[Speaker 19] (0:28 - 0:58)
.

[Speaker 1] (1:51 - 2:05)
Okay, welcome to the April 2nd select board meeting and before we begin I'd just like to thank Nate Bysham and Joe Dulette for bringing the meeting to the masses tonight. So, if you could join me in the Pledge of Allegiance.

[Speaker 3] (2:09 - 2:20)
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[Speaker 1] (2:24 - 2:30)
Okay, we'll begin our meeting with the reading of the Autism Awareness Proclamation, David.

[Speaker 4] (2:31 - 4:06)
Sure. 2025 Autism Awareness Month Proclamation. Whereas, autism spectrum disorder is a neurological and developmental disorder that affects how people interact with others, communicate, learn, and behave.

And, whereas, in the United States it is estimated that 2.7% of children have autism along with 2.2% of adults and experiences with the disorder vary widely from person to person. And, whereas, individuals with autism can face very difficult barriers to employment opportunities and often have their intelligence and abilities misunderstood or overlooked. And, whereas, it is crucial to champion awareness of the impacts of autism and the acceptance of individuals with autism as they navigate life with increased challenges in many aspects of development and socialization.

And, whereas, the town is committed to fostering an environment where individuals with autism can live, learn, play, and work in Swampskate while also being fully understood and accepted. Now, therefore, in honor of Autism Awareness Month, the town of Swampskate hereby establishes April 2025 as Autism Awareness Month in the town of Swampskate, Massachusetts, and encourages all faith-based and nonprofit organizations, residents, businesses, civic and public institutions to acknowledge, honor, and celebrate our autistic citizens. In witness whereof, we have here on to set our hands and cause to be affixed the great seal of the town of Swampskate, Massachusetts, the second day of April 2025.

[Speaker 1] (4:09 - 4:27)
Thank you, David. Okay, so moving on, we'll move to a public comment. If anyone has a public comment, please raise your hand.

I'll recognize you, and then you can take the mic. Please just give your name and your address, and you have three minutes. So, Nancy Schultz.

[Speaker 12] (4:32 - 7:26)
Nancy Schultz, 23 Hampton Street. Town meeting member, Precinct 3. Chair, Swampskate Historical Commission.

Member, Board of Governors, Swampskate Historical Society, and volunteer with Save the Glover Preservation Effort. Thank you to Mary Ellen Fletcher for suggesting that I speak during tonight's public comment. I want to thank the Swampskate Select Board for your strong support of the Glover Preservation Effort.

We are grateful for the funding we have received and for the Board's commitment to historic preservation. I've heard the Board talk in the past about the importance of inspiring young people in our communities, and tonight I'd like to show that your support for saving the Glover has helped provide such inspiration. Yesterday, I picked up a packet at the post office that had been delivered from Marblehead.

Enclosed was the following letter about a very special student at the Glover School, which I have excerpted here to stay within my time limits. Dear Save the Glover, I'm the parent of a local Marblehead second grader who, for his eighth birthday, asked that instead of reading a story to his class, I help him with a very important presentation. He wanted to let all his classmates know about his passion for saving the Glover.

He loves all things antique and historical, including steam trains, antique cars, and the incredible history in our very own backyard. When I told him what was happening with the Glover House, he felt compelled to get the word out and has started with his second grade classroom where, with the help of his teacher, he is now going from classroom to classroom at the Glover School to share his presentation. Also included was a picture of this very adorable second grader with his Save the Glover poster and more than 35 children's drawings of a restored Glover House, which I'm happy to share with you at another time.

He also included a donation of $30 of his own money to the cause. Tonight, I just wanted to say your work matters, our work together matters, and preservation matters. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Nancy Schultz.

[Speaker 11] (7:46 - 11:52)
Thank you. Karen Marshall, town meeting member, Precinct 2, member of the school committee. The school committee has put together a letter for the select board and finance committee, and I was just going to read it to you guys tonight.

Basically, just talking about next steps as we work through these budget issues. So, I'll start the way I start in the letter, which is thanking you for working to find ways to address the gap between the school budget requirements and the recommended town allocation. We understand that approximately $440,000 have been identified as reductions in the town budget that could be used to close this gap.

We really appreciate that. The meetings, discussions, and the deep look into the budget have been productive in many ways, such as helping to build back a semblance of trust for the school committee, a sense that the school's budgetary needs and pressure points are understood, and a recognition that the school budget is as lean as possible from a decade of constant pressure, cut sufficiencies, and advantageous bargaining contracts.

We feel that the budget gap, either whole or in part, can be funded in ways that would not have negative impacts to any town departments. One possible route is to increase the estimate for local receipts for 2026. Local receipts for 2026 are $2.4 million less than the FY24 actual local receipts, and that's a staggering estimated decrease. And while some of the reasons are known, it doesn't account fully for the size of that number. The town could increase the estimate by, for example, $400,000 and still remain in a careful, conservative stance. Even with this increase, the likely worst-case scenario to the town would be certification of free cash might be less than in the past few years, but likely would still fall within the town guidance of 3% to 5%.

For many years, free cash certification has exceeded the top end of the financial policy of 5%, and we feel that that is a luxury that we just can't afford in the current budget. The second idea consists of reducing the budgeted amount in the health insurance line. This item would then be treated similar to the school special education costs.

If you remember, even prior to the creation of the Special Education Reserve Fund, the Finance Committee requested that the special education budget be reduced with the caveat that if additional funds were needed, free cash would be used to bridge the gap. And the reason stated back then was because of the volatility and the variability of special education costs. And it seems that health care is very similar in this respect and should be treated the same way.

A reduction of $200,000 to $300,000 in this line could be used to fund a significant portion of the school budget gap. And then if the health care costs did rise to the higher level than was budgeted, then free cash could cover it. It seems that leaving a 17% increase in that line item that may not occur does not seem fair or wise.

These ideas would be sufficient to meet the needs of the school budget for FY26. Further, we still need confirmation that the town plans to fulfill its promise to fund $200,000 in the utility account with free cash and ensure that there's sufficient money in the Special Education Reserve Fund to support the $400,000 in tuition as requested. Keep in mind, there have been some savings on the town side from the additional MSBA monies, the national grid rebates, the IRA monies, increased local aid from Commonwealth of Massachusetts for schools, and a decrease in the Essex North Shore Tech assessment.

So, with all of this together, we really feel like we can solve this. The school committee, as well as the whole school department, look forward to resolving this as soon as possible. And if we do, we all look forward to a united town meeting this year.

Thank you. Thank you, Karen. Amy?

[Speaker 14] (12:02 - 14:02)
Amy O'Connor, Precinct 6 Town Meeting Member, also a school committee member, and I appreciate the new proclamation about people with autism. Obviously, that's something that impacts the schools pretty dramatically. Tonight, I want to read something and actually clear up a couple of myths that are floating around town.

The first is that Superintendent Kalishman will not be earning the same salary as Superintendent Angelakis. He will be earning a competitive salary based on salaries in comparable and neighboring communities. The details will be public record when a contract is signed.

Second, Superintendent Angelakis has no sweetheart deal, or in fact, any deal. She is retiring and will not be paid by this district next year, and those who say otherwise are misinformed. Three, the district has been controlling cost growth with diligence, and our two largest expenses are for our educators and for special education.

Special ed funding is required by law, and paying educators is simply expensive. Everywhere in Massachusetts, not funding this budget fully specifically means cutting educators. We encourage everyone to read the paper and watch the news.

Education budgets across the commonwealth are growing by 8%, 9%, 10%, whereas ours is closer to 5%. We have been saying this for years, that holding the 2.2% growth in tax rate is impossible without gutting services, and it's time that Swampscot recognizes the good position that we're in with our budget. While growth is higher than what we'd like it to be, it's nowhere near as high as what it could and should be, and we need to stop the myth that the schools are cannibalizing the budget.

In 10 years, our tax rate in Swampscot has grown by 12%, while Essex County has an average of 38%. And while 12% feels better on our annual tax bill, it isn't enough to support the services that Swampscot residents expect.

[Speaker 1] (14:04 - 14:21)
Thank you, Amy. Is there anyone else? Is there anyone online?

Okay. With that, we will move to new and old business. Item number one, discussion and possible vote to appoint Richard.

[Speaker 4] (14:21 - 14:32)
Madam Chair, could we potentially take review and discussion of the fiscal year 26 proposed budget out of order and bring that to the top? I would like to make a motion.

[Speaker 1] (14:33 - 14:43)
I second that. Sure. We don't need a vote to do that.

Okay. We're going to just briefly bring 10 up to the top.

[Speaker 6] (14:47 - 14:49)
Did you say why Geno's not here?

[Speaker 1] (14:50 - 14:51)
I didn't say.

[Speaker 6] (14:52 - 14:52)
What's that?

[Speaker 1] (14:52 - 15:17)
I didn't say, but he's on vacation. David, did you want to start? Amy, did you want to start?

Is there a brief update on what's... Have you had... You were meeting with Pam and Cheryl and Geno and you.

Do you have an update on where that is?

[Speaker 2] (15:17 - 16:52)
We had another meeting the Friday, the 21st. So the town administrator's recommendation, he stands firm with the 144 that he discussed at last meeting. The 440,000 number was from rough numbers that were assembled during the meeting.

But when we looked at that list afterwards, there were a number of duplicated items on there. So the overall list was more like 300,000. But after further review, the town administrator said that there were some that he couldn't support moving forward with.

So that was the 144 number that Geno presented last week. As for the finance committee, as of Monday night, they have reviewed their first run through of every single line of the expense budgets for general fund and enterprise. They had a number of questions and are asking a couple department heads to attend.

But as of this time, they haven't made any recommendations for changes. And in your meeting with the schools, did they find any savings? The only thing Superintendent Angelakis came forward with was, she said they had about 20,000 in their legal expenses, which was a contingency in case the interfaith bargaining didn't move forward.

And they feel confident that's working this year. So she said they could reduce the 20,000 in that legal line. But other than that, she stood firm that every other line in their budget was what it had to be.

[Speaker 6] (16:52 - 16:55)
So just to make sure I'm following. So we had a gap of 600.

[Speaker 1] (16:57 - 16:57)
660.

[Speaker 6] (16:57 - 17:12)
OK. To be precise. 660.

And so now you're saying the combination, we've closed 160. 144, 20, 166. I just want to be careful.

Right. OK. So we've got 500 still to go, at least.

OK.

[Speaker 1] (17:13 - 17:24)
On the 144, did he send out, do we have an email on, because I never saw an email on it. We don't have a printout. Was he solid on that 143?

I'd just like to see what that number was again.

[Speaker 2] (17:25 - 17:31)
Yeah. He had 144. I don't know.

I don't see the email he sent, so I don't know if that went forward or not.

[Speaker 3] (17:31 - 20:50)
So let me, I just want to weigh in on this first of all. So when we first had the 660, and I looked at the line item budget, I went through line by line, and I came up with well over 600,000 in potential, potential savings. Right.

Not hard and fast, not definitely doable, just thinking outside the box, this is maybe what areas we can look at. So I sent that to Amy, Gino, Cheryl, Stella, Pam, I think even maybe Glenn, and they had the first meeting, and I think they, I want to say they came to, they found like 15, 20,000. I was happy to sit through and go line by line public session.

I offered to do that at that meeting, but I think we were going on a little long, and I was cut off. So they had their first meeting. They found about 15, 20,000, and then I asked for an update on where we stood, and I felt like we were kind of at an impasse.

So I offered to come to the next meeting, which was the 21st, maybe. So I sat in on that meeting, and we went, again, line by line through everything I had proposed, and when I asked for the total, the running total of what we had identified, we were well over $400,000. So I think there were some questions, there were some areas that needed, you know, Gino needed to decide, talk about, you know, speak to his department heads.

So we left that meeting feeling pretty decent because, you know, we were thinking outside of the box. Everybody was really great, really open, really trying to work it out. Since then, we've met with, obviously, finance committee and school committee had a joint meeting.

When we last spoke, when I last spoke to Gino, I think he had identified, somehow the number went from the 440 we found to this 140-something, and then he said there was another 150, I thought, potential that he thought would bring him to about 300,000 in cuts. So somewhere we lost that 140-ish from 300 to 440, and that's certainly, you know, in his purview. I don't know specifically what that speaks to, what we identified that no longer is on the table.

To me, everything's on the table, right? And I've said that before, that I really think it's up to us to do our due diligence on this side, and I really, I don't think the spirit of that meeting was intended for the school department to look for further cuts. That's not how I took it.

My suggestions weren't based on the school committee budget. They were based on the town budget and where we could cut on the town side. I'm not speaking for the school committee side.

So that's not how I went into that meeting. I wasn't looking for school department cuts. I understood what has been said by the superintendent, by the school committee, and that is that you guys have already done your due diligence and done as much as you could, and I leave it to the experts in the fields to do that, and so that was my approach on this side, just to kind of explain that.

So I don't, without Gino here, I can't really, I don't know. I don't know where that, where that dip and where that change went, you know. Maybe you could, you probably don't even know either.

I mean, I don't, I didn't see like a, you know, running total of his 140 or 150, so I don't know.

[Speaker 2] (20:50 - 21:17)
Yeah, so when we had that list of 140 that Cheryl was putting together during the meeting, I went back to the actual budget, because as you know, we were just, you know, spitballing around numbers. I went back to the actual budget to tick and tie each of those items out and produce that list for Gino, which was the list he had with him at last meeting. I want to say there was like 10 overall, like, item topics that were inclusive of multiple lines.

[Speaker 3] (21:20 - 21:23)
But am I right in that thinking that he thought there was another 150 somewhere?

[Speaker 2] (21:23 - 21:26)
I think the list totaled like 320. Okay.

[Speaker 3] (21:26 - 21:27)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (21:27 - 21:31)
So it was the 144 that he was going forward with, and then the other one didn't go.

[Speaker 3] (21:31 - 21:44)
And then an additional potential 150 that would bring him somewhere in the neighborhood of 300. So now we're going from 440 to 300-ish. Yep.

So it's getting smaller, but it's not going to be, you know, perfect science, but that was...

[Speaker 1] (21:44 - 21:46)
Wait, so you're saying you saw 440? Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (21:47 - 21:53)
You saw 440 at that meeting? And last week Gino told us 140-ish. Yeah.

So the 140...

[Speaker 2] (21:53 - 22:18)
Yeah, he said something... The 140 included a couple duplicates. Right.

So... Duplicates that we had already taken out? No, just within the meeting, because we were...

We were looking at different areas. ...balancing topic to topic, so there were a couple items on the list that were duplications of each other. So when that actual list was costed out, it was about 320.

And then when Gino reviewed it, that was where he said he only felt comfortable recommending the 144.

[Speaker 6] (22:19 - 22:24)
And does that include any personnel? Yes. Staffing reductions?

Further staffing reductions? Yeah.

[Speaker 20] (22:26 - 22:26)
Yep.

[Speaker 4] (22:26 - 24:25)
I will say that this is... It's been tough to follow, you know, because I know that we've had limited conversations publicly. Obviously, there's been meetings with town staff.

It's just been difficult for me to follow. But, you know, as leaders, you know, and as the chief policymakers in town, I think tonight we should, you know, we should provide direction to town staff as to what we, you know, what we would like to see. Obviously, I want to see what we can cut, but...

And make sure that we have as little impact to the taxpayer as possible. But I do think it's important, you know, on the school side to know that their budget is... How it's going to be funded.

And I want to provide my support tonight to fully fund the Swampscott Public School budget. So I think that if we do that, we can continue doing our work on our side to ensure that we have as tight of a budget as possible. But also, you know, hey, we may, you know, we may need to fund whatever that difference is, whatever that delta is in some way, shape, or form.

And I'm prepared to make that commitment and make a motion so that way we are meeting. And just to me, from where I sit, I just want to make sure that we're providing that guidance to town staff and we're letting, you know, the finance committee know what the recommendation is of the select board. And I'm just one vote of this board.

But, you know, I do think that that's important as we move forward, you know, as we head towards town meeting in May.

[Speaker 1] (24:26 - 26:08)
Well, I would think it would be critically important that we send the message... I mean, I think it always has to be a clear message that our budgets have got to be as tight and as reasonable as possible. And that should be, you know, the clear bottom line of what we're always doing.

The fact that it took Daniel Leonard to go in there and to look line by line and come up with additional money was pretty disappointing to me. To me, that was really the job of town staff. So the fact that she was able to find the additionals that could be skimmed out immediately, you know, I really appreciate that.

But as far as for me, I do think it's important to fund the schools where it can be funded. But I think that looking at everything line by line is critical. And I hear, Danielle, you saying you rely on the professionals.

So do I. But what happens when the police department professional comes in and states everything that he needs, the fire department professional says everything he needs, the DPW professional. I mean, at some point, we've really got to look at every single thing line item by line item.

And my understanding from the last meeting we're at, or the meeting before, was this was going to be a work in progress because it's really tight. We've got to do the right thing. We've got to double check to see how much pressure the schools have been under over the last few years and what additional supports that they need in there.

So I think it's, you know, I think it's too early to make a statement. But that's just my opinion.

[Speaker 3] (26:09 - 28:02)
And to your point, I really did leave it to the professionals. So when I sat with the interim town administrator and our head of finance, as well as Cheryl Stella, who's been on both sides of the fence, and Pam Angelakis, that to me was leaving it to the professionals. And Gino Cresta was very adamant about areas that he felt, you know, and looking at all of his departments where he could potentially, including even DPW, where he could be, you know, a little bit more flexible and think outside of the box.

So I think we did that. I really, I think Amy did a really great job just being open-minded to the approach. And Cheryl was very helpful as well.

So I think those two ladies in a room really were my best hope to have this hammered out. And they really kind of showed their stuff and were able to do that. But again, you know, we certainly do need to make sure we're as lean as we could get.

And unfortunately, prior to me taking that step, I don't feel like we were really doing much of anything on this side to kind of figure out how we were going to bridge the divide. So to David's point, I think it is time that we, that the rubber meets the road and the select board ponies up and says, we need to do this for the schools. And we need to, however we have to do it, we need to do it.

I think Finance Committee did a really great job the other night of weighing in with what their responsibility is. And it's really not on them to find, come up with this money or really, you know, dig into the budget. That's really kind of on us.

So to David's point, I think that it's time that we did give direction because it is like we're operating in silos and I'm trying what I can. And, you know, I don't know who else is trying. I mean, luckily, Amy is here to, you know, is here to help out.

Gino is doing what he can. And, you know, it would be helpful if we could be united in the support for the schools.

[Speaker 6] (28:03 - 28:34)
Yeah, I definitely share in that direction. And I think it would be helpful. I don't know if I missed it.

Did we get the detail about the 144? About what that's going to happen. It sounds like that would be a lot to share.

It's been a little bit of a blizzard of various things flying around. So but we do know that's going to be some staffing reduction on top of the other staffing reductions. Right.

The additional beyond the 144, maybe another 150 more staffing reductions.

[Speaker 2] (28:34 - 28:41)
It was the two staffing reductions that I mentioned at the meeting. I don't want to.

[Speaker 6] (28:41 - 28:43)
Okay. Right. Yes.

Okay.

[Speaker 3] (28:43 - 28:45)
Maybe incentivizing of some sort.

[Speaker 6] (28:46 - 29:05)
Okay. Just be nice. So then the ideas that were raised, you know, in public comment here that we all have in front of us, just to kind of get that out there.

Is there a logical explanation for why the local receipts went down? I think we might have talked about this.

[Speaker 2] (29:05 - 29:24)
Yeah. So I explained it at the presentation. So especially compared to FY24, we had over $2 million in investment income that year from having the money from the new school and having favorable interest rates.

So from that line to this projection alone is down almost $1.8 million.

[Speaker 6] (29:25 - 29:31)
So that's kind of like just straightforward in terms of just interest rates. There's no other projecting in a way.

[Speaker 2] (29:31 - 29:32)
We spent the money for the new school.

[Speaker 6] (29:32 - 29:39)
No, I know that. But in terms of the money that's left and the interest rates and all that, there's not a lot of variability in what could happen.

[Speaker 2] (29:39 - 29:54)
No. And we're back. We're still higher than what we were pre-school borrowing.

We used to budget about $200,000 estimate for investment income. And there's a couple of years where we had, you know, zero or $20,000.

[Speaker 6] (29:55 - 29:57)
That's 100% of the issue here.

[Speaker 1] (29:57 - 30:31)
What is the investment income projected for this year? $400,000. So we're still using $400,000 in our budget.

That is a one-time fee, which to me, that's dangerous. Although that was a little bit of the long-term average of what we— $425,000 is our long-term cash flow balance at the current interest rates. Okay, so that's our balance.

So you're not saying there's an additional $400,000 and something on top of that? No, $425,000 is what— Okay, I'm good with that then.

[Speaker 6] (30:31 - 30:34)
It's more about the long-term average of what we usually— I'm fine with that.

[Speaker 1] (30:34 - 30:38)
I just thought it was $400,000 above— Right, making no mistake of going one time.

[Speaker 3] (30:41 - 30:42)
Amy, do you have a copy of this as well? I do.

[Speaker 20] (30:43 - 30:46)
Okay. Do you? She doesn't.

I have it.

[Speaker 3] (30:46 - 30:59)
Have you had a chance—could you take a quick— Yeah, can you do this, Amy? Is there anything in there, Amy, that you could speak to in terms of potential savings that the school committee— I was just going to step through them.

[Speaker 6] (31:00 - 31:17)
Like this thing about health insurance. So I sent our full— It sounds like a fairly creative idea in a way. We tend to always kind of end up with some extra money in health insurance, because we reasonably project, but it usually— does it always kind of end up being lower, or how does that work?

[Speaker 2] (31:17 - 31:20)
No, it doesn't always end up lower.

[Speaker 6] (31:21 - 31:23)
In all the years I've been here, it's been lower.

[Speaker 2] (31:24 - 32:38)
Yep. Prior to me starting, there was a very hefty contingency buffer in this budget. I had sent our full projection with all the background tabs to Cheryl at the school to see if there was anything that she could identify in there.

This is based off of every person who is currently enrolled on our plans, and then it also includes the contingencies for any vacancies. So, you know, assuming that our new town administrator may want to have health insurance and that we would, in fact, need to offer it to them when they start, or things like that. So we have that identified, and our contingency is exactly that.

And I put a note on there when I sent it to Cheryl, too, listing out, like, the contingency is made up of these positions, so there isn't any buffer there. So it would be a gamble if you reduce that line, especially by $200,000 or $300,000, because that's essentially reducing it by 10 to 15 people when you go by— If you reduced it $100,000.

[Speaker 3] (32:38 - 32:38)
Yeah.

[Speaker 2] (32:39 - 32:54)
So for our contingency, we use the second highest— second most popular family plan, employer portion only. So it's about $23,000 for the Mass General Brigham family plan as a contingency.

[Speaker 6] (32:55 - 33:01)
And the thing with this, though, is we basically know much more specifically by May 1st.

[Speaker 2] (33:01 - 33:33)
So open enrollment is already right now. So if you're an employee, please check your emails from Carrie to make sure that you're participating in open enrollment. When does it close?

May 1st. So before we get to town meeting, we know where anyone who has switched plans has gone to, if anyone dropped off the plans. So we'll have a much clearer picture before we get to town meeting.

And in my conversations with HR, they have had a number of staff reach out looking to change their plans. Because they're going up, right?

[Speaker 3] (33:33 - 33:34)
So that happens every year.

[Speaker 6] (33:35 - 33:47)
And all of this discussion is predicated on us using $1.5 or $2 million of some other source, whether it's free cash or tax or whatever, right?

[Speaker 2] (33:47 - 34:29)
$1.5 of excess right now. $1.5 million of— Excess levy. So the discussion and the standpoint that Gina and I had discussed was, at this stage, we would rather project use of tax levy.

So that way when we get to tax rate setting time in the fall, we have our full buckets of free cash and stabilization available to then use when we have an idea of what the tax impact is going to be, versus partially depleting those buckets now and then not being able to act as wholly. Because we could have more favorable local receipts, and that gets recognized at tax rate setting time.

[Speaker 6] (34:31 - 34:35)
Just preserving flexibility. Not making a commitment either way, but— No.

[Speaker 1] (34:36 - 34:43)
Well, and also at that time, we really need to look and see the impact over the next four years.

[Speaker 2] (34:43 - 35:30)
Yeah. And if we overestimate our local receipts, because to be candid, you can say your local receipts are going to be whatever you want them to be. But DOR— For town meeting.

When we get to tax rate setting time with DOR, they have strict guidelines of what we can put in Gateway and what they'll accept, and they will drop those estimates right down to where they need to be, and you'll still have to tax the additional. So I feel like it would be very dishonest to go to town meeting saying, we have an extra million dollars of local receipts than we reasonably think we're actually going to have, and I would much rather, at a fall town meeting, be like, hey, we superseded these estimates, or we were spot on, and now you're not caught off guard.

[Speaker 6] (35:32 - 35:46)
So in order to close the gap, we have $160 from town schools, maybe another $150 from town, maybe another $100, $200 out of health insurance, depending on how we want to play that.

[Speaker 3] (35:47 - 35:48)
I guess you're pretty darn close.

[Speaker 6] (35:49 - 36:07)
And then, it's not a magic number, about $1.5 million in terms of tax levy. It could be $1.6. There's various ways, depending on how these things move, you could make it. And then there's been stuff floating around about fees.

We're going to talk about fees tonight.

[Speaker 1] (36:07 - 36:08)
We're going to talk about fees.

[Speaker 6] (36:14 - 36:15)
It certainly seems like we have a path.

[Speaker 4] (36:16 - 36:31)
I think there's a path. So I would like to make a motion that we, that this board fully recommends fully funding the school budget for fiscal year 26.

[Speaker 3] (36:33 - 36:38)
I would second. Sorry. I'm quick today, Doug.

[Speaker 6] (36:41 - 37:07)
I don't take it lightly, in terms of doing this. But it does feel like there's a possibility of really doing this in a responsible way. Just to not sugarcoat it, we don't really talk about that $1.5. We're talking about people's taxes going up to make this happen. That's not lost on anybody.

[Speaker 2] (37:07 - 37:10)
I do want to point out that Katie Phelan has her hand up.

[Speaker 1] (37:11 - 37:13)
Katie Phelan has her hand up.

[Speaker 7] (37:14 - 38:42)
I just wanted to comment on the motion, if that's okay. So I have yet to comment because I was disposed, but I want to put my support in fully funding the school budget. Given the reduction in size of the gap in the amount of time we've been working to close that gap, I do believe that we will be able to continue to make that gap smaller and smaller.

And to Doug's point, as we get closer and closer to what that gap, how little that gap can be, we are taking that $1.5 million that we're talking about of levy capacity. That's a number that Gino and Amy came to an educated decision about, but it's not a definitive. We don't have to live by that.

If it's $1.6 or if it's $1.45, it's based on whatever we can pick, whatever crumbs we can put together to make sure we get the school to that budget. I think there needs to be a unified commitment from the board to be asking the players and directing the policy to move in that direction. I think it's happening, but I think if we have a unified voice to say we would like to put our best foot forward and make this happen as strongly as possible, then it's more likely to happen than not.

[Speaker 1] (38:51 - 38:57)
So, there's a motion on the floor. Doug, did you have anything else to say?

[Speaker 6] (38:57 - 38:57)
Nope.

[Speaker 1] (39:02 - 40:14)
So, Danielle? We have a motion on the floor, so Danielle's an aye. I'm an aye.

Doug? Aye. David?

Aye. Katie? Aye.

And I'm going to abstain only because I have not seen what I appear to be a full line item budget from the schools to see exactly what can possibly, if anything, come out. And I do think there's a process, but I am in full agreement that the schools do need additional support. So, until I see everything, knowing that I am very serious about what the tax implications are for this entire community, I'd just like to see everything wrung out and that's where I stand.

So, this motion is approved. So, next, going to discussion and possible vote to appoint Richard Baldacci as the building and commissioner. Margie, are you here to talk on that or how are we leaving that?

Personnel.

[Speaker 3] (40:16 - 40:17)
I don't think she's online.

[Speaker 1] (40:22 - 40:23)
Marianne, did you want to cover that?

[Speaker 10] (40:23 - 41:58)
Sure. I think Diane shared with you his cover letter and resume. It would be his third time around since Longscott.

I did go back and look at how he did when he was here for beating his budgets and he always stayed by close to $250,000, $300,000. But I don't understand because the budgets have bounced around. One year we did a million more than what we were budgeted to.

So, and then we set the budget this year at a million and we're only at $300,000. So, I do know he'll go after and hold businesses and anyone doing permitting accountable and I believe he will make money for the town doing that. He just spent his last three years working as the chief of inspections for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

I believe it was the governor who got him the job or recommended him. And he has worked for both Marblehead and Swampscott over the years in this role and also as a facilities manager at times too. So, he is very excited about the possibility of working for us again.

Lives in town. Is excited about potentially changing the hours around and having the building department open at 7 a.m. So that contractors can get in when they're up so early. It just seems like he'd step in and we wouldn't miss a beat.

And he would go back and I think people are taking advantage of us right now because we don't have a building commissioner and he'll go back. He's already pointed things out that he sees happening in town.

[Speaker 1] (41:59 - 42:01)
Does anybody have any questions?

[Speaker 6] (42:01 - 43:08)
Yeah. I don't know Mr. Baldacci. Makes it even harder now that I understand he lives in town.

So, and I obviously is completely qualified for this position. My concern is not anything to do with him at all. It's much more so that we have this incredibly tight budget.

And frankly, I'm not sure. We just had a building commissioner that was able to also do some work for another town. And it feels as though this is a perfect opportunity for us to think about.

Can we, you know, engage Mr. Baldacci part-time? Can we partner with Marblehead? And I apologize, you're way down the path and we're just seeing this now in this forum.

So, this does feel like a place where we really should think hard about whether or not we need a full-time building commissioner.

[Speaker 1] (43:08 - 44:10)
So, this was brought up at the last meeting. And I did, I actually did think that we did have our last building commissioner spent over a year working part-time sharing with Marblehead. And that's why I said, do we really need a full-time building commissioner?

And I will tell you, I received several phone calls from contractors in town letting me know that we need a full-time building commissioner. And we're losing out by not having it. It is an absolute full-time position.

So, that's the input that I've had. According to Gino, it's a full-time position. It's not a part-time position.

I wanted it to be a part-time position. Because we spent 12 months, 13 months part-time. And according to everyone else, it's not part-time.

[Speaker 6] (44:12 - 44:51)
I never heard how we lost, what we lost out during that time. So, I understand it would be, if you're a contractor, you probably want to make sure that you can kind of move things along. I totally get that.

Right. You want people to be able to do that in a reasonable amount of time. But it does feel like this is not an insignificant amount of money with the gap that we're talking about with the schools or anything else, right?

So, for that reason, I apologize I didn't share in the conversation last time. But I wouldn't feel comfortable right now moving forward with a full-time position.

[Speaker 3] (44:51 - 44:58)
Marion, can I ask you, did you happen to do a survey of what towns employ full-time building commissioners?

[Speaker 10] (44:58 - 45:03)
It is on my market survey that gets shared with you guys.

[Speaker 3] (45:04 - 45:10)
Any of our peer communities? Are there any that are sharing part-time, .75, anything?

[Speaker 10] (45:10 - 45:18)
The smaller towns that are like 8,000, 7,000 share, obviously. But without it in front of me, I don't want them to speak.

[Speaker 3] (45:18 - 45:32)
I'd be interested to see what the peer communities are doing. To your point, Doug, I think it's one of those. I automatically thought of it as one that we could try to share or we could at least do a .5. We already did.

[Speaker 6] (45:33 - 45:33)
Right.

[Speaker 4] (45:34 - 45:52)
We did, and our former building commissioner is in Marblehead. And I'm sure Marblehead has a lot of the same challenges that we have here. I would think putting together an inter-municipal agreement would be something that would be a very difficult lift.

[Speaker 10] (45:52 - 46:18)
I do want to add that Steve did share with me, in his position in Marblehead, he has way more staff members than we have. There are several inspectors, whereas our building inspector, we only have one part-time building inspector that only works Tuesday and Thursday. And so they would be doing inspections in the field for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

And Steve was excited about the amount of, he wouldn't ever have to leave the office.

[Speaker 3] (46:19 - 46:25)
He wouldn't have to do any work because he'd have everyone else doing it, right? Sure, I could see that. Margie is on if you want her.

[Speaker 1] (46:25 - 46:33)
Okay, yes. Margie? Yes, good evening.

[Speaker 17] (46:33 - 47:44)
Sorry about that. If I could just add a little bit to the discussion. In light of all the new proposed development that we have going on, I think it's really imperative to have a full-time commissioner to really assist with the process.

Our building commissioner is also the zoning enforcement officer. So anytime we need to have an opinion in regards to any zoning issues, any permitting residents coming in seeking zoning relief applications, going in front of the ZBA or the planning board, and that's something that's really an integral part of the building department. It's something that we rely on all the time because it's the zoning, it's the commissioner's opinion, which is the final opinion.

Not a final, obviously. Residents can appeal to the ZBA, but he is the person that really provides the opinion for the town. And we would be, in my opinion at least, we would be so fortunate to have somebody who knows the local zoning, who knows the state building code, and it really will be an asset to have Rich back in town and really to, again, to be able to work with him.

[Speaker 3] (47:45 - 48:20)
Thank you for that, Margie. So this is one of those cases where I would say if this is something that the interim TA feels strongly about, that it would kind of be on him to make the case and then show me where else he could reduce in his budget so that we're as lean as we want to be, right? So it's one of those hard conversations.

You really want this, while in a town of 15,000 people with X number of parcels to tax, where are you going to get that from, right? And if you want to make that case, let's see it. Because, I mean, these are the hard decisions we're having to have, right?

[Speaker 6] (48:20 - 48:32)
Right. And if I further understand correctly, the salary isn't necessarily commensurate with what we have in the budget. So this would actually put us back.

So just to be...

[Speaker 2] (48:32 - 48:40)
The interim town administrator has identified an additional proportionate staff reduction that would make this a net zero.

[Speaker 1] (48:40 - 48:48)
The bottom line. He said the bottom line number would be the same. BD?

Is that a building? I think that's Bill Dementor.

[Speaker 2] (48:49 - 48:49)
Oh.

[Speaker 15] (48:54 - 48:55)
Do I get to say something?

[Speaker 2] (48:56 - 48:57)
Bill, you're muted.

[Speaker 15] (48:58 - 50:24)
Great. 50 years of being a lawyer. 40 years of practicing in Swansket as a zoning and land use.

It took us five years after the full-time building inspector became full-time in 1984. It took us five years under the leadership of Jill Sullivan and the planning board to get a half-time assistant building inspector. We need a full-time building inspector desperately as when you ride home tonight, drive by some of the buildings with all of their windows covered with signs, whether they be pizza sign or some other thing, all the flashing lights.

We've gone from good building department enforcement for years to no enforcement. There's no zoning enforcement in Swansket and there hasn't been for the last five years. They just eliminated it from their obligations.

Very difficult when you see a zoning violation, filing a complaint to get anything done. But right now, it's a quality of life. You desperately must have a full-time building inspector and it is a big mistake not to if that's the direction you're going to go.

Thanks for your time.

[Speaker 1] (50:25 - 50:35)
Thank you. May I say something? Katie?

No, one second. Katie, did you have anything to say?

[Speaker 7] (50:40 - 50:43)
No, I don't have anything to say right now, no. Amy?

[Speaker 2] (50:45 - 51:41)
I worked with Rich when he was here last time. I will just say from my department standpoint, he was an incredible asset. He had the benefit of him living in town.

He regularly drives around town more than just his working hours. It was almost like having a 24-7 building commercial because he'd go out to dinner at night and he would happen to see something as he drove by and add it to his little running notebook of what to check on. He would also send us monthly updates via email of all the receipts broken down by what his department was collecting.

And it was the most thorough during budget season when we sat down to discuss his revenue where he could explicitly outlay, hey, we have this development. This is exactly what we're going to get for permitting fees. This is exactly what you can project.

And as you can see, historically, the years that he was here, the estimate was always met and or exceeded in the years that he was here.

[Speaker 3] (51:42 - 51:57)
Marion, have you discussed any willingness for him to consider the position as less than a 1.0, as like a .5 or a .75? Do you have a sense of whether or not he'd be willing to even consider something like that?

[Speaker 10] (51:57 - 51:58)
We did not discuss anything like that.

[Speaker 1] (52:00 - 52:47)
Well, so is the question, I think what we're hearing is, is the question, is this a full-time position or not? And I wanted to, I'm really guilty of saying I did not believe this was a full-time position until, you know, I was hammered with a number of phone calls from contractors, lawyers, someone on the zoning board, and town staff to tell me that, you know, we depend on revenue. We depend on enforcement.

We really depend on this and to, and especially with everything that's being built in town and being, having to be built right, this, we'd be making a mistake on losing Mr. Baldacci when we have an opportunity to get somebody.

[Speaker 6] (52:49 - 52:53)
I think it'd be helpful to hear what Gino, you know, the trade-offs, you know, the package.

[Speaker 1] (52:53 - 52:53)
Exactly.

[Speaker 6] (52:54 - 52:55)
We're just hearing about that.

[Speaker 1] (52:56 - 53:02)
So how about if we punt this to the next meeting? Would that be okay with everybody? Yep.

Okay.

[Speaker 4] (53:02 - 53:02)
Yes, please.

[Speaker 1] (53:03 - 55:34)
Okay. So we'll put this on to the next agenda, okay? All right.

Now we're going to move to discussion and possible vote, even though I'm not encouraging any vote, to change parking on Elm Street, Pitman, Hillcrest, Circle, Upland Road, Maple, Columbia, Burpee, Terrace, Burpee Road, Earl Street, Doherty Circle, to resident parking only. I just want to give the update as to why we're bringing this up. Last Thursday we had a meeting with the residents of this community, the people who live around the new development by Wynn Properties.

What is it called again? And it was pretty significant to see the senior center filled with residents that are going to be significantly impacted by this development. So Katie and I were in attendance and we promised we would put this on the agenda so that we could discuss how to mitigate some of these parking issues.

One thing that was brought up to me as I was coming in here tonight that we have to have checked, Margie sent this to me. It's a question on parking on Pitman Road. In the write-up on the zoning on the 40B, under number 11I, it says a public parking easement reserving six of the 11 parking spaces proposed along Pitman Road shall be made available for public use for non-project town residents.

I really need to, I want to double check to see whether or not the zoning board had the authority to grant public parking on that spot. So we're just going to double check that. But that doesn't deter from our conversation here tonight.

I want to really have a conversation about how to take care of the residents in that area to make sure that they actually have resident parking. And then also how to address recreation parking. So if we could just start the discussion, that would be great.

We do have the police department here tonight to, Captain Cable and Officer Ream to address some of the issues from that meeting. So how about I turn that over to you guys?

[Speaker 5] (55:35 - 59:16)
Very good. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us here.

Just a quick synopsis just to add on what Mary Ellen had said. We were contacted and have been contacted for the past few months from many of the residents in that area. We were trying to mitigate their concerns, their issues, any violations, anything that was presented to us that was under our scope of responsibility.

With that, and the help of Margie at Town Hall, she and I started brainstorming how can we start to remedy this, especially before the keys get turned over and residents start to occupy the building. In doing such, we decided to have a public meeting. I went door to door, dropped leaflets in all of the residents in the neighborhood streets.

It was successful, in my opinion, that they showed up. At the meeting also was Chief Quesada and Captain Cable as well as representatives from the wing group and, as Mary Ellen said, herself and Katie. It was quite interesting the way how the residents were able to carry forth their concerns, their requests.

After we have summarized all of the notes that we have taken through the night, we drafted a proposal, which I believe you all have. With that, some modifications are being asked for this area. As I had requested, Elm Place to be specifically turned into a one-way from the entrance of the Westcott side on Essex Street.

The one-way would proceed through Elm Place down around the corner, bend to the left as you turn back up onto Essex Street. There would also be resident parking there as well. Pitman Road, adverse to what you had just said a minute ago about the 40B with the extra spots there, also to be resident-only parking.

Hillcrest Circle and Upland to be resident parking only. Maple Ave to continue its resident parking only. On Columbia Street, we're looking at making a modification.

As you turn onto Columbia Street from Burrell Street on the residential side, the side that only has houses, from Burrell all the way through Beach Ave would be resident-only. As it is right now, it is timed resident-only. We're looking at eliminating the timed parking and making that just complete resident.

Moving that resident sign up to Beach Ave, we will be taking away two recreation spots that are in between Essex Ave and Beach. A couple of reasons why. One is it would allow an extra resident parking spot in that area.

Two, some residents have made it known that their concern for the line of sight exiting Essex Ave onto Columbia Street is extremely difficult when viewing traffic coming from Burrell. Because of vehicles that do park on that corner, looking at oncoming traffic can be extremely difficult. It would be prudent to remove that spot so that vehicles can exit Essex Ave in a much safer condition.

We all know what traffic is like on Columbia Street during drop-off and pick-up time of daily work hours.

[Speaker 6] (59:18 - 59:25)
Kevin, can I just ask you a question? When you talk about resident throughout, that includes residents of the new West Cop? Would it be eligible for these residents or somehow not?

[Speaker 5] (59:27 - 1:01:39)
In short, no. I'm going to get to an explanation for that. I appreciate the question.

If we were to move up to Railroad Ave, Railroad Ave is also restricted right now as well, would be resident. At the end of Railroad Ave, as it turns left onto Pine Street, there's another traffic concern with the flow of traffic. If you're aware, from Pine Street, turning right onto Railroad Ave, there is a new stop sign that's been put in place.

It's been very effective. We've noticed on our end that when it was initially put in, with some significant enforcement from our side, we were able to educate the public in issue citations, monitor traffic, and over time, the residents and people who travel through that way have become much more obedient to the traffic recommendation. Our concern now that has been brought up to us, to which I also agree with, is the vehicles turning from Railroad Ave left onto Pine Street.

There is parking allowed on the residential side, which would be the right-hand side of traffic, as you turn on. A couple of different things come into play here is any large vehicles. We've recently seen buses being utilized to shuttle back and forth to Lynn.

We have a much more dense population where residents are now exiting Lombard Terrace, exiting the residents on Pine Street in that area. Any large vehicle that's parked in that specific spot causes a line-of-sight issue from concerned vehicles, A, pulling out, and in the event if it's a bus making a turn, we could have a much greater problem as the bus is trying to cut the angle and use the geometry to flow through to Pine Street, therefore making the oncoming traffic from Pine Street onto Railroad Ave difficult to proceed. I think that we should eliminate parking in general at that particular corner.

Yes?

[Speaker 4] (1:01:40 - 1:01:48)
So, Officer Reen, to that effect, are you recommending that we eliminate one spot, two spots? What's the count?

[Speaker 5] (1:01:48 - 1:03:51)
It would be two spots in that particular specific area. It would be at the exit of the parking lot with the MBTA train station. As you are looking south down Pine Street, on the right-hand side, there's about a 12-foot stretch of granite curving that already has restricted parking.

It would be the next section of curving where we would expect to put a no-parking sign there. That would allow large vehicles to turn and enter Pine Street. I actually also think it might slow the progression of traffic down heading onto Pine Street.

You have cars that cut that angle quickly. They may accelerate to try to get through the oncoming traffic the other way, which then creates a momentum effect as the vehicles proceed down Railroad. As we go back to Burpee Road, we would look to be making Burpee Road residential parking only.

So that would be, obviously, Burpee Road is from Essex Street up through Buena Vista, and we would also be looking at making Burpee Terrace resident only. There has been a lot of feedback from the residents in the Burpee Terrace area regarding some of the construction workers that are parking, and using that as their direct point to start their day. Obviously, we know that that will be eliminated once the construction is done.

The construction workers are no longer here. I'll have more to add to that in just a second. As far as additional resident parking only, it would be to continue it on Burrell Street and in Dougherty Circle.

Dougherty Circle, obviously, is part of the housing authority. There are very limited spots in there to begin with. We would like to maintain and keep it that way for the residents who, the residents that are living there, a majority of them are limited to the amount of vehicle space that they have and vehicle usage.

[Speaker 1] (1:03:52 - 1:04:15)
I have a quick question on that. On Dougherty Circle, one of the residents, they do not have a handicap space in front of Dougherty Circle on Burrell Street. Is it the select board that has to put that on the agenda and approve that?

If that's something, I would strongly encourage it as well. We'll take care of that on our next meeting.

[Speaker 5] (1:04:15 - 1:04:16)
Thank you for that point.

[Speaker 1] (1:04:16 - 1:04:28)
That was brought up, and that's still left out. Can you also just double-check within Dougherty Circle? I don't know who has jurisdiction within the parking there, if they have enough handicap parking in there.

[Speaker 5] (1:04:29 - 1:05:39)
I can get a tally of that and see what is there. I can also connect with the housing authority to see what might be necessary. I think it's just a matter of getting eyes on location to make a determination on that, so I can follow up on that.

Okay. Furthermore, regarding the addition of resident parking only, it was also brought to our attention of the fines that are imposed on this. The board recently has increased the fines of resident recreational parking near Phillips Beach on Ocean Ave., Preston Beach on Atlantic Ave., and areas like that. I would make the recommendation that all recreation and all residential parking be moved to $75 to be equivalent with all of the other increased fines. It would just make things, I think, much more manageable and more simplistic.

[Speaker 1] (1:05:40 - 1:05:45)
Do we have that in our recommendation? Is that a recommendation in our fines for later on? It's a separate fine item.

[Speaker 2] (1:05:46 - 1:05:50)
I left it alone to have fees and permits, and they have the fines.

[Speaker 1] (1:05:50 - 1:05:58)
Okay. We'll take that recommendation tonight, but just so that we have a second reading on it, we'll put that on our next agenda, too.

[Speaker 6] (1:05:59 - 1:06:06)
Okay. Thank you. Very good.

Do you feel like, as much as you can tell, that's actually had some impact in terms of where we did it on Ocean?

[Speaker 5] (1:06:07 - 1:06:11)
Yes, it has had a positive impact. It depends on how you want to define positive impact.

[Speaker 6] (1:06:12 - 1:06:14)
Community at large has had a positive impact.

[Speaker 5] (1:06:14 - 1:07:15)
Will it help the school budget? I believe it does help in the event that it, for lack of a better term, has a little bit more bite and has the impact to allow residents to have a better understanding. We try to educate with our enforcement as much as possible.

When we can get face-to-face with a resident or operator or the owner of a vehicle, I can honestly say it is not our intent to specifically fine immediately. If we can come up with a solution where the person is able to move their vehicle immediately, where they're able to go and relocate to a proper spot, to create another opportunity to which a citation does not have to be issued, we would much rather do that. But in the event, when we have no other opportunity or no other choice, we have to fine.

We have to follow through.

[Speaker 6] (1:07:17 - 1:07:21)
$75 is three times more memorable than $20,000. Thank you.

[Speaker 5] (1:07:21 - 1:07:22)
Yes, for sure.

[Speaker 4] (1:07:22 - 1:07:22)
Officer Ring.

[Speaker 6] (1:07:23 - 1:07:23)
Yes.

[Speaker 4] (1:07:24 - 1:07:36)
Since the fines went into place at the increased amount, are you seeing multiple infractions from the same individuals, or is it everybody? You kind of learned your lesson.

[Speaker 5] (1:07:36 - 1:08:35)
Do you track that? Actually, it's really hard to tell because most of these have been passed. These tickets are passed on a daily basis.

Obviously, we see a much greater increase of these citations specifically in this area, the Phillips Beach area, if I may, just because of the time of the year. In the very beginning of the beach season, summer season, it is significantly higher. Just because stickers are expired, new ones haven't come in, or people fail to present their receipt from their purchase of their recreation sticker.

Most often times, once that's done and presented, we don't see a recidivism rate that drops significantly. But in short, we don't have a mechanism to calculate how many times a vehicle has been ticketed or tagged. I could work with Max Casper on that if you needed more data.

[Speaker 4] (1:08:36 - 1:08:42)
I don't need that information. It was more just for conversation and your observation, that's all.

[Speaker 1] (1:08:42 - 1:08:45)
Hold on. Katie, do you have your hand up? Yes, she does.

[Speaker 7] (1:08:45 - 1:09:59)
I just wanted to mention too at the meeting we were at that an unfortunate consequence of the actions we took to raise the beach ticket price was that we made a sense of inequity on the other side of town to say that we didn't value their parking capabilities as much as we did at the beach by the train station. And I think, Mary Ellen, you'll agree that a lot of those residents felt like it was inequitable to have a $75 beach fine and a $25 parking fine when they can't park outside their home. And to be fair, that really struck me and I thought, wow, that was an unfortunate consequence of something that we thought would be a deterrent for people on the beach side and we didn't fully think out the repercussions, I think.

And I think it's the right thing to do to create equity across the town to say the value of these spots just because they're not affecting as many folks around the beach or at the train station or whomever. It needs to be put out there that we value them all the same.

[Speaker 1] (1:10:03 - 1:10:19)
So it's a $75 fine if you're parking in a residential parking space. Is that what it... I'm a little bit confused on what the fines really are.

If I park on Dale Road in a no parking area, what's the fine?

[Speaker 5] (1:10:20 - 1:10:22)
On Dale Road, it would be $25.

[Speaker 1] (1:10:23 - 1:10:32)
And so why is it we just don't have $75 across the board? Is there a reason we just don't blanket, say, $75?

[Speaker 5] (1:10:32 - 1:10:35)
So we don't set the parameter on that? We don't. Correct.

[Speaker 8] (1:10:36 - 1:11:03)
It was a decision made when they added the extra spots around Phillips Beach, the extra public parking, out of understanding the neighborhood concerns. That was increased for that area, not town-wide. And I can say anecdotally, $25 for most commuters, that's what they would pay to park in Boston or to park in another train station.

So there's many people that consider that fine, the cost of them parking and being able to use the Swanscott train station.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:03 - 1:11:32)
Right. So maybe we should consider, when we do go to vote, that we just have a town-wide blanket, $75. Parking in Boston has gone up, so let's raise it to $50.

I just know on Humphrey Street on the 3rd of July, people park everywhere they can. I said to the guy, I said, oh, I think the police are going to come by and ask you to move. And he said, not if they can find me.

He said, if they don't see me, I'm fine. He goes, and it's only $25.

[Speaker 20] (1:11:33 - 1:11:34)
Yeah, there you go.

[Speaker 1] (1:11:34 - 1:11:44)
Okay, so maybe that's something we should consider. And then can you also, what is the difference between, why do we have recreational parking at the train? That just.

[Speaker 5] (1:11:45 - 1:12:24)
So recreation parking at the train is, in the same sense, why we have recreation parking and residential parking at the beaches. So if a person who lives on Dale is trying to commute and use public transit to get to Boston, they would purchase a recreation sticker at Town Hall so that they could then drive from Dale to park their vehicle at the train station and go to Boston. Much as, like, a person who lives on Norfolk Ave, who wants to go to the beach, would buy a recreation sticker so that they could go to Ocean Ave or Atlantic Ave and park there so they could go to the beach.

[Speaker 20] (1:12:25 - 1:12:25)
Okay.

[Speaker 5] (1:12:26 - 1:12:42)
And the residential side is for the resident that's limited to within that specific area so that when they come home from work, they can park in front of their house versus having recreation all over. So we're just trying to make a balance.

[Speaker 1] (1:12:42 - 1:13:24)
So the argument is that we all, and I think this might have been the argument from David last year about the beaches, we all pay for these roads, so, you know, should we really even have resident parking? I'm just trying to find out. I'm just trying to make sure we're looking at both sides here.

You know, my number one concern really is what this neighborhood is going through. That is a huge building with a lot of cars and a lot of people, and the impact is pretty profound. So, you know, I just want to make sure we're vetting everything out because we're going to hear from other people too.

So anything you can comment on that.

[Speaker 8] (1:13:25 - 1:16:19)
Go ahead. I'll just say, so the resident parking statute has been around a long time. I think it started with the train station area and then was expanded to the beaches.

And in time, as it grew and it covered more areas, we've tried to manage it with the restrictions we have now. The law doesn't really identify, you know, like it's got to be within 100 feet of your house or on your street. And most places you'll find that they have, like, zoned parking.

You know, like in Salem there will be a zone around, you know, the Salem Willows. We just have one resident sticker, right? Yeah, so they have like this.

So there will be a zone that says, like, this sticker lets you park within this zone, that's where your house is. We haven't got that in Swamp Spot. So we've been able to manage it in the past while it was relatively a small issue by, as Officer Reen was talking, by being proactive, knocking on doors when we get complaints, saying, hey, that's, even though this is Maple Lab, that's your neighbor that lives in Columbia that's parked here.

But with the addition of the Westcourt, that's going to become really untenable. The Westcourt residents are residents of that area. They'll be entitled to resident stickers.

And all of these restrictions will be relatively mood of meaningless if we go down that path. And it's going to be beyond the ability of the police department to sort of manage it with the neighbors and just say, hey, this is your neighbor around the corner. So that's theoretically why we went to the recreation sticker and resident sticker combination.

But technically right now, you're right. And we handle that by knocking on doors and talking to people. A resident sticker is really good anywhere the way it's written right now.

We haven't necessarily cited resident stickers in those off areas. We've tried to manage it by talking like this and such. But that's something that's going to come to a head here with the Westcourt.

It's true everybody does pay for the roads in town. And that is basically the system that we have right now. And have you all got the sort of detailed breakdown that we've provided?

So the answer to your question earlier about are the Westcourt people eligible, right now they are. Our proposals say that these are all meaningless changes if we don't address that particular issue. And, you know, it's just something that's been around forever.

It's been handled sort of, you know, neighborly in a way that's just not going to be tenable with the Westcourt. So this is definitely going to represent a drastic change. And people are really going to really feel the limitations of the current resident parking statute.

Or we've got to take a different approach.

[Speaker 1] (1:16:19 - 1:16:50)
So if the issue is if I'm a resident on Burpee or I'm a resident on Pittman. I'm a resident on Pittman, not a resident on Burpee. If I'm a resident, and I would think that I should be able to get resident parking for Pittman.

That's where I can get my resident parking. If I'm a resident of the Westcott, I would have my resident parking at the Westcott or the Westcott faces what, Essex? So they're a resident.

[Speaker 8] (1:16:50 - 1:16:55)
The address is going to be an Elm Street address. It's going to be Elm Place. So I think it's going to be an Elm address.

[Speaker 1] (1:16:55 - 1:17:06)
But the people at the Westcott, they have designated parking right on their property. It was a 40B. I think it sits outside a little bit.

[Speaker 8] (1:17:06 - 1:17:22)
They explained that they would. They have 114 units and 131 spaces. So they expect to have, and they tell us that their lease is going to limit each unit to one vehicle.

So they should be able to handle all their parking.

[Speaker 1] (1:17:22 - 1:17:57)
And you have to remember that this was one of the big, big things about having this spot right where it is, is that so many people are going to be taking the train and municipal type of transportation. So there might not even be as many cars as we think there might be. I mean, that's what was sold to us a few years ago.

So, you know, again, I'm just really, my concern is for the neighbors that are dealing with this situation.

[Speaker 8] (1:17:57 - 1:18:51)
And we share that concern, and that's why we definitely recommended that the board consider changing the eligibility if you are part of, our recommendation is residents of large complexes that have assigned off-street parking not be eligible for resident stickers in general. Define a large complex, you know, in Swamp Street, I think anything over six to ten would be considered large. And they have assigned off-street parking.

They should use it. The town was sold that there would be a limit of one vehicle per unit. They will all have their space.

There should be absolutely no need for a residential sticker. But without that change in the law or without giving us some sort of ability to enforce it, because right now it's arbitrary. Are we saying it's within 100 yards of your house?

Are we saying it's right in front of your house? Is it only on your street? That's fine while we're handling one car complaint at a time and knocking on doors and dealing with people.

It won't work here.

[Speaker 1] (1:18:52 - 1:18:54)
When is the Westcott opening up?

[Speaker 8] (1:18:54 - 1:18:56)
Summer, I believe.

[Speaker 5] (1:18:56 - 1:19:11)
The May 30th, I think, is the turnover date. It was expected the beginning of June that they would potentially be turning over. There wasn't a definite answer that was given.

I think they're dealing with some of their stuff on their own. So we don't have an exact date.

[Speaker 4] (1:19:11 - 1:20:15)
Okay. Captain Cable, just a quick question. First off, I want to make sure that we're protecting the residents of these areas.

It will be certainly tight from a parking perspective if this isn't addressed. So thank you for working with Officer Reen and the community to really hear the concerns of those residents and make sure that we're coming up with a plan. So is this something that has to go to town meeting?

Is this something that this board just votes on and it goes into effect the next day? Just process-wise, how does that happen? And then question number two is we're talking about residents of large residential complexes of 10 or more units with assigned off-street parking shall not be eligible to receive Swampscot resident parking stickers.

Does that have any impact to the residents that live on Doherty Circle?

[Speaker 8] (1:20:17 - 1:20:19)
No, that would not affect Doherty Circle.

[Speaker 4] (1:20:19 - 1:20:22)
Okay, so Doherty Circle is not impacted whatsoever.

[Speaker 8] (1:20:23 - 1:20:34)
It shouldn't be. It's public housing. I think it's different than a commercial residential complex.

So that's certainly not our intent, and I think maybe the language could be clarified to include that.

[Speaker 4] (1:20:35 - 1:20:42)
I think I just want to make sure there's no inadvertent impact. We would interpret public housing as different. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:20:42 - 1:20:51)
So do you need a policy or bylaw? I think we would need a bylaw. We'll double-check if we need a policy or bylaw.

If it's a bylaw, it goes town meeting policy, we can set the policy.

[Speaker 6] (1:20:52 - 1:21:19)
Yeah. I get the idea of definitely making sure by doing it this way. But I'm having a little trouble understanding if, it's an if, if Westcott follows through with their requirement to limit it to one vehicle per, why would someone that lives there that has an assigned on-site parking spot want to use the on-street parking?

[Speaker 8] (1:21:20 - 1:21:46)
Well, the Westcott, as you'll see, and the rest of it, has offered very limited information as to how they're going to actually enforce that one vehicle requirement of the lease. They haven't even, their proposal right now is that they wouldn't even number their spaces or monitor their own internal spaces. And without our ability to regulate that, you would assume that people could move in, have two or three cars, just apply for the resident sticker, or for guests, they could get a resident sticker for themselves, park in the street, leave the space open for guests.

[Speaker 1] (1:21:47 - 1:21:51)
They have emailed. They are going to be discussing that. They're going to take that up.

[Speaker 8] (1:21:51 - 1:22:02)
Yes, they did tell us that they were going to talk about it, and we brought it up, too. But in the same email that I saw that he sent to Officer Ring, he was also inquiring about the ability of their residents to get resident parking stickers.

[Speaker 1] (1:22:02 - 1:22:17)
But they're not limiting, you're not, you're not limited to having one car moving into the Westcott. You just only get one car parking. So you could move into the Westcott with three cars.

[Speaker 8] (1:22:18 - 1:22:35)
They told us that the lease would say that the residents are limited to one vehicle per resident. At the site. Exactly.

There's very little to see that they would be able to enforce that and control it, and they would end up just pushing that burden off onto the neighbors.

[Speaker 1] (1:22:36 - 1:22:38)
Katie Phelan has her hand up.

[Speaker 7] (1:22:39 - 1:23:30)
Yeah, I just wanted to expand a little bit about David's comment about the language. I know it's it's not been vetted by council and I understand the sort of the resident sticker conditions for the folks at the Westcott. I just want to make sure that there aren't accidental unforeseen consequences to us doing this.

We're intending it to be targeted right to the Westcott residents. But there are other complexes with 10 or more units that may actually have ramifications. So I just want to make sure we fully vet where those are and if we are if we're accidentally involving them in this situation.

And if we are, if that is actually an issue for them before we, you know, see if that's a solution.

[Speaker 21] (1:23:31 - 1:23:31)
OK.

[Speaker 6] (1:23:32 - 1:23:38)
We got a lot of developments where people are right now might have a resident sticker as well.

[Speaker 8] (1:23:39 - 1:24:10)
The other developments that I believe fit that definition aren't in areas of restricted resident parking. You'd have all the ones along Paradise Road that don't have resident restrictions around them. There's a couple on Humphrey Street.

Yeah, none of them that as I was analyzing this, I don't think that there's any that fall within residential parking areas currently. And as new development comes along, this would sort of cover that. But certainly, again, I don't pretend that we've thought of every contingency with this.

[Speaker 6] (1:24:11 - 1:24:17)
They don't have restricted parking right near them, but they still could be getting a resident sticker as well. A recreation sticker.

[Speaker 1] (1:24:18 - 1:24:28)
Well, anybody could get a recreation sticker. That's OK. But a recreation, you can't use a recreation sticker to park in resident parking.

[Speaker 8] (1:24:29 - 1:24:37)
And currently, all those other complexes, if they parked in the street, it's unrestricted to residents. So they can park there now without a sticker.

[Speaker 6] (1:24:38 - 1:24:45)
I suppose the flip of this is, can you just not give resident stickers to people in the Westcott?

[Speaker 8] (1:24:46 - 1:24:54)
I think you absolutely could. Yeah. If that's what we specifically delineate them, they did commit to that.

I don't know if it's fair that you can actually do that.

[Speaker 3] (1:24:54 - 1:24:59)
Could there be a legal ramification for that? I don't know if they could.

[Speaker 7] (1:24:59 - 1:25:02)
I would think that we need to have that more fully vetted by council.

[Speaker 1] (1:25:02 - 1:25:34)
Right. So this is just a work in progress right now. We have a pretty tight schedule here tonight.

But I just want to, if there's one or two residents, if you have something to say, please. I just want to keep it limited, but I just want to make sure that we're extending this.

[Speaker 16] (1:25:37 - 1:27:05)
And I want to say that it's already an issue, parking. The contractors, the workers, whatever, are parking on Hillcrest Circle. So residents don't even have their own parking spots.

It was a very huge, huge issue when it was snowing and they didn't move their vehicles. Plows went around them. They moved their vehicles.

The rain came. It turned to ice. And Hillcrest Circle is a pitch like this that goes right onto Essex.

Kids are walking to school with their hoods on, their earphones in, and you're sliding right into Essex Street, traffic coming both ways. So I can only say specifically for Hillcrest Circle, it's a disaster. And they can say that at the Westcott, they said that there will be one space.

They don't say you can only have one car. So, of course, they're going to be looking for everywhere else. And the town was told that Westcott, it's going to be a commuter area.

It's not going to be commuter. They're going to use the commuter rail, buses, et cetera, and that's all well and good going to work, but they're not going to stop and shop on the commuter rail. So they're going to have more cars.

[Speaker 1] (1:27:05 - 1:27:06)
Okay.

[Speaker 16] (1:27:06 - 1:27:07)
Okay, thanks.

[Speaker 1] (1:27:08 - 1:27:39)
Okay, so I think, does anybody have any more questions? Because this is going to take us a little while. One of the concerns that I have is just making sure that other people in the public really know what we're discussing here in case they want to come forward and have more pushback on here or just give a different opinion.

So we'll just keep this on the agenda a little bit. Okay, so the next thing we're going to talk about.

[Speaker 7] (1:27:39 - 1:28:02)
Mary Ellen, before you move on, can I just request that if it's at all possible from the police department's recommendations that they sort of map it out on a map? Yeah. So that I think that's far easier for citizens to understand the way we were describing it, if it's maybe the map we have today and the map we are projecting or the recommendations.

[Speaker 1] (1:28:02 - 1:28:10)
Okay, and can we put that, Kevin, can we put that on all the town's social media sites? And Diane, can we put that on the website?

[Speaker 5] (1:28:11 - 1:28:13)
Put the map?

[Speaker 1] (1:28:14 - 1:28:15)
Yep, the map.

[Speaker 5] (1:28:16 - 1:28:22)
My only question is do you want it in what we would project to be?

[Speaker 1] (1:28:23 - 1:28:31)
Yes, recommended changes. Just to really make it clear we're having an open conversation about this.

[Speaker 7] (1:28:31 - 1:28:40)
Perfect. I think you might want to state, like, if you have comments or concerns, either to email Select Board or email you and then they can filter back to us that way.

[Speaker 5] (1:28:41 - 1:28:41)
Most certainly.

[Speaker 1] (1:28:41 - 1:28:49)
Okay, so I'm going to say that we did just cover line item number two and three. Are you all in agreement on that?

[Speaker 20] (1:28:49 - 1:28:50)
Mm-hmm.

[Speaker 1] (1:28:50 - 1:29:06)
Okay, so let's go to discussion and possible vote. I'd rather just discussion to increase parking fines to 75. Do we have any conversation on that?

I kind of feel like it should just be townwide. Yes. Oh, you want to talk about it?

[Speaker 3] (1:29:06 - 1:29:09)
Yes, townwide. Okay. No question for me.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:10 - 1:29:11)
Does anybody? Okay.

[Speaker 4] (1:29:11 - 1:29:12)
I'm supportive of that.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:14 - 1:29:19)
Is it okay if we just vote on it next time just in case somebody wants to come forward? Doug, do you have an issue with that?

[Speaker 6] (1:29:20 - 1:29:31)
I don't know. Does Margie have? From an economic development standpoint, is this actually advantageous in that regard?

Is there any other ramification? I mean, it seems so obvious on one level.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:31 - 1:29:31)
Right.

[Speaker 6] (1:29:32 - 1:29:36)
But it almost seems too obvious that, like, are we rushing? Is there something we're missing?

[Speaker 1] (1:29:36 - 1:29:50)
That's why I want to leave it. You know, we've brought it forward. I just want to leave it in case somebody, you know, maybe Mr. Picarillo parks in different areas in town and he's worried about getting a higher parking fine. He'll have an opportunity to come forward.

[Speaker 3] (1:29:50 - 1:29:53)
Specifically Mr. Picarillo. That's the quarry.

[Speaker 1] (1:29:53 - 1:30:17)
Okay. So we've covered number four. Let's move to our second.

Did you gentlemen want to stay for this one? Let's move to our discussion of possible vote on the sexual harassment policy for recreation department. This is our second reading.

So we can take a vote on this tonight. Mary Ann?

[Speaker 10] (1:30:17 - 1:31:32)
Yes. So I reached out to legal counsel because I was asked to do so about this policy. And they came back with so there are three policies that we give new hires in general when we're hiring everybody.

One is the conflict of interest policy. The second is a harassment policy, not specific to sexual, just harassment in general. And then they wanted the risk insurance company wanted us to add the sexual abuse and misconduct policy for anybody working for recreation and with children.

And so their answer back was regardless of what was done previously, all minor hires going forward should sign all relevant and applicable employment-related policies, but they should also be signed by a parent or a legal guardian. So I went back and wrote a letter that I would include, and I would start kind of packaging the three policies together, and then just sort of call it out, especially with rec. We mail all their paperwork anyways.

So it just is a highlight to the parent that they need to also sign off on the policies. And then I let Joe know, too, because he hires a lot of minors.

[Speaker 1] (1:31:33 - 1:31:45)
Okay. Now, who is double-checking this? Because recreation has a number of people that come in.

They come in and they go out. So where are the checks and balances so it's just not a big burden? Yes.

[Speaker 10] (1:31:45 - 1:32:16)
So we have a date that in the letters that go out to the job offers and even for the returning that all the paperwork is due back by a certain date, and we don't let them leave the building without going through the paperwork and making sure they didn't miss anything. And then if they do miss paperwork, which inevitably happens, we record what is missing for who and that they need to get it back to us, and then I just keep a running tally of the paperwork. I have a checklist that we check off, new hire paperwork checklist.

[Speaker 1] (1:32:16 - 1:32:16)
Okay.

[Speaker 10] (1:32:17 - 1:32:20)
So when I'm filling out a folder in case I'm missing something, it's easy to highlight it.

[Speaker 1] (1:32:22 - 1:32:30)
Okay. So do we have a discussion on this? Because I would like to just make a motion to accept.

[Speaker 4] (1:32:32 - 1:32:36)
I just had a quick question on page 4, Mary Ann.

[Speaker 20] (1:32:36 - 1:32:36)
Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (1:32:36 - 1:32:50)
Items 10 and 11, it almost looks like there's a mention of your facility. Is that just the boilerplate language that hadn't been written?

[Speaker 10] (1:32:50 - 1:32:52)
Are you in the actual handbook?

[Speaker 3] (1:32:53 - 1:32:57)
No, it's the actual policy. On page 4. The sexual abuse policy.

Oh, all right.

[Speaker 6] (1:33:02 - 1:33:07)
I'm going to read. Read right to the last word.

[Speaker 3] (1:33:09 - 1:33:18)
What? Yeah, I think that goes along if there's a complaint filed. What?

I think it speaks to the ones.

[Speaker 6] (1:33:18 - 1:33:19)
Page 4, number 10 and 11.

[Speaker 3] (1:33:20 - 1:33:35)
10 and 11. When there's an actual complaint, but it speaks to the ones before it. If a formal complaint is made, it should be the goals of your ‑‑ What are they referring to of your facility?

I don't know why it's capitalized. It really shouldn't be.

[Speaker 10] (1:33:37 - 1:33:45)
Grammar issue. They looked at ‑‑ this went straight to legal counsel. They went through it.

[Speaker 3] (1:33:46 - 1:34:03)
The way it's worded, it shall be the goals of your facility. I don't know what they're constituting as facility. I guess it would be parks and rec or camp or whatever.

Whatever the camp was. This speaks to if someone is filing a complaint. Where there's a plaintiff and a defendant type of thing.

[Speaker 4] (1:34:06 - 1:34:10)
It just stood out to me. I just wanted to get clarification.

[Speaker 10] (1:34:11 - 1:34:13)
I can certainly ask for you.

[Speaker 4] (1:34:14 - 1:34:18)
I didn't have any other questions or comments about the policy itself.

[Speaker 6] (1:34:20 - 1:34:23)
I'd love to just move forward, but it does seem really odd.

[Speaker 7] (1:34:24 - 1:34:30)
It's mentioned again in section 8 too. All right.

[Speaker 1] (1:34:31 - 1:34:32)
Let's kick this back.

[Speaker 3] (1:34:32 - 1:34:34)
Let's just ask for clarification.

[Speaker 1] (1:34:35 - 1:34:49)
Let's kick this back on clarification on 8, 10 and 11. Diane, you'll pop this back. You'll put this on the next one.

[Speaker 3] (1:34:50 - 1:34:54)
It has to be. Rec needs this policy, right? There's an urgency to this.

[Speaker 1] (1:34:54 - 1:34:55)
Yes. Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:34:56 - 1:34:57)
Wait.

[Speaker 1] (1:34:57 - 1:35:04)
Is there a way for us to make a motion? Subject to what, though?

[Speaker 2] (1:35:04 - 1:35:06)
Your revision. Your facility. Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (1:35:08 - 1:35:11)
By town council. But how do we know if the change is?

[Speaker 7] (1:35:12 - 1:35:57)
I think that the way it reads, I think it should be like town of Swampscott was dropped in. In other situations of your facility. I think it probably started off as boilerplate and then it's subbed in the town of Swampscott friends town.

So I would think that those instances might read the final decision of the town documentation shall be retained in a confidential personnel file. And then in 10, it says it shall be the goals of the town. Capital T is a defined term to provide supportive care.

And then again, in 11, it should read if the plaintiff should desire to appeal the decision of the capital T town. And the crisis management team or the board of directors legal counsel will be consulted.

[Speaker 1] (1:35:58 - 1:36:08)
Okay. So I think with that, then we could make a motion to accept it with the changes to reflect the town of Swampscott. So can I have a motion for that?

Motion. Second.

[Speaker 21] (1:36:09 - 1:36:10)
Second.

[Speaker 1] (1:36:10 - 1:36:56)
All in favor. Aye. Aye.

Okay. Motion carries. Thank you.

So we don't have to bring that back and you can get that right away. Okay. Discussion and possible vote to open up annual town meeting warrant 519, including review discussion votes on articles.

So we're at least just getting it open right now to get it open to the public. Where was the warrant here? Okay.

So if we look at the warrant, we're looking at what can you can you tell what are the what are the dates that we need to hit?

[Speaker 2] (1:36:56 - 1:37:11)
May 19th. So I have the earliest that you would potentially close the warrant as April 16th. But you can, in fact, close it as late as April 23rd.

I just didn't know if you wanted to meet that week because it is school vacation week.

[Speaker 1] (1:37:12 - 1:37:20)
And what is when do they have to be mailed out to hit the two week deadline? And when is it mailed out for three week deadline? One week deadline.

[Speaker 2] (1:37:20 - 1:37:32)
Annual town meetings one week. Specialist 14 days. We mail it out the end of the week prior to the seven days just to ensure that people are receiving it at least seven days prior.

[Speaker 1] (1:37:33 - 1:37:36)
Give me the date if it's if it's two weeks prior. May 5th.

[Speaker 2] (1:37:37 - 1:37:45)
Five what? If it were two weeks prior, it would have to be mailed on May 5th. That was good, Daniel.

[Speaker 3] (1:37:46 - 1:37:48)
Try it. Let's go to bio. I know that.

[Speaker 2] (1:37:52 - 1:37:56)
As soon as we get them back from the printer, we do mail them out.

[Speaker 1] (1:37:57 - 1:38:51)
Okay. All right. So I guess do you folks want to go through this real quick or not?

You want to? It's whatever the board wants here. I mean, it looks like, you know, we'll be going over the operating budget later when they have it.

The approval of the free cash. Transfer free cash utility reserve line. That's for the schools.

That's going to be normal. Okay. So the cost, the article number X.

I didn't number them because the board can determine the order. Yep. All right.

So we just need to find out what where we're at with the COLA with the retirees. They know that it's going to be on here. Yes.

And then the board will have to turn around and, you know, support or not support. And then FinCom will come in and address that.

[Speaker 4] (1:38:51 - 1:39:02)
Marion, are we going to have a, weren't we looking for a, aren't they having their report that was being compiled? We're going to have.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:02 - 1:39:02)
Yeah, they're still.

[Speaker 4] (1:39:03 - 1:39:03)
Actuarial study.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:03 - 1:39:10)
So I've been holding a placeholder for them in every single agenda and their actuary still isn't in yet.

[Speaker 2] (1:39:10 - 1:39:31)
So we have still not received it from the actuary. We're scheduling a meeting in early April to be able to have that and vote on it. And then I believe the finance committee is having the retirement board come on April 21st to present it to finance committee.

And then they will come to the select board after they've already spoken to the finance committee.

[Speaker 20] (1:39:31 - 1:39:31)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:39:31 - 1:39:36)
So we've been anticipating, but they just have a hold up on their side.

[Speaker 4] (1:39:37 - 1:39:48)
So just as, so just as a matter of process. So, you know, right now it's April 2nd. Are we anticipating having meetings weekly leading up to annual town meeting?

Do you have any thoughts there?

[Speaker 1] (1:39:49 - 1:40:00)
No, I don't. I haven't really thought about it. I don't know.

Do you recommend we try to shoot for that? Why don't we get through this and why don't we just do, why don't we talk about that at the end?

[Speaker 4] (1:40:00 - 1:40:00)
That's fine.

[Speaker 1] (1:40:00 - 1:40:08)
Okay. Then we have the amendments for the revolving funds. I think that's going to be pretty easy there.

[Speaker 2] (1:40:08 - 1:40:12)
We have one for, there's four different exemptions that the board of assessors is looking for.

[Speaker 1] (1:40:12 - 1:41:13)
Right. So that, well, that is the next one. We need to really get, we need to get educated on that.

Okay. So actually let's just, let's highlight the things that we think we've got the retirement board. The assessors.

Chapter 90 is going to be easy peasy. Appropriations for capital projects. I'm in, correct me, but I'm anticipating that's going to be easy.

That will. That's at least routine. That's routine.

Yep. Good. We'll call them routine.

The CPA, how are we going to, how are we approaching that? That's just the general bylaw that we need to approve. Yeah.

To form the CPC. Right. Do we anticipate that we need to put a lot into getting ready for this?

[Speaker 6] (1:41:13 - 1:41:14)
Are you talking about our time?

[Speaker 1] (1:41:15 - 1:41:16)
Yeah. Yep.

[Speaker 6] (1:41:17 - 1:41:29)
I think we should be some discussion of probably the, because we're actually deciding on membership. And, you know, there could be some discussion of taking an hour or anything, but.

[Speaker 1] (1:41:29 - 1:41:37)
So we need to get that. We should have it on two agendas then. So we should put that on next, the next, next meeting.

[Speaker 6] (1:41:38 - 1:41:44)
Do you have a recommendation as to, unfortunately my email's not loading, so I can't do it right now.

[Speaker 1] (1:41:45 - 1:41:55)
You know what, let's, we'll come back to that, because if your email loads, let's talk, we'll talk about it now. The Earth Removal Advisory Committee. What?

[Speaker 2] (1:41:57 - 1:42:04)
So they have a bylaw amendment, and it looks like to change the makeup of their committee.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:04 - 1:42:08)
Oh, yes. That's not going to be hard. That's just the planning board.

[Speaker 4] (1:42:09 - 1:42:09)
So.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:09 - 1:42:11)
I don't think, we're not going to need a lot of discussion on that.

[Speaker 4] (1:42:11 - 1:42:16)
So is this a recommendation from ERAC through us, or is this a recommendation by the select board?

[Speaker 2] (1:42:17 - 1:42:22)
I received this from ERAC. I highlighted the ones where I'm not sure who wants to sponsor the article.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:22 - 1:42:33)
You know, we can say, I think we could easily say we sponsor this based on what their needs are. They're only asking to take out, this is the one they're asking to take out, the planning board?

[Speaker 2] (1:42:34 - 1:42:43)
Yep, they're looking to remove the requirement for one member to be from the planning board, and instead increase the number of select board appointed members from two to three. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:42:45 - 1:43:04)
Okay. The use of land, parks, and fields. This is to change a bylaw.

We have to see who's going to give us, I think Joe Markarian and John Piccarillo are addressing this.

[Speaker 2] (1:43:05 - 1:43:07)
Did you want the select board to sponsor this?

[Speaker 1] (1:43:08 - 1:43:17)
I don't have a problem with that. Okay. Establish fall town meeting, this is to make an actual date for fall town meeting?

[Speaker 2] (1:43:17 - 1:43:28)
Yeah, so the town clerk and I were talking, and there's a number of communities who routinely have a fall town meeting, and similar to our annual, which is always the third Monday in May.

[Speaker 1] (1:43:28 - 1:43:34)
So people can plan on it, and then we can always just cancel it? Yep. Yep, I think that's...

[Speaker 7] (1:43:34 - 1:44:05)
For the prior article, for the use of land, parks, and fields, the comment section is... Yeah, I noticed that. Okay.

What is that? It's just the comment is the same from the one above it, so we just have to update the comment section. So, Amy, you'll fix that?

Also, for the ERAC one, maybe we don't talk about it tonight, but I just would like to know the planning board's feeling about being removed from ERAC.

[Speaker 1] (1:44:06 - 1:44:08)
The planning board brought it up. Great.

[Speaker 4] (1:44:09 - 1:44:10)
We have the chair of the planning board.

[Speaker 7] (1:44:10 - 1:44:11)
Oh, is he here?

[Speaker 1] (1:44:12 - 1:44:16)
Ted raised his hand, so... TD, are you there? Is he TD?

[Speaker 18] (1:44:16 - 1:44:16)
Yep.

[Speaker 1] (1:44:16 - 1:44:17)
Okay.

[Speaker 18] (1:44:18 - 1:44:28)
Hi there. Yeah, Mary Ellen had it correct. This is a request that came from the planning board about a year and a half ago, but I think we missed the warrant last year, so it's something we wanted to include this year.

[Speaker 7] (1:44:29 - 1:44:33)
And ERAC is supportive, Mary Ellen? Yes. Okay, great.

Thank you.

[Speaker 18] (1:44:33 - 1:44:34)
That's easy. Thank you.

[Speaker 7] (1:44:35 - 1:44:35)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:44:38 - 1:45:26)
Town meeting member minimum write-in vote. So the town clerk has mentioned that we've had a number of people in the precincts that don't have a lot of participation in town meeting. They are getting written in and winning the election with only one or two write-in votes, and then when it comes time, they didn't actually want to be running.

So this is standard in most other communities, that there is a minimum of at least ten write-in votes to be a town meeting member, and that way someone actually has to want to be a town meeting member, because we're having a number of people who are winning the election with one or two write-in votes, and then come time, they don't swear in, they don't want to be part of it, and then that precinct is scrambling to fill it.

[Speaker 1] (1:45:26 - 1:45:49)
Well, I would think that that precinct isn't at a loss, and if they didn't want to be there, they're not going to be there, and they wouldn't have won someone else's position. But the problem I have with this is what happens at the last minute? Somebody just decides they're in a precinct that's really not very competitive, and they decide, okay, I'm going to take the plunge, and they get their family and their neighbors, and they only get five.

[Speaker 2] (1:45:49 - 1:46:12)
We can lower that number to five. Ten was just what was in most other communities, but the board can recommend a lower. I guess from my point, I just really don't even—my opinion is I don't really want to see this here, but that's just— Ten was more so because you need ten to get on the ballot, so that was where the standard came from.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:15 - 1:46:54)
Makes sense. We'll just leave a question mark there to see if people even want to address this. Prohibit discharge from sanitary sewers.

We've already had one public meeting on this. This will be—we'll have to bring this up again. Inspection of sewer ladder.

Oh, that's the one that had the public meeting there. That's some time there, so those are two things that have to get booked. Preservation of historically significant buildings.

I thought—was this from—did we have this on the last one? We were going to— Further amended it, right?

[Speaker 6] (1:46:54 - 1:46:55)
We pulled it.

[Speaker 1] (1:46:55 - 1:47:01)
Yeah, we pulled it. Are we—we want it back? Because don't we already have a policy that we can get the same effect?

[Speaker 6] (1:47:01 - 1:47:09)
There was some ambiguity last time, and so the Historical Commission will have to provide further clarity on why this is additive.

[Speaker 7] (1:47:11 - 1:47:20)
That one's not in my packet, so I don't know if that's— Is that in your packet? No, just go straight to Citizens Petition in my packet.

[Speaker 3] (1:47:20 - 1:47:24)
Well, as it says on Thursday, it might have been updated.

[Speaker 1] (1:47:25 - 1:47:30)
I can email it to you, Katie. Is this something we're going to want to have?

[Speaker 20] (1:47:31 - 1:47:32)
I don't know. Okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:47:33 - 1:47:42)
I just put everything in the draft that I was made aware of for the board to decide what should or should not be in there. That makes sense.

[Speaker 1] (1:47:45 - 1:48:02)
Thank you. Is accessory dwelling—Ted, are you still there? Are these yours?

The accessory dwelling unit, the floodplain, and the site plan permit?

[Speaker 18] (1:48:03 - 1:48:09)
Yep, those are the bylaws that the planning board is going to be seeking to do and the ones that I briefed the board about back in February.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:09 - 1:48:13)
Okay, very good. And are you arranging for public hearings on this?

[Speaker 18] (1:48:14 - 1:48:30)
So the planning board is meeting a week from this Monday to finalize language, and then as required by state law, we'll be having a public hearing for all of those that the board votes to recommend, which we anticipate being all three of those. So there will be a public hearing at some point before the end of the month on all three of those.

[Speaker 2] (1:48:31 - 1:48:35)
Okay. Ted, is the planning board sponsoring these articles?

[Speaker 18] (1:48:36 - 1:48:36)
They are.

[Speaker 2] (1:48:36 - 1:48:37)
Thank you.

[Speaker 18] (1:48:37 - 1:48:41)
Well, that is my presumption that they are. The vote will happen on a week from Monday.

[Speaker 1] (1:48:41 - 1:48:47)
Of course. Thank you. Okay.

And then citizen's petition is citizen's petition.

[Speaker 4] (1:48:48 - 1:48:54)
We also have to have clarity on a potential bylaw for the parking change, correct?

[Speaker 2] (1:48:55 - 1:49:19)
If we have to have a bylaw. I looked at the bylaws, and I did not see any reference to residential parking. Article 5, section 16 does talk about parking in general in terms of like you can't block public access, you can't block emergency vehicles, things like that.

Not a lawyer. But there is no reference to residential parking or parking permits in our bylaws.

[Speaker 4] (1:49:20 - 1:49:20)
Okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:49:21 - 1:49:21)
All right.

[Speaker 4] (1:49:21 - 1:49:26)
Which would allow us, the select board, to make that change without having to take it to town meetings. Yes. Okay.

[Speaker 2] (1:49:26 - 1:49:30)
Let's just double check. I'm going to send it to council just to make sure.

[Speaker 4] (1:49:30 - 1:49:30)
Thank you.

[Speaker 1] (1:49:35 - 1:49:59)
Okay. So if we just go back through here, it looks like let's just talk about, you know, what are the big conversations. The COLA.

I don't think the revolving funds are going to be a big conversation.

[Speaker 2] (1:49:59 - 1:50:17)
So there's two COLA pieces to that revolving fund. One is what the interim town administrator referenced last week, which would amend the purpose of the rec revolving to include donations for the community programs.

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

[Speaker 2] (1:50:18 - 1:50:23)
And secondly, the So we have to change the language in the purpose?

[Speaker 1] (1:50:23 - 1:50:24)
You open it up? In the purpose.

[Speaker 2] (1:50:24 - 1:50:47)
Okay. Amend the purpose. And then separately, the library director has asked to increase the annual spending limit for the library revolving fund from $3,500 to $5,000.

This is for the printing and copying that patrons can do at the library, and it's just due to the increase in cost subject to all other revolving funds. They can only spend what they have anyway.

[Speaker 1] (1:50:48 - 1:50:54)
Is there any reason we just don't make it $10,000? He asked for five, so that's what I put it in there for.

[Speaker 2] (1:50:54 - 1:51:00)
Okay. There is nothing prohibiting from town meeting setting these insanely high limits.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:00 - 1:51:03)
And Doug, are we okay with the historic commission at 25?

[Speaker 6] (1:51:03 - 1:51:05)
Yep, that's what they requested last time.

[Speaker 1] (1:51:05 - 1:51:13)
Okay. All right. The board of assessors, that's going to take education.

[Speaker 4] (1:51:13 - 1:51:16)
Can they come to our next meeting to walk us through?

[Speaker 1] (1:51:17 - 1:51:34)
Yeah, we just have to find out from Paul. General Paul. He says.

Chapter 70 is fine. Appropriation, physical. Capital projects, I think that's not going to take long.

[Speaker 4] (1:51:34 - 1:52:10)
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Just about capital projects for fiscal year 26. So as it pertains to the relocation of the VFW and ensuring that we're going to do what we say we're going to do with the renovations to recharts, I just want to make sure that we're going to fund this.

Just so I'm putting my marker down. I just want to make sure that we're looking at funding this in 26 in our capital projects.

[Speaker 2] (1:52:10 - 1:52:23)
I will say that a finance committee member has posed that question to Max and we're waiting to hear back from him on cost assumptions and when that would be factored into the capital plan. So once I get that answer from Max Casper, I'll share it with the board as well.

[Speaker 20] (1:52:23 - 1:52:23)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (1:52:24 - 1:52:49)
So let me ask something. Is there a reason to have to focus on it for 26 when we don't even have state funding? So my understanding is that it takes a year to two to even get state funding.

So if it's going to take that long to even get state funding and then to even start to build a project, don't we have time?

[Speaker 4] (1:52:50 - 1:52:58)
I just want to ensure that the town and the select board, yeah, that it doesn't, that 27 doesn't turn into 28 doesn't turn into 29.

[Speaker 1] (1:52:59 - 1:53:12)
I'm in agreement. I'm in agreement. That's what I'm trying to ensure.

Right. Okay. Okay.

So we have that. And then we have the CPA. Why don't we.

[Speaker 6] (1:53:13 - 1:53:15)
So I have information on that.

[Speaker 1] (1:53:15 - 1:53:15)
Okay.

[Speaker 6] (1:53:15 - 1:53:22)
But I don't know if it's easier to send it around to people, have them look at it in advance as opposed to me, like reading stuff out.

[Speaker 1] (1:53:22 - 1:53:26)
Can you walk us just through like what the procedure is? Just like.

[Speaker 6] (1:53:26 - 1:53:50)
Oh, yeah. I mean, we've got Marcie got from town council, a bunch of different examples from different towns and the types of things that we need to specify for the community preservation committee are the number of people can be anywhere from five to nine. Five are mandated.

Very specific ones. Concom, open space, housing authority, historical commission and planning board.

[Speaker 1] (1:53:51 - 1:53:53)
Wait, hold on. Concom housing.

[Speaker 6] (1:53:54 - 1:53:55)
It's there. It's right there.

[Speaker 1] (1:53:56 - 1:53:57)
Okay. All right.

[Speaker 3] (1:53:57 - 1:53:58)
Thank you.

[Speaker 6] (1:53:59 - 1:53:59)
Where is it?

[Speaker 3] (1:54:00 - 1:54:03)
All right. So we don't have board of park. Right.

[Speaker 6] (1:54:03 - 1:54:04)
So that's open space. Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (1:54:05 - 1:54:05)
Okay.

[Speaker 6] (1:54:05 - 1:54:07)
Okay. So those five are set.

[Speaker 1] (1:54:07 - 1:54:08)
Okay.

[Speaker 6] (1:54:08 - 1:57:12)
And then, um, you know, a little discussion, very informal amongst people that were involved in this in terms of, you know, what they heard, what they think about potential additional, um, would be, uh, the affordable housing trust would have a quote, a seat. Um, finance committee would have a seat. And then, uh, there'll be two select board appointees, uh, that not be select board members, but there'd be appointees.

Um, and some of the logic here beyond the five are that, um, you know, housing does tend to be a relatively large piece of this, not this necessarily that, uh, every single year, but when you do housing, it ends up being kind of a big chunk. So you do have in the, in the required, you have concom open space, which kind of lean in as kind of, there's three different pieces, right? Basically open space, housing and historic preservation.

So you have two seats kind of, uh, somewhat oriented towards open space. Um, adding a housing trust fund makes that kind of two seats for housing. Uh, historical commission still only has one planning board thinking about a lot of different things.

Finance committee is thinking about a very different angle than everybody else. Uh, and, and then the select board appointees are thinking is that this kind of continually kind of refreshes the committee in accordance with how the elections and the community is actually electing people. So there kind of keeps things a little bit oriented to, you know, the most current kind of mood of the community.

Uh, you know, various towns do lots of different things. Some of them have slept board. Some people actually have an election, uh, for an, a seat.

Uh, not too many, but some do. Um, so this seemed to be kind of a compromise between actually have an election for the seat and, but not have, you know, potentially you can, uh, depending how you do this, you can end up with people that sit on this for forever. Um, you know, if they're part of these committees, they're just on the CPC for a long time.

So the other piece of this is usually like what, uh, what the length of the term is and how many max terms. So kind of a blend here is that, um, everybody would be in a two year term, uh, and a five term max. Um, you can get fancy with trying to have staggered terms, but I think there's with this number, if we're going to have nine seats, I think there's gonna be enough natural turnover of, you know, each of these committees would be recommending someone that's going to change over time.

Um, you know, if we really end up with, you know, people we think aren't doing a very good job and they're on there for five terms, I'm sure the select board could weigh in, uh, with the committees. Um, so those are the basic things, you know, do you want five up to nine? What are the number, you know, exactly which additional people, uh, what's the length of the term, how many max terms and do you want to stagger?

[Speaker 4] (1:57:13 - 1:57:37)
Yeah, just, just to weigh, just to weigh in. Um, you know, I, I, I may even take what I'm, I'm supportive of nine. Um, but I'd also look at, at potentially having someone from CIC, uh, sitting on this, uh, as well.

So I may, I may take one of the, the two select board appointees. So that's just something to, for us to ponder.

[Speaker 1] (1:57:38 - 1:57:40)
I'm good with that. Katie?

[Speaker 6] (1:57:42 - 1:57:46)
You could even say that it makes more sense for CIC than finance committee.

[Speaker 1] (1:57:46 - 1:57:46)
Right.

[Speaker 6] (1:57:46 - 1:57:52)
Because this is more capital project-ish that we're talking about. Sure. But if you want to take it from select board, that's fine too.

[Speaker 1] (1:57:52 - 1:57:53)
I'd rather take it from select board.

[Speaker 7] (1:57:54 - 1:58:10)
Yeah, I think I, I would like, Doug, if you could send that around, I would like to see it and think, like, noodle it a little bit. But I think having CIC at the table is important. I just don't know that, you know, who, who that bumps or what that looks like.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:12 - 1:58:16)
And does anybody have an appetite for an elected position?

[Speaker 3] (1:58:16 - 1:58:17)
No.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:17 - 1:58:20)
No. Okay. I have to bring it up.

[Speaker 3] (1:58:21 - 1:58:23)
Recreation. I mean, does it make sense for recreation?

[Speaker 1] (1:58:24 - 1:58:31)
Yeah, I would think so. There, there is one from. It's open.

That's called open, but that's open space. That's, that's really not recreation.

[Speaker 6] (1:58:32 - 1:58:33)
It's the open space and recreation committee.

[Speaker 2] (1:58:33 - 1:58:38)
It specifically says the board of park commissioners, which is our recreation open space committee.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:39 - 1:58:43)
All right. I'm just wondering. Okay.

It's CONCOM. So wait, it's CON, you're saying.

[Speaker 6] (1:58:44 - 1:58:46)
There's CONCOM is required.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:46 - 1:58:46)
Right.

[Speaker 6] (1:58:47 - 1:58:53)
And the, the board of park commissioners, which for us would be someone from the open space and rec.

[Speaker 1] (1:58:54 - 1:58:58)
Open space and rec. So. Which is separate from recreation commission.

Yes.

[Speaker 4] (1:58:58 - 1:58:58)
Right.

[Speaker 7] (1:58:59 - 1:59:00)
Yes. Which is not rec commission.

[Speaker 1] (1:59:00 - 1:59:02)
Right. Which is not the rec commission.

[Speaker 4] (1:59:02 - 1:59:06)
But also you got to remember the utilization of these funds.

[Speaker 1] (1:59:06 - 1:59:12)
I understand. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm just thinking this through. I just want to. Yeah.

I mean, I just. I don't want to leave out. I just want to make sure I'm.

[Speaker 3] (1:59:13 - 1:59:20)
Maybe that's one of the select board ones. I don't know. That's just an idea.

I don't know if Danielle, I mean, just Danielle's group. I don't know.

[Speaker 1] (1:59:20 - 1:59:25)
Right. But to David's point, that the, the way the funds are set up.

[Speaker 3] (1:59:25 - 1:59:34)
I'm fine with it. As I've just laid that out. Two-year terms make sense.

Five-year maxi five max terms seems logical.

[Speaker 7] (1:59:37 - 1:59:47)
Does it make any sense to have Doug? Does any community have the initial terms be longer than two years? And then it scale back as the funds accumulate.

[Speaker 6] (1:59:48 - 1:59:50)
I don't remember that being a scenario.

[Speaker 7] (1:59:51 - 1:59:52)
Okay. I'm just curious.

[Speaker 2] (1:59:53 - 1:59:58)
Yeah. I've only seen the initial stagger at the onset of the commission.

[Speaker 20] (1:59:58 - 1:59:58)
Right.

[Speaker 2] (1:59:59 - 2:00:03)
And then there's set terms beyond that. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:07 - 2:00:42)
So how about if Diane, if you send this out to all of us. And. We just bring it up at the next meeting.

Yeah. Just so everybody can just forward it around now. Okay.

Yeah. All right. Okay.

We've got to pull in the retirement board. Cola. We've got land uses.

The parks and fields. We need them. We're going to need that.

An explanation on that. John left already. I think he knows that.

[Speaker 2] (2:00:46 - 2:00:54)
So for the fall town meeting, the town clerk was going to talk to the moderator, but did the board have a. Sense of when you would. Like to have that.

[Speaker 1] (2:00:55 - 2:01:07)
Well, what is your position as a, as the finance? Well, we've, we've actually, I think we looked over the last eight years. It's always been the first or second.

Whoa. No, it's been the first or second week of December.

[Speaker 2] (2:01:08 - 2:01:13)
It's usually been the first. For most of my tenure, it's been the first Monday in December.

[Speaker 1] (2:01:13 - 2:01:13)
Right.

[Speaker 2] (2:01:15 - 2:01:46)
A lot of communities do it in November. And they typically do it like the second. Or early third week of November.

So that way you're not punting into Thanksgiving holiday ambiguity as a whole. But is that a burden on the. That would definitely.

Rush along the assessor. So most communities don't use money to mitigate their taxes. So they don't have to wait for all their classification and assess values to come through.

[Speaker 1] (2:01:46 - 2:01:59)
So, whereas that we do, we, we have. We'd probably historically. So then why wouldn't we want it?

The first. Monday of December then. And we can.

That's what we've done.

[Speaker 4] (2:02:00 - 2:02:06)
Yeah. We wouldn't have hit the state last year. No.

Or the last. Two years.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:07 - 2:02:11)
I think for seven or eight years, we've been the first week of December.

[Speaker 4] (2:02:11 - 2:02:15)
No, but I'm saying like the tax rate hasn't been. Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:15 - 2:02:15)
Right.

[Speaker 4] (2:02:16 - 2:02:18)
So we want to give them, we want to get the board of assessors and.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:19 - 2:02:23)
Okay. So our goal, our goal is to set our goal is to set a given time.

[Speaker 2] (2:02:23 - 2:02:37)
Yeah. And I feel like the first of December has worked consistently. And if you go beyond that, then you're.

Running into not submitting your tax rate recap in time for DOR to certify. Okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:02:40 - 2:03:14)
All right. So I think. We don't really need to have a whole lot of discussion on this one.

Okay. Going forward. All right.

The minimum write in vote. That's. You know, we can just discuss that again at the next one.

The. We need to look at the prohibited discharge of sanitary sewers inspection on that. That we can pump out there and get some more meetings.

Okay. Preservation of historical.

[Speaker 6] (2:03:15 - 2:03:24)
Sorry, sorry, Mary Ellen. Those two. Sanitary and lateral.

Those water and sewer already has held. You said.

[Speaker 2] (2:03:25 - 2:03:25)
We talk about it.

[Speaker 1] (2:03:26 - 2:03:26)
Yeah. That's not.

[Speaker 2] (2:03:27 - 2:03:30)
Right. Water and sewer infrastructure advisory committee.

[Speaker 1] (2:03:31 - 2:03:31)
Right.

[Speaker 6] (2:03:32 - 2:03:35)
So they, they're. Going to give us the exact language.

[Speaker 2] (2:03:35 - 2:03:40)
I have the exact language. I'm just waiting on my. Warrant language.

So I have the full appendix.

[Speaker 6] (2:03:41 - 2:03:41)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:03:43 - 2:03:43)
Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (2:03:44 - 2:03:44)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:03:45 - 2:03:46)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (2:03:46 - 2:03:52)
So we'll, so just, just for clarification, will we see that at our next, at our next meeting, if it's in a week or?

[Speaker 1] (2:03:53 - 2:04:30)
Yes, we will absolutely see that next meeting or there's a chance we might even be able to put this out there. The other question is whether or not, yeah, it'll be on our next meeting, whether or not we have to delay this. I don't want to.

So this is something I brought up to, to Sean, well, the, not the sanitary sewers, but the inspection of the laterals. I brought this up to Sean a few years ago and he said that he would try to get this moved forward. So it looks like it's moving forward.

Doug, you're going to double check on the preservation of historically significant buildings.

[Speaker 6] (2:04:30 - 2:04:34)
Yeah. I just got a note from Nancy that it's not exactly the same as what it was last time.

[Speaker 1] (2:04:35 - 2:04:52)
So I just, okay. All right. So then I think Diane and I can work out the agenda and try to expedite whatever we need and get all the information out to everybody and try to clear the agenda to focus on this.

[Speaker 2] (2:04:52 - 2:04:58)
Is there anything you want ordered differently before I go through and add the article numbers to it?

[Speaker 1] (2:04:58 - 2:05:22)
Let's talk about that. We'll talk about that at the end so people can think about it. Let's just look at it timing, timing, like how much time we think we're going to take for all this.

Okay. All right. So moving on with this agenda here.

First reading. What? Oh, yes.

Can we have a motion to open up?

[Speaker 6] (2:05:23 - 2:05:24)
So moved.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:24 - 2:05:26)
Thank God you're here. So all in favor?

[Speaker 6] (2:05:27 - 2:05:30)
Second. Okay. Danielle got that.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:30 - 2:05:31)
Okay. I'm sorry.

[Speaker 20] (2:05:31 - 2:05:31)
I didn't hear that.

[Speaker 1] (2:05:31 - 2:05:52)
Oh, okay. Motion carries. First reading and review, possible vote on new fees, permit fees proposal.

Who's going over that? Diane? You on the fees?

Amy on the fees?

[Speaker 2] (2:05:53 - 2:06:57)
So I put together, you should have a blue and green kind of striped fee schedule of what we currently have. And then I believe Diane added into your packet a single page of recommended fee permit increases. So a couple departments came forward after the last meeting with increases for their own departments.

Obviously the board can increase beyond that. I just figured this would be easier if people were already recommending them. So the block party permits are currently $25 each.

There was a proposal to increase them to 50 each. We don't have a lot of them, so it would only bring in about $400 more, but. And that's based on what?

That's based off of how many block party permits we've issued in the last year.

[Speaker 1] (2:06:57 - 2:07:17)
So why are we increasing that? Just to increase revenue or like, why not? Well, I'm really not into nickel and diming the residents.

I mean, last year we spent 45 minutes talking about increasing a beach sticker and I just.

[Speaker 4] (2:07:17 - 2:07:18)
By five bucks.

[Speaker 1] (2:07:18 - 2:07:20)
Right. $25.

[Speaker 3] (2:07:20 - 2:07:25)
The last time these were revisited was when? I just, dogs for five bucks?

[Speaker 7] (2:07:25 - 2:08:29)
Yeah, I will also say this as a person who has been part of this $400 payment in the last consecutive three years, we have a block party every year on our street and it is often a grouping of neighbors who come together to hold like a potluck. And so the fee, while it is, to me it is a very inexpensive fee for what typically happens in a block party. I've also attended multiple block parties and it's often like 10 or 12 or 15 families who come together on the street to host it.

So when you're talking about raising the fee to $50, you're talking about an additional $5 a family or less to participate if you're splitting it or if somebody takes on that cost as part of the block party. So as a person who literally pays the fee, I'm supportive of it, but I understand Mary Ellen, your point. I don't think that anybody would be less likely to not, or would be like, you know, deterred from having a block party last year because it was $20 and this year because it's $50.

[Speaker 4] (2:08:30 - 2:08:40)
But I would also go in the exact opposite direction. I would want to encourage more block parties. I would want to encourage people to get together with their neighbors.

So I would...

[Speaker 6] (2:08:42 - 2:08:43)
Do you want to pay people to have a block party?

[Speaker 4] (2:08:43 - 2:08:56)
I would, I don't want to pay people to have a block party, but I would say that there shouldn't be any fee and it should be, it should be zero. I'll forego the $400 or whatever that, the $800, whatever we're going to collect.

[Speaker 7] (2:08:58 - 2:09:15)
Well, there is a process, the DPW comes and they drop off sawhorses and then they come back and pick them up. And so like we are spending town funds to do that. So we're not recouping, I would assume based on the amount of effort that's put in, we're not recouping that full amount.

So we are still subsidizing block parties.

[Speaker 4] (2:09:16 - 2:09:31)
I, that's just my, that's my personal belief and that's, that's where I would, that's where I would shake out. So I wouldn't just on, just on this particular line, I wouldn't support an increase. I would actually support a movement to zero.

[Speaker 6] (2:09:32 - 2:09:39)
Can I ask before we go, like it's being off for an hour, are these all somewhat benchmarked in any way to other communities?

[Speaker 2] (2:09:39 - 2:09:40)
They are. Yeah.

[Speaker 6] (2:09:40 - 2:09:41)
Yes.

[Speaker 2] (2:09:41 - 2:09:41)
The ones that are on the street are benchmarked.

[Speaker 6] (2:09:41 - 2:09:43)
Maybe you said that already. Sorry, I just wanted to.

[Speaker 2] (2:09:43 - 2:09:58)
I would also say that you would not want to eliminate it completely, even if you went to a token dollar, just because it is something that where you have to notify the police department of the blocked road and the increase of people.

[Speaker 1] (2:09:59 - 2:10:07)
There's an expense to these. It sounds like in Katie's neighborhood over there, I want to come to her block party.

[Speaker 2] (2:10:07 - 2:10:08)
It's going to be $5.

[Speaker 1] (2:10:09 - 2:10:13)
We need to get notified on the black parties that needs to be put in here.

[Speaker 6] (2:10:14 - 2:10:31)
I mean, you know, there's others on here that I could kind of pick out a little bit listing books. Well, I'm like the cemetery fees, you know, but I mean, if this is your benchmarks to other communities, then I'm fine with all been benchmarked and approved and proposed by those department heads.

[Speaker 3] (2:10:31 - 2:10:34)
What was the last time these fees were looked at in ever?

[Speaker 2] (2:10:34 - 2:11:22)
I mean, honestly, in the century, I have to say, because so the cemetery, no one who is currently on staff was able to tell me the last time these were increased, literally pre me birth birthday, the street listing books have not been increased as far back as the clerk could find. So at least what we call the nosy book, the nosy book. So if you want a nosy book, you're going to pay $25.

And the bigger part, and that's why I put it out there, it costs us $21 to print one. So I did or whatever they do to it, right. But anyone can request it electronically.

So if any one of you or anyone watching right now sends an email to the clerk's office, and says, I would like an electronic version of the notebook, you will get it free of cost.

[Speaker 3] (2:11:22 - 2:11:38)
But there's a cost associated with emailing even right? Our staff is doing that. Yes, but they're taking their time out.

I'm just saying. Yeah. And if you would like a fee to because it will have everybody, everybody, you know, everybody, their mother will say at that point, they might just put it up on the website.

[Speaker 2] (2:11:39 - 2:11:39)
Yeah.

[Speaker 3] (2:11:39 - 2:11:45)
Right. Vital records, $10. I mean, I don't think anybody is $10.

Any child?

[Speaker 2] (2:11:46 - 2:11:53)
No. And I mean, I just, I personally just ordered a request for those things. My husband's from Winthrop, which is 15.

And yeah. Okay. All right.

[Speaker 6] (2:11:54 - 2:11:56)
Are we, we want to try to vote on this tonight or not?

[Speaker 1] (2:11:59 - 2:12:08)
You do not need to vote on it tonight. Why don't we just vote on it the next time? Maybe we could just vote on it really easy.

I just hate voting on something when it first comes out. Yeah. Only just.

[Speaker 2] (2:12:08 - 2:12:29)
And then I also want to point out the back side of that page, you should have a copy of the registry of vital records and statistics fees. So in addition to the vital record proposed increase, you'll see I have a note that says and the additional fee services. So right now you can only get your birth certificate by walking in in person.

[Speaker 20] (2:12:30 - 2:12:30)
Right.

[Speaker 2] (2:12:30 - 2:12:41)
The RVRS does allow increased fees for you to get it mailed to you or to expedite it. And the clerk would like to adopt those as well.

[Speaker 3] (2:12:42 - 2:12:44)
Yeah. Okay. Dollars.

[Speaker 2] (2:12:45 - 2:13:19)
I got the genealogical research. We, we already have a fee for genealogical research. And it's only for like non-residents if it's more than this many years back and so we don't really charge that.

They are only looking, they're not looking for those bottom two boxes, the amendments or the genealogical. Okay. So what he's asking for is if we will, we will bring our fees up to the.

For the by mail section and the online telephone for vital check, those two sections. Okay.

[Speaker 3] (2:13:20 - 2:13:37)
So can I ask, what was the impetus for this with the fees? Like is there a reason or what did we ever, or would we ever consider, you know, adding a trash barrel fee, buying your own barrel? I mean, is that, is every fee on the table here or is it just some of these things?

[Speaker 1] (2:13:39 - 2:13:59)
I think the trash barrel fee, we need to talk to the, what the, the solid waste, solid waste advisory committee. I think, I think there is, there is a conversation about that, but there's also going to be a bigger conversation about that as we're coming into the new contract season for next year. That's something we need to start to prepare for.

[Speaker 3] (2:14:00 - 2:14:07)
People are asking me that question all the time. Can I buy a barrel? Can I buy a second barrel?

How much does it cost? I don't know. Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:14:07 - 2:14:30)
So that conversation is underway and you know, when they come here, we'll have a conversation with them again. I think if we can, the biggest thing is to, we really have to eliminate the amount of bags that are sitting, sitting freely outside, the blue bags that sit outside of a container, that they get ripped open by coyotes and other animals and it's, it ends up becoming a bigger problem.

[Speaker 3] (2:14:31 - 2:14:32)
So the whole thing is a thing.

[Speaker 2] (2:14:33 - 2:14:46)
I don't know. And Danielle, to your point, I put a column on that blue and green sheet to indicate which ones are set by MGL or other statute. Yes.

So that way... Right. Because there are other fees we could be looking at too, right?

[Speaker 3] (2:14:46 - 2:14:48)
Board fees, all kinds of things.

[Speaker 2] (2:14:48 - 2:15:04)
And the harbormaster did come last year to increase those. The fees have already been put forth for this season, but he is planning on coming in the fall with a new recommendation for the next season. Okay.

That's good.

[Speaker 7] (2:15:06 - 2:15:06)
Okay.

[Speaker 1] (2:15:06 - 2:15:07)
So we're going to...

[Speaker 7] (2:15:07 - 2:15:35)
I think that just as part of good housekeeping, we should be looking at fees, whether it's, Amy, you can make a recommendation every year, every other year, and not just the fees that we have, but the fees that surrounding towns and cities are applying that maybe we are not applying, why we don't apply them. I mean, if we're going to look at every aspect of the budget, we have to be looking at this stuff also.

[Speaker 2] (2:15:37 - 2:16:00)
As I said before, I plan on doing a full overview of the financial policies over the summer. My intention is to add an annual fee review by the board no later than September 15th of each year, because that will give myself and the town administrator sufficient time to then turn that around for the November 15th forecast. Projections.

[Speaker 3] (2:16:01 - 2:16:02)
Okay. Very good, Amy.

[Speaker 1] (2:16:03 - 2:17:16)
Okay. Okay. So now we'll move to discussion and possible vote to create a new Veterans Council.

I know we got an email kind of late from the VCO, but I was just wondering if we could get information sent to us. Please go on. You can wait one second.

If we can get information sent to us on what is the mission statement on the two councils that we already voted on. I know we voted on something for Veterans Council to be more acclimated to assistant events and support, a more supportive type of committee versus a policy type of committee. And then we had the other committee that we're setting up to specifically look to make sure that we address every single veteran and to really work hard to get every veteran qualified or at least educated on how they could get into veterans housing.

So we just need to really discuss whether or not that's the way we're looking to go here. And with that, let me, let Mr. Sweeney, Mike, do you want to, do you want to make any comments here? Mike Sweeney is our veterans, our veterans service officer.

[Speaker 13] (2:17:17 - 2:18:28)
Thank you. No, I think you, I think you hit it right in the nose as long as I think that's the issue about what we're going to move forward with the, there has been, because we've gone back and forth talking about it for the last several years. I just want to be clear.

I, when it was coming up before there was some talk that the board that had always been appointed by the community had some sort of policy component to it. So at the time I reached out to my predecessor, Jim Schultz, who said that, that it didn't, it was exactly as you just explained, which was, it was about patriotic and veteran centered events throughout the community. So I think that would be a great way to get started.

And I just want to, cognizant of the hour, just want to point out that I'm here to, helping any way to help the select board and get information, any insight we could provide. And in terms of that one committee, I would say we could always use the help, I think, just to do some counting. Our office sponsors or co-sponsors almost 30 events every year, including a food market every month, a coffee every month.

So I think we'd love to be able to get people involved in anything you're talking about, getting people eligible for housing.

[Speaker 1] (2:18:29 - 2:18:42)
Do you have, does your, does the VSO office, do you have somebody at the senior center every, every week helping people with their applications or anything like that? What are, what are the other things that are happening there?

[Speaker 13] (2:18:44 - 2:19:08)
We have a, we have office hours, so tomorrow we'll be at the senior center from 11 to one. We have office hours every week and I live in the community, we're in the community every day. But we, other than that, 11 to one on Thursday, we meet people in the community.

That is sort of an all hands on deck. So if people come in for help with claims, chapter 115, any kind of help at all, but obviously people come in and we assist them with housing as well.

[Speaker 1] (2:19:08 - 2:19:21)
Great. And do you have a listing of the, all the veterans in town that you can send mailers out to as we get, we get going with trying to identify who qualifies?

[Speaker 13] (2:19:22 - 2:19:49)
Absolutely. Thanks for the question. Yeah.

The, under Massachusetts general law, every VSO is afforded the list of veterans from the town clerk and our clerk has been wonderful at that. So we have, we receive that list every year and we use that as a mailing list and we can, we use it for, as long as we can't provide it to anyone, we can use it in terms of outreach to people in the future and get people to come to events or to inform them on benefits. So we do utilize that and we're happy to do that.

[Speaker 1] (2:19:49 - 2:19:53)
And will you be able to use that with the committee so that the committee can?

[Speaker 13] (2:19:55 - 2:19:55)
Oh, absolutely.

[Speaker 1] (2:19:56 - 2:19:56)
Anything we can get.

[Speaker 13] (2:19:56 - 2:19:57)
No, I think that would be great.

[Speaker 1] (2:19:57 - 2:19:59)
I didn't know, I don't know how confidential it was.

[Speaker 13] (2:20:00 - 2:20:18)
It's confidential. We would send it out and then the return mailing address would probably be our office or would go to keep that, but we can't share it. We can take the mailing from somebody and mail it out.

That's how we usually do that. People provide us with the flyer or the postcard and we send it out. We put the address on it.

[Speaker 1] (2:20:18 - 2:20:34)
All right. So I would propose that we just start getting more information out there and we might have to just put this, I don't want to say on the back burner, but just, you know, we get the information out and then we could just discuss it as we, as we go along.

[Speaker 4] (2:20:34 - 2:20:43)
So, so, so just here, like what, what was the, like for, for eight and we're talking about creating a new veterans council, like what, what was the intent of this?

[Speaker 1] (2:20:43 - 2:21:19)
Well, the question is, should we create a new veterans council? Is what we, it is what we appointed last year, what is in the best interest of veterans. So that's, that's the question that was brought up.

So if the point, if what we have now is the definition of a social type of a support group is what's in the best interest of veterans, then we're good with that. But are there other communities that have other veterans councils, councils that can be more supportive of veterans? I think that that's the question is whether or not we should just address and look at the whole thing.

[Speaker 6] (2:21:19 - 2:21:22)
Did we actually populate those communities? No, we never.

[Speaker 1] (2:21:22 - 2:21:33)
We have, well, we didn't populate because we didn't, you know, we didn't know if we were going through a pine street, so we didn't populate that and I don't know what we have with the other one.

[Speaker 3] (2:21:33 - 2:21:39)
What about the veterans committee though? Does that, does that exist? There are two actually.

So they do actually exist with a lot of people.

[Speaker 1] (2:21:39 - 2:21:47)
No, we haven't, we haven't voted for them in there. So we've created the committees, we've not, we've not actually put the people out there. Populated them.

Right.

[Speaker 6] (2:21:47 - 2:21:51)
And one's for events and the other was to support the housing.

[Speaker 3] (2:21:51 - 2:21:53)
Just for this particular project.

[Speaker 6] (2:21:53 - 2:21:53)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:21:53 - 2:23:08)
So one was more a support group and then the other one was like a really more of a task group that they would have a task at hand. You know, so that what happened at Michon, like one of the problems when we got everybody into the Michon, there was many, many people felt that B'nai and the town didn't get the word out enough. Now I have to be honest, I don't share that only because everywhere I went there was constant, you know, constant events going on to get the word out about, you know, the Michon opening up for affordable housing, but there's still a large population that felt that they didn't have enough information out there.

So the whole idea of making sure we had a committee, that this committee was on the ground knocking on doors and making sure they were checking with every single person. And you know, Kim Martin Epstein actually even said that we should consider having an estate type of a lawyer give a talk about how you can actually prepare your finances on how you could qualify to get in there. Because many people that were applying for Michon couldn't because they were still house rich or if they had made some changes in their assets, they would have qualified.

[Speaker 4] (2:23:10 - 2:23:29)
So can we make a commitment to make a, I don't recall if we've ever listed the Veterans Events Committee or solicited any applications, can we get that up so we can get that up and running and potentially seated?

[Speaker 1] (2:23:29 - 2:24:32)
Can you, well, there's two things. One is, can you just like get it back up onto the website? And I would like to check what other committees, what other communities have on different councils just to make sure we're maximizing all the support, all the support for Mike Sweeney and the veterans and make sure we're just doing everything possible.

Okay? Okay. Yep.

Alright. Okay. So moving on to discussion and possible vote to reconstitute the Traffic Study Advisory Committee.

This is something Katie's brought up a few times and the question is, do we have a need for this? I mean, we did have one in the past. I know that it was dropped and I think that we definitely need, you know, the fire department, the police department, which is really big on the police department, but also do we have citizens involved?

So Katie, you want to talk about your opinion on this?

[Speaker 7] (2:24:33 - 2:25:34)
Yeah. I mean, I think it's worth a conversation. I'm not sure if I'm sold whether or not it needs to be reconvened or not, but considering all of the conversations we've had recently, the neighborhood meetings that, that I've been to that are talking about these kinds of issues, maybe there is a sort of energy for it to be reconstituted in town and people will be willing to step up and do the work.

I think it dissolved because there was sort of a, I don't, I think we should, if we are, if we are going to reseed it, we should figure out if we can, in advance of reseeding it, solve some of the issues that was happening prior, which was like what their exact role was and if they were coming forward and making recommendations to us for us to move forward with, or if they were just to sort of be a place where grievances get aired and sort of realign their mission statement with what we hope them to be able to, to do for the community.

[Speaker 1] (2:25:34 - 2:25:36)
Who was the liaison? Were you the liaison?

[Speaker 4] (2:25:37 - 2:26:50)
Yeah, I was. It was, yeah, Linda Hayes was the, was the chair and I believe it was disbanded maybe, maybe around the summer, the summertime as we were talking about adding parking around Phillips Beach. I think some of the conversations got contentious and I think that was off-putting to a number of the members who then resigned.

To be honest, I think we need to make sure that we're, you know, that we're listening to our constituents and I think those, those constituents are going to have certain ideas around parking, around traffic, and I think taking their, their input and opinions from their neighbors along with public safety is really going to help make our community that much better and, and, and safer and addressing these, these things that, you know, maybe, maybe the police and fire know are problems but maybe it's just not top of mind.

So I think that resident input does, does help to shape some of those conversations and, and, and discussions and, and effectuate positive change.

[Speaker 1] (2:26:50 - 2:27:08)
So would you, because I would be inclined to say to have a committee with, you know, police department, a member of the police department, the fire department, possibly DPW and two residents. Katie, do you have an opinion on that?

[Speaker 7] (2:27:09 - 2:27:10)
Well, David, what was it before?

[Speaker 4] (2:27:13 - 2:27:17)
I don't, I don't recall the exact, the exact makeup, Katie.

[Speaker 7] (2:27:17 - 2:27:17)
Okay.

[Speaker 4] (2:27:18 - 2:27:21)
But I, but I do, I, I believe there were two or three residents.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:21 - 2:27:22)
Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (2:27:23 - 2:27:23)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (2:27:23 - 2:27:29)
Like I'd like to have at least two residents on there. I don't really know if we need to have more.

[Speaker 3] (2:27:30 - 2:28:04)
I agree with that. I've had two residents call me about various parking issues this week, one near the monument and one on Reddington street. So I think that in the consensus that both of them mentioned was that we have concerns, but where do we go with it?

Like, who do I contact? It's not see, click, fix. It's where do I go?

Do I call the police station for this? Do I? So I think, I think it's warranted.

I think, you know, to David's point, we should be listening to what people, I don't know every traffic issue and problem of the town, right? But we don't know. We need to hear from people to tell us what they're experiencing.

[Speaker 20] (2:28:04 - 2:28:05)
So, yep.

[Speaker 3] (2:28:05 - 2:28:05)
Right.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:05 - 2:28:35)
So if we had one police, one fire, one DPW, DPW and two residents, two residents, does anybody, I mean, we can, we can vote on this at the next meeting just in case we want to think about it a little bit more, or we can just start to advance this. We can actually, we actually, we can ask Diane to just start listing it now and we can make our final decision next week.

[Speaker 4] (2:28:36 - 2:28:36)
That's great.

[Speaker 7] (2:28:37 - 2:28:40)
Can we condition the residents to be from different precincts?

[Speaker 1] (2:28:40 - 2:28:46)
Yeah. Yeah. I would say so.

Right. We've only, we're only putting two on there, so.

[Speaker 7] (2:28:46 - 2:28:51)
Right. I just want to make sure that we're representing multiple areas of town and not just.

[Speaker 3] (2:28:51 - 2:28:51)
Sure.

[Speaker 1] (2:28:52 - 2:30:23)
Okay. All right. So, Diane, we're going to move this to the next, we'll vote on this at the next meeting, but you're going to start advertising now.

What is it? It's a 14-day advertisement? It's a 14-day advertisement.

And I think you have some people that have applied for the traffic advisory because I don't think that's come off of the checklist. No, I don't. All right.

All right. So we have gotten through our agenda. Now next we have, we move to our consent agenda, and I only have one question on the consent agenda, and that is on what is the process in which, what is the process in which we choose a beer vendor at the, at this event?

The reason I'm asking this is because, one, I want to know how people get chosen, and number two, I often wonder if we have a restaurant in town or multiple restaurants in town that would like to be the vendor, how do they get the opportunity to be the vendor? What's the process here, and what is the fee that they pay for that license? Danielle?

Maybe she stepped away. Danielle Leonard, do you know?

[Speaker 3] (2:30:24 - 2:30:27)
I don't know. No. Amy, do you know?

[Speaker 4] (2:30:27 - 2:30:29)
I can, I can help here.

[Speaker 3] (2:30:29 - 2:30:29)
If it.

[Speaker 4] (2:30:30 - 2:32:10)
Yeah. So, you know, a few years ago we were, you know, we were approached by, by East Regiment Brewing of Salem, and they just said, hey, we want to get involved, you know, with, with town events. Is there, is there anything that we can do?

How can we, how can we help? We brought them in for the Strawberry Festival. They sponsored, fully sponsored the event, paying for, certainly paying for music, paying for, you know, the, the sound system, and it was a good, it was a good relationship.

They had the first event probably three years ago, and then they said, all right, well, what else can we do? How else can we get involved? I went to them and said, hey, we'd love to throw a, a Derby event.

We just, we just got a, we just got a new big screen, and we'd love to, to use it and, and really have a, a kickoff to, to the spring season, bring people together. So they said, hey, what about a Crawfish Boil on Town Hall Lawn? That brings people together.

We'll have a little beer garden, we'll have some music, and that, that was really how it, how it really got started for this particular event. As to the specifics of, of everything, I'll defer to the Recreation Director, but I will, I will say that I, I did personally reach out to, to Scott Perry at, at East Regiment, but I, I, I see him occasionally around town, too, and he's been, he's been helpful, and he's been wanting to do, to do other additional events within the town.

[Speaker 1] (2:32:12 - 2:32:42)
So my, my concern is that we have, we have businesses in town, and that do the businesses in town that have liquor license, that serve the town, do they have the same opportunities to be sponsoring these events? I'm looking at what are the opportunities, and how are we supporting our local, our local vendors? And number two, what are we charging?

Are we charging $500 for this, for this, you know, for these type of licenses, one-day licenses?

[Speaker 4] (2:32:42 - 2:32:44)
It's, it's 50 bucks for the one-day.

[Speaker 1] (2:32:44 - 2:32:45)
$50.

[Speaker 4] (2:32:45 - 2:33:04)
It's $50 for the one-day liquor license, and these, these, these vendors are paying, and they're covering fairly substantial expenses related to bands, set up, you know, this, this could be, you know, several thousand, several thousand.

[Speaker 1] (2:33:04 - 2:33:06)
Oh, Danielle's back, okay, Danielle Strauss.

[Speaker 9] (2:33:08 - 2:34:46)
Hi everyone, can you hear me? Yep. Yep.

Okay, good. So, with this particular event, it's really new. So, they actually were having a hard time getting someone to source the crawfish, and to cook the crawfish, and they just today got, and we didn't even know if we were going to have crawfish, and it might just be showing the Kentucky Derby, and I think you might remember from town meeting last year, I was like so excited that we were going to have a Derby party.

So we're really trying to pull this together, but just recently, today, we got Patriot Seafoods to cook up the crawfish and handle the food. And that's pretty much going to be a, on their side, they don't even know how it's going to work, whether or not they're going to make any money, or who's even going to come to this. And the same thing with East Regiment.

So, East Regiment said that they would give us a portion of what they sell, of the beer, because this is a first time doing this, and we don't want them to walk away losing money. So, we decided on that. Were there other questions?

And we do work, we work with, when we do the Harbor Festival, we're actually going to have a chowder contest, and there will be three town restaurants that will be doing that contest, which they did last year too.

[Speaker 1] (2:34:47 - 2:34:56)
Okay, so, is crawfish, is this a New Orleans thing, or is this, what is crawfish, it's a southern thing.

[Speaker 4] (2:34:57 - 2:35:04)
It's a southern thing, and we can bring a little bit of southern hospitality north to Swampskate, and I think, you know.

[Speaker 1] (2:35:04 - 2:35:05)
Are we importing these crawfish?

[Speaker 4] (2:35:05 - 2:35:37)
They are being imported from, I believe, Cajun Country, Lafayette, Louisiana. That's where we've had some Swampskate residents who have had crawfish boils in the past. They've been fantastic, and I think this will be a great addition to our events lineup in town, and really, you know, bringing people together for music and the Kentucky Derby and Mary Ellen, you should, you know, hopefully.

[Speaker 1] (2:35:37 - 2:35:38)
I'm already working on my hat.

[Speaker 4] (2:35:38 - 2:35:39)
Hopefully you're working on your hat.

[Speaker 1] (2:35:39 - 2:35:53)
That's already, I am working on it. So, Danielle, so, just so I understand, so they are, the agreement with East Regiment is they're going to be giving you a percentage of their sales? Correct.

[Speaker 20] (2:35:53 - 2:35:54)
Okay. Yeah.

[Speaker 9] (2:35:56 - 2:36:20)
For this time, so we'll see how this works out, how many people come, how popular the event is, and then, you know, we move on from there. That's sort of what happened with the Strawberry Festival one year. We kind of brought them in, and then it was so popular, and they had such a long line, they, you know, offered to pay us $1,500 to be there.

[Speaker 1] (2:36:21 - 2:36:24)
They had good sales, I bet. And what is the percentage of their sales?

[Speaker 9] (2:36:25 - 2:36:27)
10% they're going to give us. Wow.

[Speaker 1] (2:36:29 - 2:36:29)
Okay.

[Speaker 3] (2:36:30 - 2:37:38)
So, I think that the question, or the issue here is just that, first of all, are we responsible for procurement law with vendors in this case? Like, do we have to? Great.

No. Fine. And are we consistent with each event that we have, that we have the revenue or whatever, the profit sharing of it, consistent in the same way?

Let's just make sure we're doing, you know, I know we get a back-end percentage here, it looks like. Are we doing that for all events of this nature? You know, just to make sure that we're consistent across the board, we're giving, you know, any vendor the opportunity to participate, right?

And local ones included, right? We don't want anyone to feel excluded. You know, just getting a real transparent understanding of how we're pulling in revenue from these things and what that's going towards.

And I think that this will eliminate any questions in the future once we, you know, once we just get that out there, then, you know, this shouldn't have to come up all the time, right? And we should have a, you know, this will be our working knowledge of how these things work.

[Speaker 1] (2:37:38 - 2:37:57)
Well, why not, why wouldn't we open it up if a local vendor, if a local business wants to participate in this and wants to turn around and give a percentage of revenue, why wouldn't we just do that now, too? Because that would be no loss to us. They might not want to, you know, might want to open it.

[Speaker 3] (2:37:57 - 2:38:17)
And maybe not, but I'm just saying for the purpose of each event, so everything's different. We have concert series, we have, you know, different, we have HarborFest, we have different events, so, you know, just make it consistent for all of them and we can understand what the funding mechanism is, the revenue, you know, and have it clear so that we don't have questions coming back later that we can't explain.

[Speaker 1] (2:38:18 - 2:38:20)
Well, I think that's something that has to come out of the Recreation Commission, right?

[Speaker 4] (2:38:21 - 2:39:52)
But also, too, some of the events, I mean, the events are different. Some of them are, you know, some of them do have, you know, fees associated with them. Some of them have, some of them are paid.

Some of them, you know, some of them are, you know, are free. Some of them are going to be very well attended. Some of them are going to be lightly attended.

So, I don't really see there being, I think we can do a, to your point, I think we can do a better job of, you know, of trying to put some structure and function around it. But I think, you know, especially as you're getting these events off the ground, one of the challenges that we had, you know, back in 2019 and certainly in 2021 was there really couldn't be a one-size-fits-all policy given that there was considerable financial risk, you know, for the, you know, for the pioneer coming in and saying, I want to do this, but I don't want to lose unlimited sums of money.

I want to make sure that, you know, we can balance that out. But I would love for our local businesses to come and say, hey, look, we want to do this event. You know, we could have a whole series of events throughout the spring, summer, and fall live on the lawn.

So, I think that brings some incredible opportunities to us as a town, you know, and really we're just limited by the imaginations of our small business community and our recreation department.

[Speaker 3] (2:39:52 - 2:40:05)
I'm all for it. I just don't, you know, I don't want East Regiment or whoever they are to say, oh, well, I gave you 10% of mine, but this guy comes in another event, he doesn't have to do it or whatever. Do you know what I mean?

Right, can I speak to that?

[Speaker 9] (2:40:06 - 2:41:20)
That's why when we did the Fireworks Festival, we have like three main beer companies that we've been using, that we've partnered with. They come to the summer concert series and also do other events. So, what I've tried to do with them is to treat them all fairly and say, okay, so if you would like to participate in the Fireworks Festival, you all pay the same amount and that amount we try to equal what it's going to cost for the music.

And I picked music because that's probably the biggest expense that we have when we do that event. And then the same thing, I did the same thing with the Block Party. It was basically the same three beer companies and said the same thing to them.

Okay, there's three of you here. One newer notch wanted to participate too, but they didn't want to pay anything. So, I was like, well, these people have committed to this, so we all have to do it fairly.

So, you have to split it four ways instead of three ways. So, I've tried to be pretty fair to everybody.

[Speaker 3] (2:41:21 - 2:42:09)
So, maybe it's a matter, Danielle, of having like a rate sheet or something, like this is what it is, this is what it costs if you want to participate. Like, I think maybe, Amy, you can be part of this where, you know, considering we're looking at all fees, we're looking at all revenue, how we can maximize, maybe we look at it as, okay, let's see what we can charge to see how that can offset some issues that we're having, obviously, right now with budget situations. You know, and maybe it's like a sheet for these events, this is what it would be.

But if you're coming to this event and it's a fireworks fundraiser, maybe it's less and this is what we require, just so people can understand what they're getting into, right, and maybe to increase the competition. So, if you can get more people, maybe they're going to donate more, you know what I'm saying, just to kind of maximize your revenue. Maybe that's the answer.

I don't know.

[Speaker 9] (2:42:09 - 2:42:28)
Right. And beyond beer gardens, what we've tried to do with the block party is to invite everyone to come. And if you are a Swamp Scouts business, you don't pay anything to come to the block party, just as part of a, and maybe that should change.

[Speaker 3] (2:42:29 - 2:42:54)
Right, right, exactly. So, maybe that's, which is a really nice idea and it's great to do, but maybe we could get something extra out of there, right? Maybe we could, you know, take a little something, but, you know, I mean, it's just an idea, but again, if it's, if we put it out there and we make it, you know, public, this is what it is, that people can't come back and say later, oh, well, you know, I wasn't asked or I couldn't get in or, you know, whatever.

Right. You know what I mean?

[Speaker 9] (2:42:54 - 2:43:00)
That's just, but. Just so you know, I try to never say no. Oh, yeah.

[Speaker 3] (2:43:00 - 2:43:00)
No, I know that.

[Speaker 9] (2:43:01 - 2:43:10)
I mean, sometimes we have like all sorts of things and just because I don't want to say no to anybody. Right. Right.

No, I appreciate that. You won't marry me, right?

[Speaker 1] (2:43:10 - 2:43:23)
Right. All right. So on this event, so are we in agreement that if a local vendor, if one of the restaurants wants to participate in this event, that they can go in if they.

[Speaker 3] (2:43:23 - 2:43:25)
Oh, yeah. I don't think they've ever been told they can't.

[Speaker 1] (2:43:25 - 2:43:32)
Say Dockside or Mission or Anthony's or whoever wants to participate, they can be down there.

[Speaker 3] (2:43:32 - 2:43:37)
I don't think they've ever been told they can't. I don't believe that that's ever happened, right? I think.

That's correct.

[Speaker 9] (2:43:38 - 2:43:41)
Yeah. I don't think anyone's come to me to say we can't participate in this.

[Speaker 3] (2:43:41 - 2:43:44)
And I think we can expand our reach maybe and try to.

[Speaker 1] (2:43:44 - 2:43:47)
Have they received a phone call to say, do you want to come down here?

[Speaker 3] (2:43:47 - 2:44:17)
No, but I don't think that's ever been asked, right? I don't think anyone has ever said to Danielle, go call every business and see who wants to participate. So I don't know that that would be a natural reaction for her.

It wouldn't be for me, right? But if we want to give direction and say, like, maybe let's just do a rate sheet or however or, you know, have Amy look at it and come up with the best way that we can maximize potential revenue, then, you know, I'm sure that would be helpful for Danielle too.

[Speaker 9] (2:44:18 - 2:44:37)
Also keeping in mind what David said about all of these events are different from each other. Yes. The amount of people that come, you know, and so it has been, honestly, it's been a challenge for me to make sure I'm being fair at every single point.

Right. It is.

[Speaker 3] (2:44:37 - 2:45:10)
And that's what I want to avoid. I don't want anyone to come and say, well, you know, Danielle did this or the rec department didn't. No, we're not, you know, we're going to make it clear for you so you can't come back later and say, you know, I wasn't treated fairly or whatever.

And, you know, I know you're not doing that and I know you run a ton of programs and there are new ones every year, which is great, you know, and it's nice stuff. So I just think if we could get a little bit more consistent, you know, and get it out there, then there's really nothing that people can question, you know.

[Speaker 2] (2:45:11 - 2:45:27)
I think one thing we can standardize right off the bat is when these one-day liquor licenses come before the board, we can have that information of saying, you know, this is the profit sharing or these are the costs that they're covering in doing this event so that way you have that information as you're voting the license.

[Speaker 1] (2:45:28 - 2:45:30)
Have you looked at the fee on the one-day liquor license?

[Speaker 3] (2:45:31 - 2:45:33)
What is it, ten bucks?

[Speaker 1] (2:45:33 - 2:45:34)
Fifty dollars.

[Speaker 2] (2:45:34 - 2:45:44)
I'm just wondering. It's on your fee schedule. It was.

To increase? Huh? To increase?

It wasn't on there as an increase, but it is something controlled by the board, so. Yeah.

[Speaker 4] (2:45:44 - 2:46:06)
Yeah, I'm just worried that you have smaller events. You don't want to price yourself out of it either. Yeah, you do have some smaller events.

One of the other things on the consent agenda is sip and science. Yeah, I mean, so if you were to take that fee from 50 to 100 bucks or 50 to 75 dollars, that may. You don't want to discourage them.

Yeah, that may discourage them.

[Speaker 1] (2:46:06 - 2:46:09)
No, I don't, but maybe we want to look at bigger events.

[Speaker 2] (2:46:09 - 2:46:21)
We can also look at if it's possible to tier it. So if you have an event, you know, under a certain size, we have that with some of our permits and stuff too where it's, you know, up to the size, over the size, so.

[Speaker 1] (2:46:21 - 2:46:25)
All right, so then can I have a motion to. Thank you, Danielle.

[Speaker 6] (2:46:25 - 2:46:27)
So moved. Second.

[Speaker 1] (2:46:27 - 2:46:28)
All in favor?

[Speaker 5] (2:46:28 - 2:46:29)
Aye.

[Speaker 1] (2:46:29 - 2:46:38)
Aye. All right, so can I, can I have a motion to, that's everything here. Is that consent agenda?

Did we just do that? Yeah. Select board time.

[Speaker 3] (2:46:38 - 2:47:44)
I don't even know what I'm motioning. All right, select board time, Danielle? Yeah, select board time, okay.

I wanted to thank Chief Cassata, Officer Reen and Officer Wilson for donating their time to the glow dance at the elementary school this past Friday night. It was a banger of a time and they all came and they were on site and we appreciated that. I met with a resident this week and he had a great suggestion and it is a good old fashioned suggestion box and why maybe we could create one online on our website where people just go and put their suggestions and we look at it at every select board meeting and read whatever people are asking us.

It's a little bit old school, but it's a little bit like, okay, these are questions out there, these are what people are, you know, wanting to know and we ever, you know, we owe it to them to answer. So that was a great idea that I hadn't thought of. Yeah, so those are, those are the things that have come up in my week.

I know it sounds exciting, but that's all I have.

[Speaker 1] (2:47:44 - 2:47:58)
Doug? No. David?

Nothing to add. And I'm going to pass too, so can I have a motion to adjourn? So moved.

Oh, wait, Katie? I'm sorry. Katie is?

It's okay, Mary Ellen. I'll second. You don't have anything?

Oh, wait, I have one other thing.

[Speaker 3] (2:47:58 - 2:47:59)
I second the motion to adjourn.

[Speaker 7] (2:47:59 - 2:47:59)
One second.

[Speaker 3] (2:47:59 - 2:48:32)
Sorry, I have one other thing, Katie. I hate to interrupt you. The Town of Swampscott Community Jam is happening April 7th.

It is a DEI initiative. It's at the public library. Mary Ann has put a lot of time into this.

Katie and I have helped a little bit, but really most of it is on her. It is very exciting. We want the community to come out.

Again, this is a community initiative. Diane, this is on the website, I think, right? So we wanna hear from all residents about having an inclusive community and how we can get better at that.

So again, April 7th at the library from six to eight. Thanks.

[Speaker 7] (2:48:32 - 2:48:35)
And the request is that you sign up in advance, right, Danielle?

[Speaker 3] (2:48:36 - 2:48:43)
Yes, and there's a QR code and an email. And yes, some people have already registered, but we want as many as possible.

[Speaker 2] (2:48:44 - 2:48:49)
And no staff will be in attendance, nor will any elected, so therefore.

[Speaker 3] (2:48:49 - 2:48:54)
Right, it's open and free to say whatever you think, and we really want your feedback.

[Speaker 1] (2:48:56 - 2:49:01)
Thank you. Sorry. Okay.

Second.

[Speaker 2] (2:49:12 - 2:49:16)
One second. You guys are still live.

[Speaker 20] (2:49:16 - 2:49:19)
Okay. Are we adjourned or not? We're adjourned.

Okay.