2026-04-27: Select Board

Click timestamps in the text to watch that part of the meeting recording.

Select Board — April 27, 2026

Section 1: Agenda

  1. Call to order, pledge 3:44
  2. Town Administrator’s report 4:36 — weekly police/fire stats forthcoming; DOR Municipal Finance Fellow this summer; INI policy review of Swampscott Mall project; Hawthorne lease draft delivered; thanks to outgoing members
  3. TA six-month evaluation update from chair 9:59
  4. Public comment 10:22 — Miguel Contreras (53E½ flexibility on rec revolving fund); Tasia Vasiliou (April 15 follow-up; formal investigation request); Tom Burke email read aloud (support for 3.25% school budget)
  5. Cedar Hill Terrace residential parking proposal — discussion only, deferred 16:51
  6. Sewer-lateral inspection bylaw, first reading — presentation by Water/Sewer Infrastructure Advisory Committee chair (Kelly, remote) and vice chair Brian Norman 28:00
  7. Town Meeting warrant — taken out of order to free presenters 1:04:24
    • Article 10 (sewer-lateral bylaw) voted first 1:05:54
    • Articles 2–9 and 11 reviewed and voted in sequence
    • Article 9 (capital plan) significantly amended on the SB recommendation 1:39:17
  8. Hawthorne lease approval — Performing Arts Center operator 2:46:31
  9. Consent agenda (with March minutes and one hawker license pulled) 3:05:42
  10. Food-truck/peddler-at-beach policy discussion 3:08:06
  11. Select Board farewells — Doug Thompson and David Grishman 3:15:16
  12. Adjournment 3:36:39

Section 2: Speaking Attendees

The transcript’s Whisper-generated [Speaker N] tags shift assignment multiple times across the three-and-a-half-hour meeting; the same person is tagged differently at different points (e.g., the chair appears under several tags depending on audio routing). Identifications below are by content cues — self-introduction, role context, and topic — rather than tag continuity.

  • Katie Phelan (Chair) — runs the meeting, opens public comment, reads Tom Burke email aloud, conducts the warrant walk-through, frames votes, abstains on Article 4 due to her wife’s employment as a Middle School teacher, delivers tribute to Grishman in farewell (“my calls to you have not always been pleasant”).
  • Doug Thompson (Vice Chair, departing) — leads warrant amendment drafting on Article 9; opens the Grishman tribute (“waiting for like a week to honor Mr. Grishman”); gives his own farewell thanking Patrick Luddy and town committees.
  • David Grishman (Member, departing) — drives the sewer-betterment pushback on Article 9 line 63; gives a sharp farewell critiquing town counsel on real-estate matters (cites the consent decree, UU settlement, Archer Street).
  • Danielle Leonard (Member) — strongest objector to 7.3 of the Hawthorne lease (extraordinary-repair termination escape); delivers the “Danielle fashion” farewell to both departing members; abstains on Article 4 due to wife’s employment.
  • Mary Ellen Fletcher (Member) — asks about Fisherman’s Beach sea-level study, Humphrey Street ticket data, Cedar Hill site-line specifics; raises the parking-lot offer “from the monsignor” at the church; votes the lone NO on Article 4 (FY27 operating) citing the school “cushion account”; pulls the Hawker/Peddler license #3 from the consent agenda.
  • Nick Connors (Town Administrator) — opens with the TA report; mediates the betterment-policy discussion; surfaces the Hawthorne lease changes; commits to follow-ups (Marcy on Fisherman’s Beach; vendor RFP framework; Burl Street cost validation).
  • Patrick Luddy (Finance Director) — provides FinCom-recommendation status, FY26 transfer mechanics, capital-plan line changes; clarifies what FinCom has and has not yet voted on.
  • Kelly (W/S Advisory Chair, remote on Zoom) — Likely Kelly Slater, but name not stated in transcript. Presents the sewer-lateral bylaw, walks the slides, explains the KP Law non-criminal-disposition option.
  • Brian Norman (W/S Advisory Vice Chair, in person) — supplements Kelly’s presentation, fields the $300/day fine discussion.
  • Miguel Contreras (resident, School Committee member speaking in personal capacity) — self-introduced as “46 Buena Vista, speaking as a resident, not school committee member.”
  • Tasia Vasiliou (resident, town meeting member) — self-introduced as “resident of Lewis Road, town meeting member, and the former chair of the Board of Assessors.” Transcribed variously as “Basilio”/“Vasilio.” Followed up her April 15 SB comments by formally requesting an investigation and inviting Grishman to apologize.
  • Police Chief — present for Cedar Hill discussion; likely Chief Ruben Quesada but not named in transcript. Speaks to historical context and enforcement approach.
  • Captain Cable — police, identified by name in transcript; provided the site photos.
  • Joe (AV/tech) — handling the Zoom audio delay.

HUMAN-REVIEW: Tasia Vasiliou’s “former chair of the Board of Assessors” self-description conflicts with the 2026-05 political-context snapshot, which still lists her as Assessors Chair. Either her role has changed or the snapshot is out of date.

Section 3: Meeting Minutes

Town Administrator’s report 4:36

Connors announced weekly police/fire stat reports beginning Friday; a Department of Revenue Municipal Finance Fellow this summer working under Luddy and Liam Braley; ongoing INI-policy review of a Swampscott Mall project (engineering data under review); delivery to the board of the Hawthorne lease draft (final liability-insurance answer received the day of the meeting); committed to follow up on the Marcy-led Fisherman’s Beach sea-level-rise study (Fletcher had asked about it). Connors thanked Grishman and Thompson for the last six months.

Public comment 10:22

  • Miguel Contreras argued the town may have the wrong statute in mind for the rec revolving fund and that 53E½ allows more flexibility than 53D — fundraising, community events (Juneteenth, Pride, veterans), and beach operations / lifeguard programs in peer communities (Chatham, Hartwich, Wellesley) are funded that way. He suggested updating the bylaw to access the “very large excess balance” for revenue relief.
  • Tasia Vasiliou said she’d formally requested an investigation into the matters she raised on April 15, asked Grishman directly to apologize “to save the town the trouble of following through with a formal investigation,” and urged the whole departing board to consider apologies “to each other and to those that you’ve treated with less respect than they deserved.”
  • Tom Burke email (read by the chair) supported the 3.25% school budget increase.

Cedar Hill Terrace parking proposal 16:51

Town staff presented a plan: no-parking zones at the Humphrey corner and adjacent to the Four Seasons garage; the residential-side stretch designated resident-only with visitor passes. The police chief and Captain Cable supported it on sight-line and pedestrian-safety grounds (cars currently parking on the sidewalk push pedestrians into the street). Grishman initially read the photos as showing “plenty of room” and was corrected by Captain Cable on the sidewalk-obstruction point. Fletcher asked for the last 30 days of Humphrey Street parking-ticket data from Mission on the Bay to Four Seasons. The board agreed to defer the vote to allow neighborhood and business comment, with Leonard explicit: “I just want to make sure people have a fair shot.”

Sewer-lateral inspection bylaw 28:00

Kelly walked the bylaw: inspection-required-to-transfer (DPW certificate of compliance or non-compliance, valid two years, weather-extension up to six months post-transfer), $300/day non-compliance fine ceiling, repair within six months of transfer. Cost estimate per CCTV inspection ~$500. The KP Law optional addition — Mass General Law c.40 §21D non-criminal-disposition language (“ticket” mechanism) — drew the most debate. Leonard worried “may” introduces ambiguity and “playing favorites”; Brian Norman: “we either impose a fine and enforce it, or we don’t say anything about it because the wishy-washiness in the middle gets us into trouble.” Doug Thompson favored leaving KP’s language out because it muddied the existing clear shall language in §8A. The board reached consensus to omit the KP addition; if KP comes back saying it’s required, it can be added later. Discussion also surfaced that the inspection plus six-month repair window does not block a sale (intentional: peer-community model declined to mimic title-V because it could “create a real-estate burden crisis”), which Leonard pushed back on. Pre-town-meeting work assigned: peer-community failure-rate data (Danvers, Salem, Marblehead) and a cost-range communication for homeowners.

Town Meeting warrant — Article 10 first 1:05:54

With Kelly and Brian still present, the board took the article out of order: Select Board recommends 5-0 on the sewer-lateral bylaw as drafted (without the KP addition).

Article 2 (Prior-year bills) 1:09:11

Approved 5-0 after Luddy explained the larger-than-usual injured-on-duty medical claims line: four years of unrouted prescription-drug obligations for retired police/fire on service-related disability that had been mishandled by the carrier; benefits department has corrected the routing going forward.

Article 3 (FY26 amendment) 1:11:46

Approved 5-0 conditional on FinCom, who had not yet voted. Net-zero in/out shuffle: $130K to fund the settled police contract, $20K veterans benefits, $57K debt service, $20K street lighting, $18K interim accountant. Offset by salary-reserve, healthcare, and vacancy savings — no free cash used.

Article 4 (FY27 operating budget) 1:14:36

Luddy summarized FinCom’s Thursday changes: $1,500 and $8,500 recruitment/promotional exam funding removed from police/fire (consolidated under HR); state aid updated to House budget; cannabis excise estimate raised from $200K to $261K based on the four-year upward trend. Net impact: +$174K revenue, –$82.5K expense, reducing excess-levy use to just under $1.5M.

McNerney’s framing (“an override without asking for permission”) was recalled — Phelan replied that the town benefits from years of prior fiscal discipline; “this piggy bank” is now being leveraged. Vote: 3 in favor (Thompson, Leonard, Grishman), 1 NO (Fletcher), 1 abstain (Phelan). Fletcher: “I can’t support the budget with having close to half a million dollars sitting in a cushion account… budget is one thing, but not being able to support the budget with that cash is where I have my problem.” Phelan abstained because her wife teaches at the middle school.

Article 5 (CPC FY27 appropriation) 1:31:08

Thompson explained the standard 10% statutory set-asides ($88,750 each to historic, community housing, open space) plus admin (5% of revenue, per the Community Preservation Coalition guideline) and ~70% reserved for future projects. 5-0. Phelan thanked Thompson and Grishman for the CPA legacy.

Article 6 (Revolving funds) 1:34:36

Sponsored by the Select Board; $650K cap on the rec revolving fund retained (Luddy: temporary mid-year increase remains available if programming justifies). 5-0 conditional on FinCom.

Article 7 (Roadway improvements — Ch. 90 appropriation) 1:36:33

$300K Chapter 90 acceptance. Grishman attempted to nominate Essex Street; Phelan noted that’s not actually where he lives. 5-0.

Article 8 (Capital authorization amendment)

Placeholder with no current substance; will be indefinitely postponed at town meeting if nothing is identified by then.

Article 9 (FY27 capital plan) — amended 1:39:17

Patrick reported FinCom had on Thursday removed the $300K solar canopy design at the high school (with $150K grant offset) and $200K middle school gym A/V. Connors added that the $200K middle-school classroom space project would also come off because of the MSBA Statement of Interest moving forward — better to push it out and prioritize windows / track / trash.

The two big extended debates:

Item 33 — Solar canopy at HS. Thompson and Connors reported a Monday meeting with Max (Facilities) showing the project can be sized down while still capturing the Green Communities Climate Leaders grant (~$150K, no match required). Connors warned that without this, the universe of projects climate-leaders money can fund in town is narrowing fast. National Grid does have capacity to support generation at the HS (unlike the elementary site, where 5+ “utility years” of delay was the original blocker). Board moved to put it back in.

Item 63 — Sewer main rehabilitation, $3.5M. Grishman led the pushback: roughly $3M of public dollars has already gone into private laterals in the Stacy’s Brook area, and the same magnitude is expected for the next phase (~500 laterals × ~$6K). “I can’t approve that if we don’t have a mechanism where the town can recapture all or a vast majority of those costs. It would be fiscally irresponsible.” 1:58:32 Connors and Luddy described the betterment process — requires criteria-setting, public process, and a Select Board policy decision. Cresta had earlier indicated the existing prior-authorization funding can carry the work to December. Board removed the line from this warrant and committed to a betterment-policy public process for a December town meeting article. Phelan: “I generally agree with David… it doesn’t even sound like we’re 100% clear” — and Leonard concurred. Grishman pushed harder: he disputed Connors’s framing that this had been “discussed publicly since 2017” and questioned whether the Capital Improvement Committee had been told public dollars were going to private laterals. Connors: “we will provide a recommended criteria and sort of qualification for how we would go about doing it… that’s something we are more than happy to come back to the board with.”

Item 11 — Burl Street veterans space, $600K. Long discussion about a December 2024 vote whose intent the outgoing members were trying to lock in. Thompson and Grishman recalled committing to a separate fund / sale-of-real-estate-account treatment so the eventual B’nai B’rith payment would specifically reimburse the Burl Street work, not flow into general capital. Connors said staff had reviewed the relevant minutes and could not find that exact language. The compromise: the SB recommendation goes to town meeting at $600K (Max’s number, based on conversations with veterans and Marzi), with the floor open to amend upward if Max’s pre-town-meeting validation comes back higher. Connors and Luddy committed to come back to the board on the account structure in time for a December warrant article.

Thompson’s full amendment motion to FinCom’s recommendation: keep solar canopy at $300K with $150K grant (item 33); confirm $600K for Burl Street with amendment-on-floor upward flexibility (item 11); concur on removal of items 39 (classroom), 56 (gym A/V), 63 (sewer main); push these to outyears. Carried by Select Board vote.

Article 11 (Anti-coagulant rodenticide prohibition) 2:42:59

SB-sponsored; will replace duplicate citizen petition (Article 12) at town meeting. Approved.

Hawthorne lease 2:46:25

Connors walked through the late-arriving negotiated changes. Two notable points:

  • §7.3 Extraordinary repairs. Tenant may terminate the lease if a repair estimate falls under “extraordinary” and exceeds $30K, with §7.1 obligations (roof, foundation, mechanical systems, etc.) defining the universe but not excluding them from the $30K trigger. Connors noted this was negotiated down from a lower number the tenant initially proposed.
  • Lease economics. $10K/month × 26 months = $260K rent, plus property tax (~$150K — triple net) and liability insurance carried by tenant; town continues to carry property insurance. Estimated total benefit $620K plus utilities savings ($100K–$120K avoided) and projected meals/F&B tax.

Leonard’s objection was that §7.3 gives the tenant a near-trivial out: “you could probably get any contractor to walk in there and tell you there’s $30K of necessary repair.” She framed the broader concern: “I’m not looking to benefit this company… I’m looking for the best interest of this town.” Fletcher seconded the concern about open-ended quiet-enjoyment provisions and noise-amenity precedents (Little G).

Phelan, Thompson, and Grishman argued the alternative was an empty building generating no revenue and no progress toward a permanent RFP. Motion to approve as proposed, subject to lessee signing first, carried 5-0. Phelan committed she and Leonard would move promptly on a long-term Hawthorne RFP after the new board is seated.

Approved with the March 2 and March 18 minutes pulled (for updates) and the Hawker/Peddler license #3 (Joseph Sanchez, DBA Jane Austen’s, taco vendor at Fisherman’s Beach) pulled. The board concluded a town-wide food-truck / vendor-at-beach RFP framework is needed; Connors will work on something for next season modeled on Boston / Revere rotations. Fletcher: “I don’t want to be in a position where we have temporary food trucks or temporary food wagons… interfering with brick and mortar that are paying a lot of money in taxes.” Grishman concurred (Andre’s Taqueria comparison).

Select Board farewells 3:15:16

Sequential tributes — Thompson to Grishman; Grishman’s farewell with a critique of town counsel (“insufficient and should be replaced,” citing the consent decree, UU settlement, Archer Street); Leonard to both (“we have gone toe to toe, nose to nose”); Phelan to both (“my calls to you have not always been pleasant”). Grishman suggested permanently displaying past Select Board member names in Town Hall; Connors noted that’s already been done in the old Select Board meeting room since shortly after his arrival.

Section 4: Executive Summary

Hawthorne reaches a working resolution. A 26-month, ~$260K lease to a performing-arts/restaurant operator passed unanimously. For residents, this ends the long open question of whether the empty Hawthorne would generate any revenue before a permanent RFP. The §7.3 termination clause is a real risk surface — Leonard articulated it clearly and lost — but the rest of the board judged that an empty building is the worse outcome. Phelan and Leonard committed to opening the long-term RFP work after the new board reorganizes.

Sewer-betterment policy is now committed. The most fiscally consequential outcome was not spending the $3.5M for Phase 2 of sewer-main rehab. Grishman’s pre-departure push forced the board to acknowledge that prior phases of work effectively spent ~$3M of public money on private laterals (in the Stacy’s Brook MS-4 / consent-decree area), and that continuing to do so without a betterment-recovery mechanism is open-ended public liability. Connors committed to a public process and a December warrant article. This binds the next board to develop policy criteria they’d otherwise have been free to defer.

Capital plan culling. Three items pushed to outyears (middle-school classroom space $200K; gym A/V $150K; sewer main $3.5M), one item restored against FinCom (solar canopy design $300K, $150K grant-offset). The solar canopy restoration is the climate-leaders-money preservation argument; the project landed at the HS because National Grid has actual generation capacity there. The override-cliff context (already $1.5M of excess levy used in FY27, McNerney’s “override without permission” framing) makes the appetite for further capital-plan items thin.

FY27 operating budget passes 3-1-1. Fletcher’s NO on the school’s ~$500K “cushion account” is the only substantive dissent from the budget figures. She has been censured 12 days earlier but is clearly still operating on procedural-fiscal questions. Phelan’s abstention (wife teaches at the MS) is a recurring conflict accommodation.

Sewer-lateral inspection bylaw heads to town meeting with a 5-0 SB recommendation. The board declined to add the KP Law non-criminal-disposition “ticket” mechanism, choosing clarity over flexibility on the enforcement question.

Cedar Hill parking deferred. Police support is clear; the board wants neighborhood and business voice before voting. Both the proposal and the broader question of paid-parking revenue on Humphrey Street were named as priorities for the incoming board — Phelan and Thompson framed it as a town-with-a-city-problem governance gap.

Hawker/peddler-at-the-beach policy. Fletcher’s procedural objection (private vendor competing with brick-and-mortar restaurants paying meals tax) generalized into a town-wide policy question: an RFP-based vendor framework with rotating locations and a Recreation-administered process, modeled on Boston/Revere. The single Hawker application that triggered this discussion (taco/T-shirt vendor at Fisherman’s Beach) is being redirected to the farmer’s market application track.

Tasia Vasiliou’s formal investigation request extends the April 15 accountability theme. She did not name Fletcher directly but referenced the censure dynamics (“the inconsistency this board has shown in applying discipline”) and explicitly invited Grishman to apologize “to save the town the trouble.” On her face she is the former chair of the Board of Assessors — a status the current political-context snapshot does not reflect.

Final acts of the outgoing board. Thompson and Grishman leave the board after this meeting. The substantive marks they leave behind: the betterment-policy commitment, the CPA infrastructure continuing to accumulate ~$900K/year, the Hawthorne lease, the capital-plan culling. Grishman’s last public act is a sharp critique of town counsel’s real-estate work, identifying specific costs (consent decree, UU settlement, Archer Street).

Section 5: Analysis

The outgoing members extract durable commitments before leaving. The two most consequential procedural decisions — pushing the $3.5M sewer-main rehab to December pending a betterment policy, and locking the Burl Street veterans appropriation with an upward-amendment trigger — both originated with Grishman and Thompson. Neither will be on the board when the betterment policy gets drafted or when the Burl Street follow-up arrives in December. That’s the point. By forcing the items into the warrant timing, they constrain the new board’s degrees of freedom. The political context’s framing of Grishman as the SB’s “lone internal-transparency voice on the BBH/LDA process” fits — and that role plays out one more time tonight, in the sewer-lateral fight: he asks where the $6K-per-lateral money went, who knew, and whether the Capital Improvement Committee was ever told. Connors’s answer — “I will safely, I believe, has had at least initial conversations” — was not strong enough to carry the line. The vote-to-push reflects how thin the case for spending another $3M without recovery actually is.

Fletcher remains operative on procedural-fiscal questions. Twelve days after the unanimous censure, she is still raising substantive concerns and casting consequential votes (NO on Article 4, pulling the Hawker license from consent, asking about parking ticket data, raising the church parking lot offer). The censure was framed in the political-context snapshot as targeting “a specific act” (directing town staff on the police investigation of Grishman’s hit-and-run) rather than a moral verdict on her overall record. Tonight’s meeting bears that framing out: Fletcher’s substantive contributions are taken seriously and her objection on the cushion account is what produces the only NO vote of the night. Whether the post-April-28 board with Dooley and Spritz will treat her dissents as legitimate process or as residual noise is the open question.

Leonard’s loss on the Hawthorne §7.3 clause is the cleanest factional defeat of the night. She articulated the problem precisely — “you could probably get any contractor to tell you there’s $30K of necessary repair” — and got no agreement from the other four members, including Fletcher (her usual procedural ally). The pragmatic-vs.-rigorous split favored pragmatism unanimously. The risk surface she described is real; if it gets triggered, it’ll be cited back to this meeting. That said, both sides of the argument were transcript-grounded and on-the-merits — this wasn’t a faction fight, it was a judgment call about the marginal value of a likely-imperfect tenant versus a continuing empty building.

The “override-equivalent” framing is consolidating. Both Fletcher (in her NO) and the broader budget discussion treat $1.5M of excess-levy use as a real fiscal commitment, not free money. The political-context snapshot is correct that this is the next 18-24 months’ defining question. Tonight’s vote to remove $200K of MS classroom space, $200K of A/V, and a $300K design study — all under the rationale that the MSBA project, the trash contract, and the track repair are higher-priority — is the same fiscal-cliff logic applied at the capital-plan line-item level.

Tasia Vasiliou’s intervention sharpens the post-censure accountability axis. She formally requested an investigation and named Grishman directly (“I believe you were misled when all of this occurred”). The political-context snapshot’s careful disaggregation — that Grishman’s 2024 dispute with her over the abatement program was substantively defensible but executed abrasively, distinct from the 2025 hit-and-run conduct — is exactly the frame the current public exchange is testing. Her self-description as the former chair of the Board of Assessors, if accurate, is a roster change the snapshot has not yet absorbed. If she is no longer in that role, the political ecology of the abatement-program questions has shifted as well.

Connors’s neutrality holds. The TA was put in real tension on at least three items tonight — the December 2024 Burl Street vote whose minutes can’t be located, the sewer-betterment timing, and the lease §7.3 negotiation outcome — and in each case his answer was clear and bounded (“I’m not going to opine on what FinCom is aware of,” “we’d be happy to come back,” “this is the number Max put together”). The snapshot’s frame of “pure-execution TA posture” continues to fit; he absorbs disagreement without becoming a faction. His half-joking willingness to be told he was wrong on the Burl Street accounting and come back with the right approach is the cleanest signal here.

Inflection check. The meeting itself isn’t an inflection point on any single live issue — those happened at the April 15 censure and will happen again at the April 28 election. But the betterment-policy commitment and the Hawthorne lease together constitute meaningful before/after marks on two long-running issues. The next board’s first six weeks will be substantially shaped by what’s in tonight’s amended warrant and the December follow-ups that this meeting forced into existence.