker 21] (32:18 - 32:19)
Correct.

[Speaker 2] (32:19 - 32:26)
Or does it automatically return? It seems like something shouldn't automatically return. Yeah.

It seems strange. It automatically returns? So I think.

Sorry, am I?

[Speaker 19] (32:26 - 32:26)
No, that's correct.

[Speaker 3] (32:26 - 32:50)
If the Chief doesn't, at that point, remove the restrictions or the traffic pattern with his authority, certainly as soon as the school opens, the board can then make whatever decisions it needs to make in terms of the traffic pattern. But the Chief will have the authority up until the point that the new school is operational.

[Speaker 10] (32:51 - 32:56)
Okay, so once the school opens, whose job is it to put the streets back the way they were? That's what I want to know.

[Speaker 2] (32:58 - 33:00)
Ours, if he hasn't done it before.

[Speaker 10] (33:00 - 33:01)
Okay, perfect. Thank you.

[Speaker 2] (33:02 - 33:03)
Did you hear that, Chief?

[Speaker 1] (33:04 - 33:07)
Yeah, I don't want this any longer than we have to.

[Speaker 10] (33:07 - 33:08)
I just want to be very clear about that.

[Speaker 3] (33:08 - 34:11)
I think you want the Chief to just take care of it all. That said, I don't want to make light of this. The most important risk and the most serious concern that I have and I think most have in Swampskate is pedestrian safety.

We have a town that is among the most densely settled communities in the Commonwealth. We're three square miles. There's no bigger concern than how our children are going to get to school.

Our roads get congested quickly. Neighborhoods get congested quickly. It's wonderful that Swampskate has so many tightly knit neighborhoods, but it does bring complexities, and we certainly need our police department day in and day out, especially as we have to work with every one of the neighborhoods that are right around this lane of school to really be flexible, adaptable, and really supportive as we work with PTOs and work with students and neighborhoods that are really concerned about safety.

[Speaker 5] (34:13 - 34:18)
Okay, so we have a motion. We have a second. Second.

All right. All in favor?

[Speaker 2] (34:18 - 34:40)
No, I was suggesting we don't vote until the end. Just make the motion so it's on the table to hear it, to hear his thing, just to make clear to the room where this board was thinking. I just don't want the Chief to feel like he needs to convince us of his authority, meaning that he's qualified to do this.

It's more talk about the substance of the matter as opposed to why you are the one to do it, because I don't think we need to commit to that.

[Speaker 1] (34:41 - 37:32)
So I'll get started. Thank you, Select Board, for having me here tonight to talk about the Blaney Hadley School Traffic Circulation Plan as well as to give you an update on the police department. So before I begin, I'd like to introduce some of my superior officers who are here.

I think I have said it before. This is my 128th day here, and so I may not have all the answers, but I will certainly have the people as well who will have some of the answers that I may not have in my first three and a half months or so. First, I have Captain Joe Cable, who is here with me.

He has been part of the Traffic Safety Advisory Committee. He, as well as Officer Wilson and Officer John Lloyd, have worked extensively with our expert engineers, our school administration, our PTO input, our community input, as well as our partners in the fire department. So he has worked diligently and our officers have worked diligently to work on this traffic circulation plan.

Also with me is Lieutenant Tom Hennessey. He will assist me in some stats and figures that we may ask of him, and Lieutenant Mike Fraylor as my peer support. So, again, like I said, one of the first things that I said when I was hired as your police chief was my three-prong approach.

That was communication, community safety, and public and community engagement. This traffic circulation plan encompasses all three, and so I take that to heart. I take that as my first real test as your police chief.

So, in essence, the Stanley School students will temporarily be relocated to Blaney School. While some of the kindergarten students are moved to Hadley School, we will ensure that we are out in full force weeks prior to the start of the school year. One of the things that we will ensure to, like I said in the community engagement and the public input part, is to ensure that our residents, our children, our pedestrians, our commuters are safe out there, and we will ensure that we have a sufficient number of officers out there.

The specific plan, I will have Captain Cable talk about it, but we will include community notifications. We will ensure to be out there during the times that these are occurring. I will personally be out there to ensure that the residents are heard and that everyone understands that public safety is the utmost concern for us.

So, for this topic of the presentation, I'm going to turn it over to Captain Cable on some of the things that he's already, that they've already addressed in this plan.

[Speaker 8] (37:35 - 40:41)
Good evening. I'm glad to be here to talk to you about this. As the chief said, we've been in several meetings with the school, the Traffic Safety Advisory Committee, with the public, a specific residents-only meeting to hear their concerns and we understand them.

And there's no doubt that this is going to be a change to the neighborhood and it's going to have an impact. But we're absolutely committed as a department to talk to the neighborhood, to work with them, to get to the right answers and to mitigate that to every extent possible. As far as the specific plan goes right now in addressing the pedestrian safety component right up front, the area currently has three crossing guards assigned through the school.

We intend to redeploy two more for the schools to the area from the Stanley School, since we don't have to worry about that. So we expect to have five civilian traffic crossing guards there to help get those kids safely to and from. So we feel very confident in our ability to sort of manage the flow of the pedestrians moving into the area.

The vehicles will necessarily, I believe the number that the school has put out is 292 vehicles will be estimated to be doing the drop-off or pickup at the two schools over the course of the day. That's a volume that just will absolutely require the changes that have been discussed and put forward to some extent with modifications that are responsive to the community and the neighborhood. Am I speaking with you?

I apologize. Can everybody hear me now? Thank you.

So as the chief said, part of that will be the community engagement. We intend to meet with the community and attend every forum that the school has to make sure that we are hearing their feedback and we're responsive to it. Then as far as the community safety portion, as the chief said, we'll be developing a plan several weeks in advance to make sure that we're getting the information out there to the parents and the community to understand the impact and then to have a presence in the early going of this changeover so that we can make sure that people understand and there's police officers, civilians, teachers to direct them properly to go where they need to go. The engineering changes that have been discussed, particularly at the bottom of Reddington Street, although that's been a source of significant community concern, is in the estimation of the police department absolutely required.

There's also a concern about eliminating some parking spaces on Humphrey Street. That's a very big burden for the businesses down there that always are stressed for parking for their customers to begin with. And the school and we have committed to work to try and limit those parking space reductions.

We do anticipate that there will be the necessity to remove a couple to improve sight lines to make sure that when kids cross the street, we'll get there. But absolutely, we understand the neighborhood. We understand that since I started on this job that parking down there has been tough.

It's been a challenge, and we're going to make sure that we minimize that impact to the best we can. Is there any specific questions right now?

[Speaker 10] (40:43 - 40:48)
I have a question. Have all five of the crossing guard positions been filled for next school year?

[Speaker 8] (40:49 - 41:01)
My understanding is that we assuredly have three, and the SRO was working on making sure that that roster of five is filled out. But to my understanding, I do not believe all five are filled.

[Speaker 10] (41:02 - 41:15)
And if all five are not filled, what will be the process of helping at those intersections? As a parent who spent time as a temporary crossing guard for Hadley last year, I can't do that next year.

[Speaker 8] (41:16 - 41:44)
So we have a number of ways that we usually deal with that. Sometimes the school will commit some of their personnel to move out there. We will redeploy people from less significant crossings, and this area I think will be a top priority.

So there is a chance that sometimes that happens, and sometimes the police department fills in those spots directly. But the expectation would be that the community can count on there being five people making sure that kids are going to cross the street safely.

[Speaker 10] (41:45 - 42:00)
Thank you. And then for parents who drop off, where is the suggested – I mean, I'm sorry. For parents who don't do rolling drop off and want to walk with their children to school, where do you suggest they park if they're not residing in walking distance?

[Speaker 8] (42:02 - 42:05)
So where in the neighborhood would they park if they don't want to do the direct drop off?

[Speaker 10] (42:05 - 42:21)
Yeah, like I live on Banks Terrace. I drive my son to the top of Reddington, and then we walk from the top of Reddington because he was a kindergartner and we couldn't roll drop off. So I parked there every day.

But now I won't be able to park there because that's not where I will be dropping him off. So where would I drop him off?

[Speaker 8] (42:21 - 42:54)
So there are some spaces that may be available, according to Max Casper, when he was discussing it at the meeting, that they may be able to open up some spaces at the Hawthorne lot that they're currently planning on using for staff. I understand there was a lot of things that were going into whether or not they were able to do that, including some of the situation about the purchase and the agreement and such. So that would be one possible solution.

Beyond that, I wouldn't have an answer to that right now. And I really hadn't considered the idea that people would drive there but not use the drop off function.

[Speaker 10] (42:55 - 43:14)
So that's a good thing to know. Yeah, I think a lot of parents like myself, they want to walk their child to the door for which they're getting into school. And so I think you will find that a lot of folks will be looking for that to not do rolling drop off and to park somewhere, get out of the car, bring their kid to the door for which they're going to enter school.

[Speaker 8] (43:15 - 43:21)
That hasn't been a part of my specific plan. I don't know if the school has looked at that, but I can assure you that we will now.

[Speaker 4] (43:21 - 43:40)
Okay, thank you. I have a question, Cabinet. Are you aware of all of the emails that we have received from individuals on King Street?

As a board, we received, I think, about seven, including a petition that was signed by... Right.

[Speaker 8] (43:41 - 43:48)
Okay, I'm not familiar with the emails that you might have been receiving. Is this about changing the direction of the one-way or the problems in the winter at the bottom of King Street?

[Speaker 4] (43:49 - 43:50)
It's about...

[Speaker 8] (43:50 - 43:51)
Yes and yes. Yes and yes.

[Speaker 4] (43:51 - 43:54)
King Street and everything that involves King Street.

[Speaker 8] (43:54 - 44:20)
Yes, so I am understanding with those particular issues and those two items were both scheduled for further discussion at the school Zoom meeting a couple of weeks ago. So those were valid concerns, particularly the snow and ice problem that sometimes develops at the bottom of the hill and the fact that people might be sliding out where we will be directing kids to walk. So yes, that is being considered and discussed.

[Speaker 4] (44:21 - 44:33)
Okay, so are you saying to me that the flow on King Street is just being discussed or it hasn't been taken off the table? I just want to know where we are with King Street.

[Speaker 8] (44:33 - 44:43)
My last discussion was it was not off the table, but it was being discussed. If that has changed in the school's eyes, it hasn't been communicated to me yet, but I know it's actively being considered.

[Speaker 4] (44:43 - 44:47)
Can you tell me what the process is on that discussion? When will they be meeting?

[Speaker 8] (44:49 - 45:01)
I know that there is a meeting with the PTO coming up that I've been in about a week, I believe, and I assume it will come up then, but I'll check with the superintendent and try and get you some updated information there.

[Speaker 2] (45:01 - 46:46)
So can I just chime in, Mary Ellen? I think the superintendent, so I'm on the SBC, the School Building Committee, and I believe the traffic engineer, Rebecca Brown from GPI, is here tonight virtually, and I believe the superintendent is also here virtually, and so I think they may be able to answer some of your questions in a little bit more detail just because they've been living with us, but I think most importantly it's the coordination going forward.

I mean, GPI is one of the best firms, and Rebecca Brown, if you've listened to her in the presentations and you've read her material, it is comprehensive. I'm not a traffic engineer, so I can't tell what's right and what's wrong, but I just want to make sure that as we continue your process that we just make sure it's tethered. You ultimately get the streets are in the jurisdiction of the select board.

We've delegated to you to make these temporary changes that you deem necessary for public safety, but still ask that you tether it to the educational needs, the neighborhood needs, and towns typically don't have the ability to have a GPI on our staff, right, and a resource to be able to say we want to test this, we want to model this, we want to understand this, and so you have that through the School Building Committee process, and so I really want to encourage to make sure you guys stay tethered, and, for example, you're just getting up to speed on a lot of these things. It's totally understandable for you not to be able to answer questions like that, but to also make sure that we kind of, when we do talk to the public, that we do it coordinated with GPI and the School Building Committee because they've been talking about it for much longer, and that way you can just coordinate answers and work out conflicts and traffic conflicts and otherwise together on that, but, Mr. Chairman, if okay with you, I believe the superintendent is here and may even have her hand raised and can answer some of the questions that were just asked.

Yeah, sure she can.

[Speaker 9] (46:49 - 51:32)
Good evening, everyone. Thank you for letting me speak. First, I'd like to address Ms. Valen's questions about crossing guards. I am happy to report that I have signed two crossing guard hiring letters this week alone, and that's more action than we've gotten in several years, so I'm hopeful. We did at the last parent meeting, community meeting, or neighborhood meeting talk about different ways of publicizing, and we've taken a new strategy, and really our school resource officer, Officer Brian Wilson, has posted at places we wouldn't have thought of. The library, the Blinchan Auto Blue YMCA, the JCC.

We really thought outside the box, so I do think we're getting some responses and some positive, well, at least two hiring letters this week, so we are attempting to fill those positions. The other thing, I know that Rebecca Brown had to sign off at 7 o'clock, but Nicole Rogers is here, but I do want to read a statement, and I am aware of a petition from the King Street residents. One of the most valuable forums we had was the last one where those King Street residents showed up.

They had some incredibly valid concerns. It was in front of our traffic consultant's GPI. They went back out the next day and walked the neighborhood to address those concerns.

I think the miscommunication or lack of communication circling back with that neighborhood probably prompted that petition. So I'd like to read a little statement here, letting you know that they were heard and that changes were made because of their attendance at that meeting and because of their concerns. So just very quickly, GPI heard their concerns, and a site visit was performed and certainly validated them.

Plans were updated to keep King Street operating one way, away from Reddington Street as it exists today. Therefore, all concerns regarding the 90-degree sharp turn at the bottom of King Street as well as the site distance concerns at the intersection of King and Reddington Street have been alleviated. The portion of King Street from Greenwood to Highland will remain two-way as it exists today.

Vehicles will be routed from Greenwood to King Street, at which point they will turn right onto Highland Street and proceed to Reddington Street. I'm not going to say it anymore, but all I'm trying to impress upon you is that their attendance at that meeting really precipitated changes. We heard them.

The consultants heard them. Came out and walked, and we made changes. So I think, like I said, I think the problem here is we never got back to those neighbors.

We did say at that meeting they had valid concerns, and we never were able to communicate. We heard you. We made changes accordingly.

So I just wanted to pop in and say that, that they were incredibly valuable at that meeting, and they pointed out options of Highland Street that we did not consider previously, and so I think we're in really good shape. And I know that, as Joe Cable said, he'll be at the August 17th PTO meeting, which you know about, Katie, and we have Brian Wilson, and so we are going to communicate, communicate, communicate. The other thing that I need to make the board aware of is that we are filling a bus, and I just have gone through the Stanley School students that will qualify for that bus, and I think we have 68 students, so we'll also be having a bus that will almost be completely filled.

I'm trying to leave a few seats open in the event that somebody might move in. We started at the two-mile distance. Katie, I know you got this communication.

We've gone down to 1.7 in order to fill that bus, and remember, this is the same bus that's going to be used for the middle school, so we're doing two runs. We're using it for elementary, and we're using it for middle school. So I never thought I would say this a year ago, but I feel like we're in pretty good shape.

I am kind of hyperventilating, and it's August 1st, and the kids are coming in soon, but I've seen Blaney. I've walked through Stanley now that it's closing. Blaney looks beautiful.

We're going to do the family visits there, and we're working on the traffic. So I have full confidence that we'll work closely with the police department. I plan to be out there at least for the first month at drop-off and pickup, and we'll have all hands on deck.

So I hope my babbling was a little helpful.

[Speaker 10] (51:34 - 51:34)
Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (51:37 - 51:51)
Thank you, Pam, and that's exactly how the process should work, taking in that community input and synthesizing that and making substantive changes for the neighborhood. So I thank all that are involved.

[Speaker 2] (51:51 - 54:02)
If I can ask just a couple of questions. I just want to make sure, for example, Captain Cable, when you were answering the parent parking so they can drop off thing, I just want to make sure that we coordinate with the schools and with other things to make sure, because I think what happens is your answer may be right, but if it isn't the answer, people hear that answer and now think that's an option, and that may not be an option because it hasn't actually been finalized yet that we can do it. Totally get why you were brainstorming, but I want to make sure that since there's multiple entities here, you guys get to make the final call on traffic patterns because it's a street jurisdiction thing, but you're funneled with a lot of great information from the schools and experts. But just make sure that you're all on the same page, again, just to make sure the information that's going out to the schools is consistent with what you're doing, just because it will make your life easier, I think.

But on that thing, I think a couple of things. I'm interested in hearing a commitment from the police department to make sure that there's going to be a presence, at least in the first couple of weeks, on site at the Blaney School area. Again, in that time, there's going to be no greater public safety, except an extraordinary event.

That's going to be certainly the first two to three weeks of school. So I'd appreciate a commitment by the police department to make sure that some... I know the SRO is going to dedicate and can be there, but I don't want to take the SRO away from other needs as well in the first few weeks of school.

So if we can have a police presence to help those crossing guards are great intentioned individuals, but we saw, candidly, when we... The town worked with the school to redo the traffic pattern at the middle school last school year, and for a couple of days, we had police officers and actually a number of firefighters, a lieutenant from the fire department showed up and was fantastic. There's a drastic difference when professionals that certainly know about traffic controls and doing things, what happened and how cars behaved and how people behaved.

And so I think that would just, in the first three weeks, two to three weeks, would be really helpful to have a presence so that people are comfortable and we minimize... And you are also witnessing, moment by moment, what's working and what's not, because my guess is we're going to need to make changes on the fly, so to speak.

[Speaker 1] (54:03 - 55:10)
Absolutely. And just to reiterate your point, I mean, I was out there today with Gina Acresta and our town administrator, and you can see that some vehicles don't always seem willing to stop for pedestrians, but they saw me in uniform and they immediately stopped. So I think that our presence is of the utmost importance to ensure that we have safety out there and you have our commitment that we will be out there, we will be out in force.

And I think I take this as an opportunity for us. This is an opportunity where we can partner with the community. We can maybe complete some fun activities with the children.

Maybe we can have a bicycle officer riding their bike with our kids who are walking to school, with our parents who are walking to school. We're going to take this as an opportunity. And when I talk about community engagement, that's part of the community engagement.

And so I think, like I said, this is an opportunity for us. You have our full commitment that we will partner with all our collaborators. We will listen to the community, but we will always take safety as the number one concern.

[Speaker 2] (55:11 - 55:17)
I'm sorry. Mr. Chairman, just let me do one more thing. We're having another conversation beyond this, correct, about traffic and parking?

[Speaker 22] (55:18 - 55:19)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (55:19 - 57:07)
The only other thing I'm going to say that's school-related that would also fall in the other category of parking and traffic is we already talked a little bit about Humphrey Street, right? And if we go on Humphrey Street today, the reality is it's going to ‑‑ the Blaney School operations are going to complicate Humphrey Street further. Never mind Blaney Street and Reddington, all the streets, but Humphrey Street for the moment here.

And I just think as though we have to do a comprehensive review of the parking restrictions that are there now. For example, if you go on the Anthony side of Humphrey Street, you won't find a parking restriction sign, right? It doesn't exist, right?

And so no one knows when to park there. And if you sit there long enough, you see that there are employees that park there. There may be now school employees that park there or parents.

I think we have to do a holistic view of how Humphrey Street is going to exist during this, and I think as though it's probably long, long, long overdue. And it adds to our burden, I know, but I think we have to do it because I think we run the risk of having Humphrey Street used as a drop-off when in fact I think GPI will tell you and the school will tell you if you look at every one of these traffic circulation patterns, they don't want you parking on the other side of Humphrey Street and walking across that crosswalk. There's a good reason for that, right?

And so they're going to tell you they want, and I'm sure you as well would say the same thing. We don't actually want you on that side of Humphrey Street. We want you over here, and so we just need to make sure that we think ahead.

And again, it will be an iterative thing, no doubt, unfolding, but I just want us to, as we look at Humphrey Street, no doubt just like King Street residents have communicated themselves, the Humphrey Street businesses, well, there's multiple voices and different opinions. They have been for years, even before the Blaney Street, have been communicating and communicating, and it's been hard because unlike King Street where there seems to be a unity as to how the solution is, and Humphrey Street there isn't. So at the end of the day, we just need to make sure that public safety is happening, and then we can work on the rest, but ask you just to spend some time on Humphrey Street.

[Speaker 1] (57:08 - 57:09)
Agreed. Agreed.

[Speaker 10] (57:09 - 57:16)
I just have two more practical questions. Go ahead. It relates to the report, and they don't have to be answered now.

They're just something for you to think about.

[Speaker 22] (57:16 - 57:17)
Okay.

[Speaker 10] (57:17 - 57:50)
If you have multiple children and there's a kindergarten section for drop-off and a non-kindergarten, how does that work? How is that being communicated to parents who have kindergartners and older students? And number two, will there be handicap parking for pick-up and drop-off?

Because I do know a lot of grandparents, great-aunts, care providers may have physical issues, and so we just want to be clear about where we're communicating where they can park to safely drop-off, which is not an extended walk or a way that they can't access pick-up and drop-off.

[Speaker 1] (57:50 - 57:58)
Certainly. On your second question, it is definitely yes on handicap parking. I will work on the first one.

I don't know if, Captain Cable, did you?

[Speaker 10] (58:00 - 58:04)
Don't answer me now. Just wait. Answer me later.

[Speaker 5] (58:05 - 58:05)
Okay.

[Speaker 10] (58:05 - 58:06)
Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (58:06 - 58:31)
Thank you. Any other questions from the board? Questions from the public?

Will we take public questions, public comments for a few minutes? Traffic patterns and changes on the school? Please come to the microphone.

Please state your name and address.

[Speaker 15] (58:40 - 59:30)
Good evening, everybody. My name is Dean Satch, and I lived on King. My family moved there 100 years ago, and we're still there.

So just to give you a little piece of history. But my question to you is that has anyone from the police chief or the select board reached out to the parish, to Father Kelly, to see if that parking lot across the street from the church can be used more than it is now? I think that if, I mean, one of the bishops of the archdiocese, Bishop Reed, he grew up in Swampscott.

So if somebody could reach out and get something going, I mean, to see that parking lot empty every day.

[Speaker 2] (59:31 - 1:00:18)
Mr. Chairman, I'm happy to answer that. Kind of cruel. You're asking a really important question.

So I think, as you have figured out, if not, Blaney School belongs to the church. The church leased it to the YMCA. The YMCA is subleasing it to the town.

So the church and the YMCA have been very generous and gracious with their flexibility to give our students a school building to be in for the next two years. I will tell you that we've had multiple conversations over the years about the parking lot, and we have not found the same level of accommodation for that parking lot. The church is very protective of that parking lot.

We have, however. We have ongoing conversations. You may also know the town is in the process of acquiring the Hawthorne.

[Speaker 15] (1:00:19 - 1:00:21)
I think we need to try harder.

[Speaker 2] (1:00:21 - 1:00:47)
Even though the Hawthorne is not going to be acquired before the start of school, Mr. Athanas has been talking to the town administrator about allowing parking in Anthony's parking lot during the day. So we are working on solutions. I agree we will work harder, but I will tell you in seven years I can count at least seven times about reaching to the church and the response on the parking lot.

They've been great about the sublease, so no disrespect to them.

[Speaker 15] (1:00:48 - 1:01:00)
No disrespect to you, but I can see the buses pulling into the parking lot and having all the kids queue up and intermittently walking across.

[Speaker 2] (1:01:00 - 1:01:14)
I take no disrespect. Unfortunately, the bishop and others in the Catholic church just aren't very responsive to me. So if you have better ideas, we welcome it, but we're glad that we have Anthony's as a help here.

[Speaker 3] (1:01:14 - 1:01:29)
Just to chime in, I did speak with Mr. Athanas last week. He is working out a plan, and I do have hopes that we'll be able to use the Athanas property. But I do think we should follow up with the church, and we'll make another call.

[Speaker 5] (1:01:30 - 1:01:32)
Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

[Speaker 16] (1:01:43 - 1:02:28)
Sinclair, you would have got a few e-mails from me recently from King Street. I just wanted to thank you all for hearing us. I think that's the most important thing for all of us here tonight.

There's 10 of us here tonight, and I know umpteen dozen are online right now trying to raise their hands. So we really appreciate it, and I'd just like to give a copy of our petition to the police so you can see what it really means to us to have the safety of the cars going up the street because it's just extremely dangerous. So thank you very much.

I appreciate it, and we all appreciate it.

[Speaker 5] (1:02:28 - 1:02:29)
Thank you, Ms. Sinclair.

[Speaker 10] (1:02:29 - 1:02:42)
And if I could quickly say that the thanks should be us to you for participating in the process because without you guys and the information and understanding the neighborhood, we wouldn't know. So thank you for participating as well.

[Speaker 13] (1:02:51 - 1:05:26)
My name is Chris Bellumer. I live on actually Reddington Street right on the corner. I'm part of that 100-year lineage that Deems is talking about.

I think whatever the traffic changes is, I really do want to stress, everybody that's been in that neighborhood, we can plan as best but without the execution, especially the DPW, right, because it doesn't matter whether in reality, whether it goes one way or it goes the other way, it's treacherous out there. I can't even get out of my driveway most days without the plows. The salting is horrendous.

You know, when you're living, you know, as a single 42-year-old guy with a girlfriend, you know, the thing is like a back problem, right? I don't have kids. I don't have any of that.

But then you start throwing 300 cars a day out there. I mean, it's difficult as is with 150. You double that on those roads without strategic, whether it's your influence or your influence, from the DPW in terms of how to salt, how to plow, snow removal.

I think we all know that Reddington Street barely has any sidewalks, and the sidewalks on Reddington Street are hardly, they're never plowed. They're leaving it up to residents, residents primarily that we don't have kids. Like there's that side of the street.

We don't have kids. We're older, and we got jobs. So if you're going to expect us to, and I'm just being real.

I'm not trying to be callous. But for us to get out there and do that snow removal and all those things, I mean, we really got to put this in perspective, because the human element of this is probably going to be the biggest hurdle. Slipping, car accidents.

Just trying to get out of my driveway, I'm like thinking, because I literally have to either back up one onto King Street or pull out the other part of my driveway, which goes, you know, like a drop-off. I mean, there's no real good way to do this without proper management of these roads. So, you know, I don't want to lose that piece.

So I think that piece is going to be pivotal, and the execution of that will have success. You know, it will have the success for everything else.

[Speaker 5] (1:05:26 - 1:05:42)
So I appreciate you. Thank you, Mr. Bellhumer. Sean, just to that point, I think it's incredibly important.

I'm sure conversations are ongoing with Genopresta and the DPW. I mean, what is their role here, and how can they assist?

[Speaker 3] (1:05:42 - 1:08:38)
Absolutely critical conversation. Really important for us to think about in clement weather days, not just snow but rain. We're going to see different traffic patterns.

You know, Swansket's a tightly networked community, and so we're going to see people driving in different ways to try to get through traffic. And so it's the reason why I'm recommending that the police chief be really responsible day to day to really think about what happens when traffic patterns shift and change because of weather. Chris, your points about pedestrian safety, the sidewalks, really important.

Swansket did pass a mandatory shovel your sidewalk ordinance where we're going to have to really get the word out that we're going to have to keep these sidewalks clear around the pedestrian pathways to the school because we don't want to have more cars in this neighborhood. We actually want to minimize cars by having more students walk safely to the school. That's why we want the police department to work with the PTOs and to work with parents and really think differently about how we bring children to this neighborhood that's densely settled, that has a very busy Main Street and Humphrey Street that can get busy with funerals and other really pressing pedestrian and traffic impacts.

That said, I have every confidence in our police department. When you think about the number of police officers that we can deploy and we think about the crosswalk guards and the folks that will be there to help identify those pressure points, we'll be able to flex on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis how to bring strategies for moving traffic and improving flow and most importantly keeping an eye on safety. The DPW was on the site today.

I was with the director of the DPW and the chief. We walked all around the neighborhood. We talked about sidewalks.

We walked on sidewalks that had broken features to it. We are going to repair those. We're going to focus on minimizing every risk to pedestrian safety, but what's going to mean everything is constant focus, constant attention, and we're going to have to have ongoing conversations.

I've talked to the chief about having meetings with the neighborhood, not just the school engagement but the police department, really reaching out and getting feedback because as we hear tonight, that feedback is important to us. You know your neighborhood best. You will experience the impact, and you will need to communicate that to us and help us really make better decisions as we try to support the responsibilities that we have.

[Speaker 14] (1:08:48 - 1:10:38)
Good evening. My name is Mark Morrison, and I live on King Street on a part-time basis. That's why the 2%, the 98%, we were the two that weren't there to sign the original petition.

I had prepared myself after being approached, and Prudence, you did a really great job. She buttonholed me. I'm a safety engineer.

One of the things that I did the two weeks that I was here was look at the street and look at the blind spots and look at the line of sight, and the school people or whoever did it that changed their mind did the right thing because from a safety standpoint, that was creating a definite hazard. It would have created auto accidents. I don't know about pedestrians.

But the thing I wanted, the reason I came up now was when you approach the church, I would strongly suggest that you give them some assurance that they would have the same protection since I've been in the insurance business for 40 years. They would have the same protection that you have as Title 59 and that anyone entered near property would be held legally liable, I mean legally hold harmless. They would be held harmless and that the town would assume or someone would assume all that liability because someone gets dropped off in their parking lot, they injure themselves or there's an accident, and then lawyers own shotguns and they're going to sue everybody and their brother.

And if I were advising the church, I would say, I'm sorry, unless I have some type of assurance that someone getting injured or an accident occurring on my parking lot that I'm going to be held not responsible, I would say, no, sorry, can't help you. So just throwing that out.

[Speaker 21] (1:10:38 - 1:10:40)
Great points. Thanks, Mark.

[Speaker 5] (1:10:42 - 1:10:43)
Anyone else from the public?

[Speaker 2] (1:10:47 - 1:10:55)
Any other questions or comments from the board? Are we going to switch over to conversations to stay on the pedestrian and traffic? I think that's on our agenda as a conversation.

[Speaker 8] (1:10:56 - 1:11:37)
Before we do move on from the school thing, I just would like to take the opportunity to share. We have three good points of contacts for the public. The people involved with the schools, the SRO has made himself available and is available.

For anybody to reach out to him from the PTO or something like that, he'll bring it to us and we will take that communication. Officer John Lloyd, who is our representative to the Traffic Safety Advisory Committee, he's been advised and he's opened up himself to any sort of public comment. And I remain open to the public.

Everybody reach out to me. If you have nobody else to reach out to, I'll make sure it gets where it needs to get so that your concerns are heard. All right.

[Speaker 10] (1:11:38 - 1:11:39)
Thank you very much.

[Speaker 5] (1:11:39 - 1:12:09)
Thank you, Captain Gable. All right. We'll move on now to a discussion on public safety regarding traffic, parking and wildlife.

Oh, sorry. Sorry. We did have a motion on the floor that was seconded to delegate to the Swampscot Police Department that we never voted on.

So with that, since we have taken, we'll take a vote now. All in favor? Aye.

[Speaker 22] (1:12:09 - 1:12:09)
Aye.

[Speaker 5] (1:12:09 - 1:12:18)
Aye. Thank you. We'll move on to public safety discussions regarding traffic, parking and wildlife.

Who's going to kick off that conversation?

[Speaker 3] (1:12:18 - 1:12:28)
The chief actually is going to kick it off. He's got a presentation to go over. So, Diane, if you have that up, you can.

So, Chief, welcome.

[Speaker 1] (1:12:28 - 1:14:07)
Sure. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for allowing me to give you a brief update on the current state of affairs in the police department.

It may not go in the order that you'd like, so if you'd like me to address traffic safety first, I can certainly do that. I just threw together some charts and graphs so that everyone can easily read along. There's only about seven slides.

First off, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the help of Captain Joe Cable and Angelica Noble. Angelica is the one who put this together. She is sick, and she is still working, and so I want to publicly thank Angelica for her hard work.

And she should be online, hopefully. I kept her. She's my lifeline right now if I have any questions.

She's my lifeline on the Internet, and I have my lifeline here behind me. So, thank you for going to the next slide. So, if you look at our calls for service beginning in 2018, 2019, they were steadily increasing.

As the pandemic hit last year, you can see that our calls for service decreased to about 19,187. This year, year to date, from January to June, we are currently at 10,299 calls for service. Just to give you a snapshot of how busy our police department has been, and how busy, I would say, how the calls for service have decreased throughout the pandemic years.

[Speaker 3] (1:14:07 - 1:14:11)
Next slide, please. Chief, that's pretty typical of a lot of departments, right?

[Speaker 1] (1:14:11 - 1:15:38)
Yes, yeah. I've spoken to a lot of the North Shore communities, my colleagues, chiefs. Everybody has experienced the same issue with the pandemic.

Again, social distancing, you're not going to see as many or as much community engagement efforts. You're not going to see as many citizens calling the police. So, the slide is titled calls for service, the top ten categories.

Now, certainly we have hundreds of calls for service and different kinds of calls for service. But this gives you a snapshot of our top ten calls for service. And if you can see, check area, my colleagues here might be able to explain better, but that is more towards explaining any kind of suspicious activity where we are called.

And check area, if you look at the top categories, it's check area, building check, our traffic enforcement posts, motor vehicle stops are the bulk of our calls for service. So, you can see where our activity is at right now. So, it is obviously traffic enforcement and motor vehicle stops, parking citations, as well as suspicious in progress activity calls.

Next slide.

[Speaker 3] (1:15:39 - 1:15:40)
Chief, just for a second.

[Speaker 1] (1:15:40 - 1:15:40)
Sure.

[Speaker 3] (1:15:40 - 1:15:56)
In terms of these top ten categories, what percentage of time are officers self-directing their patrol or enforcement of activity?

[Speaker 1] (1:15:56 - 1:20:56)
Well, I don't have the specific numbers. Many of our, if you look at what our park and walks are, that is 9% of our top ten calls are park and walks. Our officers are out there in Vinton Square on Humphrey Street, and they are literally parking and they're walking the beat.

And so, that is what you'll see. I, as an outsider, when I saw officers walking down Humphrey Street, it just gives me a sense of safety, a sense of community feel, because I know I can speak to those officers if need be. And that's something that was instituted last year as part of, even before I got here, but as part of our community engagement efforts.

So, the next slide that I want to talk about is our police organizational chart. I know this has been the topic of discussion. And so, we currently, our allotted authorized strength is 32 officers.

That is everyone, including myself. If you look at one of the questions that I had been asked in the past week was, how many vacancies do we have? And we have two vacancies.

I need to provide context with that. We have two vacant positions at the patrol officer position. We have two conditional hires.

Now, those conditional hires were given conditional hires in June of 2022. In fact, one of our hires is now in the academy as of this week. And the other conditional offer is in the process of their background employment.

They still need a background employment, I'm sorry, background psychological test, as well as a physical agility test to pass before we are even able to assign them to a police academy. So, we're hoping to assign, if this person passes all their tests, they will be assigned in, we would love September, more than likely October, in one of the police academies, most likely Randolph. We have, so those two conditional hires, they have to go through the police academy.

They have to go through the police academy. They have to go through training, which is MPTC, that's our state certification unit, MPTC Certified Police Academy. They'll attend an academy, in-person academy, for approximately five, six months, and then they will come back to Swampscot and they will be in field training.

So, it'll be about nine months before we see them, like myself, in a police uniform on the street. So, that's just to provide some context on those conditional hires. The two vacancies, we do have a list that we are working with on a hiring list, and we do have one candidate left on that list.

Does anybody have any questions? Next slide. Thank you.

So, this is a brief overview of our traffic, our traffic enforcement. You will see I brought my traffic guru, which is Lieutenant Tom Hennessey, thanks to him. He provides me these statistics every month, and it gives me a snapshot of what our officers are doing in terms of traffic safety.

So, since January of this year, from January to June, the end of June, we have completed 776 citations. If you see, there's several citations that have been completed each month, but the bulk of them have been speeding violations, crosswalk violations, and then, of course, OUIs or drunk driving arrests are always important to us in traffic safety. So, we've provided some of these numbers for you.

Another issue that we always seem to deal with, and I'm learning quite quickly, is parking, parking issues, parking complaints. We have issued, just this summer alone, we have issued 281 parking complaints. Now, thanks to the efforts of Lieutenant Tom Hennessey and putting together a proposal for a grant, I'll let him speak a little bit more about that, but we average approximately $16,000 to $20,000 a year that is given to the Swampscot Police Department to pay for traffic enforcement efforts, and so that greatly assists us in ensuring that we are keeping our community safe on the roadways.

I'll have Lieutenant Tom Hennessey talk a little bit about the MRS grant, enforcement grant, and any other topics that you have.

[Speaker 11] (1:20:59 - 1:23:53)
Good evening. I was lucky enough to take over the grant program once it became competitive. Before that, it was fill out a form, and you were given approximately $6,000 for our size police department.

When I took over, it became a competitive grant process. The year 2021 was my first stab at a grant, and we got $19,000 in change in grants. That was all enforcement grant at the time.

It was pedestrian operating under the influence, speed enforcement, use of a mobile device while driving, distracted driving. So that was our first year. We were able to spend approximately $10,000 or $11,000 of that money.

Unfortunately, the protests tied up our officers to the point where they couldn't work more than 16 hours in a day. The grant was supplemental, so we did our best. 2022, we got $27,000 and a little more.

$6,000 of it is for training. We're training six officers in operating under the influence of drugs, which is a very specific skill set. So we're actually hosting that training at our department in September.

If I'm successful in 2023, I've applied for $29,000. That includes approximately $12,000 in enforcement, $6,000 in training, $10,000 in pedestrian enforcement, and a couple thousand in community engagement-type speaking on traffic safety and that nature. And just for maybe some of your concerns about pedestrian safety coming up, we have approximately $7,000 in grant money right now for pedestrian safety.

There was a deployment yesterday. The officers are being diligent in getting out there. So hopefully we'll be able to utilize those dollars wisely, and that's what I budgeted for this time of year, just to get folks used to the pedestrian safety as we go into school.

Great.

[Speaker 5] (1:23:55 - 1:23:58)
Any questions from the board? Comments?

[Speaker 10] (1:23:59 - 1:24:25)
I have two questions about traffic safety, but they don't directly relate to the funding. Should I wait or is that okay? So the first question I have is about parking tickets.

I know there has been a lot of conversation in town about the difference between recreational spots and residential spots, and there's some signage posted, but is there any thought about doing some more outreach and education to folks about where they should be parking and should not be parking?

[Speaker 11] (1:24:26 - 1:24:28)
I'm going to defer on that.

[Speaker 10] (1:24:29 - 1:25:07)
Or maybe it's just a suggestion. I know it should seem clear because there's a sign, but clearly it isn't since we've issued 281 tickets. It's not that they're all because of that.

And then the other thing I would be remiss if I didn't also ask if we took a look at the pedestrian and traffic issues with regards to Clark. The other two elementary schools are getting an awful lot of headlines right now because of the impact that the new school is having in the switch to Blaney, but I know that there are some unresolved, potentially unresolved things that we could be working on at Clark as well.

[Speaker 11] (1:25:09 - 1:25:38)
During the grant application process, part of it is where you intend to enforce. Humphrey Street has always been primary in pedestrian enforcement. Essex Street has always been a concern with kids walking to the high school.

We're going to be focusing in the area of Paradise and Norfolk also. That's one of the things. When I deploy people, I give them suggestions.

[Speaker 4] (1:25:40 - 1:25:40)
Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (1:25:43 - 1:25:44)
Any additional questions?

[Speaker 4] (1:25:45 - 1:25:59)
No, but I do want to say thank you, Lieutenant, for bringing in that additional money. I've written grants, and it's not a walk in the park, but you hang in there. I appreciate that.

Thank you.

[Speaker 3] (1:26:00 - 1:26:03)
Lieutenant, you're not baking any cookies to get those grants, are you?

[Speaker 11] (1:26:04 - 1:26:07)
No, none of that. I'm still cooking.

[Speaker 3] (1:26:07 - 1:26:35)
I know you have some award-winning baking talents. Listen, those limited dollars make a big difference. Katie had asked about education.

Obviously, there's investment in education. They go hand in hand. When we issue citations, of the citations, how many are warnings?

Just a rough percentage. I know that we've talked about this before.

[Speaker 11] (1:26:36 - 1:27:18)
The vast majority are going to be warnings. Traffic safety is an educational process, in my opinion. There are certainly people who are critical traffic offenders.

We have access when we stop someone so they're traffic-ready. If they're not getting the picture with a warning, they can't be cited. I've had people come to me years later and say, you gave me a warning at a stop sign that really made me think.

I think the enforcement and the education are hand in hand. A well-meaning warning, I think, is sometimes more educational and effective than a satisfaction warning.

[Speaker 3] (1:27:19 - 1:27:50)
Helpful. Again, I just wanted to draw that point because I do think it's important for folks to understand it's not always about the stick. It's sometimes about making sure that we constructively address some of the risks of driving.

Certainly, distracted driving is on the rise. We're seeing more and more challenges with that. The more we can get the word out that we want people to be safe, especially as we gear up for a very busy school season, is going to be critical.

[Speaker 5] (1:27:51 - 1:28:30)
I did have a safety question about parking on Paradise Road. I was traveling from Panera towards the Clark School. I'd be remiss if I didn't, since I have the attention of the chief of police, just the enforcement of illegal parking on the side of that road.

Today, I drove by and there were probably eight to ten vehicles that were parked. Does that fall under the jurisdiction of Swampscot police, or because that's a state road, is that the state that needs to enforce? I just want to make sure that it's safe.

[Speaker 17] (1:28:36 - 1:28:39)
Sir, are you talking about in front of the trauma center?

[Speaker 5] (1:28:40 - 1:28:45)
I'm talking, yeah, from the family doctors to the Clark School past the DPW.

[Speaker 17] (1:28:45 - 1:28:55)
Paradise Road, V8 Blue 1A, it is technically a state highway with no parking allowed. There's been dispensation given to the trauma center because they don't have a giant parking lot.

[Speaker 22] (1:28:55 - 1:28:56)
Yep.

[Speaker 17] (1:28:56 - 1:29:15)
So those are usually patients. So we, in the sign, there is no technical signage there. There is signage across the street, so we don't narrow that area.

But once you go beyond the trauma center, either north or south, there is no parking.

[Speaker 2] (1:29:16 - 1:33:19)
Thank you for the clarification. So I have a couple, actually a bunch for you, Chief. I want to start with just some kind of traffic safety things.

John, we had a long conversation last summer about pedestrian safety, and we were buying beacons, and we were going to put beacons out. And a year later, not all the beacons are out. If they're out, we haven't gotten all the ones we're supposed to get.

The biggest, I'm going to keep, I'm glad we helped the intersection in front of St. John. I'm glad we were able to put a beacon that people can actually see there. But the intersection at Monument and Humphrey still remains exactly as it was a year ago.

Exactly. Nothing's changed. Zero.

In fact, it's actually gotten worse, because the parking space that last year was marked off in front of the crosswalk is back being used. There's no blockade there. And that reoccurs consistently in our town, which is we have parking spaces way too close to crosswalks.

You have to step out from behind a car to be seen crossing that thing. I would just ask for that we have a, please be a really intensive focus on this. We spent how many hours last summer?

And that didn't work. So I don't want to spend hours on it here, but you drive through communities that are, I get that Humphrey Street is an important road, and it gets traffic north and south, or east and west, whichever way direction it goes there. But it's our main street, and it is literally a matter of time until the next person.

Yes, it gets hit there. That crosswalk is awful. And there are things we can do, and people may not think they're the most beautiful things we can do, but there's a lot more than a broken down crosswalk sign in the middle of the street that we can be doing to identify that.

And I'm using that as an example, which is the, you know, go up and down Humphrey Street. I think we're going to see those parking spaces. I think at one point they were blacked out, right?

But the blackout has faded, and the parking space is back there. And people are parking there every single day up and down Humphrey Street. So that, I'm using it as an example.

There's so many places we need to look. Nothing makes me happier when, I think probably my colleagues feel the same, when we see evidence of something just changing. Like all of a sudden something came up.

We may not understand the idea. We don't, you know, we may not think it was awesome, but we're like, wait, that means someone saw something. Someone's doing something.

That's cool. Let's try something different there. That crosswalk I'm just pointing out, because it's the one everybody in our town knows.

I mean, there isn't a person in our town that doesn't know it. It's God awful. I mean, it just really is.

And so I just would ask us to pay that attention to that, because I think that's really important. I appreciate what Lieutenant Hennessey said about education and enforcement. I was on the Cape this morning for a funeral.

And what's the first thing everybody does when they go over the bridge? They slow down, because the Cape is notorious in terms of reputation, right? You know, when you start driving in Barnstable, you're not driving very fast in Barnstable.

I would kind of like us to have, and I know it's difficult, and I know it's a challenge, but I would like motorists to just instinctively slow down when they come into Swampscott, no matter which direction they do. I just would like that. And it's not fully your responsibility.

It's the driver's responsibility, too. But I would like that, because I don't think Swampscott has that reputation. And I think that's an okay reputation, which is you really want to slow down in Swampscott, right?

And I don't know how to do it, so that's for you guys to figure out. But I think that would be an interesting thing to talk about more, how do we do that? Because most people are entering on fast streets in our town, but our town, there are also crossings, right?

We have people going to school across Paradise Road. We have people going to the ocean on Humphrey Street. So all these streets that they're coming in and they're going to Salem, they're going to Marblehead, tend to be on fast streets.

And I think it would be great if we found a way to get their attention when they entered Swampscott and really do that for a long period of time so that people kind of ‑‑ I don't want us to think like we're the Cape, because there's so many reasons for that. But I do want them to think twice when they come into town and want to slow down.

[Speaker 1] (1:33:20 - 1:34:24)
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I think what we, you know, one of the things that Lieutenant Hennessey talked about was our officers' ability to use discretion. Now, I understand if we, you know, if we start handing out parking citations and we say, hey, there's going to be zero tolerance, we're also going to have 15,000 complaints because we're going to be issuing 15,000 citations.

But I do think that there's a time and place for all of that. So I think that that goes hand in hand with public safety awareness. Hey, this month, be aware, we are having a zero tolerance speeding parking issue.

So if you plan to speed, if you plan to park illegally, if you plan to not pay attention to our pedestrians in the crosswalks, you will receive a citation. And I think that's something that is ‑‑ could be valuable. Now, I'm not here to say I want to give out 1,000 tickets.

But I do think that community awareness and enforcement does go hand in hand. So I do agree with that. Absolutely.

[Speaker 2] (1:34:24 - 1:35:10)
And so with the chair's indulgence, I have just a couple other a little bit off‑topic questions. But two weeks ago, almost two weeks ago, I wasn't at our meeting. There was a discussion, an on‑schedule discussion, public comment about the police department.

And during public comment, the police union came and made some statements. And I just ‑‑ you weren't here, so I assume you either didn't know that public statements were being made or you couldn't be here. But I thought it was unfortunate that the chief of police couldn't be here to talk about that.

So one of the comments was that the Swampscot Police Department is, and the quote is, grossly understaffed and that the number of swarm officers in Swampscot is at a level that constitutes, and this is a quote, gross negligence when it comes to the safety of our town. And I guess I just wanted to give you a chance to say do you agree with that?

[Speaker 1] (1:35:11 - 1:36:41)
I would say that we are not fully staffed. We do have two vacancies. We do have two other positions that have been out on extended leave.

And I think that first and foremost, I will state that while the president of the union and I don't always agree, there is one thing that we do have is a mutual respect for one another and a voice. So I think that in saying that we are understaffed, we do have vacancies. We currently have vacancies.

We have had a couple individuals who have been out for extended leave, which has taken a toll on our police force mentally, physically, psychologically. And so I don't, well, you know, I think what it comes down to is we are able to answer our calls for service. We are able to answer to emergencies.

There's not going to be a Swampscot resident, nor has there been since I've been here, but that said, you never responded to my house. I called the police and you were never here. So we have responded.

We will respond. And I think that's just the, to be honest with you, I think that's the frustration that our officers are feeling based on the toll that they've taken in terms of having to work extra, having to work extra shifts, being detailed to shift when somebody calls in sick. And there has to be somebody else who replaces that officer.

Right.

[Speaker 2] (1:36:42 - 1:36:51)
So, but, but do you believe Swampscot's grossly negligent? I just, it's important because those words sat out there in our community, heard those words for the last two weeks, unresponded to.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:51 - 1:36:51)
Sure.

[Speaker 2] (1:36:51 - 1:37:28)
I think it's really important. I appreciate, I haven't had the need to call, so I trust they will come always. But it's more important that when the public hears things that it doesn't go unanswered.

And I appreciate the mutual respect you have for each other. And I hope that would extend to that. You find a time to come together to meetings as opposed to individually.

And so that we don't have this surprise and characterization about our town being grossly negligent amongst other things. And I'll ask some other questions in a second. And you guys can come together and have conversations because, so I really want to understand, just hear from you.

Is Swampscot grossly negligent?

[Speaker 1] (1:37:28 - 1:38:48)
I do not want to be put in a position where I feel like I'm being pitted against one way or another. But I do not feel that we're grossly negligent in our staffing. I do not feel that way.

We are able to answer our calls for service. Now, again, like I said, I toe a very fine line because I am, have to listen to, and I am aware and cognizant of the needs of our police officers and the toll that has been taken on them. But at the same time, I also understand our staffing issues.

I'm still in the middle of the assessment of collecting data to analyze, do we have enough officers? And that's yet to be determined. I can't say, I can say right now, we will always answer any calls for service.

We have not had that issue. But if there is other things that I would like to see in the future as us evolve, I would like to see a traffic enforcement officer. I would like to see a dedicated community action officer.

I would like to see a dedicated crime prevention records person. There are so many things that we need to accomplish that I may say right now, right now we're doing as what we can. We're doing what we can with what we have.

But a year later from now, I may say, I need four officers, and I'll provide the data to accompany that need and suggestion.

[Speaker 2] (1:38:49 - 1:41:14)
Yeah, no, I appreciate that, and I know you will. I remember Mary Ellen was at it as well, and I know that Mary Ellen was surprised by the stat, but a couple of years ago we had a financial forum at the Salem. Actually, I think Lieutenant Hennessy was actually at that as well, of all the major boards in town, and there was a conversation about cost of contracts, and where the then chair of the finance committee talked about how Swampscot was 35% higher per capita for policing costs than the state average, and I remember Mary Ellen was surprised by that.

I think repeated it numerous times at subsequent meetings and income meetings, and I have and other people as well. So when we hear things like someone saying that we're grossly negligent, and it's not about pitting things, but you weren't here two weeks ago, and I feel it's really important because you are the chief of police. You are the one that we look to to make sure of that, because God forbid if we were grossly negligent, we would have expected you would have been here, and you would have told us that, and yes, we would have had questions, because we'd want to know why are we well above the state average in what we pay for public safety, but yet we're grossly negligent, and so I think that's a really important thing just to flesh out here, so I really would encourage whatever's happening in the station house that the dialogue get better such that there aren't these messages being sent out, because I didn't get e-mails from people saying that they were concerned. Oh, my God, what are you doing? You've got to do things for police.

I actually got messages from people saying we're grossly negligent, like concerned, like that we have inadequate policing, and we don't have that information here, so we just trust that you're going to come here, and if you need to say hard words like we're grossly negligent, you should say we're grossly negligent. I don't be afraid of the words. I just don't want them being spoken if they don't reflect your view, and I personally want to hear your view about the policing here.

The last thing I'm just going to say is that there's been a lot of conversation about filling vacancies here, and I know that at least one of the vacancies now is a retirement, and under the contract, police officers don't need to give much notice on vacancies or when they decide to retire, but two weeks ago it was said you were quoted, or you were specifically said that you had, for the candidates that are on the list, that offers had not been presented to, the statement was that when Chief Quesada joined the department, he too reviewed and endorsed these candidates and presented the same candidates for employment, which implied that you had said employ all these candidates. My understanding is that you actually hadn't even met all or some of these candidates.

Is that correct?

[Speaker 1] (1:41:16 - 1:41:49)
Yes, that's correct. I did present those candidates to Sean about a month after they were already presented by then Chief Kurz back in February or March, and then I talked to Mr. Fitzgerald and told him I see these as viable candidates. Again, I've never met them.

I've never spoken to them. I've not interviewed them. I do not have their, I don't have specificity on their backgrounds, but in my training and experience of working in the 1,200-member department, working as the hiring authority, they were viable candidates to me.

[Speaker 2] (1:41:49 - 1:42:08)
Yeah, no, I appreciate it, and I don't take away your opinion about that at all. It's more just that statement implied that you had put your stamp of approval such that you were asking for them and continuing to be asking for them, and I just found it interesting. If you hadn't met them, I assume the police chief is going to be meeting candidates before he's asking the town administrator or insisting upon the town administrator to be hired.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:08 - 1:42:11)
I think it's become an issue of semantics at this point.

[Speaker 2] (1:42:11 - 1:42:13)
Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it.

[Speaker 4] (1:42:14 - 1:42:15)
So I have a few questions.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:16 - 1:42:16)
Sure.

[Speaker 4] (1:42:16 - 1:43:33)
First, just to be clear, when there was a comment on your statement about our supposum that we had talking about what we pay the police department in Swampscot versus other communities, one of the things that was left out of that supposum was the census report, which was done by the Collins Center and evaluated the census of our police department. And at that time, our police department was very, very heavy with senior type of officers. That actual line item was never factored into that report.

So, yes, the report showed that compared to other communities, we were paying more, but that item was never added into the report. So I am very big on always evaluating cost of contracts and making sure that the people of Swampscot get a fair deal on what they're paying for, if that's the best way to put it. I'm sorry that you're in a situation where, you know, we're going back and forth between what you're saying and what the president of the union—I don't think that that promotes cohesiveness or any kind of peace within our community.

But some of the questions I have for you, because I don't have your resume or anything like that, but do you have experience in HR?

[Speaker 1] (1:43:34 - 1:43:39)
I do. I worked two years as the human resources lieutenant in the Mesa Police Department.

[Speaker 4] (1:43:39 - 1:43:47)
Okay. So when you say a viable candidate, can you just tell me what that definition really means, a viable candidate?

[Speaker 1] (1:43:48 - 1:44:20)
As my experience as the hiring authority in the Mesa Police Department, it was my duty to oversee all the physical agility tests, all the written tests, all the backgrounds, the psychological tests, the polygraph, the entire process. That is very similar to here in Massachusetts. And then it was myself as well as a committee, but I was the top hiring stamp of approval, if you may, in terms of a person getting hired and going into the police department.

[Speaker 4] (1:44:21 - 1:45:00)
So you're very experienced. One of the questions I want to be really clear tonight, you're saying that we have two openings, and I think that's what was even said at the meeting last time. We do have two openings.

However, we have four positions that are not filled at this time. We have one position, the candidate is at the academy right now, and that candidate will be able to, provided everything goes okay, that candidate will be able to take a position, what, next May?

[Speaker 1] (1:45:00 - 1:45:01)
Spring 2023.

[Speaker 4] (1:45:02 - 1:45:10)
Okay. The candidate who has a conditional offer, when will that candidate, provided everything goes okay?

[Speaker 1] (1:45:11 - 1:45:11)
Next summer.

[Speaker 4] (1:45:11 - 1:45:17)
Next summer. And then the two candidates that we don't even have filled yet, what are we looking at?

[Speaker 1] (1:45:18 - 1:45:38)
We currently have one person left on the eligibility list of the process that was started last year with Dave Kearse, Chief Kearse. We have that one person, and then we will vet that candidate, and we have another position that's open after that.

[Speaker 4] (1:45:40 - 1:46:05)
So it seems that even with these four positions that we have to put bodies on, it seems that we're not going to be even in a position of having those four bodies. We're looking at May, possibly summer, possibly December, January, and then where are you at as far as retirements go?

[Speaker 1] (1:46:06 - 1:46:13)
In terms of retirements, again, employees won't necessarily tell me, hey, Chief, I'm going to retire.

[Speaker 4] (1:46:13 - 1:46:21)
But how many candidates do you, how many officers do you have that could go into your office tomorrow morning and say I'm calling it a day?

[Speaker 1] (1:46:22 - 1:47:15)
I had one supervisor, one sergeant, who rescinded his retirement. He actually gave me his retirement papers about a month and a half ago. He then rescinded about a week after rescinded his retirement.

And in all transparency, his thought process was we are short-staffed, and I don't want to make this harder on the police department. So I don't know when he intends to retire, but he can retire at any time. We have two potential retirements next year, two lieutenants who are at their, I don't know, maybe you can, 30-plus year mark where they are eligible for retirement.

And then I have two other potential patrol positions who may retire.

[Speaker 4] (1:47:17 - 1:48:19)
So based on all of that, I think it's fair to say, and with Mr. Fitzgerald actually made a statement that we were in, on 93021 to Senator Creighton, that we're at a critical junction with staffing. So everything I'm hearing, so this is going to be my opinion, I don't really, we might not be grossly negligent. We might be able to take care of our services.

But what I'm hearing is that we are seriously understaffed with patrol officers on the streets. That's for me as a citizen to say. And it does trouble me.

It does trouble me that we have candidates that are coming through that you as a chief seem to feel that they have, they're viable candidates. I just hope that we're able to get this buttoned up and get into a better position here. That's for me.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:19 - 1:48:19)
I agree.

[Speaker 4] (1:48:23 - 1:49:23)
And that's all I have. Oh wait, I do have one question and one concern. On July 13th, Amy Sorrell happened to mention that both chiefs, the fire chief and the police chief, feel confident that they're going to be able to work within their overtime budget.

Now, when you look at your budgets on overtime, because that's, I do have a background on the finance committee, that's always a stickler for me, is the overtime budgets. In 2021, the end of year was almost 6-12. Last year's 22 budget was 4-15.

Your budget coming into 23 is 3-65. You have less staff to work and whenever somebody goes out sick, you're going to have to use overtime. I'm concerned that you're really going to be able to stay within that overtime budget and the Swan Scout residents are still going to get the same service that they've been provided in the past.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:24 - 1:52:51)
That is an accurate statement. I would say that when I came here and coming as an outside, shall I say expert assessor, because I study, this is what I study and this is what I do, there is no flexibility here. If one person calls out sick, has illness, is in training, that is automatic overtime.

There has been no flexibility. And so that concerned me coming in. There was a lot of concerns that I had with the way that we are operating.

And so what I am currently doing right now is I have reduced staffing by one. We typically run with five officers per shift. We are now running with four.

We were already doing that. In fact, we did a number approximately, Lieutenant Hennessey could certainly explain how many times. We did it approximately 65 times.

From the beginning of this year, we worked with four officers on shift. And I won't always say, hey, there are some shifts that we are going to be busy. We are going to call, to call, to call.

But we did that. And so I am in the process of analyzing how it works right now with four officers on shift. My intention is to analyze, collect the data.

It's not just me who is analyzing the data. I have a colleague of mine who is a professor at Rutgers University who runs algorithms to determine how many calls do we get per hour, per day, per shift, per month. And I think that's important to allocate our staffing to utilize those measures and analyze and figure out how many officers do we necessarily need on each shift, each day, each hour.

I think that's important to do. I think we are, we have to evolve. And I think, like I said, doing the things that we've always done because it's always been that way is not necessarily a good thing.

I think we need to evolve. And so that is what I am in the process of doing. And as your police chief, and when I was testing throughout the process, I explained, I'm going to use data analytics to determine how we best deploy.

Now, it's not just going to be data analytics. What does the community want? What do you as my select board want?

How does it affect my officers and their well-being and their ability to perform every day, day in and day out? There are so many variables that have to be taken into account to ensure I have the right number of officers. But number one, public safety is crucial in my job and my success as a police chief.

I will never have public safety as a question under my tenure. And so if you ask me, I'd like to order six officers right now, that would be fantastic. We are doing what we can right now.

And it will be my job, and my job as a researcher, as a statistician, to come back to you and say, I need more officers, and here is why.

[Speaker 10] (1:52:52 - 1:52:53)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:52:53 - 1:52:54)
Thank you.

[Speaker 10] (1:52:54 - 1:53:04)
Can I ask a follow-up? Yeah. In the process of doing the analysis, what is the approximate timeline that we might hear back from you about your findings?

[Speaker 1] (1:53:05 - 1:54:18)
So I have given myself and my department 90 days. We are going to do this for three months. We have to take data, historical data, and see, maybe there's times that we are less busy in the winter.

Maybe there are times in the summer where I need to reallocate more officers on shift. Maybe I need six officers instead of what we had as five. I need to include that historical data.

Our data is only as good as the systems that we have. And I will say, coming from a city the size of Boston, that our data collection process and our software isn't the best. I cannot sort.

I cannot categorize. There are certain things that I am looking for. In order to get these stats for you today, I manually counted.

In 2022, that's unacceptable. So that's one of the things that there are so many things that I've noticed that we need to improve upon. I hope I answered your question.

[Speaker 10] (1:54:18 - 1:54:23)
So 90 days until you think you might have some findings that you might be able to come back to us with? Correct. Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 5] (1:54:24 - 1:54:27)
And that's 90 days from today or 90 days from?

[Speaker 1] (1:54:27 - 1:54:28)
We started this.

[Speaker 10] (1:54:28 - 1:54:29)
Start the clock.

[Speaker 1] (1:54:29 - 1:54:32)
I actually started this on July 13th.

[Speaker 10] (1:54:34 - 1:54:37)
You can tell we're looking forward to you coming back.

[Speaker 1] (1:54:37 - 1:56:14)
Definitely. So I will finish my PowerPoint presentation. I also included our training hours.

And the first three categories that you see, these are mandated, minimum mandatory training hours that each officer must complete each year. So if you look at the number of hours, you can determine, okay, just 40 hours in service training alone is going to be times 31, 32 officers. I'll include myself because I still have to do that training.

It's approximately 1,240 hours of training that needs to be completed. Again, when I said not a lot of flexibility, if I have an officer, we don't have the luxury anymore of doing training on Zoom or online. Now, MPTC has begun to start in-person training.

So I have an officer who has eight hours of training that day. That person is off the street. Now, what do I do?

Do I need to call someone in overtime? Can I somehow fill it? That's where the staffing issue, that's where that arises.

And that's where I say there's some inflexibility. And that's what I'm trying to create is to ensure that we're a flexible organization and that we can meet the demands of our officers going to mandatory training, and I can still cover that shift without overtime.

[Speaker 2] (1:56:17 - 1:57:33)
So I think that's really important. So I guess I would ask you to come back. And when we talk about inflexibility, certainly being down head or two or three or four certainly limits that.

But there's also contractual inflexibility, right? And so I'd ask you to come back, and I'm really grateful for the work, the hard work of the town administrator and the union in past contracts where they've created more flexibility. But we need to hear from you as well, which is what are the other things?

Because I know that training can only happen on certain times, and you're required to backfill or you're required to do certain things to accommodate training. Training has to happen. It's a necessary thing.

I'm not looking to do less of it. I would love for us to do more of it. But for you to come back as well, again, to the town administrator because we don't really publicly debate contracts here, but to talk about those things and to engage in the union in a thoughtful way to say, well, how do we do that to accommodate that?

Because, you know, for example, retirement notifications, that's creating some of the inflexibility, right? The contract specifically has language. And we are, although someone can retire, we're surprised at times by it.

And there's a way around that. We can try and do those things. And I understand it's a compromise.

You have to have a negotiation and talk about those things and just put more tools on the table to help us get you more flexibility and the rank and file more flexibility so that, you know, they're not as stressed with the demands that are put on them.

[Speaker 1] (1:57:40 - 2:00:36)
So I'll end this on a high note. Our community engagement efforts. Back in May 26, we started one of the things that I came in and asked was that I noticed in law enforcement that a lot of times that we as officers will engage the community and I don't necessarily get credit for it.

Meaning if you understand or if you know how we use computer aid to dispatch, if I respond to a call, it will show on my dispatch record and log that Chief Quesada responded to 531 Humphrey Street for a building check. Now, if I say, hey, I'm out talking to some kids, we're talking about the school, we're talking about whatever it may be, I don't get any credit for that. Hey, I'll be out with a couple kids.

And it's just maybe labeled as a traffic stop or an unlabeled, uncategorized stop. So what we started to do back on May 26, with the help of Captain Cable, we have started to we have a community engagement policy and we have officers who are now doing community engagement efforts. Not just the park and walks, but part of, you know, we will go out to the senior center.

We will go out to the temples and engage our every entity in that that resides in our town. And I think that's important to show our officers are engaging the community. And so as, you know, just some of the some of the examples are, you know, that we have gone to the policy.

We've started the policy addiction forum, thanks to Officer Reen and Officer Wilson. I'm probably forgetting somebody else. The Anti-Defamation League Law and Education Day, our DARE camp, our Juneteenth celebration, our Pride Day celebration.

You will see officers out there engaging the community. And it's not because we were it's not because we were told, hey, you have to show up to this event today. It's because this is a new philosophy.

This is something that that I won't say that our officers haven't already done before. But now we are collecting that data. And now we are we'll be able to show I would love to have a GIS mapping system as show.

These are the crimes that are occurring. These are the community engagement efforts that we made in response to those crimes. And so that's where I say we need to evolve and we need to progress forward.

I'm proud of our officers and their efforts. And they have shown me how much they care about our community. And they will be out there.

They live here. They grew up here. And so to me, I think that's that's an important aspect to show.

And I'm proud of the community engagement efforts.

[Speaker 2] (2:00:37 - 2:01:22)
Chief, if I can just say something about McDonald was here earlier. And I think about Matt and Lieutenant Hennessy. He doesn't know what I'm about to say.

But I've seen him in places and oftentimes not with a uniform, still at a community event. And Lieutenant, I saw you recently at something. And I, you know, that to me is as powerful than when you are in the uniforms.

Right. It's just seeing you, Lieutenant. I saw you engaging in what you were doing.

And Matt has been he really got involved with the All Ages Committee. And he has made himself just everywhere. And I just so I do credit that.

And there's examples that I could give of Kevin and Brendan and others as well. But that is so hugely important because it really makes it feel to the resident as public safety.

[Speaker 1] (2:01:23 - 2:01:41)
I will recognize Matt McDonald. I call him, in fact, today the community whisperer because he just he understands people. And people understand him.

And I've come to notice that and recognize that. So I applaud Matt and echo your sentiments.

[Speaker 2] (2:01:41 - 2:01:51)
Yeah. If Matt baked, it would be the real deal. But just until he bakes.

He might. I don't know if he might bake. I don't know that.

Thank you, though.

[Speaker 1] (2:01:53 - 2:01:54)
Any questions?

[Speaker 2] (2:01:54 - 2:01:55)
Any other questions for the Chief?

[Speaker 4] (2:01:57 - 2:01:58)
How do you like it here so far?

[Speaker 1] (2:02:00 - 2:03:17)
It is hot. It's not as hot as Arizona. I am truly proud of the dedication.

I've worked in a very large police department where officers often get lost because there's so many. We have approximately 1,000 officers out there where I worked. And I will say working in now for me what I call a small department is so gratifying because I get to work with these men and women every day.

And I see how dedicated, how much they care. I have officers and I'm amazed because I didn't see this in my last city. I have an officer who will help an elderly woman walk across the street across Humphreys because she has to go get her hair done.

I have another officer who changed a light bulb for another resident. Now, I don't think I've ever seen that in my 30 years of law enforcement experience. And I truly respect their dedication to making this a better community.

And so I applaud. I am proud to be the Swampscot Police Chief. I am proud to represent the community, our members, and the Select Board.

I truly am proud.

[Speaker 2] (2:03:18 - 2:03:31)
Thanks, Chief. We didn't talk about wildlife. Can you talk about wildlife?

[Speaker 3] (2:03:31 - 2:03:37)
Yeah, Chief, you didn't talk about wildlife. I'll get back to the wildlife. What kind of wildlife?

[Speaker 21] (2:03:38 - 2:03:38)
Coyotes.

[Speaker 10] (2:03:39 - 2:03:39)
Coyotes.

[Speaker 1] (2:03:40 - 2:05:02)
We've had about 50 from the beginning of this year. We've had about 50 coyote calls, whether it is anything to do with a coyote. Again, this was a manual sort process.

And it was a painstaking process. But we've had about 50 calls. And so what we've done with the efforts of the rest of the town and Angelica, and there are so many countless individuals who have put together flyers and community notifications, we've posted on Facebook, we've made flyers so that we can distribute out to the community, so we can distribute out to the restaurants in the area.

Venn and Square, Bertucci's, that is where I see a lot of the reports that there are coyotes in the area. And so our animal control officer is hard at work with that. We have had Lieutenant Mike Fraylor, who has worked on some mitigation measures in terms of, listen, we can educate, educate, educate the public, but at some point something bad may happen.

And we need to be ready for that. Lieutenant Fraylor can talk on that, but he has worked diligently to ensure that we have mitigation plans in place in case the oh no happens.

[Speaker 3] (2:05:03 - 2:07:18)
The only thing I would add is that, you know, we've reached out to town council. We've worked with our ACO, our animal control officer, Scott Constantine, and our former ACO, Dan Prew, to really look at a wildlife feeding bylaw that helps us really educate the population, and especially the businesses around Venn and Square, that feeding coyotes because you think you're helping them is actually, you know, a very bad thing, because ultimately what happens is those coyotes become habituated to human activity, and that creates a risk, a risk that there may be a bite. And we want the people to know that, look, it's wildlife. It should not be engaged.

We have people that want to feed turkeys and folks that think it's just a wonderful thing to do. And we know that it's good intentions, but we have to get the word out that that leads to very, very dangerous situations where people will be at risk, and certainly the animals will be at risk. We want to have a small town of three square miles that can support pockets of wildlife.

It actually supports a habitat area that supports an ecosystem. That's important for us, but we have to really get the word out that it's a serious responsibility that we have, not only from public safety. If we see these animals out there in the daytime, if they're around children, call the police department.

But certainly if they're just around, don't leave food. Don't try to engage them. Take pictures, post them on social media, but don't engage them.

And a draft of the bylaw is in the packet, and certainly we're going to get this out to a few of our committees, and at some point we can have a conversation as a board on whether or not this is appropriate for a special town meeting or an annual town meeting. But we'll work with the police department and our animal control offices and other stakeholders to really help educate the community on how we can responsibly strike a balance with our wildlife.

[Speaker 5] (2:07:19 - 2:07:22)
Any questions from the board on wildlife?

[Speaker 1] (2:07:26 - 2:07:27)
Thank you. Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (2:07:30 - 2:07:36)
All right, moving on, we will move on to installation of no parking signs at the Michon property.

[Speaker 2] (2:07:43 - 2:07:44)
Sean, is that you?

[Speaker 3] (2:07:44 - 2:07:48)
Or is it Alaska? Yeah, I don't see.

[Speaker 2] (2:07:49 - 2:08:02)
I'm fine just, I mean, if you guys want a presentation, that's great, but I would make a motion to approve the recommendation of the Traffic Study Committee to install the stop signs, as indicated from opposite, sorry, along the frontage of the Michon school from 17 Burpee to 53 Burpee.

[Speaker 18] (2:08:02 - 2:08:02)
Second.

[Speaker 5] (2:08:03 - 2:08:04)
All in favor?

[Speaker 18] (2:08:04 - 2:08:04)
Aye.

[Speaker 2] (2:08:04 - 2:08:05)
Aye.

[Speaker 5] (2:08:06 - 2:08:27)
Thank you. All right, we'll move on to the consent agenda. The consent agenda is designed to expedite the handling of routine and miscellaneous business of the board.

The select board may adopt the entire consent agenda with one motion at the request of any board member. Any items may be removed from the consent agenda and placed on the regular agenda for discussion.

[Speaker 18] (2:08:28 - 2:08:37)
I need to remove one of the minutes, the minutes on July 20th.

[Speaker 5] (2:08:38 - 2:08:42)
The minutes of July 20th, okay. What change do you need, Mary Ellen?

[Speaker 4] (2:08:42 - 2:09:02)
So the question is, Bill Demento, Paradise Road, claims the director of finance and administration told the select board that ARPA funds couldn't be revisited. Did he say in there that it couldn't, because I didn't, I don't go back and listen to the tapes, but did he say that it just is not true? I thought he said something about it not being true.

[Speaker 5] (2:09:02 - 2:09:04)
I don't recall off the top of my head.

[Speaker 20] (2:09:04 - 2:09:16)
I believe what Mr. Demento said was that is anybody going to come forward and explain that it was a falsehood or something like that?

[Speaker 3] (2:09:17 - 2:09:18)
You know, we can go back and we can.

[Speaker 2] (2:09:18 - 2:09:24)
Yeah, we should definitely, we should go back and let's make sure we quote him because he's purposeful in his words, isn't he?

[Speaker 4] (2:09:24 - 2:09:25)
Yes, that's what I'm going to do.

[Speaker 2] (2:09:25 - 2:09:26)
We should, yeah.

[Speaker 3] (2:09:26 - 2:09:56)
I don't know if it's important to, you know, have these minutes verbatim, especially if, you know, frankly, it's, you know, we're going to create an incredible administrative burden to go through every conversation and make it verbatim. We try to catch the context of the conversation and make sure that we report things that would be important, you know, for historical context, not so that individuals, if they want to come in and just.

[Speaker 4] (2:09:56 - 2:10:00)
I'm good with that. But we'll double check it.

[Speaker 3] (2:10:00 - 2:10:06)
I certainly don't want to misrepresent what Mr. Demento would be seeking to convey.

[Speaker 4] (2:10:07 - 2:10:47)
If on the second page you have here, it says, Ms. Fletcher would like to sit and clear up the process. On the second page, or excuse me, third page, third page. You have Ms. Fletcher would like to sit and clear up the process. Ms. Fletcher would like to clear up the process. I'm not going to go sit anywhere. All right.

And then I just want to, just because I did go to an open meeting seminar, any documents that are provided in any of these meetings, they need to be attached and added to these minutes. Okay.

[Speaker 5] (2:10:52 - 2:10:57)
So are we going to approve the minutes as amended on 7-20-22?

[Speaker 4] (2:10:57 - 2:11:01)
They're going to go back and check on 7-20. So just remove 7-20.

[Speaker 5] (2:11:01 - 2:11:10)
Okay. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda with the removal of July 20th, 20 minutes? Do I have a second?

[Speaker 20] (2:11:11 - 2:11:12)
Second.

[Speaker 5] (2:11:12 - 2:11:16)
All in favor? Aye. An administrative report.

[Speaker 3] (2:11:17 - 2:14:56)
Okay. I'm pleased to report that I have a interim assessor that I'll be recommending to the board at hopefully our next meeting. Mr. Richard Simmons, who we recently appointed as a conservation commissioner, is a retired assessor from the town of Linfield. Richard has a terrific background in valuations and appraisals, and I think he'll provide us with many months' worth of support. This gives us a little time to really go out and find a part-time assessor that can fill that important position. We are busy with the construction of a new elementary school.

We have hired a demolition contractor, and we're scheduled to begin in August. As we discussed earlier, the traffic pattern is coming together. This will be fluid, and we certainly expect the first two weeks will provide us with a lot of information.

Again, I've asked the chief to work closely with the neighborhoods and the PTOs. I fully expect that we're going to need as much help as we can get. But these types of events can really help build community and help create community, and I know that it's stressful, but it's also a wonderful part of new experiences, and I'm looking forward to just making sure that everybody's working together on that.

We are working on a number of vacancies with our board. Diane has been really diligent at reaching out to board and committee chairs. As I mentioned earlier, I thought we had among the best conversations with our veteran stakeholders last week.

We will be having monthly meetings, but some really great ideas are starting to come together, including helping the VFW perhaps take use of one of the three vans that we have at our senior center. Over the last few years, we haven't traded any of those vans in, and so they're sitting at the senior center. It might make some sense to either convert one of those over to a veteran's van to help our veterans get to appointments or maybe even finding an electric vehicle that our veterans agent and perhaps some senior center drivers could use to help our veterans get additional support.

I really want to thank Jody Watts, who has done an absolutely wonderful job getting our newsletter out. If you haven't had a chance to sign up, you can at our website, swamps.ma.gov, and subscribe. There's a lot of great information in there.

I have been working closely with our health director about getting information from the city of Somerville about smart boxes for how we can mainly deal with some of the rodents that we have in Swampskate. These are increasingly a challenge for public health, but I think there are some really best practices. Lastly, I really just want to thank our extraordinary summer rec staff.

If you are out in the community and see all the staff working with all of our youth, it really is extraordinary. The stand-up paddleboard program is an absolutely tremendous success. I would encourage members of the board to get out there and see if you can balance your way around Fisherman's Beach.

That's my report.

[Speaker 5] (2:14:57 - 2:14:58)
Any questions for the town administrator?

[Speaker 19] (2:14:59 - 2:15:03)
Did you just touch upon the ARPA survey that went out? Do you want to talk about that?

[Speaker 3] (2:15:03 - 2:15:51)
Yes, we did send an ARPA survey out, and we are going to be seeking input from residents. We did want to make some modifications after the meeting with the veterans. We want to put some language in there about how some of those funds could be helpful to our veterans, but certainly we will be getting more information out about folks engaging with us.

We want to hear any ideas about how these ARPA dollars could help us build community. As we've mentioned before, if we have to default into fixing pipes with ARPA dollars, we will do that, but that's not my highest and best use of these dollars. I think we should have big ideas.

[Speaker 19] (2:15:52 - 2:15:57)
And right now, where could folks access the survey? On the town website?

[Speaker 3] (2:15:57 - 2:16:07)
It is on our website, but I will get some information back to you tomorrow on that. I think we did post it up on our website, but I just wanted to make sure that's up.

[Speaker 2] (2:16:07 - 2:16:09)
Maybe a robocall at some point?

[Speaker 5] (2:16:09 - 2:16:33)
Good idea. Let us help disseminate that information to the public as well. One of the things, Sean and Diane, for that matter, is how do we grow our newsletter?

If right now we're emailing to over 1,000 residents and we have 15,000, we have 6,000 households approximately, how do we get that number to a more critical mass?

[Speaker 3] (2:16:33 - 2:16:43)
You can throw another event. If they go up and buy a beer or a glass of wine, we can— But in all seriousness, I think David asked a really good question.

[Speaker 2] (2:16:44 - 2:17:31)
We send out regular bills. In my view, there should always be something besides the bill. We can do it.

You can't give them 20 things in their packet, but we do mailings, and there's predictability to every resident here, their card saying that big, bold letter, sign up for the newsletter, here it is, or whatever. Just one thing at a time, we're doing quarterly mailings to people, and we should figure out a way to use that because the Internet isn't spreading the word beyond this. I think the 1,000 people that were signed up are because they are more on the Internet and using god-awful things like Facebook.

But let's use snail mail. Let's use that because I do think that people notice that when a bright red piece of paper pops out of a bill or whatever. And just come up with a system, have a calendar.

[Speaker 3] (2:17:31 - 2:18:11)
I think that's a great idea, Peter. We should use that because it's ubiquitous and it's part of what we do. I do think it's probably going to be important for us to go to a number of different groups and just try to engage them.

When you think of 1,000 people, not a lot. We probably do need to reach out to some of our faith-based organizations and civic-based organizations and just find a way to connect to them because, like everything, we may not get everybody with one idea. We need a bunch of them.

[Speaker 5] (2:18:11 - 2:18:48)
Of course, but it needs to be a continued effort, and I think one of the things that we had discussed several years ago now, time flies when you're having fun, is really those new resident packets. I checked the website. It's not there anymore, but there was a welcome packet from 2012, which is when I moved to town a decade ago, and I think that's an opportunity to really leverage the relationships and the incredible realtors that are welcoming new residents to town.

So let's utilize them as a resource.

[Speaker 3] (2:18:48 - 2:19:25)
I had a conversation about that just this week, and I absolutely agree. I'd love to have some type of gift. We talked about towels or beach balls or other, you know, but there's better ideas.

And, David, if you have ideas about what you think would make a special Welcome to Swanscript packet, please share it with me because we should do something. We have funds in the budget, in the select board budget, that we could use to help seed these types of efforts in helping people feel welcome.

[Speaker 10] (2:19:26 - 2:19:27)
One free beach pass.

[Speaker 3] (2:19:27 - 2:19:29)
One free beach pass?

[Speaker 10] (2:19:31 - 2:19:32)
Encourage people to come out.

[Speaker 2] (2:19:33 - 2:19:44)
I'm telling you, look at it. These are like, literally, I'm not going to say anything because you've heard me for seven years say, where's the welcome packet? I know, I know.

Katie's spot on. David's spot on.

[Speaker 5] (2:19:46 - 2:19:48)
Spot on. Anything else for Sean?

[Speaker 10] (2:19:48 - 2:19:49)
Did you get a welcome packet 12 years ago?

[Speaker 5] (2:19:50 - 2:19:53)
Ten years ago, yeah, I did. What was in it? Paper.

[Speaker 10] (2:19:53 - 2:19:54)
Seven years ago, I did not.

[Speaker 5] (2:19:54 - 2:19:55)
Paper.

[Speaker 3] (2:19:55 - 2:19:56)
All right.

[Speaker 10] (2:19:56 - 2:19:56)
There was none.

[Speaker 3] (2:19:57 - 2:19:58)
We will do better than paper.

[Speaker 2] (2:19:58 - 2:19:59)
Thank you, Sean. Thanks.

[Speaker 5] (2:20:00 - 2:20:05)
Thanks. What else do we have? Oh, we never had public comment.

[Speaker 19] (2:20:06 - 2:20:13)
Oh, no. Not today, unfortunately.

[Speaker 5] (2:20:14 - 2:20:30)
So, public comment. Okay, great. We welcome members of the public.

Feel free to step up to the microphone. Please announce your name, your address, and I would ask that you refrain from political comments.

[Speaker 7] (2:20:31 - 2:20:33)
What does that mean exactly? What does that mean?

[Speaker 5] (2:20:34 - 2:20:35)
We'll let you know when you do it.

[Speaker 7] (2:20:35 - 2:20:45)
Freedom of speech, right? Okay. So, my name is Danielle Leonard.

Yep. 93 Linden Ave. I'm a town meeting member for this recent event. So, I want to thank Katie first.

[Speaker 5] (2:20:45 - 2:20:47)
Danielle, you want to talk into the microphone, please.

[Speaker 7] (2:20:47 - 2:23:35)
Thank you. My voice carries. It's pretty good.

Katie, I want to thank you first of all. Your questions and comments, public safety, in regards to the Valini Street situation, very great. Very appreciated.

Very necessary. It's a huge concern. I have a child going into kindergarten at Hadley, Stanley, Hadley, whatever we're calling it.

So, I appreciate that, especially the crossing guard piece. I'm a former employee of the school system, so I saw firsthand the lack of crossing guards. We'd often have teachers out there doing it, random people, sometimes no one.

So, that's a real heightened sense of security for me, in terms of little kids walking around, densely populated, as Sean says. So, you hit the nail right on the head. So, I really, really appreciate that.

I wasn't here for that tonight, though, I will tell you. I was here for what you mentioned about the survey. I did take the survey.

I saw it online. I think it's a great idea. The problem I have is that we paid out $100,000 in ARPA money before that survey was put up.

So, without anybody's input from the town, that decision to pay, I don't know, 25, however many people, that's circulating all around the ever-popular Facebook that Peter referenced, is disconcerting to me. I'm trying to understand what the criteria was for the people on that list and the amounts that were allotted to those people, or those positions, let's not even say people. Who wants to, you know, name names?

No. So, in looking at what I saw, it was very heavy with department heads, and, you know, some people lower on the totem pole were getting the smaller amounts. I didn't see school custodians, right?

Those guys were there through the whole time. If we're talking about people on the front lines during a pandemic, where were the senior center employees that were there? Where was Gina Bush, right, who stepped in as executive director when Maryland stepped down and ran it from her house and delivered meals to hundreds of our most at-risk population in a pandemic?

Why were certain people left off? But then we have some past employees, right? We have the former chief, you know, various other people that no longer work for the town with pretty large amounts.

So what is—I can't, in my head, make sense of what exactly the rationale was in drafting that list and coming up with those amounts. So that's my question.

[Speaker 2] (2:23:35 - 2:23:41)
Can I interject? I think it's a great question. I would encourage you to reach out to the town administrator, and you and he can have a conversation about it.

[Speaker 7] (2:23:42 - 2:23:44)
Okay, why would that not be appropriate here?

[Speaker 2] (2:23:44 - 2:23:47)
Well, public comment's not a back and forth. Public comment's when we listen.

[Speaker 7] (2:23:47 - 2:23:51)
I'm aware of that, but you can respond. There is—it's not an absolute.

[Speaker 3] (2:23:52 - 2:23:58)
These are personnel matters, and if you want to have a conversation, I'd be happy to meet with you and we can talk about it.

[Speaker 7] (2:23:59 - 2:24:11)
I don't even need specific personnel questions. I'm just trying to figure out what your rationale was and how you decided. Based on— Because it looked to me like it was picking shoes, and that's not the perception you want to have.

[Speaker 2] (2:24:11 - 2:24:14)
Great. Can we just move on? Thanks for the comment.

That's helpful. Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (2:24:14 - 2:24:17)
Wait, I do have a comment. Thank you for coming up.

[Speaker 7] (2:24:17 - 2:24:22)
Yeah, I'm waiting two and a half hours to be told that I can talk about it in private. That's not what I'm here for, Peter.

[Speaker 2] (2:24:22 - 2:24:25)
No, no, no. I didn't say you can— We're happy for the comment.

[Speaker 7] (2:24:26 - 2:24:27)
I don't need a back side door conversation.

[Speaker 2] (2:24:27 - 2:24:30)
That's not what I'm here for. We're happy for the comment. This is public comment, though.

Yep.

[Speaker 7] (2:24:30 - 2:27:21)
Fine. So I'll continue with my public comment, then, because I have others. I watch at home typically.

I don't usually come here. This is the first time I've ever come here and sat here for two and a half hours. And I was absolutely dismayed to see a dressing down of the chief of police for no good reason.

The man has been here three months. And because there's some ridiculously adversarial relationship between this town and its unions, it's now on public display, and it's completely inappropriate. You want to talk about having a conversation in private off to the side?

That's what that should have been. I don't care if he—he can't tell Kevin Reen what to say and what to do and shouldn't be, like, dressed down in front of public display asking why, you know, he can't control his staff, for lack of a better term. No one needs to see it.

We don't want to see it. I want to see a congenial relationship between this board and the unions of this town so that this town functions properly, because guess what? It doesn't right now.

I know you like to think good things are happening. This is the most divided I've ever seen this town, be it about school choice, building a school that I am entirely for, that, you know, you did great things about. I was so proud of that.

And then we get to this stuff where we're fighting with police, we're fighting with fire, in public, displays like this. Like, this is not Swamp Scott. This is embarrassing.

A crosswalk isn't embarrassing to me. This display is embarrassing. You know, two weeks ago, when you guys are fighting amongst yourselves, like, what have we become?

To me, this board is the role model for this town, right? So I want this board to behave and operate the way I want my kids to behave, right? I want you guys to be role models for them, for everyone else in this town who's lost it, for lack of a better term.

And, you know, you've got neighbors fighting and everybody picking a side and everything's politicized. It just doesn't need to be. And it's on display.

So in my opinion, and in the opinion of lots of others on Facebook, which, you know, is used quite often when people are running for election, right? So it's used quite often in this town to gossip and whatever else. I said, forget Facebook.

I'm going to come down to the Board of Selectmen. I'm going to tell them myself, as a taxpayer, as a resident, as a parent, what I think, right? So that's my public comment.

If you want to respond, feel free. You want to talk to me offline, happy to do that, Sean, certainly. Not trying to tell you what to do with your money.

I get it. This isn't Amex. It's not IBM.

You know, we're not in a position where we just dole out funds as one person sees fit. We live here. We're residents.

We have got to have some say. Even just understanding where you're coming from, right? It's a benefit to you.

It's a benefit to us.

[Speaker 5] (2:27:22 - 2:27:22)
Thank you, Ms. Lanou.

[Speaker 4] (2:27:23 - 2:27:26)
Thank you for coming and saying something. Thank you.

[Speaker 10] (2:27:26 - 2:27:33)
Thank you. Anyone else?

[Speaker 5] (2:27:33 - 2:27:37)
Any other comments? Select Board, Don.

[Speaker 4] (2:27:39 - 2:27:45)
Do you have any comments, sir? Put him on the spot. Oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to put you on the spot.

[Speaker 5] (2:27:46 - 2:27:56)
Select Board, Don. Peter. Anything?

I'm thinking for a second. Katie.

[Speaker 10] (2:27:57 - 2:27:58)
I need to just...

[Speaker 5] (2:28:00 - 2:28:04)
I had something while everybody thinks, if that's okay.

[Speaker 10] (2:28:04 - 2:28:04)
Please.

[Speaker 5] (2:28:05 - 2:29:22)
Sure. So, I just wanted to read an email that was sent from Karen Bonner, 32 Middlesex Avenue, Unit 2. As a citizen of Swampscott, I want to say thank you for your ongoing commitment, continued hard work, and for tackling important issues, even when they aren't the most popular.

I've lived in Swampscott for the last 15 years, having spent most of my life a short walk away in Lynn. I have great affection for my hometown, but 15 years in Swampscott, home is where the heart is. Lynn is a large city with different government structure and starkly different culture.

It has been an adjustment understanding small-town government. I don't know any of you personally, but I watch the Select Board meetings and try to keep abreast of town happenings. Unfortunately, the social media sites I've followed in my attempts to stay informed can at times be toxic.

I think the job of a Select Board member is difficult and requires incredible commitment. So many stakeholders and constituents with their own priorities and agendas. You all have families, jobs, and careers, and yet I imagine you spend a large number of hours on town business.

Thank you. I see lots of exciting things happening in town. Beach improvements, climate change, mitigation efforts, road repairs, to name a few.

I think you have a chorus of critics who are often very loud, but for me and my family, we are appreciative. I wish the tone of discourse in town could be kinder. Karen Bonner.

Thank you, Ms. Bonner.

[Speaker 4] (2:29:27 - 2:30:11)
I just want to give you folks an update on the two committees that I had to cover this week. So CIC has started meeting. Patrick Luddy, our treasurer, has put everything together.

And what happened was we had a report from the Collins Center that showed us how to really evaluate each request. That kind of fell to the wayside a little bit. We had COVID, on every other excuse.

But now we're trying to implement that again. Department heads will be turning in their requests and start working on that. Patrick is going to be asking, in the past it was a five-year, Patrick's now asking for a ten-year.

So people will be thinking about that. CIC?

[Speaker 3] (2:30:11 - 2:30:16)
I've talked to them about 30 years. Two life cycles, Mary Ellen. Okay.

[Speaker 4] (2:30:16 - 2:30:42)
I'm just reporting on what's being reported here. But I'll bring that back to him. So the goal will be to have CIC will be completed by the end of October.

They're looking at having three meetings in October, 10-4, 10-11, 10-18. They're going to have marathon meetings, five to nine, to go over with department heads and just to get things pretty much in line. So it's very aggressive.

[Speaker 3] (2:30:44 - 2:31:23)
What I've sought to do since I've started is to get the CIP, the capital improvement plan, baked in before the budget conversations start to happen. Again, there's always going to be room for what the select board priorities might be from year to year. But most of the important capital projects, the status of good repair for all of our facilities, parks, infrastructure, that should be baked into the plan.

And we should prioritize it so that our debt service number can be set so that we can build the rest of the budget around the debt service.

[Speaker 4] (2:31:23 - 2:31:55)
Peter, there was a few years ago that you made a comment about a possibility of adding a subcommittee to the CIC when they were looking at very, very large purchases such as the fire truck. I brought that up last night again. But it was several years ago that you had said it.

So I really couldn't remember everything. If you can just let me know if you have any more recommendations on that. I promised I'd bring it back to them.

Solid waste, so now I'm going to move from CIC to solid waste, which is a very exciting committee.

[Speaker 3] (2:31:57 - 2:31:58)
Trash talk.

[Speaker 4] (2:31:58 - 2:32:46)
Trash talk. So the solid waste will be meeting again this week with the board of health. And the biggest issue there is some of these big parties that we're having and how to take the opportunity to get some recycling in.

So I think I sent you a copy of that. So we're going to focus on that. We're also focusing on the possibility of – they are focusing on the possibility of getting glass out of our waste stream and then doing something with the glass, with the possibility of even buying our own glass crusher and then using that in DDW.

So those are the highlights of my committees. And board of health is chasing the coyotes. But they'll be meeting this week on the 10th.

[Speaker 5] (2:32:47 - 2:32:48)
Thank you, Mary Ellen.

[Speaker 4] (2:32:48 - 2:32:49)
You're welcome.

[Speaker 5] (2:32:51 - 2:32:52)
Katie, anything from you?

[Speaker 20] (2:32:53 - 2:32:54)
No, thank you.

[Speaker 5] (2:32:54 - 2:33:00)
Okay. Well, that wraps this. With that, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.

[Speaker 20] (2:33:00 - 2:33:01)
So moved. Second.

[Speaker 5] (2:33:02 - 2:33:02)
All in favor?

[Speaker 20] (2:33:02 - 2:33:03)
Aye.

[Speaker 5] (2:33:03 - 2:33:06)
Aye. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Joe.