Select Board - October 23, 2025

called to order the select board meeting October 23, 2025, arise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Okay, we'll start with Dedham citizens open discussion. Is anyone here tonight for open discussion? Anyone online? All right, seeing none, we can move on to the town manager's report.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. So just a few items this evening to update you all on. First, the Town Green project. As I think we mentioned maybe a few weeks ago, We've been working with the building department to get a building permit for the pavilion that has now been issued. and we have noticed from the contractor that the structure will arrive late November, early December and we're expecting a two to three week installation for that. So we're hoping by the first of the year we will have the structure installed at the town green and the project will be wrapped up. I should note that I met with the leadership of the town green working group earlier this week as well. They're planning a meeting in the next

I think they're working on some scheduling around that to go over everything, wrap up and possibly disband because they've completed their work. So I think that we'll see that on an agenda in the near future.

Moving on, Splash Pet. Just one follow-up question on that. So if the construction is starting during that period, does that mean that the town green would not be available during the Dino's Diastole?

We will have to work with the Dedham Square Committee to make sure that... You can get back to the answer. We'll coordinate with them to make sure that, you know, will be cognizant of that.

Yeah.

OK. Thank you. The splash pad project, we just issued a change order to the completion has been pushed back a little bit. We're expecting construction to wrap up November. at which point they will winterize and then they will come back in the springtime to activate and we will have a working splash pad in the springtime. Jason Mamone, a town engineer, has been managing that project. It is under budget, which is great, and We're a little bit behind schedule due to some lead time issues from the contractor, but we will have a functioning splash pad in the springtime, which I know many people in the neighborhood are excited for, across town are excited for, so that's good. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Fire Prevention Month has been going on all the month of October. As you heard from the Fire Chief, we've been continuing with our school visits and other community activities, getting a lot of positive feedback on that, so I wanted to

thank the chief and the fire department for doing that while they're responding to calls all over town and continuing to do the hard work that they do this month and every month throughout the year. And then last but not least, MBTA Readville, I know that we've heard from neighbors down there. It's actually quieted down somewhat as far as the railroad ties go. the health department was down there recently and noted that the large majority of the ties are now gone and the ones that are left are covered with tarps so that that is a positive improvement there and we'll continue to work on the National Grid noise issues with our neighbors in Boston. And that completes my report, but I'm happy to take questions.

Questions from board members? Thank you. Moving along to the consent agenda.

Move to approve the consent agenda including gift certificate. Gift expectances, $950 total, various donors for street mural, $100 memorial donation for library books, street closure, Richard Street, 10, 31, 25, 4 to 9 p.m., Aranopat Cellars, Wine and Malt, license at Winter and Spring Farmers Market November 2025 through June 2026.

Second. Hearing a motion and a second, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. and I'll entertain a motion to take up items not on the agenda.

Second.

and the items that are not on the agenda are to approve our Kadesh excavation LLC as a drain layer in Dedham and moved to approve wine and malt license for Bliss Point Meadery for the Dedham Winters Farmers Market.

So moved.

Second.

Hearing a motion and a second. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Let's move forward. Okay, up next we have several committees to hear candidate statements for. We'll start with the Facilities Master Plan Steering Committee, and Eli Bossen. Yes, you can come up to, thank you, to the podium.

Hello. My name is Eli Bossen. I live at 131 Court Street with my wife and two and five-year-old daughters. I'm currently serving as a Dedham Town Meeting member and appreciate the opportunity to be considered for the Facilities Master Plan Steering Committee. In my day job, I do work similar to what the Facilities Master Plan will do. I'm focused on developing and implementing facility improvement projects on behalf of municipalities and states. I just finished up a project for the Rhode Island Department of Education in partnership with their electric utility, evaluating 74 public school facilities across five municipalities. where we developed facility condition reports and made recommendations for implementing projects and setting priorities for future facility improvements. Mr. MacDonald, I'm sure you know Dr. DaSilva. quite well.

I'm also working as a technical assistance vendor for the Mass Clean Energy Center's Green School Works program, which provides funding and expertise to Massachusetts communities to evaluate and implement energy improvement projects in schools. on a day-to-day basis, I help state and municipal partners develop and evaluate facility improvement RFPs and I work extensively as an owner's agent on behalf of those municipal and state entities, partnering with facility managers and directors for public properties. I pride myself on being a collaborative teammate who's willing to listen to all ideas and work openly to find consensus, even when there are difficult situations with no obvious answers. I will be able to effectively evaluate and work well with whatever consultants are hired and can help to translate their work into plain language for the public. My oldest daughter just started. at the ECEC, and after this year she'll be going to Riverdale.

My family and I are deeply invested in seeing Dedham successfully implement a facilities master plan for our schools and municipal buildings. This board knows as well as anyone the challenges we're facing with a potential fiscal cliff, affordability issues for residents, and significant facility investment demands looming. As we saw with the Oakdale vote last year, if we are to find a path forward on those facility improvements, they must be done within the context of a coherent master plan that can answer questions of prioritization, budgets, procurement, and facility utilization and reuse. As is noted in the Master Plan RFP, this will require both an effective and efficient consulting partner and extensive input and buy-in from the Dedham public. I respectfully ask for your consideration as one of the representatives to the steering committee on behalf of the broader residents of Dedham.

I look forward to bringing technical expertise as well as a willingness to work on behalf of and engage directly with the residents of Dedham. the steering committee and its board member representatives and the selected consultant. Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you so much. Questions from board members?

A couple questions. Thank you for coming in this evening. So public engagement is really important in this, right? So how would you ensure that residents are informed and included?

I think we need to communicate across quite a number of different avenues. obviously the town has their communication methods, I think social media, there's a lot of Dedham community groups, and then I think engaging parent groups, PTO groups. I think there's sometimes it's hard for working families to really engage in the town processes. I can certainly appreciate that and I think it's a matter of reaching people where they are.

So with that, there's a lot of commitment to being on this committee. There's going to be a lot of work within the next 12 to 18 months. and as far as that end of it, you're committed to in-person meeting. I mean, it could be every two weeks.

Yes.

All right.

Thank you. Thank you. Other questions, comments from board members?

Hi, thanks for your interest. From your experience on these kinds of projects, do you have thoughts of what do you think some of the kind of most important are to make sure we get out of this what we need to?

I think we need to make sure that we're upfront with our consultants about the expectations. We need to see something that doesn't just reiterate what we already know about our facilities. It has to actually be a coherent step-by-step set of plans. These are the consequences of those steps. These are the budgetary consequences, the use consequences of the buildings. I think that's That's really what we've been missing so far is there's always a lot of questions of, well, what happens next? And what does the next thing cost? And that, I think we can't. We can't walk away without answers on that or it's failed.

Thanks. Thank you. Any further questions?

I didn't have a question, but just listen to your answers. I do have one now. So this isn't just focused on schools. Correct. This is focused on everything. what do you think how do you think from based on your experience that you'll be able to to look at the broader picture and not just on the on the school side yeah um i i do act i work with municipalities on

and municipal facilities as well. Two days ago I was in North Kingston working with them on their recreation facility. I'm very comfortable engaging facility personnel across municipal properties. Good, thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Eli. And we do have two other candidates who are unable to be here tonight, Steve Popper and Brandon Westerling, and we'll hear from them at our November 6th board meeting. Okay, next committee we have the Human Rights Committee. First up, John Sanders. Right here. Okay, thank you.

Members of the select board, thanks very much for having me. My name is John Sanders, and I live at 153 Court Street. I'm currently a teacher. working with students who are neurodiverse and have a variety of social anxiety issues. That's very much an environment where we try to include people. Prior to working at the school I'm at now, I've spent five years teaching in Boston public schools. At the time I got that particular position, it was a career change at the time, and I was intrigued by a story I'd heard on the radio about a teacher program that would allow me to work with urban student populations, which really appealed to me. I've long been very much involved or engaged in Inclusiveness Activities.

Right now we know that the concept of DEI is very much under attack and in disfavor. I would like to be a part of the bulwark of trying to push back on that in small ways where possible. such as here on the committee. Additional examples of the sort of work I've done in this regard is when I lived in Colorado. I've been lucky enough, by the way, to live in many places. In Colorado, I conducted a training program for refugees from Laos at the time who had been prisoners of war during Vietnam and such. and afterwards, and I provided instruction for the citizenship exam, arranged for English translation or English instruction as second language, so that they could have a chance at that. Earlier than that,

When I was a student in Chicago, I worked with a bank on the south side of Chicago, which unfortunately is no longer there, but called South Store Bank, and they were a community development bank, specifically meaning that they would take deposits anywhere in the country, any interested investor who had an interest in community improvement and inclusiveness. And they invested this money in a specific neighborhood on the Chicago South side. and made it economically a very viable neighborhood by that kind of work. And I did marketing plans for them. I am currently living in Dedham. actually for currently more like 22 years now I came back and it was a homecoming because my whole family is from here. I was born in Chelsea. You don't hear the accent simply because I wasn't raised around here.

but I think that Boston has historically been seen as a community with many problems in terms of inclusiveness. I think their reputation is a bit old fashioned now, but I think it's always a concern in many communities. And again, I think because of the climate we're in now, I think it's important for entities such as the town to have the means of bringing people together, finding opportunities for people to feel represented and for people to integrate with one another as well. Thank you.

Questions from board members?

I have a question.

Sure.

I'll go into my first question is also, as always, schedule and in person, et cetera. OK. You just mentioned. Climate, right? The climate that's out there now. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So how would you bridge differences between groups or individuals that strongly disagree with each other? How would you do that?

That's a brilliant question. I think what would be useful in that regard is I think you have to reach people in their own communities that might be in community centers, places of worship, and try to reach out in something of an ambassadorial way, bringing people in who are interested in making those kinds of inroads with other communities that maybe haven't been well, don't feel well received or don't feel that they've been treated in a very friendly way. I think it's a slow process. I think you would have to do combinations of things, anything from educational programs like panels to simply sharing resources at a farmer's market where you can have different foods from different communities.

People can come together and share those things that they think made their own community special and educate people about who they are and try to find ways to make them feel welcome at Dedham.

Other questions? All right. Thank you very much, John. Thank you very much. Tracy Franklin.

Hi.

I'm Tracy Franklin, 727 East Street here in Dedham. I come before you as a lifelong resident of the town of Dedham, a disabled American and a biracial woman a single mother of a perfect teenager and a dedicated community leader. I graduated from Dedham High School in 1990 as most likely the first black child to complete K through 12 in Dedham. I'm yet to hear different. The town I graduated in was markedly different from the Dedham that we know today, which is now enriched with greater culture and diversity. This is something that I would like to foster and see grow. I'm a co-founder of the Dedham Coalition for Equity and Inclusion, DCEI, established in 2020 by a group of Facebook moms in response to the tragic deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

DCEI is rooted in the values of equity, inclusion, community empowerment. Since its inception, it has grown to over 1,500 members. I have been fortunate enough to co-chair the community engagement group successfully hosting several Juneteenth celebrations in collaboration with the Human Rights Commission, the HRC. Additionally, I'm also the co-chair of the Police Communication Liaison Group, working alongside the Dedham Police Department. We organized National Night Out for the police department, those events here in Dedham, for several years. My mission through this group has always been to dismantle the blue versus black lives narrative. that's often perpetuated in our society. People who feel that it has to be a police officer versus a black person. That never sat well with me.

So working with the Dedham Police Department, and the group that we have there. As I think it was Dimitria who said, what do you do when there's two opposing sides? That was my contribution right there. In the community, I have proven that I am not afraid to get involved and do the work. If given the opportunity, I'm excited to bring fresh ideas and insights. like helping to organize more multicultural events within the community and publish educational letters to the Dedham Times all while aligning with the mission of the Dedham Human Rights Commission. Thank you to the select board for supporting the HRC and for your consideration.

Thank you, Tracy. Questions from board members?

I always do. My famous one about you're available at all times, et cetera.

I am.

Are you on any other boards or committees?

Not within the town, just DCEI.

Just, okay. And so the phrase human rights, right, what does that mean to you in the context of a local community like Dedham?

In reference to a whole community?

In the local community of Dedham.

Human rights covers a broad spectrum. That is everyone inclusively. socioeconomic, race-based, every single member of this community in what they deserve.

And that's under that umbrella.

Under that umbrella, yes. Thank you.

Any other questions? Thank you, Tracy. Andrea Crowell.

Hi, everybody. I'm Andrea Crowell. I live at 333 Bridge Street in Dedham. I have just a few brief remarks I prepared. Public speaking is not my forte, so I will try to stick to my script. So a little bit about me. I've lived in Dedham for 10 years with my son, who's in the fifth grade at Riverdale. Over that time, we've come to love living in Dedham and have built a sense of community, really feel included here. We appreciate the way people tend to look out for each other and take pride in making Dedham a great place to live.

I'm applying for the Human Rights Commission because I care deeply about ensuring that Dedham continues to be a place where everyone feels welcome, respected, and able to participate fully in the community life. As the town grows and changes and a lot of the social issues we're facing these days, I think the Commission plays an important role in helping us navigate those changes with empathy, understanding, and inclusion. In my professional life I've spent More years than I'd like to count, about 20 years working in the legal field, specifically in intellectual property, in legal operations, and I currently work at Moderna in Cambridge. I've been involved with the Riverdale PTO and organizations like Cradles to Crayons, Rough Tales Rescue, and Amnesty International.

Those experiences and along with my professional experience has taught me a lot about collaborations, communication, and the importance of showing up when it counts. If appointed, I bring that same energy to the commission, helping with community events and education, supporting inclusion efforts, and being a dependable teammate. So thank you all for your consideration. of Supporting the Human Rights Commission, and Dedham.

Thank you.

Questions from board members?

St. Dimitria. So I saw that you had put here evenings, weekends are fine for you. So my question to you is, how would you measure the success of the Human Rights Commission's work?

I think success would be being more known in the community. I think not everybody knows about the mission of the Human Rights Commission and the value that we bring to the community. So I think, for me, that would be a big measure of success is having people know who we are. that we're a resource that's available to them if they need it, whether it's helping organize an event or propose some new ideas for the town to get the community together.

Other questions, comments? All right, thank you, Andrea. Thank you. Our next committee, we have the conservation, we have two separate postings for the conservation commission. One is for the associate member, there are two open seats and one candidate, David Hildeman.

Madam Chair, members of the board, thank you for hearing me out tonight. I live at 15 Prospect Street. I walked here this evening. My wife and eight-month-old son live there. lived in Dedham for three years and are vested in the foreseeable future of Dedham and are very interested in conserving the town's wetland resource areas. My experience and background and education all align well with a position on the Conservation Commission. I am a licensed professional engineer in Massachusetts. My specialty is water resource engineering and environmental engineering. I am a professional wetland scientist, so I'm well versed in of Wetland Delineations and Wetland Restoration.

And most importantly, I have several years of experience of project review, working as a environmental engineer in the wetlands program in Boston at MassDEP. So I am intimately familiar with the importance of the conservation commissions. I have attended and presented at the spring and fall conferences of the MACC, as well as conducted and led trainings for wetland delineation and wetland restoration to conservation commissioners across the state. So thank you for your consideration tonight.

Thank you. Questions from board members.

Do you serve on any other committees?

Not in Dedham.

And this is your first? Thank you.

Yep.

being on this committee, you can work with developers, abutters, and also what the needs of the conservation committee are. How would you approach balancing environmental needs with Growth, I'd say that, or reasonable land use.

Sure. Yeah, I think the regulations and the bylaws speak for themselves. And so I would interpret the regulations and laws to the best of my ability for any applicant that was before the commission. And so overall, the hope would be to be fair and just. So I think that gives everybody the same seat and the same opportunities.

Yep.

Other questions? Thank you, David.

Thank you.

And we've previously had heard statements from applicants. Was that at our September meeting? Last meeting was Lee, who was the incumbent. So there's two seats. Okay, thank you. Next up is the Conservation Commission resource member. There are three open seats. We're hearing from two candidates tonight. Is Sophia here?

on Zoom.

Thank you. Yes, welcome.

Thank you. I know I spoke a few meetings ago, and I'm kind of in connection with Meredith and Nancy Bader since May. but I appreciate having the opportunity to speak again tonight and give a little bit more of a less formal statement about why I'm interested in joining the conservation profession as I've said, a formal one would be a no. For those who don't know me, my name is Sophia McKinnon. I am a lifelong Dedham resident. I was raised in this town. I've been involved in this town since I was young, since I've been in the school system, I guess, through sports and through school activities. I'm also continuing to stay involved in the town through engagements with whether it be the craft fair that my mom runs or other local events and I'm also a

which I was raised, and I am a student at the University of Vermont right now where I'm studying sustainability, ecology, and policy with a special focus on environmental planning, policy, and law, and also a minor in Spanish. and I believe that my academic qualifications are very relevant to this position as a research associate member. conducting research for the Vermont legislature and that connection with official policy making

I also received studying abroad in Costa Rica where we conducted field research specifically pertaining to water conservation and water quality. In terms of community engagement, I'm in the Climate Action Collective up here in Burlington, Vermont. We're working on local grassroots campaigns for environmental issues. I guess I'm not exactly positive what their role, contain what my responsibilities would be, but I'm happy to contribute as much as possible

I'm very happy to contribute to the conservation commission's mission to protecting wetlands as much as possible. And I very much appreciate your time and consideration.

Thank you. Thank you, Sophia. Questions from board members?

Hi, Sophia. Thank you for joining us again. Appreciate your time. What do you think one of the most pressing environmental issues that we could be facing in Dedham right now is? That's a tough one.

Dedham.

Or around. Anywhere.

I think the state of Massachusetts and then definitely relevant for Dedham, energy, where we're getting our energy from is a big environmental issue right now. That's something that I'm working on up here actually in Burlington about Hurley to Vermont, I'm not sure if anybody's aware, is technically a net zero city. It's the first in the United States. And it's a bit of greenwashing. It seems like it's net zero because we aren't We are burning biomass for a large portion of our energy and that is causing water issues and it's affecting the lakes, it's also causing water issues I think that is something that does not only go to Vermont, but to Massachusetts and to Dedham as well.

Thank you. Thank you for that answer. Thank you.

Other questions? and Sophia, is it my understanding that since we last saw you, you have been in touch to present tonight because you're also graduating in the next month, is that?

Yes, so I'm a senior at UVM, but I'm a final semester senior, which means I'll be graduating in December. And I will be remaining up here in Burlington through the second semester, so through May. But I will be home from late November through December and January, and I will be back in the summertime. And I plan on moving back to Dedham after I graduate, so I will be able to attend meetings in person come September.

Thank you. Thanks, Sophia. Thank you for attending tonight. Next, Matthew Lane.

Hi, thank you. I'm Matt Lane. I live at 11 Contentment Place, Contentment on the Banner. Lived there for 23 and a half years. My wife Dasha is a teacher in the Dedham schools. I guess I don't really know much about the Conservation Commission, honestly, and I saw the ad and I thought, like, I've been in Dedham a long time and I think I can contribute. So my undergraduate training is in biology, ecology, evolution, plant and animal biology. I have a PhD in biochemistry and I'm currently a faculty member at Boston University School of Medicine. and Assistant Dean of Research there. So I have a lot of experience working on teams, reading complicated documents and policy. I think the most pressing issues, I believe, are water. Really, that is the most pressing. The drought in Massachusetts has gone on. Groundwater. I also think invasive species is another significant problem.

I'm available in the evenings for meetings and that's my quick pitch.

Thank you. Thanks, Matthew. and just because it's come up twice now, Leon, could you just very briefly share what the role of specifically the resource member is on the Conservation Commission?

So the resource members are folks who, they're not full members of the commission, but they are asked to assist with sharing their professional backgrounds. So as we've heard, we've got folks who have biology backgrounds, ecology, wetland science types of backgrounds that can help contribute to the work that the the Conservation Commission does, especially as it does updates to plans and regulations and things of that nature, but not ruling specifically on applications. That's my understanding. And Jeremy's back there.

You can correct me if I'm wrong. So advising, lending, experience. That's correct. Thank you. Questions from board members?

Just one comment. Please. I have to say that probably the most impressive CV that I have seen come through here, so thank you for...

I was a little ashamed to send the full one.

This is not the full one? It's most of it.

But anyway, but thank you for stepping up and wanting to volunteer for our community. Thank you.

You answered my questions. So thank you. Saw it coming. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right, I believe that's all of our candidate statements for this evening. And again, I echo what Jim just said. For all of our candidates, Dedham runs on the engagement of our volunteers. thank you for stepping up and showing an interest in participating in a more structured way in our town, so thank you.

So Madam Chair, also remind them that we are not voting tonight, and I'm sure you have something else you would rather do, so there's no, it's okay to get up and, you're welcome to stay, but it's okay As you saw a few minutes ago, you don't have to stay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Have a good evening.

Have a good evening.

Okay, up next we have an update from Director Jeremy Rosenberger. That's planning, zoning.

Good evening Madam Chair, members of the board. I thought I'd share a hard copy just in case you want to take that home and look it over. Thank you. want to give a quick update on all that is going on at the Planning, Zoning, and Natural Resources Department. Oh, I have a clicker. Lovely. Most importantly, we have a counter. I know, it's thrilling. And it's amazing how it matches everything else. I am not a carpenter and I was amazed at what these carpenters could do to match and make it look like it was part of the building when it opened back in 2020. But anyways, we're happy to have it. Staff is happy to have it. There's seven of us full-time staffers that make up the Planning, Zoning, and Natural Resources Division. We merged. planning, zoning, and stormwater back in 2023.

And the counter was one of our hopes. We can provide better customer service. You can see we have screens. A lot of what we do with our customers, if not on the phone, is visually. We deal with maps. Many folks ask about their properties. And so we are actually able to get right to the chase with a visual conversation about their property and any questions they might have regarding zoning, stormwater, conservation, wetlands, et cetera. So we're very happy, and thanks to all that made this happen. So just some updates. We have our conservation division. They support the Conservation Commission and it sounds like we have some awesome candidates for you to choose from. Always great to hear. and again the resource associate is really, I'd like to say it's a junior position and often it's a learning experience for folks to get their feet wet, no pun intended.

and ultimately when the time comes and an associate position comes up, they can go for that position. It's a great opportunity to be able to have those junior positions for folks that are just looking to get started. Conservation Commission also supports the Open Space and Recreation Subcommittee. And we also have the Sustainability Advisory Committee. So it keeps them very busy. Conservation Commission, as you know, meets twice a month and that's the bulk of the workload when it comes to staff to support that commission was active. Also, what's been going on in 2025, the wetlands bylaw was most recently updated. It hadn't had an overhaul since 1996. updated the fees nominally, codified the tree policy of the Conservation Commission, which is ultimately a replacement of two to one for any trees over six inches in caliper.

they've also been up to open space and recreation plan update and you'll see on your screen. I'm happy to invite you members and also members of the public this Saturday at the Avery will be the first community meeting for the update of the 10 year Open Space and Recreation Plan. This will be really a brainstorming session and engagement between the members of the public and staff that are working on this and the subcommittee. This is funded by a grant match with MAPC. So it's $40,000 study. The town has provided $20,000, and MAPC is matching that. and again this is a 10-year plan the last one was done in 2019 it was a six-year plan and so I think for the better the state has actually changed some of the parameters of it and making it every 10 years Six years is a bit of an odd time to remember, but so we'll do that every 10 years. And most importantly, and I think for all of our department, is engagement with the public. looking in this year. We do lots of engagement.

But what can we do more to outreach to the folks, engage them, and ultimately promote all the great things that we're doing? And that's easier said than done. often we're going about our typical stuff and we forget about telling the story of what we're up to all week and all the great events and all of our milestones. I don't know if anyone attended. We had the Biodiversity Day back in May, which is always a success and will continue on. That's been a great engagement with the community over at the Dolan Center. and actually surprising also a popular request to come back as some wetland regulation trainings. So for folks that that are in the trades that have some association with wetlands and might not know much about it. We provide some trainings and 101s for folks that want to know more about our wetlands and resources. So those have been very popular.

We also have our stormwater division. Susanna Sullivan started four months ago and she's been taking a look at our stormwater regulations to make sure that they are up to date and that we are ensuring that we're regulating stormwater, but we're also flexible. And that is an ongoing effort because, and truthfully, stormwater is a bit of a new topic. when it comes to municipalities. And so she's been working with other cities and towns to ensure that we are understanding what other folks are doing, what best practices. Also been doing a lot of engagement. I think one thing that we're really working on is to the stormwater fee. We have multiple tiers and we've noticed that there's a number of property owners, both business and commercial, that are on the cusp of these tiers. That if they removed, say, a couple hundred square feet of pavement or sidewalks, could actually go down to a lower tier and save a significant amount of money.

So we are outreaching to those folks because, no surprise, folks would love to have to pay less. So one thing we can do is be proactive and reach out to those folks, have a conversation, and see how we might be able to reduce their stormwater fee. Moving on to the Planning and Zoning Division, we support the Planning Board, Zoning Board of Appeals, and Design Review Advisory Board, and definitely there's always a topic du jour of committees, mostly recently got to assist and support the Water Resource Advisory Committee, which I think we'll be presenting hopefully in November. So always happy to lend a hand for any committees that pop up and need support and administrative support. So planning, we've been, as I think we've talked previously, we have a million dollar, the town is benefit of a million dollar mass works grant that we received this past May, and this grant is to

improved the transportation infrastructure and safety in and around Legacy, namely looking at the intersections of Elm Street and National Drive, that's the no left-hand turn exit onto Elm Street of Legacy Place, looking at, most importantly, the intersection of Providence Highway and Legacy Boulevard, which I think we've all been stuck in, or probably heard from constituents and residents that they've been stuck in that. But the goal is that this is a high priority area for growth for the town. in its current state, it's maxed out, it's unsafe, and especially with the holidays coming, it gets even busier. So this million dollars, the state recognized that this is an important place for the state and also for the town. How can we improve that situation? and so we've been working on preliminary 25% design plans right now and ultimately working with the property owners who all have a stake in the improvements of this too. How can we best improve these intersections?

because, as you probably know, Legacy Boulevard is actually a private roadway. So to make changes to that requires working with our private property owners that have a variety of different interests along that roadway. In addition, we have the state that owns Providence Highway and then the town who has ownership along Elm Street. So we're just getting started. This is going to be a two-year process, and I'm sure we will be back. since the select board is the commissioners of the roadway, to talk about any improvements when we come up with them. To complement that, we are waiving a decision from the state, Gesundheit, for a $105,000 zoning study in and around Legacy Boulevard. As I said, Legacy Place is probably one of our, if not the economic engine of the town when it comes to commercial taxes and commercial growth. And what we've seen is residential growth.

and while we want to tackle the safety and transportation issues, this is an area that wants to grow. We know folks want to be there. and we'll see there are some projects slated to be around in this area. And no surprise that more folks will want to be here. It's near the highway, has an MBTA commuter rail station with easy access to the city. So this makes sense for growth for the town of Dedham. Dedham. It's out of the neighborhoods, though it's becoming a neighborhood. But nonetheless, we want to take a look at our zoning to what can we do to ensure that we continue to have commercial growth which we need and we want more, but at the same time we are losing it to the increased housing demand. We know that the most valuable use or reuse of a property is for residential. and but if a property is going to turn residential, what can we do through zoning to ensure that there's some commercial leftover or prioritizing commercial?

So we will hopefully get that award and we'll be able to hire a great consultant team that will help both the planning board and staff and the town as a whole to conduct a community process to look at this important area. As you probably know, the planning board has sponsored six town meeting articles. We were in this room last night deliberating and voting on those and making recommendations to the town. I will say that for the bulk of them it's really about beautifying our commercial corridors and reducing pavement, making our commercial corridors an even more inviting place. and also there is one town meeting petitioner that's generated a lot of interest, I'm sure you're aware. And lastly, we're working on another hot topic and what was passed at Springtown meeting is an ADU guidebook. The building department and also the planning department Department have received a lot of inquiries about ADUs. Folks want to know how they can build one, and ultimately we've

We folks have found out that it's actually a lot more complicated. Homeowners that want to do 800, 900 square foot addition, convert their garage, et cetera, it's actually a lot more complicated than what they thought and more costly. So we want to put a guidebook that can be a resource to folks that we can first present to them and also a host on our website that they can consult first and then ultimately come to staff when they've really understand all the constraints and what might be required to do an ADU. and, as you know, this is a popular topic across the Commonwealth since the legislation allowed, by right, ADUs of roughly less than 900 square feet with some parameters. So that's us. I feel like we've always been a bit ahead of the curve on all this. I definitely have not seen many cities and towns with any guidance when it comes to ADUs. So we want to be proactive and get the messaging out there. So hopefully come 2026, we'll have that out.

Future, always looking to seek grant money, and we've been very successful, as you've heard. We're looking, as part of our three-pronged approach, looking at economic development and economic growth. One is we definitely would be looking for a macroeconomic strategy for the town. Hopefully, next year, we'll be able to find a grant opportunity for that. But in the meantime, we want to look at the E Street corridor study. Part of our master plan was to look at certain corridors in the town where we should take a look at redevelopment of underutilized properties and also protecting neighborhoods. And we did the same. This would be similar to what we did on Bridge Street, which actually had a bunch of articles that were actually successively approved by town meeting in the spring. And hopefully we'll be finding grant money to have a community process for that. and lastly, kind of randomly, is looking the underpass at Dedham Square. I know a lot of folks have talked about what could happen there.

So we are always on the, Outlook for grants that might help visioning of how can we make an underpass a more attractive area? Is it a place for a Market. Is it a place for skateboarding? Is it a place for food? We need to study it. And obviously, there's environmental issues as there's animals that live up in those rafters. But I know many folks have talked about it, but I'm an ambitious fellow, and I'd like to find some funding for us to move the needle a bit on what can we do with this underpass. and that's a good overview. So definitely wanted to leave it off with some of the development that's going on. Always happy to come to you and talk about what's the planning board up to and what's the development world up to. What was approved last year and most recently is a file for building permits is at the end of Sturgis Way by Norbloom Companies is 150 unit mixed use development. hopefully we'll be seeing that under construction in 2026.

They're, I believe, probably midway through their building permit review process and they have expressed, I mean, as you probably know, not many construction projects are actually moving forward in the Commonwealth and the Norbloom Company who owns this and wants to develop it is committed to actually building it. And I think they feel like that's a strategic way to get ahead of everyone else. And I think you'll all attest that they will be bringing very high quality housing adjacent to Legacy Place where folks want to live. and you can see in the foreground, folks will have a nice resource of wigwam pond, which we will continue to improve environmentally. along Bridge Street. Also approved last year was the redevelopment of Mosley's properties, both the parking lot, the vacant parking lot, and the former dance hall. This is 86 units spread across those two properties, and you can see a nice Vantage Point containing those two buildings.

I think one of the important aspects is going back to our Bridge Street Corridor Plan and working with the community, there are the public benefits that were talked through this process that they will be providing a public park I would say it's about the size of the town green, maybe a little smaller that the public will be able to access and actually see the waterfront and take a breath. We discussed this last night. This is 2 Bridge Street, otherwise known as Waterford's. This will be a 26-unit condo development. also about 3,000 square feet, I think plus or minus 60 seat new restaurant. And I believe they're also proposing a potential public canoe launch, going back to, as you probably know, this was a mecca of canoeing. in the 20s and years before that. So they want to tip their cap to that, and they're not bringing the carousel back that was across the street, but maybe someone else will come up with that.

but nonetheless a very attractive design that will be going through the review process by the planning board and into 2026. This is the Hilton. The owners are proposing to convert this from I believe it's 200 and some odd rooms to roughly up to 160 units of apartments. their push is that the Hilton Hotel is just not bringing the revenue that it needs and that, no surprise, the residential market is how to make it feasible. and so they've been working with the planning board on the conversion of this building that will really be really mostly interior. But I mean the site, the planning board has said it really hasn't been touched since the 80s and this is an opportunity to improve it. And a great location, of course, next to the MBTA commuter rail. Dedham definitely needs more food for us to spend our hard-earned money.

As you probably know, Dedham is, and we will again, talking about being proactive, is, I think many towns would be envious of our culinary institutions that are in this town, from fast casual to fine dining. Dedham has it all. Corporate restaurants, and small businesses. So I'm happy to hear. I don't know if you've been to First Watch. I've been there. Great breakfast. Everyone loves breakfast. And so this would be another addition. This would be actually at Dedham Plaza. right near the kitty corner across the main entrance into Dedham Plaza. Be on the opposite side of the main entrance to Panera, where I believe it's pretty much a vacant parking lot in Seagulls right now. So they're committed to about a 4,000-square-foot restaurant, and this would be serving breakfast and lunch, and that will be undergoing review probably starting in December. 124 Quabish. This might sound familiar.

There was a project approved here, a mixed use development of 294 units by the planning board back in 2022. And I like to use this term due to a lack of favorable financing environment, the project has stalled and actually the developer, Mr. Joe Federico, has decided to do a different project that ultimately he feels converting it to an entirely residential project of 380 units would be much more viable. We all know it's very expensive right now. Construction costs keep going up. Construction loans are through the roof. So it's a tough environment to build. And so likely, probably in 2026, We will see a new process for development here. And just to note that this is actually part of our MBTA community zoning area, which allows by right multifamily projects.

So this project would actually be by right and it would still have to go through site plan review with the planning board. But ultimately, it's the same size. It's more units. it's losing the commercial component which would have been a tough you know those units would have been tough to fill being right adjacent to legacy place trying to fill those commercial units so and instead they'll be providing more units and lastly, this has been a long time coming, been talking about this site since I started here six years ago, is 359 Washington Street. This is across the street from Blue Ribbon Barbecue, C2 Body, one story vacant building. there's a proposal likely to be taken up next month for a 14-unit condo commercial project, mixed-use project to replace that one story I think we would all say I saw in Dedham Square.

and I believe that is it. So always something going on. I definitely like to highlight the restaurants here are booming. We keep seeing new restaurants come and it's not just ones that are coming and going, but actually new ones like the First Watch. We have Just Salad, not to promote anymore, but for folks that want a little more on the healthy end, that's taking the old Santander Bank. So we'll definitely be doing what we can to promote that and hopefully get it to a larger audience than just locally, that folks will recognize and it's a great source for us is meals taxes. So folks are definitely coming from other neighborhoods to spend their money here and hopefully they'll, in addition to going to restaurants, will also go to all of our other retail and commercial establishments and spend some money. Thank you.

Thank you, Jeremy. Questions from board members? Michelle?

Thank you. You all have a lot going on. Thank you. It's good to see, especially projects where there's and other redevelopment spots that aesthetically are not doing what we want and not bringing in the tax revenue they could and see those spots improved. I have a more general question. I know it's been a couple years now and a restructure of your department and I would just love to hear your thoughts on that like if you feel like it's done what folks hoped it would do in terms of efficiency and communication and working together and you know where the pros and cons and just the progress and all of that.

I speak for staff. I think it's great. We're all within one cozy area. We all deal with land use. Typically, any building permit or larger project deals with all of us to have us all in the same area. in communicating, prevents the cliched silo effect. We're right across the hall from building departments, so we have this nice little land use wing were always in constant communication, and not to mention that working off brainstorming and coming with ideas together. So I think it's worked out great, and I'm thankful for us to be combined? And I think staff would echo those sentiments. and lastly I'd like to say that as I guess the planning director I'm having a lot of staff that are either new or been in the public sector for a couple years.

I like to say that I serve as a bit of a mentor to them too, to understand how to get through government. I've been doing this for 23 years. still learning bureaucracy, but I'm able to mentor them of how to get through and how to get things done. And I think that's an important aspect to learn from. And so I'm happy to share what I've learned to folks that want to spend their career in the public sector also.

Other questions, comments? Dennis.

Thank you. Thank you. Jeremy, first of all, I just want to thank you for your energy, your enthusiasm, your expertise, all that you bring to the planning department. It's truly appreciated. The importance of what you do can't be understated what the whole department does. So thank you to everyone in the whole department from beginning, middle to end. you know new growth is vital to the financial future of this town and you know a lot of times people want to point the finger at spending and spending is something we could always do better on but at the end of the day The only way we really move the needle on the financial future of this town, in my opinion, is with new growth. And it's encouraging to see some of these new proposals We have to change the way that we think about Dedham.

When I was in high school, people were afraid Dedham was going to go the other way and be an undesirable place to live. and the complete opposite has really happened. Dedham is one of the most desirable places to live anywhere. We are in the epicenter of one of the most coveted places to live, work and be on planet earth. and so the land is valuable. It's great to see redevelopment happening. I think that's vital to the future of the town. Economically, I think we all have to keep an open mind as we go through this because change is hard. It's hard. It always is. But it also brings a lot of good to this community, both experientially and financially. So thank you for what you do and look forward to continuing Thank you, because everyone's great.

Other questions? No, go ahead.

So thanks very much for a good presentation, Jeremy, and explaining to everybody that's watching and that will re-watch what's going on. One of the areas of concerns that I have is, and you mentioned it, that we have parcels that have permits. you talked about the Sturgis way and then now going in a different direction with a larger unit, larger impact to the community, but nothing has happened yet. And I think you said it was, When was the first one approved, 2019?

2022, if we're talking about 124, Quabbish.

And then we have, then we all, for those of us down in Riverdale know what happened to 80 Bridge Street prior to what we see now, is that as a project starts, then stops and it's an eyesore for many, many, many years until you get a good developer that comes in and is able to to finish a project that was an eyesore. And as you mentioned, this spot down the street on Washington Street, I mean, people drive by that all the time and everybody wonders what's gonna happen next. So while I'm optimistic about what we see here, but I also know that the economics in the construction industry right now is not a good one.

between tariffs and other things that are impacting their ability to get supply chain really has an impact. And this was even last year and now it's even, I think it's even more challenging for them to get it. So I'm glad that why I wanna see things progress and move. I'm glad that we have some responsible contractors, responsible owners, of these parcels, Sturgis Way and Bridge Street, that are waiting until they have their financing and all their ducks in a row, so to speak, so they can move forward. but I think once the tide turns and they're able to do that, it's gonna be impactful for the tax rate, but impactful to neighborhoods,

but it's about, as Dennis said, it's about continuing to move forward and growing and utilizing the valuable space because seeing an empty space or seeing an empty parcel is a lost opportunity. And we know within our community, within our neighborhoods, there are parcels that will probably be redeveloped. So while we focus on the commercial end, We can't leave behind the residential properties that are prime for redevelopment. We know there's a lot of when I say a lot, I know in my neighborhood area, homes that are abandoned for years, complete eyesores, and I drive by them and I say, why is the town allowing This building to sit here. And then another one, you tear it down, then it's a vacant lot.

So while we focus on the commercial, I think we need to regroup and look at the neighborhoods, especially these buildings that I know sometimes will be tax title. that we can move forward, but let's just also make sure that we're taking care of our neighborhoods and these parcels are being fixed. And the last thing I wanna say is you mentioned the stormwater fee, biggest complaint, that other than taxes that people always talk about is the stormwater fee. People don't understand it. you know, I think as Michelle said, you know, we should probably be revisiting, I think it was the storm water we had talked about, bringing it back and having a conversation about the tears.

and if we're telling people to tear up your parking lot in order to save money, I think that's what we're gonna be seeing in some properties. People that have large, I know in the religious, Community, these large parking lots, probably you're gonna start, they're gonna be asking, so if I take 10,000 square feet out of my parking lot, how much is my bill gonna be reduced? and we have to be prepared to answer that to everyone. So, a lot going on and thank you.

Thank you, good point.

Thank you for the staff and the team down in all these departments. We know it's, It's a lot of work, but a lot of work means opportunity for us. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for everything. Just to kind of piggyback what Jim had said as well, too, everything going on with the financing, I'm sure there's other issues that projects are getting priced out as well, too. that are going on and different things that we're actually regulating them as well, which is increasing costs for coming in too. So I just had to put that out there as well too besides the financing. Lots of apartments coming, and so I lost track. Do you have any idea what total that is for possibly 2026? It's okay. Like a thousand?

If everything was constructed, I wouldn't say that much, maybe six to 700.

Six to 700 apartments that could be coming on.

I would say over time, not all in 2026. Some of these projects are going to take multiple years. And truthfully, We don't know what 2026 is. If it's gonna be the same economic market where folks, it's too expensive to borrow money or to get financing, we're gonna be waiting. So it's hard to know. But I think we'll find a few projects that will move forward, but not all. So it won't happen all at once.

Over time.

Yes.

that those will, so these are coming ahead, they're hopefully coming in, but it'll be over time that these projects will be developed.

And truthfully, we do need some of this as our large projects that provide apartments as you probably know, we need to provide 10% of the town's housing stock to be affordable, and it's known as safe harbor, which we are at, but we have a requirement of 15% of a project, those units are affordable. And so that keeps us above that 10%, where otherwise, if we were below 10%, developers can come in and go through an expedited permitting process. And ultimately, we don't have much say. it's important that we do have some construction that's where the Norbloom which 15% of I can't do the math but 15% I think it's like 45 units of 150 is a significant amount and we need that to keep staying in safe harbor. So it's good to see that project, which will provide a number of affordable units to the public.

Well, I need to know, with Bridge Street, Big units coming in there, right? But it will change what that street looks like, but I think in a good way.

I agree.

You know, what's coming in. And they are definitely developers who are caring about the community as well, which is important. I know the planning board in your department feel that way as well too. I just have to ask a question regarding the ADU guide. Who are you working with to create that? Is the state helping? Are any other departments helping? How does that?

We're using all the town staff expertise between our department and building department. And we're working collaboratively to put that together.

That could be a great resource there. And then the wetland regulation trainings, who runs those?

That has been through our conservation agent. They've put that on, I believe, with the Conservation Commission. And contractors have been coming in to learn about... Yep, I think we've had one, and Meredith, our conservation agent, is looking to do another.

for just one last, for the space, open space and recreational plan update. Was it Stephanie Radner who had done, kind of shared that before?

Yes. And some would say single-handedly. Yes. Put that great 2019 plan together.

It's exactly what I was thinking about. So you have a much larger

Yep, we have an active subcommittee now. I don't know the number of members off the cuff, but, and we also, I believe when Stephanie was doing it, there was no consultant. She did it single handedly.

This is unbelievable. what she did all I remember her coming in front of us and I said that's and I she just did that whole thing so that was just an incredible

Thankfully, we have MAPC to assist us. They're great with community engagement. I mean, ultimately, the open spaces, there's a number of requirements and boxes you have to check. But nonetheless, there'll be three series of community meetings to hear from the community about what they see the future of all of our natural resources.

That's great. I can't even believe that time has gone by either. Right? So thank you for everything.

Thank you.

Thank you. Just a few thoughts. Thank you for your presentation. I mean, you have a lot of moving parts in your department, so thank you for managing all of that. So in terms of the number of projects that are moving through the process from approval through to completion, and Jim's comment that some of those are stalled, and there's an uncertain economic forecast. How can we support project developers in getting projects out of stalled mode or through to completion? Are there things that other towns do that we could look at here? I'm thinking mostly in terms of we want

we don't want to have lingering eyesores or areas that are causing traffic or, you know, lack of sidewalk access or other things like that. We certainly don't want to be known as a community where projects are stalled. I hear that it's broader than our community, but what might we be able to do to support that and is there anything that we can take from other municipalities?

Great question. I mean, as you said, I alluded to a lot of the powers are outside of our hands. It's construction costs. It's financing costs. Folks that want to do projects always look for a clear and transparent process where they know what the steps are. so anything we can do to be clear and communicative of what you need to do, what application you need to do, what the next step is, is always appreciated because time is money. So whether it's going through a planning board process, zoning board of appeals process, or getting a building permit, anything to run an efficient, and I'm sure they would love it, expedited process would be something that we could do. But every project's different. Some projects have more impacts than others. They're going to take some time. And some projects are more experienced than others. So it's variable.

but I think the best thing we can do is provide great customer service to these folks and let them know what they need to do as far as whatever permit and who to talk to and what's expected. I'll say a lot of commercial projects are always looking for tax assistance or tax assessment relief. Thankfully we haven't had anyone that's asked for that. but I believe I heard on the radio Somerville is actually taking up a multi-million dollar potential TIF or tax improvement Assessments, sorry, Financing. And it's funny that I think they are not at liberty to say who the recipient of that money is, which is very unusual. So that is always a tactic of commercial are larger projects is to see if they can get tax relief from the municipality. But that's also controversial too because that's, and in a town like Dedham, every dollar counts because we have needs.

but folks are not, will always ask for financial incentives.

Great, thanks. I feel like I've maybe asked this before. Have we done any surveying of developers in town to get their feedback on their experience with the process, the types of resources they did access over the course of their project, what went well, where obstacles were. Have we done anything like that?

The planning board is always asking folks if they feel like the project came out better through their process. And I think there's peer review processes we have that whether it's architectural peer review to site plan review for larger projects and they will ask that and often folks say yes. for the better. I think all that I talked about is providing a clear and transparent process. I feel like us going to OpenGov, is as simple as it seems is a bit revolutionary, where an applicant, when they file, they can see the path. as opposed to before that it was, you know, you call and want to know where you are in the process. Here when you file a permit, it's on your screen where you are in the process. You can see all the communications from all the departments that have a role in your permit. To me, transparency and understanding how a process works and what your next step is, is a game changer.

And simple stuff like that, surprisingly.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. You mentioned development of a macroeconomic strategy for the town. are there, is there work happening toward that now and who's participating? I think this is part of a conversation that we've had. here in the board before, but you mentioned it in your side, so I wanted to follow up and ask more about that.

Yeah, we saw that it's often the... Macroeconomic growth strategies is really a way for a town to look in the mirror from a thousand, ten thousand feet up. Come up with a broad strategy of how they can advance economic development in the town. and so that's not something we'd be able to do in-house and typically we would need, and there's a select group of consultants that do that and we hope to find some grant money probably next fiscal year We've kind of exhausted all the current grants. And as you saw, a lot of the stuff that we do is grant funded, sometimes with a little match. So the next grant rounds when we're eligible, that will probably be the highest priority to go to apply for.

Great, thank you and I would just, make the comment once again that I think we're creeping toward all of these bigger projects and that I think it's important that we continue to think what type of leadership would support those kind of efforts and what we might need to do to help provide that community-based vision for our economic development. Thank you so much, Jeremy. I appreciate your taking the time, great presentation, and coming in to share all these updates with us.

Thank you for the great questions and comments.

Just one other comment that Jeremy, you were talking about TIFs that Somerville has done. I want to remind everyone that A long time ago, I had a conversation with somebody that has a place called MS Walker, who was being forced out of their office, their place in Somerville, and we're looking for a place to come. And so we had talked about the Stop and Shop property and he had said, I can't afford to build that and taxes and everything else. So we worked with him, with Scott Allen, to develop a TIF for the town of Dedham and it passed. town meeting unanimously for that 10-year TIF that allowed that property out in the old Stop and Shop to be converted to what we see for MS Walker. So we have done it before in town.

We have also done, if you recall, I think General Dynamics on Rushcraft Road. We worked with them for relief in order for them to redevelop and utilize that property. So it's been done before in town. But it has to be the right fit and the right business. So it is something that, you know, every tool should be on the table in order to hopefully bring somebody new. and put parcels back, maybe back into the tax rolls or to enhance what we already have. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Okay, next up we have a discussion with Finance Director Brady Winston in our FY26Q1.

Doreen, I think I may need to be, yeah, full screen, screen, okay. Good evening. I am here to present an update on the town's first quarter budget status for fiscal year 26. So as we always do, this is a high level overview of the town's operating budget expenditures and revenues and take questions at the end and anything you know we don't talk about here I'm happy to provide more information on. OK, so we can start off, as usual, with revenues. So overall, the first quarter revenues were 5% higher than the previous year for the general fund. As usual, most of the variances year over year reflect permit fees, other things that come in at irregular times, but usually even out over the course of the four quarters. Since it is the first quarter, I kind of wanted to do a general overview of the different types of revenues we get.

So a couple departments on this list regularly receive reimbursements from the state for Eligible Activities. I think notably those are the assessing office and the veteran services department. So the revenues you see here aren't reflective of fees they're charging, but more revenues we're collecting from the state for certain activities. The finance department revenues obviously represent property taxes, personal property, excise taxes. And then the other departments are usually permits for certain fees or services that they're providing and collecting revenue for. So that's just high level for the first quarter refresher. And yeah, as I said, nothing out of the ordinary for first quarter revenues. So I think we can move on to expenditures.

So on the expenditure side, department budgets are 27% expended in the first quarter, and that's compared to 31% from last year. I'll go through and note just a few items that sort of jump out from this list. So first is the town manager's budget. You see appears highly expended, but that is to be expected. First of all, comparing to last year, we had a large salary reserve, which we don't have this year. So that represents some of the difference. The second factor is that we pay the town's liability insurance, property insurance, workers' compensation insurance in one lump sum out of this department. So if you take that lump sum out of the equation, This department is only 27% expended, so sort of right on track for what we'd expect. Another notable expense is the legal department.

As you all know, we paid the town's legal settlement with CTA from this department that was authorized by the Springtown meeting in Article 12 to be paid with bond proceeds. So I wanted to talk about it because it looks like an expenditure, but it's offset with the exact amount of revenue coming in. So it's a net zero. And then we'll pay the first Debt Service in fiscal 27. So that'll represent the first actual payment on that legal settlement. But for anyone following along on open finance, I just wanted to talk about it because it does appear as an expense. Okay, and then the last department I was gonna talk about was IT. As we talked about in previous years, IT has a lot of subscription costs, so in the first quarter they become highly expended. In addition to that, this year we entered into a cost-sharing agreement with the schools.

So our personnel budget decreased on the town side. so it actually made that department appear even more expended in the first quarter because we have less of a personnel budget, proportionally more of a subscription budget. Did I say subscription? Great, I thought I might have said prescription. We have a prescription to lots of softwares. Okay, so I think that... are the main items I wanted to talk about with expenditures. And the last item, as always, is the town's local options meals tax and rooms tax. As we all know, these revenues are reserved in the Rob and Reyes Fund, and they offset Debt Service for Major Capital Projects. The room occupancy tax is down slightly, less than 1%, and the meals tax is up slightly, less than 1%. I think it's perfectly reasonable to do some rounding and say we're exactly where we were at this point last year.

Unfortunately, that does mean that our rooms tax has not rebounded from fiscal year 25. I guess on the positive side, we are tracking exactly with last year so not going further down. Okay, so I will stop there and take any questions you have.

Questions from board members. I have one question. Do you have any sense of what room occupancy Taxes look like elsewhere. I mean, is this just where we are economically? Is this specific to Dedham? Do you have any context for that?

I can get you benchmarking from our comparable communities.

Okay.

I'm just curious if it's just an economic trend indicator or if it's something about our room stock. Thank you.

We asked for a little bit more because we have some history on that as well to see where we've been over quite a few years, right?

Sure. And remind me, some of that is taken off currently because it's being refurbished. Is that contributing to this?

We believe so. So yeah, fiscal year 25 was an anomaly. Our revenues were much lower than previous years, as you all know. and we did attribute that to the use of the hotel rooms had changed during that year and then now we have hotels being taken off the market, some rooms being put back on but it doesn't seem to have made up for sort of the change in overall number of rooms available.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, if we could have some kind of deeper dive on that at an upcoming meeting would be helpful, thanks. All right, any other questions?

This is kind of little in the whole scheme of things, but I'm curious that Endicott Estate being so much less than last year, is there anything going on there?

I also had noticed that. I haven't gotten the full story from the director so I can provide that to you when I get it.

Thank you, Brady. I appreciate your quarterly updates. They're very helpful and gives us an opportunity to track what's happening and ask questions. So thanks so much. Absolutely.

Thank you.

Right, up next, discussion with Director of Engineering, Jason Mamone, on the Manor Flow Study.

Good evening, Madam Chair, members of the board, Jason Lamoni, Director of Engineering. Thank you for having us in this evening. We've been spending approximately a year and three months since we last met at a town-wide public meeting at the Dedham Middle School or the high school. One of them, they're both very nice, and I forget which one we were at, because we were always at one of them. So from that last time, we have set out to collect data in various ways, primarily door-to-door inspections is what that meeting was about. As with me again from that evening, our consultants, Weston Sampson, I have Nathan Michael and Patrick Cotton here. We want to take the opportunity to... tell you about the observations that we've uncovered, the data that we found, and our analysis that we took, and they're going to share with you the proposed plan in order to make some improvements down in the Manor neighborhood in the near future. So I'm going to turn it over to Nathan Michael.

He's going to give you the run of everything that we've done since June of last year.

Just make sure this works. Perfect. So first, I just wanted to give a little background. So just to remind everyone why we're here today. Infiltration and inflow is clean water that enters the sewer system through defects and illegal connections. the wastewater collection system itself is only designed to transport sewer flows and not designed to transport this additional clean water. and as you can see, even with all the work that the town of Dedham has done over the years, it is estimated that about half the flow in Dedham's sewer system is currently infiltration and inflow of this clean water. and so forth. The II issues can lead to surcharging in the sewer system, which is what the ongoing issue over at the Manor neighborhood is and which is why we're here.

The sources of II inundate the sewer system and can cause surcharging, which could lead to private property backups because this clean water takes up valuable capacity in that sewer system. So that's just a little background. just because we haven't been here in a while. So what's the town's role in removing aye-aye? What are we doing to solve this problem? For almost 20 years, the town has systematically identified and removed aye-aye from the sewer system. just in the area shown here, which is the area tributary to the Manor neighborhood. The town has repaired almost 60% of the sewer pipes, almost 40% of the sewer manholes, in addition to other miscellaneous repairs.

And also the town inspects the entire sewer system. over the course of five years. Most recently in this area, the town TV'd, inspected, and did manhole inspections in sub-area XX in the spring. So while the town has been proactive in identifying aye-aye in the town-owned infrastructure for almost 20 years, these inspections do not identify private sources of information. infiltration and inflow, which can be a problem. That's why we recently completed door-to-door inspection program that Jay mentioned. to identify private inflow sources, which most commonly sump pumps, in people's basements. So about over 10 years ago now, we did do door-to-door inspections with mixed results.

And I just wanted to show this because the recent public engagement that we had for this year's program that actually started last year, really led to success of the program. As you can see here in 2014, we had an inspection rate of about 42%. So we got into less than half the houses. about 10 years ago. This year's program, we got into about 89% of the houses with very, very limited refusal rate, which was great. The town also during this program requested anybody that participated to participate in a survey if they would like. And we got really positive feedback. It was quite painless, was the general theme. So we get a lot of data that we've been kind of working through.

The preliminary results of this is we found about 65 inflow sources throughout this, over 40 of those were sump pumps connected directly to the sewer. which basically pumps the water from below the foundation grade directly into the sewer system. And then using the I.I. from these sources, the theoretical I.I., We updated the town's sewer system model that they keep up to date. And what we do is we have design storms that we use, and there's a slew of them, but for this particular exercise, We used a five-year, 24-hour storm, which is basically the duration of the storm is 24 hours, and how frequent it happens is five years, and that rainfall for that storm was about 4.5 inches, so we used that storm. And then similarly, we used a four-year storm, which is about four inches of rain over the duration of the storm.

So those are the two storms that we used in our model. And then this is just a graphic of the sewer model. So what this is showing is the profile view of the sewer system, basically from Greensboro to Sherman. basically down Bonham and Trenton Road. And so that's the pipe you see. Those are the manholes. The red line is the existing sewer flow. with the additional flow added of a five year, 24 hour storm. So as you can see in that red line, we have some surcharging in the system. and we also have that red circle is basically where the sewer flow hits the grade of the road in our model. So that's our problem area. With the removal of the inflow sources, as you can see the blue line, we still get that to grade with the sewer flow. and that's during a five year storm.

So then we went down one frequency to four year storm. So the four year storm is the green line which shows again sewer flow at grade level in that Greensboro area. but then if we remove that inflow, the projected inflow from that storm, as you can see, we're seeing significant improvement and we're below that ground surface. So using this, you can see that removing the inflow will not completely eliminate the surcharging because it may decrease the frequency that the surcharging occurs. and then just to our recommendations based on the data we received and the model we re-ran. We broke our recommendations down to public infrastructure and private infrastructure, and this is because of the two separate issues, which is our model showing that the sewer flow gets to ground surface

and also the problem that the residents are seeing with the sewer backing up into their homes because of that surcharging. So again, just starting with the public infrastructure, The first recommendation is to remove the inflow sources. The inflow sources are adding clean water to the system, which is obviously taking up valuable capacity. Each site will be different, but you have on-site redirection of these inflow sources, on-site removal, or if needed, connection to the public storm system. the town will continue their proactive approach to the infiltration in the public side to remove infiltration. So the benefits are obviously create capacity. That's the main thing. That'll decrease the surcharging. you're paying for this, so you're saving money by removing the sources.

And again, they're illegal connections, so they really should be removed according to the DP guidelines. As I mentioned with the model, just by removing the inflow sources, you're not going to completely eliminate the surcharging conditions, so we're also proposing increasing the size of the sewer main through that problem area from Bonham and Trenton, from Greensboro to Sherman, which is about 33, 3500 linear feet. Based on the cost, we kind of broke it down into two phases. between those two things, which is two each phase, equally priced. So it's about half, half and half. And the benefits is this increases capacity as well in the sewer. Again, this will even further decrease the frequency of surcharging. added benefit is replacing your aging infrastructure that, as you know, has an AI problem.

So there might be some benefits there as well. and then just to kind of visualize it a little bit, we re-ran that model with that five year storm that was still giving us problems. The red line again is the five year storm as is. The orange is after completing in phase one of the construction. And as you can see, we're still seeing some surcharging, but we removed that ground surface the flow getting to ground surface. And then the green line is completing the entire sewer upsizing. And as you can see, we see a pretty significant improvement. So that's the green line and that's basically the grade of the flow. through the sewer. So those improvements aim to increase capacity of the sewer and decrease the frequency of surcharging. but obviously the residents in the meantime are still having the problems there.

So there's some private property recommendations hopefully to give the residents peace of mind and help them out while we're doing those improvements. So this is just a map of the affected residents. We estimate there's about 35 homes in particular that are affected by this. and so this is just option one. So during the modeling and the flow metering that we did, we noticed that the main problem occurs during heavy rain and the groundwater already being elevated. So we didn't see the same flow increases when it was just a rainstorm. It was more like when the groundwater was already high and then the rain combined. So one of the options would be to monitor the groundwater. So you can install a groundwater monitoring well. you can put a notification system on that. And that could then notify the residents that the groundwater is high.

If what weather's in the forecast, they could be prepared. So in addition to that, backflow preventer installation. A backflow preventer is basically and so forth. a preventative measure. Benefit is it notifies the homeowners. They're not surprised when something happens. as they are now. It gives them a little peace of mind. There's a little operation and maintenance to this valve, which is one of the disadvantages. And then obviously during a surcharge condition when that valve is activated, their sewer use is very limited. Option 2, installation of low pressure sewer at the 35 homes that are affected.

Low pressure system, just as a little background, is basically a pump that's installed on your property. pumps the sewer flow into a smaller low pressure pipe that runs along the road. And basically, we would discharge that in the gravity main downstream of the problem area. to mitigate the sewer surcharging. So a benefit of that would be that you'd eliminate the wet weather concerns. They would have a peace of mind during rainstorms because the low pressure systems pumping their sewer flow downstream of the problem. Again, a disadvantage operation and maintenance. Now the homeowner owns a pump. It's a mechanical pump. They have a lifespan. And another thing would be like if they lose power, they wouldn't have sewer. They wouldn't have use of their sewer.

So to summarize conceptual schedule, we'd recommend the inflow removal program policy. Get that. get that going or start removing those inflow sources. Try to gain back some of the capacity in your sewer system all while planning the upsizing of the sewer main. That would be on the public side and on the private side. We proposed a couple options. We're proposing, the town's proposing, the first step would be to engage the affected properties. They're the ones that are having this problem. run through the options with them, just a little outreach, and see what might be the best for them. And then move forward with that, and basically the schedule, the actual schedule would be dependent on which option was chose in addition to funding that's available to do all of this work. the town has an annual I.I.

budget and at the moment the plan would be to use a portion of that for this plan, these recommendations. I'm gonna pass it off to Jay for some next steps.

All right, thanks, Nathan. So what are our immediate steps following the information that has been provided to you within the report and the observations and analysis and recommendations made? Now that we have a proposed plan to move forward, it's important that we develop our inflow removal policy. and that's gonna be handled internally with the town manager, a finance director, DPW director, myself and the communications director and through Shortstraws, one member of this select board. This is going to be pivotal because it's going to allow us to understand the financing mechanisms to this and how it impacts private property owners and as well as rate payers for any public work that we're going to do. So it's going to set the groundwork to allow us to do this work. So it's very important that we begin that process immediately and start putting it together.

It's going to be very similar to how we did our infiltration removal policy where we met internally, developed a plan, and coupled with a stakeholders engagement to develop and have a policy that everyone seemed to be approved about. That obviously is going to involve town council, help and assistance along the way. Make sure that we're not infringing on anybody's rights and the town's doing everything that we can within our rights and also protecting the private property owners for any work that we must do or assist them in doing on their own property. just reiterating the policy's gonna set the framework for financing and funding. And with that, when we talk about stakeholder engagement, in one of the previous slides, Nate showed you the 35 affected properties that are directly related to the private property search action events.

those are the ones that we can get into right away while we're working internally on the framework of the inflow removal policy and have a very frank discussion on the options that are in front of them between the backflow preventer and the low pressure system, give them all the pros, give them all the cons, give them all the potential maintenance costs, give them all the things that they want to know and let them ask questions to things that we might not have thought of in our own interpretations of the pros and cons and allow them the opportunity to select what we believe or they believe to be the best fit for their little neighborhood of those 35 properties. We don't want to dictate to them which one they want to do it because they do come with Disadvantages and Advantages, we want them to be a part of that discussion and tell us what they would be most happy with to have for their own private property.

and as far as the rate pays themselves, we're going to try to develop some strategy that we can use and engage with them in order to help us build the inflow removal policy in itself because this is something that is being developed as a necessity for what we're doing right now, but can then also be employed to other areas in town if we find that there's a need or a problem in the future. So it's something that can be used townwide. So we want to make sure that all the ratepayers have an opportunity to hear what we're considering and provide some feedback as well. So that pretty much concludes what we have for you this evening. And Nate and I and Patrick are here to answer any questions, technical ones. I'll turn over to Wes and Samson, but others I'll try to. to take on myself. Thank you.

Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Nate. Questions from board members?

Thank you, both of you, for all the information and the work and especially hearing that reviews went well of how the work was done. I guess my questions are mainly related to understanding what's have already been done or maybe what's to come, both for homes where there were violations found and then homes where they're having the issue with the surcharge. are there things that so far have properties just been identified or have any remedies happened? on the other side that you were just talking about, Jason, I think I'm hearing that in terms of the decision of the two options, that's for the whole neighborhood. It's not property by property, right?

So I'll go back to the first part of that. Nothing has been done in terms of any illicit connections that have been discovered. It was just an investigatory process in which we wanted to find out where they were. and where they were found, those residents do know that they have them, but we let them know that the town isn't moving forward with anything right now as we're developing, we're going to be developing an inflow removal policy that will help us provide those direction and the process in which we're going to do that. So that hasn't started yet, but that's part of this next step. for the options for the private property owners that are susceptible to the surcharging events. It's not going to be a property by property. We're going to engage with all of them and we want them to come to a resolution in a majority fashion on what they believe to be best. They each have their own costs associated with it, and to do one-offs of one or two properties probably isn't the best in terms of cost-benefit.

We want to be able to do it all under one process.

and has any of that communication started or that's all part of this next step also?

That's also a part of the next step.

Thank you.

Other questions?

Jim? Yeah, thank you. So I think that, so this is the first presentation to us, that the next one needs to be to the Manor neighborhood, probably at the Endicott Estate or someplace that they can go and they can listen and they can hear and then they can ask questions. Because I think it's important to talk to the entire neighborhood who chooses to come. and review what you're talking about today and getting that direct feedback and then go into your next steps, whatever direction it takes after listening to the neighborhood. Because I'm sure everybody is, knew what was happening and is waiting to hear and I'm sure there's going to be some challenges to your findings and that need to be explained.

So by going to the neighborhood, I think that is the next step should be, in my opinion. Thank you.

Thank you, Tim. Other questions, comments?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to say thank you for a very informative presentation and the job. Extremely well done to this point on this project. This was obviously, as you all know, controversial. I think from the time it was first conceptualized, there was a real concerted effort to do this in the least invasive and most effective way. in terms of engagement and just dealing with the sensitive nature of what was being done. And I think you guys have really got us to the best possible place we can be right now. and like we talked about two or three years ago when we first conceptualized this, now we have this information. we had no idea what we were going to do with it. Now we get to that next chapter and I'm sure that there will be a lot further discussions on that moving forward. So thank you and I appreciate what you guys have done. Thank you.

Yes, thank you for launching into this enormous project and remedy for this neighborhood. I appreciate the report back of the improved success and participation as a result of the community engagement. I think that you did a really great job with that and so that's a great model to continue with moving forward with similar projects and agree that a report back to the community. is a good next step there. Obviously this information, it's a lot to take in and it's also Okay, we have an answer and we're potentially decades out from a solution and so that is really, that's hard to hear.

knowing that some of those residents are so severely impacted by this problem. And so just to be clear, around the private property mitigation options. Those costs I see listed potentially $3 million, $1 million. those would be costs that would be borne by the town or would private residents, how does that work?

That is part of what the charge for the internal working group is to figure out the appropriate funding mechanism to get this work done. So I can't really speculate right now, but I do know that we were trying to position this policy to keep as much burden off of the private properties as possible. That's our goal. That's what we want to continue to do. But again, these internal discussions will help us develop that framework.

Okay. And the option one and option two, these are property by property. So this is that these solutions would need to be installed one by one at each property or there would be a neighborhood hub where these motors and mechanisms are installed. Is it on the private property or is it for the whole neighborhood?

Both of the options as presented are to be situated on private property. So the backflow preventer would be on private property and the low pressure system with the ejector pump would be on private property. And it would be individual. Yeah, but also keep in mind, too, the 35 properties that were identified, when we do have an opportunity to talk to them, some of them may just say, you know what, I've never had a problem and I'm not really concerned. but they're still available to this process should something ever happen in the future. And we know that it's been induced by a surcharge rain and groundwater event. We don't want to disclude them, but we still want them to be involved in the process because if you do come for assistance at some point, we want to make sure that you've had an opportunity to listen to the pros and cons on each of these and try to weigh in on the option that you would want to have for yourself if you needed our assistance.

Thank you. And in terms of the public infrastructure solutions, The two phases you're projecting, if we were to move forward with these, the first phase would still take 10 to 15 years to complete. And then... annex phase 20 years down the road. And the private property solutions, option one you list is it would take five years to complete an option two, 15 years. So that's still leaving significant gaps where sewerage is infiltrating residents' homes.

Correct. This is the plan with the assumption of the budget that we have available to us today. I typically get a million dollars in capital improvements each year from the finance and town meeting to do inflow and infiltration removal projects. Taking half of that, utilizing it for down in the Manor neighborhood is what the intent would be right now. So we take that $500,000 and we would split it up into $250,000 for each the public way track and the private property surcharge track. if, however, there's evidence or a need to expedite this or shorten the timeframe. Again, it's a discussion in the internal working group on the financing and framework to execute it quicker. So again, this is just based upon what I have had in the past 20 years of doing this work. I'm trying to just frame it and give you an understanding based upon the available budget that I have now how it would transpire.

Thank you. That's an important clarifying point. So if, for instance, we had $4 million available then this work could be completed in what amount of time? How much is the budget the contributing factor to the time? So if you had $4 million because we got some, funding from the state or otherwise or some other source, town, whatever it was, if we had $4 million in your budget to do this, how long would it take to do that work?

take where you're going with it and try to just expand upon it a little bit. So if we were to do everything as prescribed in the report, and Nate, you can correct me if my totals are off. But the removal of the inflow sources was about a million. We're looking at about four million to do the pipe upsizing. And dependent upon the option, for the private property owners, that's one to three million, so we'll just call it two million in between. That's seven million dollars there. So in order to do it all as quickly as I could, probably within five years, maybe eight years, I would need $7 million to get going on that because we have to involve design, permitting, and construction. and that takes a little bit of time and coordination because we are going to be dealing with private property owners in their work on their property and also reconnection of their systems and making sure that they stay active and no loss of service during the time that we do it.

But in a nutshell, yes, anything can be shortened timeline-wise with added funding.

down to five to eight years. So even under best funding circumstances of availability, it would still take five to eight years.

I would think at a minimum that's to be conservative.

Okay, thank you.

Is there, I'm sure this has been thought of, but given the timeline, whether it's the short end of what you're saying or the long end of what you're saying, for those homeowners that are having significant issues. Are there any short-term, Band-Aid, other type of solutions that can help in the meantime?

There's currently nothing that we are aware of that can help them out immediately. Of the two options, the backflow preventer is the quickest because it's the less invasive, but it comes with its own you know, cons associated with you still have, if that mechanism fails, you're susceptible to a surcharge event in the gravity system. But we can help get that in sooner, and that's something that we would like to discuss with them and let them know. The other one being the low pressure system takes a little bit more time because we have to install the infrastructure within the right of way first for them to connect to, but then we can start connecting them over. So that's why it takes a little bit longer because we don't have the infrastructure in place yet. the backflow preventers, everything's already in place. But the positive for the low pressure system is they're completely off the gravity system. So they don't have to worry about that anymore. So again, it's a discussion with these property owners to know what are they willing to kind of live with now.

And the good thing is that one time is enough for anybody you have to deal with. But thankfully it's not in every month, every other month scenario. There hasn't been an event down there since 2023, and we're thankful for that. But we know Mother Nature's going to turn that around on us eventually at some time. So they may not experience anything before we get to them on any of these improvements, and that would be great. So again, it's a dialogue that I need to have with them and let them know those pros and cons in order for them to make a decision on which they think is best and they may very well. I want it right now, so let's go with that other one. I'm willing to take the risks on these other things. So I think it's going to come out of a lot of good conversation with the property owners.

Thank you. Any last questions?

Just one follow-up. So you're talking about 35 Omon, 35 apostles. So anybody that's watching this and listening and saying, is my house one of the 35? How are we, when are we going to notify those so that somebody pulls up the town website and they see what's in the meeting and says, oh, that's so-and-so's house, that's so-and-so's house, and... they don't and so and so doesn't know that their house. How soon are you going to notify the homes that they're one of those that are affected. So when I'm hearing it at a meeting at the Anaconda State, So when next week are you gonna tell people?

Yeah, so that's what I planned on doing is reaching out to them immediately. I don't need them to hear this secondary at the upcoming meeting. So I don't think I need to wait to have that meeting in order to give them that notification. So yes, the idea is to get something out to them, develop something, generate a letter to give them the knowledge of what we're talking about this evening.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much. Have a good night. Good night. All right, we're on to the pilot policy, payment in lieu of taxes.

Yes, so this pilot policy, payment in lieu of tax, is a policy that staff worked to develop as a result of the work of the pilot working group that was established about a year ago, I suppose. It consisted of members of the select board and other and community members in Dedham to look at the non-taxable parcels that we have here in Dedham, which are under Massachusetts general law, certain classes of properties don't pay property tax. And in Dedham, that is a significant portion of our Land, it's 13%. So if you think about that, you're driving around, it's a little bit more than one out of 10 parcels that you see isn't paying taxes.

and that does increase the burden on the residential and commercial taxpayers in town. So the recommendation of the pilot working group was for staff to develop a policy that could be reviewed and hopefully approved by the select board. And we're also planning to bring it to the board of assessors. to allow staff to move forward with letters and outreach to the non-taxable properties to request that they pay a portion of what would be taxable if they were non-taxable. We've looked at other communities and did an analysis of the services that everyone receives, whether you pay taxes or not, and the analysis shows that

that we think about a 25% portion of what they would pay in taxes would be appropriate for a pilot agreement or for a payment in lieu of tax. based on what we've seen from other communities and other experiences. That doesn't have to be send a letter and next year and organization pays 25%, but that could be implemented over time. Because again, this is a cost that nonprofits mostly are not banking on, and they're providing services to the community. So the idea is not to penalize these organizations because they are valuable members of our community, but to ask them to help us pay for the services that everyone enjoys and that are becoming increasingly difficult to pay for given the economic environment in town and throughout the Commonwealth and throughout the country? So again, we have in front of you tonight a policy. There's some other nuances in here.

We've looked at a a credit program that would allow organizations to seek up to 50% of the payment, so basically reduce their contribution down to 12.5%. based on services that they provide to Dedham residents and evaluation of those services. And again, there's a few examples that we saw in other communities and that would be an application that they make that's reviewed by town staff and it would be a sort of a dialogue back and forth to develop. and what that value is. And again, this is all voluntary. We can't force anyone to participate in a pilot, but it's more reaching out, explaining what the town is trying to work on, and hoping that we can establish partnerships with especially some of these bigger organizations that have significant land holdings and significant wealth to contribute to the town.

Thank you. Questions?

I just want to thank the committee members that put this together, Madam Chair, a lot of work. It's a well-done policy. I hope to see it implemented and hopefully get some success with it. Thank you.

Any other questions, comments?

So thank you to everybody. I think it's a positive step, and hopefully we do start to get some partnerships there. It's not going to solve our problems. as we know, but you know. Pennies Make Dollars. So every single thing that can help us can help us. As far as the community service credit, how will the town assess and verify the value of the community service? Are you going to develop something that everybody will understand.

Yeah, that's the intent is to try to come up with a framework or a matrix so that we could reach out, work with the organizations so that they would tell us what services they're providing, help put a value to them, and we could work with them on that. Again, I have a little bit of experience with that, and I know probably some of the other staff members do too from another state that I worked in where where the communities actually paid nonprofits for the services that they provided in the community. And so annually, one of our jobs was to work with the organizations with a similar form where they would say, okay, City, we provide meals to people who can't afford food at this value. And you would assess that. And then the city made a contribution to those nonprofits. I've seen this work before where you can figure out the value of the services that these nonprofits are offering, but it does require some back and forth and some analysis, typically.

And then also, you know, just letting us know results, keeping us in when the letters are going out, making sure that, as you know, staff all knows who's in charge.

Absolutely. And you will certainly see a draft of the letter before it goes out for your viewpoint and edits, et cetera. Communicate, a timeline, and things like that. So nobody's surprised.

Thank you.

Yes, so just building off what Dimitria asked, and that you might have samples and others too from your own places that you've worked, but I'm wondering even, and other local towns that have had success that there might be, because the policy is one thing, but the success really relies on how it's communicated, implemented and getting folks to understand and really feel like partners with the town and why this is needed. I think it might be interesting to see what kind of letters other communities have done or what besides letters if there's other kind of meetings or how that communication or just one-on-one you know what's been most successful and making these successful in our community.

Yeah. in conversations we've had, I think letters probably won't generate the full effect of what we're going for. So it'll be a letter, and then there'll be some follow-up, and I'm sure some dialogue and conversation that will eventually lead to and hopefully fruitful negotiations and pilot agreements that we can move forward with because we all get a lot of mail and that only goes so far.

and just in that vein, it might be having a meeting with someone. It may be us going to them and sitting down with them and their, whomever, decision makers and having those one-on-one conversations.

Absolutely.

Or I was even thinking inviting all potential pilot participants to a meeting to share what this is and why we're asking for this consideration, whatever works, yeah.

So I think the suggestion was once the policy is done is to send a general letter to all the tax exempt properties with the exception of the exemptions then that we talked about before. And then there would be a tiered approach based on the the property and the tax potential taxes and that's how you would start with a high end first and then work your way down. So you get the larger potentially parcels to have the conversation first. And the assessor's office, Kevin has some ideas about that approach. So when you're talking about the one-on-ones, those will happen once we send it out because there are a few that currently have similar agreements

with other communities so they're familiar with them. So it's going to be a long process probably, but anyway, that's the... that was the plan to start and then work your way down. But I will say on the 50%, when Ed was at our first or second meeting, you know, Ed had brought up. We were talking about this and he says, well, you know, somebody like Nobles, which provides services to, you know, at discounts to youth and want to make sure that we're not gonna be putting up restrictions that, okay, I'm gonna have to pay this, so I'm not gonna do that. That's why this 50% is so important. to say that we embrace the partnership and we're not saying we're not going to give you credit,

and that's, I think, will be a good way in which to sort of have both together. And I think it will, you know, we haven't really tried it before. Let's see what happens. But thank you for the policy and the staff for the work putting it in. I think this hits the exact points that the committee worked on. So thank you for doing that.

Thank you. I'll entertain a motion. Second. Hearing a motion and a second, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. The policy is forward.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for everyone's work who contributed to that. Up next, town manager evaluation policy and form.

I'll do a brief overview of this so annually the select board provides a review of the town manager we've as a community we've used the same evaluation document for many many years and the at the same time, I think that the understandings around that have changed and our peer communities have moved in a slightly different direction. So I did some research, I talked to other communities, I also reached out to and my professional association, or the Town Manager's Professional Association, the ICMA, which is International City and County Managers Association, for a sample document, which I was able to obtain as well. I looked at that and it was actually quite similar to what the model is that's being used by many of our neighboring communities. So I worked with the chair who graciously entertained these thoughts, looked at it and gave it some

feedback, and we're able to come up with this draft for your review and you know edits and potential adoption. There's also a policy to go along with it that would codify the past practice that has not been codified previously so that we could have a timeframe of doing this annually and solicit feedback from each of the board members and funnel that through the reviewer who would then compile those documents for the public discussion.

Thank you.

Have any questions? Happy to take them.

Any questions, comments?

We've been waiting to do this for a long time.

Thank you for your work on this.

All right, great. I'll entertain a motion. Move to approve the town manager evaluation policy and form. Second. Hearing a motion, a second. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, no. The policy and form move forward. Thank you. and we'll be sending that out. I'll be sending that out within a week or so.

He has to do his self evaluation.

I'll do my first part first, and then we send this out. Do you have to complete yours? Is that what the policy does?

Yeah, it's 90% drafted. I just need to finalize that to match the contract year, and then I'll get that to you. Great. for distribution.

Great. So we'll say around November 1st I'll send this out. Great. Thank you. All right. Are we at minutes? We're at approval of minutes.

Who's approval of the minutes 11-21-24 v. 27-25? Second.

Hearing a motion and a second, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Minutes are approved.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, older new business.

things. Jeremy already hit upon the open space and recreation plan tomorrow at the, excuse me, Saturday at the Avery School, 10 a.m. and also we have the National Drug Take Back Day which I think is great for people to know if they have prescriptions and medicines they can bring them to the Dedham Police Department on Saturday the 25th, this Saturday coming from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and they can be disposed of safely as opposed to throwing them in the trash or down the sink or putting them in the sewer, anything like that. And then also the free document shredding is happening on the 31st, which is Halloween. This is happening 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and it's at the American Legion. And there's instructions on the website, please put everything in paper bags, not plastic, things like that. So those are some great free events that are happening in the town.

and then also happy birthday to someone on the board. It's not today, but you know, so someone celebrated a birthday. And that is it on my end.

Thank you. Other older new business.

I'll mention that just I believe this past weekend was the last town-wide community cleanup so another thanks to Bob LaPorto and the whole team that has been doing that for many months in a row and had great success and a lot of people participating and hopefully More will in future years. Thanks to that crew.

That was Needham Street, correct? I think the last one might have been Needham. It was Needham, and I was driving in the morning, and I'm looking at all the trash, and I'm going... Who is dumped in the trash? I'm driving, and then I went, it was the cleanup! I was away, and it was the cleanup, and it was just amazing what they had collected, and they were waiting there for DPW to go and pick up. Phenomenal work. Great work.

Yes. Yes, Bob does a great job coordinating with the town and the town making sure they know when it's happening and where and picks it up promptly. It's a great community effort. Yeah. Okay. Any other parting comments? Otherwise, we can move to adjournment. I'll entertain a motion.

I just want to wish everybody a happy Halloween, Madam Chair. Remind everyone it is on a Friday night this year. Please be safe. You know, there'll be a ton of kids and families out there. We have Trunk or Treat this weekend in Denver Square. That's Saturday, right? See if the TNs pull up to that. It's always a production for us. perhaps. But yeah, just everyone be healthy and safe on Halloween. It's Friday night.

All right. Motion to adjourn. Hearing a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, no.

Meeting's adjourned.