[Speaker 2] (0:24 - 0:32)
Oh my God, it's gonna be awesome. We're totally going to switch name tags. I'll grow my hair out.

Oh, that's right. I can't. Yes, you can.

Just need a pandemic.

[Speaker 7] (0:48 - 1:09)
All right. Welcome to the May 9th, 2023 select board meeting. Can we rise for the pledge?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[Speaker 6] (1:14 - 1:15)
All right.

[Speaker 7] (1:15 - 1:54)
All right welcome we're gonna get started we have we have Max Casper in the audience and we are with the indulgence of the board I think it's important that we start with with our capital articles that will be article 16 appropriation for recommended capital projects I know there had been some questions at previous meetings concerning concerning the some of the capital articles so I thought it was appropriate to have Max here to answer any and all questions that the board may have.

[Speaker 2] (2:00 - 2:17)
So I think there was a question that was raised by a couple select board members having to do about the Clark School planning money so if maybe you can explain what that money is used for and what the school department's contemplating with that plan. Hold on a second. Let me just grab that one.

Sorry. Thank you.

[Speaker 9] (2:17 - 4:16)
So the the likely vision for the the reuse of the Clark School is for the school administration and the school preschool to move in there following the opening of the new elementary school when the elementary students move to the to the new school so that's been the vision of the school district for for a fair amount of time. At this point it seems like the likely timeline would be about one school year after the new elementary school opens so this capital item is really the first funding to kind of kick that off and it would be for like the preliminary design phase for that project. The goal of the 200,000 in funding would be to get us to the point where we have a schematic design and a detailed scope of work and a detailed cost estimate for the larger project at the Clark School so you know at this time we have a good idea of the needs to revitalize the building make it appropriate make the spaces appropriate for for that use that I described but you know you really do need to go through a schematic design process so we can truly see how that would look how what what what would the scope truly be and and what it would really cost you never know the you never really know the cost of you to you bid it but you don't even have a true sense of the cost so you can get down that design process at least a little bit.

[Speaker 2] (4:16 - 4:43)
So can you help us understand the capital plan and fiscal year 26 is a hold on six million dollars assuming that to be the project cost which I think took some of us by surprise just because we haven't focused on it or some of us haven't focused on it so can you speak to that and is that just a hold number is there small medium large versions of that number etc because that is a pretty significant number to retrofit and so any clarity on that would be helpful.

[Speaker 9] (4:43 - 5:23)
Sure yeah and it is a significant number it would have the potential to go down following a schematic design it would have the potential to go up it really was developed by me kind of taking a look at the existing building the needs of the different systems we have invested in some of the systems at Clark which is good which cuts into the ultimate cost and not it's not a full gut or a teardown or anything like that but you know it really it is an old building still and it hasn't had significant upgrades to many of the systems so there will be a significant project to kind of get it up to the to the standard that we would want it to be.

[Speaker 6] (5:23 - 5:32)
Next is there any summary report of the thinking that went into the kind of reprogramming of the Clark as kind of context for this?

[Speaker 9] (5:32 - 6:37)
I don't think there's a document that speaks to that but I know that you know that concept predates me in the facilities I would say that recently I've been the one to sort of take take hold of it I mean I've spoken with the school committee I've spoken with CSE and FinCom about it I I do feel as though there is consensus within the school department that that's the appropriate use of the building and I should mention that there is another shoe to drop with that and that is in taking all of those people that are going into Clark are coming out of the middle school the middle school is starting to burst at the seams itself because it's housing all of the four grades of middle school and all those other uses I described and the middle school is a very needy building and there's you know I won't beat around the bush there is a middle school project needed in the coming years and this is a precursor to that so that we can start understanding what that project would look like and understanding the needs of that building after after Clark I think it would be good just for the select

[Speaker 6] (6:37 - 6:56)
board to have clarity if maybe I'm the only one that doesn't you know kind of what that thinking was what what's happened with the middle school to the Clark and kind of movement because you must have some good sense of that because you're doing a little bit of planning for that but for all of us have visibility this is the next big big investment so we need to start getting

[Speaker 3] (6:56 - 8:10)
a few years ago I think maybe four years ago we conducted a $100,000 study of the middle school and so we hired a company to go through that building and look at all the building systems so we have a pretty good idea of what those needs are for the middle school I think getting some of these preliminary dollars allocated this year will help us really think about the space needs of the school building in terms of converting some of the spaces over to a professional office space for professional school administrative staff and other functions but also a preschool you know the educational specifications that we have to develop for those spaces typically that's a you know study and things are all constantly evolving with ed specs and and facilities and so some of these dollars are going to help us really get that scope of work tight and get those cost estimates in line to really come back to town meeting or come back to the select board and really explain in detail

[Speaker 6] (8:10 - 8:32)
you know yeah and I don't doubt that the $200,000 was necessary to get going on all that I'm just trying to make sure I understand do we have some have we really thought through the movement from middle school to Clark and exactly what uses or is the $200,000 really going to be engaging someone from the outside to help us do all that kind of space planning and utilization development

[Speaker 9] (8:33 - 9:51)
what stage are we at basically I can speak to that a little bit because I mean I think from the school department's perspective we're at a pretty stable point with that use plan now there's there's pieces that are open for discussion the multi-purpose room at Clark for example I think that one is has a little bit less clarity of the exact use of that will the preschool use it as part of their functionality are there potential community uses as part of that that's open for discussion but it's also important to understand that you know there's a cost associated with any part of that analysis at Clark so if we said okay it's a total clean slate we want to look at this property from ground zero what is the what's the potential we can do that but there's significant costs to like getting us up to the point where okay we know we want to continue to use it as a preschool and administration now we can go to an RFP kind of directing the designers that this is what we want to use it for versus kind of paying for the study to determine if that's what we want to use it for if we you know if there is consensus that that we do want to use it as that it's not probably good money spent to have someone tell us to use it

[Speaker 6] (9:51 - 9:53)
for what we want to use it for sure absolutely just want to understand what

[Speaker 4] (9:53 - 10:33)
the state of plates yep absolutely fair question so max I have a question so I think where I'm coming from is I just want to know out of our out of our four buildings which will be the high school the middle school a new elementary school and then the Clark school what the actual breakdown is and if there has been somebody who is really scrubbed looking at all the space that's in these four properties how we're really maximizing the use out of those four buildings I understand that you're saying that the school committee looked at it and they said they're good I'm just wondering if that's their expertise or if we have had an expert who's really looked at all of our space and

[Speaker 9] (10:33 - 13:19)
said this is the best way to use it well I mean I can't say that like that specifically has been deeply studied but if you if you break it down there's a new elementary school being built we don't need to study how we're going to use that right it's going to be used as an elementary school all those spaces have been strategically planned over the last three years so that sort of would be off of the table the high school is is going to be used 9 through 12 I think you could possibly see if there's some spaces in there that over the last 15 years have changed but I don't think you know where it's a relatively new building I don't think you're gonna see kind of drastic reuse of many spaces within the high school maybe maybe some so I think it to me the question really comes down to Clark in the middle school and how those two interplay and and I started to speak to that a bit but to kind of take it a little bit of a step further part of the reason I feel that it's really important that we start to move people out of the middle school that can go to Clark is that not only is there kind of space issues over there but if we're not going to build a new middle school which you know is a remote possibility but would be incredibly expensive and and just a massive project that would be really difficult for a town that just undertook a hundred million dollar elementary school that means we're gonna have to kind of work with the middle school building that we have in the space that we have and we're gonna have to continue to use it as a middle school while that's happening now that probably means a phase project it probably means on-site swing space along with the middle school as it's being used to be a very you know likely a very complex project and what it most importantly means is that we need to maximize the use within the existing middle school so clearing out a wing that's currently used for administration in preschool that allows you to maximize the middle school so I think we absolutely should all be looking hard at the middle school and how and how we can best use those spaces now and in the next five ten years to kind of to build momentum with the project I'm describing but you know I'm getting a little bit ahead too because the middle school project is it's it's preliminary I'm talking about it but it it has so much there's so much that has to happen as that project evolves that you know there's nothing nothing none of that is certainty but I think that this this puts us on on a good path that is what I would say

[Speaker 2] (13:23 - 13:34)
is preschool by fee this predominantly no it is but the so some some students pay some students don't pay.

[Speaker 8] (13:35 - 13:44)
It's integrated so part of the student body is by need and part of the student body is in the lottery system.

[Speaker 6] (13:50 - 14:17)
So any other questions? Not about the Clark. Speed tables.

So what's the follow-up in context of capital here where are we going to find the money for police and when you do a collaboration of people etc do we have unexpended funds do we have where are we going to be able to operationalize that?

[Speaker 3] (14:17 - 17:03)
Sure you know we do have annually unexpended funds in the town budget that we can reallocate but I certainly you know appreciate the board's concern about ensuring that we have money in capital I did send the board an email late this afternoon you know with a recommendation that we had an additional $200,000 to the pedestrian safety capital request so that would be 1.2 million dollars that $200,000 will help us continue to advance pedestrian safety strategies. I fully intend to seek to use some tailings this year to implement some of those speed tables we do have we have identified you know some tailings in the town budget we had a mild winter and you know you know this is a an important time of year to make these investments and both the DPW director and assistant town administrator and police and fire chiefs have been busy meeting and strategizing on on how to identify scopes of work and designs that will help us advance not just the speed table recommendations but other enhancements to crosswalks and elimination of slip lanes and really focus on that complete street prioritization plan that we put together a few years ago that identified 20 to 30 key priorities for pedestrian safety.

In terms of budget we have chapter 90 funds that we can allocate to address some of these priorities get over $300,000 a year we also appropriate funds in the town budget for paving they can also be identified as possible funds to help support pedestrian safety for years we've just used that to pave streets and get on top of our pavement management system we have a company that comes out and literally videotapes every road mile in town and we know where we have longitudinal cracks and alligator cracks on different roads but we we haven't spent enough time and effort and funding on pedestrian safety investments so we're gonna we're gonna dial back a little bit on that pavement management and really focus in on pedestrian safety.

[Speaker 2] (17:08 - 17:18)
Okay so so if I heard correctly you just said you you're requesting an additional $200,000 of capital for fiscal year 24 for pedestrian safety initiatives.

[Speaker 10] (17:19 - 17:19)
That's right.

[Speaker 2] (17:19 - 17:54)
Okay so that's assuming FinCom and CIC would need to review it and FinCom would need to review it as well. I'm grateful for you doing it because I believe if if it's a priority it needs to show up in the budget and I look forward to whenever everybody's coming back after town meeting to continue that conversation because I was not satisfied by that conversation and until I see the plan and see it works and I appreciate seeing the dollars because it doesn't work without dollars I look forward to being convinced it's it's so overdue so I

[Speaker 6] (17:54 - 18:02)
appreciate you putting it understood yeah likewise obviously but you referenced CIC and Finance Committee needing to review that before town meeting they do right

[Speaker 2] (18:05 - 18:15)
so good news is the chair of both committees are listening to us right as we speak yeah maybe they can review it in real time so we'll work with both the Finance Committee and

[Speaker 3] (18:15 - 18:29)
the CIC to review this additional request and typically both committees do meet prior to town meeting so there's an opportunity for us to really have that conversation so are there

[Speaker 7] (18:29 - 18:35)
additional changes other than the additional $200,000 I have I have one more just ask us to

[Speaker 2] (18:35 - 19:27)
revisit as a board making a recommendation to ask FinCom to reconsider its non-recommendation of the $50,000 for the town hall planning for the basement a CIC recommended FinCom didn't recommend I would like us to recommend I had a chance to go visit that space again this week and go down there I'm I I believe the town administrator is correct in the vision of collaboration space and the need for space in that it's $50,000 to make sure we have a plan and to understand it and I think it's it planning dollars have always benefited us they have always benefited us we've done too many projects without plans and then found that the results of the project weren't what we hoped for what we desired and so I think planning dollars are critical for this and so I appreciate that so I'd ask the board to reconsider and ask vote to recommend

[Speaker 7] (19:27 - 20:17)
the capital with the $50,000 for that as well yeah I visited the space as well with the recreation director probably a week ago and it was it was it was a large blank canvas and I certainly I certainly see the potential down there the potential for a large meeting space that is not available currently in town hall on the first floor or on the third floor the first floor is you know it's great for a meeting of five or six but it's it's it's far too small to hold you know the entire building or even a department head meeting and and certainly as we come back and we move from virtual to hybrid to in person with a lot of our other boards and very active committees I think it's important that we have a space for them to meet that's my personal opinion

[Speaker 3] (20:20 - 20:34)
thank you I for me this is a gift for future generations it's it's your town hall and certainly I'm you know I it's my hope that it just you know is going to have that function and utility

[Speaker 8] (20:34 - 21:59)
I know I I think if um if I could if I remember correctly one of the reasons why this became a sticking point for myself was because it was unclear that this was then going to be a uh it was unclear this was developmental dollars right I originally said oh it's only going to cost you $50,000 to change that space so I think in the future to to help us through this it's important that when we're looking at these funds that there is some designation that then those become future funds and the projecting those future funds out because I think we spoke about this originally that you know I get that it's for planning so you might not know but then you yourself said you know we could need x amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars to change that space um so I think it's just important to understand that developmental dollars are normally well spent but you do want to an idea of what you're spending them on and you do have an idea so give the give that information to us in the future and I think um it then becomes an easier concept to support um so you know I'm not against you developing a plan but it sounded like you had more of a plan and that would have been better it would have served you better to say that up front I think in this particular instance sure I appreciate it so I am not in support of

[Speaker 4] (21:59 - 23:23)
spending $50,000 to make a plan and have a plan sit on a shelf and there is no information here that shows backup dollars for construction of redoing the basement and the information that's ever been delivered to meetings that I've attended the additional cost to redo the the basement would be between three hundred and four hundred thousand dollars with middle school and all the other capital needs that we have I don't think that this is a good use of money at this time I was come back and look at it next year or even the year after I just feel that we have enormous amount of expenses we just added or you just added $200,000 onto pedestrian safety and I'm sure you're going to want to add more pedestrian safety if you look at your capital plan here seawall repairs we only have $250,000 in seawall repairs forecasted for FY 24 nothing for 25 nothing for 26 27 or 28 so if you go down and you see the $50,000 that we said that the finance committee said no to if you go out that line you see no additional additional projections on cost on there and I don't know how many meetings you have how many meetings you really need to have how much staff you have but I think there are other ways to deal with that over the next 24 months rather than spend $50,000 to possibly put a a plan up on a shelf but but don't we need that don't we need

[Speaker 7] (23:23 - 23:35)
the initial $50,000 to figure out what the actual cost is I mean you could I mean we could you need to spend you need to spend that money to to analyze it well we we've we've been the meetings

[Speaker 4] (23:35 - 24:02)
I've been at we've been told that the forecast looks three to four hundred thousand dollars so I don't see a need to spend $50,000 and not have a backup if you said to me look let's spend 50 this is a real need this is a need that the town has let's spend $50,000 here and then project out three to four hundred thousand over the next couple years to get it done I'd be better with that but I would really be better with it if we had seawalls here in 25 26 27 and 28 and you have

[Speaker 3] (24:02 - 24:09)
nothing there so we've spent millions on seawalls like let's not we can't we can't there's so many

[Speaker 2] (24:09 - 24:35)
projects that we could point to that we haven't spent money on so she's I think giving us an example of a that's my example so I think it's just there's always going to be a long list so I think we're no one's no one's wrong it's it's just a question priority so I'm happy to make a motion to recommend this article when we're ready but if there's other projects that we want to talk about or keep talking about this that's fine as well so

[Speaker 6] (24:35 - 24:44)
that we should make sure that we've reviewed everything for any other changes and do all changes at once as opposed to making individual changes I was going to recommend favorable action

[Speaker 2] (24:44 - 25:12)
with the inclusion of $50,000 for the town hall basements planning and the additional $200,000 for pedestrian safety those that title not incidentally the total actually it equates to the initial recommended total capital that the town administrator and is the budget recommended so we're not actually above his initial recommendation for fiscal year 24 we're actually at the amount of his recommendation for fiscal year 24 got it I have one other change

[Speaker 6] (25:12 - 25:32)
which does not change the total but changes the naming and I agree with it you haven't even said it but I can see what your fingers pointing to the vinnin square planning I would like that to be changed to town-wide planning or economic development planning may very well be you know particularly used for vinnin but I wish it to be kind of a little bit broader I think that makes

[Speaker 3] (25:32 - 25:37)
sense and I think you know more flexibility we have I think the more opportunity we have to be

[Speaker 2] (25:37 - 26:46)
that much more strategic appreciate that so let me just make my motion and then we can discuss more if that's okay so I'd make a motion to recommend favorable action on article 16 with the following three changes to increase line 20 to increase to change finance committee's recommendation or to differ from finance committee's recommendation to recommend $50,000 consistent with CIC's recommendation to change line item 34 to for the project title to town-wide planning and what economic development time widening economic development and to add a and actually I don't want to I'm sorry and that would be borrowing the other one would be borrowing as well and then I I would prefer to add a different line item for pedestrian safety different from the million dollars you have there because that million dollars is already allocated to add a new line 36 for pedestrian safety improvements of $200,000 borrowing as a new line 36.

[Speaker 7] (26:47 - 26:47)
Do I have a second?

[Speaker 6] (26:51 - 27:03)
Would you let any one Ryan's got his hand up so I don't know the process here should I second and then he comes back in okay second okay additional discussion I just had a quick question why do you

[Speaker 4] (27:03 - 27:07)
well why are we why do you want to add another line item and not just change the 200 because I

[Speaker 2] (27:07 - 27:33)
don't want it to be assumed that that I I believe I would have I believe that million dollar project has costing greater greater than a million dollars or need greater than a million dollars and they're seeking ways to mitigate that amount I don't want them to see this $200,000 as a way to further mitigate that $1,000,000 or that project that that $1,000,000 is going towards that's school school focus yeah we can say school focus and this is town wide okay I just didn't want it to be

[Speaker 7] (27:33 - 27:42)
gobbled up by that so we do have uh do have the chair of the CIC Ryan Hale with the stand up

[Speaker 11] (27:45 - 32:18)
um hey folks can you hear me okay oh yeah we can cool thanks for um inviting me to participate so I think a couple questions a couple comments you know I can't speak for the other members of the capital improvement committee but I do want to reiterate a couple points that that we included in the letter uh that's in the warrant um we're trying to shift the capital uh planning cycle in two two ways right one is that we're actually looking at a multi-year plan and evaluating that as a multi-year plan and instead of uh cramming for the final which is what we've done in the past three cycles that I've been involved in this right and uh I you know we have a committee to evaluate the request for the today I'm learning about the slides in the meeting I haven't seen there was a copy on whatever email was mentioned before but like we can't give projects that come in two days before a town meeting the level of scrutiny and diligence that that they require right so I'm gonna have to be personally convinced about where this suspiciously wrong number came from and why this is the right thing to allocate the extra 300k towards um the other discussion around the 50k for the basement um is taking up a disproportionately amount of high amount of air time right talking about 0.8 percent of our capital budget for next year and we've gone around and around in circles about whether or not we should have a plan for what's new with the town hall space right so I think the point I'm trying to make here is that I am taking responsibility for the role that the CSC has in engaging with the town administrator and the department heads and the select board to get to a point where we are meeting more regularly where we are looking at a multi-year plan every time we get together where we are grouping together project requests into a small number of themes that you don't need more than one hand to remember what we're here to achieve right we have infrastructure to take care of we have educational expectations we need to deliver to our our community we have community development priorities and we have ways that we want to engage people and make it right it doesn't have to be a lot more complicated than that and when you look through the plans you know you have to turn three pages to see what's happening right so I think we can simplify the plan we can make it more memorable about what our objectives are as a town and you can you don't have to think too hard to see how the dollars on this project line up to the priorities that we have as a community so we will meet we have a we posted a CSC meeting for I think Tuesday or before town meeting starts where we can review whatever requests that have been recommended by the select board and the administrator and you can weigh in on that I would I would like to reiterate one specific request whether this is Max to execute on it but we've asked a number of times to just write down maybe you'll fit on a piece of paper maybe we need to turn the page twice draw me a picture of the properties in town that belong to the schools and show me what's going to happen between 2023 and 2028 how is our use of those properties going to evolve what's changing each year where the body's going where the where's the revenue coming from where the cost going and just helping tell the story about what we're doing with these properties over the next few years right because that story I can't find it anywhere and I go to all these meetings I can't expect the other however many thousands of people in town to be able to follow the narrative so I think it'll be much easier for us to garner support for a multi-year plan to maintain and evolve those those buildings if we can point to a picture that tells the story easily so that's something I can help you make it max if you want but like that would be an asset that would really help us build support for for what we're doing to invest in these properties over the next few years thank you for taking my comments if you guys have any

[Speaker 6] (32:18 - 32:59)
questions I'll be online thank you Ryan I just want to say thank you very much Ryan I'm not sure if you were here at the beginning of the meeting but that your last comment was certainly echoed by a couple of other of us as well so and I appreciate you taking over this chairing that committee and your plans and your write-up sound terrific so thank you anyone else okay motion a second we do is there is anything you need to worry about putting something in subsequent years to address the issue of the fact that there's nothing for some things in subsequent years would that make more sense we're voting for this year okay all right all right

[Speaker 7] (33:00 - 33:06)
so there's a motion for the second all in favor aye opposed aye me opposed

[Speaker 4] (33:06 - 33:20)
I just want to be really clear for the minutes I'm opposed I'm in recommendation of the finance committee's recommendation that's where I stand with capital I don't want anybody thinking I'm

[Speaker 7] (33:20 - 34:58)
opposed the entire capital project all right we have a number of of veterans and veterans supporters here so thank you for joining us so we're going to jump into article 10 and article 11 article 10 is the acquisition of land at 12 to 24 pine street the select board has certainly discussed this at a number of our meetings we've discussed this in executive session prior to and you know we're we're looking to to advance and have a and have a substantive conversation about the acquisition of land on pine street which is adjacent to the vfw and I thought it was appropriate to to invite our bso mike sweeney as well as members of the vfw the vfw auxiliary as well as the chair of the affordable housing trust kim martin epstein so so welcome everyone and I look forward to to really having a you know robust conversation and really addressing the the questions and the concerns of of this board around this this project so article 10 the acquisition of the land were there any questions for the board as to as to the acquisition of

[Speaker 2] (34:58 - 37:49)
well I think that let's kind of maybe an update so we have the signed purchase and sale agreement we've working with town staff proposals for environmental and geotechnical due diligence which would happen after town meeting assuming assuming town meeting passed it the town does go hard on forty thousand dollars of money the second town meeting votes yes um that money is is gone but we do have a due diligence period that forty thousand was just carrying the time it takes for us to get through the town meeting process I believe the primary question that has come out is one about how assuming we want to do a swamscot veteran swamp that senior veteran swamscot swamscot veteran most importantly how we ensure greater success in ensuring that swamscot veterans are the beneficiaries of these units compared to other tax credit state funded programs where the lottery hasn't been appears to have not as been as successful for swamscot preference and so I think that you guys got me wrong I think that we're interested in hearing um from our veterans agent in particular about you know learning a little bit more about our veteran community how we can strategically use the time between now and roughly three years from now when we're doing a lottery to strategically reach out inform educate so that we can maximize the potential for swamscot veterans um to be the the beneficiaries of these units understanding the state does put a limitation on how much you can do a local preference it's state money primarily that will fund this um there'll be some town money some affordable housing trust money potentially but since it's state money the state does have limitations on local preferences but assuming the state allows us to do the maximum 70 percent local preference we want to do everything we can to make sure I think is the sentiment to make sure that swamscot veterans are the beneficiary and so therefore they are have filled the lottery if you will so that they are the beneficiaries here and I think it would be helpful to understand the demographics and frankly between the veterans uh agent and VFW and the other organizations the auxiliary the other organizations about how we can start today with a plan to educate and reach out in a way that gives us all greater confidence that swamscot veterans will be the primary beneficiary there are plenty of veterans in need so it's not but since this is a swamscot very significant swamscot investment as well in addition to things I think that there was just we wanted to have that dialogue tonight and to hear from the veterans agent and happy to hear from whomever wants to talk about this but just to help us understand how we can start tonight with a plan to to no guarantees in life but to get to a place of better success than than we have on other affordable projects do I have to do it nope

[Speaker 5] (37:50 - 38:36)
um just hi i'm kim martin epstein before you get down a rabbit hole that is unnecessary I just want to make it clear that unlike a local preference federal fair housing does recognize veterans as able to have a preference you can state a preference for veterans housing so we don't have the fair housing thing to overcome that we would with a local preference that's great that means that the real job is to ensure that the units that are created will be filled with the veterans that in fact when you build it they'll come so the issue isn't going to be our ability to express the preference it's going to be just making sure that the people get found and can qualify for the units that will be that will be built so before yeah I didn't want to I didn't want to start out a conversation worrying that how do we have a preference because we can have one

[Speaker 2] (38:36 - 38:41)
no yeah I appreciate that the the veterans isn't the issue it's the slums got veterans that is the

[Speaker 5] (38:41 - 39:00)
issue for that we're trying so I think I think any developer who's going to come in and do this is going to want to work closely with the veterans organization to to gather that data and to prepare the affirmative for housing marketing plan to target the exact people that have been identified that's you know that's the strategy that can be developed over the next few years

[Speaker 4] (39:01 - 39:15)
thanks kim kim will the state allow us to have several preferences so swanscott is a preference veterans is a preference and then seniors that's a preference are we able to have three preferences

[Speaker 5] (39:16 - 40:26)
um so the way that the state will view us is the veterans preference is allowable senior the senior housing is a design and marketing opportunity as is essentially most of the local preference so the way you design the project that that targets seniors is you know the way that you design the project and the size of the units and and then of course it's the additional outreach it's it's identifying the populations that are least likely to respond to um availability to make sure that that lottery is you know the people who apply for the lottery are income eligible veterans income eligible seniors and income eligible swanscott residents the law says that if you can't fill those units with people in those categories you have to still fill the units with income eligible people and so it's really incumbent on the developer working with the local population to come up with an approvable affirmative fair housing marketing plan that hits all those points but that doesn't somehow offend fair housing so there's nothing in the fair housing um parameters

[Speaker 8] (40:26 - 40:48)
that prohibit us from uh vetting our veteran our swanscott veterans to say you will if you were to apply into this lottery you would be able to have a seat at the table to be eligible for this there's nothing to preclude us from doing that to target specific swanscott veterans and help them look at

[Speaker 5] (40:48 - 41:05)
their financials right yes right i think right i think the idea is to do that legwork now this is why we're we're doing this legwork now so that we're really confident when when we choose a developer that we're not asking them to to build a project that can't be filled with the target

[Speaker 7] (41:06 - 41:12)
population uh kim can you can you speak to what to what happened with the outreach just outreach

[Speaker 5] (41:12 - 41:49)
uh for the michon project i can't i have no idea i think the best answer the best part to answer that would be the property manager because they're the ones who are following the plan i mean my guess if if if it was not filled with swanscott residents my guess is that there were insufficient income eligible swanscott residents who applied i mean that would be the natural conclusion right the it is an affordable housing development and it is designed for seniors and those are the things that those are the people that have to fill it if if somebody applied from swanscott and they were of the right age but they were not in the right incomes here they're not i

[Speaker 2] (41:49 - 42:42)
mean it's it's it's income restricted that's that's so that that's the concern we're trying to overcome right because there's two reasons there's two reasons that outcome occurred it's either the marketing wasn't broad and deep enough and it just wasn't a well orchestrated marketing plan or b there weren't enough income qualified seniors and if it's b and there wasn't enough income qualified seniors then that problem still exists for this project because the income levels are going to be very consistent that's right here so therefore the the better answer the answer we hope is true is that yes it can be a little bit that there's not as many income qualified but really that it was a marketing thing that we just didn't get word out successfully in a let's just say a semi-affluent community which is not used to marketing affordable housing right whereas other communities have more abundant opportunities than us and that there was a failure of marketing

[Speaker 5] (42:42 - 44:42)
and i mean in defense of people who do affirmative for housing marketing plans that are approved by dutd for a living and just in defense of them i'm going to say that that plan had a lot of eyes on it and that plan certified that there were income eligible seniors in the area that was being marketed that would fill and that was true whether everyone had to fight a bitter pill when they acknowledged that maybe there weren't enough swamp scott existing swamp scout residents that i don't know i mean that's a feature of of affordable housing the affordable housing trust has many times encouraged people to think about when we are when we're digging in our heels on local preference that we sit here as a community of opportunity next to many communities of lower income people and that building a you know whether we intend to or not the way we state things builds a wall around our community that a lot of people don't benefit from i mean the people who live in michonne are swamp scott residents now they are our neighbors and there are residents now where they came from before at this point it doesn't matter so i think what we have what we can do now is help the next developer target the right income levels so that the veterans project hits the right income levels that will maximize the ability to accommodate swamp scott veterans i mean it can be you know we know that the income tiers can go from the 30 percent all the way up to even 100 maybe if the numbers work so targeting swamp scott veterans is also going to be an exercise in finding out what the likely income tiers are and playing with those numbers i think and making that work that's one way to handle it perhaps or maybe it won't maybe it'll turn out that there's no problem maybe it'll turn out that there are sufficient small house you know households of veterans excuse me who fit all the income tiers that are naturally going to occur at this at this

[Speaker 2] (44:42 - 45:37)
space i mean that's just to just to kind of put it out there don't i i'm asking questions that don't necessarily reflect our beliefs we're asking questions because questions are being asked of us i personally i've said but previously i regret i regretted doing the local preference at michonne i think that was a mistake personally and i while i understand that people may want a local preference on this project too i i personally get comfortable without the local preference because i i believe it's somewhat arbitrary but others are asking the question so we want to at least understand it and if the decision is to do a local preference which you know i'm one member of the board we want to we want to do it substantively but we wanted to succeed and and and have that happen so i think you guys correct me if i'm saying it wrong we're just trying to understand it so that we understand the the likelihood of success based on the choices that we make that's

[Speaker 3] (45:37 - 46:37)
all peter i'm glad you said that i don't think there's a person in this room that frankly wouldn't go out of their way for any veteran that lives on the north shore or anywhere in this commonwealth and i i i think that's a value that everybody in this town believes very strongly in i do think it's okay though for us to ask some of these questions just to understand the parameters um look swansk it's a wonderful community and frankly we're trying to build some housing for veterans that frankly need care and need support and i'm grateful that everybody has shown up tonight to help us um it's complicated not a lot of communities build veterans housing like we're we're doing something that truly is kind of unique here it's complicated um but we want to make sure that you know swanscape veterans um you know have really an opportunity for for this type of housing and so you know having these conversations often and just reaching out um are critically important

[Speaker 5] (46:37 - 46:59)
another key thing will be to identify the kind of supportive services that will go with the housing which really enhance the appeal to veterans who need the services so i think that's i mean it's a it's a real that's a real mark i mean that's a real marketing that's a help tell your friends kind of marketing like this is what's going to be here and how valuable that will be well david it

[Speaker 6] (46:59 - 47:10)
looks like we're well on our way to uh filling uh pine street with folks that are here um so uh people that are interested so i mean i'm interested to hear from the vets themselves hold on a second

[Speaker 4] (47:10 - 48:25)
i just i just want to be really clear i am i do want to see a local option i do want to see the majority of these spaces filled with people from swamp scott having an opportunity because this is swamp scott money that's being invested and it's a it's a one-time shot for people to get into the lottery and get into the building once the lottery is finished there's there there's no benefit allowable for swamp scott residents other than just to go into the natural lottery so for me i think um i just want to be really clear that it is really important that the majority of those rooms majority of those rooms are for swamp scott swamp scott senior veterans or swamp scott veterans and i i do want to see the possibility of the the ami lifted above the 60 percent and possibly up to the 100 because right now less than 25 of swamp scott residents had the opportunity to get into michonne and um i don't think that that's a good thing so i want to see i just want to see more opportunity because we have swamp scott residents calling saying this is a need this is what we have so we need to really identify do do we have a need and can they qualify or how do we how do we make

[Speaker 5] (48:25 - 49:26)
make it so they can qualify that's really it's gonna that's really important input that's you know again like we're all essentially saying the same thing we've all identified this to-do list of what you know before we choose you know before we craft and choose craft an rfp and choose a developer what do we want them to build if we want them to build units that house people at you know between 30 and 80 or 30 and 100 am i then we need to tell them that and and design that and and ask for that you know and then and that is what they'll propose that's what they'll you know put a performer together to reflect and they will apply for state funding sources that will be um you know will qualify for that kind of thing if that's what we want i think the key is to not ask somebody to build something that we can't fill right so so we're all saying the same thing you want it to be swamps got people you want it to be swamps got veterans you want it to be people who qualified various income tiers we have to make sure that when we deliver this request we're not asking

[Speaker 2] (49:26 - 50:06)
for something that can't can't be done but but i think it's important though kim that we contextualize that request the higher the ami request that we make the harder it is to secure i mean it does become more difficult to secure ample funding from the state to do that because there are less programs available to fund higher ami so i'm saying that not to talk us out of it just but to let us know that we're increasing the lift of the project the challenge of the project because there's less funding for those higher amis at the state level it doesn't mean you don't ask for it just means that that's a harder program to get funding for and so we're just taking that on and we just need to do that consciously to know that that's just i mean the reality of i i suspect

[Speaker 5] (50:06 - 50:28)
that the funding applications are going to look really different and i mean because of the other pressures that the state's going to have to really accept the fact that without higher ami income tiers and a lot of these projects they're not going to be able to pay for it because the construction costs are very high interest rates are higher so there's all these different things that are going to go into that that are going to be part of that conversation

[Speaker 2] (50:28 - 52:00)
can i just i want to i do want to hear from others but i i'm having and i appreciate what you're saying maryellen and i don't truly know the right i know what's right for my where i'm at but i'm also cognizant that this is technically an it's an informal partnership with the vfw and the vfw is a vfw that's not just swanscott it's a vfw that has a tremendous amount of individuals from other communities that benefit as a matter of fact i i can't say this but i'd be interested no i'm i think it could be not a majority of the people that visit and use the vfw regularly maybe from out of swanscott and and that's to me that's wonderful like i i actually think that's part of the fabric of the vfw right we're we're and we i'm gonna use the word subsidized don't take it the wrong way but the town invests in that as well and that's not a swanscott majority place most likely it's it's veterans from all over and i actually think that is um one of the nice it's just a really nice feature that it's like inclusive and it's a community and because because these these zip code lines are arbitrary right they're just zip codes frankly it doesn't matter what side of the zip code you live on and and i i find that important so that's that guides me a bit in terms of that as well but i i understand what you're saying we're spending a lot of time right because it's this zip code that's putting the money yeah no i i get that but um i just want to do no no i get it i want to do a better job than what we did at michonne yeah no i want i hear you i hear you i'm i'm i agree with that as well i do have i do have one

[Speaker 4] (52:00 - 52:11)
question as the chair of the affordable housing where are we at with the discussion on how much money the affordable housing is going to be putting towards this project um the affordable housing

[Speaker 5] (52:11 - 54:07)
trust voted affirmatively to you know be able to stand up at town meeting and support the warrants so you're and to entertain you know the discussion and essentially entertain and ask for funds i think you know we haven't been asked for funds so we can't answer the request but we're expecting to be asked for funds and we're expecting to put funds in and the question that i've been puzzling about is is there a substantive and it's like this is really esoteric so we don't have to go through this right now but is there a substantive difference in us putting in funds at acquisition versus waiting for development you know this is these are questions that someone else is going to have to answer not me and not right now but the idea that we would be putting in funds is a presumption we are expecting to so we just but we don't know you know when and how much and there are funds that i think are being anticipated for the acquisition that are really appropriate for acquisition and are need to get expended i think like arpa funds need to get expended soon and so saving them for later is a bad idea versus affordable housing trust funds which aren't gonna we can spend them later so you know i think there's a little bit of a timing dance that everyone's gonna need to deal with but we are fully expecting to put funds in and you were unanimous in your in your we were unanimous in our presumption and there's no dollar there's no dollar associated i mean we you know we don't function that way i mean we can't award something that has no price tag on it so we are what we usually would expect was to be asked with either you know a developer would come with a pro forma or there would be like a specific ask and we would say oh let's vote on that but we weren't not asked to vote on anything so i so i can only tell you that we're assuming and presuming and expecting to put money in to this i just don't know how much and i don't know when because we we haven't seen any actual

[Speaker 7] (54:07 - 54:28)
you know so so so kim based upon your experience you know typically how how would the funding mechanisms work you know would you want to see you know would you want to see a pro forma would you want it what what would what would you need to see what would the affordable housing trust need to see to to get comfortable with you know entertaining a you know a funding request

[Speaker 5] (54:28 - 55:52)
well if the funding request was coming from a developer they would you know we know this was what happened with elm place we know that at that time we knew that win needed to go into the funding round and they needed local dollars so they came to us initially for just a commitment so that was like their ticket to put their application in are we talking about development dollars we would be happy to you know to award a certain amount of development dollars at at any time that a developer needs to go in round we know that they need local funds so if a developer's asking it's either a situation like that where they need they need some funds to go in round or they have the pro forma and they've mocked it up and they've got different sources and we're one of them and they're saying can you do that number and we would say looks great you know or we'd say yeah that's let's let's commit funds to that you've worked really hard to make that pro forma work and we'll we'll start there so i think it really depends who's asking and what they're using as the justification for the ask i mean we haven't had a lot of experience with this we only just got funds and elm place was the first time we were actually asked for funds at all and it was for a very specific reason and by the time they were awarded their full budget they didn't need more than the small amount that we'd awarded anyway so this is what i was thinking just to give people

[Speaker 6] (55:52 - 56:07)
context though affordable housing trust has a total of how much right now and are there any restrictions on how much you can devote to one project or another 800 and something i believe

[Speaker 5] (56:07 - 57:07)
is we're up to okay so the restriction and the restriction that we always talk about is the one that it's not renewable these are these were funds that got came to us from very specific sources we have no renewable source so once we spend it these funds are gone it's great to spend it because that's what it's for but we want to be judicious about it because we want to get the biggest bang for our buck so you know the only restriction is figuring out if the ask is sort of proportionate to all the other funds for instance that could be used because we don't want to put an outsized amount in if if someone else could basically because it just it'll limit us to other other projects but there are going to be projects that really need more local sources and we'll have fewer state opportunities and so we understand that so we're ready to go with with that with that conversation basically and figure out on a case-by-case basis so at the risk of i guess being

[Speaker 2] (57:07 - 58:28)
too direct i think the select board or prior versions of the select board because we have elections and things change um did talk about and not putting it you have to take it to your board but um having upwards to a three hundred thousand dollar contribution from the affordable housing trust and so that's just a foreshadow that's the conversation we're gonna if it hasn't happened that's the conversation we're going to want to have to offset the town monies um the town's investment is disposed disproportionately large for a community right the communities typically aren't buying land and then contributing the full value of that and stuff and so we're between what we expect the non-profit rfp bidder to bid in the land cost or a ground rent payment together with those dollars from the affordable housing trust offset because we're using our per dollars not because we don't have places to use our dollars we're using the upper dollars because we have our per dollars but we actually have other places to put the arpa dollars so we're looking to recoup some of them to be able to reinvest i'm just sharing that with you again understanding i just don't want you to think anybody's being coy here just that and i think you've heard that number before but that's that's the order of magnitude that we're we had talked about and chime in by the way to my colleagues if i've said anything that you don't agree with but i believe i'm i'm accurate you're accurate yep okay so thank you though we're now that you

[Speaker 4] (58:28 - 58:32)
disclosed that you have 800 maybe a little number well i think no but i think you should i think you

[Speaker 5] (58:32 - 59:11)
should acknowledge too again that that we we don't we we won't have it for anything else and there are other and by the way there are things that have come to us and so if you take all of the state sources and the tax credit equity and other town sources and put them all together you know that's there's a lot of other sources too so 300 i mean 300 000 for a town contribution to a project with what 40 something units that's a great number i mean that doesn't sound crazy to me and it sounds totally reasonable and um you know let's keep let's explore what that looks like whether it's an acquisition whether it's in the development side it won't matter at the end of the

[Speaker 2] (59:11 - 59:54)
day that's right so i think it's a when it's a dialogue and as we get into the pro forma point to see how much they can pay in a ground rent payment actually recoup the town can offset some of the stuff that we're talking about like we couldn't be happier if the pro forma and the funding sources offset 90 of what we are putting out there then that alleviates the the pressure we're not looking then to have you disproportionately fund i think it's so we understand that dynamic nature of it just your partnership and frankly as we get going here having you guys be an instrumental part of putting this together and and and using your expertise is going to be usually beneficial and i don't think we'll be successful without asking you guys to be partners at the table in terms of setting this rfp up and the selection for success the other thing i would

[Speaker 5] (59:54 - 1:00:33)
point out is that they're going to be parts of this overall development that will not qualify for housing dollars or low-income housing tax credit right and so it's so it's you know so sort of coming up with that sort of nugget that the town puts in that is not part of the development cost on the housing side is another way of looking at it figuring out how to acknowledge that as a town we might put in more dollars in the aggregate than we would as a local source and a housing project but there's more than just housing that's being developed here and that's important that's part of what we're going to do so we may end up writing a

[Speaker 2] (1:00:33 - 1:00:40)
bigger check on that okay thank you any other questions from the board well i really i really

[Speaker 4] (1:00:40 - 1:00:47)
appreciate your hard work kim martin epstein thank you

[Speaker 12] (1:00:49 - 1:02:26)
patrick burke hello everybody uh patrick burke 215 windsor ave um commander at the vfw dav member marine corps league member american legion member so part of all those communities just really excited about what is being discussed here tonight sean's point about you know us in wanting to help every veteran no matter where they are i mean that strikes a chord because we don't check zip codes as peter pointed out but yet you know being a town resident i want to make sure we do right by our town's veterans so it's a terribly difficult spot to be in but it's a great spot at the same time so um just wanted to come tonight hear this thank you for all the conversation for the hard work that's already gone into this certainly you know we haven't even begun the work right we we've got to figure out who the audience is going to be should the taxpayers of the town approve this project but make sure we get those veterans that really need it and um you know looking forward to being a partner with with all the organizations with the town with whoever wants to make this happen so uh that's my commitment to everybody and you know on tv everybody that's listening we'll make it work it's not going to be perfect there'll be our little dust ups but we'll have them we'll get through it so um thank you and i i did have just two quick questions as far as residency how long what is what is the legal definition of a resident of the town of

[Speaker 2] (1:02:26 - 1:02:31)
swamp scott move here now i have no i actually don't i can tell you i can just tell you for

[Speaker 10] (1:02:31 - 1:02:35)
benefits that we use statewide if you live somewhere you have an address that's that's

[Speaker 2] (1:02:35 - 1:02:44)
residency okay kim i assume that's what dacd does as well i assume that's what it is there's no there's no length the time you need to have been a resident okay for different programs you'll see

[Speaker 10] (1:02:44 - 1:02:52)
six months for like an annuity or for a tax but you'll see six months but i believe for any kind of benefit like this i mean i guess if i'm not mistaken it's a day at one day and then the other

[Speaker 12] (1:02:52 - 1:03:23)
thing is as we look at this you know maybe just just a look again very early in this look at at those dependents of veterans in in you know that are 100 percent living on the those disability payments from their loved ones who may have passed so maybe there's another bucket that we can somehow work into this to to really expand it so again i'll shut up but thank you appreciate the work so far looking forward to a lot of hard work coming up thanks patrick thank

[Speaker 7] (1:03:23 - 1:03:32)
you um no no i did any other questions from the board i just think that's a very good point about

[Speaker 8] (1:03:32 - 1:03:53)
dependents of past veterans because um you know they've served the ultimate sacrifice and so if we can help them in any way this might be an opportunity to do that i'm not sure how but we should 100 explore if we can that we should so yeah i can just and if i could just say too we're

[Speaker 10] (1:03:53 - 1:07:09)
looking at the you have different kind of categories of surviving spouses yeah surviving spouses that are uh to what patrick alluded to which are considered gold star families a uh they receive a benefit we could track that easy anyone who is a surviving spouse we don't have that data today just a surviving spouse that isn't whose loved one's death wasn't considered by it wasn't ruled by the va to be um service connected so that's stuff we don't know but it's really i think these days i think a lot of uh when you're looking at a population in town of 450 veterans by the latest census can everyone hear me so uh it's 450 veterans by the latest census 80 of those veterans are 60 years old and above so you're looking at about another five percent if you're looking at about a three-year turnaround for this project if we wait long enough i'll be eligible oh good but uh i guess what i'm saying is the lion's share of the veterans in in our community today are seniors or in the area code or rounding third as i would say um so that is what we do know you don't necessarily when that comes to that i think that really all comes into play when we're talking about um as you mentioned about the services that we do provide what we can do is we can with that population we don't have access to their income we don't have access to their assets and when it comes time to open up a list we you know it's a snapshot you don't know who's eligible when they're eligible what we can promise is everybody who is on that list will have the opportunity we can make sure that they're educated to it as a community we can do our best with that i think the world's full of unknowns we don't know what that means in terms of how many people will move in um and then it comes to the the idea of whether or not those you know how many people will be in there on day one who lived in swampscott before then i don't know um i that's what i have to just be honest about but i do know that out of those 450 veterans we would do our best to make sure every one of them understands what they're eligible for what they can apply for and i think it would be helpful as we move a little forward to find out what the michonne did not in any sort of pointing the fingers sort of way but i think anytime we can do a sit back and say you know every every one of us who does anything i you know it's seven o'clock there's three things today i do differently right so i think if you look at it that way you can find a way to possibly see what they maybe would have back if they had that opportunity but i do think in terms of us just being wide-eyed about the we're honest about what the the reality is i don't know what that number will be and i think we should go into it with you know elbow grease look and make sure we contact everybody but i think that if we're looking at it that that would be my uh my take on that i think as we go through it we'll see income and that kind of thing if there's anything other than that i think that's the main point i wanted to make our demographics in town in terms of our veteran population i think they're kind of mirror the town itself i think it's a town we're a little older in terms of demographics so i think that and i would not make any assumption within this list that any of these veterans or their families are more or less affluent than the rest of the population so i think that maybe those sort of like understandings as we move forward will inform

[Speaker 4] (1:07:10 - 1:07:33)
how we do it and lead to a better better product i believe do you have the data if there's say um mr smith was next door to me and he just became widow his wife served in a war do you have data that he's he would qualify do we know that mr smith is even counted we would see it from one

[Speaker 10] (1:07:33 - 1:08:48)
list to the next from one year to the next okay but we the one thing we do have um we can go to the state for it there's a there's a list of um and uh through uh tough rock military friends we do an awful lot of work with gold star families that population is in terms of uh people who receive the the benefit from the the federal government from the state that's a list that's a tangible list it's it's usually the surviving spouse for this generation it tends to be female but that benefit itself it should be noted isn't income based it's a it's compensation but we that list we we would have we don't um what we would do be able to do is go through this list and um you know frankly uh when you look at last year's list i mean i think we all look at the list sadly enough i think every one of us look at a census list and that's how we would know but you could compare list to list but you wouldn't have any list of the surviving spouse frankly it's something that they don't ask for in housing they don't ask for it a lot of things under chapter 115 the program we run for the state where we uh we aid surviving spouses and we have a very big challenge across the commonwealth trying to get to that i'm not

[Speaker 4] (1:08:48 - 1:08:53)
talking about gold star i'm talking about just um your regular veteran you know yeah that would be

[Speaker 10] (1:08:53 - 1:09:18)
population we under chapter 115 world that that surviving spouse in massachusetts unlike any other state in the common in the country we assist those surviving spouses and we have them on the list i but we don't have um when they come in but we we tend to do it's more of an elbow grease outreach thing we don't really have it unless we have the knowledge prior to okay mr chairman i would make

[Speaker 2] (1:09:18 - 1:10:29)
a motion to recommend favorable action of article 12 and article oh sorry yes we're going to try that again that's the hadley school um we're not there yet um i would make a motion to have the select board recommend favorable action on article 10 and article 11 in the town meeting warrant article 10 though the motion language would be what's printed in the um warrant except it would delete the uh bonding language which is the phrase that says and further to raise inappropriate transfers and or borrow some money to fund said acquisition that that phrase would get deleted since we aren't bonding money here we're going to use our funding for that so that would be just a modified motion on the town meeting floor okay do i have a second second all right all in favor aye mr chairman i would suggest you have been um if not the biggest one of the biggest advocates for this and it'd be great if you actually um made the you won't make the motion the motion would be made by the fincom but if you would perhaps do the presentation happy to thanks for all your work on this

[Speaker 7] (1:10:37 - 1:10:59)
so this this will be presented uh at town meeting monday may 15th hopefully hopefully or tuesday or thursday um so please please come please uh provide your support and uh i appreciate uh continuing the uh the journey with everyone so thank you thank you all thank you

[Speaker 6] (1:11:03 - 1:11:06)
i moved 11 and 10 and 11 together

[Speaker 7] (1:11:14 - 1:11:20)
okay uh next up uh article 12 disposition of land at the elementary school

[Speaker 2] (1:11:23 - 1:11:37)
um do you mind if we do uh the article three which is sorry article four budget i believe there's some changes we didn't recommend on that got it and i believe our administrator is recommending some changes tonight you can take that out of the order if you don't mind

[Speaker 6] (1:11:37 - 1:11:41)
that way we can just knock that out and else i didn't get a chance to thank you sean for this

[Speaker 3] (1:11:42 - 1:11:48)
supplement follow-up on the arpa funds yeah not a problem i just um just pass that out when did

[Speaker 2] (1:11:48 - 1:12:00)
of what's available but but it doesn't but it's not it's not accurate anymore because you're about to make a change that doesn't have a season tomorrow night i'll update it

[Speaker 3] (1:12:00 - 1:12:19)
sure okay that's fine it's already outdated but i appreciate you doing it one thing you don't have is a list of you know projects that you know i've received from that sometime after town meeting we'll come back and we'll talk the wish list that's right yeah

[Speaker 8] (1:12:19 - 1:12:33)
sure this is what's been expanded and there was a call to citizens like to all all citizens of swamps got to to put out requests for arpa like right like didn't we call for everyone to like

[Speaker 2] (1:12:33 - 1:12:38)
no we did departments i don't we did departments i don't think we didn't get it done other

[Speaker 4] (1:12:38 - 1:12:48)
communities have and that's a very good no we did ask community we did ask the community what your recommendations are for are we did we give it did we allow an email i don't know i'm sorry

[Speaker 8] (1:12:48 - 1:13:00)
maybe that's something that i'm not sure i know oh i think we did so you have the answer to your question so i would like to see that um the results of that outreach as well because i think it

[Speaker 2] (1:13:00 - 1:13:10)
happened all right so what's the budget changes that are being recommended yep so um

[Speaker 3] (1:13:12 - 1:15:12)
we are um making an adjustment um in the human resources um department budget um org number 0 1 1 5 2 0 1 uh 5 1 1 2 x for the diversity coordinator we're changing that from six thousand dollars we're adding 94 000 for an adjustment of 100 000 and we are making a ten thousand dollar reduction in the deputy chief line item for the police department this is a vacancy um you know this is a new position we're making a twenty thousand dollar reduction in snow and ice we're making a fifteen thousand dollar reduction in the fire department fitness incentive um and we're making a twenty nine thousand dollar reduction in group health and a twenty thousand dollar reduction in the salary reserve so that um is a interdepartmental transfer um you know of 94 000 that will help fund that full-time diversity coordinator or director position this is a position that um we um put in the budget two years ago and received town meeting support for we frankly need it and i appreciate the board's uh encouragement to put the full funding into the budget this is a critically important position it builds upon a number of important investments that we've made as a community and i've discussed these changes with department heads today and i'm proud to say every department has supported these changes we know all these budgets are tight but this is a priority i appreciate their support well i certainly i appreciate you kind of working

[Speaker 6] (1:15:12 - 1:15:17)
this through and making this happen making it kind of part of the core budget as opposed to

[Speaker 8] (1:15:17 - 1:15:59)
arpa i think it sends a message that we are committing to a lifestyle change not uh um not an afterthought that we're committing as a town to say diversity equity and inclusion is a priority we are going to budget for that priority and we are going to learn what we don't know unlearn what we have to and commit going forward to be the best versions of what our community can be i think that's what de and i is and i and i i i'm glad to see a commitment to it but now i want to see it spent in a meaningful way so that we can see meaningful things come from it

[Speaker 4] (1:16:02 - 1:17:10)
so in the spirit of diversity i'm going to say i'm completely against this um i think this is not in the town's best interest i think what's in the town's best interest is to use arpa funds and to study what our needs are what our goals are and move from there once we've identified our needs once we've identified our goals then we turn around and make a decision to add back in staffing and go with the plan that we had at the beginning of the year i'm sorry that that plan and i'm disappointed that that plan wasn't executed we were supposed to be using arpa funds to identify what our needs were um but i think it is a mistake adding a line item into the budget at this time for one staff person before we really know what our needs are and to turn around and reduce a reduce the salary for a deputy chief i don't i'd like to know why that hasn't been filled i'm wondering is there a reason that hasn't been filled because of the line item taking more money out of snow and ice the 15,000 incentive was that already dropped the 15,000 for

[Speaker 3] (1:17:10 - 1:17:26)
the fire because it says cba next to it yeah it just hasn't been expended and so we've put that in two years ago and there was no expenditure of funds it there was no expenditure in the past

[Speaker 4] (1:17:26 - 1:17:33)
but we're talking about for do we have a contract are we obligated by contract to we are and so if

[Speaker 3] (1:17:33 - 1:17:48)
individuals do take that fitness exam we'll pay them but they have to take it first okay so but we won't have any money for an entire year we won't have any money though we'll we'll find a

[Speaker 4] (1:17:48 - 1:18:02)
way to honor that okay just just so we're clear on the line item you're removing all 15,000 so that will be coming out on employee group health do we have that number so do we have the final

[Speaker 3] (1:18:02 - 1:18:15)
numbers in of what that cost is going to be we don't but uh you know we do have you know the contingency it tightens up the contingency but certainly um you know that's um you know always

[Speaker 4] (1:18:15 - 1:18:50)
a concern but yep so and then under salary reserve we'll take out 20,000 which will bring it down to zero that's right all right so again in the spirit of diversity i am completely against this i do not think it's in our best interest financially i do think we can accomplish what we need to accomplish by using 100 arpa funds and coming back and putting a great plan together with the town and with the schools i don't think that this should be 100 on the town i think we need to work together with both budgets so that we can get to our goals mariel i appreciate those concerns i

[Speaker 3] (1:18:50 - 1:19:54)
especially appreciate the concerns about collaborating with the schools um look we've worked hard to put a tight budget together you know these recommendations uh continue to keep faith with our fiduciary responsibilities to keep this town on a careful financial footing but i agree with katie and doug and and peter that this is a priority and it's so critically important that that we support this town with a position with leadership in this area we all need some help with this and frankly i think we've we've worked hard over the last few years we've made some good progress but there's more that we have to do and i think funding this position and putting the full funding in this budget speaks volumes about our values and frankly this is this is what i want swamps to really be proud of and you know we can we can do

[Speaker 7] (1:19:54 - 1:20:07)
this so exactly sean how long how long ago did we originally uh authorize this this funding for this position is this 21 okay so this is finally going to come to fruition this is going to happen this

[Speaker 2] (1:20:07 - 1:22:05)
will so we can let's let's talk about it because i think so um i want it in the operating budget because that shows a commitment and taking out of the operating budget and using one-time revenue doesn't show a commitment so that's that's where i'm at with it um but year one to me is not a hire year one's a consultant and that's because we don't know what we don't know and so i still think this money why i think it should be in the budget because it shows a commitment i actually at the mass municipal and mass select board uh board meetings today i asked my colleagues there if anybody was familiar with a town that hired a diversity consultant ultimately decided not to hire someone to oversee diversity and the answer was no like that the position ultimately is needed it's a question about what that position and what that expertise and what that skill for that community needs to be is it human resources primarily is it policy related is it and there's so many things and and well um you've studied a bit and you know some things it's really about us bringing in someone that can educate us about what we don't know and so that first year i can't strongly say enough that this should be finding and and uh there are some great references from the mma and i encourage you to reach out to the mma on that to find someone that can come in and look to what katie said soup to nuts a to z everything from everything from hiring policies to field use policies to to our bylaws to things of that housing just just in terms of how we how we how we do things and and because my guess is we have a need in a lot of places but we're going to need to prioritize in that and we need someone that with with clear eyes and and a mind astuteness to kind of help us so that then you can make sure that when we are ready to hire we are hiring the person that fills the need greatest for us so i would just ask you to to focus on this as a consultant at first just because we don't know what we don't know on this so thank thank you for doing this i think this line item is a

[Speaker 8] (1:22:07 - 1:23:15)
large task of self-reflection and departmental self-reflection can be really difficult so it is to hire somebody to do this without having that self-reflection it's it's not fruitful as marianne was saying so i too believe when i think about what this is it's a hundred thousand dollar commitment to hire a consultant to take a look at the breadth of swanstown including the school system including you know the boards and committees including town hall including the police the fire and say these are the things we do well these are the things we don't do well these are the things that we need to learn about these are the things we need to unlearn these you know and then a coordinator comes in and starts to implement those things prioritize those things so that is that is truly how i envisioned it and and i i hope that that is what comes to fruition in the next fiscal year because if we have another year where we don't spend this money i'll be beating the same drum even louder me too me too does that make you feel

[Speaker 4] (1:23:15 - 1:23:58)
any better about it i'm i've been very clear i am for three years i've said a consultant for three years okay right i still believe that this money should be coming out of the ARPA funds and not out of the line item on this budget this budget is very very tight you don't even have the dollar amounts for the health insurance yet and we're taking money out of health insurance we're taking money out of the fire department fitness tests where we're obligated for a cba taking money out of snow and ice and we're reducing the amount of dollars for the deputy chief this budget is really tight and i think that it's a mistake putting this 90,000 in the budget i would rather see use 200,000 out of ARPA to really do an in-depth and then turn around and put the money into the

[Speaker 2] (1:23:58 - 1:24:11)
budget for 2025 so sean you're sure with the deducts of what you want to do here i i i'm never going to be educated enough to be i am i went over these with i hear what marion's saying

[Speaker 3] (1:24:11 - 1:24:37)
director of finance administration i talked about these changes with department heads certainly you know it's tight marion you know as highlighted you know um you know that there's no easy decision about prioritizing any of these dollars but i do think um we are in a good position to move forward with this recommendation so okay well yeah we do have uh

[Speaker 2] (1:24:37 - 1:24:42)
i was going to make a motion but i guess we can talk more yes please you know amy if you want we

[Speaker 13] (1:24:42 - 1:25:07)
can keep talking i just wanted to mention that i just got a indication from the gic that i will have all the updated enrollment changes so i'm going to prioritize that in the morning so that i can get something out to the board uh tomorrow afternoon of what that updated production looks like based off of changes people need during open enrollment though you better thank you amy

[Speaker 2] (1:25:07 - 1:25:25)
all right so so i was going to make a motion to recommend favorable action on the budget with the changes outlined by sean in this one page summary that he just read and i think i'd still make that motion and then if something comes back and you change what you need to before monday you change what you need to before monday but that would be my motion okay do i have a second second

[Speaker 7] (1:25:25 - 1:25:57)
yeah all in favor aye opposed i'm going to abstain until we have proper information okay up to article 12 disposition of land hadley elementary school do you mind if

[Speaker 2] (1:25:57 - 1:26:02)
we do article 12 and 19 together since they're both hadley related sure

[Speaker 11] (1:26:05 - 1:26:08)
okay yeah no problem okay thank you

[Speaker 2] (1:26:09 - 1:26:43)
um you have a so i'm gonna i'm gonna make a motion first but then sure we can talk about it i'd make a motion to recommend favorable action in article 12 which is the disposition of hadley elementary school in article 19 which is um rezoning of uh relating to the hadley school property which the planning board last night recommended favorably unanimously as well yeah do i have a second second additional discussion you want me to i i just have one more question

[Speaker 8] (1:26:43 - 1:27:07)
i mean i just have one question which i've asked a million times i just want to be certain that the conveyance ceiling which has been vetted with council but that is proper it doesn't mean that we are selling the parcel it means we can convey it yeah which means we can have a long-term lease on it or something to that effect i just want to correct point that out you're talking about 12 12 12 so so i think it helps maybe just to

[Speaker 2] (1:27:07 - 1:37:07)
share kind of an update generally on on hadley just so people can hear so we uh if that's okay with you yeah so um those of you who are common watchers uh know that over the in recent months the select board voted to engage a third party uh advisor to provide us with uh market feedback and uh specific feedback relative to the possibilities of the hadley school being converted into a boutique hotel with accessory food and beverage that is one of three uses that was recommended by the hadley reuse committee and it's the one use in particular that we needed additional information to understand the the viability and the potential for such a use being put here the board has met several times we have are in receipt of a marketing study and have had other conversations regarding the the financing and the finance ability of this project and and while there are no guarantees um and and the the you know the the macroeconomic market is what it is and it could change in 60 days um i believe the feedback has shown us that it is a worthwhile venture for us to do an rfp to ascertain interest in a boutique hotel at the hadley school again the language as it reads now has it in maintaining the historic portion of the hadley school and the zoning makes that clear as well i think it's important to note and i've said this before um my my feeling about the hotel comes down to a couple of things uh first and foremost is um i believe the hadley property to be an anchor um to humphrey street and i believe that it's a critical anchor to humphrey street and i believe it's only one of two ways in which we can forever most likely change and enhance the success of humphrey street and the businesses that are on humphrey street um i'll talk in a second about what i think the direct revenue throw off will be from the hotel but the indirect revenue is uh something i want to talk more and i'll be prepared to talk more at town meeting about which is uh the money that's thrown off the discretionary money that's thrown off by visitors um and um to the hotel to local restaurants in particular but also local vendors um we need no better example than uh hiccups closing at the end of april um as to the challenges um and while we all talk about parking um being the challenge that the true the true problem that we have is bodies people who are downtown that spend money um and if we had all those people believe me the parking would have been fixed a long time ago but we actually don't have those people spending the money in discretionary ways um so i really see the hotel as an opportunity for us to really bolster humphrey street uh and to help businesses there i've said previously and i maintain that i want to set expectations it's my expectation boutique hotels and other communities have benefited um from being partners with towns which means that to enter into potentially a a pilot agreement or some type of tiff agreement that relieves real estate tax burden for the hotel to make the investment and potentially um have them paying minimal ground rent um for the project um so so what does that mean we're going out to the marketing asking someone to invest upwards beyond 20 million dollars in converting uh the hadley hotel into a 21st century building an amenity space really significant really risky investment so it's important to us that we find the right sponsor and someone that we want to partner with and and have anchor our downtown but we also need to be financially realistic about what that may take i don't hesitate saying this publicly because it's just a reality of the market we are going to retain we have retained the best um with pinnacle advisors real estate uh hotel consultant to help us uh with this and and to have their advice um we will make sure the town gets the best financial deal um from the rfp our efforts right now should be uh putting the welcome mat out to sound solid well-backed sponsors uh with track records to come to swanscott and see the opportunity uh to invest with us and to partner with us um on this incredible building um for me to put that out there i know there's other choices were community use and senior affordable housing i love the idea of a community use and i love katie's advocacy for it i think she's spot on with it but we also but i also recognize and i appreciate katie's realism to understand that that's a you know a many million dollars investment in the building that we don't have we don't have clarity at all as to how we would make that a reality right now but the the vision and the ideal of a community center should not be lost it should be using this as an opportunity to to elevate the conversation to saying where is that community center how can we make that happen we have examples all around us of communities with uh community centers that that are vibrant that are um used tremendously so that is a really important thing um i love affordable housing i spend most of my professional life at least half of my professional life building affordable housing um i care deeply about affordable housing um even if but but here i i believe that senior housing at the hadley is the wrong location um i believe that um it um will be counterproductive to helping uh humphrey street uh become more vibrant and more successful um and and even if i feel so strongly about that that even if the hadley school project um didn't go through as a hotel um my second choice wouldn't be senior housing here i think it's that important that we find a way to make sure that the hadley property maintains um a very open public use that throws off benefits uh um to humphrey street in the surrounding area um and so i know we've had conversations as a board at times about that and i'll let you all express your own feelings about that but i do want to express that it's not being anti-affordable housing i'm glad that we're doing pine street i'm glad we did michonne i'm glad that we're doing it and i want us to do more of it um i just don't believe that in this situation that it's the best interest of the town um to forever lock this property up um for senior affordable housing but like the community use we should use this opportunity to remind us that we've got to continue to find locations and help the affordable housing trust and others find other locations in town to do affordable housing and i'm grateful that we just unanimously supported the acquisition of pine street for veteran affordable housing so again in closing i would just say we don't know what an rfp is going to tell us right what we do know is that we have the right team to go out to the market and a good idea to go out to the market and we are hopeful that we will be successful in doing so assuming town meeting supports this a tentative schedule would be issuance of an rfp by the beginning of august which means that staff would work from town meeting through the end of july and with our consultants to create an rfp issue an rfp in the beginning of august which allow time for tours of the building by introspective investors and interested parties prior to the start of school the last school year of hadley and then have a response date on the rfp tentatively at the end of october of this year which would allow the select board to have public meetings and dialogues and see what the response is and then assuming a successful response potentially award as soon as the end of this year why is that important because that's part of the runway to then putting this use into effect and minimizing the town that time excuse me to minimize the time that the hadley school will be vacant it will be vacant there's nothing we can do today that will keep that school from being vacant any reuse of that school for other purposes will be extremely difficult without significant significant capital funds going into that and so we know that there'll be a period of time what we can't do and what we've all agreed to previously is the fact that we can't repeat what happened 15 years ago the last time we surplused multiple school buildings that stayed vacant for 10 plus years one of which to the point of of disrepair and water damage that there was no salvaging of it so our goal here is to do this correctly do this right do it in the way the town wants it to be done but also make sure that we're doing this efficiently so that we don't have a prolonged period ideally we would be in a situation where once the school is vacated in june of 24 god willing and the school department declares this property excess property and turns it back to the town we would then would be in a position to help the the new development team within let's say 18 months or so start start construction on the project here so the window feels good the time feels good but it certainly is something we are being very conscious about the fact that we thought two years ago about the reuse committee we had the reuse committee that we had them do the work two years ago which really set us up today to be able to have a timing that helps us minimize the amount of time hadley's going to be empty and so i think we should try and keep that schedule but more important than the schedule is making sure that we're doing it correct and again i appreciate that pinnacle advisors has been a great partner for us and gave me some information and and helped us get to this point and we don't know where this is going to end we don't know what the market's going to say which is why to do the rfp i am hopeful based on the information we have that we'll have a good result here but i believe this use is the right use and this time is the right time for us to proceed with

[Speaker 7] (1:37:07 - 1:37:25)
it thank you thank you peter um i did i did have a question just based upon you know the timeline and and you know what you what you had outlined around this article certainly is there an opportunity for an interim use of the hadley school you know

[Speaker 2] (1:37:28 - 1:38:12)
yeah so um i can't answer that question because i don't know building code enough to say it so it's something that we would need to visit with our building inspector on and our facilities director on because a change of use triggers certain code compliance upgrades that this building most certainly would not comply with we don't have ada access i'm sure there are outdated fire codes and other things that are grandfathered and the building's completely safe but from a code perspective may not technically may not technically be correct right and so i just can't speak if there's a change of use or if it's used a certain way whether there needs to be a capital infusion to make it legally able to be occupied under a different certificate of occupancy so we should explore it but i don't but i don't know the answer to that given the schedule laid out though

[Speaker 6] (1:38:12 - 1:38:16)
wouldn't we hope that there would actually be a developer wanting to be kind of engaged

[Speaker 2] (1:38:16 - 1:38:58)
pretty soon after the school yeah so i mean if we yeah if we if we awarded in january of 24 let's just say an rfp right it realistically it's it's a year plus to negotiate documents finish zoning and to have construction drawings so it's a year plus for them to best case scenario have a shovel in the ground which means that that certainly will be six months but i think more likely a year just to kind of put it out there a year where the school will be vacant and maybe even longer than that so it's not going to be a prolonged period if we stay by the schedule but again just like the hawthorn we're talking about temporary use it's a good conversation my guess is codes present some issues but we can check with the building respectively i would welcome the opportunity to

[Speaker 3] (1:38:58 - 1:39:09)
have that conversation i'll look into that um i think you're right peter i think any any kind of change of use is going to trigger you know some type of update even a community use well

[Speaker 4] (1:39:09 - 1:39:35)
i have a question can't we um so if it's a disposition of land what is the date on when it would be disposed of i mean wouldn't that have to do with the date so if it was still it was still considered an educational facility hadley elementary couldn't we still be using that as a town as a recreation slash educational use so the answer is maybe so i think we should ask

[Speaker 2] (1:39:35 - 1:39:48)
the building inspector to say what would need to happen to allow us to continue using this building when the school was no longer using it and have the building inspector give us the set of facts that complies with the state building code and fire code to know that we would legally

[Speaker 4] (1:39:48 - 1:40:01)
be able to do it or can we say that the school can the school say we are still using it and we're using it for this purpose meaning after school recreation well if the school if the school

[Speaker 2] (1:40:01 - 1:40:17)
wanted that and needed that it was still taking custody and taking care of the property that sure that that fact pattern sounds like one that maybe would comply with the building inspector but that's so let's ask the building inspector to create scenarios for us that would allow it to be continued so we could yeah that'll be great good idea

[Speaker 7] (1:40:23 - 1:40:26)
okay we have a we have a motion we have a we have a second

[Speaker 6] (1:40:28 - 1:40:32)
well do we want to hear it all from the public hearing responses from last night on this

[Speaker 2] (1:40:32 - 1:40:38)
on article 12 or should we yet hold on a minute oh we're on 19 no we're on 19 too which is the

[Speaker 4] (1:40:38 - 1:41:04)
zoning but it was again unanimously approved but i want to speak to 12 there isn't there isn't wait on 19 so i don't think there is an issue with 12 i think the issue was with 19 with the use and removing the language of the 24-hour restaurant and whatever that's right so we're

[Speaker 1] (1:41:04 - 1:42:08)
going to check with the attorneys right and that's coming out essentially that language which said read it to you it said that there would be there shall be no limitations on the hours of operation of any restaurant or bar operating from the hotel and any such establishment may provide both or either indoor and outdoor seating as a right yeah um what page i was meant to to relate strictly to the zoning code but it's very confusing so we are taking it out the planning board we've already had a held a public hearing on this article last night this aspect this particular issue was brought up and discussed at length and since then the planning board has decided that we will meet just prior to the town meeting just to have a quick meeting to vote to to amend the bylaw and we'll have something printed up to that effect where it's just going to be removed yeah so all of that will be addressed in the uh during your

[Speaker 2] (1:42:08 - 1:42:31)
process with liquor license and all that so so i'm sorry glad you reminded me so i would amend the motion our motion to the recommendation to be for article 19 with the revised language that the planning board we think is going to delete on monday which released which is the last paragraph of 4.11.3.0 delete the last paragraph regarding hours of operation so we're only supporting this

[Speaker 4] (1:42:31 - 1:42:37)
with the elimination of that that's correct yep do i have a second to the amended motion second

[Speaker 2] (1:42:38 - 1:42:47)
all in favor aye aye thanks angela for all your work on this thank you angela that was for 12 and

[Speaker 7] (1:42:47 - 1:43:02)
12 and 19 okay article 20 bennin square rezoning so mr chairman do we have any other

[Speaker 2] (1:43:02 - 1:43:06)
so that we've got a report on tonight because i'm gonna i'm recused from article 20 and i

[Speaker 6] (1:43:06 - 1:43:15)
intend to vacate the premises completely i would not allow that to happen uh the um i uh the latest

[Speaker 2] (1:43:15 - 1:43:26)
on article 29 i know last week and then i think if we can talk about the presentation on hadley and hawthorne as well we didn't talk about that as well so we should talk about what i got

[Speaker 8] (1:43:26 - 1:43:33)
nominated for last time when i wasn't here that will teach you um sorry so i think you have a

[Speaker 2] (1:43:33 - 1:46:17)
birthday so i think i'm on hadley i'm after the motion is for the article 12 the motions made by fincom the zoning motions made by the chair of the planning board i'm happy to speak up to you on on hadley um generally which is article 12 and article 19 yeah so you yeah i'm happy to but it's whatever anybody anybody wants to do it instead i'm also happy not to well i think you gotta do 12 and then um and then the only other one that i was going to offer myself up on was uh the update on hawthorne when we do the uh the extension of use to be able to give an update generally as to where we are and i wanted to spend a minute if you don't mind talking about that update to tom meeting sure article 13 so article 13 is the article that extends the time period in which we can have a temporary use basically the existing use that's there now while the community continues dialogue about the future the long-term future of the hawthorne site one of the things that i've been thinking about and i actually had a chance to talk with doug thompson about was we're going to give an update about where we are with with hdr our consultant and the process we actually had a call today an internal call kind of sharing our feedback in advance of our next call with hdr to really understand the kind of next steps with hdr so we have some refinement to work on that but something that i mentioned to doug and doug being as eager as he is like responded like brilliantly is i would like to suggest that we uh that doug and i over the next few days and again this is not something that requires action of this board or deliberation of this board so i think we can get feedback from this board but really have a rather short well-written questionnaire for town meeting members about the hawthorne and so that when they show up at town meeting they have an opportunity to receive maybe it's five questions maybe it's eight questions but something they can do while they're at town meeting and submit to us while they leave which really helps frame the dialogue a bit more i'm going to say big picture as opposed to whether or not you think we should kentucky bluegrass or a different type of grass um you know on the property but instead talk about their desires you know revenue like how important is revenue a consideration how important is open space or other considerations how much is parking in consideration i'm just throwing out ideas how much is parking a driver to you how much do you think parking can be solved in other places what

[Speaker 6] (1:46:17 - 1:46:23)
part of the master plan should that use be connected to yeah for example yep yep and so i

[Speaker 2] (1:46:23 - 1:47:46)
there's a whole bunch of i think macro things right bigger things still that help start framing it a bit more so i'm in a way stepping back from where hdr was at our last public meeting with hdr which i thought hdr got a little bit too quickly down to to getting into some micro analysis here that i i felt like um and please chime in with your feeling i felt like it was a little too quick there i think that we need to spend some more time just understanding some of the ideals right do we think this should be a destination place or should it be not a destination place should this be um what level of activity are we talking about mixed juice things of that nature and create a questionnaire that gives people an opportunity to give us that feedback and then maybe a catch-all at the end of it which says tell us anything you want that we didn't ask about here and and you know these are um 324 of the most involved residents in town so it's a really good opportunity for us to capture their thought process and and and their feedback so i just wanted to throw that out there as an idea and and doug and i would be happy to work on that you would get it and see it and could give us suggestions on on the questions but again it's these are questions these aren't these are just factual things um but we would show it to you before town meeting um so you guys had a chance to look at it give us feedback probably before the end of this week most likely but i but i think it's a good opportunity for us to interact and and ask for that type of feedback from town meeting i think i think the process

[Speaker 6] (1:47:46 - 1:48:26)
i would just want to acknowledge the i mean i think there's been an enormous amount of good information collected through the process so far i think people feel as though maybe uh it's great qualitative information but it's not structured well it's not clear whether or not you know there's kind of over emphasis from one party one group or another and by conducting somewhat of a rigorous survey where everyone gets cast kind of one vote um we kind of get maybe a little bit better you know quantitative sense of preferences in different domains and hopefully that'll be helpful to the community at large to get a sense of a little bit of a poll and more direction to

[Speaker 8] (1:48:26 - 1:49:05)
hdr as well i think that is a wonderful idea and i also encourage you to include some definition of terms on your survey because i think part of one of the issues from the last hawthorne gathering is my definition of open space is not your definition of open space is not your definition of open space and we're all using that term so we all think we're on the same page but when we get down to the nitty-gritty we actually might be talking about three different things and so to define them a little bit um to say this is what we mean when we're talking about that for the purposes of this survey that way folks are giving the correct feedback yeah that's a great

[Speaker 2] (1:49:05 - 1:50:25)
suggestion so i was thinking in at the hawthorne event i think we all experienced that i think people just expectations of what a word means is is some people hear open space they think public space not necessarily green space some people think green space right some people think active recreation something people think passive recreation some people think uh cultural right space and those can all fall within open space and i think as though even us as a group you know most of us have said open should open space like even we all probably have slightly different perspectives as to what open space is so we can absolutely do that to focus that in and doug's already sent over some suggested questions like within minutes of our conversation so we are well on our way i've now sat on them for 48 hours just just to slow him down a little bit let's be honest all right so we'll we'll work on that and you'll all see that and i think we'll also make that same survey available found on the town website whatnot but really right now we're gearing towards it and just focusing our energy on town meeting to get through town meeting and and then we'll make that information public as well what comes out of that that question there great and then what the citizen petition no no no no i i want to we have a we have a volunteer

[Speaker 7] (1:50:25 - 1:50:30)
in the room and i want to i want to address i want to address the venice square reason but i'm

[Speaker 2] (1:50:30 - 1:50:33)
leaving for the night so you're not going to have me then for the rest of your warrant discussion

[Speaker 4] (1:50:35 - 1:50:41)
are we meeting tomorrow not if we finish tonight oh yeah let's stay well i mean is there anything

[Speaker 6] (1:50:41 - 1:50:51)
else besides 29 before vending nothing else on the moment no so it's just 29

[Speaker 2] (1:50:52 - 1:51:03)
is it okay if we take up 29 like what or else i'm not gonna vote on it because i'm gonna leave i'm not sticking in the hall for an hour to i would think of come back i would too why don't you just

[Speaker 6] (1:51:03 - 1:51:14)
say what you want to say yes i recommend anything i've now read it i'll move uh that we support our article 29 go ahead a second i second that i don't um i just want to understand

[Speaker 8] (1:51:16 - 1:51:36)
how we come to citizen petitions how we opine to them and when we don't because i don't think we've been very consistent i might be wrong but i think in the past couple of years we might not have been very consistent on whether we have opined on them or not i think we have we did last year

[Speaker 4] (1:51:36 - 1:51:44)
we didn't in the the previous one before that the previous one was the cat regulation we didn't i

[Speaker 2] (1:51:44 - 1:51:50)
think last year we had a conversation i think windows huh wasn't there windows no last last

[Speaker 4] (1:51:50 - 1:52:06)
year was uh last year was uh changing the structure of fincom and that would have affected the role of the select board yeah so yeah so i don't i i know the charter doesn't differentiate

[Speaker 2] (1:52:06 - 1:52:19)
the charter actually says all all warren articles well that's what the charter says yeah so i think it does say all it does say we'll report on i'll make a recommendation on all warren articles i don't think it didn't i know it didn't differentiate citizen petitions but your point's valid we have

[Speaker 8] (1:52:19 - 1:52:49)
been inconsistent um so i'm also looking for some additional information then i guess on um but i guess we we don't really have it on the background from the citizen as to how this petition came to to be like whether he himself drafted it other towns and cities are following sue that sort of thing but there's somebody here to answer that question so are we meeting on monday

[Speaker 2] (1:52:49 - 1:52:54)
did we schedule a meeting on monday so you want to just see if we don't take any action tonight

[Speaker 8] (1:52:54 - 1:53:14)
just have a brief conversation monday yeah i mean i feel like i don't have enough information about the history like i just want to understand is this something that we're doing because there's a call for it by the native people of massachusetts to come forward and ask us to do that to write a wrong or are we doing that are we doing this for other reasons i just want to understand

[Speaker 4] (1:53:14 - 1:53:24)
what the mentality is behind the petition sure we had a request we had an email from someone asking

[Speaker 2] (1:53:24 - 1:53:37)
to speak on this i don't think it was to speak on it i think someone i didn't get one to speak i got one telling me their opinion to give information giving information from out of town but i think

[Speaker 4] (1:53:37 - 1:53:41)
they were asking to speak at town meeting yeah that's a while ago i can't remember yeah i don't

[Speaker 2] (1:53:41 - 1:53:44)
remember the asking part but they should definitely call reach out to the moderator

[Speaker 4] (1:53:44 - 1:53:50)
because he controls that discussion yep can somebody tell him that so will we finish with 20

[Speaker 2] (1:53:50 - 1:54:34)
29 we are so 20 so mr chairman i previously um said this i'm just gonna say it again for the record that i'm recusing myself on article 20 um an affiliate of my company purchased property from the affiliate of a property owner that's impacted by article 20 and in the fall of last year the owner of that property reached out to me um seeking advice as to the planning board's plan to rezone the property and i have spent time with that individual um hopefully convincing him that it's a good idea and that he thinks it's a good idea because i think it's a good idea for our community but um because of those conversations and because of my prior relationships um i am recusing myself from any action as a select board member okay thank you thank you good night

[Speaker 4] (1:54:35 - 1:54:40)
all right good night don't gloat all right i will

[Speaker 8] (1:54:42 - 1:54:47)
what time is it it's only eight o'clock wow 803 it's early for us

[Speaker 7] (1:54:50 - 1:55:12)
okay great so with us this evening is the chair of the planning board angela ipolito and i would love to uh to kick it off to her there was a public hearing last night and we did many of us were on that on that public hearing but uh you know i certainly i certainly want to hear from you as to uh as to the highlights of the uh the vincent square rezoning sure i'd be happy to

[Speaker 1] (1:55:12 - 2:11:37)
discuss it um so the zoning article uh as you have in front of you is to amend the zoning bylaw for vincent square um the initial paragraph here to see if the town will vote to amend the swamp zoning bylaw zoning map to um to amend the zoning bylaw relative to multi-family buildings containing more than eight units in the business before zoning district by inserting language showing red so and so on and so forth it goes on to describe the particular properties that we are asking to change from b3 to b4 and those properties are parcels 17-9 e 17-9 f 17-10 a and 17-10 b as set forth in the appendix one so the first thing to understand is exactly what parcels we're talking about so if you think about the swamp scott mall side of vincent square that would be the the part of vincent square that's between essex street and paradise road where the gap and starbucks is in stop and shop stop and shop is already zoned as a b4 property so home goods all the way to starbucks and also including the citizens bank building and some other properties um with the chipotle is and so forth but specifically the properties um from stop and shop all the way to the starbucks building is um is what we're calling you know the redevelopment area so what we would like to change from its current current zoning as b3 to b4 so why are we doing this we're doing this to allow for density at this site to allow for height um expanded you know enhanced zoning enhanced building capabilities so that this property can be redeveloped in the future as mixed use so all that is fine to say i can certainly read you the paragraph that's there in terms of the comment which i'll do just for the public record the comment is that this proposed article updates and expands the b4 zone to allow any redevelopment in this zone to include multi-family mixed-use buildings by right subject to design guidelines established for the zone the purpose of the proposed amendment reflects the town's goal to comply with section 3a of the zoning act mass general laws chapter 40a section 3a by may 2024 which is anticipated to overlay sections square proactive rezoning of the before will provide the opportunity for redevelopment that has the potential to replace portions of a single-story single building mall and create a walkable mixed-use neighborhood this could help to meet the town's housing needs bolster municipal tax revenue tax revenues provide improved conditions and opportunities for existing businesses and local entrepreneurs improve community character and enhance sustainability all without the environmental destruction and expense that goes along with the development of natural areas so why are we doing this why we're doing it is that our aging strip malls are in rapid decline and they're losing money i mean we still have some anchor stores we have the stop and shops and the home goods and you know marshals across the street and so forth but many of those smaller retailers have gone out of business or or just moved away or they're just not happening anymore and the the mall owners are struggling to attract sort of appealing retail retail that you know is really in demand by people in town by any anyone any mall in any town would be eager to have you know certain high-end retailers which we are unable to attract so our vision is to redevelop this portion of in a square to create a mixed-use walkable neighborhood with shops and you know hopefully be able to you know really retrofit the entire area but we are starting with just this i'll wait for the cart to go by we're starting with just as one particular parcel for a particular reason why because when you seek to re-envision a place like a mall and you're saying oh let's you know redevelop it and let's do mixed use and let's make it a neighborhood and have connectivity and it's not you need a lot of things to happen at once so literally you need the planets to align you have to have property owners that are willing to work with you that have an interest in doing this you have to have the tenants the retailers who are either at the end of their lease and planning to leave or are not at the end of their lease but are willing to go through this kind of a process to improve their overall environment and you have to have the public will of the town and the the effort behind it from our board from every other board in town and from town meeting and and the town administration to to support this kind of an effort this is we have that right now so it's not something that's going to be there a year from now two years from now it's going to go away because the situations are going to change and if we don't find a way to take advantage of an opportunity you know something else needs to happen because it's just it just needs to happen we have we have some wonderful studies that have been done by the metropolitan area planning council mapc with whom we work regularly on plans they did our master plan with us as i brought up in the meeting last night there's a site that i think everyone should go and look at called rethinking the retail strip new uses for old strip malls and it actually they've done extensive research it's an interactive site and they've identified within the mapc region several towns and cities that happen to have strip malls they've identified a few that are at the absolute top of the list in terms of having all the components the perfect storm situation to be able to make this a success and swamp scott is one of them and if you go through that site and you kind of click on all the links and you can see all the data that's already been studied for swamp scott and that has to do with you know redeveloping and mixed use and you know what all the amenities that it could provide and it even estimates the kind of the kind of bump in in the in the municipal revenue that the town could expect to receive um so that's that's a huge piece of it they were um they were very much involved in the transformation of the woburn mall which a lot of people are are familiar with and other malls that are in this region that have been tremendous success stories and there aren't that many why because of what i just told you because so many pieces have to come together at the right time and we happen to have that situation happening now at a particular area in vinnins square and we have um we you know have landowners and retailers that are willing to work with us so we see this as a huge opportunity to focus on redevelopment so what would that look like it would look like you know taking down certain parts of of the strip mall and rebuilding them and in doing so they'd be required to maintain so if you had a 10 000 square foot building just for argument's sake and there was there were three or four floors of residential on top the the bottom floor the retail floor of the building would be required to um to maintain 75 percent at least 75 percent of the gross floor area of the retail space so we're talking about if you had you know um so picture it if you pictured a large building i mean you wouldn't have retail that went through the entire it wouldn't be like a big box store going through the entire ground floor of a building when you look at those buildings it's retail that that trims the building all around that is on you know at least three sides it also envisions you know parking that could be in the center of building sort of of that wraparound style and it also it also contemplates connectivity so it contemplates you know closing up the big sea of asphalt while still maintaining ample parking which we clearly have either behind buildings within buildings um as as well as creating roadways that actually have pedestrian features you know sidewalks there green spaces benches connectivity between buildings so you can walk from one building to another so it's um we don't have an actual you know any kind of drawing yet but the but the models are out there and the the concept of what can happen here is is um it's real and it's a real possibility for us so that's the reason that the zoning is being changed um the other benefits of doing this is that we create and creating uh multi-family uh mixed use development not only do we start to attract a more vibrant type of retail but we also have multi-family housing that would be subject to our inclusionary zoning bylaw so we would have some an affordable component it's little a affordable as opposed to you know um big a affordable i suppose um it does have the affordability component to it but it's um we're able to to really bring it into the future you know have uh parking lots for and parking spaces for these for these uh residential buildings that have you know electric charging stations and and and have and and now you're you're in a much more sustainable building that happens to be sandwiched between um Essex street and paradise river we have one of the most fulsome bus transportation systems anywhere on the north shore with bus service that takes you right by the the train depot or right into boston if wherever you're going towards the north towards the south towards the west it's extremely accessible and so for anyone that choose you know could easily choose to live there without a car because you can walk to get groceries you can walk to get other you know um items that you might need shopping food so forth and you can just walk to transportation so it has all of those benefits in terms of a location and another point i'd like to make is we've been talking about the mbta communities 3a zoning so as most of you know the community development department and and i um have been working with a bowler engineering firm they are working as a consultant with us margie was able to secure them with a grant that she got from the mass housing partnership so we are working with them currently to produce the mapping for to create our 3a zoning we're pretty you know pretty well through the process we have a good idea of where we are in terms of density and how that can be overlaid on parts of men and square to bring those areas into compliance as well and kind of add to that so we have a roadmap to how we're going to comply with 3a zoning while putting that density in a place that's already been developed where we already have substantial infrastructure in terms of water and sewer and electricity and so forth and we're not disrupting another site to do this so all in all you know we're looking at a real shift in the way people shop and live we're looking at you know shopping plazas more like lifestyle centers where you would choose to go and choose to live all you need to do is is walk as go down to i went down to rubin mall was a week ago saturday and that crummy sun was a sunday actually crummy sunday freezing cold drizzle and the place was packed i mean i i used to work in rubin years ago we still have an office there and i mean i remember the old rubin mall with the same old market basket like a ghost town and i cannot believe my eyes market basket's still there and the home goods are still there and it's just it's absolutely startling and so encouraging to see that there are there is a real opportunity out there to get this done this is our chance to do it i feel very strongly that this is the right move for the town it's also again sustainable because you're putting development in the place where you are not you know disrupting and upsetting at a natural environment that you know hasn't already been in fact you're taking an old environment that's like the sea of asphalt that has you know poor water treatment poor runoff or all the buildings have you know are fueled with whatever kind of heat you know fossil fuel might be but we can really require that these buildings that are put up here are you know have you know electric heat pumps have we have you know we create a real neighborhood of sustainable buildings and that's another huge advantage um you know in terms of traffic i think a lot of people are worried about traffic as we always are because we're changing all the time and shifting patterns of you know where the schools are and where the people live and you know we've got big developments going up you know on elm place we've got something on going up with the glover there are a lot of traffic improvements that need to happen all over not just here but you know um as i think most everyone i know everyone here knows but a lot of people in the public aren't aware that paradise road is is maintained by mass department of transportation so we do not have a lot of authority i guess is the right way to put it over how that gets transformed but we we certainly can influence that and we can you know spend money studying how to improve traffic um with you know certainly with this project if it comes to fruition which you know knock on wood i hope that it does but the glover which is going to be happening you know within the next year or so um we should be looking at you know roundabouts at the top of salem street there are a lot of things that we can be looking at elsewhere i mean vinland square is a big area um we're just talking about one small part of it but it's one small part that can really set the tone and be an impetus for the right kind of change um and of course we talk about traffic mitigation fees and other things like that that can be part of any project of this size so um that's a lot of explanation i hope that's helpful

[Speaker 7] (2:11:38 - 2:11:57)
please let me know if you have any questions angel i have a couple of questions um will this actually result in development i mean right now the the you know the b4 is already applied to the stop and shop location nothing's happened there so you know how will this be different this will

[Speaker 1] (2:11:57 - 2:12:48)
be different because we actually have um the property owner that's that wants to do it and with stop and shop it was just kind of a gee stop and shop at that time because i was involved in that rezoning as well at the time uh several years back stop and shop was in process of transforming a lot of their stores and their model was to take an old store totally completely redo it put in like almost like a little little cafe areas where they had you know ready-made food stuff like that and they were building housing above it so uh we thought that there might be a possibility that um that swamp scott might be on you know considered as as part of that project but it wasn't but at this point we know we have people that are willing and and that are willing to move

[Speaker 7] (2:12:48 - 2:13:06)
forward and potentially if if if this does result in development maybe stop and shop views the whole mixed juice uh in a different light right okay um any idea what the estimated tax receipts would be if this if this area is redeveloped no but i wish i had that kind of a

[Speaker 1] (2:13:06 - 2:14:31)
mathematical mind to tell you because i i mean somebody's going to be able to do the math there is some data in um in the mapc report the rethinking the retail strip reports and when you dig down you you know sort of drill down into the information that they have on swamps but it really relates to um residential receipts but we're looking at mixed use so even in cases where there a new building is built so let's say you know a new freestanding building goes in somewhere in the middle of a the parking lot where they're you know where nothing is standing right now that particular building has to have a portion of it has to be at least 25 percent of the ground floor area would have to be a retail and it still has to have the same connectivity it can't just kind of be floating out there by itself so um the the notion is no matter what gets redeveloped it's going to be far more valuable with the retail and the residential than anything that's there now it just will be i mean there's there's kind of no disputing that so what we haven't kind of cooked into it is having more um more successful retail so more successful retail even in a smaller

[Speaker 7] (2:14:31 - 2:14:45)
footprint results in a greater per square foot valuation which even though it's 75 percent of whatever's existing should result in a revenue neutral it's something that a lot of people

[Speaker 1] (2:14:45 - 2:16:09)
because you're probably all too young to know this um but but swanscote mall when it was built no offense to swanscote mall uh people but um it was it was just this log of a building it was a mall it was an indoor mall you had to go through one set of doors and you walked inside this big kind of cement thing and there was a corridor that ran down the middle and there were shops little shops on either side all the way down to where home goods is now is like a bradley's or something anyway so you know people didn't like it and there's a you know it wasn't very you know people didn't like it so they re they you know refaced it they kind of closed up the hallway in the center they took those two shops on either side of the hallway made it one long shop and put the door what so in reality those shops are really all double deep they're all bigger than they need to be that just that's just a fact so we're just we're talking about square footage not you know revenue regenerating with that square footage of a building like if it's 10,000 square feet or 75 it depends on the business the square footage isn't what drives the amount of revenue you're going to get it's the quality of the business that's going to drive the revenue that you're

[Speaker 7] (2:16:09 - 2:16:37)
going to get so understood and last question for me i'd be remiss if i didn't if i didn't ask the question i you know i'm a member of the affordable housing trust you had mentioned last night about affordable units and i know this is this is under the inclusionary zoning which would be 10 right there any potential for greater affordability or more affordable units or you

[Speaker 1] (2:16:37 - 2:19:53)
know can you speak to that so i don't know is the answer to your question and i can tell you that this zoning change the way it's written is to encourage developers to you know to make this kind of investment while providing community benefits you know kind of really creating neighborhoods provide maybe some recreation space provide you know upgrade parking lots to really create something special for the town while also contributing to other you know upgrades for example the roadway that goes through vidden square i mean that's not a real road that belongs to the it's not a road but everyone cuts through uses it like a road so it's creating a road out of that creating but it's i mean create just creating an entire neighborhood we want to encourage the best possible development that we can and to not put too much of a burden on the developer to to create you know sort of big a affordable housing as it were that but it's not so that's just explaining why it's written the way it is it's the purpose of it is to drive revenue it's to reignite and to recreate a commercial engine where it's we have something that's barely limping along on life support right now and i might say the same is for hadley i mean if i i'm not talking about that because you guys already talked about it but they're both really all about igniting a commercial engine for the town we taught we were spending a lot of money i don't have to tell you that you just you know went through this warrant we're spending a lot of money we need to generate revenue we haven't invested in our commercial areas like we need to these are two huge projects that we can reasonably expect you know things go well we get the right participants you know we have the right participants at venin we hope to get the right participant at hadley we could really create tremendous change and it's you know they're not these aren't opportunities that kind of come up all the time so time is going to be right so i you know i'm feeling really good about that but back to your point about affordable i you know look where how many where that's all we've been permitting the past couple of years is um buildings that have you know significant amounts of affordable housing i believe in it also i i you know look my mother lives with me because she couldn't afford to live in this town if she didn't i get it but here we weren't looking at as a target to put affordable in terms of that being one of the priorities i'll just tell you honestly the the purpose here is to is to light a match under some commercial generating property

[Speaker 4] (2:19:54 - 2:20:08)
got it thank you what's the timing that we have to have 3a we have to identify you know we hold on let me just ask one we have to our our role is to identify our 3a where we want 3a to be

[Speaker 1] (2:20:08 - 2:21:09)
is that what we have we're pretty we're pretty close on that we have 20 acres that were we are required to zone as 3a only uh 20 of that 25 of that pardon me needs to be um around the train depot and we've already mapped out six and a half acres there the other 14 or so acres was going to overlay parts of vinon so we can use some existing housing however because of the the type of housing that it is in the way it's already zoned i'm talking about crown point places like that we also need to create you know other types of we need to create something that's more accessible to mass transit what's what is the date that we have to do that by according to the state december 2024 but we plan to present the 3a zoning at town meeting in may

[Speaker 4] (2:21:09 - 2:21:23)
next may may 2024 and what is the penalty if we tell the state we're not doing it we won't be able to apply for certain funds i believe

[Speaker 3] (2:21:23 - 2:21:29)
yeah grants yeah which grants i can get you a list i don't know yeah margie could probably

[Speaker 1] (2:21:29 - 2:22:33)
tell you because she uses them all the time i think so yeah not complying would be would cost the town hundreds of thousands of dollars it's um and there are also um i from i don't have the data to back this up but i just was having a conversation with someone about this um that the current administration uh governor's office is has um has created even more now i wouldn't call them incentives what's the you know demands on communities that these um that the extension you know be that the the the you know the tod transit orange right but that the the the penalties if you want to call it that i don't know if that the downside of not doing it is is is worse than um than just losing grant money so and again i'd um the attorney general spoken out clearly so you probably know housing is a crisis yeah right so um yeah so we have to

[Speaker 7] (2:22:33 - 2:22:39)
do it yeah so 3a isn't about affordable housing it's about creation of housing it's about creation

[Speaker 1] (2:22:39 - 2:23:19)
of housing however um you know and at first when it first came out the when people were saying oh good we need affordable there is actually um quite a bit of discussion in the community about the fact that they weren't requiring communities to in fact if communities really wanted to demand that their 3a be all affordable they would push back and would not allow the community to do that because they said that would discourage the development of housing period people wouldn't want to go in so that has changed a lot now i think now they're really looking at yes you've got to have you know an affordable component and um but if it if it did chew a developer away then

[Speaker 4] (2:23:19 - 2:24:04)
you know they don't want you to do it got it so can you just uh reducing commercial the commercial availability by 25 the decision on the planning board to reduce 25 is is really discouraging to me and um if this area is being proposed to be restructured um the fact that there are some existing the buildings there are fairly deep that if those buildings going to be removed and re rebuilt i can't see any reason for us to be losing commercial our commercial opportunity i understand i understand your your point on that

[Speaker 1] (2:24:04 - 2:24:20)
i truly believe that that as i said before that you can't equate what we are generating in commercial revenue with the no with the square footage i am going to respectfully disagree

[Speaker 4] (2:24:20 - 2:24:30)
okay on that because um square footage does play a role in revenue for many retail many many many

[Speaker 1] (2:24:30 - 2:25:20)
retail opportunities so well we certainly will encourage as much um retail development as we possibly can when you envision you know building that is is multi-family mixed use if you envision any building like that you would never have a um like a big like you know best buy on the ground floor taking up the entire you know area you'd have you'd have smaller stores that would actually ring the perimeter of the building and in that sense i mean it doesn't make sense to have um in a larger building to have retail that spans the entire ground floor of of the of the building um i understand your point um i am not i don't share the concern though but i i definitely

[Speaker 8] (2:25:20 - 2:26:14)
understand your point i think i too understand the point but i i am hopeful that what has been explained to me the the value of the retailers that might fill these a little bit smaller spaces would make a more dynamic retail experience for those coming into town maybe like a marketplace like the wuber mall like you're saying and that you would then spend more at each shop you wouldn't just be running to the gap to get one thing and then running out you would be sort of putzing around and spending more money more places and there would be hopefully no vacancies currently we have vacancies that in that location and i don't recall a time where i haven't seen a vacancy at that location unfortunately right um so hopefully the the the type of retailer who would be coming into a little bit smaller of a space would be more dynamic for the population

[Speaker 4] (2:26:15 - 2:26:27)
in the discussion last night the planning board also commented on the size of the uh the size of the living spaces would be studio and one bedroom now i that was a mistake oh yeah um i i didn't

[Speaker 1] (2:26:27 - 2:28:34)
think i i i tried to clear it up and i clearly failed because i don't think um i you're not the only person who brought that up to me today i had a a few different emails so it does not that is that's not the case and i'm going to go to the place in the bylaw um where that is explained okay so um i know what you're talking about is that there is a part of the bylaw in fact it's under four four five three and it states in order to ensure the production of a significant number of more reasonably priced dwelling units whether rental or sale unless waived or modified by the special permit granting authority no more than 30 percent of the total dwelling units in a multifamily or mixed-use development before district district shall contain two or more bedrooms correct that's the phrase okay if you go to the top of that section the the first paragraph of that section which is four four five zero it's on page 60 of your warrant in case you're looking at it it um that paragraph which begins the section here that paragraph begins multifamily and mixed-use developments in the b4 district that's the title of the paragraph except for development projects subject to plan review in accordance with section 4.12.0.0 of this bylaw all multifamily and mixed-use developments must meet the following design criteria so it all there's an exception for this entire zone that we're what we've just rezoned meaning that they do not have to comply with that you can't have you know only 30 of them can be two bedrooms or more so that doesn't apply and i'm sorry that that wasn't clear last night meaning that it can be more or yes meaning that it can be more okay you have a four bedroom you can have you know you can have equal numbers of each but not required but it can be right but and so 3a

[Speaker 4] (2:28:34 - 2:28:42)
does not require 3a yeah i'm sorry what what was your question i thought the rules with 3a required

[Speaker 1] (2:28:42 - 2:29:28)
us to have larger space a mix it doesn't require so much but it they're well the requirements are that you cannot build units that exclude that are so small that they would exclude families that's the whole point so you have to have units that are big enough you've got to have some that that aren't so big that that a single that my mother couldn't go and live in one a small unit by herself if she wanted to that's the other the flip side of it but you also have got to have you know the units that are ad accessible which is you know required everywhere now but you've also got to have units that are big enough to to accommodate families and that is the requirement

[Speaker 6] (2:29:28 - 2:32:21)
in 3a yes you're right and let somebody else ask questions um so i think this is you know incredibly uh exciting opportunity uh for the town um really really big opportunity really special uh achieving potentially a lot of the goals i think that we want to you look at the master plan and you can check the box almost all the way down the page basically with this one development um and it's for that reason because it is so exciting and so big that i it pains me to say this but i feel like it is too soon too fast in order for us to bring this to town meeting with the level of i mean this this only kind of came on my radar and i kind of pay attention um like a couple days before the election um and i feel like the public we had a public hearing which was great um but i feel like there's a lot of open questions in my mind for sure um about you know infrastructure about whether or not we need to do uh this type of zoning by right in this particular place what the open space implications are um i just feel like a more fulsome process you're an expert in this angela you've been looking at it for longer than any of us have um but by extension that means the general public is i think probably pretty much in the dark about you know really uh not like by intention but just you know really catching up that this really hasn't been in the water for people to digest and really kind of give input on um i think we had on the public hearing last night some other people that were you know very engaged folks who were kind of just coming to the realization that this is happening um and so i think you know this is a multi-generational investment that we're talking about here um i'm very sensitive to the kind of the the timing issues that you're kind of pointing out for us here um and you know i don't know all those details that you know i think you're kind of inferring um and i'm not looking to delay this by a year um but i think uh you know it's not unprecedented since we did it just last year i think for the hall forum to come back with another you know special town meeting um if you need to in two or three months um but i think there there there needs to be something um that is between rushing which i think feels that way to even me and others that i'm hearing from um and missing the opportunity um so i'm hopeful that there is uh some in between ground where we don't miss the opportunity but we also don't kind of leave people behind i just i just want to push

[Speaker 7] (2:32:21 - 2:34:26)
back on that a little bit sure um i know there's been a lot of work done uh by the planning board there's been a lot of thought there's been a lot of uh there's been a lot of discussion here um so i i don't want that to go unnoticed uh absolutely this this is a moment in time where we have an opportunity to do something transformative and to light a fire under our economic engine which is not humphrey street which is venison square and if we're going to if we're going to forego that opportunity but that's not what i'm saying i don't think that's what i'm saying no no okay just to be clear i hear you but there's but but this is this is the time this is the moment in time that we can that we can make this happen we can make this come that we can make this uh we can make this a reality um so i i think it's incredibly important that we take advantage of that opportunity um where we can change the zoning where we can you know ensure that we're redeveloping uh than in square i don't believe this is i don't believe this is rushed i believe this is this is something that's been that's been in that that's been in the thought process of the planning board for a long time there was considerable unanimous unanimously supported last night unanimous support so i i i'm i'm fully supportive of this and i you know i just i look at the capital plan uh ahead of ahead of us and we have a lot of a lot of needs we have a lot of uh you know we have police fire school um there's general town needs and we you know we need to look at this at this as at this revenue as an opportunity to uh to do to do right by the town of swampscott and to ensure uh affordability for all and i think this is a great opportunity and i angela i want to thank you and the and the planning board uh for all of your efforts to date and you know i'm certainly i'm certainly supportive and i i would i would certainly recommend that you know favorable action um by the select board um and and we take a take a vote um i certainly welcome the feedback and thoughts of my other colleagues i just want to make sure

[Speaker 6] (2:34:26 - 2:34:53)
my point is clear because by reference of your comments david i understand them i respect them completely um and the only distinction i'm making is about next week versus three months from now um i agree that this is exactly what we should do um but i think that there is really very important kind of bringing people along opportunity here so this is only a matter of

[Speaker 1] (2:34:53 - 2:41:13)
timing for me can i just address your concerns because i think i understand what you're saying um and yes naturally we spent a lot of time and it's not just the planning board but we've been you know talking to the the property owner for a long time who had first come to us because he's wants to bulldoze it and build apartments and call it a day okay which is there you can pretty much kiss it goodbye it's a dead zone it's just gone dead okay there'll be probably a couple other banks maybe a maybe a dental practice or something and seriously that's gonna be it because nothing if we wait two months if we wait two months you have leases that are coming up like now and if we can't be sure you know there there's this there is the so you know and i'm not saying this is like holding a knife against anybody's throat because let me back up some more let me back up some more there has to be something that just like with a hadley site why are we creating the zoning and we don't know what's going to happen you create it so that you you create some kind of predictability you know what is possible so changing zoning on b4 which is all this does is change some zoning and some dimensional requirements and stuff that's all this does doesn't build anything zoning is just a tool so if and and don't forget there are there will be full design guidelines which the planning board is working on now that are lengthy that get into everything from you know the number of cars to you know height to design to what it has to look like where it can be how much grass how much open space i mean you if you look at the design guidelines we had for the glover they were probably i don't know 16 17 pages long and it takes a long time to get through all of those specifics that's the process that's the public process we work on zoning all the time that where we've talked to people for years beforehand just to figure out is this possible is something possible you know we've been trying to pull this along for a while to bring the conversation to this point and we finally got to a point where we there's there's genuine interest and a genuine opportunity but if we don't create the zoning that's going to allow it to happen there's just the sense is that it's just not going to happen and they're just going to it's going to move on but that's not even that that's not even what i'm more concerned about what i'm more concerned about is your concern which is the public process like how do people catch up with this so you know to be quite honest most people don't pay attention to the zoning and and i because i get asked all the time from my own friends i mean people just don't pay attention so it's you know if i wasn't doing this maybe i wouldn't either i don't know but um the public process is when a plan finally comes to us when something gets submitted and we have there's a whole review process just like we do with the glover we started in august we didn't permit that until february the end of february it takes a long time so and it's the same type of thing it would be a site plan it's a site plan review process but they have to get approval under that site plan review and that process is is detailed and lengthy and we had how many public public hearings for um for the um the glover site i mean there are was that site plan review that was site plan review yeah that was that same exact it was process yeah well it's a little different here and there but basically the same because once the once that's special permit or site plan review it together that was a it was actually um it was a site plan review but we did have there was a special permit that we i guess it was a site plan special permit but it was a by right it was by right i mean basically the the bylaw gave them the right to build that we had to give them a special permit but it gave them the right to do that this would be a very similar process and because what we do is we take the whole any kind of uh any kind of uh very variance or any kind of uh relief that might be needed anywhere we take that out by putting in specific guidelines that you meet them or you can't have it it's not like your height is here and this is that we specify exactly what can what can happen um and what happens is once a plan preliminary plans come to us we have first we just you know have an application meeting just to kind of and all the meetings are public of course and posted um we had great turnouts for our glover meetings i mean we had lots of people and they were all um we had a site except for a couple they were all just virtual we had a couple hybrids here that we maybe we worked on but it's really useful because that's when the public finds out what what it is i mean we don't even we don't know what the what it is right now we just know what we hope it's going to be what we what we hope this will allow and then through the design guidelines we create the map how you get to what we hope and if you the that map gets followed then the result can be very predictable for the town and it's that process you know process by process meeting by meeting where we review or we have experts that we view we have we do um you know peer reviews on you know traffic and stormwater and and there are multiple opportunities for information for education for to for people to understand you know the entire process and and how it goes and to participate and to be able to have a voice right now you know if you're commenting you don't know you're looking at all this pages and pages and you don't know what you're looking at exactly because zoning zoning is just the tool well that's

[Speaker 6] (2:41:13 - 2:41:41)
i think part and i don't want to belabor this and i you know katie you haven't had a chance to really get in i think the only thing i'd say about that is that it would be um me what's that i'm ready when you are to get in okay uh it seems a little backward to have no plan i mean you all you know you've had conversations with the developer and yet we have no plan but we're designing uh the zoning around a plan that doesn't now exist so we're

[Speaker 1] (2:41:41 - 2:42:05)
not it's actually not legal to design right zoning for a specific plan that's you could you're not you don't do that it's just good spot zoning right so right you can't look at something and say you know somebody comes to you and has a plan and then you're like okay i'll quit you know i'll well let's go change the zoning so we can build that that's yeah you can't do that

[Speaker 8] (2:42:06 - 2:43:33)
i feel like angela you just said something very profound which is this is the hope for what this is going to look like you can't come forward with a plan and say this is the plan and now we're going to change zoning to execute it that's spot zoning you can say this is the hope for what we hope this is going to look like and then the developer comes forward and says okay i can work with that hope i can integrate these things and then as we've laid out the bylaw it's a roadmap for how the that hope right happen well the the design guidelines right right so this is just the beginning in a very long process as i was talking sorry i had to step out because i was hacking up along but this is the beginning of a conversation this is not stamping the plan and saying go build tomorrow this is saying this is the hope for what we hope comes forward in the revisioning of that area yes there are things that need to be worked out yes there are conversations that will be had we've had many conversations about the glover we've had many conversations about how we redevelop these areas and if the stars are aligned to make that hope happen then we should do everything we can to try and do that and i am i'm in agreements with david that i am supportive of this i'm supportive of putting our hopes out there in hopes that somebody carries them away and makes them reality um we if we don't send them out there they will never become reality that's right and

[Speaker 1] (2:43:33 - 2:44:07)
and again zoning doesn't build anything you know we could create um you know even when we did the humphrey street overlay district and we had visions for what you know could happen there i mean there wasn't some people were really concerned like oh my god we're gonna we're bulldozing humphrey street and may and bill no zoning doesn't build a thing it just it's just a tool that lets us that lets us do something but we get to decide what that something is that's why we have public meetings that's why we can create you know detailed design guidelines

[Speaker 3] (2:44:10 - 2:44:39)
and and and you know make sure that they are followed angela look i i just want to thank you for everything that you do for the town the time and effort that you put into um supporting zoning um i was greatly offended uh by your statement that people don't like to um read the zoning bylaw you do it for fun you people people stay up late at night to see what

[Speaker 1] (2:44:39 - 2:44:45)
people don't they don't and i i wish they did i've spent my career in public life

[Speaker 3] (2:44:45 - 2:47:19)
uh what you did though over the last couple of days to put i think six or seven youtube videos together to help ensure that we had an explosion of clarity for the town meeting members but also the public that that would be interested in learning about this was it was really helpful doug i i also appreciate your um passion for public engagement in this sense that we have to kind of try to reach out and keep people with us as we try to lead swansford forward we've we've taken bold steps to help address the educational needs of the students um for years we couldn't get a school project approved through town meeting we couldn't figure out how to keep the budget steady um we we couldn't figure out how to build open space where we've taken steps to address these critical needs when i put a hundred thousand dollars into a capital plan i didn't talk to the chair of the planning board when i did that i didn't talk to members of the select board when i did that i did that because i looked at the list of capital projects and thought wow we have to get busy making the economic engine of this town really meet the future needs of swanscott we had talked a little bit about you know 3a and and the just incredible amount of the two minutes concrete that you can just see like a blot on google earth and and think is that the best way that we actually use that incredibly valuable piece of real estate just by using it as a huge parking lot or is there a future that we could look at perhaps in wolverine or burlington or linfield that actually has a plan for mixed use development that really sees a future for strip malls and look as a kid i loved going to brigham's and you know hanging out in vinning square but that that's the past the future really needs us to to act i just think delaying this decision ultimately will just kick a can and i i just would encourage everybody to think critically about how important

[Speaker 8] (2:47:19 - 2:47:50)
it is to to move forward on that note can i make a motion yes okay so i think the motion is that the select board recommends favorable action on article 20 as amended for the venice square rezoning okay do i have a second okay is there another motion on the table

[Speaker 1] (2:47:54 - 2:48:06)
not okay did i ask what the um what the objections are and i understand yours is that we just haven't had you want to have a well actually i'd like you to explain to me exactly what you'd like to see

[Speaker 6] (2:48:06 - 2:49:47)
yeah i mean the the public process i hear what you say uh that's educational for me to some degree um but and i still feel like we're putting out a template um maybe we don't have a plan uh but we're putting out a template for a particular type of plan right now um and we're we don't completely have our 3a map done um so we're now kind of prejudicing exactly how some of that will take shape by virtue of choosing this path we're choosing uh you know one path that's completely as of right versus as of permitting we're limiting ourselves in terms of the percentage of affordable housing for this entire area so there are no not the entire area that we're talking about the zoning okay just zoning just the small yes right um so you know it we are making definite decisions by doing this that will limit us and will give the developer a clear path to move forward yes we'll design guidelines yes there will be public input but fundamentally the use you know correct me if i'm wrong we will we will be establishing a certain path and they will be able to start moving down that path wholeheartedly which will rule out certain other aspects other possibilities which may be exactly what we want to do but i don't i don't personally feel like um i'm ready to completely support exactly the definition that

[Speaker 1] (2:49:47 - 2:49:54)
we've laid out and i think okay so i can't imagine just a rezoning from b3 to b4 is what you are you

[Speaker 6] (2:49:54 - 2:50:07)
oppose because that's all that's proposed here yeah i i don't think that's quite that certainly we're making decisions about the 75 we're making other decisions that's only if that's

[Speaker 1] (2:50:07 - 2:54:51)
only if a particular proposal is received that complies with whatever the design guidelines are it doesn't it's not automatic all this does is change the zoning on certain parcels and if something is developed in that area then they can apply you know using the design guidelines to to make you know to to comply with you know height restrictions building restrictions um the you know all the all of the uh requirements that will be in the bylaw which would be a number of units and an amount of retail and what gets replaced and reconstruction of streets and green space and electrification electrification of buildings and all the other you know good amenities that go with this that would and that gets proposed and it's then we we refer back to our design guidelines and the zoning and say this you know if it doesn't comply that it's you know it certainly can't be done but changing the all this bylaw does is it's all in the first sentence the the bylaw what you what gets approved here is all in the first sentence so if you're looking at this is this is what you're doing see if the town will vote to amend the swanscott zoning bylaw and the zoning map to relative to multi-family buildings containing more than eight units in the business before zoning district by inserting the language shown in red deleting the language showing red strike through rezone the following parcels of land that are currently zoned b3 to be rezoned b4 and it says one two three four parcels are taken that's what you're doing you're changing the zoning from b3 to b4 and we're creating different you know um allowances if if these particular whatever gets proposed complies with the design guidelines if it fits within that that regulation then it something might be approved after it goes through a public process of design review which you know from what you've seen from all the design reviews we've done can is lengthy so we you know i i don't mean to contradict or or or diminish your concerns at all because i understand them i hear i hear this kind of thing all the time but when it comes down to it it's important to understand what we're asking you to do yeah i'm just asking you to rezone some parcels to a different to a different to a different uh a different uh zone the b3 to b4 why because it would allow this type of development if it meets criteria set forth in design guidelines so it doesn't we have a tourist overlay district we've had it for how many years now we don't have one bed and breakfast nothing this is not a mandate to build anything it just changes zoning this isn't jumping way out ahead we can we can pull back on it we can change it again we can do whatever we want this has and and and i can say something else if 3a weren't coming down the pike it you know that we put 3a someplace else right oh we could overlay it multiple different areas that we you know chose not to because you know this could this would make a lot of sense putting it someplace where we already have a lot of density and where we have access such good access to um to um but 3a is not the driver here it's not and i can say that i mean i find it as a benefit which is why i throw it in there as a a benefit it happens to work it's not the driver if it didn't exist i'd be i'd be supporting the exact same thing and i just think it's important to really think you're not approving a project here all we're asking is that something gets rezoned why the reason i explain me because i owe you an explanation of why we're doing it so that's why we're doing it do i think that's you know is that what we're voting on no no we're not voting on a project so we're simply voting to

[Speaker 7] (2:54:51 - 2:55:00)
rezone no so so for this evening i don't think we're going to take any action and we can come back and revisit this uh prior to town meeting at our money at our monday meeting how about that

[Speaker 1] (2:55:00 - 2:55:32)
sounds like a good plan i'm happy to talk to you about it more um i can tell you that it's i personally and um and from a planning the planning board standpoint it's very important to me that the select board support this rezoning um and i think it's really meaningful to the town and i think it would be a a tremendous loss to to not do it i really do i think it would be a big mistake so i think you know how i feel about it angela i really appreciate you listening and i and i i'm

[Speaker 6] (2:55:32 - 2:55:38)
very very very enthusiastic about doing it it's only about timing that's i understand i and it is

[Speaker 1] (2:55:38 - 2:56:01)
about timing that's you know that's one of the things where like i said you you get an opportunity where stars align and and you hope that you hope that you can make something happen um that being said i want to really thank you very much for listening and for your questions and for you know pushing back and you know really challenging me to explain so i appreciate all of that thank you thank you you're welcome

[Speaker 7] (2:56:03 - 2:56:08)
thanks marissa thank you marissa thank you select board time

[Speaker 6] (2:56:11 - 2:56:18)
um my daughter's in the e-out oh jesus so um yes i'm done yeah okay goodbye

[Speaker 4] (2:56:19 - 2:56:59)
adjourn yeah yeah well i just want to thank uh our crew tonight ethan brunstadler dennis zoran and uh nina alvis for uh the great job that they're doing i also want to give um a quick update that i'm going to give an update on our disability commission our senior center committees and our solid waste at our next meeting and that is it for me okay motion to adjourn second all in favor aye thank you thank you have a great night