[Speaker 9] (1:23 - 1:34)
For the beach conversation, I guarantee you the parking will happen in my family, that entire back row, our feelings. Alright.

[Speaker 7] (1:34 - 1:34)
Order.

[Speaker 3] (1:36 - 1:38)
I don't. We'll figure it out.

[Speaker 9] (1:38 - 1:39)
You want me to do it? Order.

[Speaker 4] (1:39 - 1:47)
We're going to call this meeting of the Swampscot Select Board for Monday, June 26th to order. And we will rise for the pledge.

[Speaker 13] (1:48 - 1:50)
Can everybody rise for the pledge?

[Speaker 3] (1:53 - 2:05)
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 4] (2:11 - 2:14)
Alright, we've got a pretty full agenda tonight.

[Speaker 22] (2:15 - 2:18)
We're recording. Yeah, we are.

[Speaker 4] (2:18 - 3:05)
Oh, yes, thank you. Thank you for the reminder. And this meeting is being recorded.

Alright, we have a full agenda tonight. Before we get started, we're going to change a few things up. We're going to put the town administrator report at the top.

And we've also changed seating. And I would ask my board colleagues just to bring some decorum back, if we could just have comments directed through me before speaking. Hopefully that will keep the meetings tighter, more concise, and we can get out of here a little sooner than we typically do.

So we'll try it.

[Speaker 7] (3:07 - 3:09)
Awesome. Any comments to the town administrator?

[Speaker 4] (3:10 - 4:32)
Throughout the meeting. So last week, as I'm sure everybody heard, there was an incident of racism written on the basketball court at the Clark School. The words scribbled in chalk were born out of ignorance and were easily washed away.

However, what remains is a reminder to our community that Swampscott faces issues of racism right here, right here in our quaint little beach town. This is not a problem facing only our neighbors or Boston. It's right here, and it has been here, and we have to be the change we want to see within our community.

While this overt act of racism is a sad sign, I remain encouraged. I remain steadfast in my support for our town to be anti-racist. And as I sit here tonight, I'm proud of my board colleagues who organized and marched and carried the proverbial banner, literally and figuratively.

The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference. So when we're met with acts of hate and acts of racism, we need to talk about it, because if we're not talking about it, we're indifferent.

And I'm proud to serve with those here who serve and share the same values as so many in our community possess. And I wanted to share that with the group before I turn this over to Peter, who has a few additional words to share. Peter?

Thanks.

[Speaker 1] (4:34 - 6:40)
A few weeks ago we had the Juneteenth celebration at Town Hall 1, thanks to the town administrator and staff, thanks to the Swanscot Public Schools and the METCO program. And it's our second? Third.

Second. Third Juneteenth program. And as you know, Juneteenth is now a national holiday as well.

But it's a day of celebration, but it's also a day of remembrance about where we've been and where we need to go. This past year and the year before, we had the benefit of Reverend Dr. Andre Bennett join our conversation on our Town Hall lawn. And he's a pastor in Lynn at the Zion Baptist Church.

Actually, he's the youth pastor. And he's been here the past two years. I want to just, with the indulgence of the chair, take a moment to share his comments.

And for those that weren't in attendance, excuse me, to be able to hear the comments. What struck me sitting there, Chief Cassata was there, Chief Archer was there, my colleagues, town administrator, was as he talked it seemed to get louder. But I became increasingly convinced it wasn't him getting louder, it was everything getting softer.

And then you started hearing it reverberate off the water. And maybe you're not going to get that tonight when you hear it. But the feeling that came through with that literally reverberating off the water, what he was saying, was extremely powerful and at times uncomfortable.

But it is for each of us to find our place in our own response to that. And we are as a community. We are as a board.

And it shows up in so many ways on things that we talk about as board members in official capacities. Decisions that we make as to how we do things in town. And just the way in which we behave and conduct our own personal affairs.

So with that, Joe, I think you're my technical guy in this. I appreciate you all listening with us.

[Speaker 6] (6:56 - 13:12)
It's not going to get me to act up. How's it going, Slauson? How we doing?

First, before I get into it, please give it up for Tommy Faye and the town of Slauson for making this event happen. Sister Nina Simone said, I wish I knew how it would feel to be free. I wish I could break all the bars holding me.

I wish I could say all the things that I should say. Say them loud. Say them clear.

For the whole round world to hear. I wish I knew how it would feel to be free. The fire chief spoke of the two independence days in America.

The two separate days of freedom. I'm going to take a slightly different tone. No disrespect to you, sir.

A slightly different tone. Because as Tommy Faye read in my Bible, I'm an immigrant from Jamaica who came here 15 years ago. Came here with a young family to a country that presented great hopes.

That we were told, we were raised to believe that it is the land of the free, the home of the brave. When I came here, I was free until I got here was the first time I understood and felt what limitations felt like. It was the first time in my life I've ever had to complete a form and on that form I had to declare my ethnicity.

There is a reason why that is the case. It's the first time in my life I've ever went to the mall and had people chase after me. You see, I came to a little church.

I was called to a little church in Lynn called Zion Baptist Church. And I remember, sir, starting at Zion as a young man with a young beautiful family. And I stood in the pulpit one Sunday and I said to Zion Baptist Church, I will not get involved in this race war that you guys are dreaming up.

You see, I was coming from Jamaica. I didn't understand. I didn't know what race war was.

And so when people, members of my congregation, a predominantly black congregation, would meet me in my office and complain to me about all kinds of stuff, I couldn't relate to the lived African American experience. And so I told them, oh, there is no race war in America. Young men just need to pull their pants up.

Young women just need to take a little bit of the attitude out of their necks when they speak. People just need to dress a little bit better. And I'm looking at the young lady, yes, you have all the right to shake your head at me because I was a fool for saying that in the pulpit.

To a church that was built by descendants of slaves that came from Nova Scotia and pitched a little board church on the corner of Union Street and were told two days after they built their church there that they do not belong there. And because they refused to move, their building was burned to the ground. I was a fool for telling them that there is no race war in this country.

Young men just need to dress better and carry themselves better and speak better and answer better. I grew up in the home of a cop. She's sitting over there.

Young men just need to do a little bit better. Well, this is how I dress every single day most days until very recently. I dressed as best as I thought I could.

I currently sit on three, not one, not two, but three PhDs. I speak this way in every interaction I have and I was still being called boy by police officers in the presence of my 60-year-old daughter. I was still being pulled over in every corner.

I was still being chased in the mall. So listen, though we do celebrate the Fourth of July as freedom for America, it was not freedom for us. And here we are many, many years, centuries later, and we still are not free.

Sister Nina Simone said, I wish I knew how it would feel to be free. I wish I knew how it feels to drive down the highway and see a police cruiser behind me and just drive comfortably without worry. I wish I knew how to have a conversation with my 20-year-old son and not have to beg him to come home alive.

I wish I knew what it feels like to walk in the mall without my collar and not be trailed every step of the way. I wish I could walk into stores and not be asked what I want. I wish I was never pulled over in Massachusetts and asked if I'm lost.

I wish I knew how it feels to be free.

[Speaker 1] (13:15 - 13:22)
We're just pausing for one second because of a technical glitch, so I apologize. The people at home are hearing it their own singing.

[Speaker 6] (13:28 - 20:55)
Freedom is not experienced by all of us. Hello, somebody. I heard Sister Liz write in her song that I don't know how my mother walked her troubles out.

I don't know how my father stood his ground. I don't know how my people survived slavery. I do remember, and that's why I believe, and I shared this before, that it is our belief that keeps us Can I take this mic off?

It is our belief that keeps us moving every single day when they murder us on the street, when they murder us in our temples, when they murder us in synagogue, when they murder us in our place of comfort. It is our belief that someday we too will enjoy the freedom that everybody else enjoys in this country that keeps us going. I wish I knew how it feels to be free.

And so I'm going to come by, not to stir up any trouble, but just to let you know that we still have a lot of work to do. Yes, this is a great step, and we are doing a wonderful thing by acknowledging Juneteenth as the day when those in Texas two years later finally got the news that we were our own people. We could choose where we live.

We could choose what last names we use. We could choose how we worship. I wish we didn't have to do that.

So whilst this is a great start, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He said in a speech that power without love is reckless and abusive. And love without power is sentimental and anemic. I'll say that again.

Power without love is reckless and abusive. And oh, we have experienced some reckless and some abusive love. We have experienced in our community.

You see, when you think, when those, let me not say you, when people think that we are fighting Tommy Faye for better housing, we're not fighting for better housing. We're fighting for equal housing. There is a difference.

The reason why people deem it as better is because they themselves won't live in what we live in. So anything up from that is considered better. But that's not what we're not fighting for better.

We're fighting for equal housing. The reason why people think we're fighting for better schools is because their children don't have to go through mental detectors and are not pat down by police officers. We're fighting for better schools.

We're fighting for equal schools for our children. If your children won't go there, then our children shouldn't go there. If your children don't have to go through it, then our children shouldn't have to deal with it.

If you won't live there, then we shouldn't live there. I wish I knew how it feels. So we've seen reckless and abusive love.

I mean power without love. We have seen in very recent times, there is a debate where women will need to get permission to decide what they do with their body. That is reckless and abusive power.

And in that same speech, Dr. King says, love without power is sentimental and anemic. So many of our allies, they love us and they love the work that we do, but they won't invite us to the table to make the decisions. They love us and they love our cause and what we're fighting for, but they know what is best for us.

That ain't power. That is sentimental love. They love us and they love to see the flags going up, but we shouldn't be on city government or town in the town administrative building.

They love us and they love hearing the songs that we sing and the worship services that we partake in, but we shouldn't be at the table. That is sentimental and anemic kind of love. What does freedom mean to us?

Not just to me. I told you I wish I knew how it feels to be free. But freedom means that I don't have to worry about my problem.

The little young man there that's twisting his ear, I don't have to worry about him as he grows up because he is judged by the content of his character and not because he has dreadlocks in his ear. Hello, somebody. Freedom means that our teenage boys are free to walk about in their hooded shirt and we don't have to worry that they look like criminals because that is what is deemed to be criminal.

Freedom means that we live in a country where justice and equality means justice and equality for all, not for some. It doesn't mean that you get this much, but if you come too close, it is too close. Freedom means that we all are free.

So, Swanscott, I leave you with this. Let it not just be about raising the flag once for your looks. Good so far, but there is still work to do.

It still can look a little better. Amen, somebody. Amen, somebody.

We still can see some more melanin in Swanscott. Amen, somebody. We still can see some more melanin in town governance in Swanscott.

Amen, somebody. We still can see some color up in the buildings and on the streets. Hello, somebody.

We still got some work to do. And when we sit and we hear people talking and they're misinformed and they're purposely spreading misinformation, we stand up. Hello, somebody.

That is what freedom means and looks like. And that is what real and true love and power looks like. Don't just love us, empower us.

Don't just love us, empower us. Don't just stand aside and watch. Get in the ring.

Get the work done. Because none of us is free until all of us are free. God bless you.

[Speaker 1] (21:08 - 21:09)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Speaker 3] (21:14 - 34:24)
Ready for the report? Yes, sir. All right.

So, look, I just want to say a few things about the hate crime. It's awful to know that we still have to address those issues. As a community, I can only contrast that with the love that we see.

That event that we had last week celebrating June 19th, Juneteenth, was love. And it's love to actually have a town celebrate Pride Month. Every police officer is wearing a Pride pin for the first time ever.

It says, you're safe with me. I want every resident of Swanska to feel as though they live in a safe community. I don't care who you are.

I don't care what you believe. I don't care your religion. I want you to just feel as though you live in a wonderful town.

But these programs aren't enough. It actually is hard to hear that it's sympathetic and it's just not. It's anemic.

When we think about housing, we think about other investments that we need to make to keep faith with inclusivity and diversity. There's more work for us all to do. That said, I feel as though, as a town, we are making good decisions and we're making great investments.

The board had asked me to present a report of buildings that were over 100 years old. I've attached that to my report. Last week, I did attend a State of the Region breakfast with the Lynn Chamber of Commerce and gave an update on some of the progress that we've been making in Swanska.

I spent a bit of that time talking about municipal taxes and our effort to really bring financial stability over the last few years. Many communities, including Marblehead, they're facing overrides. Swanska has been able to advance a number of capital projects, including a $100 million elementary school and the acquisition of open space through some really difficult financial decisions, much supported by the Select Board and Finance Committee.

I did review that in detail. We are at the close of the fiscal year. We're in the last week of the fiscal year.

Our finance team is really looking at the expenditures that have gone over. Our public safety departments, for a variety of reasons, will both end the year in the red. A number of departments will end the year in the black.

Ultimately, the entire budget will end the year on budget, so there will be some tailings. We'll be working with the Select Board and Finance Committee to make some transfers over the next few weeks to ensure that we reconcile the town budget and support living within appropriations. Department of Public Works is at a busy spring.

We've hired five summer employees. We've planted thousands of geraniums. I want to thank Gino Cresta and the DPW Department.

They worked hard to get all of the crosswalks painted with the rainbow color for the first time this year. I've received a number of compliments from a number of Swampstooth residents. I want to thank the Swampstooth School Department, because the request came in from a teacher from the school department to help ensure that folks just understand that we certainly are proud of every resident of this community.

A lot of work happening with the beaches, certainly the floats, and a number of paving projects. We've paved 16 streets over the last few weeks, and certainly a lot of work continues to be ongoing. Senior Center had a volunteer appreciation week with over 50 volunteers, including Council on Aging and the Swampstooth Friends of All Ages and Friends and Elder Act.

We kicked off a climate action change team with the Health Department. They have also started composting, and they're making great strides at being a little cleaner and greener. We did review Narcan use with the Health Department.

Mr. Dulette is also following up with sessions for our Caregiver Conference, and we're discussing topics about creating an aging plan. And last month, our Veteran Service Agent, Mike Sweeney, hosted a Wednesday coffee hour, and he'll be doing that every Thursday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The board has asked for an update on ARPA funding, American Recovery Plan funding. We've outlined the town has received $4,572,677.

We have outlined a use of some of these dollars for one-time use, but certainly I will work with the chair to put this on the agenda so we can have a few more strategic discussions. There was an outreach effort throughout the community to talk about how we can get broader ideas, and I think it makes sense for us to continue to reach out and get folks to share some perspectives. The City of Salem has used some of these dollars to buy the right of first refusal for key properties for municipal purposes, and it may be an opportunity for us to work with land-use boards to think about where are the strategic opportunities for the town to really perhaps acquire properties that you want to add to your commercial tax base or find some properties that might abut municipal properties to help ensure that you have a forward-leaning strategic plan.

Recreation has been busy. I want to thank our rec director. Both the Juneteenth event and the Pride event were coordinated by the rec department.

These programs were coordinated out of the town administrator's office over the last few years, but now they're really baked into our recreation plan, and it's good to see that these will be ongoing recreational programs. We had an absolutely amazing strawberry fest yesterday. I want to thank everybody that marched in the parade but also came out and had a no-cost, low-cost event.

It has been a big part of creating community by having these events. We were all isolated, but it's great to see folks getting out even through the rain and having some fun. We have a big Humphrey Street summer block party.

First time we're actually going to lock off Humphrey Street, much like other North Shore communities, but I think Swamp Skip will be the best, and we will have bands, and we will have activities for all ages and a time to remember. So put that date on your calendar, and we will continue to plan some events for the fall, perhaps New Year's Eve, and our hope of just really building community. We know that folks are lonely.

We know that folks, you know, really have fun and really can get out and engage when we have these events. Our building department has been busy. We have been able to issue 360 building department permits with revenue of over $77,000.

You know, it's roughly the same as last year, revenues down slightly, just given the value of some of the work. Police department is replacing some of their pistols. The board questions what happens when we turn them in.

And luckily we have Lieutenant Fraylor here. Lieutenant Fraylor, are you the armorer, or is there? Yeah, so that's your technical position.

So he is here to answer any specific questions you may have, but we basically turn them in, and we've been able to acquire new ones. Fire department's been busy with promotional process, just like the police department, and there are a number of candidates that are in the process for a captain's vacancy. We also are in our first round of interviews for an administrative assistant for the fire department.

Over the last two weeks, I've been working with our HR director and town department heads to go through their annual evaluations and goal setting. We have a number of very busy department heads. We have a lot of projects that are in the queue, but there's certainly a number of initiatives that we need their support and assistance with as we discuss goals for the select board.

The board asked for some information about capital needs for the schools. I did reach out to our facilities director, Max Casper. He did give me a breakdown of the capital needs for the various school properties.

This is a status of good repair. I've asked the facilities department, both Mr. Casper and Steve Cummings, to provide me with an annual report that details their status of good repair for every town property. These are roofs there, windows, doors.

That will be baked into the capital improvement plan, but this gives you kind of a list of some of those capital projects. If you would like to discuss some of these priorities for how we're going to meet these capital needs, I'll invite Mr. Casper and Mr. Cummings back, and we can get into a detailed conversation about some of these capital needs. It lists all of the repairs for the Clark School, the Middle School, the High School, and the Fieldhouse.

As a follow-up to our May 9th meeting, there's a question about the 3A zoning and what grants the town will lose should we not accept it. One of the grants was the housing choice. We received $250,000 last round.

MassWorks is a broad capital program. The city of Lynn applies every year for numerous projects, and we've applied as well. Local capital project funding for the housing authority, they're too numerous to really get into, but there's many, many grants if we do not comply with that 3A zoning for the MBTA.

Really pleased, our new assistant town clerk, Michael Prezone, started last week. He and Jared have been working to complete the annual town reports for the last 10 years, and we were using a number of senior work-off staff to help with that. Our second notice for the census has gone out.

Our assessing department just renewed a contract with Patriot Property, and we are converting the town to the newest version of AssessPro at no additional cost. We were using the classic version. This will make the software that much more useful as we analyze some of the data on housing.

Lastly, I just wanted to just provide a quick update. I will have a meeting later this week on Kings Beach. Over the last few weeks, I've been working with Lynn Mayer Nicholson on a number of strategies to seek state and federal funds.

Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection staff and the EPA have raised some questions regarding the ultraviolet light system that we've recommended that would address the bacteria loading on Kings Beach. We went down and saw this same system in operation in Newport, Rhode Island, and we are seeking $20 million to help protect Kings Beach, and we'll be working through some of those technical questions as we continue to seek funding to ensure that beach can be used by the next generation of Swampskate and regional residents. That's my report.

Happy to answer any questions. Thanks, Sean. Questions from the board?

[Speaker 8] (34:26 - 34:28)
Sorry, I have some questions. Do you want to go first?

[Speaker 7] (34:29 - 34:29)
Thank you.

[Speaker 8] (34:30 - 34:42)
Go ahead. So, on the senior center, do you happen to have an update on when they are going to finally get the kitchen that was bonded years ago?

[Speaker 3] (34:44 - 35:34)
Yeah, Max Casper has been working with the senior center director, and they've had to go out and re-bid the project, and we've looked at a different type of range. We want to get off of fossil fuels, and so we had to redesign the range for electric, and that required us to go out and redesign the electrical load, so it did add some time, but it's my hope that we'll see that project completed over the next few months. We are going to go back out to RFP.

It was my hope we could go out earlier, but there were some technical design drawings that need to be updated, and so it has just taken a little longer than we anticipated.

[Speaker 8] (35:34 - 35:44)
I'm a liaison to the Council on Aging, and I was just wondering, is there any way you could get me some real ETA dates and really when we could expect this?

[Speaker 3] (35:44 - 35:46)
I will ask the facilities director. We're in year three. We are.

[Speaker 8] (35:46 - 36:09)
All right, and I know there's a lot of effort going on, but I just want to get something a little bit nailed down there. On recreation, I just have a question. On Humphrey Street, Summerfest, Block Party, is the recreation department working with people that own businesses on there, and they're in support?

[Speaker 3] (36:09 - 36:25)
So is the community and economic development director. We think it's going to be one of their best days, and we're going to work with them to make sure that they have products and food items that are going to be complimentary.

[Speaker 8] (36:26 - 36:41)
Yeah, I just wanted to know if we were working together with them. I'd like to see that the fire department is working on hiring and their promotions. Where is the police department on that?

[Speaker 3] (36:42 - 37:11)
They're in the process, as I've mentioned at previous select board meetings. I will not meet with any individuals until all individuals that took the test are vetted through the police department process. So as soon as the chief brings me all of the names of individuals that applied, I will sit down with him, and we will have an interview, and we'll decide who we should issue a conditional offer to.

[Speaker 8] (37:12 - 37:14)
And is there an ETA that we think on that?

[Speaker 3] (37:14 - 37:24)
I hope that that will happen as soon as possible. The chief is on vacation right now, so I don't anticipate that I will hear from him until he gets back sometime next week.

[Speaker 8] (37:24 - 37:31)
And does that include the higher ranks, like captain or whatever? The promotional process? The promotional process, right.

[Speaker 3] (37:31 - 37:38)
It's a little bit of a different process, but I have been working with the chief, and we're working our way through that.

[Speaker 8] (37:40 - 37:49)
And last but not least, on the Kings Beach, are we still having a meeting in mid-July, an open public meeting on Kings Beach, David?

[Speaker 3] (37:50 - 37:52)
Yeah, to the best of my knowledge.

[Speaker 8] (37:52 - 37:55)
Well, you set the agenda, so. Yes. Okay, good.

[Speaker 3] (37:55 - 38:08)
I'm happy to work with you, David, and we will work with our consulting team and provide a more detailed update. Yeah, we just need to make sure the consulting team is available when we meet in July. Yep.

[Speaker 22] (38:10 - 38:11)
That's it.

[Speaker 1] (38:15 - 39:02)
I have just one thing. Thanks for giving us the update on the police department. I'm very grateful that town meeting supported the funding for replacing some of the firearms, and I know that some of them were very old.

And so I'm grateful that town meeting did that, and I'm grateful that we all as a community feel really safe and appreciate everything you all do. I would ask us to reconsider this turning in for rebates. There's over 466 million guns in this country.

I don't think us buying more guns needs to add to that bottom line, and many communities have adopted a policy where they ensure that guns that are being replaced are destroyed. I fronted. I'm very comfortable with guns, have no problem with guns, but I do believe as a policy we don't as a community need to get a little bit of a rebate for money when we can just destroy the guns like a lot of communities have.

So I just ask us to reconsider that policy on the board.

[Speaker 3] (39:02 - 39:19)
Peter, I will work with the chief, and I'll implement that recommendation. I actually agree with you, and frankly, I think we can talk about how to make sure that that's not an issue in terms of the type of pistols that we're working with. Yeah, thank you.

I appreciate that.

[Speaker 2] (39:20 - 39:21)
Thanks, David. All right.

[Speaker 3] (39:22 - 39:23)
Thanks, Sean.

[Speaker 4] (39:23 - 39:57)
All right, we're going to move on to public comment. I know there are many in the audience and on teams that are here for the pedestrian safety and traffic updates, so that is not something that is going to be addressed through public comment. But if you have a public comment for something that is not on the agenda, please stand up, state your name and your address and your voting precinct, if known, and come down to the microphone, please.

Thanks.

[Speaker 15] (40:05 - 40:47)
Hi, I'm Liz Smith, Precinct 3, and I just want to ask for some clarity, especially on the website, about the boards and committees' choosing of memberships process. I applied for the Harbor and Waterfront Advisory Committee on June 7th. I heard back on the 13th that the position had already been filled and you guys would vote for it tonight.

And I was a little frustrated because it was still showing as open and a little disappointed that I didn't get a chance to talk to anybody about my qualifications or why I want to be on that committee and what I think I could bring to the table. So just some clarity would be really good. Thanks.

[Speaker 4] (40:47 - 41:52)
Thank you. Yeah, and just for those who are first-timers here, the select board does not respond to public comment. We listen.

We take it under advisement. And, you know, that's just our MO. So don't take our silence to mean anything other than we're just following the process.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But that will be part of a later conversation on the agenda. It's not 7 o'clock yet, so we cannot continue our public hearing.

But we will, with the indulgence of the board, jump to item number four, discussion and possible vote on a draft RFP for 10 New Ocean Street and 12 to 24 Pine Street, the redevelopment area for the purpose of creating veterans' affordable housing and a veterans' center. Peter.

[Speaker 1] (41:53 - 47:18)
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to town staff for helping us put together. As folks may recall, and those may not, I'll skip the brief background.

In the May town meeting this year, town meeting voted overwhelmingly to approve this board's recommendation to approve to excuse me to purchase 12-24 Pine Street, Swampscott, and to use that building to get, excuse me, that property together with a portion of the property at 10 New Ocean Street to issue an RFP for affordable housing. Affordable veterans' housing and a new VFW or veterans' center at the location. We are scheduled to close on that acquisition on July 17th.

Due diligence is ongoing, so we have not completed due diligence. So this board will certainly be meeting before July 17th once we have due diligence to talk about due diligence and any issues that need to be resolved there before making a decision to approve acceptance of the deed of the property and moving forward to the transaction. What's before us tonight for first reading, the policy of the board in the past has been for any requests for proposals, contracts, or other agreements, we have two readings of it.

First reading to be able to just talk very generically background, give people a little understanding of what's there. And then either tonight or between the time of now and our second reading for board members, member of the public, to give us comments on the RFP. This RFP will be on the town's website, I believe, tomorrow, if I remember hearing correctly.

So this RFP under the community development tab on the town website will be available for members of the public to provide their comments as well. The dates for the RFP are fluctuating because it obviously depends on when we ultimately do issue it here. So we do anticipate issuing the RFP very soon after our purchase of the property.

You may recall back in our conversations before town meeting about the timing sensitivity here is we anticipate this project to be very similar to what the town did for Michon School. And the likely applicants are going to be non-profit housing partnerships that will be doing tax credit financing to make 100% of the units in this building or the building to be constructed affordable units. In this case, with a preference for veterans.

In light of that and the fact that the state has a funding process that really kicks off in late fall through the winter, it's important that we get the RFP out, we get the responses back, and we use the time over the summer to negotiate potentially with our non-profit housing partner. And to put them in a position so that they are lined up nicely to be applying for the tax credits and other financing needed for this project by the end of this year. So a little bit of a tight timeline, but totally doable.

And thanks to staff for putting together this RFP so we're not starting from standstill. Once we close this property, we will actually be ready to issue the RFP by the time, assuming we close on this property here. So the RFP in front of you is nearly identical to the RFP that was used for the Michon School process.

Purposely done so because we had great success through the Michon School, and hopefully the karma stays with us and we have great success here. A couple of things just to state. It is anticipated that this is going to be a local initiative petition, a LIP, which is a form of a 40B project.

It's most likely how this project will ultimately get approved. That is also exactly how the Michon School got done. So the proposal does contain some loose guidance as to the proposals, so when proposals are submitted to us, they won't be just proposals about the applicant, about the nonprofit, but they will be specific design proposals, saying we are proposing a building of X size, and here are the plans, here are the details of it, so that we, as a board, when we have the public conversation, will be able to share with the public the ideas that are before us and have a community dialogue about what specifically is being proposed as opposed to just vetting the organization. We will be actually vetting ideas. The process, once we identify a party to negotiate with, we'll be negotiating an LDA, a land disposition agreement with them, and that land disposition agreement we should, and people should view as basically a restriction agreement.

It's a contract between the town and this nonprofit housing partnership that says, this is what you're allowed to do on the property, and we agree to certain things. For example, making sure that these units are restricted for affordable housing for veterans is something that will be in that restriction. So that's how we, as a town, are confident that we know that their use of the property is going to be subject to all of these restrictions that we've all agreed to.

It also is the way in which we make sure the design of the project was advertised, discussed, and modified between the town and the applicant, so when it comes to fruition, we know we're getting what we were told we were going to get on the project. So, I think that's it for my summary here. I'm happy to answer any questions, and if I don't know them, I'm probably just going to refer you to the RFP, because I can't remember everything in the RFP at the moment here.

But over the next couple of weeks, I think we want this back on for, when's our July meeting? We'll talk about that. When we talk about our July meeting, have that back on so that ideally this would be in good shape for assuming we close on July 17th, that staff then would have our permission to issue the RFP shortly thereafter.

[Speaker 8] (47:18 - 47:20)
So that's why we leave this open?

[Speaker 7] (47:21 - 47:45)
Sorry. I raised my hand. Three high-level questions.

One, you noted that we're still in the process of due diligence. You kind of went past it quickly. I just want to make sure everyone heard that.

We're doing our due diligence extensively, right? None of this will happen if we find out there's a big problem or something like that. We don't anticipate that, otherwise we wouldn't be here right now.

[Speaker 1] (47:45 - 48:22)
Specifically environmental and geotechnical. We're just waiting for the reports to come back on environmental and geotechnical. So we have actually done a great job by town staff.

We have a top-notch environmental and geotechnical firm that has done groundwater, soil, and soil condition sampling. So we have no shortage of information. The lab results have come back, and they're now compiling the reports so that we'll know everything that we need to know about the property in terms of both contamination, historical use, constructability issues, cost premiums, things of that nature before we ever make the decision to purchase the property.

[Speaker 7] (48:22 - 48:49)
Can I just bring that up because I know people have approached me about Stacey's Brook being there, the flood zone, all these different issues, and all that stuff will be addressed through these processes. I just want to reassure people that's being looked into. Correct.

Secondly, you mentioned a little bit the list of 40B. Some of it for my own education, maybe for everyone's education. What does that really mean?

Is it really important? Is it a technical thing that's not really important?

[Speaker 1] (48:52 - 50:53)
I can't tell you if it's important or not, but it's certainly necessary to do the project. The way in which the mission was done, I'm just going to use the mission as an experience, which was it's basically a friendly 40B. You hear us talk about 40Bs all the time, and 40B is a way in which you can get waivers from local regulations.

In a 40B context, it's typically because you agree to a percentage of the units, a small 20% to 25% of the units being restricted as affordable units. Here, because it's a local initiative petition, we're making the requirement of 100% affordable. That gives us a tool then to, if you will, work with the awarded nonprofit housing partnership to work on what would be an appropriate neighborhood density and a neighborhood project to make sure that this fit within the neighborhood.

As you know now, there's already approved a three-story significant residential building. That was already approved by the zoning board. Those permits were for different projects.

I don't anticipate anyone would actually use those approvals, so I think they would go back through the 40B process, which would allow them waivers from certain underlying zoning, but it's also still through a complete public process with the zoning board. The zoning board is really, besides our LDA that I mentioned earlier, the document that we're going to negotiate where we can control design. The only other approval that they'll need besides here is the zoning board.

The Michon Project went through a number of public meetings with the select board, and then with the zoning board, that resulted in changes to the project over time to address concerns like lighting and traffic. Traffic in particular, the select board actually made special provisions and changed what the underlying proposal was to deal with concerns of the neighbors there. So that process will be identical to Michon School, but it's called the LIP because it's another way of saying friendly 40B.

We've said to the development, the nonprofit community here, we're going to work with you on something that works for the neighborhood. Tell us what you need to make it work, and then we're going to work to make sure it's neighborhood appropriate.

[Speaker 7] (50:54 - 51:21)
That's really the point I wanted to get to, is the friendly part. People can hear 40B, and then it can start getting mixed up in other perceptions of what's happening. The last piece is about ground lease versus selling it to a nonprofit housing developer.

Again, for people's education, is that really important as well? Could it go either way? Is there big pros and cons for the town versus the developer?

[Speaker 1] (51:21 - 53:03)
Great question. When we did the Michon School, we did a ground lease. The B'nai B'rith Housing Partnership is our partner.

I say partner because even though they own the ground lease, they own the building, meaning they invested the capital. We didn't invest any of the capital, but they're our partner in terms of their working to achieve the mission that we want as a town to achieve. There it was 38 affordable units at the Michon School.

Ground lease, there are a lot of institutions and communities that tend to think doing a ground lease for 99 years is the way to do it because it gives them ultimate residual control of the property. It is a proven thing that works with affordable housing and tax credit deals, so it's something that we very well could do again here for this project. The RFP certainly gives preference for a ground lease proposal.

We're having the same conversation on Hadley, and we'll be talking about the Hadley RFP shortly, whether that's a ground lease or not. Slightly different story there, so we'll have to talk about it then. I personally do not believe on a residential project the ground lease really has much value for a town because at the end of 99 years, what are we going to do?

We're going to extend the ground lease because no one's knocking on all those doors and saying, get out, right? They're residents, they're going to be community members, and it will forever be affordable housing at that point. I personally on residential don't think the ground lease versus deed matters, but I understand that some do, and there's no reason not to work within the ground lease for that.

Hadley, I'm going to come back and have a slightly different view, frankly, just because that's a bit more complicated than a residential program.

[Speaker 22] (53:04 - 53:05)
Mary Ellen?

[Speaker 8] (53:06 - 53:27)
So my question is, are we leaving? There are certain things that are blank here, and I'm just guessing they're being left blank just so that when we send it out for an RFP, they're going to come back and put in some numbers on what they're looking for, so specifically the square footage of the VFW post?

[Speaker 1] (53:27 - 53:32)
No, that will not be left blank. That is just pending. We're having calculations done.

Okay. That one won't be left blank.

[Speaker 8] (53:32 - 53:39)
That will be filled in. Okay, that's good. And then who sets the actual levels of the AMI?

[Speaker 1] (53:40 - 55:49)
So another great question. The typical programs, we can certainly set AMI however we want to do it, but it's, again, not without being based in reality, is where the funding programs are. So I'm going to use Michon again as an example.

We require them when they submit their RFP in Michon, and as an example, to submit and tell us what they're proposing for unit type, for unit quantity, unit type, and then what levels of affordability. We also ask them in that project to indicate whether or not they're open to having a Swampscot resident preference or not, and so there's other things that we can ask them of that. In that project for the Michon School, they did what I'm going to call a very traditional, down-the-middle affordable housing tax credit deal, which means that the units are majority, vast majority are at 60% of AMI, and a few are at 30% of AMI.

So what I would call affordable and extremely affordable, right? So on the low end of things. That is where the federal tax credit program funds is that level of affordability.

When you start going above 60% of AMI, and you start going to 80% of AMI, and certainly higher than 80% of AMI, you start getting out of the traditional funding mechanisms for which the state has worked to create alternative funding sources, but they're much smaller funding sources. They're less traditional funding sources, and so they're not as predictable, whereas the normal tax credit structure is predictable. The state has an allocation of tax credits from the federal government every year that they can award, and so it's a much more predictable result.

So for us, for example, we're going to have to wait a year or so for the tax credits to come in. We wouldn't want to get to the end of that waiting period and find out that we had created something that was too specialized and too nuanced that we couldn't get it funded, right? And so here, my guess is the normal applicants would come back at the 30, the 60% of AMI would be the majority, because I would anticipate this mostly to be a tax credit structure, and so that's my guess.

But if we as a board want to ask people to look at something different, we should have that conversation, but just want us to be cognizant that the more creative we get, potentially the less funding sources there are to achieve the success.

[Speaker 8] (55:50 - 55:57)
Well, where do we sit as far as saying that it's swamps got veterans for that first round?

[Speaker 1] (55:57 - 58:49)
Yeah, so that's a different question than levels of affordability. We have the ability to be able to do a preference, and we've had this conversation a couple of times about that, and the chair of the Affordable Housing Committee was here one night as well and able to help us. The veteran preference is a presumed preference that the state will automatically – I can't say automatically – give high deference to the veteran's preference, and the underlying belief that a veteran preference meets fair housing considerations.

So every time we do a preference, it's tethered back to does it meet fair housing laws, right? Because we can't, as a town, say we only want housing for white people. We're just going to be in the extreme, to use a fair housing example, or non-handicapped, non-disabled people.

We can't do that as a town, right? You can't do it as a private individual either. So it goes through what we have to create a marketing plan, a housing nonprofit will have to create a marketing plan and a housing plan to be able to show that they will be marketing in a way that meets all fair housing laws.

Veterans is one of those groups that gets an assumption of meeting fair housing. When you then add on age and zip code, typically the state entertains up to a 70% preference for local, but anything above a 70%, they start deeming as potentially running afoul of fair housing because then they start looking at the demographic radius of that zip code and say, is this radius diverse enough in multiple categories to meet fair housing? So typically the state doesn't allow you to go above 70%.

Sometimes they won't even let you go to 70% at the Michon School for a Swampscot preference. They let us go to the 70%. Again, it's not a great preference to begin with, but they did allow us to go to the maximum amount, so I would foresee they would allow us to do it here.

But candidly, I think there's a pretty vibrant conversation to be had with the veterans community as well, which is they're our partner. The VFW is our partner here, and if you look at their membership, I appreciate it's a Swampscot-based VFW, but the people that are really being served go well beyond Swampscot. I think the overwhelming majority of members are actually not Swampscot residents.

They are veterans from the North Shore, and this has become a critical thing for their existence. So I think what preference we want to put, we can have a say. We don't need to put it in the RFP.

If we want to put a preference as to preference, we can say greater weight will be given to when we score the RFP responses. We can consider that. Or we can just say we want to hear what you have to say.

Tell us what your ideas and preference would be. My instinct is unless we feel very strongly about something, to leave it. Veteran is going to be important, so put veteran.

But as to the rest, let the market respond to us. They know how to be successful. So I do want to make sure that we're creating something that's going to be a marketing success, meaning that it's going to meet the need that is out there for veterans.

But that's something we can put in the RFP if we want to.

[Speaker 4] (58:49 - 59:26)
I will just highlight on page 18, it's there. Inclusion of a local preference. The town desires housing that will meet the needs of the community's residents.

Such projects should identify the sale and lease preference of current and or former Swampscott residents. Most advantageous proposals, which include a local preference. Least advantageous proposals, which do not provide a local preference.

And just for the credence of the board, this has been reviewed by Kim Martin Epstein, the Affordable Housing Trust. So she was able to weigh in. And town council?

And town council, yes.

[Speaker 8] (59:27 - 59:29)
When will we have that number on the VFW?

[Speaker 1] (59:30 - 59:31)
Because it's being calculated.

[Speaker 8] (59:31 - 59:31)
When?

[Speaker 1] (59:32 - 59:37)
Sometime in the next couple weeks. But before we have a second reading, it's going to be in there.

[Speaker 8] (59:37 - 59:38)
Okay, thank you.

[Speaker 9] (59:38 - 1:00:06)
So because I've not gone through the Michon process like you have, say that Mike Sweeney or the veterans come forward and they've taken a look at their data and they find there's an overwhelming number of families that need this service. Could we, even though age and residency is a preference, could we then go back to our partners at the non-profit and request certain unit sizes?

[Speaker 1] (1:00:07 - 1:02:32)
Yeah, so absolutely. We can do that now if that's what we want to, if we decide as a policy that's something that we want to encourage. So communities have.

Michon, we didn't do this. So Michon, we said tell us how many units, tell us the unit sizes, et cetera. They, not to get into too much detail there, it was somewhat iterative because they originally came to us with a lower number of units and expressed concern.

The feedback from the community was it's too few units to be competitive at the state level. You have to have a critical mass to be a competitive project at the state level, so there was concern. We weren't going to allow Michon to get exponentially expanded.

There was too few units, and so what they did is they actually went back and came back with more units in the same square footage. They just went all one bedrooms. And they said we're going to do elderly housing.

We're going to do all one bedrooms. This is why. This is the market need, et cetera, et cetera.

So there is some of that back and forth for us. So we can decide that. That will clearly take down the number of units.

But the way in which the AMI's are calculated are based on household size, one, two, three, four. So it's completely in the vernacular of the affordable housing community. If we wanted family housing, family housing.

I think we need to have that conversation with the veterans and with the veterans agent because, and I think we found it out a bit in Michon, the truth is you have to really understand do you have, do the persons meeting those specific needs or requirements, are they actually living here? Because if you have a veteran who is qualifying at 60% of AMI and he or she is from Swampscott, chances are they already don't afford Swampscott, which means that they're subsidized through some other housing here, living in a legacy place that they are paying very little or that they moved out of Swampscott a long time ago because if you're at 60% of AMI, it's really tough to live in a community like Swampscott.

So then we can say, well, why don't we raise the AMI, right, and go after higher night? We can do that. We just then all of a sudden took the big bullseye of funding and made it a smaller bullseye of funding because there's less funding choices out there.

But can you make some of the units 80% AMI, some of the units 60%, some of the units, but yes, it's dynamic like that. So it's not an all or nothing. So we can absolutely have that conversation.

We should be very much including the veterans agent. He came back, if you remember, saying that they do have some information on general demographics, not specific demographics, but general demographics that may help us.

[Speaker 4] (1:02:34 - 1:02:54)
Yeah, I think he also mentioned that 85% of veterans were over the age of 55 years old in Swampscott for the 450 some-odd veterans. I believe that's the number. Any additional questions on the RFP?

[Speaker 1] (1:02:54 - 1:03:02)
As you're looking at it, if you just send them comments to Margie, is it you or Pete Kane? I apologize.

[Speaker 22] (1:03:02 - 1:03:04)
Pete's on this one.

[Speaker 1] (1:03:04 - 1:03:19)
So to Pete Kane, that would be great. And then at some point he and I will sit and assemble comments to make sure we get you a red line. So the next document you're going to see as an RFP before the second reading is going to be a red line in this document so you see everything that changed from the current version.

[Speaker 7] (1:03:19 - 1:03:46)
Perfect. So to this kind of questioning, are we suggesting that it really would be to our advantage to have some type of quick survey done by the veterans to get a better fix on people that might be, you know, interested in different income levels? I feel like we're heading for a potential kind of taking a shot and hoping it works out right without the right input.

Well, we're not.

[Speaker 1] (1:03:47 - 1:05:17)
I mean, so I think it would be prudent. The answer is going to be yes. I think it would be prudent for staff to sit with the veterans agent and delve a little deeper, and obviously some of the information is sensitive, but to delve a little deeper into that.

I think for our board, just, I mean, we have to just understand that, you know, this is not Swampscott veteran housing. This is veteran housing that we can create a preference for age and zip code, but it doesn't mean it's going to be a Swampscott resident, and we've had that conversation before. It's just something that we just need to continue realizing.

But Sean and staff can have that conversation with the veterans agent. I'm happy to join and just come back. I'm not sure what the right answer is in terms of what the RFP should say or not.

We are consulting with a couple of consultants that know this, including the state, to run this by them to make sure that the RFP is something that the state would find attractive when it comes time to funding. So we keep back-checking informally to say, hey, we're doing a project like this. What do you think about it?

Now, I will say that the assistant veteran services secretary was recently appointed, and she knows a little bit about our VFW since she has been serving out of our VFW, and so having the assistant secretary of veteran affairs, the first ever, come from our VFW is a huge opportunity for us.

[Speaker 3] (1:05:17 - 1:06:56)
So, yeah, General Andrea Gayle Bennett was the assistant commander for our disabled veterans. She has spent a career in public health, and she has just been elevated to be the undersecretary of veteran affairs for the entire Commonwealth of Massachusetts. So we have never had as much opportunity to strategically think about how we care for our veterans.

I was with General Bennett on Saturday, and we talked about this project in Lynn with a group of veterans, and there's no other community in the Commonwealth that is building veterans housing and a veterans center. This will be one of the most extraordinary investments in veteran services that the Commonwealth could make through this town. And I really do think it's a wonderful value.

This is Swampskate's values. We take care of our veterans, and we have an extraordinary opportunity to go out and bring in a partner that could build not just units of veterans but a telehealth center, perhaps a new VFW that really reflects that sense of community that is so desperately needed by our veterans that suffer from mental health or from substance abuse or other things that really ultimately come down to loneliness and isolation.

And so we have a lot of interesting conversations that are evolving, but, Doug, I think that survey idea makes a lot of sense.

[Speaker 7] (1:06:57 - 1:06:58)
Even if it's informal.

[Speaker 3] (1:06:58 - 1:08:18)
Absolutely. Absolutely. We've got to get that out, but don't be surprised if we hear some voices outside of Swampskate because And I wasn't saying it in terms of wanting them to all be from Swampskate.

Absolutely. I did not hear that. And frankly, I love the fact that this board has mentioned a number of times veterans.

We're not going to be exclusive about the need. If there's a veteran anywhere in this Commonwealth, I would love for them to think, Yeah, this could be your hometown, and, yeah, we will help you. But that income threshold is something important.

We have to kind of think about we do live in a pretty wonderful community, but we do have some folks that are struggling here. I look at our housing, our public housing community, and I want to make sure everybody in those units understands that we're going to be building some extraordinary units, too. Not one of the public housing properties in Swampskate is ADA compliant.

We don't have an elevator. Like, this is, you know, and they're not good enough, and we're going to build something that will be the standard. And so we're going to think about this very carefully, and we're going to do our best to ensure that this is as much of a resounding success as any project in the Commonwealth.

Thanks, Sean.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:19 - 1:08:45)
Anything else from the board? All right. It's a few minutes after 7 o'clock, so we are going to jump to our agenda, the number one item on our agenda, which was the 7 o'clock public hearing.

Continuation from June the 7th, I'd like to welcome members of Wholesome as well as members of our ERAC committee. And with that, we'll have a motion to continue our public hearing from June the 7th.

[Speaker 9] (1:08:45 - 1:08:46)
So moved. Second.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:47 - 1:08:47)
All in favor?

[Speaker 9] (1:08:48 - 1:08:48)
Aye.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:48 - 1:09:42)
Aye. All right. I will say we did have a number of discussions.

We've talked in executive session about how to move forward, and I think just for purposes of time, tonight we're just going to recommend that we move forward with recommending a 90-day extension to the existing permit for Aggregate and for Wholesome. And we will also be working with Aggregate's council, Wholesome's council, to enter into some settlement negotiations so we can have those discussions. So if town council has not already reached out to you, Mr. Rosenberg, they will be shortly. We'll get some dates and we'll get some times. Oh.

[Speaker 2] (1:09:43 - 1:09:44)
Town council. Oh.

[Speaker 4] (1:09:44 - 1:09:48)
Hi. Yeah. Yeah.

Attorney Sims, welcome.

[Speaker 1] (1:09:52 - 1:09:56)
You don't turn your camera on on Zoom, so we don't know what you look like.

[Speaker 4] (1:10:04 - 1:10:11)
Yeah. Anything from the board?

[Speaker 7] (1:10:11 - 1:10:15)
No, I'd make a motion.

[Speaker 1] (1:10:16 - 1:10:21)
So I think you're saying 90 days, but tell me what the date is in September, September 20th.

[Speaker 4] (1:10:22 - 1:10:35)
Yeah. So we would have to continue this hearing to a specific date, which would be our second meeting in September, which according to my calendar, third Wednesday is 9-20. All right.

[Speaker 1] (1:10:35 - 1:10:58)
I'd make a motion to continue the existing aggregate, or excuse me, the earth removal permit for Wholesome. Continue it beyond June 30th of this year and continue it to September 20th and continue this public hearing until 7 p.m. on Wednesday, September 20th in the high school.

[Speaker 4] (1:10:59 - 1:11:05)
Well, Mr. Spellios, we would want to extend the permit for 90 days through September 3rd.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:06 - 1:11:14)
That's fine. I don't know. I haven't done, like, counting of days.

So what's 90 days from today? I was just making it easy and having everything go to September 20th.

[Speaker 4] (1:11:14 - 1:11:16)
Fine. Is that okay? Sure.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:17 - 1:11:18)
All right. So I'm staying by my motion.

[Speaker 4] (1:11:19 - 1:11:19)
Do I have a second?

[Speaker 22] (1:11:20 - 1:11:22)
Second. All right.

[Speaker 4] (1:11:22 - 1:11:23)
All in favor?

[Speaker 22] (1:11:23 - 1:11:25)
Aye. Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:25 - 1:11:26)
All right. Great.

[Speaker 4] (1:12:23 - 1:13:33)
All right. Can we? I don't want to make them wait.

Let's go. Yeah, let's go. Do we have members of the Swamp Scott Retirement Board in attendance tonight?

All right. One, two. She's on Zoom.

But I. Yeah. Yeah.

I can't open it. It's not a public meeting. It's not a public, it's a joint.

[Speaker 1] (1:13:34 - 1:13:47)
But we hosted for 730, if they posted at 730, they can have a meeting. We're just talking about procedural stuff, so if they didn't, do you know what time you posted your meeting for? It says 730 on our agenda.

Do you know what time you posted your meeting?

[Speaker 4] (1:13:53 - 1:13:56)
All right, sorry about that.

[Speaker 3] (1:13:56 - 1:13:58)
But you get the front row. But now you get to sit in the front row.

[Speaker 4] (1:14:00 - 1:17:03)
We get to look at you. All right. We will, so with the indulgence of the board, we can jump ahead and talk about discussion an impossible vote on next steps for the Charter Review and Community Preservation Act.

We'll probably just have time for one before 7.30. But at recent meetings of the Town Study Committee, they've continued its review of town meeting procedures and they've begun the process of creating an extensive list of recommended changes to our town charter and our town bylaws. And I'm told that a request for a warrant article for a special town meeting this fall is likely forthcoming. We've not undertaken a comprehensive review of our town charter since 2015.

Given the likelihood of recommended charter revisions coming before a special town meeting, I'm recommending the following occur starting now so this board can be prepared to publicly discuss potential charter revisions as early as this September. So here's the outline and the schedule. So a letter to all committees and board chairs by July the 7th asking them to meet with their committees to discuss any potential charter revisions or bylaw revisions needed to better effectuate each committee and board's purpose.

All the recommendations would be forwarded to the town administrator and the select board chair by September the 10th. This would allow for several meetings to occur in July and August to really bring about these changes. And then on or about July 7th, public posting and communication to all town meeting members advising them of the ability for them to make suggested revisions to the town charter and bylaws on or before September the 10th.

A link on the town website would be provided for submissions of suggestions. And on or before September the 10th, the town administrator would provide recommended changes based on experience and discussion with town staff. Starting with our second meeting in September, through October 4th, the select board would meet to discuss potential changes and to create a list of final potential changes for further discussion.

October the 5th through the 17th, town council would review a list of potential changes and advises to any legal considerations, language, etc. And the end of October would be spent by the select board making final review of changes and recommendations for a special town meeting, considering these warrant articles. And November slash December of this year, we would have our special town meeting.

And I can share this, I can share this with, you know, with the board via e-mail. I'm sorry, I was working on this late into this afternoon.

[Speaker 7] (1:17:05 - 1:17:05)
Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (1:17:08 - 1:17:16)
So just wanted to get any comments, initial feedback from the board, if you have any. Obviously, I know we're doing this on the fly here.

[Speaker 8] (1:17:19 - 1:17:34)
I just want to make sure that it's very public-like, like these meetings are on the website, on Facebook. You know, just, I think we really have a big opportunity with communication. Yep.

And that's what I really like to see that.

[Speaker 4] (1:17:34 - 1:17:59)
Yep. No, I agree. And I think really polling and taking the temperature, getting the feedback and commentary from town meeting members and addressing and connecting with them in a number of different ways is certainly going to be most important.

So, I look forward to this being a transparent and communicative process. I think it would be, I'm sorry, you have something.

[Speaker 1] (1:17:59 - 1:18:00)
Go ahead.

[Speaker 7] (1:18:00 - 1:18:10)
Just two things. One, there is a committee, right, that, no. Does this not segue with the charter committee?

[Speaker 4] (1:18:12 - 1:18:24)
Well, there's a, right now there's a town meeting study committee, which is processes within to make town meeting more efficient so that, you know, we weren't there for four and a half nights, we were there for three.

[Speaker 7] (1:18:27 - 1:18:30)
Excellent. All to 11 o'clock.

[Speaker 4] (1:18:30 - 1:18:30)
Okay.

[Speaker 7] (1:18:31 - 1:18:39)
Okay. So, that's a town meeting process. Is there not a standing, nothing with regard to charter?

[Speaker 4] (1:18:40 - 1:18:42)
No. Peter, you can speak.

[Speaker 1] (1:18:43 - 1:18:45)
Yeah, no, we, it got dissolved right after.

[Speaker 7] (1:18:48 - 1:18:49)
The last time?

[Speaker 1] (1:18:49 - 1:18:49)
Yeah, the last time.

[Speaker 7] (1:18:49 - 1:18:50)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:18:50 - 1:18:52)
So, it's not on the books to do it.

[Speaker 7] (1:18:53 - 1:18:57)
So, that's a question mark whether or not one needs to form an ad hoc committee or not?

[Speaker 1] (1:18:57 - 1:20:21)
So, you don't, I think it's a question, I think if I'm hearing you correctly, and I don't, I don't have the dates, whatever, if you send that, that'd be great to have the dates. Sure. But I think it sounds like we are effectively going to, with the feedback of town meeting members, committee members, and staff, we will effectively, every idea will get brought to us, right, and then we can have a public conversation about every idea and effectively do the work of, basically with the charter review committee.

So, when the charter review committee met, first of all, it was a really small committee, three people, but then we met with every chairperson of every committee, well, we offered, I should say, we offered to meet with each individual select board member individually as well, and we met with town staff. So, we did something very similar to, well, I can't say that. Sounds similar, but we just, you know, did that and just, frankly, it didn't give a lot of ideas.

That process didn't, and so I think, so I'm not just, it took us pulling ideas out of people, if you will, on things. At the time, one select board member had a suggestion, one suggestion, and so just to give you a sense, right, it wasn't a thing. So, I frankly love the idea.

I mean, if I heard you correctly, town meeting members.

[Speaker 4] (1:20:21 - 1:20:21)
Yep.

[Speaker 1] (1:20:21 - 1:20:55)
And then all the committees are going to be able to meet together in a public forum with their committees and bubble up, percolate ideas, because it's very hard if you're not already focused on the charter to be, you may have ideas, but you need others around you that know the charter to be able to maybe lubricate those ideas and bring them forward here. So, I think that's really great, but I think, if I heard you correctly, we're, functionally, we will end up being the ones going through that long list of 30 proposed changes and then decide, do we agree, and then debate them in public forums and get feedback on those. But, if I'm wrong, tell me.

[Speaker 4] (1:20:55 - 1:21:10)
No, no, no. No, that's, the intent is that the five of us will have, the five of us will have that dialogue publicly with the assistance and the help of dozens of chairs and volunteers and town meeting members.

[Speaker 1] (1:21:10 - 1:21:26)
Yeah, I will tell you the last time, the select board, functionally, is it the last time too? I mean, the charter review then presents to the select board, the select board then did the Warren article, right? So, really, it's the select board that did it.

It wasn't a robust conversation at the time with the select board.

[Speaker 8] (1:21:27 - 1:21:29)
It was well advertised, though, I will tell you.

[Speaker 1] (1:21:29 - 1:21:29)
Huh?

[Speaker 8] (1:21:29 - 1:21:33)
It was well advertised. You know, people had, I did go make a recommendation.

[Speaker 1] (1:21:33 - 1:21:35)
No, no, I appreciate you saying that.

[Speaker 8] (1:21:35 - 1:21:39)
People, no, no, it was, it was advertised over and over, please come down and explain.

[Speaker 1] (1:21:39 - 1:22:28)
But, I think, by the time it really became the biggest public forum, which was a select board meeting, there actually wasn't as much robust conversation as I think this may potentially allow us to have, which is to really look at, from the most arcane small change to bigger changes, right? To say, do we need further study? You know, what does town council say?

Does the town administration think it's a good idea? Does the planning board chair, if it affects something having to do with that, think it's a good idea? That's something that we didn't, we didn't create that dynamic environment for that robust, it was, we had lots of meetings, but it was meeting with the planning board chair.

And then we met with, you know, the zoning board. And, and so there was, we had tons of meetings, but they weren't centralized here. And so I think it missed an opportunity, I think, to be more robust is my gut on that.

[Speaker 4] (1:22:29 - 1:23:06)
Yeah. And there, and, and I've, I've read through a number, probably too many charters to in recent weeks, you know, it's been a part-time hobby of mine. But there, there have been other committees that have established more of a regular cadence where you're looking at your charter every five years or three years.

So I think, you know, really putting that policy in place just helps keep that dynamic living and breathing and dynamic instead of static and on a shelf somewhere. So I think, I think this process will be, will be helpful and it will of course be very public. Yes, Katie.

[Speaker 9] (1:23:07 - 1:23:44)
So I understand why we're targeting the current boards and committees and town meeting members because they already sort of breathe that document. But maybe this is an opportunity to educate citizens of what the town charter says. And then that way they can come back with suggestions or questions, maybe at the farmer's market or something where we could be educating folks so they feel like it's available for them to have a voice.

We're giving them a platform. Even if, if it's, you know, a conversation of like, well, it really doesn't work that way and this is how it works. You know, that, that's a great spot to do that.

[Speaker 7] (1:23:44 - 1:24:01)
Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. I think it's kind of educating people to know how to actually participate in this, even for committee chairs, I think, is going to be, we're going to have to have some type of guidelines to help them think about, like, what are you, what are you looking at? What are you supposed to be thinking about in general?

Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:24:03 - 1:25:12)
I think those are great ideas. I will tell you, you know, our bylaws on our website, and I don't know how many gallons of milk we'd have to buy each citizen to go and read the bylaw and come back and actually talk about how interesting local government is, but it is important. And I, I would recommend if you're interested in thinking about just the day-to-day operation of a, of a town, this is governance.

It's, it's about our parks. It's about our, you know, master plan. It's about how we manage so many important responsibilities.

It's worth talking about. And I'd be happy to work with town hall staff and put a booth out at the farmer's market and try to make government interesting. We have a lot of folks that aren't interested in government these days for a variety of reasons.

I wish that weren't the case. You know, we need people to be interested to serve on our committees and see that they can, they can make changes. And this is a great segue into community involvement.

[Speaker 1] (1:25:14 - 1:25:29)
We actually did this little segue. It's all great that you're here, but you're here about one topic. It would be great if you guys were here every night, right?

Because we do this every week. And it's hard to get people engaged. And apparently we just got to talk about your street.

[Speaker 3] (1:25:30 - 1:25:32)
And we do that here. It's not hard to get them up to that.

[Speaker 1] (1:25:33 - 1:26:43)
But, but we did farmer's markets previously. We actually did public meeting notices for the select board that allowed the five select board members to show up at farmer's market once a month, once every so many, like, and so we did do a table and a tent. And I believe Naomi Driven and I played Frisbee for three hours one day in the rain because it was, literally it was not many people there.

But, but like we had ourselves available to do that. We can even do that in smaller groups, you know, two people at a time. I do think there's a benefit to that.

I mean, you're at the farmer's market all the time. I like going truly because it gives me a chance to see people that I don't normally see. And for people to say how great you're doing and complimenting us.

But I think we should think about the farmer's market just separate from this. Just, I think it's a great forum for us to be at. And I know we go individually, but it may make sense to pick once a month and we can notice it as a public hearing.

So that way if three of us show up, there's no open meeting issues. Right. And you just, it's an open discussion where we're, it's like public comment.

We're just listening and we're educating. If they have a question about, you know, what does the charter mean or what's this affordable housing we're doing? We then are at a place that we have, I think we have a banner.

We have, you know, the whole setup all ready to go. So we want to do that this summer. We would just need to advertise.

[Speaker 4] (1:26:47 - 1:26:50)
Let's figure out some dates and times so we can, so we can get that on the calendar.

[Speaker 9] (1:26:50 - 1:26:54)
We'll just have to coordinate to be next to Mary Ellen. Be next to me. I'll be there all day.

[Speaker 3] (1:26:54 - 1:27:01)
I'll make sure we have some frisbees. Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (1:27:01 - 1:27:15)
Yeah. Yeah. I'll, I'll send out, I'll send out the information with the, with the specific dates and everything that I kind of outlaid for just leading up to special town meeting with this, this town charter.

[Speaker 9] (1:27:17 - 1:27:21)
Thank you, David, for taking that on and for suggesting it. Yeah, of course.

[Speaker 4] (1:27:25 - 1:27:41)
Still a few minutes before 730, so we can, we can move ahead to the consent agenda. We can, it's just, we, we, we're not going to have enough time for that, Doug. So I think it's, I think it's more appropriate for us to just tackle the consent agenda and then jump into the meeting with the retirement board at 730.

[Speaker 8] (1:27:43 - 1:27:45)
We're going to need to take some things out of the consent agenda.

[Speaker 4] (1:27:45 - 1:28:05)
Okay. Consent agenda is designed to expedite the handling of routine and miscellaneous business. Select board may adopt the entire consent agenda with one motion and at the request of any board member, any item may be removed from the consent agenda and placed on the regular agenda for discussion.

Mary Ellen.

[Speaker 8] (1:28:05 - 1:28:11)
So I want to remove the entertainment license and the liquor license to have a discussion. Okay. Liquor license or both.

[Speaker 9] (1:28:13 - 1:28:23)
I only have one. There's a one day liquor license for the post for the fireworks. And there's no, not that one.

The other one, the granite coast for, for the summer concert series.

[Speaker 4] (1:28:27 - 1:28:30)
Okay. All right.

[Speaker 8] (1:28:30 - 1:28:34)
So what do you want to want to approve the minute? I mean, what's left in the consent agenda.

[Speaker 4] (1:28:34 - 1:28:34)
Sure.

[Speaker 8] (1:28:34 - 1:28:35)
Sure.

[Speaker 4] (1:28:35 - 1:28:51)
Do I have a motion to approve the remaining, the remainder of the consent agenda? Second. All right.

All in favor. Aye. Aye.

Aye. Thank you. All right.

Very on. What specifically would you like to address on the entertainment license?

[Speaker 8] (1:28:51 - 1:29:00)
I have a question on the entertainment license. This is, did they ever have, I asked this last time and no one knew, is this a renewal or did they have one before?

[Speaker 3] (1:29:02 - 1:29:07)
This is, as far as I was informed, this was a new application.

[Speaker 8] (1:29:09 - 1:29:16)
So, and the second part I have, my concerns are if it's live entertainment, this is right next door to houses.

[Speaker 3] (1:29:18 - 1:29:20)
We can revoke it if they don't behave.

[Speaker 8] (1:29:20 - 1:29:21)
Yeah, that's what I'm...

[Speaker 3] (1:29:21 - 1:29:30)
Yeah, well, if there are complaints, folks can file those complaints at town hall, I'll bring them to the board, we'll have a public hearing, and we'll revoke it if the board so desires.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:31 - 1:29:36)
I also don't believe this is a new application, I think this is a renewal of an application.

[Speaker 3] (1:29:39 - 1:29:39)
Diane.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:39 - 1:29:40)
If Diane can confirm.

[Speaker 3] (1:29:41 - 1:29:51)
I asked that question earlier today, can you... We did ask, and according to Marissa, there's no evidence of this.

[Speaker 16] (1:29:51 - 1:29:52)
This is new, okay.

[Speaker 3] (1:29:54 - 1:30:00)
I do know that I've heard that it's a very entertaining place, so maybe there's some confusion.

[Speaker 8] (1:30:01 - 1:30:08)
I haven't heard any issues of noise coming out of the club, so I think if it remains that way, you're not going to hear anything, and there are no problems. Okay.

[Speaker 3] (1:30:09 - 1:30:12)
All right. I will make sure that that message is passed along.

[Speaker 8] (1:30:12 - 1:30:14)
They're probably all home watching.

[Speaker 4] (1:30:14 - 1:30:17)
Do I have a motion to approve the entertainment license?

[Speaker 8] (1:30:18 - 1:30:19)
So moved. Second.

[Speaker 4] (1:30:19 - 1:30:29)
All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Thank you. All right. And you also had a, Mary Ellen, you had a question about the one-day liquor license for Granite Coast?

[Speaker 8] (1:30:29 - 1:32:06)
Right. So I have, you know, I know Peter has said that he gets a number of phone calls, or he received a number of phone calls about Chase Bank being in there. I get a number of phone calls about the amount of beer gardens and beer parties that we're having, and why do we have to have so many beer parties, and why are you approving all these, and why, why, why?

So also people are calling and asking me pretty consistently, where is all this money going to, and where is this documented? So I am going to want to know, you know, the financial end of it, but two, I think that we should really talk about having a plan on how we're giving out all these licenses, excuse me, how we're having these community events that have liquor. There's two things.

Number one is, A, I'm getting phone calls, and so I'm getting a lot of people asking me why do we have to have so many, so there is a perception that I'm hearing it's an issue. And number two, the question is, we have two businesses that are right there next to our open spaces, and does this affect their business? So if I'm going to the restaurant on the corner there, Pomona, and I want to sit on the patio right there, and I want to listen to the music and drink, am I instead going to not go there and be a patron there, and am I going to go and sit over here?

Is that affecting their business? Also, is it affecting the business at Mission on the Bay? So those are questions I'd just like to discuss.

So for me tonight, I'm not going to be voting to support this because I'd really like to see more discussion. And these are, is there a concert series?

[Speaker 22] (1:32:07 - 1:32:07)
Yeah.

[Speaker 8] (1:32:07 - 1:32:15)
You know, and I don't, does that mean that we're going to have to put up all those blue, the blue cage to keep everybody in? How does that work, so?

[Speaker 4] (1:32:18 - 1:34:11)
As far as the one day liquor license for Granite Coast, I think the rec department and the rec commission is looking to expand to address and bring about additional foot traffic to Humphrey Street. So it's my view, just my personal view, that more foot traffic is going to be beneficial to these businesses. So there may be someone who says, hey, I don't want to eat it, I don't want to go to Pomona because there's live music.

But that person may go to Tyriffic or that person may go to Little G or somewhere else. So I think increased foot traffic is a positive, a net positive for our local businesses. I do not believe there are any financial ramifications for Granite Coast.

This is something that we haven't done before. This is something that is happening on a Wednesday night. So I don't believe that Granite Coast is paying any money to show up and sell beers on Town Hall lawn.

I think they're paying, they're certainly having a one day liquor license. There's an insurance cost end to this as well. But this is something that we're just trying out as a town to build community, to get more people to Town Hall to listen to music and to build community through this.

This doesn't mean that, it's a Wednesday. I don't know how many people are going to be crushing a ton of beers on a Wednesday night. But you have the option to sit in a lawn chair, to look out at the bay and listen to some music and just relax and really start the wind down into the weekend.

[Speaker 8] (1:34:12 - 1:34:27)
Right, I hear you. But what I'm hearing from people is, why do we need so many events with liquor? And it's taking away from our family.

The comments that I get, it's taking away from our family atmosphere. Those are comments I want to share.

[Speaker 9] (1:34:27 - 1:35:35)
I've heard those comments also. I've actually made some of those comments myself. I think it's an important message that we send to our youth, that we don't have to have alcohol at every function to have fun.

And that we could have a good time and enjoy music, and we don't have to. And it's great that we have it available at some functions, but this is supposed to be a family community concert series. I don't know that it's necessary that we have alcohol at this particular event or at every event.

It is restrictive to families who have substance abuse issues, who have kids, people that can't attend these things because there's alcohol involved. And so I just think it would be nice if we took those thoughts into consideration when we're thinking about the community that we're trying to create and the message that we're sending to our teenagers and 20-somethings. You can go out and have a great time listening to a band without a beer in your hand.

So, that's my thinking. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:35:37 - 1:35:57)
Mr. Chairman, I'd make a motion to approve number three, four, and five on the agenda, which I think were the ones that were taken out of the consent agenda. No, we've already done that. This is- This is the only item left.

Which one? Remaining item. Grant, so you did the other two?

Yeah. Sorry. Five was the thing, sorry.

So you did number three, which is the VFW one? We did that as part of the consent agenda.

[Speaker 15] (1:35:57 - 1:35:57)
Okay. Just sorry. Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:35:58 - 1:36:36)
So, I would make a motion to approve number four on the consent agenda. Five second. Twenty people show up on average to- between 20 and 30 people show up to the summer concert series.

Just pointing out this family fun thing that we're talking about here. I don't- I hear what you're saying. I don't think everyone does.

I don't think every- this is- this is literally two summer concert series dates that they're asking for. I think here, right? Two.

If I read it correctly, right?

[Speaker 8] (1:36:36 - 1:36:38)
There are summer concert series all summer. That's what it says, two.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:39 - 1:38:56)
No, I understand, but there's summer concert series all summer long. So, right now, we only know about two. So, I don't think it's fair to characterize it.

Secondly, I think as though we haven't had the police captain here, and maybe he can let us know of any incidents we've ever had at any of these events, and to affirm the concern. But I do think the rec director is working really hard, dynamically, to do more events, and it takes a lot to do that. And so, I just- she's not here.

I think it's great if we want to consider this. We're doing it on the eve of things that she's planned and stuff, and I think that would be unfortunate. I hear you about alcohol.

Again, I think us having six events a year where we have alcohol is not us having every event. The rec department plans dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of events. They just do.

That's what they do. And I'm proud, frankly, of David, your leadership there, and Sean, your endorsement of it. This is- we are actually showing how to do it responsibly.

We're doing it, and we have the- and again, not disagreeing with anything you said. You were right about the totality. Like, it's important messaging, but we've actually shown how to do it well.

And we've taken keys from other communities, like Beverly, who does the downtown block party, and there's several other things. We've done keys like Salem, who at Pride on Saturday did it in an incredibly responsible way with numbers of people that we could never imagine being in Swampscot. We've done it at some extremely very busy times, whether it's the Beer Harbor, or when there was some Oktoberfest or things like that.

So, yeah, I hear you. I'm- if I felt like we were going there all the time, I will. But I think we're only seeing it because we only approve it when they're asking for it.

We don't approve the rest of the rec commission's schedule and what they do. And we don't approve what all the library's doing. We don't do what all the other committees and whatnot are doing as community building things.

We only get to see it when it comes to us for a liquor license. So it kind of feels like it's perpetual to us. I think it's important to support our rec.

Jackie Camerlingo and Danielle Strauss. I really think it's really important to support their effort here. So anyways, so I would ask for a second on this.

Otherwise, we're telling the rec director to go back to the drawing board on something that's less than a month from now.

[Speaker 4] (1:38:57 - 1:39:16)
Yep. And just for the record, there have been 12 one-day permits approved this year. So we've approved 12.

Not towns, though. Total. Not total.

Yeah, total. And some of those include Sea Glass Village, and as well as a private library, private event library.

[Speaker 8] (1:39:16 - 1:39:22)
We're talking about something out on the town lawn. We're talking about what we're hearing from the public.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:22 - 1:40:24)
No, no, we're not disagreeing. We're just putting in context. The only time we hear about it, again, I appreciate that you're hearing from people.

It would be great. I mean, I've gotten other members of this board have said people are saying I'm hearing things. That would be great.

Let's put an agenda item so people actually come and talk to us about it because I am not hearing that. And maybe it is because they just assume that I like beer and I don't know. But I do like beer.

Judge Kavanaugh and I are like this when it comes to beer. But let's put an agenda to talk about what the policy is going to be so that we as a board can create a policy. The use of town lawn, liquor licenses is our authority, but the use of town lawn is actually the town administrator's authority, right?

And so I hesitate to split that hair to be able to say we're gonna try and control the use of town lawn with this one-day liquor license authority. But yeah, we give them out without two seconds of thoughts after the police department signs off on them and after the town hall signs off on them for everybody else. But for us, we're going to, let's have that.

I think that having a policy is a really good idea. We don't have one right now.

[Speaker 8] (1:40:25 - 1:40:43)
I think we should have a policy because when we give them out to the library when they're having a wine tasting and things like that, but this is, you know, I've said enough. I just, I do want a policy. I do want to have a discussion and I'd like to see a bigger conversation about liquor license authority.

[Speaker 1] (1:40:44 - 1:42:00)
I appreciate you coming out and saying it out loud because I've assumed for a long time you've wanted to have this conversation. So it's good that you've finally affirmatively said it out loud that you want to talk about it. Let's do it.

Let's put it on an agenda and let's have that conversation because I think it's a really good conversation. Let those people come talk to us and then the other people that want something different so that we understand where the pulse is. I think, to Katie's point though, we should absolutely be measured about making sure that we're not creating the environment.

Yesterday at Strawberry Fest, God, I can't remember the name of that, at Strawberry Fest, there was a beer truck and there was about 12 to 18 food trucks and other things. The average age was kid-based and then probably more senior-based, but it was wonderfully not beer-centric. It was actually music-centric, it was food-centric, it was everybody being wet from getting in a thunderstorm-centric type of thing and I think that's a perfect example of I think where the rec commission, again, they created that environment.

It was dynamic, but you wouldn't ever say beer was anywhere near the center of that. It just happened to be one of 18 trucks there or 18 booths there. So if we can, over the summer, create this time to have this conversation and get feedback from other communities, that would be awesome.

[Speaker 7] (1:42:01 - 1:42:22)
I'm totally good with that. So in the interest of time, I assume we still need to figure this out. Is it possible, somewhat splitting the difference here, at least we, because I assume it's a matter of time for the first one that we need to get some clarity about it.

Can we at least approve, if we so choose, as a majority, the first one and then circle back on this conversation?

[Speaker 1] (1:42:22 - 1:42:23)
Well, the second one's a week later.

[Speaker 4] (1:42:24 - 1:42:43)
I'm just saying, so it doesn't really give us a lot of time to circle back on the second one. Yeah, but we will have a meeting either on the 5th or the 12th. So by approving 7-12, hopefully, unanimously, we can have time to get this discussion on an agenda or either the 5th.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:43 - 1:43:12)
Again, we don't, unfortunately, REC Director's not here to be able to say, to basically say, granite coast, if you do this twice, we can do this, as opposed to now we're pulling out, we're making a decision for the REC Director, which, again, it's our right on a one-day liquor license. We have never turned down a one-day liquor license since I've been on the board in eight and a half years, and maybe that's how we've become so beer-centric. I don't know.

But this will be the first time in eight and a half years for me. We did nothing four years ago in this town. Zero community events.

[Speaker 3] (1:43:12 - 1:45:04)
So I just want to just mention, the small businesses in Swanson, the best thing we can do for the small businesses is to bring more foot traffic because when you're having a wonderful time on the lawn at Town Hall, that doesn't have to end at when the music stops. You can actually walk down the street, and I've heard many times, especially with the fireworks, people come down and that entire corridor will be busy because we bring community and we bring music and art and culture. All of that really is what we're trying to do.

And again, it's right after the pandemic where folks are desperately lonely and in need of that sense of community. I hear you about alcohol and about substance abuse and that challenge. I do think we can think strategically about how to integrate into these events things that really will help folks feel like they can have a wonderful time without alcohol.

But to Peter's point, our rec department and our volunteers that are part of the energy around recreation, they've never been busier. We've got more programs, more activities, and the finances are important, Maryanne, I'll get you an accounting of every nickel and dime that we raise from these, but they're all going back into community. These are going back into supporting programs and helping us fund a number of these initiatives.

And frankly, I've been focused on finances. I'm trying to raise money, trying to help support more of these events because folks need them.

[Speaker 9] (1:45:06 - 1:45:12)
I just would like to state for myself that I am neither anti-community nor anti-rec department.

[Speaker 3] (1:45:12 - 1:45:12)
I know that.

[Speaker 15] (1:45:12 - 1:45:14)
Not anti-community. Actually, you're...

[Speaker 9] (1:45:14 - 1:45:14)
Are you sure?

[Speaker 11] (1:45:14 - 1:45:15)
I was just saying. Are you sure?

[Speaker 9] (1:45:16 - 1:45:42)
And saying that I don't want alcohol out of function means neither of those things. So I just want to be clear. I am very always shocked and surprised by how many things Jackie and Danielle come up with and what they're able to execute in a short amount of time.

And that is a true testament to them and their constant flow of ideas and executing things. All I am saying is that there's a time and a place and I don't feel like this is the time nor place.

[Speaker 1] (1:45:49 - 1:46:04)
All right, so I have a motion. Okay, all right. Let us know how the rector feels about that.

[Speaker 7] (1:46:04 - 1:46:17)
Do you not want to consider the first one? I made a motion. If you want to make a motion, you can make a motion.

Well, I'll make a motion to move forward with the event on 7-12 with the liquor license and try it out at that time and have a conversation at our next select board meeting.

[Speaker 4] (1:46:18 - 1:46:19)
Okay, do I have a second to that motion?

[Speaker 1] (1:46:20 - 1:46:57)
Will we be able to put this on our 1st of July schedule as a policy discussion? So that we can work through it and can we ask staff to come back for that 1st of July meeting then with examples of other communities and what other communities do. And also full accounting from the police department about the number of incidences, absent seagulls and trash, which we know is an issue.

Sorry, Gino. Let's just come back with the data so that we're sitting with the information as opposed to brainstorming the type of, and also other information you think is helpful for us to have so we're not that night saying, oh, it'd be great if we had this, right?

[Speaker 4] (1:46:57 - 1:47:02)
Yeah, so Sean, is that gonna be possible to have at our meeting on the 4th?

[Speaker 3] (1:47:02 - 1:47:58)
Yes, we can get some of that information. It's a busy vacation time, but we'll reach out to small businesses, we'll support the board's inquiry into this matter. I do think you're seeing more and more communities have these types of events because it's a low-cost community event.

And frankly, I do appreciate the concern around substance abuse. So I wanna be able to think about that and come back and have a better conversation about that because I think that's a more important conversation and a more important conversation that we rarely ever get to. So that should be its own agenda item at some point this month as well.

Okay, let's get to it. Okay, all right, all in favor?

[Speaker 4] (1:47:58 - 1:47:58)
Aye.

[Speaker 3] (1:47:59 - 1:47:59)
Aye.

[Speaker 4] (1:48:00 - 1:48:00)
Opposed?

[Speaker 9] (1:48:00 - 1:48:01)
Aye, opposed.

[Speaker 4] (1:48:01 - 1:48:16)
Yeah. All right, it is 7.30. We're gonna enter a joint meeting with the Swampscot Retirement Board. Continuation regarding the COLA increase request.

[Speaker 5] (1:48:19 - 1:48:39)
So I'd like to, first of all, thank you for the front row seats that have been up this far before. So all right, let's just start off. We have to open up our meeting.

If it's okay with you, I'd like to open up the Swampscot Contributor Retirement Board meeting. I have to take a roll call in order to make it legal. So John, be in present.

I'll lie. Amy?

[Speaker 14] (1:48:40 - 1:48:40)
I rely.

[Speaker 5] (1:48:40 - 1:49:15)
Okay, we have a quorum. Mr. Chairman, our chairman is not here tonight. I am the vice chair.

I'll be taking his place and speaking any questions. So we're in your court. You tell us.

We've been here before. And we gave you a lot of data to take a look at. And last that we met, you said that you wanted to reach out to the Finance Committee.

The public did not get to see some of the data and so forth. We can present it again tonight. We can speed it up.

It's your call what you want to do. I'll leave it up to you.

[Speaker 4] (1:49:15 - 1:49:30)
Yeah, no, I would like to speed it up. And I would also like to hear from our director of finance, Amy Saro, just regarding the financial ramifications to the town for this request. Ms. Saro?

[Speaker 14] (1:49:30 - 1:50:40)
Yes, so as the board is aware, this adds 860,000 in estimated future value to the funding schedule in 2031. And while I know some members of the public and potentially of the board may think that something that's happening in eight or nine years is kind of a future person's problem, there are a lot of decisions that are made in town, such as new elementary school that impact many years and many decades of people. So it is very important that we keep that in mind.

I think right now the amount that our budget can grow year over year, the 2% plus 4.5, is roughly 2.5 to 2.6 each year. And historically, our retirement appropriation is about 8% of the general fund budget. But I think it just doesn't fit in within our financial policies.

[Speaker 4] (1:50:45 - 1:50:53)
Ms. Saro, can you speak to the MMA position on this 2% COLA?

[Speaker 14] (1:50:56 - 1:52:10)
Yeah, so this came up on the previous meeting as well. So the MMA was not in favor of this. They felt like it was adding an undue burden.

And I believe it was John Dean, our vice chair, who brought up that they did end up working with Governor Baker to come up with some sort of compromise, which was the compromise to bring it before the select board or city council. But the MMA, the Mass Municipal Association, was very much opposed to the additional 2% rather than just the 3% limit. Just because of the negative impact that's gonna have on municipal governments.

So even communities that are not following our tighter financial guidelines of 2% plus 4.25, and they're sticking with the prop 2.5 plus their aggregate average of new growth, they're trying to get legislation through to increase prop 2.5 because it's just too tight for them to live within. So it's not so much that the self-imposed struggle is a struggle that other communities are having as well.

[Speaker 4] (1:52:12 - 1:52:16)
Thank you, Ms. Sherrill. Questions, comments from the board?

[Speaker 14] (1:52:18 - 1:52:19)
I have comments. Go ahead.

[Speaker 7] (1:52:21 - 1:56:47)
Thank you, Amy. What I didn't hear you talking about actually are the people that we're talking about here today. We're not just talking about a number that's eight years in the future.

We're talking about the people that have served the town of Slomscot for the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years. They likely reduced salaries to work here compared to what they could have gotten by the sector. They literally helped build this town.

They're not eligible for Social Security, but Social Security provided an 8% increase during the same time period that we're talking about providing a 5% increase. So that's significantly less than just about anyone else's Social Security and retirement system would have gotten during this same time period. Many of the people, for those of you at home, you probably haven't seen all the data that we have, but many of the people that we're talking about here have whopping pensions of about $14,000 a year.

God knows what other income they have. I sure hope they have other income, but the federal poverty line's $15,000. So for folks here that we're talking about what we know about their income and retirement, this isn't a lot of money.

So for us to sit here and say that we can't afford it with all of the other things that we do seem to be able to afford, it's hard for me to comprehend. What we're talking about is $10 to $20 a month in additional benefit for these retirees who've been your children's teacher's aide, maybe your own teacher's aide, working in the fire department, police department, DPW, town hall. And the sum total of this, the $800,000 Amy talks about is $500,000 in today's dollars inflated forward eight years.

That's gonna amount to $42 for each taxpayer to pay in 2031 for this. It's not gonna affect anyone's tax return, taxes next year. It's not gonna affect our budget next year.

I know there have been arguments made about domino effects in other conversations. I think those could be addressed. Most towns and cities, the state, et cetera, have passed this.

So we're really, despite whatever their financial situations are, better or worse than ours, more, they paid down more of their unfunded liability or less, they still found a way to do this. So I think in large part, I feel like we're making a little bit of a mountain out of a molehill here. I would urge my colleagues, mostly, to consider this as people here, we would maybe all love to be able to find creative solutions to tailor this increase to people in a different way.

I don't think that that's the option, unfortunately, in front of us. I'm not saying, and I know that every single person on this list desperately needs this $10 to $20 a month. Certainly understand that.

But I do think there's a large number of people here that do. And in the context that everyone has experienced over the last year, I think this is a reasonable investment in the people who have served us now. So I know that this is possible, and I'm hoping that other people, other, my friends, my colleagues here on the board will see my passion for this in that light and consider supporting this 2% increase.

Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (1:56:53 - 1:56:55)
Other members of the board, comments, questions?

[Speaker 8] (1:56:57 - 1:57:53)
I can give my comments. This is an incredibly hard decision to make, but when I went back and I really looked at data, I tried looking at how many, how does this really affect people who worked for the town? And I received a number of emails.

I think many of you have received emails. I received phone calls. People stopped at the farmer's market to chit-chat about it.

And the one thing that I really walked away from was how many people does this really affect where it's a desperate need to add another, came out to like $243 a month. Is that what it was? What was the amount of money that would be given out?

It's about an average of 200 and something dollars a month.

[Speaker 5] (1:57:55 - 1:57:55)
Right.

[Speaker 8] (1:57:55 - 1:57:56)
So it's around.

[Speaker 5] (1:57:57 - 1:58:02)
I always like to say that she's a positive, not a negative, and so that is incorrect.

[Speaker 8] (1:58:03 - 2:00:00)
Right. So in one conversation I did have with somebody, she expressed what it was like for her being on the fixed income and where the fixed income was and that it would definitely help her. And when I expressed to her, that's a very challenging decision to make because we have a $150 million unfunded liability and to add another $860,000 to the end of it is very difficult for me, especially when I've served on the finance committee for so many years and people know that I am very conservative when it comes to finances.

So I really feel the best way to handle this is to do a means test and look for the amount of citizens who actually work for the town between 20 and 30 years who make less than say between 25 and $30,000 and then do a allocation from our ARPA funds and I did double check on the ARPA funds and we are able to do that because it would be under a COVID-19 expenditure which covers negative impacts from COVID-19 including assistance to small businesses, comma, households, comma, and hard hit industries, comma, and economic recovery.

So I think what I'm hearing from the retirement board that this is a one-time situation, a one-time thing, a one-time hit, let's give some support one time. I'm asking, let's think outside the box and do this one-time thing and get some funding in there. So that's my take on listening to it.

[Speaker 4] (2:00:00 - 2:00:01)
Thank you, Mary Ellen.

[Speaker 14] (2:00:02 - 2:00:17)
Mary Ellen, can I just clarify one point? The monthly difference you were talking about, it's $280 annual difference at a maximum or $23.33 per month difference for the extra 2%.

[Speaker 8] (2:00:17 - 2:00:24)
Right, I said monthly and I should have said yearly. Yeah, thank you. No, I just wanted to make sure.

Thank you. $77 a day.

[Speaker 14] (2:00:26 - 2:00:28)
$0.77 a day.

[Speaker 9] (2:00:28 - 2:00:53)
Yeah. Amy, could somebody expand upon what the finance committee said when they were brought the question because I know it was put before them on Monday and I know I tried to get ahold of the recording of the finance committee, but I'm sorry, not Monday, Thursday. And I wasn't able to do that, but I have heard feedback from them.

[Speaker 14] (2:00:54 - 2:01:01)
So if somebody who heard it. Katie, Eric Hartman, the chair of the finance committee is on, if you'd like to speak to him.

[Speaker 9] (2:01:01 - 2:01:10)
Eric, would you mind surmising the feelings of the finance committee since we asked you all to opine on it?

[Speaker 7] (2:01:17 - 2:01:18)
You're on mute, Eric.

[Speaker 9] (2:01:19 - 2:01:20)
Hold on, we can't hear him.

[Speaker 7] (2:01:21 - 2:01:23)
How about that? I was double muted, I think.

[Speaker 9] (2:01:24 - 2:01:24)
There you go.

[Speaker 17] (2:01:25 - 2:04:33)
All right, Chair. Hi, Katie, hi, everybody. Yeah, the finance committee, I mean, the finance committee met last week and we were really challenged with it.

I think it's part of the same, you know, conflictions that many of you are probably feeling about this. We have to be clear, I was only able to get about five out of our nine members to be available just kind of because of the short notice on where people were. So we had a meeting with five of us.

You know, we were challenged with, first of all, the fact that this is coming up. I know it's kind of Judy's fault. It's just the timing of the legislation out there.

But we were looking at opining on something that you guys had to decide on by the end of the month. So there wasn't a lot of time for back and forth and consideration and mulling it over. And I guess I would say the general feeling of income, most people were trying to get to a place where they could be comfortable saying yes.

But at the end of the day, when I, you know, we weren't doing a formal vote because it's not really our call, but I did poll everybody individually. And at the end of the day, the people in attendance, I ended up with two people supporting and three people either not supporting or leaning towards not supporting. And I had another member who was not at the meeting who emailed me saying he also did not support.

So I think the big challenge, you know, it came back to just kind of stopping and saying, well, you know, as much as we'd like to do this, you know, when we look at the large amount of unfunded liability that we're currently struggling with, you know, we're all kind of looking forward to the day when we start to pay down some of our OPEC liability. But when we combine those two large liabilities out there, that kind of thing pushed people in one direction, even if they didn't really feel good about going in that direction on personal or people's perspective. The other thing I'll say too is that, you know, that the funding schedules that we look at, the one that we're currently operating on, which we do the funding schedules every couple of years, the retirement board does, the forecasted liability for 2031 decreased by several million dollars in the new figures that the retirement board has.

These are the new 24, 25, or maybe 25, 26 fiscal year. So if you look at it from that perspective, this 860,000 of additional cost, you know, would actually still result in less future forecasted expense than we were looking at previously by a couple million dollars or a million somewhere. And so that was one leading us towards, well, maybe we can afford it because we already expected to pay more.

But at the end of the day, we recognize that, you know, forecasting all the way up to 2031 with market conditions is a, you know, kind of a fool's errand, so that's not something we really rely on. So that's kind of where we, as I said, people were either saying, I'm fortunate, I feel better, I have to say no, or some people would have said, I just can't quite make a call on, you know, with this data, but that's kind of how we're behaving towards now.

[Speaker 4] (2:04:35 - 2:05:05)
Thank you, Eric. I had a couple questions, mainly about that funding schedule and just kind of looking at the sixth column, percent increase in actuarially determined contribution. So if you look at it, it looks like there's an increase from 2025 through 2030 of 5% already.

[Speaker 5] (2:05:06 - 2:05:06)
So...

[Speaker 4] (2:05:07 - 2:05:12)
Yeah, so how does that work, John? How does that...

[Speaker 5] (2:05:12 - 2:06:55)
Okay, so basically what it is... Go a little bit into history. I can give you the time or I can tell you how to build the clock, so I'm going to talk real quick.

In the 80s and so forth, you had funding schedules. The employee from day one always paid. He pays 5%, 7%, 8%, 9%, plus 2% if it's over $30,000.

The employer or the political arm of the past in the 80s were not paying, they weren't putting the money in, and that's the challenge right now because you have it, right? So we're in this together. So with that being said, the thing is we were the 49th state out of 50.

Can't get much lower. IRS came in and said, You will have a funding schedule. Now, they want at least a minimum of 3%.

When I address later, there was one point just recently, we kept the amount the same. We got a letter of reprimand from PEREC. It regulates the 102 retirement systems.

It said, although you were in the limits of the law, because you can keep it the same, but it has to be preferred. That was the term they used. They said 3%.

So when we did that, pay me now, pay me later, we had to kind of catch that up. I've been doing this for 28 years, volunteering my time. I've done about 15, 16 actuaries.

We do it every single two years to get a benchmark. There are four levers that we use. With that being said, I think that answered your question, and then I'll come back and I'll expand a little bit more.

[Speaker 4] (2:06:55 - 2:07:10)
Well, no. It looks like we had already approved a 3% increase. The supplemental would be an additional 2, but it looks like this percent increase in actually determined contribution is 5%, regardless of how we vote this evening.

[Speaker 5] (2:07:11 - 2:08:00)
I misunderstood the question. Let me try to correct. Again, the chairman is not here.

Bob is very good with numbers and everything else. Let me tell you a little bit about history. We built in that number, okay?

We built it in because we've been doing this for a long time, and that 2% so that you knew what your number was going to be. There are four levers that determine that number. So performance we can never predict.

So we normally use a benchmark of investment of 7%. We'll get to that later. But the thing is, we built it in there to say, hey, look, this is time.

We feathered it at the very end because it gives us a chance to make up for that. Based on our performance and the other mechanics that we use, does that answer your question?

[Speaker 4] (2:08:00 - 2:08:04)
No. I'd like to hear from Ms. Zarrow, please.

[Speaker 7] (2:08:05 - 2:08:05)
Okay.

[Speaker 14] (2:08:06 - 2:08:12)
David, are you talking about in the original tax that these have, the letter from Siegel?

[Speaker 7] (2:08:12 - 2:08:12)
Yes.

[Speaker 14] (2:08:13 - 2:09:08)
Okay. So the 5% was put into the funding schedule because we are only allowed to request two different funding schedule scenarios from our actuary in a regular basis. So we requested it with the 5% already approved and with two different year-over-year increases so that we could examine them and vote on them as a board.

The 5% was already baked in just because otherwise we would have had to do four different funding schedules with the thought that if it did not pass the board, we could go back and adjust a future funding schedule without it baked into it because the FY25 and 26 numbers are unaffected by this. So the funding schedule that's being voted for, those numbers don't change regardless. Got it.

[Speaker 4] (2:09:10 - 2:09:10)
Thank you.

[Speaker 14] (2:09:11 - 2:09:11)
You're welcome.

[Speaker 4] (2:09:13 - 2:09:13)
Question?

[Speaker 1] (2:09:14 - 2:13:29)
Yeah, I have a couple. So, Amy, thanks for following up on the MMA stuff. I sit on the MMA and MSA board, and I did follow up as well and just ask what the history was, and the history was it was the approval process that was the compromise, right?

MMA said if you're going to do this, don't make it automatic. Like, put it to a political, frankly, forum, and that's how it got to the select board and city councilors or whomever. So the MMA didn't support this, but ultimately said it should go to the towns, and the towns can decide for themselves.

And so they did compromise with the governor, just to be clear on that. So what I just struggle with, and I don't know how to answer it, is of all two things. The reason we're sitting here today is because generations of town leaders before us didn't do anything.

Like, if we really look at our percent of employees, or the percent of the liability that we pay annually right now, and Mary Ellen's correct, between OPEB and this, we have $150 million unfunded liability. $150 million of money that the town didn't fund decades ago and put to this generation. So 8% of our budget right now is dealing with a small portion of that.

8% of our budget right now is only dealing with $32 million of that liability. We haven't even begun to deal with the $120 million part of that liability. But this generation between now and 2030 is going to be the ones paying off 100% of that $32 million.

And then we know the state. We know what they're going to do. They're not going to all of a sudden say, oh great, you can now have that 8% and go spend it on parks and stuff.

They're going to say now you need to deal with that $120 million unfunded liability that you didn't pay. And again, generations ago. We are paying, state law mandates it, and we are paying our going forward costs.

Every employer right now that's in the system, we're 100% paying for their retirement and their OPEB benefits. It's the history that we're paying insolvently for. And again, no one's fault here.

No one's fault here. But generations of select boards, city councilors across the state, similar problems here. And so I hear when we try and numbers are funny things, you can make them say whatever you want.

And you're right. We may be talking about small dollars to a small number of individuals today, but it's those types of decisions that snowballed into us sitting here today with $150 million of unfunded liability. And so I struggle with that.

The thing I struggle most about is when the 600 plus current employees come to us, when our firefighters and our police officers and our teachers and our clerical staff and our DPW workers come and say, why is it now that everybody got a 5% this year because of extreme times, but where's ours? Like, why, why is our, why is our cost of living different? And if you've been in the past, I've been clear about the Cola.

I can't wait until we're at an age where we can have contract negotiations without Cola being the negotiating point. Colas are Colas. The cost of living adjustment for every one of us is the same.

It does not matter if you're in the clerical union or the police union or the fire union. We've unfortunately, we've unfortunately weaponized it, right? So it's now a negotiating tool.

It shouldn't be, that should be you should know the men and women in uniform should know what the Cola is going to be. Cause it's the same exact thing as what the teacher's Cola should be, but I don't know how to answer. So we're not really just talking about, you know, 800,000 and $20,000 or $500,000.

Now we're not just talking about it for just that. I just feel as though there's a huge equity issue. And I think any sort of her memo to us in her last sentence says, you know, what would stop every union from demanding the same Cola?

And all the arguments you make, John are really good arguments. And like, I agree with them, but those are the same arguments that every other employee currently has. We made a choice to work for the town.

We made a choice. We, why, why should our Cola not be the same? And so while I feel for it, I can't, I, I couldn't, our budget couldn't support.

There's not enough ARPA money here. We would use entirety of the remaining ARPA money and money and more to do this. Right.

Let's be clear to, to do that. And so I just, I just, you know, it's, it's because of that. I, I can't support it tonight.

So I, I'm not going to, but it's, it's, um, well, you haven't voted yet.

[Speaker 5] (2:13:30 - 2:13:32)
And please give me a time to respond.

[Speaker 1] (2:13:32 - 2:14:08)
No, no, no, no. I, I, you're right. I ha I haven't voted.

And I, but I'm, I'm, you know, I've spent, and I really appreciate your advocacy and you were right about Bob Powell, him being on this board. It's the single best thing. I mean, just candidly, Bob, I love it.

I love listening to you. I love listening to rationale. And even when I think that you're wrong, I love it.

Um, and, and you're passionate and you guys are representing the retirees, but I pull it back and say, what happens in July when every other employee comes to us and says, where's my one-time Cola? And I'm like, Hmm, yeah, I don't know the answer to that. And I don't, and I don't think we can afford it.

And I, and I think frankly, we can't afford to continue.

[Speaker 5] (2:14:08 - 2:14:10)
I think I can answer that question when we get to that point.

[Speaker 1] (2:14:11 - 2:14:11)
Yeah.

[Speaker 5] (2:14:11 - 2:14:15)
So, so I, I, I roll the questions at me and then I'll, I appreciate it.

[Speaker 1] (2:14:15 - 2:14:21)
No, I'm going to, I'm going to stop there. Um, cause I, otherwise we'll go on forever, but the chairman, however you want to do.

[Speaker 7] (2:14:21 - 2:14:21)
Thank you, Peter.

[Speaker 4] (2:14:23 - 2:14:25)
Anything else from the board?

[Speaker 7] (2:14:26 - 2:14:54)
Well, I just, I'll say that. I think there are answers. I didn't want to get into open contract negotiations here, but I think there are answers to that question.

Uh, we're talking about retirees. We're not talking about active people that are actively working. It's a different situation.

You're a retiree, you're on a fixed income. You don't have the ability to actually modulate your income in a way that you do when you're actually working. There are a lot of different arguments that could be posed to say that this is different than general contract negotiations.

So I'll just leave it at that.

[Speaker 8] (2:14:55 - 2:15:28)
So I just want to reiterate, I do think we should look at the, we should do a means test. We should look at a couple of variables that we think, um, would be really important to try to get, to try to address people that are in, in serious need. I think we should have a conversation or at least look at a couple of things.

I'm not saying to use all of our ARPA funds, you know, 500 and some something thousand to carte blanche, right? An additional 2% across the board. But I would like to entertain, you know, a couple ideas.

[Speaker 1] (2:15:28 - 2:15:34)
Yeah. So I, so I, I hear you on that and I don't know what it is, but I also recognize that we have to make a decision by June 30th. It's June 26th.

[Speaker 8] (2:15:34 - 2:15:41)
But we wouldn't. Yes. But if we were talking about ARPA money, we don't have to make a decision by June 30th on this.

We have to make a decision.

[Speaker 1] (2:15:41 - 2:16:54)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, I, okay.

I think we'll look at, we have an ARPA future ARPA conversation. We have to have anyways. I, from my perspective, I'm going to continually ask, you know, and that's come before us that people have previously said, how come the school department came to me?

I'm just going to be open. School department came to us and said, geez, we saw town meeting approved a contract for a town union and the town union included a one pound payment and it was ARPA money. Right?

Well, how come we're not getting those? I mean, these are, and I'm not saying things that are behind closed doors. These are open conversations.

And so I think it's, we shouldn't discuss strategy, but I'm just like a multimillion dollar. But I'm not, I'm not, I'm not discussing it. I'm just acknowledging just the reality.

So I'm totally open to it, but I also recognize that the demands here, like your perspective and your focus is exactly what it should be. It really is like I'm with you a hundred percent, right? Our focus and our constituency, unfortunately, it's just so much broader and I don't know how to answer it.

I don't know how to solve it. I think that's creative and I totally would welcome that analysis to see what that equals. I don't know where you create that line, right?

But someone smarter than I can maybe give us some advice on that, but I can't pledge to support that. But I think I appreciate the fact that you're, you want to explore that.

[Speaker 4] (2:16:54 - 2:17:18)
I think that's worthy of exploring. Yeah. I mean, I think that's part of a larger discussion about ARPA that we can have.

And I mean, we're probably going to need a little time to be able to have that conversation. So just vacation schedules as they are in summer, et cetera. But I think it's, I think it's worthy of, of exploring.

[Speaker 1] (2:17:20 - 2:17:24)
May I just, I think the vice chairman maybe had some more things he wanted to add just to give him a chance.

[Speaker 5] (2:17:25 - 2:17:31)
Questions. I can kind of answer them all.

[Speaker 3] (2:17:32 - 2:18:54)
John, John, I'm happy to share a few of the comments that I shared on Thursday night at the finance committee meeting. And I, but I want to echo the select board's affirmation of the retirement board. We have a absolutely wonderful retirement board.

You do care about our retirees. We're public servants that are on behalf of town employees. Thank you.

If, if we could make a lot of these decisions and not have, you know, a can that we could hear kicking down the road. Sure. We would a 2% on top of a 3% during these inflationary times for every town employee would be, would be a good thing.

But unfortunately, you know, we don't just have colors. You know, I talked a little bit about healthcare costs. We have some of the most generous healthcare programs that you could find in a public or private program.

And those costs have gone up by over 20% over the last four years. Amy, remind me, what was it last four years? 22%.

And so when we, when I look at the town budget and I see, you know, one of the largest single line items in the town budget, by the way, we have no control over, I can't go when we hit the great.

[Speaker 5] (2:18:55 - 2:18:57)
No, you do have control. You came to Washington.

[Speaker 3] (2:18:57 - 2:22:01)
I did. I asked, I did. But, but statutorily we have to put that number in the budget and unlike a police department budget or where I can go and I can work with the department heads and even unions and say, Hey, you know, we've got to make some changes moving into a pandemic.

I can't adjust that number. That number gets carried through. And it places such an extraordinary burden on a small town or big city, you know, for that prior generation that literally dined and dashed.

And, and we have to carry that incredible burdens. We have broken pipes in Swampstead. We have King's beach that we're trying to fix.

We have parks that aren't even level kids turn their ankles left and right. We have problems everywhere we turn and, and I've, I've got to figure out how to financially solve those problems and continue to make investments to support our seniors. And when I think about where can we spend these dollars most wisely or even more importantly, as importantly, how can we spend the time more wisely?

Is it, is it a 2% cooler at 77 cents a day? Is that a pyrrhic amount of money that really won't have a material effect on the quality of life of, of our former employees? Or are there better conversations that perhaps the retirement board can have with town administration about healthcare?

You didn't come to me and ask me about this before you decided to advance it in your schedules. You put 5%, you, you had models. It's going to be 5% and that's, that's what we're, we're funding 5% for the next two years, irrespective of whether the board votes it or not.

Like you didn't put them, you chose to say, Hey, we're not going to put a 3% model in. And that would have taken a little pressure off the town budget. And it could have been a hundred, $200,000.

And I will tell you, there's not a department head that wouldn't line up to say, Hey, Sean, just a little bit more money for, for our senior program, our adult daycare. Bob, you know how, how desperately Swanscot needs that adult care program. We have more senior citizens in Swanscot per capita than any community in Essex County.

And we're underfunding that. And, and I've got to figure out how to pay for it. That said, John, I, philosophically, you know, I'm proud of the work that you're doing to advocate this, but I, I can't find a way to support this given all the other financial responsibilities that we have for all these other issues, but I would work with you and your board to try to find better ways to provide better healthcare for our retirees, better opportunities to improve some services or even to find some opera funds. But I, I'm not sure just because every other community or a number of them are doing this, we should too.

I think we can do something better and I'm hopeful that we can get to that conversation sooner than later.

[Speaker 5] (2:22:03 - 2:27:42)
Mr. Chairman. I'd like to wrap it up on our side. We gave you a lot of data.

I'd like to go left to right on all the thoughts that I heard, Sean, you know, that we have monthly meetings and everything else. When we do these actuaries, we do them right in town hall. Everybody's invited.

You can always come. When you said I didn't come to you, you could have came to us. You could have saw the methodology and how we develop these models.

It was a missed opportunity. So in front of everybody, you're invited to these meetings. When we do this, we'd like to see you there.

Mary Ellen has been to those meetings. She has been on the finance committee. I've talked to her many, many times.

When I get to her, her would be the most interesting, I think, comic because it will bring us back of how long we've been doing this. We all have common things. One of the things is we love the town.

We're trying to get the best value for our taxpayers and everything else. And that's what we want to do. But I'm going to tell you something.

This is what I said. When I started this in 1996, we had $34 million. As of the town's contribution, along with the employees, we now have $78 million, $488,731 in the portfolio.

As I look at our five million, there are 102 systems on our performance as of March, a five-year number because it's a long-term game. We are number 12. We're in the top.

Our three-year number, we're number 10 from the top. So what I'm trying to say is I told Peter, Peter said last time, he said, these are big numbers, but they're not so big in the big picture when you're talking about the amounts of monies and so forth. Now, when you talk about the mandate that was always given to us as the board is try to pay it off as quick as possible.

So if we could do that and we can smooth it out and everything, we can use that money for other things. One of the things is the benefit package and everything else. When we start to talk about healthcare, I'm not here to talk about healthcare, just retirement.

That's what I control. That's what we try to do. We're very good at it.

I just told you our performance. I think our performance speaks for it. Now, where we're going, I don't know.

If it's a little bit of money, it's something. I don't care if it's a dollar, $10 or $100. The other thing is the liability is our job.

Our job to try to figure it out. We have volunteer boards. We have five people on our board.

There's only one that's compensated and one under your direction. The rest of us spend a lot of time, very hard to produce those types of numbers. Peter said one of the things was, this is huge.

This is the first time that you've ever come before us in my time. And he is correct with that statement because the governor took everything together and he said, this is the law, whether we like it or not. This is chapter 32.

This is the vehicle that you decided that you made the contract agreement with these gentlemen who sit here right now. So our job is to try to work with you. You're on the same team.

We have the same challenges, right? There's never enough money in everything else. So let's agree upon what we can agree upon and move forward.

It's a small, I feel it's a small amount of money, especially when our portfolio has $78 million, $488,731. David, I don't know how to address you. You haven't really said much.

You're a great listener. I want to thank you because the last time here you said, John, we want to hear your thoughts. You did the same thing too.

And I appreciate that. We're all listening together because here's the thunder of my statement. People come to this town for the services.

They come here for the people. Your people produce the services. They're a human resource.

And I got to tell you, people aren't coming and they're leaving. I hear it. I see it.

We see it and we sign off on the people and everything else. And that's a huge problem. You are in charge of the employment part.

Whatever you give for wages, whatever you have to do, we have to take that liability. We have to make it work. And we've done that.

Katie, you had said to me, I have this laundry list. We gave that to you. You said, I really don't care what the other communities do.

I care what Swanscot does. And that's true. But what we have to do is just like venting the wheel.

There's no sense in trying to come up with something all the time when everybody else is doing something. And maybe that's the mechanism that we need to do. So what we wanted to show you is the other people that struggle with even more liabilities than we have, and they're doing that.

I'm going to pick three communities that touch us, Marblehead, Salem, and Lynn. These are the people that you're trying to draw and so forth on the employment picture. They did it.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong or whatever. That was just a list for you to say what are the other people doing. Mary Ellen, you had said to me, we've had several conversations.

[Speaker 8] (2:27:42 - 2:27:42)
Yes.

[Speaker 5] (2:27:45 - 2:27:55)
And thank you, David, because I've only got one more left, and then I'll turn it over to you. You had said to me, John, when you were on the finance committee, why did you come?

[Speaker 8] (2:27:55 - 2:27:56)
We're going way back now, John.

[Speaker 5] (2:27:56 - 2:32:15)
Yeah, I know. I'm dating myself. I was a young guy back then.

You had said, why did you come to this town if you knew the benefits? You're correct. At that particular time, I knew the benefits, but I didn't know they decreased.

And a caller is a common mechanism that we use in order to make sure that the purchasing power is the same. So we also had another conversation just over the week. In fact, we had a couple of them.

You always show up at the meetings. You always do your due diligence in trying to understand how we do what we do. This book is very complicated.

I always tell everybody, I don't know all the answers, but we can learn together. I have 28 years' experience. Tom Driscoll has 30.

Bob and Kevin and Amy is our junior one. So I would like to just jump for one second. Don't let me go back to you.

You had said to me tonight, and also over the phone, there are four factors that determine a person's retirement. And so it's like a math formula. If you take three of the factors out and only concentrate on one factor, and then you try to do a means test, it's very hard because you're all over the place.

The bottom line is that this is the vehicle that you chose. You didn't choose a 401K. You didn't choose Social Security.

You chose Chapter 32. With that, you can't really move one out. Ten years' numbers, 20 years, 32.

Some people come, some people stay. There's too many moving parts. We can try to give you some data and everything else, if that's the benchmark that you want, but I just wanted to address that on that.

Doug, you said it brilliantly. I liked what you said because here's the thing. It's complex, and it's not an easy thing to do.

We all want to do it. We're all trying to do it. Our job is to do it.

We can feather that in. The Finance Committee and everything else, we can work with them and everything else. I was very happy to hear what the Chairman said and everything else, if that's the goal.

But right now, we're under some pressure. We started this in January. We gave you firm numbers and everything else.

We have to have them done by an actuary and so forth. It takes time to move. But we're here tonight, and as a board, a volunteer board, somehow we have to have mutual respect for each other.

We need your help. We've done our due diligence. We've gone on our trip.

We've opened up the hood. We've done everything that we possibly can. We actually gave you maybe too much information because it's a lot to try to understand.

Everybody's smart in this room. Everybody can do it, but we have to rely on each other at some particular point. Amy.

Amy is a board member. She's also to the person you look. You know the vote was 4-1.

I'm sure that you had votes that were not unanimous and everything else. It's not an easy decision. She's under the direction of the town manager and so forth, and she can state the reasons why she wanted to do it.

That's her to decide. But the majority of the four, the four out of the five, we think that this vehicle that we presented to you here today is the vehicle to use. My closer is this, Doug, if I could.

You have the opportunity here tonight. They have earned it. They have deserved it, and it's in your court.

Just one last thing. I don't know who said it, Peter or Sean. A retiree, sometimes when he's 80 or 85 and everything else, he can't go back to work.

We talk about the comment, my brother offices and so forth. They can continue to work and everything else, but there's some people that can't work. We're talking about a population.

So that's the difference between the employee and the retiree. I've done a lot of talking. I told you sometimes they take the mic away from me for a reason.

So I'll turn it back to you.

[Speaker 8] (2:32:16 - 2:32:18)
Thanks, John. Take that mic away now.

[Speaker 5] (2:32:19 - 2:32:31)
John, you're in good company. Mr. Chairman, just one second. Did you want to say something?

[Speaker 16] (2:32:31 - 2:33:28)
Well, I just wanted, before you vote, I just wanted to speak for 30 seconds or so. But if you're going to entertain a motion, I'll let you. Go ahead, Bob.

So I'd written all this stuff down. I'm not going to say it, actually. I'm going to say a couple, three things.

One is I would like to acknowledge that Mr. Reid is retiring. And for those of you who have children who have had Mr. Reid, he's been an incredible asset and inspiration to the students of this town. And right now he's upstairs working on his goodbye video.

And it's a video where he's compiling videos that were made by his former students, including two that were made by my son. And I can't tell you that this man is a tremendous loss to this town, but he's been a tremendous asset and inspiration and resource. And hopefully we'll acknowledge his departure in some great way.

[Speaker 3] (2:33:28 - 2:33:29)
Great musician, too.

[Speaker 16] (2:33:29 - 2:35:24)
Yeah. Second thing is, Chairman Hartman, just for the record, I think the way we ended that meeting with FinCom was that there was no clear consensus. Two were in favor of it.

The three that were present, one of whom said, as a person, I'm in favor of this. But as a FinCom member, I'm not. So there's great sort of debate internally about whether this is the right thing to do.

And I agree, it's not an easy decision. Ambivalence. Sorry?

Ambivalence. Quite a bit of ambivalence. And I would just, for the record, and Amy, maybe you can sort of just clarify it, too, I had done a projection about what this ADC would be as a percent of budget in 2031, that $800,000, what it would be.

Assuming 2.5% growth, 2.5% plus growth, assuming that you bring on board Elm Place, Glover, Vinan, and the hotel. And my projection was, and I've been thinking off the top of my head, it was somewhere, declines from about 8% to about 5%, somewhere around there. That's correct.

So what we're looking at is, in the year 2031, as a percent of budget, the contribution from the town would dramatically decline by 3 percentage points. That's, I think, worth noting. And then, I guess the last thing I'll say is that I feel like, as a board member to the retirement board, that I'll go to sleep tonight, regardless of how you vote, at peace knowing that I tried to do what I could for our retired workers.

And so I appreciate the opportunity to say that. And please don't leave without adjourning officially. I wouldn't dream of it.

All right.

[Speaker 7] (2:35:25 - 2:35:41)
Thanks, Bob. I'd like to make a motion to support the recommendation of the retirement board for the additional 2% COLA. Do I have a second?

[Speaker 8] (2:35:45 - 2:35:46)
Second.

[Speaker 7] (2:35:47 - 2:35:49)
All right. All in favor? Aye.

[Speaker 22] (2:35:54 - 2:35:56)
Opposed? Aye.

[Speaker 17] (2:35:59 - 2:36:00)
Thank you, guys.

[Speaker 5] (2:36:01 - 2:36:04)
John, thank you. We're all set?

[Speaker 16] (2:36:04 - 2:36:05)
Oh, we have to adjourn.

[Speaker 5] (2:36:05 - 2:36:13)
Oh, we have to adjourn? So the thing is, is that motion to adjourn? First.

Okay. Amy, second? Second.

[Speaker 4] (2:36:13 - 2:36:14)
All right.

[Speaker 5] (2:36:14 - 2:36:14)
We're out of here.

[Speaker 7] (2:36:15 - 2:36:18)
Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, Bob.

[Speaker 5] (2:36:18 - 2:36:19)
Amy.

[Speaker 4] (2:36:35 - 2:36:41)
All right. We will move on to the much-anticipated pedestrian safety and traffic update.

[Speaker 3] (2:36:43 - 2:36:50)
And for this, I will kick it off to Captain Cable. Just at the right time, Cap. We caught you.

[Speaker 2] (2:36:51 - 2:36:52)
Oh, I'm sorry. He needs a microphone.

[Speaker 6] (2:36:59 - 2:37:01)
We needed a microphone.

[Speaker 9] (2:37:01 - 2:37:01)
Yeah, he needs a microphone.

[Speaker 15] (2:37:10 - 2:37:12)
This is Mars.

[Speaker 9] (2:37:13 - 2:37:14)
Mars is on it.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:25 - 2:37:30)
What kind of place is this? Stewart's? Is this Green Stewart?

[Speaker 17] (2:37:40 - 2:37:50)
Thank you very much. I'm very glad that you came to the last meeting with me. I'm flattered.

But if you were missing, I'd like to say that Chief Quesada...

[Speaker 9] (2:37:50 - 2:37:56)
I just want to interrupt you for a second. Of course. I think if you hold the button, you are muting yourself.

So don't hold the button.

[Speaker 2] (2:37:57 - 2:37:58)
Well, thank you very much.

[Speaker 9] (2:37:59 - 2:38:00)
I want everyone to hear you at home.

[Speaker 2] (2:38:01 - 2:50:45)
Okay. I thought I was projecting just fine, but no. So Chief Quesada, he deeply regrets that he can't be here and certainly regretted that he couldn't be at the event on Saturday.

He condemns what happened at the basketball court in the strongest terms and is committing the department to making sure that we, as the town administrator said, everybody in town can feel perfectly safe and welcome. And we're strongly committed to work in that direction. So his absence there was necessitated by the fact that he was several thousand miles away and he had no choice, but he would have deeply liked to have been there and he'd certainly like to be here tonight to answer you.

I appreciate his trust in me and allowing me to be here to present to you. I have with me Lieutenant Fraylor, who stepped away for a moment, and Sergeant John Moore here. And I see Gino trying to hide down there, but we'll be throwing a few things down to him.

Lieutenant Fraylor is here because, although he's also one of our very active traffic people, he is going to be taking over the position that's going to be vacated shortly by Lieutenant Lord's retirement in less than two weeks. Anybody that knows Lieutenant Lord, he's worked for the town for his whole adult life. He's lived in town his whole adult life.

It's going to be a sore loss to the department. It's going to be a sore loss to the town. We're certainly going to make Lieutenant Fraylor earn his money and step into the big shoes that Lieutenant Lord is leaving behind.

But that is a person that we will be losing and we will deeply miss. Do you have the PowerPoint there, Diane? All right, so the goals of the presentation, there was a number of things that we discussed a couple of weeks back when this came up, and I'm going to try and, you know, I took some notes, and I'm going to try and, in this presentation, cover a broad set of topics that include basically what are the tools available for not just the police but the town to improve the standard of living, the safety in town for people, people's quality of life of being able to walk and enjoy a nice town.

There's three E's that they look at in that through the National Highway Transportation Safety Board. The E's stand for education, engineering, and enforcement. So we're going to talk about the pros and cons of each of those both generally but very specifically to Swampscot so you can understand some of the reasons that we have done some of the things we've done.

And that being said, we're going to provide insight into the guiding philosophy that directs the Swampscot Police goals and efforts towards this issue. That's a very complicated thing. I would say that, you know, we've spent about the last 20 years since we had our first major state study of our traffic enforcement.

We spent about 20 years looking at this subject and trying to figure out what is the right approach, what is the right level of enforcement, and how we should be conducting it. So it's going to be really hard to sort of break it down really quickly, but we're going to try and let you see the philosophy that guides what we do. Then directly as to the questions that were asked, we're going to talk about the level of proactive traffic enforcement in Swampscot specifically in comparison with our regional communities and our labor units, as we were asked by Ms. Fletcher, and just figure out are we stopping enough vehicles. We cannot talk about this issue without bringing up race and bias and traffic enforcement and why we need to all care about that. And when I brought that up a few weeks ago, you know, I got some feedback where people thought that what they were hearing from me was that we are afraid or we are unwilling to stop people that are committing violations based on those factors. That is not correct.

It's a complicated issue, and I hope to clarify that a little bit so people will be able to have a little more understanding of where we're at. And then we'll finish that off with our current updates, the future of the issue, where we stand with the three tables that we talked about a few weeks ago and what's going on. If you wouldn't mind jumping to the next slide.

So that being said, before I get into it and before people can misinterpret what they're hearing, I want to say that the Swampscot Police is committed to enhancing the safety, livability, and quality of life of our community and its residents. So whatever you're hearing here, if you think you're hearing something that doesn't say that, you're not. Trust me.

So that absolutely includes a strong focus on safety for both the drivers and pedestrians who share our beautiful but congested roads and walkways, but we also commit that we're going to conduct ourselves towards these goals in a manner that is fundamentally fair, consistent with the 21st century focus on policing, and is consistent. If you wouldn't mind jumping ahead. This slide came in out of space, but I think when we were editing it, so it comes up later.

When I'm talking about some of these things, the point was that I just want you to see that these enhancements are what they call the spectacular seven of pedestrian safety. So we're going to touch on these and how they can work in Swampscot, but there's 30 cases that have been studied or 30 studies that have been done that highlight the safety benefits of each one of these countermeasures in engineering. So jumping ahead to the next slide, I'm going to start off.

I've listed these out, the three E's, engineering, education, and enforcement, and I've listed those in that way. That's the order that I think the priority should be looked at, and I'm going to explain that to you in a few minutes, but I'm going to start off with engineering. Why is engineering the future of traffic control?

Frankly, it's consistent how we solve most problems. We go to the root of the matter. When people were getting onto the train tracks 20 years ago, the MBTA didn't say the MBTA police was going to increase patrols and keep people off the tracks.

They built fences. If we had a dangerous railing down at the beach, we wouldn't post the police down there to move people away from the railing. We'd rebuild the railing.

And it's the same with this. If we have roadways that are designed to accommodate unsafe speeds and unsafe conditions, we should fix the root of the problem. On most nights or most days, we have two police officers out on the street.

We can't possibly solve this with enforcement. For many decades, the majority of the engineering effort has gone in the opposite direction. It's gone towards moving greater amounts of traffic as quickly and efficiently as possible, which is the exact opposite direction we should be wanting to move if safety is the focus.

It is in many places. It's done. We've all been in sometimes it's gated communities, but we have all been in places where streets are designed that allow for a speed that is safe and desirable.

It is possible to do that. It's also very possible to design intersections and crossing points with a high degree of pedestrian safety in mind. Engineering solutions are effective 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

If you build it, it's there, and it's doing its jobs. It can't be accused or show bias, and they are very cost-effective compared to enforcement solutions. Of course, they involve upfront expenditures by the town that seem significant at the time, but compared to traffic posts that, frankly, are not getting the job done, it is a much cheaper solution.

We can jump on to the next one. So the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency calls this self-enforcing roadways. They say that engineering solutions create self-enforcing roadways, a concept where roadways are designed in such a way as to encourage drivers to intuitively adopt speeds appropriate for the roadway without the need for posted speed limit signs.

This approach relies on geometric features, visual cues to shape driver speed selection towards speeds that feel safe and comfortable. Now, some of the things that they talk about to do that, road, diet, lane narrowing, oftentimes that's in the concept of multi-lane roads where they want to shrink them down. Another approach would have been the Walker Road proposal that we were looking at last year and working on where we were making it a one-way so that we could use bike lanes, expand the sidewalks, increase pedestrian opportunities.

These kind of engineering things slow traffic, and they also facilitate and encourage alternative transportation options such as walking and biking, so we relieve a little bit of congestion, we make everybody a little bit healthier, and we certainly make everybody happier and feel safer. If we jump to the next page, we come to the one that we've all been talking about, which is speed humps and speed pillows. These are very effective, and they're by far the fastest-growing solution.

Some of you might have heard recently, a couple months ago, the city of Boston announced their safety surge to address street and pedestrian safety. The entire focus is on engineering. Boston has eliminated the idea of strategic placement of speed humps.

They used to allow people to nominate streets for speed humps. They have decided, in the interest of safety, that they are going to put speed humps on every eligible street in the city of Boston, every single one. Nobody's nominating.

That's what they're going to do. That's what a major city has decided to do. They have a three-year plan that totals 80 miles of roadways, with speed humps spaced at 250-foot intervals, and they expect to accomplish this at a rate of 500 speed tables per year.

Circling back to what I said, why have streets that are designed to accommodate speeds that are deemed unsafe? It just makes no sense. Speed humps will reduce the need for previous problematic solutions, such as excessive stop signs.

If you go around town for about 20 years, we have gone to four-way stop signs and then stop signs on streets to slow down. It's had some effect, but drivers aren't stupid, and they figure out which stop signs are really safety-based, which ones are not. They tend to roll through the ones that are not.

But the citizens still see the cars rolling through those stop signs and demand that we enforce them. So we end up putting our officers on stop signs that have no business being there in the first place, that have no safety impact, because people are upset that they see them rolling through the signs that are there to slow down traffic. A speed hump eliminates that problem.

Nobody's going to ask us to enforce the speed hump. And as we said in the last meeting, this will allow targeted enforcement in those areas that aren't amenable to engineered solutions. There are going to be some places we just can't put them.

Boston eliminated the idea completely of putting them on streets that have public transportation. That's not because you can't. That was their choice, and it's something we would have to think about.

But wherever we are not able to put those speed humps, however we decide that, that will allow us to focus that one or two officers that we have available to those spots. We can jump on to the next spot. Intersection design, going back to that spectacular 7.

This is, I think, the place that we've had the most progress recently and where we first identified our engineering aspirations, I think with some credit to the town administrator. We focused on the elimination of slip lanes, rounded, winding intersections like we have all over town that create really long crosswalks and, again, encourage people to just roll through onto the side street. We have to look at the option of turning on red at some intersections.

Another focus of the City of Boston, they state that the presence of pedestrians, especially near schools, parks, other community facilities, sight lines, and history of crashes are reasons that a no turn on red sign may be installed. And we do have spots where that is a problem in town, and we should be looking at that. We also need to look at some of the crosswalks that we have in town and should we move them or eliminate them because they're just manifestly unsafe.

My example will be 90 Humphrey Street when we jump to the next slide. The first time I was tasked to look at 90 Humphrey Street and the dangers associated with it, and it's by far our most dangerous crosswalk in town, was about six, seven years ago, and after looking at it, my solution was the crosswalk can't stay there. The crosswalk is still there, and we've added a flashing beacon.

But I would direct you up here, and I don't have much skill in making pictures here, as you can see, but I want you... Oh, is my camera not working here? It's not going to work?

I don't think it works on TV. Okay. Well, the red line there that you see pulling out of Burrill Street would be a car that is waiting to turn right onto Humphrey Street.

Thanks, Daniel. You're the best. The star would represent a pedestrian waiting to cross the street, and the green line would represent a car traveling on Humphrey Street towards Lynn.

[Speaker 8] (2:50:46 - 2:50:46)
Oh, I know.

[Speaker 2] (2:50:46 - 3:16:23)
What often happens is green car sees pedestrian waiting in crosswalk and slows and stops to allow pedestrian to cross. Red car, who is also looking left, sees green car slowing down and says, here's my opportunity to pull into the intersection. Accelerates as fast as he can to get out there before green car changes his mind.

At the same time, pedestrian's stopping into the crosswalk, and with nobody committing a violation, with everybody having the best of intentions and driving like any one of us would, we have a horrific accident. That's the same thing that they're talking about at the right turn on Reds. It's the same exact effect.

But, you know, there's no making that crosswalk safe. It just can't be done. So we really have to take a hard look at some of these crossing points and decide where do we want to funnel our pedestrians.

If you wouldn't mind jumping onto the next one. So some of the things and some of the things we've touched on so far, flashing beacons, let's face it, it really can be hard to notice pedestrians waiting across the street. I would say in the course of a year, I probably drive by three or four people waiting across a crosswalk in Swampscott and all my time driving around town with all the miles I put on.

And it's never once because I wanted to drive by somebody. It's because I was focused on the car in front of me or something else, and I just didn't see the person standing there. But that doesn't mean the person didn't say, look at this person that doesn't care about me in the crosswalk.

And I would say that's the case with 90% of people that I've pulled over. 90% of people that I've pulled over for anything including this, they just didn't see it. They're just average people like us.

If they're speeding, they might have been running a little late to work, but they're not. Most people just need the reminder from police and don't need the sanction of a citation. It's certainly been my impression.

I feel that if I give a person a warning or a verbal warning, they're willing to listen to me talk to them as I explain to them, hey, I saw an accident here last year, somebody doing exactly what you were doing, and you're just going to want to keep that in mind, the kids do run out here or something like that. They'll listen. You hand them a couple hundred dollar citation that's also going to raise their insurance $1,000 over the next five years, for the most part they're saying give me the ticket and drive on, and they're justifying themselves in every way why what they did was fine.

So the vast majority of people, the idea of a money fine is just it's not the right approach. Most people don't deserve that. Other things in here.

Raised crosswalks, as we sort of discussed in some of our proposals for the speed humps. Traffic cameras. Traffic cameras came up as a red light camera several years back, and it was not generally supported by the town, and frankly it wasn't supported by the town for the exact reason that instead of getting pulled over by the police and hoping that you were going to get the resident discount or something like that, it was going to be accountable to everybody and everybody was going to get pulled over. And that's where we have to sell to the community the safety value of these things, and we have to make a strong case to convince them that that is the way to go.

The traffic cameras are cheap, again, cannot be accused of bias, and they can get the job done with some bylaws being passed. The visibility enhancements, which we've been doing, the bump-outs, elimination of parking in front of the crosswalks, cleaning the trees and vegetations, moving locations such as the 90 Humphrey Street. So design the streets to encourage the desired result, and I really think that we will get far in solving our problems here.

It's the way we handle things as a society, and this really shouldn't be any different. I think I'll have a slide later on where I'll say it, but I'll say it here now because I think it fits. The fact that the problem persists after 50 years of, I mean, traffic enforcement used to be much heavier just as a general process, and I don't think anybody really feels like there's a solution in that and that things have gotten better.

I compare it to the war on drugs, which is a lot of effort to see that we have accomplished almost nothing in solving people's problems with addiction or really making society better. Where we ended up starting to help and make society better was in the last 10 years when we've actually approached opioids not as a supply issue, not how do we interdict the shipments of drugs to this town, but approaching the victims and saying let's help get you clean, let's help provide you the services, and that's what the police departments in the state have been doing. The for-profit health care system in the state, in this country, you'd think you'd go to the hospital, right, to get help?

No, that's not there. You have to come to the police to really get connected with the program, and I think that that example is really transferable to the idea of police enforcement, of traffic violations. It's been done, it's been done for a long time, and the second the police car leaves, people are going to be speeding again because the roads have been designed to allow people to drive fast.

I think we can hop up to the next one there, Diane. We'll move on to education. So education is a spot that we have really started to focus on.

John here has really been the forefront of that. I'll touch on it a bit, but everybody here that's had some sort of traffic issue in the last year at some point probably had a conversation with this man and knows how hard he's working to it. Our education efforts, we want to focus on our most vulnerable populations, which are the very young and the elderly.

The very young are susceptible to injury because they're small, and when they get hit by the car, their head is where our torso is, so they suffer serious injuries, and even when they think they know what they're doing, they're very literal, they see the light change, that's my cue, I go, and you have to sort of intervene with them up front and say, yes, the light changed, but let's talk about looking left, looking right, that sort of thing.

So there's a long way to go towards educating young people, and the same thing with the elderly. The elderly are disproportionately affected by this due to speed and their susceptibility to injury, and we certainly need to have a talk with our elders in town to make sure that they're able to properly enjoy the town and the community. Pedestrians have more to do with their safety than they realize, and we tend to focus on the actions of drivers, so NHTSA analyzed 5,000 accidents and reported the following.

Pedestrians had consumed alcohol in 35% of accidents, and in 30% they were 0.08 or over, so 30% of pedestrian accidents, the pedestrian themselves was intoxicated. Also, 22% of accidents at intersections involved pedestrians dashing into the intersection, where only 16% involved a driver violation, such as running a red light, speeding, et cetera. So the accident is more likely to be caused by the pedestrian entering the roadway unexpectedly than it is because the driver has committed some sort of violation.

Another 30% involved a turning vehicle, such as the 90 Humphrey speeding example. So pedestrian education and intersection engineering have room to impact 52% of all accidents. Efforts towards motor vehicle enforcement can impact 16%, so that doesn't mean that we ignore those 16%, but it also means that our efforts towards education and engineering have a much larger room for impact.

So what does the same report say about non-intersection pedestrian accidents? It's even more, the disparity becomes more striking outside of an intersection. 52% outside of an intersection of accidents involved improper pedestrian entry into the roadway, 35% involved dart outs from an unobscured position, and the term dart out, when they use dart outs, means that a person enters the roadway in a place where the operator of the car wouldn't expect it, and either the driver or the pedestrian has to take evasive action.

So that's the definition of dart out. It doesn't necessarily mean that you ran. So 35% involved dart outs from an unobscured position, meaning that although the driver wasn't obligated to be looking to see if somebody was going to run out from their right-hand side, theoretically, they could have seen the person, 17% involved dart outs from an obscured position where there was no possibility for the driver to see the pedestrian prior to the collision.

So what's that? 52% of accidents involve pedestrians doing something wrong in this case, where, again, 16% involve the drivers. We have to look at different ways that we're posting things.

People are acting differently. You'll find in a lot of places, the sign on the right there, so the traditional one that's very effective, but they're expensive, they get damaged, and you have to keep recycling them and get new ones, but they're considered by NHTSA very effective at advising people that the crosswalk is coming up and increasing safety. The two that you see in the left are becoming more common as you go around, and those are spray-painted on the ground as you step out into the street to try and catch all the distracted pedestrians that are looking at their phone and looking down at the ground and remind them to pay attention.

Just before the pandemic, it was actually the Girl Scouts that approached the police department and were going to— Marblehead had done a similar program, and they were going to do that in town, and then it sort of fell apart because the pandemic came on, but I certainly would recommend that we reconsider that and engage maybe some youth groups as a process of getting them involved and getting them to paint that. That is becoming much more common out there. So education is an area that the SBD would like to continue to increase our focus.

Events such as engagements at the farmer's market, community meetings regarding the new pedestrian drop-off patterns at the Hadley School, neighborhood issues such as the train depot and commuter busing. Going forward, we've discussed plans. Joe Dulette doesn't know that we've nominated him yet, but we intend to create some PSAs.

So thank you, Joe, and the high school kids. Our SRO is going to create a program for the young early elementary age kids to talk about the things that I talked about earlier, the same thing with our seniors. We're going to do something with the senior center to try and talk to them and make sure we talk to them about being a safe pedestrian and engage with the local groups like the Boy and Girl Scouts to see if we can get some free labor out of them, if nothing else.

So then we jump forward to enforcement. As noted, full compliance with traffic rules and laws could mitigate or eliminate 16% of pedestrian accidents. So what about the other 84%?

Am I washing my hands of those and saying there's nothing we can do? Absolutely not. The two main focuses and the places that the police can intervene here are operating under the influence and speed.

Certainly alcohol, we've talked about pedestrians, but 16% of all fatal pedestrian accidents involve an operator who is drunk. Enforcement of OUI laws and continued pressure on establishments to serve alcohol responsibly can have a major impact. This includes getting establishments to understand that walking drunk can be as dangerous as well as driving.

A normal 30% of pedestrians involved are intoxicated. And with that in mind, special consideration should be given to lighting and roadway design and entertainment districts, including the prime example for Swamp Start. So as we continue this effort to reimagine our beautiful waterfront and destination area that we want to encourage everybody to use, this is an area that we're going to have to really focus on the engineering.

We're inviting people down there to have a good time. We want them to be able to walk home and get home safe. If we jump up to the next one, this is where the police have, I think, the most direct ability to engage.

Enforcement of pedestrian violations is really difficult. There's only a handful of crosswalks in town. Oh, of course, I'm sorry.

Enforcement of pedestrian-specific violations is very difficult because there's only a handful of crosswalks in town where we expect people to be crossing at a regular enough basis that the officer can sit there and have a few opportunities to make stops. And that being said, then, there's got to be an intersection where there's a good place for the officer to sit so that he can see the pedestrian enter the crosswalk and know that the driver had the opportunity to see the pedestrian and stop. So the old days in that 90 Humphrey Street scene that I put up there before we redid the driving pattern there and there was a left-turn lane, we used to sit there all the time and be able to see that crosswalk right in front of 90, see the person step into the crosswalk, see the person fail to stop and pull them over.

Now there's no place for us to park down there anymore that we can be hidden, and therefore it's almost impossible for us to enforce it. So most of the time when we do pedestrian enforcement, to make it productive, we need to hire two people, somebody that's crossing the street and then somebody that's doing the enforcement. That all being said, the place that we can make a big difference is in speed enforcement.

A study by the AAA Foundation found that the average risk of severe injury for a pedestrian stuck by a vehicle is 10% at 16 miles an hour, not too bad. You've got a 90% chance of walking away from that. 25% at 23 miles an hour, so you've only gone up 7 miles an hour, but you've gone up 150% in your chance of injury.

Add on another 8 miles an hour and you've gone up another 100% in your chance of injuries. You've doubled from 25 to 50 at 31 miles an hour, which is the speed that Stetson Ave and most of those streets are seeing very commonly. You get up to 39 miles an hour and you're at a 75%, and at 46 miles per hour you're at 90%.

And frankly, I don't know how that's not 100%, but apparently somehow there's 10% of people that have walked away from a car going 50 miles an hour. Additionally, as I said earlier, age is a factor. Older persons and the very young are likely to suffer greater injury.

That's because of the small size of young people and the frailty of the elderly. So in enforcement, what are the police-specific challenges in this right now for us? The top one is limited resources.

We have what we have out there. We generally have two officers on the street. There's a lot of reports that need to be done, paperwork that needs to be done over the course of the shift.

And so we may generally, I think on average, have actually one person unassigned and sometimes zero. So we have limited resources at least to impact this problem in the way that people would like to see. If you wanted to see enforcement make this impact, it would involve a considerable effort and expenditure.

The high cost of using enforcement to achieve these goals, as I said earlier, is where I mentioned that. The fact that the problem persists nationwide despite decades of effort, I think, proves that anybody that says that enforcement is the panacea here is just incorrect. As soon as the enforcement stops and move on, traffic generally begins to revert to the way it was.

On Stetson Ave, April 23, I mentioned this at the last meeting. I received a complaint about this meeting on April 13th, so I decided to look back and see what we had been doing. And on April 13th, we had assigned, just for the month of April, 12 traffic enforcement posts on Stetson Ave. So almost one every day. Out of those, we only got four citations. As I spoke earlier, there's many places where it's just not very productive to do enforcement. We can be seen very easily by people driving, and they slow down.

And you see that in the post from that same see, click, fix response that I got back in April that got me to look at this. Here's two of the quotes. There's been a lot of police presence over the weekend, which is appreciated.

But again, people seem aware of the cruises from down the road, which is amazing to me because I assume everyone is clueless and zoning out. And then the next comment was, so a cruiser was parked on the street this morning. Thank you.

And as usual, not a lot of business. Literally, as soon as the officer moved, the speed of traffic was notably faster, including one car that hit 42 on the speed board sign side. So both those comments came within a 12-day, 13-day period where we had been there for 12 days in a row.

And we were still getting the complaints. And the people that were watching carefully were seeing that we were there and that it impacted. But then we left, and it simply reverts.

Now, I did cherry-pick the ones that said those semi-nice things about the police. Anybody that wants to go look online, you're going to find plenty that say that we were not so attentive. But I appreciated whoever this person was that observed that we were there.

Let me skip to the next thing. Now, this was new to me, relatively recent. I got a car where I could plug my phone into the car, and I was surprised when all of a sudden my Wave thing started telling me every 10 seconds when I was driving on the street, police ahead, police ahead.

I didn't know this was happening. And there you go. So most people, the average person here is driving along, and you might get pulled over by us.

But the people that are out there that you really want us pulling over, the chronic problems, they know where we are every time we set up within a couple of minutes. So they slow down. We don't catch them, the people that are a bad enough driver to aggressively, this is the radar detector of today, but we'll catch the average person here that's just driving down the road that doesn't care to see where the police officer is because you're just a good person going to work, and unfortunately you're running to me.

So that's a new problem. It's a nationwide problem. As a matter of fact, one of the articles I pulled out of it was from Australia, and it's even become a problem where drunk driving checkpoints are being posted so that on New Year's Eve, drunks don't show up at a fixed checkpoint.

So if we can move on to the next one. And then the elephant in the room for us on enforcement, especially in the town of Swampstock, is bias concerns. And I want people to really understand what I'm saying here and know that I'm not saying that the police will not do their job or will not engage certain populations.

That's absolutely not the case. But traffic enforcement does have some unique concerns in the area of bias. Just as a police executive, I would say that, I mean, first of all, it's one of the most common, if not the most common, police-initiated interaction that anybody's likely to have with the police.

It's an interaction that has massive discretionary latitude. Anything can happen from walking up to the person and saying, hey, stop at the stop sign next time, to writing a warning, to writing a citation, to delivering to a criminal summons, an arrest, a tow of the car. So there's this massive amount of discretion, and it's not easily quantifiable as to, you know, necessarily why one thing would happen.

You talk about arrests or something like that, we're all able to sit down and sort of objectively say, this should have been an arrest, this shouldn't have been an arrest. Traffic enforcement, very difficult to do that. Many biases that have no basis as racially motivated, such as a residency bias, which everybody expects.

I mean, there's nobody in here that doesn't kind of expect a residency bias. It can and will manifest in racial statistics in a community such as Swampsburg. If we're giving our residents more of a break than the cut-through people, the people that are entering town that we've heard that we want to feel that they've got to hit the brakes when they come into town, there is no way for that to manifest except as a racial disparity.

Not that the officers necessarily are thinking of it that way, or doing it that way, enforcing it that way, but that is how it will come up. Same thing with vehicle and equipment discrepancies that stem from the massive wealth inequality locally centered in Swampsburg. That will also impact and come across as a racial bias.

Now, multiple checks, both by us and by the state, have found no bias in our enforcement, but I'll get to that later. But we really need to be cognizant of that. And why do we need to be cognizant of it?

Can we jump to the next step? Most importantly, I just want to say it's just plain right to make sure that no one's treated differently by the police based on their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation. Everybody has to be confident they've been stopped based solely on their driving and or their vehicle safety.

I really could stop the explanation there, but I understand that that's not going to be a satisfactory answer to everybody. And I want to just explain that there are real-world consequences if we lose our grip on this. The first is that even an appearance of bias in our work has significant consequences, not only for us, but for the residents that we serve.

The number of judges that we regularly appear in front of at Linn District Court, there's only a handful over there. Most of them know us all by face and name. We've sat in front of them so many times.

They will very quickly develop an opinion as to whether or not a specific officer is conducting themselves legitimately or not. And if they get the feeling that the Swamp Scout Police Department is engaged in biased enforcement, their first remedy is to dismiss charges, dismiss tickets. And what will happen is the very people that the town of Swamp Scout wants to see us engage in will engage them, but the courts will correct on their end, because they will assume that there's something there, and they'll simply dismiss it.

We can jump to the next one. Same holds true for the District Attorney's Office. Their lawyers both prosecute our cases, but they also act as a first line of defense against police misconduct.

They are very mindful for patterns of concern amongst the officers and departments who regularly appear in front of them. So if they in any way develop a concern that the Swamp Scout Police Department is engaged in any sort of biased enforcement, we can expect pushback from their office and a reluctance to bring our charges forward. Area residents, everybody around us, the people from Lynn that are driving through that would be affected by this, they're the jury pool that's going to hear every case that we bring on behalf of everybody here and everybody behind me.

They're going to be the jury. I spoke with a woman a couple of months ago, and she was a delightful woman, and I was having a great conversation with her, and she was telling me how she was disappointed because she had lived inland on Eastern Ave right outside of town for 20 years, and she had always thought that the Swamp Scout Police were great and they were fine, but then she had heard recently about the arrest at the protest, and she was very disappointed to find out that that wasn't the case in her mind and that the Swamp Scout Police did have problems. Now, I don't blame her. She isn't going to go and read the report that says that there was no bias or that the police acted with probable cause.

She's acting on vaguely what she heard, but what that means is my decision that day to make an arrest has been generalized to the whole police department and to the whole town of Swamp Scout. It has nothing to do with anybody in here. It has nothing to do with most of the department.

I made a decision, but this woman, if she ever sits in your jury, is going to be automatically biased and feel that there's a great chance that the charge has been brought by a department that has issues and bias. So our legitimacy, our community support, the real foundation of our ability to effectively function depends not just on an absence of bias, but the absence of even reasonable influence. We just cannot have that and function effectively for all of you.

Bias concerns have led to a nationwide movement to eliminate police traffic enforcement completely. Now, I disagree with that. I understand why that movement is out there.

I think that it's, well, it would be interesting to see if it does work, but I think that there's a lot of reasons that we want police still enforcing traffic, and to do that, it's incumbent on the police department to make sure that the country feels confident in our having that power and ability. So for these reasons, we can't rely on just mere internal confidence that our enforcement is based on behavior and safety. Perception is reality, and I cannot emphasize enough the challenges of existing in Swanscot with the demographics that we have surrounded and trying to maintain a state where nobody can reasonably point to this department, this town, and accuse us of bias and basically make us ineffective at our jobs.

[Speaker 4] (3:16:24 - 3:16:35)
Thank you. Captain Cable? Yes.

Can we, we have probably 30 people in the room that want to talk about beach parking, so is it possible to shift and pivot?

[Speaker 2] (3:16:35 - 3:21:24)
It is. I just got a couple more things here. I just wanted to jump in on the actual enforcement that we did, if you don't mind, and then we can do that.

Do you mind giving me about five more minutes? Sure. All right.

So as for bias, if anybody in here is wondering how we do it, we were ahead of that. We've been doing that for quite a while. It's become more common in the last couple years, obviously, and now there is a required statewide annual report first published in February of last year.

We always use the resident population to stop analysis to evaluate the department as a whole, then we measure individual losses compared to a statistical deviation from the department's mean to find out whether or not we had any problems. The state study also included what they call a veil of darkness and inter-twilight period. That basically says in the dark you don't know, or it's much more difficult to find out who you're stopping, and they look for variations there.

The inter-twilight period is the best analysis where you would look at, say, 6 p.m. on a particular road all year long. For part of the year, that means it would be in the light. Part of the year, that means it would be in the dark, and you look for a statistical deviation in that where you would say, oh, when it's light out, this officer who's pulling over the same driving population at the same time on the same road all year long is more inclined to pull over black people than white people and look at the study that that was not the case in Swampscot.

So is traffic safety a real priority for policing? Of course, in any big-picture view, we understand that that is very important to everybody in here and everybody in town, but the reality is on a shift-by-shift basis, if you don't have dedicated traffic units, enforcement becomes relegated to something is done when the officer has no other obligations. Calls must be serviced first, paperwork must be completed, departmental obligations, evidence processing, licensing, accreditation, interviews, case follow-up are all necessarily prioritized, even if they're not necessarily more important than traffic.

And for these reasons, it's inevitable that staffing reductions and other service need increases manifest very early in traffic enforcement data, regardless of the true priority. Shift staffing is down 20% generally across the board, and our street staffing has been impacted by as much as 33% by the same reductions. Accreditation is a similar example.

I've talked to my accreditation team. I've told them there's nothing more important than accreditation. If we get to the end of the year and somehow we got de-accredited, it would be devastating to the department, but the reality is they have to do it all in their spare time because they have to do everything else first.

So the most important thing to the department is the least priority on a shift-by-shift basis. The last thing I want to say on that part is traffic enforcement productivity and its real effect on safety can become disconnected really quick. Stetson Ave, safety issue, generally understand it.

It's almost impossible for us to get tickets there, but we can post there and try and slow people down. There's a handful of places in town where it's shooting fish in a barrel. I could pull over, I could get car after car after car on Essex Street probably or something like that, but that's not where the safety need is.

So by producing numbers to show and say here are the numbers, the places that we're focusing on to do that just happen to be places where it's real easy for us to hide and catch people, but it's not impacting the safety at all. So productivity and the desired result just disconnect really quickly. If you wouldn't mind, jump forward.

Now I'm going to jump into the data from the 2022 citation report just to answer the question of what kind of effort have we put into enforcement? Have I sat here and just told everybody that the Swampscot Police doesn't do enforcement? Would you mind jumping ahead?

So this is a list of every community surrounding Swampscot. So we went up to Beverly, down to Revere, and west, two communities out to Linfield, Redding, and North Redding and Middleton. So everybody geographically around us with no exceptions.

Out of that entire list, as you see here, Swampscot came out third, just behind Lynn and Salem who have a total of 300 offices between them and dedicated traffic units. But you'll see that we were by far the tops in citations per officer at 59.3, and that really means other people were pulling over a lot more people because I'm not pulling people over, even though I'm counted in that. The next closest was Salem at 42.9. The third closest was Danvers at less than half at 27.3. Nahant didn't even have enough stops to register in the study. I found them at the appendix at the back with 45, and I found Redding with 623. I didn't include them in here because I had some trouble getting their data on officers and stuff to complete the comparison. But as you can see, our enforcement in the region absolutely tops for any comparable community.

You wouldn't mind jumping ahead? Can I? I'm sorry.

Of course.

[Speaker 1] (3:21:25 - 3:22:03)
I apologize. You're going to have to stay regardless. So can we just – this is really good, but we want to respond to things, but then we know we're going to take a break here because I think that while I think, no disrespect, this is a very important topic and don't take the suggestion to move on as any diminution of that, but I do think just it's bad enough we all have to be here until ungodly hours.

So to the chairman, if you wouldn't mind, if we can just push pause, don't forget where you are, and just move on so we can just talk about this because we need your input on that as well. We had a bunch of other important things to make that we couldn't reprioritize, and this has to be this way.

[Speaker 4] (3:22:04 - 3:22:09)
We also want to be cognizant of the 30, 40 people that have been here for almost three and a half hours.

[Speaker 2] (3:22:11 - 3:22:13)
Absolutely. I'd be glad to. I'm glad nobody came and took my mic.

[Speaker 1] (3:22:15 - 3:22:23)
I did. Go for it. That's fine.

Great. So who's presenting on this?

[Speaker 2] (3:22:23 - 3:22:25)
So who's presenting on the traffic study?

[Speaker 3] (3:22:25 - 3:22:29)
We have the J. Lock. I'm sorry.

[Speaker 2] (3:22:29 - 3:22:30)
Lloyd.

[Speaker 3] (3:22:30 - 3:22:40)
I'm sorry. Sergeant Lloyd, would you be able to provide a recommendation for the Traffic Committee on the beach parking?

[Speaker 18] (3:22:41 - 3:24:06)
So it started off as to create more parking. Sorry about that. Anyways, the whole idea of this is to propose more parking for the area of Phillips Beach to be more inclusive to the rest of the town.

That's been the concern starting from the beginning. And so what we try to do is create more streets within that area to provide beach rec parking, and then we kind of whittled it down to this. So our recommendation is to allow one-sided parking on Ocean, Bradley, and Shepherd, and to increase the parking violation fee from $25 to $50.

In that case, from increasing it from $25 to $50, the parking violation is less than what most cities and towns charge for their beach parking anyway. So it kind of creates that more of accountability so they don't just park everywhere in regards to the residents who just see random cars parked just to take the $25 hit to go to the beach. So it's the recommendation for parking on Ocean, Bradley, and Shepherd, and to increase the parking violation fee from $25 to $50.

Thank you.

[Speaker 9] (3:24:06 - 3:24:15)
I believe that last time you all were here, you had maybe dabbled with an idea of what side or flipping the sides. Is there a recommendation on that?

[Speaker 18] (3:24:15 - 3:24:23)
So I was unable to make the last meeting. I know that this recommendation is to allow one-sided parking. Is Margie here?

[Speaker 16] (3:24:25 - 3:24:40)
Or Gino? The recommendation was to alternate every other year with the parking with the side of the street.

[Speaker 9] (3:24:41 - 3:24:45)
So on even years, you park on the even side of the street, and on years, you park on the odd side of the street?

[Speaker 16] (3:24:45 - 3:24:46)
Correct.

[Speaker 1] (3:24:51 - 3:25:20)
So the last time that we were here, we did ask you guys just to come back with kind of what you thought about in your analysis as to identifying streets. There were more streets contemplated originally that are not on this list now. And I think we had, Sarge, I know you weren't here, but probably pretty obvious things to say with the streets, curb cuts, things of that nature.

So I guess my first question is, how did you view the streets and come to the determination about the streets that you were making the recommendation on?

[Speaker 18] (3:25:20 - 3:25:44)
I think based on the way these streets flow into where Phillips Beach, the entrance is, it all kind of just comes together. So it splits the difference between Sheppard and then Bradley and then Ocean. It kind of just all filters in.

So that was the idea. The streets are wide enough and without having to do every single street.

[Speaker 1] (3:25:44 - 3:25:53)
Did one of the questions specifically was having the fire department sign off on this recommendation so that fire apparatus clearances with one side parking. So did that happen?

[Speaker 18] (3:25:54 - 3:26:00)
Chief Archer. Chief Archer. He's been good with this whole proposal.

Okay.

[Speaker 1] (3:26:00 - 3:26:28)
And then one other question has to do with sightlines in particular I'm interested in, which is what is the standard, ignore this conversation, what is the standard distance someone needs to park from a curb cut? In a residential neighborhood, what would cause you to decide someone's parking too close to a curb cut? A residential driveway such that you think so it's too close or something you would need to cite.

What is the distance?

[Speaker 2] (3:26:29 - 3:26:54)
20 feet. 20 feet. So I'm talking about driveways.

Driveways we look at is generally just is it obstructed? Can the person get out of their driveway? There's not a set number of feet.

The intersection has a standard and the fire hydrants have a standard of 10 and 20 feet respectively. So I asked the question. I'm asking the question.

[Speaker 1] (3:26:54 - 3:28:41)
I believe one of the putting aside the general opinion about this, not just generally speaking about where cars park in pedestrian safety and things that we're talking about. One of the great things that I appreciate the DPW doing is is blocking out the space before that 90 Humphrey Street crosswalk. Right.

So we've created now a sight line that didn't exist because we had parking right up to that sight line right now. We had there's so many other side crosswalks we can do that for. Right.

So we're starting. We're getting there. And that's, I think, a really good move because it created a sight line.

I do worry about that in the neighborhoods. I do worry about that with with kids. I do worry about the sight lines.

So it doesn't mean that I have a I'm not saying my opinion. I'm just saying that for me to be there, I'd want comfort to know that we've established something and have come up with a way to be comfortable because that that is a huge concern. And and that is just that's just a realistic concern.

Right. For any neighborhood is that sight line. And we all live on streets where, you know, the space between my driver and my neighbor's driveway is so small.

You basically are parking in that zone. Right. So any car that parks there, including my own car, kills my sight line for that.

But for this, I think as though we're introducing parking into it to an area here, we've got to figure out how we can best create that understanding that enforcement isn't the tool we want to use. Right. So what's the engineering solution?

And what's the other thing that that we can do? There is just something as we talk about this, I'm just going to be interested in hearing about because I do believe the urge to pack in and to park in the edges is an overwhelming human response. And there's nothing we can do to pretend it doesn't exist.

So just as we go forward, I just be interested in hearing about that, which was one of the topics we talked about last time. And I'm told that Chief Archer is on and certainly if Chief Sharper wants to chime in on this, I welcome it as well.

[Speaker 9] (3:28:50 - 3:29:04)
With the proposed addition of the three streets, one side, what is the estimated additional amount of car parking that will be added to each parking?

[Speaker 18] (3:29:06 - 3:29:09)
I don't have it with me, but we did have that at the previous meeting.

[Speaker 19] (3:29:09 - 3:29:11)
I don't know if Chief Archer has it.

[Speaker 2] (3:29:15 - 3:29:16)
Marcy, do you have the final answer?

[Speaker 1] (3:29:19 - 3:29:20)
Marcy, you need a microphone, sorry.

[Speaker 21] (3:29:29 - 3:29:34)
Thank you. I'm just counting the numbers right now, if you give me one minute, please.

[Speaker 8] (3:29:38 - 3:29:50)
I have a quick question. So I've never heard people say that they're having a problem parking at the beach if they come before noon. Is there a big problem parking?

[Speaker 4] (3:29:50 - 3:30:20)
I've heard from a number of residents, I've had problems parking at the beach. Obviously not this month, in June, since it's rain and it's buttery day. But it's summer now.

The first day of summer was June 21st. Sunny, warm days are ahead. And it definitely is problematic parking.

If you show up at 9 o'clock, you get front row parking. But if you show up at 2 or 3 o'clock, you're out of luck.

[Speaker 7] (3:30:23 - 3:30:28)
Just to follow up on that, that's the problem we're trying to solve here?

[Speaker 4] (3:30:29 - 3:30:30)
Late sleepers.

[Speaker 7] (3:30:30 - 3:30:34)
There's not enough parking at Phillips Beach all the time?

[Speaker 4] (3:30:35 - 3:30:39)
There is not enough parking on a weekend.

[Speaker 8] (3:30:39 - 3:30:40)
On a weekend?

[Speaker 4] (3:30:40 - 3:30:40)
To accommodate.

[Speaker 8] (3:30:41 - 3:30:42)
In the afternoon.

[Speaker 4] (3:30:42 - 3:30:51)
There's not enough parking to accommodate the number of people that have recreational stickers that want to enjoy the beach. That's the problem that we're trying to solve.

[Speaker 7] (3:30:52 - 3:30:57)
And I apologize, because I think this sounds like this was a conversation before I was on the board that started or something.

[Speaker 8] (3:30:57 - 3:30:57)
No.

[Speaker 4] (3:30:57 - 3:31:02)
Oh, yeah, yeah, maybe. It was. It started, what, March?

Okay. February?

[Speaker 7] (3:31:02 - 3:31:18)
Okay. That is the problem. Not enough parking in established spaces, existing spaces, on the weekend in the summer.

Correct. Okay. And is this a change that's being proposed for just the weekends, or is it every day of the week?

[Speaker 18] (3:31:18 - 3:31:19)
Every day of the week.

[Speaker 7] (3:31:19 - 3:31:19)
Every day of the week.

[Speaker 18] (3:31:20 - 3:31:27)
And this recommendation, it just adds Bradley. So Ocean and Sheppard both have beach rec parking.

[Speaker 7] (3:31:31 - 3:31:32)
So I have the number.

[Speaker 21] (3:31:34 - 3:31:55)
I have the numbers for you, if you like. So we would gain approximately 127 parking spaces on the odd side, collectively on three streets. And we would gain about 100 parking spaces on the even side, or collectively, over the three streets.

[Speaker 4] (3:31:58 - 3:31:59)
Go ahead.

[Speaker 9] (3:31:59 - 3:32:05)
I was going to say, do you have a number of what we currently estimate parking exists today, without any addition?

[Speaker 21] (3:32:06 - 3:32:14)
I don't have that number in front of me right now. I know that we looked at those numbers, but I don't have that in front of me. I'm sorry.

[Speaker 9] (3:32:14 - 3:32:21)
Could you opine as to whether you think this might be additional third parking, additional doubling the parking?

[Speaker 21] (3:32:21 - 3:32:22)
Yeah.

[Speaker 9] (3:32:22 - 3:32:23)
Could you make an estimate?

[Speaker 21] (3:32:24 - 3:32:38)
I would defer to the Police Department and Gino, perhaps, because I don't know. There is some resident parking on Sheppard, as well as recreation parking. So I would defer to them.

[Speaker 2] (3:32:42 - 3:32:52)
The street right now, the spaces aren't marked. So we just guess how many people can jam themselves in there. But I would guess it's at least a doubling, right?

Yeah. It's at least a doubling.

[Speaker 9] (3:32:53 - 3:32:53)
It's at least doubling.

[Speaker 2] (3:32:54 - 3:32:54)
OK.

[Speaker 9] (3:32:55 - 3:32:55)
Thank you.

[Speaker 7] (3:33:04 - 3:33:09)
David, how do we do in terms of the specific?

[Speaker 4] (3:33:09 - 3:33:14)
Yeah. Yeah. I think we should open it up.

We should hear from the residents.

[Speaker 1] (3:33:14 - 3:34:45)
I want to set the stage a little bit with some opinion, just so people… I'm inclined to support additional parking. I'm not inclined to support this until there's additional data that satisfies me, that it's going to be implemented in a way that's going to address the few concerns that I've stated.

And I'm sure there are other… I'm definitely not all-encompassing. I'm so tired at the moment.

But I've just… And I hate pushing things. You know I hate pushing things.

I hate clogging our agenda. It drives me batty. But I feel like this is very reasonable information for us to know about how engineering, right, not enforcement, that we can do this and we can do this safely.

And I say I'm inclined for supporting parking as a principle. I'm inclined to support it. It's a resource for the whole town.

And it shocks me that we're only a couple decades away from it being a precinct-only parking zone. So I'm just being honest about where my general feeling is, but not without knowing that it can be done in a way that… What does it really net for parking spaces?

How do we protect those obstructed curb cut things? And the answer could be, well, we can't. I'm probably not going to believe that's the answer either.

But I would just like to advance that conversation. So I'm just putting it out there so neighbors… And for you guys here too, chime in too, because I want to hear from neighbors here that are here.

But I also want to unapologetically say that I don't think this is ready for a vote.

[Speaker 4] (3:34:46 - 3:35:14)
But I do think it should come back to us. Yeah. I do think this should come back to us.

I do want to hear from, you know, what the neighbors have to say. We've received a number of emails. I've received phone calls and text messages, you know, as well about this, both in support and against.

So, you know, if anybody would like to stand up and be heard, certainly jump to the microphone. Name and address, please.

[Speaker 3] (3:35:33 - 3:35:41)
Yeah, just talk. My name is Barry Craft.

[Speaker 4] (3:35:41 - 3:35:47)
Hold on one second.

[Speaker 12] (3:35:51 - 3:35:52)
Does it work now? Yes, okay.

[Speaker 4] (3:35:52 - 3:35:56)
There you go. Don't touch anything.

[Speaker 12] (3:36:04 - 3:37:14)
Check, check. Check, check. That's better.

Barry Craft, Blodgett Ave, been a Swamp Scout resident for 45 years. My wife's been a lifetime Swamp Scout resident. It seems to me, and this is the first time I heard Doug say to try to figure out what the problem is, it seems to me that we have a solution in search of a problem.

I'm not sure. I've looked at the data, and you guys, what I've heard today is that you like looking at data, you understand data. And we've put in a couple of requests to the town clerk to get information about the parking, and about parking tickets, and about who's parking in Swamp Scout down at the Phyllis Beach area.

One of the questions that I had asked was how many parking spaces are there now, and how many parking spaces we're going to add, and I think we just got that answered. But the question is, and I guess my question is, is this a parking problem for residents, or are we trying to allow non-residents to park there as well? Are you guys open to answering questions?

[Speaker 4] (3:37:15 - 3:37:40)
I'm happy to. So I live at 55 Sampson. I live in Precinct 1.

I can't walk to the beach. I can't ride my bike to the beach. I need to drive to Phyllis Beach.

And I'm one of several thousand residents who were not as fortunate to be able to walk. I would love to be able to walk to the beach, but to walk to Phyllis Beach is probably a two and a half mile walk for me.

[Speaker 12] (3:37:40 - 3:37:50)
So I don't have an option. Well, you do have an option, because there's parking in the neighborhoods that are a lot closer than a mile away. You could park on the other side of Marshall.

[Speaker 1] (3:37:50 - 3:37:58)
Let me just answer your question. Your question was the proposal before us is about expanding beach parking, which is sticker parking, which is resident-only parking. That was your question.

[Speaker 4] (3:37:58 - 3:38:22)
The proposal before us has to do with expanding where residents with beach stickers will be able to park. And I'm just trying to support those who aren't in attendance, who don't live in your neighborhood, to be able to open up the parking there for those individuals who have purchased a recreational sticker to enjoy our public beach at Phyllis. That's simply it.

[Speaker 12] (3:38:22 - 3:38:33)
Okay, and that's fine. But have you looked at the data to find out how many non-residents park there and how many non-residents are taking up the residence parking space at Phyllis Beach? Have you looked at that data?

[Speaker 4] (3:38:34 - 3:38:35)
The non-residents?

[Speaker 12] (3:38:36 - 3:38:39)
How many people park in that area that are non-residents?

[Speaker 4] (3:38:40 - 3:38:44)
So when you say non-residents, are you saying non-residents of Swampscott? Swampscott.

[Speaker 12] (3:38:45 - 3:38:48)
No, non-Swampscott residents.

[Speaker 8] (3:38:48 - 3:38:49)
Non-stickered parking.

[Speaker 12] (3:38:49 - 3:38:50)
Non-stickered parking.

[Speaker 4] (3:38:50 - 3:38:51)
I have no idea.

[Speaker 12] (3:38:51 - 3:39:19)
Well, I do. Okay, great. Because we got the data.

And the data represents that 75% of the parking, somewhere between 65% and 70% of the parking are from non-residents. And so increasing the parking will just allow more non-residents to park there. It will not help resident parking, residents to park there.

Does this make a bigger problem? I don't know. I have a question.

You don't follow?

[Speaker 9] (3:39:19 - 3:39:20)
I have a question about the data.

[Speaker 12] (3:39:20 - 3:39:21)
Yes.

[Speaker 9] (3:39:21 - 3:39:28)
Is it parking in residential spaces assigned parking right now, or is it both rec and residential?

[Speaker 12] (3:39:28 - 3:39:44)
Well, that's a good question because the data doesn't really distinguish between the two. So a parking ticket is a parking ticket, whether it could be a resident parking ticket or a recreational parking ticket. But it's basically they don't distinguish it when they write a ticket.

[Speaker 8] (3:39:44 - 3:39:49)
So you're saying this data is coming from tickets, not like you're out in the neighborhood writing down who doesn't have it?

[Speaker 12] (3:39:49 - 3:43:29)
I made three requests to the town for tickets. I made three requests to the town. One was to get the parking tickets that were issued in the last five years, all parking tickets in the town.

I then went through meticulously and figured out which of the parking areas were in the Phyllis Beach area. And most of the tickets that were issued there were done during four Sundays in all of the year, the whole last summer, four Sundays. Eighty-eight percent of the tickets were written in only four days.

That should be an indication of it. So my next request was to try to find out whether those tickets were for residents or non-residents. But the town didn't really have that information that well.

They didn't really provide me that information because when they write a ticket, they don't always know what the city, state, and zip of that ticket was unless the person doesn't pay. It's an issue with the data that the town gets from Kelly and Lyon or whoever provides that data. Eighty percent of the tickets that were issued were paid, ten percent were abated, and ten percent are outstanding.

And of those outstanding tickets, 75 percent are from out of town. So I think we have to ask ourselves, look at the data, and determine if this is a problem that's really related to the town. Now, I've been to other beaches in the North Shore, Manchester, Singing Beach.

You have to be there at 9 o'clock in the morning to get a parking space. If you don't, then you have to walk a mile. That's the way it is.

Every place is like that. Secondly, I will say, in terms of the tickets, I also found an analysis in terms of that, that we made $55,000 in parking tickets in the town in the last four years. Ninety-eight percent of them were $25 tickets.

The average ticket size was $28. If we increase that parking to $50 or even $75, then non-residents won't be parking there. And if residents are getting the tickets, which 27 percent of the tickets were from residents, why didn't they get a sticker?

You have Swampscott residents parking down there with no sticker. And they repeat offenders. So I implore you to look at data.

Forgetting about all the safety issues and all the other concerns about the neighborhood, look at the data before you determine that there's a parking problem. Because I know that people have complained that there's no parking down there, but there's always parking down there on weekdays, and there's always parking down there on most weekends. Last Sunday I went down there visually checking.

It was parking on Ocean Avenue was all booked. All parking spaces were taken. There were 10 non-stickers parked there, and there were 12 additional parking spaces on Sheppard Avenue that were not even being used.

Furthermore, Atlantic Avenue on the Preston area side, that's Swampscott. There's residential parking there. I mean, recreational parking there.

Do you think anybody in town knows about that? That's Phyllis Beach parking too, you know. It's not parking so you get to Phyllis Beach, but it is parking so you get to access that beach.

[Speaker 7] (3:43:31 - 3:43:33)
Thank you. Thanks.

[Speaker 9] (3:43:43 - 3:43:45)
Mrs. Levinson has the microphone.

[Speaker 15] (3:43:47 - 3:46:49)
Hi. Is this on? Okay.

I'm Cheryl Levinson. I live on Sheppard Ave. I've been living with this now for nine years, and there are a couple of things I need to say. First of all, on the subject of switching sides, this is going to be a very big problem on Sheppard.

The reason why the original talk about having the recreation parking there, it was determined that there were too many blind driveways on the non-ocean side, which is why it is on the ocean side. People do not understand the difference between these signs. Those are where most of the problems come into being.

On most weekends, there are cars parked with recreation stickers on the resident parking side because the signs are just too much alike. I have repeatedly, repeatedly asked that the signs be changed, either color, size, or whatever, and it's not even in this recommendation, even though I've asked for it every year for nine years. Secondly, there is parking at the end of Sheppard on both sides, so it's already on both sides.

And on ocean, at the end of ocean, how can you have parking on the side of the Beach Club parking lot? There's no place to park. So it's going to become even more confusing than it already is.

And, I mean, it's just it is not fair to the residents that live there. I understand that there's a thought that there be more beach parking, but it's not fair to the people who are there who have to live with this, who have people parking all over the place, a lot of them, I hate to say, have some disrespect for the people who live there. There's trash that I have to pick up and I know my neighbor has to pick up after every weekend on our driveways, on our lawns.

And, yes, I agree, there are a lot of people who do not have stickers. They are from out of town. And what they say is the $25, they get to go to the beach.

So I appreciate the fact that they're talking about increasing it, but my two issues are, number one, switching sides is going to be a very big problem and very confusing. It's already confusing. And number two, the recreation signs need to be changed in color and size so that people understand.

They just look at it and they say, oh, I'm a resident. I am a resident because I have a recreation sticker so I can park there. They don't understand the difference.

Thank you. Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (3:46:52 - 3:46:54)
Put the microphone back on the stand.

[Speaker 3] (3:47:16 - 3:47:17)
Joe is going to help out.

[Speaker 10] (3:47:37 - 3:54:42)
Okay, can you hear me? Yep. Kevin Reen, Ocean Ave. Just a couple of other sentiments that I wanted to add and point out specifically within the area of Phyllis Beach, primarily for safety concerns. It should be noted that at the beginning of Ocean Ave, where it starts at Atlantic Ave, going down towards Phyllis Beach, as you approach the marsh that everybody knows on the right-hand side, the width of the street from the top of Atlantic Ave down to, I believe it would be 102 is the address on Ocean Ave, the width of the street is only 24 feet wide. If you take that measurement and if you were to put in what is proposed recreational stickers on one side for beach goers and then resident parking on the opposite side, you would have vehicles both sides. The average size of a vehicle today is approximately 6 1⁄2 to 8 1⁄2 feet wide.

So now if you're occupying both sides in that area, add into the space of driveways now that are being considered in that area, you have now taken 16 feet away from a 24-foot wide street. Now, add into the situation if there's an emergency where a fire truck, yes, can pass through and come by. However, if there is traffic exiting the beach club as they now drive west up Ocean Ave towards Atlantic Ave, you're going to come to a stalemate.

I think that's a problem that could be an issue. If you go across Atlantic Ave onto Ocean Ave, the street width increases significantly by 10 more feet. There's completely restricted parking on that side.

To consider things further with the safety as you move towards the beach, now traveling back east towards the marsh, this particular area becomes congested regularly throughout all summer months, all days in the summer regarding the occupation of the beach and beachgoers, whether resident or non-resident, it is what it is, they're there. As we now increase vehicles in that area, once you get to 102 Ocean Ave at the corner of Longley and Bradley as you're approaching the beach, there are no sidewalks. So now you're creating even more of a safety issue by getting your families out of your vehicles, put them in their wagons as you walk with their new exit strategy.

They can do what they can, that's fine. You now have vehicles exiting onto Ocean Ave, taking a right or a left-hand turn on Ocean to exit either through Shepherd, or if you take a right, you're now exiting through Ocean, Longley, or Bradley. That cluster of those three finger streets that come in together create a traffic nightmare.

As a full disclosure, you all know I'm a police officer in town and I regularly work in that area. Yes, there are many days in which there are a significant amount of tickets that are issued. However, there's also very many days where the traffic just in general creates a hazard.

I think the residents can also agree with me within the past 12 years, the population turnover of the occupants in that area have become much younger. You're now seeing younger families move in with younger children who are on their bikes. I know I can count off the top of my head right now.

There are 15 children under the age of 16 who walk and occupy and ride bikes and play basketball in that area. Now, yes, people can talk about we chose to buy a house there, and we did. I'm lucky for that.

But I think when you're breaking down the safety mechanism of what we're trying to do, and the captain in his presentation was talking about lane narrowing and how that is creating a safety opportunity for those particular areas outside of Phillips Beach. Here we already have our natural element of safety with narrow lanes in this particular area of Longley, Ocean, Bradley, and Shepherd. We're now throwing gasoline onto a fire of safety concerns, which were clearly specified by the captain in his presentation.

Alternating every other year, I don't understand how you could do that, because if you do on certain sides of Ocean, Bradley, and Shepherd, driveways are staggered throughout. So you're going to be eliminating parking spots one year and then adding them the next year, and it's going to be vice versa. I think it was also mentioned the addition of stickers to employees in town that are nonresidents that also add to an influx of extra parking or extra vehicles in the area.

Is that something that we need to consider? I don't know. I'm just pointing out the fact that there are now more people coming into an area that just work here, don't live here.

Talking about the traffic flow, it's very easy to see that Ocean Ave, as you enter from Atlantic Ave, that is the primary entrance to Phillips Beach. It comes down in, there's a drop-off, and then people go and look for their parking. Also have to take into consideration the amount of extra vehicles that are coming down there that are nonresident people utilizing Uber, Lyft, or any other ride-share systems that are now making our beach even more popular.

I had the opportunity to speak with a couple the other day who were there. They Googled beaches, Phillips Beach popped up, and they're visiting from Brookline. So it's a popular spot.

God bless it that it is. I think that before anything is voted on or enacted upon tonight, that there should be a greater study as to the width, the flow, traffic patterns, and the total population of vehicles that are entering and exiting during high beach hours. That's what the concern is.

People are looking to go to the beach. I'm going to add the sentiment again one more time. We're all here for safety and want to make sure that our kids are safe.

Mr. Spellios, I couldn't agree more with you in your line of sight. We have some images of vehicles parked in that area, and as you're entering and exiting your driveway, it's a colossal nightmare. And any child or person who's trying to walk to the beach down the street because they can't occupy a sidewalk gets hit by someone backing out of their driveway.

That would be an extremely unfortunate situation. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

[Speaker 20] (3:54:49 - 3:56:12)
Hi, everybody. Rachel Teradash. Probably a very opposite opinion of a lot of people here.

I live over on Middlesex Ave. I'm one of the people who drives to the beach. I have a beach permit. I have four very small children, and I have, on many occasions, spent upwards of 20 minutes looking for a place to drive to the English Park to go to the beach.

I appreciate the – I'm sorry you have to walk if you don't get there early enough, but that just means that my family and I don't go to the beach on those days. We can't find parking. So I'm absolutely in favor of that additional parking.

The other reason I'm up here is I sincerely hope that every single one of you that's concerned about safety is also up here when at some point we get to talk about people racing down Middlesex, Norfolk, Stetson, because everyone here is concerned about safety and narrowing streets. Middlesex is an extremely narrow street. People park on both sides of that.

Up to the edge of everybody's driveway, we have a stop sign that everybody just ignores. So I hope that we can increase parking for the beach. I hope we can do it keeping everybody safe, everybody's children, everybody's families who like to ride bikes on the streets.

But I also hope to see all of you here at some point to talk about safety on the other more crowded streets in town. Thank you.

[Speaker 13] (3:56:21 - 3:58:53)
Hi. My name's Jared Bridge. I live at 42 Shepherd Avenue, so I'm just past Blodgett and Cutting intersection, just north of that going towards Marblehead on the right-hand side.

So my side is recreation. The opposite side says residential. When I moved in, I was like, great, nobody's going to park here.

It says residential because I read it wrong and it said recreation. So she has an absolute point that the signs need to be changed. That should be something that's done now, not tabled for another discussion.

They are identical signs except saying residential versus recreation, and nobody A, pays attention to it because they don't care, or they just misread it. I like to say that I live further up where it's a little more riff-raff of people parking that aren't supposed to be there. Yesterday is a prime example.

It was a gorgeous day. About 5 o'clock at night, there's nobody on the street. Everybody's left the beach, and a beautiful Mini Cooper comes up and parks in front of my house, and four people get out and walk to the beach.

And then you go outside, and there's not a car down the street. Well, they park there because they think the police are going to enforce further down, but not in front of the house. So the big thing really is enforcement.

It's not more spaces. It's more enforcement. Tonight we should increase the fine from $25 to $50 or $75.

And then on top of that, we should have enforcement on every weekend, Saturdays and Sundays. If you look at the data from last year for parking tickets, I believe it was Saturdays. There were 14 Saturdays, and only three days for Saturdays were given tickets.

Memorial Day last year, there wasn't a single ticket written on a Monday. So it's really a key of enforcement and not more parking. If you increased it and increased the enforcement, people wouldn't come knowing, hey, I might not get a ticket today, and it would really be beneficial for us.

The other thing that I heard at the last meeting we had, there were 50 or 60 people at the meeting in May, and I'm glad there was one person here this evening who just spoke to say she was in support because at the last meeting there was only one person there for support of it, and there were 50 people not there. So I was confused at where this even came about as an issue.

[Speaker 1] (3:58:53 - 3:59:01)
Can I quickly answer that for you? You all got notice of that meeting, but the rest of the town didn't get notice. So you knew the meeting was happening, but people in Middlesex didn't get a notice.

[Speaker 13] (3:59:05 - 3:59:12)
That's for the last meeting? I'm listening. The people in Middlesex didn't get notice.

[Speaker 1] (3:59:14 - 4:00:05)
Order. Order, please. Order.

I am answering his question as to why there wasn't people from the other side of town. It's remarkable. No one in this room has shown up at the four hearings that we've had on Middlesex Avenue.

That's just the point he's trying to make, and you agree with me, and the reason is because it's not your neighborhood. We understand why you're here. There's no doubt you have every right to be here.

You should be here. We want to hear from you. I'm just correcting or answering the question because I think it's important to acknowledge no one in this room has been here when we've been talking about Stetson and Middlesex time after time after time.

It's okay. We don't hold it against you, but the Middlesex residents have been here because it's their neighborhood. So we're getting there.

We're here at 10 o'clock listening to you, so just take it easy, guys. We've said we're going to look for more information.

[Speaker 13] (4:00:07 - 4:01:42)
Thank you. For the record, I was not notified of the other meeting. Jackie let all of us know that it was happening.

We were not given any notifications to our house, and for this meeting I was given a letter that I got at 5 o'clock Friday night, was put on my door at some point to say come tonight. So I'm glad we did get something for this meeting. We didn't get anything for the last meeting.

But that's not my point. My biggest point is enforcement. I don't feel as a resident of Swampscott that I should have to call the police to say please come ticket the cars that are in front of my house, and that's what I've been told that I have to do, that I'm supposed to go out into the street because the permits are on, the stickers are on the street side, and count down and say, well, there's enough cars here.

I guess I should call and say can you come ticket cars. That's not what I want to be doing in life. But I went outside again, and I went outside yesterday, and you can go 100 feet this way or 100 feet this way, and 35% of the cars or 40% of the cars don't have a sticker.

Yesterday there were five cars on the residential side. Three of them had a sticker, but they weren't parked in the right spots. One didn't have a sticker.

One was from Vermont, and another one didn't have a sticker. So it's enforcement. It's not adding spaces.

If we could just have more enforcement, people would realize, no, they're serious, they're going to give you a $50 ticket, and you guys who do have permits and parking stickers would be having places. Next time you go down to the beach, if you can't find a spot, check out how many cars don't have stickers. Thanks.

Bye.

[Speaker 11] (4:01:48 - 4:08:49)
Mara Lau, Outlook Road, town meeting member, Precinct 3. So I do not have an opinion about parking, you know, at the beaches. That's really not what I'm kind of standing to speak about, although I do understand it could be a very difficult issue.

I would like to talk to some of the things that the captain pointed out. I'm going to just sort of rattle through a number of things. I am very concerned about the speed in town, the safety in town.

I have a student at the high school that is on the cross country, and every day comes home with stories about how which group of kids almost got hit. And, yes, I think that there's a few kids that may have been jumping out or, you know, kind of running out, but not after Carson gives it to them. So, yeah, it's a real problem.

Safety for our pedestrians, safety for our students walking to all of the schools in town is a huge concern. I do think enforcement on the beach stickers and in terms of speed in town has to play a bigger role. I think your data has a point.

I don't think that if you get a $100 ticket for, you know, speeding down Middlesex Ave, you're going to be too quick to do it again. Right? So at least it's helping that, you know, get that problem off of the road.

Let's say it that way. A few additional things. It's not just alcohol that is the problem.

It is pot. You smell it the second you get in the car. You can smell it blowing into your car from the car in front of you.

And I understand, my understanding is it's very hard to police that, you know, in terms of finding impaired people. There was a person driving all the way down Lynn Shore Drive, right down Walker Road the other day. She had to be three sheets to the wind.

So do you pull over and try to call them in or, you know, you kind of just hope? I didn't call this person in, but I've certainly done it several times. What happens?

I don't really know. But enforcement is a problem. I followed this woman just going home.

She happened to be in front of me four miles. And, you know, there wasn't anybody there to pull her over that clearly she shouldn't have been driving. I'd also like to point out the intersection of Burrell Street and Norfolk, right at the train station there.

I have witnessed this just a few months back, driving my high school student. There was a student that actually got, I will say, got bumped. You know, had to jump out of the way, hands on the hood of the car by somebody turning.

The student was in the crosswalk, not on their phone, doing all of the right things. It was just, I witnessed it then. My hunch is it's happened several times.

So speed and enforcement and occasionally having officers just at some of those busier intersections would be great. I think the improvement at banks is significant. Thank you, Gino.

I do think overall I think that that is an improvement because it does slow people down. Still, though, people don't seem to think that if the person in front of them stops at the stop sign, that the stop sign really applies to them. They just keep going through.

So, yes, education. I don't know what to do about that other than sending everybody back to Mr. Bennett to learn because it's just concerning. One of the other things, Humphrey Street and Monument intersection, you're right.

When you go to turn right, the beach is in front of you. You're coming down Monument. You're turning right onto Lynn Shore Drive.

You are always seeing a pedestrian coming through there. But if you're coming from the Lynn side, you just can't see. I mean, that was a perfect spot that we should have had a bump out for the pedestrians to walk out to.

We don't have that. At minimum, it could be a quick fix tomorrow. You just X off that one space until you guys come up with a bigger solution or a better solution.

So even if you just drop that parking space there, you're taking out the blind spot for the individual coming off of the beach side. So that's something certainly to consider. On Walker, we need lines, Gino.

People are coming down off of Outlook and then they're speeding to the stop sign. And they're just coming too fast. And you know they're still speeding down the other side, coming down Monument.

The amount of people that come out of Sheridan, excuse me, not Sheridan, Farragut, and do not stop at that intersection. There's a child care center in the church there, the corner of Farragut and Monument. It's insane the amount of people who are weaseling through people while they're trying to get their infants out of the car.

It's immoral. But more importantly, it's dangerous. So some education that I think that the police could do.

Let's think about doing more programs that target young families. We have a lot of young families in town. Putting those car seats into your cars, I'm sorry, is still a beast.

That cannot be done more often. The number of kindergartners I would see coming out of elementary schools and jumping into the front seat of the car with no booster seat and certainly not belonging in the front seat of the car, that is an incredibly important education. It should just not be happening.

And I'm sorry, if that parent needs to be educated, educated, and ticketed, then that's fine too. Because it's an incredible danger. I know for, the statistics sadly have changed, for ages, you know, infancy to 18, automobiles were our number one killer of children.

Unfortunately, now it is firearms. Both are deplorable. Both we need to do better on.

My last thing is, I saw Chief Casada when we were here last time. We need a female cop. Hands down.

We need a female cop. We have only two, sir, is the problem. We need additional female cops.

We are looking to, I'm talking, not you. We need additional female cops. Minority cops.

We need a cross section. If you come into our school, thankfully we are a rainbow of skin tones now. It is, our public services need to reflect that.

But number one, we need more female cops. Thank you.

[Speaker 4] (4:08:49 - 4:08:51)
Thank you, Ms. Lyle. We'll take one more comment.

[Speaker 5] (4:08:52 - 4:08:55)
Well, how many more do we have?

[Speaker 4] (4:08:56 - 4:08:56)
Sorry.

[Speaker 19] (4:08:59 - 4:11:01)
Hi, my name is Sarah Climate. I am also on Shepherd Avenue. And I have three kids.

There's 11 kids under the age of 18 on our small street. Seven of those kids are under kindergarten age. So we have a very young population.

We moved to this town because of the quality of life and for our children. I am very concerned with adding 100 plus more parking spots in our neighborhood and how that will affect the safety of our streets. Our kids ride bikes.

They play basketball outside. Little ones, no. You have to stop them from running naked.

They run around the blocks. It's a very warm community that we have created. And not creating essentially boulevards on very small streets, that is going to change the nature of our community.

And it's not about there are other parts of the town where there are atrocious traffic problems. This happens to be the part where it's really going to affect my children and my family, as well as all of the people who we've come to really love, as well as we also need to take into consideration can emergency vehicles safely make it to places if there's going to be parking on both sides of the street. I have not seen the data to prove that that would be safe.

[Speaker 4] (4:11:04 - 4:11:05)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (4:11:23 - 4:11:57)
Can I ask then just to make a motion to continue this and table this and ask that frankly a subset of us meet with staff and make sure it's ready to come back to us in whatever way before it comes back. This is the second time it's before us. And again, I've shared my predisposition as to where I lean, but it's not a blinded leaning by any means.

This just isn't ready at the moment. And so I just ask that we can continue. Others, I don't mean to shut off your meeting tonight.

I'm just saying we're not going to resolve this tonight.

[Speaker 9] (4:11:58 - 4:12:31)
Yeah, I would just say if there's a working group, I'd love to be a part of it. But I would love to see some mapping before us that specifically shows us the distance away from driveways and sight lines and some more fact-based information before we can come to any conclusion where the addition of parking will be and how it's going to affect both our neighbors here and afar so that we can truly understand what we would be implementing if we took a vote.

[Speaker 8] (4:12:33 - 4:12:50)
My only concern is that the people here feel like they had an opportunity to say what they wanted to say. I think all the hands have gone up except for maybe one. Two, sorry.

He's the chairman. I'm not the chair.

[Speaker 4] (4:12:50 - 4:13:22)
I can only complain. It's 10.15, and we get the point. We heard the neighbors.

We still have other things on our agenda which we're not going to get to tonight. I'm going to recommend we're going to postpone this vote for the beach parking. We're going to then continue votes which are important for boards and commission terms as well as committee and board liaisons for next year.

We've already approved the consent agenda.

[Speaker 9] (4:13:25 - 4:13:45)
If there is some documentation you want us to see that we haven't yet seen, you can email it so we can see it. And then if there's other facts or data that have not yet been mentioned tonight that you would like to provide to us, please also feel free to email that. That way we can maybe mitigate additional conversation but still get the information.

[Speaker 8] (4:13:45 - 4:13:53)
Is it possible we can vote on two things or implement two things right away? Like increasing the additional fine and the signs?

[Speaker 4] (4:13:54 - 4:14:04)
I want this to be part of a holistic approach. I don't want to take a piecemeal approach to this. I want to look at this.

[Speaker 9] (4:14:05 - 4:14:14)
I would also like to see where the signs are proposed. Like where they are now and where they – like a design for them maybe or something that will differentiate them.

[Speaker 8] (4:14:15 - 4:14:23)
I don't need to see a design. I just need to see – I mean a different – just like to get something going. We're going to need new signs.

I mean they are really confusing.

[Speaker 4] (4:14:25 - 4:14:30)
So talking to staff, do we think we'll have this information? Sean, do we think we'll have this information?

[Speaker 3] (4:14:30 - 4:16:01)
Yes, I think we can put the maps together. And I do think we just need a couple of days where we can actually get out into the neighborhood, walk the streets, count the spaces, and come back with a map. We certainly should talk to some of the neighbors.

I've actually had a conversation with the committee about going down on a Saturday in the neighborhood so we can listen to these concerns and see the streets and work through this. We're a community. Certainly, I apologize because we should have had this information for you tonight.

And we have maps. We have maps of every street. We know we can count the spaces, and we can come back here, and we can have a good conversation about building community.

I will tell you I appreciate the fact that we've had a group of citizens here for three and a half hours. You've generally been civil. I haven't agreed with everything that folks have said about strangers or people that may come here from elsewhere or my colleagues, public servants that have stickers that may not live here.

I want Swampskid to be a community that welcomes everybody in a way that keeps it safe. We can figure this all out. We have a wonderful neighborhood.

We're one of the most densely settled communities in the Commonwealth, and so these issues do touch home, and I get how concerned folks are. But we will be back.

[Speaker 4] (4:16:01 - 4:16:09)
Yeah, and ultimately I just want residents of Precinct 1 and Precinct 2 and Precinct 3 to be welcomed in Precincts 5 and 6 as well.

[Speaker 9] (4:16:10 - 4:16:22)
So can I just make a motion to continue?

[Speaker 1] (4:16:22 - 4:16:38)
I made a motion to continue, and the other thing I would just suggest is maybe as a suggestion, I don't have any more bandwidth to offer to working groups at the moment, but just make a motion to table this. It's not to a specific date. We're tabling this until it's ready to come back.

[Speaker 9] (4:16:39 - 4:16:40)
I second the motion.

[Speaker 4] (4:16:40 - 4:16:41)
All in favor?

[Speaker 9] (4:16:41 - 4:16:45)
Aye. And I also accept if the working group exists, I would love to be a part of it.

[Speaker 4] (4:16:45 - 4:16:46)
You accept.

[Speaker 9] (4:16:46 - 4:16:51)
I accept. Thank you to all the residents who came and gave comments.

[Speaker 1] (4:16:54 - 4:16:57)
We're staying on the ‑‑ we're still going to stand past that.

[Speaker 22] (4:17:12 - 4:17:17)
You're all welcome to stay.

[Speaker 4] (4:17:18 - 4:17:25)
We'll finish with ‑‑ we'll finish with Captain Cable, and then we'll discuss our next meeting case, and we'll try to get out of here before 10.

[Speaker 8] (4:17:26 - 4:17:27)
So Captain Cable and then we're gone? Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (4:17:29 - 4:17:33)
Racing to the door? Huh? I have someone.

Racing up the stairs.

[Speaker 8] (4:17:34 - 4:17:35)
Okay. Let's keep moving.

[Speaker 4] (4:17:37 - 4:17:42)
I'll get a speeding club. Captain Cable. Excuse me, sir.

[Speaker 8] (4:17:44 - 4:17:47)
Sir? Okay. Sir.

[Speaker 4] (4:17:47 - 4:17:48)
We're still in the middle of a public meeting.

[Speaker 2] (4:17:50 - 4:17:50)
Captain.

[Speaker 4] (4:17:51 - 4:17:52)
Yes, sir.

[Speaker 8] (4:17:52 - 4:17:52)
Captain.

[Speaker 2] (4:17:53 - 4:17:55)
Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I didn't jump in.

[Speaker 9] (4:17:56 - 4:18:00)
Could you pull up the rest of the presentation so Captain Cable could finish?

[Speaker 2] (4:18:00 - 4:19:04)
And I can really throw through this in just a couple minutes. The last thing I had was basically the statistics to respond. So the next community comparison, Swanscot had the highest ratio of citations per officer, 59.3. Next closest, Salem, with a dedicated traffic team and 100 officers at 42.9. After that, you're looking at Danvers, 27.3, half of their production of Swanscot. The 13 community average was 16.8, 353% below Swanscot. The 1,541 stops that Swanscot made in this reporting period was more than the combined total of Beverly, Topsfield, Saugus, North Reading, Middleton, Linfield, and Marblehead combined. Those towns had 1,466.

We had 1,541. Those seven communities have 259 officers, 10 times our size, and a combined population of 431,000. What year was that?

What's that? Was that 2020? This is all from 2020.

That's the- I'm good. So the state is organizing this, and this is from 2020. I assume next year we'll have something more recent.

[Speaker 22] (4:19:04 - 4:19:04)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (4:19:04 - 4:23:24)
And I do expect that these will change. Our staffing has gone down. Our philosophy has changed.

If we jump to the next one, you talked about the sort of labor units that go into it. As you can see, we're fourth from the bottom in both budget and number of officers, yet we topped that list. Breaking it down to the ones that just resemble Swanscot, under 30,000, above 10,000, similar to the 2018 study.

Again, tops in the stops by far, second from the bottom in budget there. So since those numbers were working out so conveniently for me, I was afraid that maybe I'd better look at something else. So I went to the communities that we used in the town's 2018 report, that was used to compare our budget and our contracts.

And as you see, out of those communities, we were second to Wilmington, who is twice our size and has Route 93 going through them, but we still beat them in stops per officer, and we beat every other community. So we were fourth in total citations, first in citations per officer in that separate group, just to make sure that we looked at a different way of comparing ourselves, consistent with the way that you guys have compared us in the past. So basically, what does that all mean for the future?

The stuff that we've talked about, we need to really focus on the intersections, the squaring, shortening, crosswalks. The new pedestrian crossing signals are absolutely invaluable, and they're getting very cheap and effective. As she was talking about, and as Peter was talking about, elimination of obstructed view of drivers, the spaces in front of crosswalks, etc.

We have had our first install of a temporary speed pillows on Stetson Ave. Chino put those in. I drove down there today, working like a charm. Nobody was going over 20 miles an hour.

We do need to continue to work towards engaging engineering expertise. I really do think that that's something that we want to bring in somebody to really look at, and not just take what we've put down. So going forward, the last few decades, things have gotten much more challenging for pedestrian safety.

Vehicles have gotten larger. Drivers are getting more distracted. Roadways are getting more congested.

Electric vehicles like mine are silent. People can't really hear them. The future does offer some technological hopes.

Hands-free technology, semi-autonomous self-driving vehicles, collision avoiding systems, ride sharing, decreasing OUI. But staffing reductions, we've gone down since 2020. We've got two or three more people that we're going to lose this year.

Even with the hiring that we're going to do, that won't be in time to impact that. So we're going to see further reductions in our staffing. And one of the first places that you're going to see that impact is on traffic enforcement.

It's just by necessity. There's no way around it. No matter how much we prioritize it, the fact is all those other things that I listed have to be done first.

So I don't see these numbers being sustainable going forward for those reasons. I don't think that next time I'll be able to sit down and say we're 353% above the average community. So engineering, only solution for everything we've said.

Traffic cameras, something that I really think that we should be looking into. And the last thing that I'll mention, just to skip over this because I know everybody wants to get out of here. We have engaged Dr. Joel Kaplan, Rutgers University. He has a program called Risk Terrain Modeling. So we are going to use that to insert our data that we have on accidents and try and identify the problem points that we should be looking for, whether it's park, schools, or whatever. But they come up with some very interesting connections and safety that aren't intuitive and could really benefit us here.

So I would just wrap up by saying, as I said, out of 24 communities, you have by far the department that was the most proactive in traffic enforcement. Nobody else even close. And at that, you can see and feel the residents' frustration with that.

And our resources are diminishing. We're not going to be able to improve upon that in the very near future. So I really think that we've got to think differently, act differently, and really address the problem and solve the problem.

So that's what I have for you. Any questions?

[Speaker 1] (4:23:25 - 4:23:29)
Thank you, Deb. I do. Others?

Let me defer to Doug, please.

[Speaker 7] (4:23:30 - 4:23:58)
Well, I really, really, really appreciate the thoroughness of it. Extreme thoroughness, for sure. And many, many things I could ask.

It's late at night. The speed tables, you talked about one on Stetson. I thought maybe we'd have a kind of a more thorough plan about where else we're talking about that.

Is it set or still under discussion? I don't want to get too expansive about it, but do you have a plan yet or not?

[Speaker 2] (4:23:59 - 4:24:25)
We do have a plan, as I think that recognizing what was said a couple of weeks ago, there is a plan to have an engineer look at it. So we put forward those proposals that basically showed where we thought the problem was and tried to emphasize the philosophy of how we'd like to be able to shift our enforcement to where it's more productive. But absolutely, I think anything like this should have a trained traffic engineer look at and say, what are you listening to Joe Gable putting it here for?

[Speaker 7] (4:24:25 - 4:24:32)
Put it someplace else. So what does that mean? We're waiting now to consult with someone else before we make final plans?

[Speaker 2] (4:24:32 - 4:24:41)
We'll go with some temporary ones to see how they work, but my understanding is there's absolutely an intention to engage expert advice, right?

[Speaker 3] (4:24:41 - 4:24:46)
Well, we have our director of public works who heads up our engineering department.

[Speaker 2] (4:24:47 - 4:24:48)
I'm an expert.

[Speaker 3] (4:24:48 - 4:24:49)
Understood.

[Speaker 2] (4:24:51 - 4:24:53)
It's beyond what we put forward as the police.

[Speaker 3] (4:24:53 - 4:25:03)
We've got traffic engineers. We hire them, so we have them, and we can reach out to them to help us. Can I just interject a question here and say why haven't we?

I'm sorry.

[Speaker 1] (4:25:03 - 4:25:18)
No, we haven't. I'm sorry. I know it's 1030 at night, and I know you hate it when I get pissed off something, but if we're so bad at enforcement, then why hasn't the police department DPW been here with engineered solutions before now?

I'm being honest about it. This is a rhetorical question.

[Speaker 2] (4:25:19 - 4:25:23)
Nobody has asked me here before. Anybody that's ever asked me about traffic enforcement going back eight years is her engineer.

[Speaker 1] (4:25:23 - 4:26:30)
Your core mission is public safety. You don't need to be asked to come for public safety. Gino, you don't need permission to do public safety.

No one does. Sean, you don't need permission. But this is just circular.

We're literally, I think, tonight thinking that we were going to hear about 20 things because some of my board members wanted you to come back. I said go do it. But now you're back, and we've seen one, and we've heard no plan for the rest.

And you just sat in a room and listened to 30 residents just talk about an abysmal failure they think is our traffic enforcement. So if we're doing so darn much, and so many people think that we're miserable at it, something is really wrong. And we have to be inward looking.

We all bear responsibility. I don't drive a day in my life in a cruiser. And I bear responsibility because I decided to volunteer for this position.

I can't myself fix the concerns that Maura Lau has raised. But I bear responsibility because I'm sitting here, and she's also my neighbor, and she'll knock on my door and look at me that way. But she's right about it.

We all bear responsibility, though. And I'm just going to be honest. Hearing the presentation, your engineering portion was brilliant.

Stop it there. The rest of it was a defense for why we don't do things.

[Speaker 2] (4:26:30 - 4:26:34)
But the rest of it was actually a response to you telling us that you wanted to understand our enforcement.

[Speaker 1] (4:26:35 - 4:29:05)
I appreciate that. You have enlightened me as to quite a bit tonight, but not as to how we're going beyond the engineering, how we're going to solve the problem. I just ask you all to please don't come at it from the defensive.

We're not asking you at all. Just be open to the fact that we don't have it nailed, open to the fact that you are the paid professionals of every day, and we will support you. When you come forward with ideas and say, not just cruisers and guns and simulations and stuff like that.

If you came back as part of a public safety budget saying, look, we have an enforcement problem. We're never going to snaff our way out of it. We have an enforcement problem.

We admit it. We all agree. I think we don't agree on everything unanimously.

I think we're all going to agree with you on that within one minute of you saying it, not 20. But we agree with you on it. But come to us with those ideas.

And then put us in that awkward position to be able to say we can't do it or we're not going to do it. But no one has, I'm just being honest, no one has ever come with the ideas. They've all originated from these types of conversations in this room.

And, Gino, you do a great job executing them when we have them. And I appreciate the fact that you went and checked the speed bump today to see that it was working. But we're now in the busy season, and we all thought we were going to hear tonight about moving something forward.

Instead, we're hearing we should get engineering help. We said that three weeks ago. And I'm sorry.

I get passionate about it because this is literally not, this is eight and a half years in for me having the same conversation. It's just not happening. It's not your fault until it is all of our fault.

We've got to do more collectively. And I just ask you to be open and not defensive about it. Everybody, us included, staff included, I'm not, we all have to be open to it.

We all, you know, and so many things. When you're going through your things, we have to be open to maybe we don't have enforcement right. Maybe the statistics you showed tonight do say something, but don't say what you think they say.

Because we still have a room full of 30 residents that think we're the worst enforcement in the community. So maybe we do have an enforcement, a different problem than you think. Maybe we do have bias.

Maybe we should just be open to the fact that if I was to ask that room of 30 people that were here tonight, if a black man walks down your street, do you notice it quicker than a white woman walking down your street? And I'm going to tell you in my house, I do. In my street, I do.

Three black men walk down my street. Street Outlook wrote a thing. Frankly, I'm not going to put my neighbor on the spot, but I would notice it.

Does that make me a bad person? Does that make me whatever it is? I'm just saying we have to just be open to the fact that we have the potential for bias.

The report.

[Speaker 15] (4:29:06 - 4:29:06)
I get it.

[Speaker 1] (4:29:06 - 4:29:08)
I would like to emphasize that.

[Speaker 2] (4:29:08 - 4:29:28)
But I know that. Any person that's asked for a traffic ad nauseum, I'm sure Sean would say it, Margie would say it, my answer has been since I've been involved in traffic engineering. If that hasn't trickled up to this spot, I'm not sure why that hasn't.

But I'm sure it drives them crazy how much I say we've got to go to engineering. Okay. Well, we're here, and we gave you the platform.

We want you to use the platform.

[Speaker 1] (4:29:28 - 4:30:01)
I'm sorry that I'm exasperated by it. We just can't start from a, hey, the report said we didn't have a problem, so we don't have a problem. We have problems throughout all the things that you talked about tonight.

It's okay. We're human. We're just evolving.

And we're a little slow at it, too. But that's because we're humans, and we've proven ourselves to be very slow at this stuff. But we can't start from a position of been there, done that.

I agree with you on engineering. I just am extremely disappointed that here we are going into July when it gets slow and things are harder to do, and we have one temporary thing out there, and no foresight as to where it's going.

[Speaker 2] (4:30:02 - 4:30:29)
I would just point out that the defensiveness, I hate being defensive, and I don't want to be defensive, and I was trying to point out the facts. But a couple weeks ago when we were pointing out the facts, not only did when the Chief Quesada said that we weren't taking our foot off the gas, your answer to the whole town was you didn't think our foot was ever on the gas. And you said that you wanted to see the numbers of what we were doing, and you wanted to see it broken down by labor units.

And that's exactly what I presented. I still stand by that statement. I appreciate the information.

[Speaker 1] (4:30:29 - 4:31:08)
If engineering has been the solution for as long as you've been here and you've been saying it, the fact that not a single engineered solution has come through is really unfortunate. There is a real failure somewhere, Captain, that in your 20-plus years you've been saying engineered solution, but it hasn't been coming through because we've done nothing. And so let's do it.

Let's just go back and do it. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. Doing nothing is the mistake.

That is the mistake. That is the worst mistake we'll make. We'll support you.

We will never say, oh, that was a stupid speed bump. We've already done the stupid speed bump, right? On Puritan Road.

That was a mistake. Right? We're moving on now, and we have a better speed bump on Stetson now, and we're trying something different.

And I think as though that, you know, don't be afraid of the mistake. Let's just do it because not doing it is how we end up with rooms like this that feel as though we're not doing things.

[Speaker 2] (4:31:08 - 4:31:13)
In that case, we agree 100%. It's beyond time for us to do something. Let's do it.

Let's do it. Thank you. I appreciate you listening.

Wait.

[Speaker 8] (4:31:14 - 4:31:16)
Oh, I was going to. Doug had his hand up.

[Speaker 7] (4:31:17 - 4:31:19)
I'm tempted to just let it sit.

[Speaker 9] (4:31:20 - 4:32:02)
I'm not. I have something else to say if you're not. I was going to say it as a rhetorical question, but since Peter's already opened Pandora's box, clearly there is a problem because you are presenting facts that say we are making all the right stops, tickets per officer, and there's a whole community of people sitting here that say we aren't.

So somehow we have to bridge the gap. It doesn't mean we have to write more tickets. It doesn't mean we have to do.

I'm not coming up with a solution tonight. There has to be one or multiple, probably multiple solutions on both parts, education, communication, perhaps enforcement in different areas. The gentleman who said, why haven't we written one ticket on Memorial Day?

Did it rain last year?

[Speaker 2] (4:32:03 - 4:32:03)
I don't know.

[Speaker 9] (4:32:04 - 4:33:23)
That could be a reason why. So you can't hold up a piece of fact and say, Eureka, this is it. It's much more detail-oriented than that.

So communication has to come across then to understand the facts that were brought before us about 75% of the people who get ticketed are non-residents. Well, they pick 10% of the pool to give you the 75% of. So as Peter said already in this meeting, numbers can be molded to say anything.

Let's come to a common agreement on what the numbers say in a way that can both benefit the entire community as well as the folks who live in the direct community for the beaches and other areas that have traffic problems like Middlesex, like Stetson Ave. Was I surprised to see speed pillows on Stetson Ave? No. Am I surprised that they disappeared without anybody saying they were going to be out there?

Yeah. Would I have liked to have just a little bit of heads up that they were going out on Stetson Ave? Sure.

But are they necessary? Absolutely. So there are just little and big things that we could be doing better.

And so let's just all commit to do that instead of placing blame and being defensive and saying what we've done in the past. Let's look to the future. Let's make it better.

Let's not think about all the ways we could have done in the past.

[Speaker 2] (4:33:25 - 4:33:27)
Absolutely. I agree. We would love to move forward to the future.

[Speaker 9] (4:33:27 - 4:33:27)
Perfect.

[Speaker 7] (4:33:28 - 4:33:52)
In that spirit, something that's very specific and simple hopefully to answer, how many other movable, portable speed tables do we have on hand at this moment? Enough to do two more. Okay.

Is there a reason why we – they're movable. So we can make a mistake and we can move them again. Is there a reason we can't deploy those?

No. Okay. Can we do that?

[Speaker 3] (4:33:53 - 4:34:09)
Yes, we plan to do that. I have to do that based on recommendations from my public safety team. And so as soon as they give me those recommendations, we can put those out.

Great. Great. This has to have – So can I – yes.

[Speaker 1] (4:34:10 - 4:34:26)
Can we just revisit – in the charter, can I just please suggest that we please talk about commissioners of streets? Because technically we're commissioners of the streets, which I think is the stupidest thing in the world. What do we know about where speed bumps should be?

So I think it's literally the stupidest thing in the world, but he just said he can go ahead and put them out there any time he wants to.

[Speaker 7] (4:34:26 - 4:34:26)
Temporary.

[Speaker 1] (4:34:27 - 4:34:35)
I agree. Temporary. Let's just revise that in the charter as well and just let – and then, you know, we can be pissed off here, but we're not – I don't know where to put speed bumps.

[Speaker 7] (4:34:35 - 4:34:37)
I'm not proposing specific locations.

[Speaker 1] (4:34:38 - 4:34:44)
No, no, I know you're not, but I'm trying to support your thesis, which is be nimble. I think there was a list. Yeah, be nimble.

[Speaker 9] (4:34:44 - 4:34:50)
So there's a list. The last presentation is the list. Let's pick some places off the list.

David, add that to the charter.

[Speaker 4] (4:34:51 - 4:34:54)
Got it. Got it. Okay.

Right on top of that.

[Speaker 9] (4:34:54 - 4:34:56)
Let's move along a little, Doug. Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (4:34:56 - 4:34:58)
Yeah. Thank you, Captain Kidman. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 9] (4:34:58 - 4:34:59)
Hi, everyone.

[Speaker 4] (4:34:59 - 4:35:34)
Yep. All right. So we're going to table the discussion and possible vote for the expiring board and commission terms.

We're going to table CPA discussions. We're going to table board and committee liaisons for 23-24 until our next meeting, which brings us up to our item of the next board meeting. So if everybody can check their calendars, the first Wednesday of the month would be July the 8th.

How does that work?

[Speaker 1] (4:35:35 - 4:35:54)
I would like to suggest that we push it off because I don't believe it gives staff adequate time, given vacations, to prepare another meeting that will be productive for us. So I actually would push it to the following week because there's not enough business days between here and there to put together agendas, do the homework, and stuff like that.

[Speaker 4] (4:35:54 - 4:35:56)
And I just would rather have a week later.

[Speaker 1] (4:35:56 - 4:35:57)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (4:35:57 - 4:36:01)
So we would have a regular meeting on July 12th and then July 19th.

[Speaker 1] (4:36:02 - 4:36:07)
I'm more comfortable with that just because it gives more time, but that's just my two cents. I'm around.

[Speaker 8] (4:36:07 - 4:36:07)
That's a good observation.

[Speaker 1] (4:36:08 - 4:36:09)
If we do the 5th, I can do the 5th.

[Speaker 4] (4:36:09 - 4:36:12)
Does that work for you, Doug, Mary Ellen?

[Speaker 8] (4:36:12 - 4:36:12)
Whatever.

[Speaker 4] (4:36:13 - 4:36:14)
Whatever. Katie?

[Speaker 9] (4:36:15 - 4:36:18)
Yes, as long as they start at 630.

[Speaker 4] (4:36:19 - 4:36:21)
At 630 on the 12th.

[Speaker 8] (4:36:21 - 4:36:30)
So I'd like to get more meetings at 630. So that select board time. Oh, okay.

I'll say that to you. I'm giving up my select board time.

[Speaker 7] (4:36:31 - 4:36:38)
Okay. You have select board time? I actually did have a number of things I wanted to talk about at select board time.

Okay. We're here.

[Speaker 8] (4:36:39 - 4:36:39)
Oh, my God.

[Speaker 7] (4:36:40 - 4:36:48)
It's about traffic enforcement, precinct 6. Make it quick. I'll go really fast.

[Speaker 10] (4:36:48 - 4:36:49)
I feel so bad about this.

[Speaker 7] (4:36:50 - 4:36:51)
Get on with it.

[Speaker 15] (4:36:51 - 4:36:51)
Okay.

[Speaker 7] (4:36:51 - 4:40:24)
So there were several things over the last couple weeks that I want to just comment on. One is on behalf of the Climate Action Plan Committee, we did do the adoption of the Climate Plan tonight just in case anyone missed that in the consent agenda. The Climate Action Plan Committee's met.

They're hard at work digging into the actions that are part of that. And everyone's trying to kind of take ownership over one action is kind of the general movement there. One particular thing that I want people to be aware of is that we already do have a grant.

I've mentioned this once before. I think Community First Grant that is supportive of people getting their homes weatherized. There are people from Revise coming around door-to-door, offering audits of homes to get basically almost free weatherization and help with other energy efficiency and cost savings initiatives.

Marcie, as well as Marissa, our energy advocate under this program, are there to help people kind of move this forward. And we're already making great progress, actually. There's a lot of leads through this program, people already signing up and making progress.

So that's one thing. Three other things that are kind of connected in terms of people that are struggling in some way, shape, or form here in Swampscot. One, I know at least Peter and I ended up at the Feast to Fight Hunger at the middle school recently.

Amazing event led by Mr. Lewis. And they raised $2,500 for my brother's table. Learned some great skills as sixth graders there.

And just want to kind of put out the fact that, you know, there are just incredible numbers of people here in Swampscot and the surrounding community that are struggling with hunger and SNAP. There was enhanced SNAP benefits that just got decreased after the pandemic at the beginning of this month. And food insecurity rates knocked me back when Mr. Lewis sent me some stats. African American families, 42%. LGBTQ families and Latino families, over 50% of people struggling with food insecurity in this area. Then I went to a Housing Authority meeting and experienced a lot of very similar conversations, people there.

Some glimmers of hope and, you know, hopes for things that maybe we can do there at the Housing Authority. But obviously a lot of desires for improvement. I'll just leave it very general there.

Senior Center, the opportunity as the Select Board Member of the Month to go there and hear concerns. And while it's kind of the place is busting and the cardio class before the meeting was overflowing and the yoga class was as well. I think Sean mentioned the composting program there.

Just so many great things happening. But, you know, a lot of demand. So I just want to recognize that.

A lot of questions from people there about, you know, not surprisingly, senior housing and other services for seniors that are having trouble getting rent, food, etc. And, you know, how can we help with transportation, etc. So it was very thematic.

Some of these things that I was engaged in over the last couple of weeks in terms of really reminding me as if I needed it more that there are a lot of people here that are struggling to make ends meet in one way or another. So thank you.

[Speaker 9] (4:40:24 - 4:40:26)
Thanks, Doug. I have a couple of bullet points.

[Speaker 7] (4:40:27 - 4:40:27)
Go ahead.

[Speaker 9] (4:40:27 - 4:40:42)
Can we please start meetings at 630 so I don't look like I don't care enough to be on time? I do very much care enough to be on time, but traffic sometimes has other alternatives. I come from Waltham on Wednesday afternoons.

I left the office today at 4 o'clock to be here on time.

[Speaker 22] (4:40:42 - 4:40:42)
Cool.

[Speaker 9] (4:40:44 - 4:40:46)
So if we could please entertain that.

[Speaker 22] (4:40:46 - 4:40:47)
Yep.

[Speaker 9] (4:40:47 - 4:42:11)
Open Space and Rec had an interesting conversation about the Hadley Playground, and they were requesting that the Hadley Hotel RFP covers talking about keeping that playground or moving that equipment to another space. I just want to give that a little bit of life. I know Marzi was there and has probably communicated this to the correct people, but I just would be remiss if I didn't mention it.

The Lynn Ferry is now open. I know multiple partners spoke about it when they came to discuss with us. There are not many people here hearing me say this, but if they watch it on replay, maybe that will entice them to go for a ride on the ferry.

And the last thing. I don't know how we do this, but if we could ask that the groups that provide candy for the parades try to use nut-free or allergy-friendly candy. I know that can be very difficult, and they're doing it out of their own pockets.

And it's not to say I don't appreciate that, but I do know of one incident that occurred yesterday because of a non-nut-friendly candy problem and some little ones. So if it's something we could just ask, obviously I don't know how enforceable it is, but maybe Mrs. Cameron and others who run these types of parades, we can put out a little flyer to ask them to do that. That would be great.

[Speaker 8] (4:42:12 - 4:42:36)
So, David, I'm not going to go over my committees like I normally do, and I'm not going to say anything else. But I just want to tell people that on the 4th of July, we're going to be bringing back the 4th of July races over at Phillips Park. The entry fee is a donation to the Anchor Food Bank, and information will be sent over to the town, for the town website.

I'll go over everything with Sean.

[Speaker 3] (4:42:37 - 4:42:45)
We are looking for a three-legged race from members of the select board. Do you want to join with me?

[Speaker 8] (4:42:46 - 4:43:00)
I will be the starter with the pistol. Starter pistol. Yeah, so they'll start at, I think, 1030.

And to get in the door, we need donations. We'll put all that on the social media.

[Speaker 9] (4:43:00 - 4:43:00)
Awesome.

[Speaker 4] (4:43:01 - 4:43:04)
Thank you. All right. With that, motion to adjourn?

[Speaker 9] (4:43:06 - 4:43:08)
Peter, are you good? Yeah, I'm good. So moved.

[Speaker 4] (4:43:09 - 4:43:12)
Do I have a second? Second. Aye.

[Speaker 9] (4:43:13 - 4:43:13)
Aye. Aye.

[Speaker 16] (4:43:14 - 4:43:58)
Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Thanks, Joe.

Thank you.