Select Board - November 20, 2025

Good evening, everyone.

Thanks for coming tonight. I'll open the select board meeting for Thursday, November 20th, 2025. And tonight, thank you, and tonight we have the honor of having Lauren Pellequin, a junior from Nobles, who is the student board advisor for the Dedham Youth Commission. helped to open our meeting and also to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance this evening. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Lauren.

Okay, so it looks like we are starting with the presentation from the Dedham Youth Commission.

Good evening. I usually just kind of speak off cuff and from the heart, but my boss said, why don't you put something on paper so you can be quick? So bear with me as I do that. Good evening. We want to invite you, all of you downstairs to our teensgiving dinner that is happening right now. But since we knew you were tied up with this meeting, we thought we would bring a little of that energy upstairs for a quick hello. These turkeys are not running from the oven. They are warming up for next Thursday's Turkey Trot 5K, happening right here in Dedham at Endicott Estate. This 5K is truly important to Dedham and to our residents. It supports the Dedham Youth Commission, the Dedham Food Pantry, and Ripples of Hope. All three organizations make a real difference in this community.

and with the federal government still getting fully back online, the need at the food pantry is even more vital this year. This is a big annual event in Dedham. We want to give a huge shout out to everyone who volunteers and participates every Thanksgiving, especially Aaron Perron and the team at Endicott Estate for hosting us year after year. So come run, walk, exercise, or simply show up to cheer everyone on before you head home to enjoy your turkey. and don't worry, Tommy and Bobby Turkey, Mr. Goodwin will pardon you so you're safe for another year. There is still plenty of time to register for the in-person or virtual 5K or the free Kids Half Mile. Just visit ripplesofhope.org to sign up.

We also encourage anyone attending next Thursday to bring a donation for the Dedham Food Pantry. Food Pantry volunteers will be on site to collect donations. For anyone who cannot run but still wants to support the cause, donations can be made directly to any of the organizations or through ripplesofhope.org. There's also a price break for all registrations received before November 24th. That is our upcoming event. I would like to quickly shift to reflect another annual event in town that happened earlier this fall. I, along with many others, want to thank Dedham Veterans Service Officer Joe Hamilton for keeping the run for the fall in 5K here in town. In talking with participants, especially Gold Star family members, they constantly say how meaningful it is that Dedham continues to host this event every year. The Youth Commission loves bringing young people to see the importance of this day.

Being part of the event is not just educational, it is humbling. We have youth who have already graduated and still return to volunteer. Some show up even before I do, and they stay late to carry heavy equipment, break down, and provide the muscle that makes the day run smoothly. This year we had more than 30 youth volunteers helping. One of them, Blitz Fernandez, she won't want me to pronounce her first name, Eliza, is an artist who always carries a sketchbook. During the event, while volunteering, she paused to sketch what she was witnessing. Afterwards, she turns her sketches into beautiful paintings, some now hanging in our office, and we invite anyone to come up to the fourth floor to see them. Eliza also created two paintings specifically for Joe in the Veterans Office, and she wanted to present those to him tonight.

Again, a heartfelt thank you to Joe and Sarah from Military Friends for helping put on this invaluable, meaningful, and somber event to honor our fallen military heroes. It is another powerful example of the good happening in Dedham and of how human service programs provide opportunities that stay with young people long after the day is over. Thank you all for your time and continued support. Bliss, do you have to come up and give the paintings to Joe?

I would like to present these two paintings I did from The Run for the Fallen and Painting and sketching this event really brought a new light and a newfound respect towards veterans and then to this whole event in total. And I'm very proud and happy to present these two paintings to Joe. I did one of the Soldiers Cross and then another one of just another angle of it. And I'm very proud of them.

I love it.

They're so very well done.

Yeah, those are excellent.

Awesome.

Very nice.

Yeah, really excellent.

Go in front of Jim.

Jones, Joe, Blitz, the turkeys, and any of you commissioners that would like to be a part of the picture.

Oh, yes, absolutely.

You can come behind you.

Yeah, come behind us.

So, Blitz, Joe, Greg, Turkeys, why don't you come on back, Lauren, Marion.

Sure. Anyone that wants to come up.

Anyone that wants to come up is welcome to come on up.

Wait! Wait!

I want you right in front of me pal.

Alright?

Okay.

Everybody say turkey! Turkey! I'll carry you. I'll carry you. Y'all are still a silly one! Thanks for coming in. Bye-bye, bye-bye, friggin' pudding.

Good job, Mr. Cabrera.

Thank you for making this the most energetic meeting of the year.

Dennis, just like the old days.

We've got turkey downstairs to calm them down.

See you later, Wade.

How's it going, bud? What's up, buddy?

How you doing, buddy? Mr. T. You can call me Dennis. That was cute.

See you, bud.

all right well thank you to the Youth Commission for coming and bringing the energy to our evening tonight so our next agenda item is Dedham citizens open discussion and I welcome anyone the members of the public with any comments or any comments on any of our agenda items this evening to come forward and state your name and address. All right, seeing none, we can move to town manager's report.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. Just a few items this evening. All nice things that have been happening in the town of Dedham. Last night, I wanted to just give a little shout out to our ACO and our police department who hosted a wildlife event at the Public Safety Building. That was with the CEO of the New England Wildlife Center. There were over 45 attendees, and they were also all treated to samples from the Tropical Smoothie Cafe, which was a nice donation from a new business that opened up in town. So I just wanted to give a little shout out to that event. there has been increasing interactions with wildlife here in town so this was an opportunity for folks to learn more about how to manage that and I understand this ACO is from other Towns also came out and learned from this event. So that was a good community event last night at the Public Safety Building. A little shout out to our finance team.

We have received the GFOA, which is the Government Finance Officers Association Distinguished Budget Book Award for our FY26 budget this year. and that is an award that is only issued to communities that meet very stringent criteria for their budget presentation and that are helping to increase transparency and public understanding around their budgets. that's something that I think we can be all pretty proud about and the budget book is posted on our website. It's interactive. Folks can flip through that and it gives a good explanation of each department budget, what the department budgets go towards, their goals, their KPIs, et cetera. So I think it's a nice opportunity for the public to be able to take a look at that as well. We had a successful town meeting on Monday night and got out of there just a little after 10. It was very productive. I think Dedham has a great history of

moving through our town business twice per year, and I think a civil well run way. And again, I think most folks now know that our town moderator has announced his retirement, so I think the way town meeting runs is much much of that can be contributed to Dan Driscoll and his leadership over the years 33 years so I just want to again thank him and offer my appreciation to him for for all the work that he has done and the guidance that he gave me when I became town manager here. electronic votes are now also posted on our website from that meeting. So folks can go and check those out. And then last but not least, our HR department is constantly providing training opportunities for our employees. just this past week that we did offer a safety and respect training for our frontline workers. We had supervisors training a couple of weeks ago and we plan to offer another session of that training in December for more of our frontline staff.

And that's just, again, part of the continuing training that we offer to our employees. But I wanted to give a little shout out to our HR department for organizing all of that. So with that, it concludes my report, but I'm happy to take questions.

Discussion for members? You know, congratulations, good job, right, to the whole team, and on the award. Thank you. Wonderful to hear that. On the HR training, safety and respect, you said?

Safety and Respect at Work is the name of it.

And you said frontline employees?

Yeah, it was our frontline staff, and then we had a supervisory training two weeks ago. And then we'll have another staff training coming up for folks in the town hall and other frontline positions as well.

And is it safety and respect for the internal customers and also external?

It talks about de-escalation, how to deal with difficult situations, reporting requirements, and things of that nature.

Any other questions or discussion? All right.

Hearing none, we can move on to the consent agenda.

Madam Chair, I move to remove the request for the Dedham Square Circle regarding 15-minute parking 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Eastern Avenue from the consent agenda. Second.

Hearing a motion and a second. Discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Aye.

Oh, and we do have to take roll call votes tonight because we do have a member online. Michelle?

Yes, I'm sorry, but yes.

Dennis, Jim, and Dimitria. And the chair votes yes. Thank you.

Can I have a little bit more information on that particular request from the Dedham Square Circle?

We invite Anne up to share with us this request and information about it.

Hello. Anne Miranda, Dedham Square Circle, 207 Fairbanks Road. Thank you so much for allowing me to chat tonight. I'm happy to answer any questions. I'll start off by just giving you a little background information. So the businesses on Eastern Avenue, who I referenced in my letter to the select board, had requested 15 minutes parking. The reason for this request is that in that area there's a high density of takeout restaurants and business that takes just a short amount of time. So the two parking spaces referenced in my letter are part of the two-hour parking in the square.

But what tends to happen is people park there for more than two hours, and when businesses who especially have Just that quick in and out, whether it be the Mimi's News, the coffee shop, few and far around the corner getting takeout, Ron's Ice Cream across the street, any of the restaurants on High Street. having those parking spaces really helps the businesses. So we've all I'm sure been there at times when you want to either get a cup of coffee or you want to pick something up and If you're feeling like the weather isn't your friend that day, you may opt for other options, a drive-through and leaving the square. And with Small Business Saturday approaching,

reminding everybody that when they spend locally, more of their money stays within our community than shopping with larger chain stores. I am always encouraging people to think that way. And when people, especially with meals tax, when they can contribute to the Robin Reyes Fund with that extra little tax on food and drinks. It all helps, all of us in Dedham. Swinging back around, this request from the small businesses on Eastern Avenue, they were all in favor of it, and I did reach out to Few and Far as well, and he was unanimous. they were all unanimously in favor of it and in fact they wanted more of the parking spaces than the two that I referenced but I thought I'd start small here.

Prior to the meeting I did a little Research Online to look at 15-minute parking spaces. How many should you have and why should you have them? And there are I didn't find anything definitive about how many you should have, but it really seems to tie to the businesses close by and what their needs are. So that was my request. Thank you.

Questions from board members?

Just one, Madam Chair. So it's just two spaces? Yes, just the two. And it would be like similar to like when you go to Legacy Place, right? Like they have those 15 minute parking spots scattered throughout.

Yeah, correct, for pickup, right, right, that are close.

Lovely, actually, if you're just like trying to like pick up something there, Right, right.

And I just want to mention this too. Since COVID, the The way that people eat out has changed a lot. There are less and less people that are dining in who would have normally done that in the past. and a higher percentage of people are taking out their food even if they have the time to. We're just kind of used to doing that now, taking it out, bringing it home. So given that there's been that change across the board with many of the businesses in the square who traditionally would have had more dine-in, there is more of a need for this quick 15-minute parking space to be able to get in and get out.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Other questions from board members?

If I could, Anne, thanks very much for bringing this forward. I do find it a little ironic that the restaurant far and away around the corner is saying that they need more parking when they have outdoor dining that takes a spot out for the entire summer. So it's sort of ironic there that they want 15 minute but, you know, but they've taken the space for four months outside. I just bring that up because as I'm looking at your picture, I see that. and I have no problem with this, but I'm wondering if we are picking and choosing because there's also across the street, Cathay Kitchen. has no indoor dining. And anybody that tries to pick up there, that's on the other side of the street. So I'm wondering whether 15 minutes, first of all, whether 15 minutes is long enough. if we're going to be looking for the entire square.

So I might even suggest putting it to 20 minutes. So that gives, you know, people are going to jump in and get a coffee if the space is, you're going to get in, you're going to get out. But, you know, about the other side of the street, to give them an opportunity to also benefit and whether it's especially with the outdoor dining, it takes up a lot of spaces in the summertime. So maybe we try it for six months and see how it works. I've also talked to Leon about the parking next to the post office. which is 10 minutes and people are getting tagged and they're complaining. So I'm just also wondering about the enforcement of this with the parking enforcement officer about how they're gonna be able to juggle the enforcements throughout the town. So that's why I think it should take a little while to try it out and see how it works. and then come back and make it permanent.

I mean, if you want to start with 15 minutes and if we see it as an issue, I think we can bounce it up to 20. But it's just a matter of I don't want to be doing this for one business.

Yeah, it's not for one business.

I know it's not, but the appearance is that it is. because there's only a few businesses that are really on that side that you would jump in and jump out and take off.

That's actually a very good point. When I was asking for those parking spaces, although they're located in front of those businesses, that can be utilized for Ron's ice cream. It could be used for Cathay Kitchen, which doesn't have parking spaces right in front of it. But I'm also happy to connect with the other businesses in the square to ask them and all of them to ask them if they want one 15 minute on each block. That might be the answer to the question here. especially during the outdoor dining period when there are fewer spaces for that. So it might be something like that space that you referenced closest to, it's really in front of Orchid 7. that would be the first parking space that's closest to Cathay Kitchen and sort of on that block that maybe we designate that one 15 minute. So I'm happy to do that.

But I didn't want to overwhelm by sort of asking for two minutes.

And if we're talking about runs, 15 minutes is definitely not enough time. but anyway, also the traffic enforcement officer is not there after. They're just during the daytime, correct, Leon? That's correct. Yeah, Monday through Friday, day or in the day. There's nobody there afterwards, so it doesn't really matter. It's open.

I think the hope also is that the sign is also a deterrent so that people do see that it's 15 minutes and maybe they wouldn't think that they could park there for three hours because with the two hour parking, people might go over that, I don't know.

Did they go online? Of course.

All right, Michelle? Hi, thank you. Thanks, Anne, for coming and talking a little bit more about this.

Sure.

I definitely understand the need for the request. I'm always inclined to support something that helps parking turn over. I have a lot of the same questions and comments that some of my colleagues have already mentioned. I'm wanting to kind of understand best practices around this in a town center and how this fits in throughout the whole square so that we are being comprehensive and equitable and strategic because I do know that there are and other establishments that we're talking about. I know one in particular on Washington Street that has mentioned losing business from customers that call and say, I'm never gonna pick up my takeout because I just couldn't park. So they opt to just leave it behind and there's money lost there. I think that I'd love to see this as a first step of analyzing and I agree in the equity when I do get that those two spots there might help many businesses but maybe it's the right thing to do to have one or two on high and one or two on Washington But then again, how does that fit into, you know, there needs to be that balance of short, medium, and long term.

So, I would not be opposed to approving this. Now, maybe on a trial basis, like has been mentioned, maybe without the hour limits of 9 to 5, because I think a lot of these quick in and out pickups also happen at night. We're talking about Ron's and Cafe Kitchen and House of Pizza and things like that. You know, or that we will focus to looking more closely, which I don't know what the process for that would be, but I'm also happy to support it as long as it's kind of a first step and that we're not just reacting to this one request right now, but understanding all the needs of the school.

Sure, I am happy to look into it more, talk to Jason if that's... Mamone, and see what he has to say about it. Really happy to start the dialogue and start thinking about this. and especially as we get closer to the winter months when there might be more snow and a little bit less or tighter parking. Yeah, so whatever you'd like me to do, I'm happy to do that.

I think that's a great suggestion, Michelle, and to talk to Jason and bring it back. for, instead of doing it in piecemeal, make a look at the entire square and figure where you can, I think you're hearing support for putting a space or spaces. just that they are strategically located to benefit whether it's a business on Washington Street, on Eastern Avenue, or Lower High Street.

So I'll survey the businesses because there is, unlike... other parts of the square, that little area is just such a high concentration of those types of businesses that really need the turnover whereas other parts of the square it might be a little bit more mixed so I want to make sure that while I may think that a 15 minute spot would be beneficial to one business it may be not beneficial to more. So I will survey the businesses in the square and ask them and work with Jason as well.

You can also look at Washington Street, especially with the new restaurant, Zooka, that now has takeout window on Washington Street. And I know I went to get pizza takeout, and I know I saw Dennis happen to... walk across the street to find a place to park. There's nothing. There's nothing on that with El Centro. So I think we're cut off for you.

Okay.

Thank you. So I agree with what everybody said here. The other thing, too, is most of you have known me on this board. Parking has been my thing. and the Keystone. And there has been discussion before about some of those spots also becoming 15 minute or half hour in that front row there. as opposed to the long-term park there all day kind of thing, that those move as well too, which right there is the same kind of distance maybe even easier. have been parking on Washington Street or, well, not Washington Street, but High Street or East or there. So I think it's something to really look at. and come back with a more comprehensive plan on how we can do this. And the other thing too is I don't think necessarily that we should stop it at 5 p.m. because I agree, trying to get takeout for dinner, you can drive around the square 20 minutes before you can find some place to park, which is a great thing.

What do you think is reasonable?

Well, I'm... Like, is it always? Is it 7 o'clock at night? Is it, you know, is it 7 o'clock at night, right? And kind of past that maybe takeout.

Yeah, maybe even 9 because when the businesses are to have takeout or the bottle shop.

Mm-hmm. and that could be maybe part of a conversation as well too on how long because just because of the parking enforcement doesn't mean that other officers can't be well aware of what's going on and if things aren't moving,

and is there a way that enforcement can happen without a police officer standing there and watching like don't they not they don't mark the tires right or

No.

Digitally marked? Okay, good. So, unfortunately, because I think that's the other part of it, too, is the businesses say that they see the same people Parking out there for all day long. And not to throw enforcement under the bus, not trying to do that, but that there's... We have once had conversations, and I don't know, we kind of...

moved away from them is parking at the courthouse and possibly getting a row there for employees that work there to park there as well.

So the Registry of Deeds lot is free.

bring that back into the conversation. You were great partners during some recent court cases. Maybe it's time to say, hey, we have a few spots over there.

Postal employees allowed to park in the Registry of Deeds lot?

I'm not sure. I don't know. We don't control that. I have no idea. But it might be something that we look at. Thank you. Thank you, Ian.

Sure. And I just have one other addition. Yes, I support the comprehensive review. A couple other issues that we've talked about relative to parking there recently. One, I'm not remembering, we had a discussion about the taxi stand that is right in that area as well, and we discussed parking for food delivery services, because I wouldn't want these 15-minute spots necessarily to be taken up now by a food delivery service. But I know that we did add some spots for that. So again, if we could take all of that into consideration. in this comprehensive review. And also, if we're taking up two spots in a row, again, there are spaces in the square where you can't park at all because they're taken up for these various reasons and then others where there's more parking.

And just again, so if we can include some of those other types of parking spots or reduced availability into this review would be helpful.

Can I ask just a question? When you said about the taxi stand, what do you mean by that? Was there a discussion about getting rid of it or keeping it or the need?

discussed it. So I probably have driven by that a million times and never really noticed that that was a taxi stand. And so there's a question, are taxis using it? Is that the only place that a taxi stand should be? in the day of Uber, is it being utilized? I just don't know, and we had a discussion about it, and I'm not sure, I don't remember where that discussion landed, but just... thinking of that and in food delivery having had to drive dangerously around food Park to grab food out of businesses for food delivery. I think these are all part of what we're seeing as a changing use of parking in the square so that we look at these other components as well.

Sure. And just one more question about the service delivery spot, food service delivery. Was that on Bryant or was that?

Where did that land?

It's not on Bryant. I think we had talked about doing one in the square. I don't recall where that was located. And I know we certainly had the conversation about the taxi stand. And I need to refresh my memory on that. So we can look into this. And this is what all... involved changes to your traffic rules and regs too, so that we need to follow that process as well.

I mean, if I may, Madam Chair, too, since that just came up, the food delivery on Bryant is also a huge issue because the fire apparatus, I think, have a hard time. In fact, when I was on my way to town meeting, the apparatus was leaving. and I was at the red light by the mobile station there and I saw how much hard time it had while there was a and Uber East driver parked on Bryan Street. So just something to think about. It might be nice to put a space in this lot or in the public safety lot and just that way they can cross the street and go pick it up as opposed to You know, that would be a good idea as a compromise. And then, Dimitri, I really like your idea of obviously cherry-picking a few key spots in the square to maybe do a 15- or 20-minute thing, but then also the keystone lot. That's really smart because the reality is if you're in a really... Dentspot, no one should have the expectation that they're going to be able to pull up, get Rockstar parking, walk out and get, that's just not how it works when you have that much development in that small space.

the Keystone's having some protected spots in the Keystone lot that's a really nice fair way that anyone can access pretty much any square in the business within reasonable walking distance you know to pick up something thank you Madam Chair sorry

Great idea, thank you, thank you. Any other questions?

It's a motion to take under advisement the request for the two spaces.

Second. Hearing a motion, a second. On the roll call, Michelle. Yes. Dennis? Yes. Jim? Yes. Mitria? Yes.

And the chair votes yes. All right, thank you for the discussion, Anne.

I hope to see you all at the straw.

Yes. Oh, yes. Can't wait.

Well, I'm singing again. I'm guitaring and singing again. Cover your ears.

Moving along. Move to approve the consent agenda including Block Party, Carroll Drive, and Wesley Circle, 12, 13, 25, 3 to 9 p.m. gift acceptances. 1500 from DYC from Bay State, Antique Auto Club, and $10,000 from Fidelity Charitable. Change in DBA for Abbey's Beverly Inc., DBA Uchi to Abbey's Beverly Inc., DBA Uchi.

Second.

You're going to motion a second, roll call vote. Michelle? Yes. Dennis? Yes. Tim? Yes. Dimitria? Yes. And the chair votes yes. Okay, up next we have a public hearing for AT&T Wireless Attachments at 671 High Street. and this is, so we'll hear a presentation and then we'll open it up for public hearing. Thank you. Hi.

Good evening.

Good evening.

My name is Ed Parry. It's P-A-R-R-E. I'm an attorney at Brown Rudnick. Here representing AT&T. If you recall, I was here just a short four months ago in July of 2025. I presented five small cell facilities. One of those small cell facilities was located near the courthouse on the corner of Norfolk and Pearl. The county, the director of the county had some concerns with the historic nature of the area, asked AT&T to go out and try to find a new location, which we did. It does take some time to do. That's what we have pending this evening. So the street address, closest address, street address for the poll is at 671 High Street. The poll's actually located on Ames Street. It's right near the Dedham Community House. the back entrance, I guess, entrance exit.

So Eversource has licensed the pole to us. The pole needs to be replaced as we've done in the past. The installation will consist of our usual small cell facility. It's a two foot canister antenna on the top of the pole. There's an equipment cabinet about 11 and a half feet above the and there is obviously a meter and a shutoff switch. We've provided all of our usual materials with respect to the AT&T's need in the area. We do comply with the emissions requirements of the FCC. We've done about a dozen of these so far in Dedham and With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions, but that's a summary of what we're doing. They'll look exactly like the others. I did follow up with the county director and they had no objection and they were appreciative of our efforts to

I have no problem with you putting it on.

what piqued my attention when you were speaking was that the poll is no good, they're gonna take a poll and put a new poll there. So my condition is gonna be that we will put that on once the second poll is removed. So it will be conditionally that my motion will be to approve it conditionally that the The AT&T device is not placed there until there is only a single pole at that location and the other one is removed.

It's beyond your control. It really isn't.

It isn't, but it is because if you want to put it on, you have to get them to help. I don't know what's on the poll, but just to get rid of the poll. Let me take a look. I don't know what else is on there.

I'm just... It looks like there are just some wires, but I can't do anything about the... No, it's not you, but that's... Yeah, and we do, I mean, there is a condition in your typical or your usual approval that requires no double polls. We've added that in all of the conditions here, so. We'd like to be able to install when we do the make ready work all together, and we're happy to take a condition of no double pole, but I understand your point. Understood. Thank you.

Discussion, questions from board members? Michelle?

Hi, thank you. Just a quick question about how notice was given to neighbors, particularly 671 High Street, but any other butters as well, and did they have a chance to weigh in at all?

We did a mailing consistent with the last hearings that we had that we do a 500-foot area. So anybody within that buffer of the poll received a notice from our office along with a copy of the plan. and a link to the full package that was submitted. We did not receive any calls or emails to the office with any questions, concerns or opposition.

If I may just follow up on that, as at Nancy's suggestion, I did reach out to Roberto Moran when we began looking at this poll because it was right next to the property there. I shared the plans with him months ago, followed up with a phone call. He had no issue with it, no further questions. So we did our due diligence with him also, just to let you know we did do outreach to him.

Perfect, thank you.

You're welcome.

Other questions from board members?

And this is a public hearing. We'll entertain any comments from members of the community. Feel free to come up if you have any comments.

Chair, I move to close the public hearing.

Second. Hearing a motion and a second. On the roll call vote, Michelle? Yes. Dennis? Yes. Jim? Yes. Dimitria? Yes. And the chair votes yes.

Madam Chair, I move to approve the request from AT&T for the placement of a cellular wireless device at 671 High Street on the condition that there only be a single pole at the location in order to affix the AT&T wireless device.

Second. Hearing a motion and a second on a roll call vote. Michelle? Yes. Dennis? Yes. Jim? Yes. Dimitria? Yes. And the chair votes yes. Thank you.

Thank you all very much.

Thank you.

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

You too.

Okay, next up, acceptance of grants.

Good evening, everyone. Rana Monadorfer, Assistant Finance Director. I'm on the agenda twice tonight, so I'll be back. We received a grant on October 22nd from the MassDAP under their Massachusetts Electric Vehicle Incentive Program. And that's just the program that incentivizes communities to Purchase EVs. And so as part of the police budgets, the police FY26 budget, they are purchasing a Ford F-150 Lightning. and leasing a Chevy Equinox. The Ford F-150 Lightning will be replacing a 2018 Ford F-150 and will be assigned to a school resource officer. It will also be used to haul or tow a trailer for their firearms training. The Chevy Equinox will be replacing a 2013 Ford Taurus.

The total amount that we will be receiving is $12,500, which will be a nice chunk of change that we don't have to spend out of the operating budget.

Thank you.

Discussion from board members.

Did you say that you were purchasing or leasing?

The F-150 Lightning is being purchased and the Chevy Equinox will be leased. and it's being paid for out of the FY26 operating capital. So that's just money that each year the chief has for his vehicles.

Do you know what the warranty is on that EV battery?

Most are eight years, but we can double check on that and get back to you.

Okay. And if there's any way to find out if there's any extension on that? Yeah. Because do we usually typically keep those trucks for more than eight years, or is it an eight-year rotation?

The... The truck isn't being leased. It's a Chevy Equinox. It's a small little, it's kind of like the Nissan Leaf. This would be the first time for the police department to lease cars. So I think they're doing this as an experiment because the and the person that's being assigned to sort of the perfect position for that vehicle.

If I may, through the chair, what was the year of the vehicle that the F-150 is being replaced though?

The Ford F-150 is replacing a 2018 Ford F-150.

So seven or eight years probably.

Okay, thank you. Questions from, any other questions from board members? Entertain a motion.

move to accept the Massachusetts Electric Vehicle Incentive Program Mass DEP grant.

Second.

Hearing a motion and a second, roll call vote. Michelle? Yes. Dennis? Yes. Jim? Yes. Dimitria? Yes. And the chair votes yes.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, request for change manager for Ali Muniv to Robert Antonius for Total Wines, 344 Providence Highway.

Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. Attorney Trish Fonsworth. And with me is Robert Antonius, change of manager on an all-alcohol Package store license. Mr. Antonius has more than 25 years of retail management experience and more than three years with here in Dedham. He helped open the store. and answer any questions for you. Thank you.

Questions from board members?

So you are aware of the rules and regulations of the town of Dedham regarding alcohol, correct?

Yes, I am, sir. We actually just passed a sting this past Monday. It was our fifth sting since opening in July of 23. And we've received more stings in our location than any other Establishment, I believe, in town and any total line. We take a lot of pride in that in training.

So I just want to correct you that they're called compliance checks? Yes. It's not a thing. It's used to educate businesses within the community. everybody is treated equally, everyone receives the same, so you do not get any more than anybody else. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments from board members? I'll entertain a motion.

Move to approve a change of manager for Total Wines 344 Providence Highway from LA Muneeb to Robert Antonius.

Second.

hearing a motion and a second, roll call vote. Michelle? Yes. Dennis? Yes. Jim? Yes. Dimitria? Yes. And the chair votes yes. Thank you. Good luck. Thanks, Councilor.

Thank you.

All right, and we've caught up a little bit. Next up on the agenda, Director of Engineering and Public Works. Yes, our director of DPW, Joe Flanagan, regarding recommended pavement management program for Oh, Jason's online. Thank you very much. For calendar year 2026 through 2028.

Good evening, thank you very much. I think Jay's on as he is. So in front of you is our 26 to 28 plan. Is he ready to go?

Can I just... There's the other person. Oh, that's the guy, a gentleman from Portland. Oh, okay. Waiting. Okay, got it. Thank you.

That's fine.

Hello, good evening. Good evening, Jason.

Hi, how's everyone? Good evening. Yeah, tonight at 4.20 this evening is our recommended 3-year We are entering into our 19th year of this program. Our favorite condition index right now is an 83, which is being a roadway condition that is absolutely perfect for our town. We are at or above slightly the Commonwealth average for other communities, so we're still at a good point. We're up pretty much 13 points from where we originally started 19 years ago. and PCI of 70. For our funding scenario for the next three years, we're looking at just utilizing the chapter nine state funds. The past May comm meeting,

we did not receive any local funding for that so this year we're going to be just using the chapter 90 and I believe even this year we're not seeking capital for roadway improvements locally but we're going to be using the chapter 90 So the next three years are actually all just chapter 9 driven. First year is a little bit higher than subsequent years at $950,000 as a state. actually utilized $300 million for allotments to the chapter 90 where they typically do $200 million. So years two and three, we went back to that, so $200 million. So, assuming that they don't do that, we were just being conservative, saying $200 million. If we end up getting $300 million like they did this year, we'll make adjustments accordingly and bring things up from years out to years closer.

And so along with our self-evaluation transition plan, we take 30% of the funding that we use to repair our non-compliant ADA sidewalks and ramps. We want to make a concerted effort to try to bring up our accessibility standards to meet today's ADA and AAB standards. With that, if we get the funding that we anticipate we're going to get over the next three years. We can realize that we'll have approximately 3.6 miles of newly repaved roadway, approximately 1.4 miles of New ADA-compliant sidewalks and approximately 85 ADA-compliant curb ramps.

With that, I'll leave it open to any questions or concerns regarding the recommended curb ramp program.

Thank you, Jason. Questions or discussion from board members?

I have something, Madam Chair. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Joe. For the people at home, could you just explain what Chapter 90 is?

Child 90 is the state fund that the state utilizes to provide other communities revenue in order to do various road repairs or buy equipment, repair bridges and culverts. So if it's an infrastructure improvement fund that

So when we say that we're doing our roads with exclusively Chapter 90 funds, that means we're pretty much saying we're using exclusively state money at this point? and historically in the past, obviously that wasn't the case. There was a mix of local funds, funds that we collected, and then, so what was the breakdown in some of the previous years? How much of the improvements that you did came from local funds versus Chapter 90 funds?

When we first started the program 19 years ago, we got $1.5 million locally, and we used Chapter 90, so we were working for about $2.2 million per year. And the first 10 years, we were receiving that $1.5 million. and then as years 10 through 19 started to receive less in local funding from $1 million to $900,000 to $700,000 to $500,000 to now significantly increased their ability as well.

So in the most recent years, it was like 25 to 30% of the funds were local and the rest came from Chapter 90. Is that approximately right?

It might have been like a 60-40 split between state and local. in 730, but over the past few years, Chapman 90 has been the higher contributor to our credit management program.

So it's fair to say that, I mean, what that essentially means is we're doing less roads over the next three years because we have less money. So we had to pick and choose which ones we wanted to. We might have done more otherwise. Is that right?

That's correct. So last year we presented the three program years, two and three. are now this year's one, two, and three. We could not bring in another year's worth of roads because we have that less money. So years two and three have been now spread out over three years. for us on this next payment management program.

So it's fair to say you've tightened your belt with what you're asking? Exactly, yes. We had to. OK, thank you. And then lastly, it's reasonable to wonder if that 83 is going to go down a little, right? If we continually don't fully fund the roads, it might become 82 or 81 or 80 or 79, right? Is that a fair thing to say? So I just want to make all those points for everyone because We're facing financial challenges right now and I commend you both for taking that into consideration and what you're looking for with this program. appreciated I think from this board and from a lot of places in town so thank you for that and just knowing that you know we can't have our cake and eat it too you know like when we when we cut from roads then do that enough years in a row, and the roads might suffer a little.

So this is the tough choices that we're faced with as a community in many different domains right now, and I think this is a great example of that, which is why I wanted to bring it to light. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Other questions or comments from board members? Michelle?

Hi, thanks, Joe and Jason. Building options, this question, being on Facebook previously, I always thought it was It's interesting and a little confusing how these plans tie with the budget decisions from recommendations from PENCOM and End-of-Town Meeting. Normally my question is there or the other direction, right? Like what if the select board had approved a three-year plan, and then the town doesn't approve that money in the budget. But going the other direction here, related to Dennis' question, if for some reason FinCom and Town Leading did add more funds here over Chapter 90? What would happen if you moved through the plan more quickly? Would there be opportunities to add? I'm always so curious how those two processes kind of line up with each other.

We've changed our strategy over the years. We've learned lessons that trying to develop a payment management program with funds that aren't there is very difficult. So the money that we What we were looking for this past May that we didn't end up getting, we get that money and we also realize that we're going to get a chapter 90 in that current year for our next calendar year. So we based upon our calendar year 26, based upon any local funding for chapter 90 we received in 2025. So if we were able to get additional money in 2026, this town meeting, We would use that to fund year one of the next three-year program. And yes, we would bring both roads forward in years two and three and supplement those with roads that would be repaired beyond that probably out in years four and five.

They had one follow-up question. So in the packet, it mentioned in your email that sometimes projects are postponed. because of utilities or other road work that's being done to utilities in the state. How does that end up impacting the schedule or the funding?

Yeah, I'll give you a good example. East Street between the Rotaries. We were supposed to do that three or four years ago. But with all the road work that's been going on with the MBTA and the bridge and the water main, and now we know even Eversource is going in there next year. We can't even do until the VOQ of this program started. So things like this always come up and we're able to kind of maneuver and we try to do it within our current creative program where if something's in gear one, you know that there's a utility company that's annoying there, We tried to chalk it around a year two or year three road, so we kind of bring that forward and then we bring that up to years two and three. So we're trying to work within our current three-day program so it doesn't get completely to a point where we know and are hopeful that we can get to it.

Okay, but yeah, I did notice a lot of East Street on the schedule, so I assume that was kind of aligned with them finishing up their work there. Okay, thank you.

and also if I can just jump in right there. That's around town too, so Riverside Drive is another example of that. The gas company went in last year, we were supposed to do that. But you work with the utility companies and we meet with the utility companies almost on a weekly basis, and now we get there. you get their three-year plan, you try to work with it so we're all, so we can just push this off so there's one final pave and we don't want to get the situation where we're paving and then all of a sudden they come in and have a, but the gas, the gas is difficult because they are, There's small stretches of the gas main where they just say, no, we're not going to fix it. We're going to let it go. And then we say, well, you know what? If you're going to go in there and repair it, then you have to go curb to curb. and that's always a push and a struggle but unfortunately you have to do that if they're not going to do, they have our plan.

Other questions from board members? Just to follow up what Dennis had said, I agree with you. in the sense that we have to do more with less or try to do more with less. The local road safety plan, when we were working on that and we had our community events, one of the things we did here is about the ADA compliance on the sidewalks. So thank you for continuing that effort in improving the sidewalks. And I think the point is taken that people do have to understand that we are doing the best that we possibly can for our roads and our sidewalks. We don't have an open checkbook, unfortunately, for this. We are limited in what we can fund. And we do our best in order to go to different sections of the town with streets. There's a lot that goes into it. and deciding what streets they're going to be doing.

So I thank you for all your work on that and to the community to understand what goes into that and funding is a major part of it and sometimes you do have to Take what you take at this point. Take what you get. Unfortunately, and that might sound a little mean or harsh, but it is the financial situation that we are in right now, that we're doing our very best. to be able to fix our roads and our sidewalks and make the community as safe as we possibly can.

Thank you. Thank you. And I'll ask just one question. Thank you for comments from my colleagues. I know that Dedham took active steps to increase our roads ratings. and help me fill in the gaps of what I'm trying to say here, but that we improved the quality, what is it? CPI, PCI, and we and residents were concerned about the conditions of our roads and we took time to improve that and I think are we What is our grade currently?

83. We're at an 83 right now.

83. And so how long do you think it will take having these reduced investments before we start to see a degradation of that rating? Within five years. Within five years. So I think that's just important context for us to understand as a community. We need to make decisions about whether we're more comfortable with those types of road conditions in the future in understanding why, what goes into those road conditions. I'm glad that we have some flexibility now during the years where we're having I think the most difficulties in meeting our budget needs.

but to know that within five years without additional investments we will start to see a degradation of the conditions of our roads and that should be expected. without investments within the next five years. I just wanted to make sure that that context was discussed.

And that's difficult. I mean, this is a conversation, right? I mean, that's a really difficult statement to say, right, as where we're going because, again, where does the money come from? where do we get more funding? Is it where the state puts more funding and where they decide what they're going to fund? Right? So this is a really big, it's great that we're on record saying all of this, and we could see our roads get to a point in five years that we're not going to be proud of after all the work that we did do to improve all of our roads. but where does it come from? So, you know, sometimes some initiatives might have to change a little in priorities. I appreciate what you said there. Thank you.

Great. I'll entertain a motion if there's no further discussion.

I move to accept the recommended pavement management program for calendar year 2026 through 2028.

Second. Hearing a motion and a second on the roll call vote, Michelle. Dennis, Jim, Dimitria, and the chair votes yes. All right, thank you very much, Jason and Joe, for coming in.

Thank you very much. Thank you both. Happy Thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving. Okay, next up is a presentation by Polko of the National Community Survey results. Good evening. Welcome.

Good evening. Thank you so much. Can you see my screen?

Yes. Yes.

We do have them up on us.

All right, perfect.

I think we're good to go. Well, I'm very happy to be here tonight to present the findings from Dedham's first national community survey.

Before IBM, on behalf of myself,

co-workers, I would like to extend a couple of thank yous to Leon, Brady, and Amanda who were our primary contacts throughout the survey development and implementation process. They provided thoughtful feedback on survey developments, the delivery of the instrument,

Thorpe, that's been chair, that's been the presentation that we're going to give tonight.

I also would like to acknowledge my colleague, Lily Vasquez, who was the main project manager for this year's survey and helped to do a lot of the work for this conference.

So a little bit about who we are here for diving into some of your results.

So ULTO is an online community engagement platform. of jurisdictions nationwide to help communities with strategic planning, with budgeting, and most importantly, with empowering residents.

Back in 2019, Holcomb merged with the National Research Center

that we conduct around the US, like the National Community Survey, the National Employee Survey, the Community Assessments Survey for older adults, among a few others. MRC actually was the first organization to conceive of the idea to create benchmarks for local government and public opinion. and since 1999, we work with hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide to build the largest national database of local public opinion. You can see here on the slide, we also work closely with ICMA and the National League of Cities, as well as GFOA, which I heard you had to work on earlier tonight, so that's exciting news. There are other government leaders that we work with as well, like the Alliance for Invasion, Engage Well for Government Leaders, and tons of academic partners like the American Association for Public and Human Resources. So before we again look at those results, I do want to emphasize there's a variety of ways that these results can be used.

Most common jurisdictions that we work with are going to use their survey results to monitor trends in residential paving over time. to inform budgeting processes and strategic planning, and most importantly, to benchmark your community's specific characteristics and services against other communities in our benchmarking database. So the National Community Survey, or NCS, is a standardized five-page comprehensive survey that allows municipalities to assess the resident's opinion about their community and about their local

The NCS focuses on the overall livability of the town by categorizing survey questions into the 10 main points for community livability.

You can see those 10 facets here on the slide.

These facets have been identified for extensive survey research as those that are most impactful to residents' overall quality of life.

and the National Community Survey includes items within each of these 10 classes to provide a full picture of how residents feel about their community. And then finally, and I think most importantly, these facets also tend to align with a lot of municipal departments. It may be very easy for town staff to quickly find the information that's most important to their day-to-day work in the final report results. So looking here at how we conducted this most recent survey, all households within the town were eligible to participate in the survey. A list of all households serving The Dedham zip codes were purchased based on updated listings from the United States Postal Service. And then using boundary files provided by the town, addresses located outside of your boundaries were removed from a potential list of households to service.

So ultimately, in the end, 3,000 addresses were geolocated to confirm they were Dedham residents, and those individuals were selected to receive a survey invitation. Those 3,000 randomly selected households received mailings. beginning on August 28th and the survey remained open for six weeks. The first mailing was a postcard inviting the household to participate in the survey. The next mailing contained a cover letter with instructions, the five-page survey questionnaire, and a postage paper turnaround form. Each of these mailings included a web link to give residents the opportunity to respond online, as well as QR codes to further encourage participation. A total of 496 certificates were received from these efforts, providing a response rate of 17% and a margin of error of plus or minus 4%. We then compared the demographic profile of these survey respondents to that of all adults living in the town using the most recent census and American Community Survey data, and we lately found a survey.

Now, in addition to this randomly selected probability sample of households, a link to an online community-wide open participation survey was also publicized by the town. The open participation survey was available to all residents and became available on September 25th. That survey remained open for two weeks and an additional 467 responses were received from most applicants. Now the presentation that we're going to go through here tonight, the report that's been shared with you, those are based on 496 responses to the random sample mail-based survey. However, the responses to the Open Participation Survey are provided separately in the full report results as well. look at some high-level results here. I do just want to reiterate that the major advantage to participating in the National Community Survey is this opportunity to compare ratings given by your residents to those from communities around the U.S.

So as I said before, the National Research Center was the first organization to conceive of this idea to create benchmarks for global public opinion. That allows you to compare ratings from your citizens to ratings of similar citizens around the US and other communities.

As you can see on the slide here, currently there are about 400 communities found in our national database.

All right, we'll get on the high-level overview here first, and then we'll turn to some key findings and highlights that our data science and survey research teams pulled out. So in the survey itself, we have two questions that ask directly about those 10 facets of community livability that we identified a few slides ago. The first asks residents to rate the current quality. of each of these 10 areas within the community. And you can see here the resulting comparisons of the national benchmark in the shading on the chart. The second question then asks about the same 10 facets of community livability but this time it's centered on how important residents think it is for the community to focus on these areas in the coming two years. So we asked both about the current quality and future importance of each of these 10 fences

and we use those answers to create this quality importance gap analysis.

So we use this chart, which is also included in the recorded results, to help determine which areas are of relatively higher importance to residents and all of these residents, so those with the largest gaps shown here on the slide. This chart is just one of many ways to interpret your data. It can be used to help identify Findings, and maybe more importantly, to help communities to determine which areas may need additional focus or maybe some additional resource allocation in the coming years and which others are performing well by comparison. Now the NCS includes 123 survey items for which residents provide evaluative ratings.

In those 123, five received ratings that were higher than the rolling national benchmarks here in the town.

109 received similar ratings and 9 received lower ratings. So ratings are considered similar if they're within 10 points of our rolling national average, and higher or lower if they are more than 10 points different from that average. We'll hit and highlight those here next. So the items that scored higher than our national benchmark, you can see on the slide here, they're organized by facet. So we have four items in the economy facet that scored higher than the national benchmark comparisons. The overall quality of business and service establishments, a variety of business and service establishments. I would say the downtown commercial area. Shopping opportunities, which actually scored much higher than our national benchmark. It was 20 points above our global national average. and then in the area of utilities we have affordable high speed internet access scoring at least 10 points above the national average. We also had nine items, as I said, that scored below the national benchmark.

So coming in at least 10 points below, you can see these are divided up here as well by the facet. that they're related to. So drinking water and utility billing did come below national benchmarks in the utilities facet, K-12 education, overall economic health, traffic flow on major streets, and then two items in relation to parks and recreation. and the natural environment. We're going to highlight these as we move ahead into our key findings. I want to point out here before we dive into these key findings there is a lot of additional data that we won't cover in the rest of this presentation but in the full report for example we have demographic and geographic breakdowns of the data as well as the The rest of the presentation here tonight is really going to focus on a few areas that we thought were most noteworthy within the survey results. So key finding number one, most residents experience a high quality of life in the town.

Around 8 in 10 residents gave positive ratings to Dedham as a place to live and the overall quality of life. in the town, and to Dedham as a place to raise children. Additionally, as you can see on the right here, around 80% stated that they plan to remain in the town for the next five years, and around 80% would recommend living in the town to Sullivan last. Our second key takeaway, most residents feel a strong sense of safety in Dedham. Nearly all residents indicated that they felt very or somewhat safe in their neighborhoods during the day. Around 9 to 10 community members also felt very or somewhat safe in downtown commercial areas and from violent crime. Feeling safe from a fire, flood, or other natural disasters and from property crime also received high marks. You can see here that each of these items did score in line with our national benchmark comparisons.

Now in addition to feelings of safety, the NCS also includes a battery of questions about safety services throughout Dedham. So about 9 to 10 residents gave high marks to fire services and ambulance or emergency medical services. That's when you present excellent or good in rating those services. Roughly 8 in 10 community members also paid vaccine early ratings to fire prevention and education, crime prevention, and animal control, and each of these items scoring a high in the financial. Our third key takeaway here, while Dedham's business and service environment is raised strongly, perceptions of economic opportunity and cost of living were less favorable. So around 9 in 10 residents gave higher marks to the overall quality of business and service establishments, while around 8 in 10 community members gave excellent or good ratings to the variety of business and service establishments and the vibrancy of the downtown commercial areas.

as we emphasized before, each of these ratings exceeded the national benchmark. Shopping opportunities, as well, scored much higher than our comparison with communities.

Economic development, employment opportunities, and the cost of living received fewer positive ratings, but were all still on par with our national averages.

Our fourth key takeaway here, the town earned solid marks for arts and cultural offerings, but residents do express more modest satisfaction than educational opportunities and childcare access. So around 8 to 10 residents applauded public library services, while roughly 7 to 10 community members gave positive ratings to make all residents feel welcome and the overall sense of community in the town. Opportunities to volunteer and opportunities to attend special events and festivals also received positive ratings from around two-thirds of participants. and then finally about six in ten residents gave excellent work with ratings to the community's overall support for the arts. You can see here on the slide as well, around six in 10 residents felt satisfied with the overall opportunity for education, culture, and the arts. While around half of the community members gave positive ratings to K through 12 education,

and roughly 3 in 10 I gave positive ratings to the availability of affordable quality child care or preschool. Those two items in the lighter shade are digital or lower than actual. And then finally key finding number five, residents gave mixed ratings to mobility and maintenance services. So about six in ten residents gave positive ratings to the ease of travel by car and the ease of public parking in the town. About half of the community members gave excellent or avoided ratings to the ease of walking, while the ease of travel by bicycle and the ease of travel by public transportation received excellent or good marks from around a month of respondents. Our sole magnet here that fell below national benchmarks was the traffic flow on major streets, receiving excellent or good ratings from 3 in 10, which is fabulous.

And then similarly to our safety facet, the mobility facet also includes some elaborate questions for mobility services in Dedham. So around seven to 10 residents gave positive ratings to snow removal and street lighting. You can see here that around 6 in 10 members gave positive reviews to street cleaning and traffic enforcement. All around half provided excellent road remarks and traffic signals. And then sixth key takeaway, residents appreciate local recreation programs, but we do see some room to enhance parks and trail access. Roughly 8 to 10 participants applauded the overall air quality in the town. Recycling and cleanliness received excellent or good marks from around.

two-thirds of respondents.

While the yard waste pickup and water resources like beaches, lakes, ponds, and riverways fell below our national averages at about one in two

And then finally, approximately 7 in 10 participants gave excellent or good marks to recreation programs or classes.

You can see the top three items here did score similar to our national benchmark.

while the overall quality of Parks and Recreation opportunities and the availability of parks and walking trails did score a natural national benchmark.

Now in addition to the standard battery of questions, the NSCS also has space to include some custom questions that are unique to your community. So we're going to hit on those here next before wrapping up. So in our first question that's unique to Dedham, there was a question asking to indicate what degree you agree or disagree with the following statement about taxes in the town. You can see around 6 in 10 residents felt that they paid too much for the services that they received. That's 61% strong, your sum would agree. Around half of community members felt satisfied with the current level of taxes and services. Roughly 4 in 10 participants are willing to pay more taxes to get more services. And then finally, only 3 in 10 residents were willing to accept service reductions if it means lower taxes. 27% stronger somewhere through with that final state.

Then in a follow-up question here, there was a course choice question that we followed up with. So without additional revenue, services provided by the town may have to be reduced in the future. For each of these following municipal services, we ask the respondents to indicate if they would prefer a service reduction or a tax increase, one or the other. You can see here that the top five choices for increasing taxes include maintenance of town and school facilities, road maintenance, school services, trash and recycling collection, and fire department services. You can see our sole item here over the dark green with vouching services exceeded is the construction of new town facilities. That was 49%. And then finally, we have one additional question regarding property taxes. So which of the following best describes how you think the township balances budget, revenues, and expenditures?

and you can see here we have a battery of questions around six and ten residents strongly or somewhat agree that the township proposed a property tax override to maintain school department services at the current level. and it followed up as well with the property tax override, or I'm sorry, to maintain town services that were non-school related at the current service level. The other two items here scored at around 1.5 and 4.10 respectively. So with that, we have a summary of conclusions here. As we said, most residents experience a high quality of life in the town. Most residents also deal with a strong sense of safety. Dedham's economic and business environment stand out as community strengths, but there's some concern potentially for cost of living and affordability measures.

Community enrichment and engagement is strong in Dedham.

Residents gave mixed ratings to mobility and maintenance services.

And then finally, residents appreciate local recreation programs, but do see some room to enhance parking trail access.

So with that, I'll pause here, I'll catch my breath, and I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have on the production of the survey, the report that's been shared with you, or on the presentation slide that I just put up. Thanks so much for your time and attention.

Thank you for the presentation. I'll open it up to questions from board members.

I have a few, it's okay, Madam Chair. A couple questions for you, sir. Thank you for a great presentation. I appreciate it very much, very interesting. I want to talk about a couple of things. Number one is you got 496 responses out of 3,000. The 3,000 people were picked randomly, so it's probably a safe assumption to say that the demographic traits in socioeconomic and other identifying traits of those 3,000 people were reflective of the community at large, most likely in most areas. Is that a fair statement? Did you look at the 496 who responded and did you see any intrinsic biases and differences between the 496 who responded and the people that did not respond?

Yeah, that's a great question. So as part of the preparation and data cleaning, We do end up weighting the final survey results to the random sample. So we'll actually look at the most recent census and American Community Survey data for the demographic makeup of the town. and then we work and we slightly waive the responses to make sure that they match the overall demographics of the town. So that's all taken into account prior, during the date of beginning the preparation steps, yes.

So it was accounted for. and then of the 467 people that just filled out the survey and responded, I'm assuming, did you notice any major differences between those 467 people and the 496 people that responded? respond to the random survey?

Yes, so typically the one area that we always see, and we saw it here, where the open participation scores higher than the random sample is participation in

Local events, participation with local government.

Any of those items that asked about have you attended a recent meeting?

Are you active in local organizations?

Have you reached out to an elected official?

because likely they saw the invitation from a potential New York Facebook page or a newsletter. So the more engaged community members likely responded to the open participation survey.

Did you see any differences in their answers or patterns in their answers between the people that responded to the open survey versus those that were asked to participate?

Aside from the participation numbers, I didn't see anything that stood out explicitly, but I can dig in a little bit deeper and we can get a comparison for you if you'd like across all the items.

I would be curious. I think that's really important. And then lastly, since the normative data is such an important part of what you presented to us in the presentation, I'm very curious how you derive it. And I'm wondering, when you compare Dedham to other communities, how are you choosing the communities? Are you choosing all 3,000 communities? Are you comparing Dedham to other comparable communities? Like, for example, I'll give you a good example now. You said access to shopping and services Dedham did quite well on, right? But if we're comparing us to like Paducahville or something, it's going to be a lot different than if you're comparing us to say like Arlington, Virginia. Like if you look at other communities situated in the heart of metro areas, maybe that score actually isn't a good score. if you're comparing it to that group versus comparing it to, say, places that are rural places that intrinsically would not have the same acts of service.

Yeah, that's a really good question. So the national benchmarks here are compared to the entirety of our national database. So there's between 400 and 500 communities, some smaller, some larger. We do offer an opportunity to do what are called custom benchmark comparisons where we actually select from specific demographic or geographic variables to make a a smaller cohort that might be more aligned with them. We did do that in this effort. That wasn't included as part of this effort. But it certainly is something that we can do in the future. But when you're looking at benchmarking here, it's to the entire national level.

I appreciate that and you know I think that's something I don't know how much it costs but it is something I think we should consider because it will be a lot more meaningful and I would encourage people to interpret that with caution because if we're not comparing Dedham to similar communities, then when we use those comparisons, they might not be really as meaningful. So, I mean, the data is great, the survey is great, but I think that is one important piece of context. Maybe that's something we should look at is seeing what our results are like when compared to a comparable cohort. because we might get very different impressions from the data. Great question. Thank you. That's all, Madam Chair.

Yeah, we still have the data available here. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to jump in. Go ahead.

No, I was saying thank you to the chair. Go for it.

Oh, thank you. I was just going to say, we still have the data available here, so let me work with the project manager and the main point of contact with you all, and we can probably spin off a quick custom benchmark here for you and get that demographic this time and make sure we include it in the next iteration. are going to be doing here for you and getting those results.

Thank you. I have other comments, Madam Chair, but I'm sure my other colleagues will bring them up. There's definitely some interesting take-homes from what was presented, so thank you.

Sure, thanks. Michelle.

Hi, thank you. There is a lot to digest here, and obviously there will be more analysis and conversations to come around all of this before we draw too many conclusions. But I think for me, while it's interesting to see how Dedham compares to other communities, what I'm More interested in is how residents rate their priorities here in Dedham against each other, and especially how different demographics in Dedham answer similarly or differently. So my question I was gonna ask, you already kind of touched upon, basically is related to what additional analysis, whether it's Dedham getting the raw data, hopefully we have, or whatever additional analysis we or you can do with that raw data to further understand how folks answer. So, for example, like how did age or income or race or geography impact answers? You know, people that are, most people said they felt safe. Those that didn't, you know, do they have something in common or around where they live or... and other factors.

People that are unhappy with certain services have similarities as opposed to those that are happy with those services and the like. So what would next steps be for us to dig into some of that? Yeah, no next steps needed.

Actually, the report online includes

list over here to the right.

So you'll have breakdowns by age, by gender, by race and Hispanic origin, housing tenure type, how long have you lived in the town, so length of residency,

presence of children in the home, presence of older adults in the home, and income level.

So that's all interactive online.

You can select your demographic.

You can select what you want to look at in common, your safety, your mobility, and that will populate automatically for you.

So we can make sure we share that link, but that's all a part of the report. It's just in the digital version because it's better in the internet.

Other comments or questions from board members?

I just have two kind of quick questions right here. Thank you for all this, and there is a lot to digest. So you used the 496, and then there were two, was it the same exact survey that either was sent out or you could go yourself and do it.

Yes, there's just one additional question at the beginning asking those people in the open participation to confirm if they are a resident. We obviously know what the version is because we geolocated them, but that's the only thing I have.

Okay, and you said that you did not include all results in these results from both sets?

That's correct. So the results that you're seeing on the presentation and report are from the probability randomly selected mail-based sample.

From that sample we can calculate margin of error because it's randomly selected.

But if you want to dig deeper, we do offer it to everybody. We have 450 or so additional responses to the open participation. But again, those aren't randomly selected. Those are people who are more engaged in the community likely that are responding. So the best estimate of the overall community ratings come from the random sales.

I'd be very interested. Why did we bother asking the other people for data if we weren't ever going to use it?

It can still be useful if there are areas where you want to dig in. It also provides an opportunity for everybody to feel like they can participate if they like to. So the data, the raw results are still there.

We've got 450 additional responses there.

We can also dig in deeper with further poll surveys and events, too, with multiple UNFs, too, as well.

I'd be interesting to know those people if we think that they're more engaged to what they're feeling as well, too. That's just my opinion on that. And then just a quick question. What is utility billing? When you say... What does that mean? I have to find what that was. It has nothing to do with the search.

Yeah, so this is in relation to, so this is a part of the battery. I think it's question seven on the survey itself. Please rate the quality of each of the following services in the town. And utility billing is kind of just a standard question we ask. usually that's in relation to receiving the utility building. Is there online opportunities to pay the bill? Can you get it in e-version, paper version? It's just listed as utility building, however. There is no parenthetical description for that.

Alright, thank you. Thank you.

First, thanks very much for for a pretty concise PowerPoint that really touched on a lot of key points. And I would encourage, I'm glad to hear that there is an interactive tool because as I was going through the report, you know, you sort of get more questions about the, you know, what part of town, you know, what is the socioeconomic area that we're seeing these answers, so I think that is gonna be a real, good tool to sort of drill down a little further to make sure that as we're looking at the sampling that it's representative of the entire town and not, you know, not particular areas. So I think that's, you know, for us statistically to have a, you know, a survey that we're gonna be talking about truly represent the town. So great to hear that. And as I'm looking through the,

The PowerPoint was great, but the report, and I would encourage folks to read the report first before you go and look at the interactive map so that I think it will help you sort of focus on what areas that you want to see. And on the education and K to 12, I was sort of surprised to see that 48% lower and that means lower compared to the national average. Is that correct? So I mean, and again, things like that too, we'd like to see a little more drilling down on what, I know there was no opportunity to write a comment, but what was the, was the questions that are in the, In the report, those are the actual questions that were asked. So, for instance, the custom questions. Did you find any that were

that will counter, they answered it one way, and then they answered, then they flipped and answered it completely a different way. So when I'm looking, especially on the tax part, I look at the questions, you can answer it one way and then you get down and say, well, I really don't, I really don't like that. I'm willing to accept services at a reduction, strongly agree, and is that consistent with an answer that they might have earlier? Can you just talk about that?

Consistency and answers. Yeah, that is a really good question. I mean, just looking at the statements about taxes in the slide that we shared earlier, there's always some contradiction when we talk about taxes, right? I feel like I pay too much for taxes with 6 and 10, but then around one quarter are only willing to accept service reductions. So again, just kind of a trade-off there. I would suggest all of the custom questions are available for demographic breakdowns as well. So for example, income level could be a very interesting comparison there. Age could be a very interesting comparison there. length of residency, probably in relation to age. But there's a lot more information in the interactive component. We don't necessarily cross-tab everything for example, at like, how did you rate overall economic development and how did you respond to this question, just because they're being

and I appreciate you including the questions and the report that were asked because I think that's that's helpful for those that are reading the report to understand what was asked and so, you know, good job on that and overall an excellent presentation and A lot to digest, but it's a starting point. Thank you.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity to have this kind of data available to us. So thank you to Leon for initiating this type of survey and thank you Polko for executing that and analyzing the data and giving us all of these new resources which we previously haven't been had access to. And I think it's interesting to, one, to think about what this is as a tool. There's data, there's some specific questions. I think some of the questions are more specific or more directly correlate with a service or something like that. Some are a little harder. I think the question around K-12 is a very difficult, it's really difficult to understand what does that mean. People are less satisfied with K-12.

but there's certainly a lot of opportunity to dig into the data. And mostly what I want to call out is is how this plays into an exercise that will continue for us over the course of the next six months and longer. be looking to create opportunities for more of that qualitative, direct comment-based information from residents through a series of community conversations that we'll be rolling out over the next few months. So I think that's important for community members to understand that this is This is an opportunity for us to start with some benchmark data to get some more information from our residents directly in their own words.

in understanding our unique Dedham environment, our specific services, and really take this data and make it specific to Dedham so that we know, as decision makers, how we can best plan for for a future of our town that meets the needs. So I appreciate this effort. this is one piece of the puzzle, this is one data set, it is an important data set which we have a lot more opportunity to dig through and that we will be pairing this with more qualitative remarks through conversations with our residents so that we can use that information to help with our decision making. So thank you.

Can I just ask one more question on these results, if you don't mind? In the Dedham community, cost of living, that result, that percentage is what people agree that the cost of living is okay?

Yes, all of the direct relation ones are typically excellent or good ratings. So 33% gave an excellent or good mark to the overall cost of living in the town. Okay. And that's similar to our national benchmark because that item has, in recent years, declined nationally, and so we're seeing, you know, that's within 10 points of the rolling national average right now.

Okay, so 33% think it's excellent or good. That's exactly right. Thank you.

You're welcome. And I'll just say Polko is here obviously to be your partner in continuing those conversations. So we can continue to post things online with you, help to promote them. So we're always available.

Thank you so much.

Oh, I have one more. Very quick. I'm sorry. It just popped into my head. I was going to ask. What years did you do the normative data from? Are they all from the same year? Or are they spread out over the last, like, 10 years?

that normally compare the data to. Yes, so all of the national benchmark data is updated. So all of those responses are from within the last three to five years, or I should say within the last five years. Everything you're seeing here is 2021 or later. that you're being paired with, and only with the most recent effort. We have a lot of communities that do this every year or every other year, so only their most recent community survey is in the national surveys.

Sorry. That's curious. Thank you. Sorry.

You're welcome. Excellent. Thanks so much. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Okay, next agenda item.

Final report of the Water Resource Advisory Committee.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I wanted to make sure you had a nice print for your coffee tables or your bookshelves. and we of course have more of these if you have any members of the public or anyone interested. We have some select copies. So thank you all, thank you Madam Chair, thank you select board members and thanks for the opportunity to present the final report of the Water Resource Advisory Committee or otherwise known as WRAC. Next slide, please. RACC was established by the Select Board in 2024 with three objectives. One was to gain a better understanding of future water demand, capacity and quality in Dedham and the surrounding region. to assess the need for additional studies, including defining potential budgetary considerations and setting objectives for possible future research, and three, to identify possible opportunities to ensure that current planning and development policies

and practices are sustainable for future drinking, water, quality and supply. Next slide, please. The rack is made up of two select board members, two planning board members, one conservation commission member, two Dedham residents appointed by the select board, staff from the Dedham Westwood Water District, and the Planning, Zoning, and Natural Resource Department. The committee was led by Chair Jessica Porter and Vice Chair Dimitria Sullivan. Next slide, please. The committee held 11 meetings culminating in the approval of the final report and submission to the Select Board in May 2025. Through the 11 meetings, committee members heard from a variety of stakeholder groups associated with water, such as the Dedham-Westwood Water District, Charles and Neponset River Watershed Associations, the Town Engineer, Conservation Commission, and many others. Next slide, please. As a result of those 11 meetings, the committee made the following findings regarding RAC's objectives.

The Committee has found that the Town of Dedham, based on evidence presented by the Dedham-Westwood Water District, has the necessary predicted drinking water supply to handle future growth and associated water demand. Specifically, the committee finds that Dedham-Westwood Water District has adequate capacity both through the treatment of groundwater supply and purchase of MWA water. which is known as the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority to address water demand associated with future development in the town of Dedham. Next slide, please. No additional studies are recommended to be funded by the town of Dedham to address the demand, supply, and quality of Dedham's drinking water. However, the committee does recommend the following continued efforts. pursue any potential grants regarding water conservation, stormwater infrastructure, and soil conditions, engage with MWRA and other local utilities to understand studies that these utilities have conducted to learn from their efforts,

and participation with regional communities and nonprofits to ensure Dedham's drinking water is a viable source of drinking water for decades to come. Next slide, please. And lastly, the committee identified actions that could be taken by various boards, committees, or departments within the town to support the continued quality and quantity of the town's drinking water. The five categories are focused on actions at the town level and are additive to existing and future efforts of the Dedham-Westwood Water District. I will speak for the committee as a whole. We have learned more than we ever thought about water, how it's handled in the town, where it goes, how it gets in the ground, and back into the air. And definitely I think that the committee members would echo that. and we learned a lot through 11 meetings in over a year. And with that, we hope the Select Board graciously accepts this final report and concludes the work of the RAC committee. Thank you.

Thank you. comments and questions from board members.

I just, if I can, I want to thank all the members for all their hard work. Jeremy, for you, I see that we have two commissioners here as well. It really, when you said we learned a lot about water, more than I ever thought I would, that was very true and there's so much more to learn as well too. I would suggest that this board meets annually with the Westwood Board as well. And I think that we have to start working with that relationship a little bit more with the town of Westwood. I think that we need to explore opportunities and planning and development, especially around future drinking water quality and supply. As we know, we appoint three commissioners to the Dedham-Westwood Water District, and I think we should have biannual updates to support timely discussions and collaboration with them.

What else I think that we should also look into is from doing this research, we found out that there obviously is a governance document. The Dedham-Westwood Water District is a governmental entity established by Chapter 193 of the Act of 1985. to operate as an independent self-supporting unit government. I would suggest, and I'm not sure how this would work, that that needs to be reviewed because it's now 2025, so we're working from operation of 1985 on the Charter and I'm not sure if that is something that we can look at to make sure that we're actually at 2025 standards and how it works, how the business works. That document to me, reading it, doesn't seem to really be supporting on how business is done now. So I think that's something that we really should be looking at as a community.

Other than that, working together more with our commissioners, working together more with Westwood. I want to thank everybody for their commitment to this and the continued commitment to it as well, too. And Jessica, you did a fantastic job as the chair of this committee as well, too.

Thank you. Thank you.

Other comments from board members?

Very quickly, Madam Chair, having served on this committee, I want to just echo My thanks for all the committee members, for both our chairs, Dimitria and Jessica. You both did an amazing job dealing with this. It was sometimes a difficult situation to navigate. and the report is terrific. The take home from the report I think is good news that we're well positioned and I think that we should also give some thanks to the Dedham Westward Water District and for the work they've done and the planning they've done because when we had questions, they had answers. and I think that should make us all feel good. There are challenges for sure. I think that came up from the report, but you know, overall, The take-home from this is good news, and I think this is something we should do again, maybe not for a long time, but like in a decade or something like that, just to keep an eye on it, but...

Overall, you guys did a great job, so thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Michelle.

Hi, thank you. Thank you Dimitria and Jessica and Jeremy and everybody involved and Jeremy for the nice quick summary of the report. I know we have a longer, more detailed version of the final report that was have given to us and it seems like a lot of great advice and next steps in there. And so I have two questions about that. Were there any conversations about kind of implementation oversight? You know, I know we've done other projects in Dedham. Sometimes we have a concerted effort or a team to kind of keep up with the progress. I'm wondering. and Household staff and how that will be done. And then I was going to ask about maybe if there were two or three pressing things in their action items in terms of the select board, if any of you have something to be curious about. I'm trying to think about the answer. If there's anything else that the select board should be focused on that is top of mind, maybe just loading through or just an important priority.

Yeah, I think the one thing I would add in terms of select board, which I think builds on what Dimitria said is, so it was referenced that we had two of the commissioners that the select board has appointed to the Dedham Westwood Water District. came to, I think they were at every meeting, or at least one was at every meeting, and they're actually here tonight, so I do want to just acknowledge Eric Marathu, and Bob Alexander. Just very clear that they're real resources. I think one of the things I know the select board are tasked with making appointments to a lot of committees in town and each one has I think a distinct kind of, some maybe have less distinct, but each one has different characteristics that you're looking for. I just would, I think one of the things that became really clear to me is how important this particular appointment is.

and so I think in terms of an ongoing kind of, I don't think we stated this as an action item, but just I would encourage you all as a kind of ongoing priority is that thinking about your appointments to this board. I think when there is professional expertise that can come into play, I think is super critical. And so I do just want to acknowledge that these two gentlemen were super knowledgeable, very helpful, and obviously very committed to, in addition to going to the regular meetings, coming to all of our meetings as well. In terms of the implementation question, we did discuss this a little. Our committee went back and forth about whether we're making recommendations or action items and how I think directive to be with the different relative boards and departments about how to implement.

In the end, we left it with a set of recommendations that people could pursue as opposed to something that would be a little more dictated. And I believe a lot of these do center around planning, zoning, and natural resources, whether you know, conservation or other, but we also impact the health department, storm water, engineering, and so what we had talked about was making sure that we're distributing this to all of the relevant boards and committees. We're starting with the select board. We have given the port the report to the planning board and are planning a presentation like this as well and then the others my guess is we would just do in terms of you know written response with an offer to meet but not requiring. Is that accurate?

Yes.

Thank you.

Thanks, Evan. Thank you to the committee. and when you say 11 meetings, I know I have talked to members of the committee and they were long meetings and everybody had an opportunity to share their expertise, their opinions. and the committee listened and took it in. I just want also just to say thank you to my former neighbor who is now, she's a professor at Northeastern and now she's down at UNC. and she moved her family and her husband, Patrick Hogan, who was also a part of that, two very involved community orientated folks. And when you talk about talent, Jess, Kelsey would be the one that would come to my mind about somebody that has the talent and expertise that stepped up and we know it's always welcome when people

take the opportunity and this committee here was a perfect fit. And then I think Dimitria's comments about Westwood. So this is a, it's Dedham-Westwood Water District. It's two communities. And at one time we met with them, in my term on the board, probably four maybe four times with the district. We haven't done it in a long time and I think that's an invitation we should send out sooner rather than later, Madam Chair, for after the first year they have a joint meeting. We can go to Westwood? and then the next one come here and invite the district in and sort of continue the conversation. And to the point that Dimitria made about the general law that established the water district,

Again, I think both councils can review with staff and see what needs to be updated, which of course takes an act of the legislature, it takes town meeting, but I think that's something that is worthwhile to look at. And finally, this committee, as we have started to do, has an end date, we dissolve. And this is the benchmark that I think I see my good friend John Bethany in the back of the room, who has always believed that, you know, sometimes working groups go on and on and on and on and we have started the process following what the planning board has done is put an end date so that we thank you and then it's up to us. So thanks everyone, thank you.

Thank you. I'll echo the thanks and gratitude for the 11 meetings, the extensive work, the deep dive in looking at the whole cycle of water. I appreciate the way that this report is laid out. There's a lot of information to dive into. but I think anytime that I see a report with a set of recommendations, my question is always, Well, what's the next step? And the fact that you've highlighted where each of these recommendations lie makes that easier. and this is one more opportunity for us to track how do we handle these types of recommendations. and this gives us that framework. So I appreciate that effort.

And I think that this couldn't come at a more timely I think that we hear a lot of questions from the community about our drinking water, about MWRA, about our water district and how that's different. And so this comes at a really timely moment. I think that in looking at ways for our town staff to further simplify some of the content of the report for the community, so that the community can understand and easily get fine answers to some of their thoughts or considerations or questions that I know we've likely all heard that this is a starting point for them to be able to access some of that information.

and certainly take the recommendation for meeting with Westwood as something important for us to make sure that we get on our calendars. and I too want to extend thanks to our water commissioners for the commitment that you showed in the importance that that you've put in your role. I appreciate that you showed up at the meetings. You were available. and that you are now informed even more so about all of the components that go into us having good water throughout the whole cycle in town. So thanks for that. All right, so now we need, I'll entertain a motion.

Move to accept the final report of the Water Resources Advisory Committee and to resolve the committee with the board's appreciation.

Second.

Hearing a motion and a second on the roll call vote, Michelle? Yes. Dennis?

Yes.

Jim? Yes. Dimitria? Yes. And the chair votes yes.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, too. Thanks, guys.

All right, next agenda item, a discussion. We will be having a discussion. We will not be having a vote tonight regarding electric vehicle policy and municipal decarbonization road mile.

So just a brief overview, Madam Chair, Select Board. I asked Radamana Dorfer to come back this evening to just give a brief overview of where we currently stand on these two initiatives as well as... relates to the larger climate leader community initiative. And I know that there are members of the sustainability advisory committee here as well to answer the board's questions. and again we intend this as a discussion this evening, a question and answer session. We're more than happy to answer questions this evening or follow up in writing as well to the board if you have any remaining questions. It looks different on my shirt. Oh, okay.

Sorry.

Good evening. Thank you for having me again. I'm back to discuss something which we've been discussing for a while now, the Climate Leader Community Certification through the DOER, or as we've been referring to it as Green Communities 2.0. There are six steps to getting the certification, which are outlined on this slide. Be a green community in good standing, which Our last annual report was approved and I just submitted our 2025 report. So usually those don't get approved until March of the following year. Establish a local committee to advise on clean energy and climate activities. We're very lucky to have a very active sustainability advisory committee. The last time we were here, this step was not yet complete, but at the November 17th fall town meeting, the municipal decarbonization commitment or resolution was passed by town meeting.

So we are very happy about that. And then we have the municipal decarbonization roadmap and the zero emission vehicle first policy. and of course the Specialized Stretch Energy Coat, which was adopted in 2024? 2010. Nope, yep, I keep thinking of the opt-in. I keep doing that. So the two items that are sort of left on this exhaustive list of things we need to do is the adoption of a municipal decarbonization roadmap and the EV policy. The roadmap is simply an evaluation of strategies to decarbonize our facilities and vehicles. It is a list of options, not requirements. This roadmap can be updated any time internally, either through a technical assistance grant or we can get together the facilities department, DPW,

Engineering, and sort of go through it and update it as we identify decarbonization projects that we can do. Some of the projects that are suggested in the DCARB roadmap is the improvement of windows and doors at our schools, such as the Green Lodge, the Riverdale, and the Oakdale. I would take this moment to say that for our FY26 facilities capital on the school side, we were approved for money to do schematic design for this very project. and so this was separate and happening in parallel as we were developing this roadmap. And so I predict that either for FY27 or FY28, once the schematic designs are complete, The school facilities will be back asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars to install and improve these doors and windows that we're doing schematic designs for.

in order to improve the heat circulation and ventilation in our buildings and make sure our buildings are more secure and energy efficient. the school committee also this week adopted this decarbonization roadmap so we're very happy that half of the battle has been won. And then next up is the zero emission vehicle first policy. Currently, the town of Dedham since 2010 has a fuel-efficient vehicle policy, meaning that when we buy a vehicle, we are considering a fuel-efficient vehicle first and foremost. Similar to this policy, when department heads are looking at buying vehicles, they would consider if an electric or a hybrid vehicle would be are practical and good for their uses. There are exemptions for police, fire, and DPW.

This policy does not mandate the procurement of products that do not perform adequately for their intended use. The DOER is not punitive. They're not going to punish us if we buy an ICE. For example, let's say an F-150. It's not exempt weight-wise. Maybe an F-150 Lightning doesn't work for the DPW, but it works for police. Similar to how we do it with green communities, we're reporting once a year. It's part of my job. They ask me for a list of the vehicles that we've purchased. They come back, they say, hey, you bought this car, why? I tell them why. and we move on. They're not punitive, they don't pull back funding, like for example with the green communities grant that we have, that's not why they're there. nor both of these things do not require that we suddenly change all of our HVAC or buy all electric vehicles or replace existing things. This is zero over time.

as things break, as things are being replaced, as vehicles are being considered for replacement. These are things that are already happening as part of our operations. Next slide, please. So these are the next steps and questions. As I mentioned, the municipal decarbonization resolution was adopted. Thank you, town meeting. The roadmap and the ZEV policy was adopted by the school committee. The next deadline to apply for the certification would be this December. After that, it would be in June. It is our hope that the Select Board would vote to adopt the roadmap and the policy hopefully before December 30th so that we can apply and try and get funding in for all of the different school and town facilities projects that need funding. And again, I do remind you that there is a 10% grant match.

So again, say a project is $600,000, instead of asking for that full $600,000, we'd be asking for 60. I'm happy to take any questions and I'm also joined tonight by Dave Costello, the chair of Sustainability Advisory Committee. So yeah, that's all I got.

Through the chair, may I ask just one clarification? So for the projects that were listed in the decarbonization roadmap and are also in our capital schedule, would those be eligible for any grants if we were to become climate leader community?

Yes, the electrification of VRF systems, the installation of new electric boilers. There's one other one, the heat pumps. Electric heat pumps are really popular right now. All of these things are eligible. All of these things are identified in the decarbonization roadmap. And these are all things that facilities would do anyway and ask for money for anyway.

Thank you.

David, are you here for questions or are you present?

I'm here just for questions, but I do want to make a quick statement, and I'm really just echoing the other committee members that are here as well as those that are not. This is not an effort that started yesterday. This is an ongoing effort that really started in 2010 and moving forward. So this is not something new. It is about continuing the momentum that we've had. And when we started going down this path for getting this partnership, and getting into the climate leader community to get grants, there were three things that we really needed to do. One, we needed to build awareness, we needed to educate, and then we needed to advocate. if you take those three things and you couple it with a strong message, which is what we have, normally you get really good results.

At town meeting we saw that 72% voted in favor of moving forward. We go to the school board, we get a unanimous vote on both the zero emissions vehicle policy and an unanimous vote on municipal decarbonization roadmap. So the efforts that we put forward, the educational effort and the advocacy that we put forward have positive results. I want to say that I like to break things down into really easy math. The state of Commonwealth of Massachusetts has approximately $50 million available for grants. This runs through February 2027. 19 of the 351 towns and cities in Massachusetts are eligible.

Our neighbors Needham, Newton, Wellesley, Brookline are four of the 19. they are going after money that could be ours. As other communities start to become members when they adopt this policy, they're gonna go after that big pie of money. We want to get an early so we can get the full amount of our ask rather than a partial amount of our ask. As Rana said, there is no low, low risk in moving ahead. What we're doing by not moving forward is just stalling or eliminating our opportunity to apply for these grants.

If we're going to get a vehicle, why wouldn't we want the grant? If we're going to install New Windows, New Heating Systems, why wouldn't we want the grants? That is what our committee is continuing to educate people on saying we need to move forward with this initiative. So I will now open it to questions for the both of us. But I wanted to make that case on behalf of our committee. We spent a lot of time and effort on this very important issue. And when we hear the town saying we've got to find ways to get money, guess what? We found a way. So let's take advantage of it. Thank you.

Thank you. I'll open it up to questions from board members. Michelle, I see you have your hand up.

Yes, thank you. So first I just really appreciate all the efforts of the sustainability advisory committee and the town staff and all the progress that's been made so far on a variety of important efforts around these things. and their patients with all of my questions, the board's questions. This can be confusing, all the different steps and one sounds like another and I know sometimes they answer questions for us and then I ask them again, so thank you. I did support the town meeting resolution because I do think we need to be taking every practical opportunity to move forward around sustainability for the sake of our residents' health and defense climate readiness and to take advantage of financial grants and incentives like Dave just mentioned. And grants and incentives around work, much of which we will likely be doing anyway.

That said, there are also going to be times when there are real pressures to consider alternatives due to financial constraints and other priorities. But I felt like that vote was easy because it was a resolution and a sense of direction and not a mandate. So for these last two steps, while I'm trying to also support the DCAR roadmap and the ED policy, I think what we want to be sure we all understand is where there's room to veer off or sometimes for other considerations and what the consequences of doing so would be and related to the roadmap I think you know I just heard Ronna say These are options, not requirements. So I just think, whether it's tonight or later, just confirming that that is the case on the roadmap side. I heard her say that we can update that at any time, so that's reassuring. One other thing about the roadmap, it's not so much a question, but just a thought. I know our facilities master,

Plan Committee is about to get started and whether we build the roadmap or not. There was so much amazing work in there and data and information about our buildings and vehicles, so making sure that That committee and the consultants have that information on our buildings, I think, will be important in all the different background documents that whoever ends up working with us on this, but they get that information. So making sure they see that, I think, is important. and then I had a question on the zero emissions first. I guess similarly, you know, the questions around how binding, what it costs concerns, There's a quote in there about if it doesn't meet operational needs. So what does that mean, operational needs? Can it include budget?

Is not feeling like we can afford something enough of a reason to go in a different direction, I think is one question I have on the zero emissions first policy.

Thanks, Michelle.

Do you want us to take those questions right now or respond to the whole board in writing or to those, or how would you prefer we proceed?

Right, well, I mean, to the extent that you have answers to some of Michelle's specific questions, if that's not something that you have, then we'll take them at a later date.

So with regard to the roadmap, we can certainly double check with DOER and get confirmation from them that it's not binding, it's a menu of options, and that we can update it. and over time as we learn more and certainly as facilities change, we've all seen that, for example, the Dolan Center, We were using that five years ago, and it may have appeared on the list five years ago. It won't appear on the list going forward because of changes in our use of it. So I think that is understandable that it will evolve and change over time, but we can certainly get confirmation from DOER relative to the I guess the enforcement of the list and whether or not we have to follow it or it's an option. and then with regard to the vehicles, the way I would interpret that but we'll get confirmation on this again is an operational requirement. We can't spend money that we don't have budgeted and if we budget for a vehicle,

and the only EV is significantly above our budget, I would say that doesn't meet operational needs and we would then be able to move forward with an ICE vehicle instead or something similar. But again, we can get confirmation of that. as the folks who will be interpreting and enforcing this. That would be my interpretation.

Thank you. Okay, comments, questions from other board members?

I'll go. When I hear the word grants, I've sat up here for over a decade. and when I hear the word grants, the word uncertainty pops into my head because there have been some boastful promises made about grants in the past and they don't always come through. Never look a gift horse in the mouth, right? Be aware and be wary. of individuals that come in and make boastful promises about grants. It's irresponsible and it's reckless. to suggest or imply that somehow we are going to get 1 19th of $50 million because we sign into this program is not realistic, and it is not reasonable. Grant money is not just given out.

The Grant Stork just doesn't come and drop off money because we raise our hand and say yes. It has to be earned. It's competitive. You have to make an application. it's going to be evaluated. How well we adhere to the promises we make is probably going to be one of the biggest criteria. So, every grant is different. I'm not against this. I want to sit down. You said you came up to me at the town meeting. You said you wanted to sit down and meet. I would love to sit down and learn more about what we're committing to now that the town meeting has voted on this. you know, there is going to be upfront costs too associated with this and we have to be really careful. Okay, when we get into this thing where if we choose more expensive options, and I'm only saying this because I've seen this happen before in the forefront, and then we don't get grants. then we're really not getting anything back. Now we might get grants and it might work.

I hope it works out. I hope I eat these words because I want us to get money and we need it and this could potentially help us. But we have to be careful, I think, about the reality of the situation. Like, yeah, there is a chance we can get money here. There is also a chance we can't. You just heard a few moments ago, I mean, we just had to underfund our roads compared to the last few years, right? That was something we just talked about an hour ago. We're facing real financial challenges and now we're gonna have to potentially to stay in this game, to be eligible for grants, maybe choose more expensive options in the short term to get that long-term gain. And is that really the right thing now? I don't know. Now, I'm not saying it isn't. And like I said, I would love to sit down and meet and hear more about this. This is the way that we're headed. This is the way Massachusetts is headed. This is the way the world is headed.

the right thing to do in the long term because we have a major problem with climate in this world. It's a huge, huge, huge existential threat. to us. That's just science. That's just reality. So I get that we have to move this way, but I think we need to also be careful. I think we need to take it slow. I think sometimes we have to consider short term. versus long-term and our enthusiasm for this stuff and be very considerate of the big picture. That's all I have to say. I look forward to meeting with everyone and hearing more about this because I think I need to learn more about it, frankly. because it's a complicated program.

And I don't really understand 100% about this from the presentation, not saying you did anything wrong to present it to me, but clearly I need to do more homework on this to develop my position. I'm going to do that over the next couple of weeks and we'll meet and take it from there. Thank you.

If I could just respond to the 19 divided into 351. It was not about the money that I was, it's about the competition as you said. So I apologize if I, misspoke on that, saying that it's 19 divided into $53 million. So it is really about the level of competition with 19 versus more. That's correct.

Comments or questions from board members?

Sure, I can. Thanks very much. I did vote no at town meeting. And I think that the, I was not surprised by town meeting's vote. and that's why council has stated it is non-binding. It is non-binding on the town. It is the will of the town meeting which is a small population of the town. And I think as we're getting into the broader picture of decarbonization and that the entire town should be weighing in. And maybe at some point that we should have this on the ballot. Do you support? I mean we did one for, remember the rail trail? we put that on the ballot and gave people an opportunity to weigh in. Do you want this or don't you want it?

And I think that there's just so much that's going on in our country now in regards to you know, climate and what it is and what it isn't. In fact, even as, you know, and I appreciate, you know, Michael De Winter, we had a conversation. I appreciate, you know, him reaching out. And just a week ago, the chairman of a major committee in the House of Representatives in Massachusetts proposed a bill because he was questioning the 2050. he was questioning the roadmap that the state had done. And he came out with that and there was all sorts of, I mean, it took a lot of people by surprise. and have voted out of the committee seven with I believe four that held back until they needed further information.

and then a few days later, Chairman Michalowicz of the Ways and Means sort of dialed back what Representative Cusack from Braintree had said and said they were going to be taking it up not yesterday, which is when they took up a lot of bills yesterday, but they were going to take it up after the first of the year. So what does that mean for the state's roadmap? What does that mean for the state's commitment? Is it something? Is it nothing? I don't know, but I was sort of, and I'm sure if you haven't read the, if you haven't read the stories in Commonwealth Magazine, I would encourage you to look at them, as well as the follow up in the Boston Globe when the, when it came out and the reaction that came from those that have worked so hard for the 2050 and everything else.

So I think there's, even in our own state now, there's some uncertainty, and I do echo Dr. Teehan's comments about if you don't live this, it's difficult to get your hands around it and understand. And understand what it means on the electric vehicles, for instance. that who's gonna have the decision of whether we get one or not? Is it gonna be town hall? Or is it gonna be the department head? Is it gonna be the police chief or the fire chief? And if they say no, we don't want it, is that gonna be overridden because this is a policy and guidelines? They're gonna say, no, you're wrong, we're gonna do it. So I think that there needs to be a little more,

structure in regards to how these decisions would be made within the town and give people an opportunity, the department heads, you know, to have, really to have the final say. You know, the police You know, what Randall was just talking about, I know the pickup truck that will be used to tow stuff around. I mean, it's used, but it's not really law enforcement use. I know we have the car that does parking. Parking Enforcement, as well as the Police Traffic Enforcement. Again, not cars that are out 24 hours a day, they have a certain period of time. The vehicle policy, I think it, I'd like to see it tightened up a little more on what it is. And do we, in the infrastructure, in order to deal with these electric cars.

And also, we hear about the fire damage, that when these electric cars catch on fire, do we have a policy that says we're not going to put these cars in the garage? We're going to keep them outside. I mean, there's things that you hear about electric vehicles, it happens. And you mentioned the fire trucks that NFPA doesn't have anything. I was out in Portland, Oregon a year and a half ago, two years ago, and they had an all-electric fire truck. So there are all-electric fire trucks that are out there, but you don't hear how they, How are they working for the normal wear and tear? I'd just like to see a little more in that policy tightening up. I think at the end of the day, Climate is real. It's happening. We have to do something.

But as Dennis says, is this the time for us now?

Yeah, the money doesn't last.

That's the question. I'm sorry, Andy.

I said yes, because the money doesn't last long, and it's a program that recertifies every three years.

Every three years, okay. Yeah. Yeah, and when I looked up, by the way, the screen about the windows and doors at those schools, I wonder why they didn't apply it to MSBA for accelerated repair project. That's a grant making.

We did, but it was for the high school.

Why? Again, opportunity to talk about grants. grants for accelerated repair program, Mass School Building Authority, roofs, windows, and doors. And now we're looking for windows and doors for three schools.

I don't want to get into the weeds, but we were applying for something that already had schematic designs that were shovel ready. That is the problem with these grants is that you have to come to them shovel ready. We have experience. We have track record with the DOR. We have proven that we've gone over $600,000 from them to do projects. So yes, it is competitive. Yes, we have to write proposals. But this is not putting the cart before the horse. We have an identified capital improvement plan. We know what the things that we want to fix are. We would go to them for money that we would not have to ask from the taxpayer. That is what's at stake here today. I understand that you need more time. I understand that you want to tighten things up. I understand that you want things more black and white. I get that. There's no downside. And we recertify every three years. If it doesn't work out for us, we bail out. They're not going to come back and say, give me my $1 million back. It's never happened. We have a track record with them. We are strong grant writers. We get money.

and I've been only here for four years, but I can testify to how hard we work behind the scenes to secure funding, whether it's MSBA, whether it's DOER, whether it's MassDOT. just for the town green project alone, I secured $1.5 million in grants.

Don't deny doing your job and getting the grants. That's what's supposed to happen.

Absolutely.

And my point was that we had an opportunity for a grant. and we didn't. I don't control the schools. And now we're looking. And we also had a grant for a school, and the voters chose not to, not to accept the grant. So, you know, grants, my point is that grants are a part of it, they're not the whole. That because you have to, a grant is just a portion of the money that's needed and then the town has to come up with the rest. And I think that's the challenge that we as a community have as we start selecting what we do and what we don't do is where are we going to get Where are we going to get the matching money? But thanks very much.

Thank you.

Thanks.

I'm good.

OK. Thank you for the information. The presentation that you put up, Rana, did we receive that yet? Did we receive it or?

It was uploaded this evening into the portal.

Oh, it was this evening? All right, because I didn't see that. Oh, I'm sorry. That's fine. Question on the decarbonization roadmap that we received. Who wrote this?

It was a technical assistance grant through Power Options. They work in the electricity and gas field. I need help. I'm misremembering. But we've worked with them previously a ton, and they partner with the DOER. So we just put in a technical assistance grant application, and the DOR said, here you go, you can work with them. So they did an audit of all of our buildings, they did walkthroughs of our buildings to see our existing equipment, and then they just went through and put that together. and of course there was input from town and school facilities.

So I did start reading it and digging in and doing a lot of my homework and my research which is what I do as a select board member. and sitting on the side of the table, I have to take all that into consideration. So I'm assuming that you understand this report, that you understand this report and that you can explain things to me in this report. Am I correct?

Yes, we've studied the report.

You've studied the report, so you've studied the report, and you guys have studied it. I mean, it's technical in here, right? This is handed to us, and I tend to agree we need more conversation on it. and I don't know if it's a meeting that is done with the two of you sitting at a desk in a meeting. I think it has to be done that we all understand exactly what needs to go into this and exactly what this report means because I have spent a lot of time reading it and researching it and probably just like water way too much time on it but it's part of my job and I still really don't get it. What I am hearing and I'm going to bring this up right now because it was said again is that We talk about heavy duty fleet adoption is something in the EV policy that we don't have to do, and I understand that. But when I read this document, there are targets in here.

zero emission vehicles, ZEVs, and heavy duty fleet adoption by 20, 30, 20%. And then when I looked at the chart, that was all in there as well too, right? Dump trucks, all that, right? So I do have concern with when we start going forward with these items, that it all of a sudden becomes that it's the law and this is what we have to do. The resolution itself, I don't really know what we did on the 18th. for the article 18. What exactly did that do?

It's an aspirational commitment from town, meaning that the town will move in a direction toward decarbonization, basically.

And did they understand exactly what all that meant as well, too? Did we have meetings? Did we have these discussions? It sounds fantastic. But I'm not really sure if everybody knows exactly what that meant, because I don't know how many people read this.

To answer the first question, we did meet with several constituency groups including all the precinct leads, precinct town meeting members and others from the community to answer all their questions they had. We gave presentations on it. So to the best of my knowledge, that it was an informed vote. But to your point, how deep does anybody get into a lot of the articles, right, that are presented? But I think on this one, it was about as deep as any... I do recognize that it's a difficult question, but I think the town was as informed as they would traditionally be on any other.

because article 13 before that was everyone saying that they didn't or people saying that they didn't understand something that they wrote it on a few years ago right and what the long-term ramifications were so hence why I have a lot of concern and what's going on and what does everything mean? In reading the report, energy use intensity reduction, I'm not really quite sure what that is, but we're being requested to look at that. The other thing that I kind of was a little bit, and I need some clarification on, and again, maybe during, maybe we have a workshop meeting where we can really understand this because what did we pass last year?

Specialized opt-in code. Right.

So, the stretch code?

Specialized opt-in.

Right. We had done the base, then we did the stretch, and then we pushed and we did the specialized. Right? So we... We took something in the very beginning when we said we were going to become a climate leader, and it's gone really fast in the last couple of years. Would we agree? right so so that was that was huge so that came to us last year and now we're being requested to do this part of it as well too and it's kind of being presented to us like it doesn't mean anything You're going to get money. It doesn't mean anything. So when you said you came here and you were talking about the grants that you got on the EVs before for the cars that we accepted, where did that come from?

MassDEP.

And do those grants go away?

No, but they would go away if we weren't in MBTA community.

But we are one.

We are.

Okay, so we still have that pot to kind of go after, right, with those and that you're doing that?

We do, but there is a limit of 50 vehicles per community. So once we've claimed 50 vehicles under the Mass EVIP program, we're done after that.

So according to this, we have 98, right? And so I'm assuming

Sorry, no. They will give us money for up to 50 vehicles claimed through their program. Not every vehicle we own is a vehicle that we have obtained through funding from Mass EVIP.

Right, right, but according to this report, we have 98 in our total fleet.

98 what?

Vehicles, according to this report that I received.

Yes, but not all of them are EVs.

No, I know that. Oh, okay. I know that, but I'm saying that you're saying it could go up to 50, but in total we have 98, so that number doesn't seem too, uh-oh to me. That's what I'm trying to say. It doesn't seem like that 50 number is too low when we have 98. There was also... The other thing that I just need clarification on this as well too, which I think is important, is in here it talks about the different buildings. And I appreciate Like you said, the work that went into the different buildings and they did an evaluation on it. And according to the decarbonization plans for high impact buildings, what's the number one building

the high school.

The high school.

Yep, that's right.

But what does our plan say? What do you mean? Oakdale, right? So they're saying that we should really be looking here and putting funds here and this is really the number one priority, but our strategic plan as it stands right now seems to be that the Oakdale City Elementary Schools are more important than here, but this is saying that though you say it's a priority, their priority would be this building. I'm just saying, I don't know if that means anything towards grants, but right in this report, it's putting Dedham High School as the highest, as the priority.

If I may, I think there's a few things happening here. the priorities of the community as far as the buildings that we want to build or knock down or all of that stuff, that will be determined through the facilities master plan. process, which hasn't begun, but it's on its way. The decarbonization roadmap is a list of suggestions. This roadmap I can use to apply for the grant for something that we have identified that we want to work on that is in the roadmap. So when they say, how come you're applying for this? We can say, because we identified it in this lovely roadmap. So please give us the money, money that we wouldn't have to ask from town meeting. This is very, very similar to our ADA transition plan that we did in the 90s when we applied for money with MassADA to put in ADA compliant curbing and other things for the town green. They said no. Why?

Because we never identified that we wanted to turn 600 High Street to a town green because the town had evolved since 1992. this is how that roadmap will be used. I think, I'm not sure, but I think I can get the consultant to come and give a presentation, might be virtual because I'm not sure where she's based, to help explain the nitty gritty if that would be helpful for the board.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think we need a lot more information. And even from the town employees as well too, right, on what all of this means and really what it means to us. Because the other thing that I did research on, is the fossil fuels which seems to be what the next group of towns is doing, where they're eliminating fossil fuels. So when I look at all this and we say, well, this is easy, but it seems like once they've done that, because nobody mentioned this when we passed the code last year. now all of a sudden this is here, right? The next thing when I'm researching is the fossil fuels. So is that coming next year? I don't know. But that's the next thing that it seems like that we're chasing. and there's my concern, right, is it just seems like we're just taking away the freedoms of our community members and we are costing them a lot of money. We are.

right, a lot of this, I mean, electricity has gone through the roof. People, how long ago was it when we got our electric bills and everybody, you know, when you look at your electric bills, how expensive are the electric bills because we're being charged to fund all of these things. It's not free money. It's just not. Anyway, so there are where my concerns are, okay? And there's a few more. It's not about not wanting to be green. It's not that. But I just don't think it is as simple as it's trying to be presented to us. need more information. I think we need more meetings. We need to have real guardrails and safety nets for our residents. And be it in writing or however we do it.

I just had one more quick thing I know we're way behind very quickly just one minute just to illustrate where some of my concerns come from you can look at the town green project as a great example of that where we're like you know we came into it and we asked for a certain amount of money from town meeting. We got that money. and then we were supposed to get all these grants that was gonna cover the remainder of the cost. And then we didn't get this grant. We didn't get that grant. We did get that grant but we didn't get that other one. And then all of a sudden we had this huge gap to fill and fortunately we had a very committed and great group of people that went out and raised money, Needham Bank, Dedham Savings, Jessica Porter, Sarah MacDonald, Peter Smith, I'm probably leaving some names off and I don't want to offend anyone but like they came through and they filled that gap and and really made that project happen there's not a pergola on that project we just we got a smaller pergola that's coming this spring right it was supposed to be a bigger pergola we couldn't afford it

So, you know, these are the kind of things I feel like that happen when we get into these things where we put up taxpayer money, we make commitments, We start projects, all this uncertainty around grants, and then something changes, something happens, and we're left. kind of committed to something, right? Scrambling around. So I don't know as much about this as you guys do. Fully admit that. We're going to sit down. You're going to teach me, all of you. Michael, Michael, Rana. But... you know that's the kind of stuff I'm talking about where I get screamers so just want to bring that up thank you and sorry madam chair thank you

Thank you. And thank you for the thoughtful comments from my colleagues. I certainly think that specific and practical recommendations for adjustments to Policy, clarifications, guidance documents, having further deeper dive workshop style information shared with us in order to best understand this all makes sense. and to pull back a little bit, I find that I do this myself. We talk about climate change as if it's something that will happen in the future, realistically, it is happening now. And we are having those impacts today. And we are paying for those impacts today. Some of the most practical costs that have landed on our laps over the past couple years.

One, when you talk about energy costs, the increased need for air conditioners. The fact that for the first time we designed a school, we'll need to revisit that again, an elementary school that includes Air Conditioning. We currently have one functioning elementary school that can operate during the summer. I know that I sent my children through the summer program. I attended events at that summer program. Our best school is barely passable to utilize during the summer months. And that doesn't have air conditioning. It has another airflow system. So our next school will need to have air conditioning in it. We just had a presentation a few months ago or a couple months ago from Jason Mamone regarding the sewer study that was conducted. It showed that

The flooding that's happening in the Manor neighborhood, while there are several factors of it, the primary factors are the fact that the water table is high and that the rain events that we're having are different than they used to be. The rain is falling at a higher volume when it comes, and it's falling more sporadically. And that's backed by scientific research and data. And when those two things happen, We have events that are sending sewerage into our neighbors' homes. This is climate change. It is happening. and the fix to that is something that we're going to have to figure out how to deal with because it was presented as at least an $8 million resolution to one neighborhood. to fix a couple dozen houses from having raw sewerage coming through their bathrooms. An $8 million fix that we're going to have to figure out

What kind of timeline are we willing to say it's okay for our neighbors to have sewage coming through their bathroom pipes until we can afford to fix this? So when we talk about costs, we are already paying for climate change, and it's expensive. and that's only going to increase. It's not going to decrease. So I just want to make sure that we have that context when we talk about decisions. This is not a future problem. This is a today problem. It was a yesterday problem. and increasingly were going to need to adopt what many, a philosophy, and we already are. I should say we are already adopting a philosophy. We have, we're making decisions already about electric vehicles, about Electricity, and others, how we're going to provide heating and support to future buildings.

factoring in these discussions, and that's good, and that's important. We have to keep doing it. But when we talk about postponing decisions, I think it's important that we postpone a decision when we feel like we can reach a place of comfort, when we can make clarifications and have specific guiding documents and know exactly what we're talking about. But we need to continue to double down on the types of decisions that we're making. Climate change can feel so big, right? That the decision that I make in my house or that the decisions that we make in our town, we're just one person, we're just one town. but we all collectively need to look for opportunities to make those decisions because if we don't, no one is. And so I point that out because we're talking about does this or doesn't this cost us more money?

I mean I think that there are good guardrails in place to make sure that we are in any way that we might benefit from this as if benefiting from our climate is not enough that those funds are put toward costs that we are already planning for, that we're already having intentions for and we're looking for opportunities to recoup when available, when we're lucky enough to meet those requirements. I would say that the grants are an added benefit, not a sole goal to this process. because we are already experiencing the effects of climate change. And it's not looking good. It's not pretty. It's not good for our neighbors in the Manor neighborhood who are having problems that are a direct result So I push and encourage us to look for those difficult decisions

that continue to take the model that many businesses look at. They call it people, profit, and planet. We could call it people, revenue, and Planet, or Expenses, or just looking at this triple aim that whether or not we look for opportunities for EV vehicles or otherwise. The climate is costing us money. And we have to do our part and take action steps. toward doing that. And we're already behind. So I hope that we can work through some of these details together. I hope that we can get some of these clarifications and that we act on it as soon as we feel comfortable in our decisions rather than kicking it further and further down because those costs are only going to continue to accumulate. the costs of climate change that we are experiencing today. So I appreciate the conversation.

I think each of us has contributed an important piece of the puzzle of exploring the information that we have at reviewing what the state is doing at reviewing. And I encourage us to keep pushing through this conversation. to a place where we feel more comfortable. So thank you. Thanks. I appreciate everyone's contribution to the conversation tonight.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Same to you. Poor Nancy's right hand, however, appreciates.

and we'll make ourselves available, small groups, work groups, whatever and we'll certainly bring in consultants if they need further explaining and we'll get to that point of comfort hopefully for everybody.

Okay, next agenda item, approval of meeting minutes. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you for coming.

Of course.

Move approval of the meeting, minutes of June 18, 2025, executive session in October 9, 2025, regular session. Second.

Hearing a motion.

Discussion? Oh, yeah. That change was made. I will make it. Okay, thank you. Thank you. It was just a title change.

Thank you, I was gonna ask that also. So I didn't mean to take your spot, Denise.

That's all right. Okay, hearing a motion and a second on the roll call vote, Michelle. Dennis, Jim, Dimitria, and the chair votes yes. Okay, old and new business.

Just one happy Thanksgiving, but also to just thank and acknowledge Din, Dan Driscoll, and Cheryl Ann Sheen. 33 years of service to the town, one as an elected official and the other as a volunteer, which we're all volunteers anyways. but that's a, when Dan was given a recap of his term and just briefly spoke about challenges moderator is a very difficult job to try to be neutral. and to try to treat everyone fairly. And it's really, it's, you know, Deanna's done I think an amazing job and when I, talked to other communities.

And when they talk about their town meeting, that goes eight, nine, 10 days. it's because Dedham has the, you know, Dedham takes the time to, you know, organization, you know, leadership of the moderator and finance and warrant and the town and everybody else to do it. but Dan standing up there for 33 years, that's quite an accomplishment. And the two years that we had, that we had to think outside the box for, during the COVID era of having a town meeting on the high school field. will be able to pull it off. Having a town meeting at Dedham Health and Athletic Club. Again, a great, the Gainesboro, a great sponsor letting us use the facility. being able to adapt and to move forward. And plus, folks don't really, I think, know that Dan, before town meeting, there's a group.

that meets, the chairs, you know, Leon, Nancy, you know, this year Aaron as the chair, and in council to sort of to go through and to prepare. There's a lot that goes in to it, so I just want to say thank you to Dan and Cherylann for your years of dedication, and I think that probably in the springtime we'll find a way I know Nancy and I have had a conversation about acknowledging both of them coming up, so thank you.

Very quickly, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. And very, very quickly, it looks like the CDC just released data yesterday that this is going to be a very bad flu season. that the vaccine might not work that well and the strain is particularly virulent and pathogenic. Last year was the worst flu season of my career. Even though the vaccine is not going to work as well, it still makes sense for everyone to get it. So please discuss that with your doctor and just be very careful out there. If you get sick, test because there are vulnerable people that we're trying to protect. So that's all.

We had some clinics, right? We did have clinics. We did have clinics.

They're all complete.

Okay, if there's no more old or new business... Motion to adjourn, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Second.

All right. Hearing motion to second, roll call vote. Michelle? Yes. Dennis?

I'd actually like to stay in on the halfway.

You're welcome to. Jim, Dimitria, and the chair votes yes.

Thank you.