Select Board - January 15, 2026

Good evening and happy new year, everyone. I'll call to order the select board meeting of January 15th, 2026. Everyone could rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Okay, I'll now open Dedham citizens public comment. Is anyone here for public comment this evening? Matt. Please state your name and address.

Hello, Matthew Brophy, 36 Button Street, also Precinct 2 representative of town meeting. I'm faced with a decision whether to run again next election season. I do encourage to consider the same and whether they're in town meeting or at different boards, talk to your different representatives for that. I'm here to compliment the town manager's office about the deficit reduction process and I can continue to I look forward to looking. It's a continuous conversation. I'm happy it hasn't got stale or got in the back burner. That's good. I did speak with Nancy Baker briefly, but I want to just get on the record. I want to hear the, basically like the timeline, basically be reminded of the timeline process between now and Springtown meeting in May.

of when things are due and when people are encouraged to attend different meetings like, say, finance and warrant and combine board meetings as you go through the budget and such. and help us representatives of town meeting to go around and talk to our neighbors to get their feedback so we can talk to you folks or if anyone, of course, can come to these public meetings. Speaking of the town meeting date itself, I see that's already set, and I wasn't sure, but the most important question is the due date of the articles, and then something to consider, whether it's too late now or future town meetings would be perhaps consider a 6.30 p.m. start time instead. It's a half-hour difference, something to ponder. As a reference, a few years ago we had a special town meeting because I believe there was an article that select board had submitted that was after the warrant booklet.

So we had a meeting at 6.45 before the meeting. So I want things going. And then I comment about something to be more like, I guess, pilot program adjacent. distribution in lieu of taxes. I'm getting the wording wrong, but how the non-profits and such I'm saying adjacent to that because it's not exactly that, is to consider different and creative sources of revenue. One that's not quite creative that I can think of that I'm not sure If we have any more, but like example, we talk to other towns, see what they do, and then give them ideas. One would be like the town in Needham has adult education. I remember we had it years ago. maybe that could be an additional revenue stream among other ideas. Thank you for your time.

Anyone else? Public comments? Anyone online? Town Manager's Report.

Thank you Madam Chair, members of the board, and thank you Matt for the kind comments about the deficit reduction work. that's actually on my agenda this evening. I did want to update the board on that process because it is an ongoing process and we'll continue to have dialogue and inform the FY27, and future budgets with the information. But we held a community meeting on January 8 at the Dedham Public Library in the morning. and it was, we had a good turnout of folks, good questions, presented information and again I wanted to express my appreciation to those who came especially the deficit reduction working group who attended all of the work meetings over the past number of months, as well as this meeting, to help us facilitate this discussion. We have another meeting coming up on January 28th at 6.30 in the evening at the Endicott Estate. and we're trying to make these as accessible as possible for folks.

So that's why we had a morning one and an evening one. And again, the topics of discussion will be the deficit reduction study, the Polko survey, as well as soliciting feedback from folks on both and any other topics involving the budget and the budget process. Again, it's an opportunity for folks to engage in the budget process outside of the normal channels, which are very busy this time of year. We have a CEC meeting this evening in an adjacent room to vote on capital. We'll soon have Finance and Warrant Committee meetings, the all-day budget meeting will be in early March with the Finance and Warrant Committee. We'll have budget presentation to the select board the end of February. this evening I will have an update with the board on FY27 budget status, what we're working on up to date. So again, very busy on the budget this time of year.

I also wanted to point out a fun new event that the Senior Center is hosting. they're calling it a lunch and learn and they're bringing in various department heads and other folks from the community to meet with the seniors, talk about their jobs, talk about things in the community. this month kicked it off their inaugural meeting with Jeremy Rosenberger, our Director of Planning, Zoning, and Natural Resources. And then I will be joining the seniors on February 11th to discuss topics of interest to them. I suspect there'll be lots of budget talk but all other matters are also on the table and I look forward to that and applaud the senior center for adding yet another fun event to their calendar because it's definitely a thriving senior center with a lot of activities. continually reinventing them. So again, shout out to the Senior Center.

and with that, oh actually no, I did have one other update on the pilot as Mr. Brophy had mentioned the select board did adopt the policy back in October. There was a little bit of a delay in some work as we talk to a consultant. But now we are back working on that internally with staff. We have a draft letter that I'll be sending to the select board in the coming days. And once that letter is signed off on, we will get that distributed to the non-profits. We'll be getting those conversations in the coming months about pilot payments in lieu of taxes. And again, this is not something that will happen very quickly, so we expect it will be conversations that will happen over a number of months, but this will be a good start. So again, I wanted to give everyone an update on that as well.

Great, thank you. Questions, comments from board members? Okay, we can move on to this evening's consent agenda.

Move to approve the consent agenda including gift acceptances and Michelle Heffernan, $300 from Fairbanks Garden Club and $100 from National Associations of Retired Veteran Railway Employees, all for upkeep and beautification of the estate. Youth Commission, $23,000 from Ripples of Hope. Total for multiple donors for 2025 holiday program of $61,175. Friends of Dedham Library, $250 for promotional stickers and $750 for theater rentals. Dedham Library Innovation Team, $3,500 to Dedham Public Schools, $500 for each school library to support Dedham Reads 2026. During labor approvals, Boston Pipe, Pelotoni Brothers, Jones Contracting, PJ Hayes, R.D.

Kadesh, Welsh Corp., A1 Pipe Restoration, ATL Construction, Earthwork Industries, J&L Musto Construction, Joseph D. Filippo & Company, RJV Construction, Super Service Today, Tedinelli Construction, one-day liquor license, MBACC on 2-7-26, 6-10 p.m., Green Lodge, Fun Run, 5-3-26 at 9 a.m.

Thank you. Second.

Hearing a motion and a second, any discussion?

If I could, Madam Chair, I just wanted to point out we're talking about the Christmas donations of cash and gift cards and Gifts for Kids, Inc., 57,200. And really, this past Christmas holiday season, the Dedham Youth Commission really needs to be singled out for the work that they have done and continue to do to make sure that nobody within our community that is struggling is left behind during Christmas season. And when you hear about the the work that they do all the time, but especially during the holiday season. I just want to say thank you to Becky and team for what they did this past Christmas and what they do every day. Thank you.

Absolutely. Thank you. Jim. Other comments or questions? Okay. Hearing none on the vote, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Chair votes aye. Okay, next we have recognition of a municipal partner, Carol Reed, who is the retired SAPC coordinator for the town of Needham. Hi, Carol. Yeah, come on up.

How are you?

Good, how are you?

Thank you so much. Have a seat. I know you have a very, do you want me here?

Yes, that would be great. I didn't know. And I'd invite Chief Dontremont or anyone else who might want to come and share about the collaboration that the town of Dedham had with Needham with Carol's leadership and support.

I just appreciate you taking this time to even give me any recognition. I do want to say that Chief Don Tremont and Mike Butler were incredible leaders. in bringing me in with Cathy Cardinelli using the time of addiction and substance use going above and beyond their jobs to spend time to identify federal grant funding, which enabled Dedham to write a federal grant and then hire staff. but I particularly want to say, and I know you have a tight agenda. I moved here, my husband and I bought our first home in Dedham in 1986. and then worked and then brought our first son home here.

So six, seven years we lived here volunteering helping out initially with Dedham years later felt like coming home. And I just want to say to you all that the leadership that you have is a catalyst for good change in Dedham, and that, to me, was a lesson learned through Mike. He called, our health director asked me to talk about the grant, and Mike got stakeholders and leaders, and he spent hours learning about this federal money. And that was above and beyond his volunteer job as a select board member. So I just say that what I saw in Dedham with people doing above and beyond because this is extra work, this grant and coalition in partnership with public health. Dedham has a lot to be proud of.

So I hope in these times you look at this as what your powers are, of taking time to identify support resources for your residents, which really brought the town together to talk about addiction and substance dependence, but drilled it into prevention. So I probably wasn't supposed to talk.

No, absolutely not. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And Chief, any words that you'd like to share?

So yeah, I mean, I think it's wonderful that you're recognizing Carol this evening. I've kind of found that you meet all kinds of different people over time. Some people are a little bit different. So Carol has an incredible level of knowledge. in public health. She has a level of energy that not a lot of people are going to be able to keep up with. and she's committed to the mission and sharing her knowledge and expertise with everyone else. And she has, as you can probably see, this real passion for what she does. And this is an inspiration when you find people that that have that. Carol certainly has it. So I know she helped us with a lot of stuff over the years, everything from for Substance Abuse Prevention, and I'm sure Michael Pollan will probably, where am I? I'm sure he'll add a few more words in Carol's efforts helping Dedham with that.

You know, when marijuana came on the scene, there was a lot of education needed to take place. Cow was a very critical component in helping us communicate that message. alcohol compliance checks and keeping alcohol out of the hands of underage people. Carol was a very big partner in that. She organized tips trains around town, and then she became a tips trainer along with Chrissy King and Sergeant Jason Sullivan, who I saw in the back here. So Carol and Jason would... presented as a team to look at license holders in Dedham and Needham. I know I'm forgetting one major piece here.

How about your leadership with the social worker?

Oh, that was the other piece, yeah. So before we ended up getting a social worker, it was Needham that reached out to us through Carol that, These DMH grants are out there, and let's work together to try to put it together. And Needham was going to do most of the work, so it sounded like a pretty good deal for Dedham. So we went through that process, and unfortunately they weren't approving any new grants at the time. But obviously it was the intent, the effort, and the commitment to doing things to help our communities and work together to do it. And Carol was a linchpin in doing that and helping us. So I think it's fantastic that you have her in here tonight to recognize her. Thank you, Carol. Thank you. Thank you.

Yes, nice to see you. Good evening everybody, my name is Mike Butler, former member of the board and worked with the Chief and Carol closely in the early days of the Coalition for Drug and Alcohol Misuse. that Dedham formed because you may remember, seems like yesterday or seems like a long time ago, that the overdose problem really erupted. a lot of overdoses due to heroin, fentanyl, etc. And as a community, as well as a lot of other communities in Norfolk County, we weren't really equipped on how to tackle that. Pretty complex, and it took us a few years to get organized for that, but I remember Sarah MacDonald and Chief Dr. Maher, Chief Spillane, Water Health, Health Department had at the time coming together and trying to figure out what to do.

And it wasn't just an issue with people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. It was also something that you had to tackle with kids as early as middle school. So fortunately, we were able to reach out to Carol, who was right next door in Needham. And she said, OK, here's what you need to do. And she just started helping us go through the checklist of all the activities we had to undertake. And it really paid off. And if you look now, 10 years down the road, even though there's still a lot of work to do, you can say that the efforts undertaken by the town, very similar to communities around Norfolk County and the state, the results are encouraging. not only because the number of overdoses has declined. I mean, I think at its peak, Dedham was responding to 911 calls at least once a week for an overdose. And there was about one fatal a month. and now those numbers are way down, so that's good.

And if you look at the survey results that the schools conduct every couple of years with the Metro West Youth Health Survey, Those numbers are very encouraging as well. The numbers of kids using the different substances continues to decline. And that's because we've been able to take advantage of resources in Dedham, but also with the assistance of outside experts like Carol. It's been great.

Those grants are community engagement that varied stakeholder groups, police, public health, schools, faith-based, parents, media, come together and understand that working together, identifying promising programs and framing the effort is what makes it work. And that was what I loved about Dedham because people stepped up.

Jessica Tracy, you remember Jessica Tracy, our public health nurse, and Chrissy King, a former coordinator in the program, send their appreciation to Carol. They couldn't make it tonight. So thank you.

We appreciate it. And I have some words to share from the town, from those who worked with you. Carol Reed possesses many admirable qualities. She has a high level of knowledge in the area of public health, substance misuse, and Community Messaging. Carol was always willing to share her knowledge. Her passion for her work led her to offer her time to assist communities beyond Needham. Carol was a participant and regular attendee at meetings when Dedham first organized a substance misuse coalition. She helped to guide this group with her experience. She contributed to the education of people in Dedham related to marijuana. Carroll worked to support Dedham's successful effort to ban marijuana establishments in town. Carroll organized TIPS training for liquor license holders in Needham and Dedham with the goal of keeping alcohol out of the hands of underage children.

She eventually, along with Sergeant Sullivan and Chrissy King, was trained as a presenter for TIPS training. Carol helped to present this training on several occasions. She assisted Dedham's public health nurse Jessica Tracy in preparing Dedham's initial drug-free community grant. Carol worked with Dedham, Needham, Norwood, and Westwood to refine and coordinate alcohol compliance checks. Prior to local funding being approved, Carol worked with Dedham and Needham to formulate a grant application. for social worker to service the two communities. She helped organize youth projects such as PhotoVoice to bring to light how our youth perceive alcohol use in our community. And Carol tirelessly worked on regional grants to support public health efforts.

and I also know that you've been a critical mentor to a good friend of mine here in the audience, Monica De Winter, and so we're so pleased to have you here to have the entire town hear about this important collaboration that you have brought and shared with the town of Dedham and your expertise and dedication to this issue. So thank you so much.

Thank you so much. I'm really humbled. And you have an amazing town. And I'm grateful that I was asked early on to help out after being a resident here years before. You mentioned Monica, I know, way over time. Monica and Carlos and Katharida, we serve on the Dedham V&A Foundation Board, and we would love to come sometime back for a few minutes and speak to you about what the Dedham Foundation is and what our goals are. Basically, it's been in existence for over 145 years the funds that the endowment manages gives home care to Dedham residents in need. And we would love to come back. since you brought us up sometime and share more about that work for Dedham. Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all. You're very kind. You have to get a certificate.

Oh.

So just thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to say thank you for all you have done for our community. I mean, this battle continues. As you know, we're still We're still struggling as a community, as are other people, with people who are having a difficult time with no matter whatever the whatever the substance is and I do appreciate the substance misuse because that's exactly what we see whether it's the alcohol or whether it's the drugs. People, it's an ongoing issue and probably when you mentioned the social worker, that really, and in fact I remember Dr. Teehan really being a strong advocate for that when we were looking at our budget about what do we need additional to help and Dennis really was a push behind that. And I have seen firsthand what difference that makes.

It helps our officers. It helps deescalate, but it gets people the help that they need. So thank you for your leadership and what you have done for our community and many others. So thank you.

Very kind. Thank you. And prevention, prevention. We know. The earlier we can move this trajectory with our kids, the less apt they are to develop a problem. So that's what that community coalition is all about. Early intervention, early engagement, education, but community strategies like compliance checks for alcohol retailers and things that are done in the community level that change the culture and prioritize health for youth and families without being judgmental. And we see the inflection of mental health with substance use. So the more we can talk about that and move away from the stigma and shame of addiction, it's a chronic relapsing disease and we know our kids

when they use substances, they are more likely, the survey will show, they also indicate five mental health indicators. So thank you for believing in the work, Reilly, on prevention and continuing to support Community Engagement, and The Coalition, because you're changing and sending messages of acceptance and treatment and prevention. I know that I've talked a long time. Thank you so much.

This certificate of appreciation for you. Thank you so much. All right. That was a nice way to kick off tonight's agenda. Moving on next, we have Candidates for Sustainability Advisory Committee.

Madam Chair, Mr. Kozin is attending this evening via Zoom. He's down with the flu but didn't want to miss the opportunity to meet with the board. Is he online? So maybe we start with him. Oh, no? Hang on one second. Your name? Nick. Nick. Hang on, Nick. One second. Thank you. We have one member by doom.

Okay. Mr. Kozin, welcome. Well, can you tell us a bit about your interest in the position and what led you to submit your application?

Sure, yeah, I appreciate the opportunity to be here. So professionally I work in renewable energy operations and defending renewable energy and distributed energy space for about a decade. and so on. And I think that's what we're trying to do. I think that's what we're trying to not just kind of as a policy goal but as something that directly affects the place where we're raising our children. So I've been looking for a meaningful way to get involved and give back locally.

And serving on this sustainability advisory committee feels like the best way to contribute in a way that aligns with both my background

Great, thank you so much. Questions from board members? Question?

Hi there. So I have a question regarding something that you just said about balancing between sustainability goals and the needs of the community. Can you speak a little bit more to that for me?

Practicality aspect in terms of what the community is willing to do in reality versus what they're willing to put on paper and say as a goal. I think there's a balance there between what you're trying to do and how you're trying to affect change and the way to approach it that feels manageable and attainable and sustainable for the community as a whole. I'm thinking practically about of finding the right way to layer it into people's lives to make it easy for them.

And make it easy for them and to have conversations with the community regarding goals? of what their goals are as well, or just the sustainability?

Yeah, exactly right, exactly right. So understanding what the community's goals are, and I think in terms of balancing that with what the town takes, the goals for the town, and I think that anytime you can fix something as easy as possible is the way that you're going to impact the world's change. Time and Attention, things that are as simple and easy Thank you very much.

Thank you other comments or questions? Thank you so much for attending and hope you and your family feel better.

Thank you very much, appreciate it.

Thank you. Okay, next we have Nick Iandolo.

Good evening. First, I would like to thank the Select Board for inviting me to this meeting so that I could discuss my candidacy for being a part of the Sustainability Advisory Committee. First thing I just would like to say is that I love this town. Now, my wife and I moved here back in 2008, and we're currently raising a 17-year-old daughter in this town. And if anybody knows, it can be quite a challenge. And she'll be about a year and a half, we'll be going away to college. which is a little too soon for me if you ask. But yeah, I always say that living in Dedham, Massachusetts is like living inside a Norman Rockwell painting. This town is just bristling with Americana and community and just inclusivity and everything just is amazing about this town. and one of the things that I have found that's been remarkable about this town is its commitment to sustainability.

I see it everywhere, such as the high school and middle school installing solar panels, our new town common where the old police station used to be and events such as Hazardous Waste Recycling Day and even Shredding Day. The commitment to sustainability of Dedham, Massachusetts is wonderful. When I saw that there was a role available on the Sustainability Advisory Committee, I knew that I had to campaign for this role. And the reason is, is because my entire life has been part of in promoting sustainability has been about green initiatives. In fact, I went to UMass Amherst back in the 1980s, and you don't get any greener than that. I mean, there has just been, like I've been a part of groups on campus and outside of campus,

all about pushing, you know, back then, you know, like Greenpeace and doing pilot programs, cleaning up like areas that have, you know, Waste, and clean water, clean air, planting, anything that was part of sustainability. So it's been a part of me. It's been ingrained in me pretty much my entire adult life. and as I grew older and moved through my career, I've worked for various companies that have always had some bit of a sustainability initiative, one of which was SatCon Technology Corporation, which they built photovoltaic Power Inverters, which basically would take energy from solar grids and put it, solar arrays and bring it into the energy grids for you know, national, state, local areas, communities thereby reducing our carbon footprint. I've also worked for companies such as Exponent where I've actually been part of

thought leadership initiatives and campaigns, talking about everything from the Texas Power Grid to restoring wildlife habitats after wildfires. So my professional career has been involved with sustainability in one level or another. Actually, and also, I am now a member of the Friends of the Blue Hills. as you know we have the wonderful Blue Hills Reservation. And so what I, my current role there is marketing communications and advocacy and messaging. Currently working on a newsletter right now where we're talking about how the park is a preserve of not just wildlife and beauty, but also of heritage and community connection. And it is a beautiful place. are now next door. And I use it actually as a training ground for obstacle course races that I do over the summer up and down the eastern seaboard of the United States of America from West Virginia and North Carolina all the way up to Vermont.

Anyway, and also knowing that Dedham itself has its own little preserve, and I just discovered this recently at Dedham Day, which is another wonderful event that the community has. and that's between like the Bank of America and that Learning Express preschool. There's an actual little park. I don't know if many people know about that, that you can visit and run some trails there. So this town has been just, an amazing place for sustainability and so I want to be a part of this committee because I believe that my experience which goes back 30, 35 years of sustainability action and professional marketing communications experience will be a driving force for messaging and action and

and engagement for the community and also for the committee itself to help them steer their messaging and their content and their initiatives so that we can promote greater and greener initiatives for the town of Dedham and reaching every level from high school kids or younger all the way up to adults and families because this town represents community. And community to me right now is one of the most important aspects of anyone's life. And the older I get, the more How paramount it is for me to be giving back to my community and so I would love to join this committee and I thank you all for giving me the opportunity to campaign for it and if you have any questions I would love to answer them.

Thank you so much Nick. Questions from board members?

I just have one. Do you have a question? Oh, no. I just have one question for you. Do you serve on any other town of Dedham committees, or would this be your first one?

This would be the first one.

OK, thank you. I have an unorthodox request. Is Tim still on?

Yes.

I have a question that I always forget that I forgot to ask Tim. Do you have any time constraints? I did see that you Time constraints to any evening meetings after 6 p.m. Nope.

Nope?

Okay.

I forgot. You might not be there. Sorry, Tim. I just had a quick question that I forgot to ask my standard question. Do you have time constraints if you get appointed to the commission, to the committee? Evening, you are normal business hours. Okay, thank you. That was my question. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

And last, we have Emily O'Connell. Welcome Emily.

Hi, my name is Emily. My family is from Dedham. In fact, my grandmother grew up across from the Fairbanks home. I bought my first condo here in June of 2022. I'm a registered nurse at Beth as a real in Boston and I'm an MBA candidate at Bentley University and I'll be graduating May 15th by 6 p.m. What piqued my interest in sustainability, I grew up a sustainable lifestyle, but I was a travel nurse and traveled to the West Coast. and I noticed that even though the East Coast is ahead on many things as far as education and healthcare, we're a bit behind on sustainability practices. So I came back home after the pandemic and joined the Sustainability Committee up at the Israel Degas Medical Center. Since then, I was elected to attend the CleanMed Conference, which I don't know if I heard that you were a physician, but it's a conference in the United States that is on the intersection of healthcare and sustainability. So I represented the hospital there.

And I also presented at a Grand Rounds on nursing's role in sustainability at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. My interests are waste diversion and responsible procurement. And I think what's important about sustainability is it can be very daunting and very intimidating, especially for people that don't understand it. I know at our hospital we use terms such as zero waste and everyone's like zero waste like we can't attain that but it's important to educate the public community on what that actually means whether it's a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions and really the smallest changes, incremental changes can make such a huge difference. I think anybody that wants to can integrate sustainability into their life. I think that's the most important thing to me is to connect with people and make sure we have a mutual understanding of what sustainability is because everybody can find that they need it in their life. And so mainly I think I have to offer the intersection of health care.

Public Health and Sustainability because it does, with the climate change, it does affect our communities with extreme weather. We're seeing a lot more people in the hospital with asthma attacks, strokes. So I believe that makes me a unique candidate in the fact that I'm a registered nurse and I'm about to have a business degree.

Excellent. Thank you, Emily. Questions from board members?

Just me. OK. Time restrictions?

So truthfully, I do have classes on Wednesdays at 5.30. I can tell my professor that this was a... You have other days that you'd be able to come in the evening. Yeah, no, that's it. I have a flexible job and I just have class on Wednesday nights and then I'm done in May.

So let me ask you, how do you balance the community's ideas of sustainability with what your idea of sustainability is and CO2 emissions? and a whole bunch of you said that we're behind the West Coast. Can I have an example of what you think that you would bring forward?

Sure. I think we're catching up. But when I lived in Seattle, for example, this was 2017, the city of Seattle had free composting offered. I know we did just partner with Black Earth Compost as a town and then Boston just instated free composting, I think, in the past 18 months or so. But that was just like standard, is you compost. We got a free tea pass, well, the Seattle tea, because they wanted to reduce carbon emissions from us driving to and from work. And I think the upper hand that the Pacific Northwest had is that nature is kind of all around you. It's ever present, so you're constantly seeing nature and appreciating it. and I think here it's hard in Massachusetts because it's so dense, but I think if we were to create more green spaces, I think people could appreciate nature more and see

Oh, if I make these positive changes, this is what I'm going to get in return, or this is going to preserve the area. So the main changes I noticed were composting. I wasn't involved in the Seattle town sustainability just because I was temporary. But as far as health care, for sure. And a lot of their devices were recyclable, repurposable. We had responsible procurement. Yeah. people were healthier out there too.

All right. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And I just want to say I'm really impressed with the people before me. Maybe I wasn't supposed to say that, but it's really exciting to see people eager to do this because we do have a lot of changes to make. So I'm really impressed with everybody so far.

Thank you. Thank you, Emily. And thank you, candidates. We have three candidates for one unexpired term, and we will vote at an upcoming select board meeting. So thank you for coming this evening. Next up we have a candidate for Tax Aid Committee, Jeff Klaus.

So in other words, if you just spoke, you don't have to stay. We watch people sit in their chairs, and I say, what do I do? Do I leave? Do I stay?

Welcome to stay.

Yeah, you're welcome to stay. Right.

Thank you. So I'm Jeff Klaus. I live at 540 Washington Street. I'm here to express my interest in volunteering for the Taxation Aid Committee. I've been a Dedham resident since 2007. I graduated from Boston College in 91 with a BS in finance. and also have an MBA from BU. I currently work as a director of global strategy for Amazon Web Services where I help customers achieve their global expansion goals. I'm highly involved in their financial path to being successful there. I've volunteered in the past for and other Dedham operations. I was recruited once I was coaching for Dedham Youth Hockey to participate in the board. I was a board member for over six years participating as a general member and then as the treasurer and then as the president for my final two years.

So I had a brief respite where I was getting some kids through college and now I want to come back and continue with some with some additional contributions for the town. But during that time, I helped hundreds of families achieve their sports goals in addition to raising money, some substantial money for the program. I'm interested in serving the town in this volunteer position on the Taxation Aid Committee and using my experience and knowledge to improve the exposure and the understanding of this town service more broadly. Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff. Questions from board members?

I can see here in your restriction full-time job, available most evenings. OK. And so you did serve on, and I knew I knew the name. It's got to be . has to be through hockey. I was like, where do I know this name from? So thank you for all that work as well, too. That was it. I just wanted to make sure that any other town committees that you were on, you were on the Youth Commission. All right, thank you.

All right, thank you.

Thanks so much, Jeff.

Point. Madam Chair, before you go out, Jeff, before you walk out. So since we have, Madam Chair, since we have a single individual for this, I would move to approve the appointment of Jeff to the Taxation Aid Committee for a three-year term expiring in 2028?

Second. Hearing a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, no. Welcome to the committee.

Thank you. Thanks, Jeff.

All right, next up, we have Department Updates, Endicotta State Director, Erin Perrin.

King. Erin Perron, Director at the Endicott Estate. updating on the Endicott Estates. I haven't been in front of the board in a while, so I see lots of new faces here. In terms of the Endicott Estates of Facility, in the past year the main Entrance Ramp was replaced with the composite material. You know, the old wood tends to rot away. So that was a good improvement. I'm not aware of any future capital requests. It could be through facilities, but I'm not aware of anything. I have been working with the Endicott Estate on pricing for new drapes for the ballroom, which will be quite an expense.

We want to get some pricing so we have an idea because probably within the next couple of years they'll need to be replaced and then probably have to move on to another room. With regards to the greenhouse on property, back in 1992, January of 1992. It was Human Services at the time. Now it's called the Endicott Community Greenhouse. And back in 92, the human services formally requested an agreement of some sort with the commission in the town for use of that. and a piece of property in the land around it. And then I believe nothing ever transpired from that. I searched, I checked with town records and town clerk's office there's no formal document that ever was created. So back in 2013, I believe,

I met with town council as well as the town manager and those that were on the committee for the greenhouse at the time and again it was determined that agreement needed to be put together. and unfortunately the town manager left soon after that. And then we got a new town manager. that was discussed with him. There were talks within the greenhouse in the town about another agreement, and unfortunately he left. and then when Leon started, one of his first meetings was with the Greenhouse Committee over there. and they again requested an agreement, which it makes sense if they are using the property, there should be an agreement. So finally that agreement was put together with town council and Leon, and I was involved as well along with the commission.

And that has been put together and we're just waiting for it to be executed. it's just a standard legal agreement to protect the town as well as the greenhouse. Great, thank you. Do you have further questions? Oh, I have more, yeah. Oh, okay. Anybody have questions on the greenhouse? Was there anything?

I'm just glad to hear that I know that that was something that was mentioned in the deficit reduction that the Collins Center noted that that was something that was important that we didn't have a formal agreement. So I'm glad to hear that that is happening.

Oh, I didn't realize that. Yeah. It's been in the talks for over 30 years. It's finally been put together, so it just needs to be finalized and executed.

And I'll just add that I love when I learned that the greenhouse was originally called the Human Services.

It was Human Services of Dedham.

Of Dedham. because as a frequenter of the greenhouse, I have always found that more than just plants grow there, it truly is an intergenerational community of friendships with daily interactions. And I think it's such an important resource and community builder for our town. So I love that it's called and Human Services.

Yeah, I think Human Services was, it was more of an educational component and it was used by, I believe, the Youth Commission as well as the schools, and then it just became a greenhouse group who changed the name to the Endicott Community Greenhouse. and it is a community greenhouse. That's great. In terms of numbers at the estate, in terms of the rentals and the community use, in fiscal year 25, We had 55 weddings. We had 65 other paid events, miscellaneous. the estate was used 278 times for community meetings and such. Revenue for fiscal year 25

was $324,125. And something really funny today when I was checking the numbers, I looked back to last year to see the difference. I was up this year. by $25. So all those dollars, just being off by $25, I wasn't trying for that. Consistent. So everything's going good over there. Again, I don't foresee any capital projects. I'm not aware of any. It's just day-to-day maintenance and day-to-day sales and marketing. and the door is always open for the community.

Excellent. Thanks so much, Erin. Questions from board members?

No questions? Yes.

Just thank you for all that you do do and do for the community.

You're very welcome.

My pleasure. And I know it's a passion of yours is taking care of that building. keeping it in the community as it was meant to be when it was given to the town so many years ago.

Well, thank you for letting me work for the town of Dedham. I really enjoy it. I spend more time here than I do at home. Thank you.

Thank you.

I do have just one question. I know it's been a couple years now since the garage or shed burnt down and that replacement cost, the barn, thank you. were multiples of the funds that were available via insurance and that other systems or usage of a smaller shed has been put in place. How is that working?

So there was a fire at the barn and it burned down. And there was a settlement. which happened a while ago, but it's been put on hold for now and I think there's a couple different reasons for that. I think, The initial plans that were created by the architect were just over and above. The expense was going to be just too much. it was determined that maybe we look at another option, maybe something that was like a prefab or something to replace exactly what was there. The problem was code changes. It has to do with bathrooms. in requirements in that regard with an employee working out of that area. So that kind of put a hold on everything because that was going to really increase the number to rebuild it.

So nothing has been done at this point. And even though there are multiple bathrooms on the greater property. Yeah. I tried to get a little bit more information about that, but I was unable to get that information. you know how many square feet. Can you go without having to install a bathroom? I don't know. We have hopefully a new and the building commissioner coming in pretty soon, or building director. Maybe they can help me with that. Nobody seems to get back to me with answers on that.

So let's make sure to look into that. I'm sure you could rattle off how many bathrooms are on the property.

Oh, I know how many bathrooms. Yeah.

We've had conversations, substantial conversations, it's a plumbing code issue actually and there was a change a couple of years ago with the plumbing code that essentially any structure in which there's space for an employee to work now requires a bathroom facility, including hand washing and hot water, including things like garages. So Dedham Westwood Water District, they had discussions about this. even things like pump houses where you build a small structure and an employee may have to be in there for maintenance purposes now require bathrooms under the plumbing code. It's a significant change and also drives significant expense. because as Aaron mentioned, the old barn had only a cold water service, a very small service there, and this would require significant upgrades to the water service.

it would require plumbing, it would require access, which drives hundreds of thousands of dollars more of site work and investment.

Thank you for explaining that. Other questions?

We haven't given up on it.

Madam Chair, I just want to say thank you for being such a great steward of a public asset in the Anaconda State, a real special place. You do such a great job. I really appreciate all the great work you do. That's all I have to say.

Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Have a good night.

Thanks you too.

All right, Parks and Rec we have.

Careful.

Thanks.

All right, Bob Stanley, Dedham Parks and Recreation. And I also have with me, in case I get any brain cramps tonight, is Debbie Anderson. We were discussing this afternoon what we were going to talk about tonight. I really didn't know how to go about it. We want to talk about what we do or how are we doing it. So we decided to focus more on what we do. So I said, we're going to put together a one-page fact sheet of what we did. We tried that. It ended up to be like five or six pages, so we cut it down to four. I want to remind you that I've got a lot of Park and Recreation stuff in my head. I'm coming up on my 48th year working for Parks and Recreation, so I've got to pick and choose what I, gave you tonight. So I'm just going to kind of skim through the information sheets we gave out. We are parks and recreation.

the way me and Deb kind of run it is I'm kind of 75% pox and 25% recreation. And she's the opposite. She's 75% recreation and 25 pox. It works out very well. I'm going to start off with our parks department, or our parks facilities. Our parks are kind of in two different groups, neighborhood parks and facilities, and then the community facilities. Our community parks and facilities are more of our bigger parks, Memorial Park, Fairbanks Park, the Dolan Center. They're kind of like destination parks where people come from all over town to go to the Dolan Center, to go to Memorial Park.

our destination playground there, the indoor pool, Gonzales Park. People come from all over. And then we've got all our neighborhood parks. Paul Park for the Oakdale neighborhood, Condon Park for East Dedham, Churchill Park, Mill Pond Park, Park, some of the parks you may have not even heard of, Hartnett Park, Oakdale Common, The Triangle, Dedham Common, East Dedham, Passwood Park. We've got a lot to take care of. We've got a four-man parks department to maintain. all those areas. Along with those areas, the ones I've just given you is about over 100 acres that we maintain. And then on top of that,

we've got about another 90 acres that we maintain from the school department. And those are pretty much all the school fields. We can't maintain them to the same level that we do our parks, but we're there once a week cutting the grass and try to keep them, some of the conditions there are safe and playable. as possible. But like I said, we've only got four people, and it's quite a stretch to get them to all these areas. Those are the parks, the recreational services. We run many, many programs through our recreation. Center, and through the Dedham pool.

The Dedham Pool is another one of the facilities that we run, and I will tell you, the Dedham Pool, that's why I'm here today, because that's where I started when I was 16 years old working at the pool. I think it's one of the greatest assets that we have. I've seen so many people, so many kids, so many families go through the pool and all the programs that they have and I've literally seen it changed people's lives down there. They start at the pool when they're five years old and they stay with all the programs. We've had three or four people, met their future wives there. They got engaged down on the pool deck. So that's the difference that some of the programs that we offer. It's almost like a lifestyle. for some of these kids. Back to the Parks Department.

It's a four-person employees during the summer. We expand that to seasonal growth, which can be four to six extra people coming on. That's critical, having as many people on when we hit May and June. and May when the grass starts to grow. I'm trying to keep up with almost 200 acres of field. It's a daunting task and I don't know how my guys do it but they they managed to get most of it done. And that's just constant two people on a lawn mower, 40 hours a week. My Parks Department, along with maintaining all those properties, they do a number of other community things. A few weeks ago, beginning of December, they do all the Christmas decorations in town.

They're a big part of the tree lighting and all that. Also, you know, people wonder what they do during the winter. they also work for the DPW. DPW anytime DPW get calls in for snow our guys get called in for snow. they work on our facilities and then they work on whatever the DPW needs them to do. When we buy our trucks for Parks and Rec, we make sure they're all equipped so that they can help DPW with all the plowing. On the recreation side, We just moved. We just moved into a new facility. As most of you know, we were at the Dolan Center. And we moved into the Dolan Center back in 2017. I was obviously working for Parks and Rec there.

We moved into the Dolan Center mostly for the property out there, which was river access and some spots for softball fields and what have you. and then we had the building kind of as a bonus and then when we looked at the building we realized what we could do with the building. It became a great recreation center for the probably around 2007. So we're almost in there about 18 years. We put a dance studio in there. We put... A gym in there, somewhat of a gym. We had karate and wrestling and gymnastics. Every day we were very busy and that was When we were in there, we were outsourcing, renting rooms all around Dedham and renting gyms for all our programs. So it was great to have our own recreation center. Unfortunately, the building had some issues. it was deteriorating a little bit and it became more and more apparent that we had to move out of there.

The cost of repairing some of the damage would have triggered a lot of other costs. and we decided that we needed to find a new place and the Capen was available. I'll tell you when I first walked into the Capen before any renovations were made, I didn't, I wanted to stay at the Dolan Center, but I have to tell you, and I should say Debbie handled most of the transition going in there. So I went three, four months during the renovate, I didn't even go in there. And when they completed it, when I walked in there, I was blown away. I could not believe I was in the same building where they renovated the back part of the school. three classrooms, they turned them into offices. The hallway, it was a decrepit hallway falling apart. You walk in there now, it's beautiful, new floors, new walls, new ceilings.

So I encourage any of you, any time during business hours, stop up there. Pay us a visit. We'll give you a quick tour. It's a great place. And unlike the Dolan Center, we've got much bigger office space. beautiful meeting room up there that almost every department and the police and everyone is using our meeting room facility up there. We also have a full-size gym, you know, the old Capen gym. We've done some work in there. and that's the floor that we're on, the first floor. We've got three classrooms that were renovated and then we've got the gym and then we have the whole... Basement. And what we did in the basement was we put in a new dance studio down there to pretty much replace the dance studio at the Dolan Center.

The Dolan Center Dance Studio was funded by, I'm sure you all know Nicole Lyle. She was a dancer for Dedham Box and Rec. We lost Nicole 15 years ago now, I think. So we had the Nicole Laudan studio and we didn't want to lose that so we moved the studio to the new rec center and got that programs. doing very well. So we're very happy to be in our new home. It's working out great. I think I covered everything on that. Oh yeah, I have to throw that in there. I talked about how great it came out, but I have to credit Matt Hafner and the entire facilities department that came in and did all this work. It was their whole staff. working in there for probably a year or so, getting that ready. And it came out beautiful. And they're still supporting us now. It's a great place.

So, yeah, thank you to the facilities department. I have Dedham pool operations, but I think I talked a little bit about that already. The pool's a major part of our revenue generating. Like I said, we do parks and rec. We've got a rec revolving fund and a pool revolving fund. those two funds supplement our operating budget. And more and more as the years go on, When you take all our budgets together, the revolving account is making up more and more of our total operating. expenses. And I'm going to get into a little bit kind of how we are doing as opposed to what we are doing. And I'm just going to show you some of the the revenue on the next page.

And I just went back to I picked 2017 where we took in under 300,000 between our pool and recreation. And back then we had about 2,200 participants in our programs. and then in 2018, we went up to 40% increase but we had some one-time costs that came in there that kind of elevated our revenue. but we maintained that the following year in 2019 at around 400,000. Obviously, then COVID hits and everything plummeted for about a year and a half. 2021, we started coming back. 2022, our first full year back and you can see we're up close to $436,000 and then we really hit our stride in 23 where we went from $436,000 in revenue to $600,000

and $14,000, that's a 40% increase and that is all the pool and recreation. Following here, even better than that, another $50,000, you know, an 8% increase from the previous year. We've kind of leveled off in 2025, but, and then also in 2025, you can see we're at, you know, 3,700 participants in our programs going from 2200 years ago. So from that aspect, Yes, revenue is very important. That's how we stay alive. But our main goal is participation in our programs. We have to charge people. So the money is important. We have to pay the bills. But we like that 3,700 number. We want to get more. and more kids out there.

And I will say back in 2020, right after COVID, we hired a new pool director and kind of made it more of a financial incentive to get that pool running the way it should be, and are we making the most revenue from the pool that we could, because it's expensive to keep a pool running. And that increase that you see in 2023 was from the pool. The revenue just skyrocketed once we kind of restructured the pool director's position over there. We've got a number of projects that we're working on right now. One that we just finished is obviously I just spoke about the Project to relocate Dolan to Fox and Rec. We finally got in there and fully in this past, oh geez, now. It's been a year. Been a year now. Last January.

some new things that we're working on. Condon Park, you're gonna see this coming summer, this coming spring, we've got a brand new splash pad going in down there. It's something that I've wanted to do for a number of years and we got, thank you land, got us some funding, federal funding. to get that built. It's pretty much completed. We haven't opened it yet. We're going to get trained on it this coming spring. and we're looking forward to getting that open this spring. A couple other projects we're working on. I spoke a lot about the Dolan Center. We got another grant to do a couple studies. One was the Dolan Center. Obviously, we're no longer there. The building's still there. Everything we do at the building is still going on. There's still softball fields there.

There's still kayak rentals and river access. We've got a dog park that is one of the busiest dog parks in the state. We've got gardening that goes on up there. So it's a very, very busy place. So everything that goes on around the building is still going. What are we going to do with the building? Every month, or I go up once a week, I can see it deteriorating a little bit more, especially with no heat, no water. So something's going to need to be done up there. So we worked with an engineering company, Activitas, who's done a lot of work for us. They're the ones who did Gonzales Field. And we did a study. We had some community meetings. What do we want to do up there? What do we need? We're going to announce the results of that study, I believe, at our March parks and rec meeting. But what we're looking at is tearing down the building,

putting up a smaller structure, maybe with some restrooms, a little bit of storage space, nothing like we have up there now, but just enough to run what we've got going up there, expand the dog park. One of the things that a lot of people have come to us over the past 10 years is pickleball. So we're trying to work that in. You know, there'll be a lot of discussions with neighbors and, you know, will it fit in that area. So we're pretty excited to get that and the way that's going to work is we'll announce the results of the study and we'll have two or three different options or plans of what to do and then at some point We'll come before this board and the Finance Committee and Capital Committee and we'll try and possibly roll those out. The other project we've got going is Rustcraft Field, we're looking at doing a complete renovation over there.

We realized when Manor Fields didn't get done, maybe we should start focusing on the fields that we do have and Russcraft we've always had issues with water down there and it's just been big problems down there trying to keep a grass field down there so we're We're looking at a lot of different options. So I've seen some of the options, but we're again going to present those in March, and again, we will present them at some point to these boards, and we'd like to kind of move forward with those projects. another project we're working on, and I have it in front of Capitol. Right now it's going on in the other room. That's what I'm running to when I get out of here to see if they're gonna vote for this, but we'd like to renovate our Memorial Park playground

That was built, I think, the first year I got on the Recreation Commission in 97, 98, and it's pretty much hit its lifespan at 27 years, so we're looking at completely renovating that pockets. It's kind of our premier park in town. It's our best playground, biggest playground. We've had it inspected a number of times and they said it's reached its useful life. What we're trying to do there is build the 2026 version of a 1997 version playground. with all the new things that 2026 has to offer, more accessibility, more things for different age groups. So hopefully that project will move forward. I'm bouncing around here on my list. The last couple things I have on here. The other thing Dedham Parks and Rec does, and I'm sure you all know this, is we run a lot of different events.

One of our biggest ones is Dedham Flight Day Parade. also associated with the Flag Day Parade, we'd like to do every five years a fireworks display. And we are coming up on that five year. It's part of my operating budget right now. So we're hoping that gets passed. It wouldn't be this coming Flag Day. It would be the 2027 FY budget and that of the next year. We hope that goes through, but we understand there's some fiscal constraints these days. So hopefully that's a tradition that doesn't end. Dedham Day. That's another one. Deb, she's a big part of running Dedham Day. That was, Dedham Day, as you know, was started by Juju Machaccio, and it's a great event. It's something that we always want to keep going.

It's a fundraiser, but that's not really why we do it. I mean, we do it, it's more of a community event. Everyone likes it. We've got other small things like the bike rodeo that we have at Endicott and Run for the Fallen, a big road race we do at the beginning of September for the veterans. I mentioned the holiday stroll, the tree lighting. That pretty much covers it. There's a little bit of community feedback on the handout I gave you. Take a look at that. In the future, There's a few things we're looking at that we haven't put down on paper yet, just something to think about. One of the things is we just moved into the Capen School. I understand. Manor Fields, $22 million. We tried to pass that five years ago. It didn't happen.

It missed town meeting by like one one-tenth of a vote. So maybe we're not ready for that yet, but I think we do need to do something down there. It's a big property, and now that we are there, we're abutting the property, the Capen School, the recreation center, right there. which is pretty much the only access into that property. I just think it's a good opportunity to kind of mesh the two together. and we're not talking full fields and everything, even walking paths with gardens down there, some kind of destination down there. I think it needs to be looked at and I think the whole facility, not just Manor Fields but the Capen School and the field right next to it. Right now we can't even use that field next to it because there's really no more access even to the field right next to Capen. It's a slope that goes down. There's no steps that go down.

sometimes people come and try and watch the kids play soccer and they actually slide down that hill so we're at the point where it's almost a safety reason to not use that field. Deb had an idea to flood the field during the winters and use it as an ice skating rink. She brought that to me today, but I'm like, what do we do about access? I just think that whole facility needs to be looked at in general and there's a playground right in front of the Capen School too. and it's deteriorating. It's not one of ours, it's a facilities playground, but there hasn't been a school there so there's no reason to maintain it. But it just stopped having a playground that's fallen apart in front of a recreation center. So those are the things. Hopefully there's some opportunities coming up. And the last thing I'll say is some other opportunities that are going to come up. leadership of Parks and Rec. A year and a half, two years. So we'll see what happens there.

I've got a foreman that's been with us for 42 years. He's retiring the next year. So there's going to be some opportunities to look at there. I'm interested in what your questions are, though. I've got a lot up here, but I'm not sure what you want to know.

Just to hit on the keep and access, it might not have great access, but it's a great sledding hill, so if you guys have kids, take advantage of that hill. Because that's the only way to get there.

Intentionally or unintentionally. Thank you, Bob and Debbie. Appreciate it. Questions from board members? I can start.

Anyone else wants to?

Oh, yes. Thanks for the really comprehensive report. It's great to hear the updates. No, it's great. I know how many families value all that you all do, so thank you. appreciate hearing about the upgrades at Capen and I need to get over there and see that I spent many years.

I encourage everyone to come down there and see. I love showing it off. Debbie does. And Debbie should show it off because she's the one that

It's great to hear that you were surprised at how much it's worked out. That's wonderful, and I agree with the potential there. is really great with all the space, outdoor and indoor. So imagine what it could be years down the road also. I would be curious to hear how it has been going, the transition, given some of the shifts and changes with funding voted at last town meeting and the budget. where some more of your budget is relying on the revolving fund and the fees and how that transition has gone.

I'm not going to say it's easy. What she's referring to is our budget last year was reduced about 130. I think initially it was almost going to be about 230 in a town meeting. they brought that down to 130, and we worked closely with Leon. How can we offset that 130,000? So we're still going through that process right now because we're still in the fiscal year. We saw a couple opportunities to increase revenue, two major ones, which is one is increase our fees for our programs. We've taken $660,000. If we can increase 10%, well, that's $60,000 right there. The other thing which

kind of somewhat unpopular, but it's done in other cities and towns, is charging people to use our fields. And when I say charging people, we charge outside groups and we rent the fields all the time. But no, this was charging the youth groups themselves Dedham youth soccer, Dedham baseball, field hockey, every single group that comes on. And we kept it relatively cheap at $10 an hour. for whatever field you're at, $10 an hour, even at Gonzales Field where we get over $100 an hour for private groups. We're still going through our first of all. We're still collecting all that revenue. I'm looking maybe at 25,000 for that. 25 additional. That's just for one fall.

And then we've still got spring, and then we have summer. There's not much revenue during the summer. We're not going to be a full year through that. There's a number of different ways to look at it. I'm a little disappointed because what I did notice is when we started charging people, field use dropped 60%. In other words, we're at like 40% of what they use. And what I hate to see happen is that there's kids out there not using our fields because the youth groups can't afford it. and I'm hoping that's not what it is. Sometimes groups come in and they overbook fields. In other words, we call it blanket permitting.

we're going to take this field every single day from 3 to 7 when we know they're only using it 3 to 5 so when they're paying for it all of a sudden oh well then the real numbers come in but it's a balance how much that they cut because they were blanket permitting. are the kids losing because of that. And that's what I don't want to see. That's our main thing is to get the kids on our field, especially the Dedham kids. and the program fees, we're working on that. And I go back and forth on that. Some people say we're not charging enough, Okay, but I've always had a thing where we charge what it costs us plus a 15% administration fee. Where I get a little bit uncomfortable is

When we raise our swimming gym fees, our most popular program in town, do we take that extra revenue that we raised on that and start paying for soccer fields? are the swimming gym people gonna, that's where, you know, I get a little bit uneasy doing that, taking our popular programs to So, I don't know. And I'm not saying this is a bad idea. I'm just saying there's all different parts of it, some good, some bad, and some just getting used to, and some, like, this is... This is the way it is. This is the way other towns work. You've got to generate your own revenue. I just kind of wish we had kind of went into it a little bit slower and gradually built up. As you can see, for the past 10 years, We have been doing a good job at raising. We're far outpacing inflation with our programs. I can tell you some of our programs are so popular

I think it was last year or the year before. I had WBC radio bring TV cameras into our office because they wanted the film the first day of registration for Swimming Gym, February 1st. I'm like, there's nothing to see. No one comes in the office. They don't online. No, we want to sit over your shoulder and videotape your computer screen, because we would take in $100,000 in 10 minutes. and that's what they came in to see. From that aspect, we're doing the right thing and we're giving them the right programs. trying to expand our demographics. I mean, our specialty is four years old to 12 years old. We'd like to get out of that. To answer your question from a revenue perspective, we're trying. We're trying and we're trying to do it with the least effect on our main customers, which are the residents of Dedham.

Do I think we're ready for another $100,000 hit? No. And I just should say that When I went to FinCom the year before that, I went in saying, just as a warning, I'm looking for a 10% increase in my budget. And I brought in paperwork from the NRPA saying, this is what a standard pox and rec worked on, which we weren't even close to that. So my goal was to try and get closer, but unfortunately, it doesn't always work that way.

Thank you. Other questions, comments?

Thank you. So I was going to ask you what you attributed to that that increased to from 2022 to 2023. I can give you a better answer.

I would say most of that was COVID and the kids been doing nothing. for two years. So even 21, even 22 was it was, we were still rolling, we had limits on how many people could go in the pool even.

Yeah, I was gonna say a lot of this was we did still have the health restrictions on how many people we were allowed to put in our program. So they kind of opened that up to

When 23, they fully let us go, we upped the inputs to all our programs, and we let Swimmin' Jim go full bore, and that explained a lot of it.

So when you talk about programming, and you said your demographic is up to, did you say 12? So I was kind of sitting here wondering about the adults.

Yeah, so our primary is the four to 12 generally, but we do our programs for all ages all the way through senior.

just we don't get the participation level that we do with the other.

Where are we marketing in? What kind of program? I'm just asking for my own self.

It's on our Facebook pages. It's in all of our communications that we do.

We offer pickleball. We offer... Water aerobics.

A lot of stuff down the pool.

Yeah.

As I talk to people my age group, and they're looking for programs within town, so they could be at another revenue kind of thing. and see what they're interested in, right? What does my age group want to do? right like what kind of programs and things like that so I just think that there's a group there if you want to start tapping into that next level we're always looking for ideas too so if you have ideas for a program oh I do

because we've got a facility now that we can do a lot more.

Yeah, it's just I haven't been in it, so it sounds like it's going to be absolutely beautiful, so I can't wait to go in there and see it. We should take a little field trip. I'm very curious about the fields and how you said maybe they blanketed it when it was X and now to find out what the true need really is. and maybe it's not that they can't afford it. It really is that they just had to decide what the true is.

I will say if a group comes to me and said we really need a field and we can't afford it, I hate to say it, but at some point I'm gonna let them on that field.

Right, we're still a community.

I'm not, yeah.

And then, Obviously, I mean, it's wonderful work that you do do. The playground, I remember when we did the playground at Memorial and we had bricks. Because I'm thinking the bricks, where are the bricks going?

I have that written down with my playground consultant. He's come back to me with a number of different ideas. You're pulling up all the bricks and put them off to the side.

And do another fundraiser.

But those bricks have to come out.

Right, no, I know that, yeah.

The playground's going to be 100% accessible, which means a pour-and-play surface over the whole playground. We can't have that walkway anymore. And I'm like, can we pull up those bricks without breaking them? But that is something we're looking into.

Yeah, and just thinking of another fundraiser as well, too, because to think how long that can stay.

The other thing, at the Capital and Finance Committee last week, when I went in front of them, Jessica Porter brought up the Poth grants. State grants, and I did a lot of research on that, and we're a very good candidate for that, and I reported back to FinCom on that. That would pay for a good portion of it, but the key part of it is you have to fully fund the playground, and then kind of after you build it, then maybe they'll give you money. So we're looking at different avenues to do that.

Thank you. Thank you to all of you for all the work you do.

Thank you. Thanks, Bob and Debbie. And I'll first just start by sharing that as you were reviewing all of the programs that Parks and Rec has, I was sitting here with this whole memories reel spinning in my mind of a lifetime of memories engaging in Dedham Parks and Rec activities. I was thinking about when I, as a swimmin' gym alum, was sitting at the picnic table making gimp bracelets with Juju, doing gymnastics class when I was at the Riverdale School, because Dolan didn't exist, and I think I even remember I think the very first Dedham Day was a foam day that then turned into the Dedham Day that we all know and love. I wanted to share that because one, thank you. You have contributed to many of those memories in one form or another. And also that I've been able to pass that on to my kids to have those own experiences.

But I think it really speaks to how important Parks and Rec is to the feeling of our community and our sense of community. and how we live and exist here and enjoy our town and love our town that is an experience that I know you know all of us really love living here in that those are such important critical cornerstones to our experience here so thank you for all the work that you do. So a couple of thoughts that I had in questions were, again, talking about the participation increase. So is that producing, I think you touched on it a little bit, but just to clarify, is that producing additional revenue for the program, or is it meeting costs? So the increase in participation

and the increase in revenue, are you just meeting the cost of serving additional participants or is there additional revenue?

If I understand your question right, I think I do. Yes, when revenue goes up like this, expenses go up like that. But you kind of like to widen the margin a little bit, because just say in the last 10, 11 years, we typically pay our employees minimum wage, and minimum wage is almost doubled. So yeah, our costs are going way up, and I will say most of our costs, probably from our revolving accounts, 90% of that is all salaries, but it's all salaries to the youth of Dedham. That demographic, 17 or 16 to 21, they're the ones that run a lot of our programs down the pool and everything we do. that when we raise the fees, to bring in more revenue for what we're doing now.

I always get nervous just because I think it's like any business. You try and hit that sweet spot. How much can you raise the fees? before people start, you know, and can you hit that spot where they don't turn around and back out of the program? because what we have is we have a dance program at Gymnastics. We've got programs that there are private companies all around in the area that do them. Once our rates start getting close to those professional dance studios, That's when we start losing our dancers, because they're going to go to the... more prestigious, supposedly. Our goal is to be affordable. And our goal is to just take in the revenue that we need to run the programs. Every program should be self-sufficient.

What happens is some programs do really well and we make more money, and what we try to do is take that extra that we're taking here to help out the programs that are just getting off the ground. because they're not going to make money the first couple of years. And that's kind of the business plan that we had. I don't mind taking money from program A that's doing well to put in the program B to get it off the ground. I do have kind of issues taking money from program A that's doing well and taking it completely out of programs and putting it to maintaining fields. I don't know if that answered your question.

Yeah, that was exactly my question. Thank you. And the other is more just a comment. You mentioned that when the fees were increased for field use that bookings dropped 40%. and I just wanted to recommend that we do, or maybe you have and you can share that with me, but an analysis and report of who wasn't booking? Was it that the time that was booked was shorter because it aligned more with actual usage? Was it certain groups that weren't booking? But I think that that's valuable information. I know that booking has always been so tight because everyone wants to use the limited space that we have. is it just that it's running more efficiently now? Or are there really groups that aren't accessing it and maybe looking into why?

I had a long conversation with the president of Dedham baseball today, and he basically said, Bob, I just want to tell you, this is the field space I need. This is the budget I have. I can't go over this budget. and Dedham Youth Baseball redid one of our fields with their own money. They put $20,000 into a field. I have some leeway with it, and basically I said, I don't want to, you need $10,000 worth of field space, you put $20,000 into the field. we can cover that. So in other words, they were not going to let their kids play. and that's what I didn't want to happen. So I think there's certain situations that we're gonna work with the youth groups as opposed to them not playing.

There might come a point where I think people have taken advantage of that, but I don't think for that yet. Again, that's my goal. I want to make sure that the Dedham players get out there, but I also want to make sure that we get the revenue that we're getting. Sometimes groups have different ways of you know, contributing to Fox and Rec. And that, what they did with the field renovation down at Capone Field at Russcraft, it was going to save us some money. So I think that was, it's kind of a win-win. Okay. Again, I'm going to work with the groups that can't do it. But we're also looking at it because the way the permit situation, if they turn in their permits two months before the season, they don't know how much they need at that point. then once schedules get done and the coaches do their schedules, then they realize actual uses. Then there's what we call the give back. And then they give back all this time.

And then with this new system, at the end of the season, they tell us what they actually use if it rains. There's a lot of back and forth. On a normal year, I wouldn't get the, when it rained, we didn't use it, because we didn't care. We didn't need to know that. So now we're getting that, so that's a part of the drop-down.

So if there is a report or analysis that's been done or if there could or there was an interest in doing one to see if it's just that it's being used more efficiently or if there is something to look at, I think that would be helpful.

We have a meeting Monday night, and we're bringing in all the youth groups before our permit meeting in February. We're bringing them in next month to see how the whole process worked, and that's going to be one of the questions I ask. to all the youth groups. Did anyone not use the field specifically because their group could not afford it? That's a question we need to know. And that's a question I'll report back Monday night when we get that answer.

Great. Thanks so much. Thanks for coming in this evening.

Thank you. Thank you. Just wanted to say thank you, guys. Oh, sorry, Dennis. That's okay. Oh, sorry, Dennis. I know we're way behind. Just very quick. Just wanted to say thank you. do a great job as a parent. Everything's amazing. Programs are great. My kids love the programs. You know that. So it's wonderful. Thank you. And I'm so happy you're thinking about Stryer. again, and how to best utilize, now that you guys are there, because when we did that last time, one of the things was that was the ECEC still, created access to the property was a huge challenge, right? And now you guys are in that property and I think that opens up the door for a new way to work with that site and there's just so much potential there. So, you know, it's tough times and, you know, I don't know what the solution is, but I'm glad you guys are thinking of it because there's a lot that could be done there. So thank you for everything you do.

And Dennis, I want to thank you for your support over the years, especially when we tried to pass the CPA. That would have really... Was it the CP? Yeah, CPA, yeah. That would have been a big help. I wish we had got that in. Hopefully someday we can look at that again because we've got some big projects at Park and Rec.

and we've certainly spent the money on CPA projects a lot over the last seven or eight years, nine years since that was rejected but we've spent a lot of money on CPA projects and some of those reimbursements, they go up and down but they've been nothing to scoff at, 15, 20, 30, 35%, so maybe one day.

I think we missed an opportunity. Thanks, Bob.

Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Chair, at some point, not now, but maybe we can have a...

Okay, up next we have Opposed traffic regulation amendment. Cowell Drive traffic regulation amendment.

I was going to say, Jason, is that you? I know we're behind, but...

Good evening, everyone. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year.

All right, first things first. A few weeks ago, maybe a month ago, Leon and the Select Board received an email concerning some safety concerns at the intersection of Caldwell Drive, Green Lodge Street. Green Lodge, Caldwell has two intersections. We're talking about the one closest to the Green Lodge Elementary School. essentially turning the stretch of Caldwell between Green Lodge and Bonnie Lane from a two-lane roadway into a one-lane roadway specific to pick-up and drop-off times associated with the Green Lodge Elementary School. So we went out and investigated the situation to see what was going on out there and we followed up with several photos and some videos that we shared with the town manager and the board showing the the pickup drop off routine that's occurring over there.

And essentially all the parents are parking on both sides of Caldwell Drive between Bonnie and Caldwell that's the main entrance area because that's pretty much at the immediate location of the intersection narrowing the roadway down so only One car can get in in one direction, so there's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of safety concerns. The cars are also parking partially onto the sidewalk, which then makes parents walking their kids, walking to the street, into a one-way area where cars are trying to come and go. So in order to try to help mitigate and provide some more openness in that area and to provide some safety, there's a recommendation to have no parking restriction put in place Monday through Friday. Just in the main half hour of pick up and drop off, in the morning would be 8.45 to 9.15 and then in the afternoon from 2.45 to 3.15. So have any questions particular to that regulation?

Yes. Have we communicated with the schools?

The schools have been in the loop with this, and they're aware of what we're proposing this evening. They wanted us to go a little bit further, but we don't think it's prudent right now. So we're just holding it to this one location and then seeing what happens from there if the board so wishes to move forward with this restriction.

and have they communicated with the community, their school community?

not until we know if there's something to actually communicate to them with and if we do there's going to be a learning period for them to let them know that this is going to be taking place and give them some time before it goes live.

But to be clear I think The schools, when the Green Lodge traffic improvement project was done, there was a lot of communication to explain to parents how drop off and pick up should be working, which is using the drive line on Green Lodge Street. This is sort of an attempt by some parents to skip that line, if you will, and that is actually causing this problem. So the schools are on board because they've communicated what they would like to see happen, which is the safest thing, which is using that drop-off line on Green Lodge. This is, again, an attempt to get around that, but it has kids crossing where there's not a crosswalk, and it's also causing a traffic incident, so I think the schools are on board. Thank you.

And what is the, I'm sorry, what will the communications plan be? How much timeline would be given to the neighborhood about these changes?

probably a month or two because we can't put signs in. grounds frozen right now. So we probably get them in in March, April. So as soon as the board makes a decision on this, communications will begin. And we likely won't have them go live until the time that we can put in the signage.

Thanks. And again, this largely will be a communication and education project. Ultimately, we don't want to have to use the enforcement. but in order to be able to have teeth behind that education, the police department requested that we go through this process in order for them to be able to go out there and move folks along and have the proper signage, et cetera.

Building on your questions, both Aaron and Dimitria, this is clearly an issue here, so I think this makes sense to do. I was going to ask what happens to the cars that are there, but I guess what I'm hearing from what Leon said is it's not that they need to find another place to park, it's that they need to drive through the loop, right? And then building on the question about communication, I think both just making sure that the schools and town are communicating to the parents, but also the neighbors. who I think would hopefully welcome this too. But there are a lot of houses right around where this is all happening that make sure that they know what's happening also.

Right, right. I mean, my only thought around that is someone may park in front of their own house and moving it for a couple hours a day would be difficult, but it seems that there's large driveways in that area. So just making sure that we have good communication with the neighbors.

Those areas are usually fairly vacant until this time frame arises. But yeah, there could be a stray resident here or there that parks in that general area during that time.

Great, thank you.

Madam Chair, I'd move with respect to the urgency for public safety amend part one schedule number one of the traffic regulations to adopt a no parking Monday through Friday, 8.45 to 9.15 a.m. in 245 to 315 PM parking restrictions on both sides of Colwell Drive from Green Lodge Street to Barney Lane.

Second. Hearing motion and second, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Thank you. And you're on our next agenda item as well, Jason, right?

Yes, you planned that perfectly. Perfect. So we have an update this evening on the MANA inflow study project. you have some information before you this evening and some attachments that we provide in the email basically flyers and Flyers, Letters, and Survey Results. But to kind of bring it into a summary, we last met with the Select Board towards the end of October of 2025 with Wes and Samson and presented the and one of the first things that we discussed at that meeting was having a discussion with the 39 affected property owners on Bonham Road as they were identified by Wesleyan Sampson as already having existing or the potential to have

and other private property backups resulting from the town's surcharge system during significant storm and or snowmelt events. So what we had done, is on November 19th, we mailed a letter to all 39 affected property owners informing them of two special hybrid meetings that we were having at the Cape and School using Bob's new meeting area that he discussed earlier. It's a great location to have a meeting close to the neighborhood. The purpose of these meetings was to review mitigation options for the existing or potential private property backups and to introduce a survey allowing the property owners to indicate their preferred mitigation option. This was really... These two meetings that we had, we really spoke to them about all the pros and cons associated with both mitigation options, the time frame associated with what we believe it would take based upon the funding that we provided to the select board back in October.

So it was a very frank discussion to be had at both of those meetings. The attendance at the December 3rd meeting included four property owners and one person virtually, and at the 10th meeting, two property owners attended in person and one virtually. following that meeting we mailed out a second letter on December 11th again to all 39 property owners thanking those who attended and then encouraging those who did not to participate in the survey. Both letters to date that I'm talking about now included links and QR codes to the various information that we've been supplying all along Weston and Sampson report, the presentation materials at the third and tenth meeting. We also had a copy of the meeting presentation available to them and links to the web page and links to the survey which they could take.

One more time, on December 30th, we hand-delivered flyers to the 39 property owners just reminding them the importance of the survey and to make sure that they have an opportunity to get on and review all the materials and make are making a conscious decision of what they believe to be the best option for their neighborhood, letting them know that the survey was closing on January 5th. We had the survey open for a month in a couple days. We ended up closing the survey on January 6th and 18 of the 39 affected property owners participated in the survey. Of those respondents, nine preferred the low pressure system, which was one of the mitigation options, and eight preferred the installation of backflow preventers, which was the second mitigation option, and one preferred neither. The one resident that preferred neither was really a phone call that I had with that property owner who just said, I've never had a problem here.

I don't anticipate to have a problem. I appreciate what you're doing, but I'm not really going to pursue any option and I don't want to get involved with the survey or anything like that. So his vote was just, I don't want either. So we took that in and we added that in there to the survey results. Of the nine property owners that selected the low pressure system, five of them currently experience ongoing private property backups. And of those five, three of them already have backflow preventers that they installed. on their own accord based upon the issues that they were having. And two of the members that were at our meeting, one in person and one virtually, talked about their experiences with the backflow preventer, letting them know that, yes, it has mitigated the private property backups that they have, but it also has held them hostage to a degree within their homes as well.

As the backflow preventer is in action, it can't allow flow out of your home. So you are kind of limited, very limited on your water use, showers, washing, bathroom use, anything that you have to turn on a water supply gets into the sewer drain. they even commented, said it could be a few hours where we're without the use of our home or it could be several days where it can be a very big challenge for those that have families to limit their water use. So with the results of the survey, it was one more in favor of going with the low pressure option. So that's the method that we plan on pursuing from this point. So the idea now is to find the necessary funding to install the low-pressure infrastructure within Bonham Road and a little bit of Trenton Road

that would allow these 39 properties to connect if they so desire. There is no requirement to connect, but it's going to be available for them should they not want to experience or potentially experience this issue in the future. So design it this year. If we happen to get, we do the funding already to design it this year. If we're able to secure the funding necessary for the construction, that would happen next year. and then starting the third year we would be ready or right after construction's over, could be the end of the second year, start getting those that want to participate in this assistance into the new low pressure system. We're gonna prioritize those that have ongoing and existing backups, and then work our way down the list from there.

We're estimating, again, as we mentioned in our October meeting, 250,000 of the million that we typically request each year in capital for inflow and infiltration work to go to outfitting the private properties that experience backups. We have nine properties that we're aware of that have ongoing existing backup problems and with that funding we would be able to get all of them off two years after we install the low pressure system, but then we can still continue to go down the list there for those that still want to participate from there, but we're going to prioritize. Obviously we want to get those that have a problem off as soon as possible. In the meantime, while we're working on the design and the construction aspect, we are working internally within the town to develop what's going to be an assistance program for those that need to get on.

It's something that we're going to be coming back to the board before we actually put it out there because we want to make sure it's vetted along all parties. but we're going on the same premise that we left a lot of our discussions leading into this is trying to minimize as much as we can the financial burden to any of the homeowners that are in this area. So that's kind of how our charge is and that's kind of how we're moving forward. We're just trying to work on the mechanism in order to do that and then see and bring it back and see if that's a favorable wait to do this. And then we can modify from there or we can run with it, but there's going to be some more discussions before that goes live. But it gives me a year or two to actually get it all squared away. and vetted before those 39 effective property owners are able to participate in that assistance program. But in parallel, we're also working on the private inflow removal policy for the 65 identified prohibitive connections.

in developing a policy regulation very similar to the private infiltration policy that the Select Board approved back in 2015, really following the same guidelines and funding mechanisms. that we're hopeful within the next month or two that we can bring back to the board for review and discussion and hopefully shortly thereafter it's something that we can then start working on redirecting those prohibitive connections and start removing the 65 properties that have the inflow situation to try to start restoring capacity back into the sewer main in that area which not only affects the private property owners but we do occur some activations from the manholes that then get into the street and into the Fowl Meadow which is one of the other big problems that we're trying to eliminate with this work. Again, we're following the same ideology that we don't want to present any financial burden to the homeowners so we're trying to

figure out a creative way to fund this and make it tangible for those and really not stress them financially. And that's something that we'll be coming back to the board again in the future with. So with that, I just leave to any questions that you have on the updates.

Thank you, Jason. Questions from board members?

Thank you for the update. Appreciate it. And dealing with this difficult situation with the inflow project, it's not an easy thing. You guys have done a really great job of, I think, getting everyone to the best possible place. So thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, I think you answered all my questions. Just a couple comments that it was interesting that it was such a close vote. And I'm glad to see that the vote, the way it's going, the wishes of those that are most impacted by it. Because if it was this close the other way, I'd say, do we really have to go with a vote? Because those folks really should get an option. I agree. Yeah. And glad to hear that you're prioritizing those that are actually having the issue first. I know this has been a tricky thing and expensive and we'll be looking forward to hearing more about the financing when you come back to us. Thanks.

And I just also wanted to highlight, because I know that I chatted with you early on about this, that one of the options, the most expensive option, was an $8 million fix, multi-year fix, correct? And this is substantially less.

This intertwines to that. The 8 million was kind of overall to get everything done. It was like 8 to 10 million. So just on the low pressure for the 39 effective property owners, we're estimating probably between 1 to 1.5 million for the design and construction of the infrastructure in the right-of-way. and that's probably gonna cost another million to outfit all properties if they all were to participate and again I don't expect a lot of people to participate if they're not experiencing a problem because most people inherently don't want construction on their property if there's no reason to have it. but we're also trying to work that policy so there is a time limit where you can still participate. We don't want to say it's in perpetuity but we don't want to make it too short where someone might have a problem you know a little bit down the road so we're trying to find that nice spot where we can say well this is available for maybe 10, 15, 20 years I don't know but

you know now's your chance to get in and now after that we might not have the financing available to do that so we're trying to work with them and trying to figure it out because not everybody wants to engage in this if they don't have a problem but they might in the future so we want to leave it open. but probably two to 2.5 just for this portion.

And the larger fix will still need to happen but the urgency of sewer backup is removed.

Yeah, even with this, we have to remove the inflow and infiltration, I mean the inflow from the prohibitive connections into the pipe upsizing in the main just to bring down the surcharge level enough that it's not creating more significant health has it when it comes out of the sewer manholes and ends up in foul metal and we can't comfortably say we're mitigating that until we do all of it. But even with that, there still looms a potential for some of these private properties to experience backups. at a much reduced frequency, but that's why we're providing this opportunity because we don't want them to experience anything. So the low pressure option is really something to get them off of the gravity system where they don't have to worry about surcharging events any further.

So it's a very difficult thing to try to solve because with anything, there is no 100%, but we're trying to get as close to 100% as we can with a lot of these options.

Thank you, Jason. Thank you very much.

Have a good night. Thank you Jason.

Okay and I'd like to, looking at our agenda, I'd like to consider taking the final report of the town green working group out of order. We're about 50 minutes behind schedule if there's no opposition to that.

That's fine.

I think that's a good idea. Great. Final report of the Town Green Work Group. Mike Butler.

Good evening everybody. We have a slide deck.

Yeah, I'm going to try and pull that up. One second, sorry.

Is that the summary one, Mike? Yes, the summary, yes.

Okay, thanks Leon. Okay, my name is Mike Butler. I'm chair of the Town Green Working Group and we're very pleased to be here tonight giving a summary of the working group activities for the past three and a half years. as you can see on slide two, which has the cap at the beginning. The town green is very close to completion. I think everybody knows that, which is great. Here's the scope of the presentation tonight, and we'll go through those. fairly quickly in the interest of time. Before I go further into the presentation, I would like to recognize members of the working group, Jessica Porter, who is the Vice Chair, Tara Ikenui, and Micah Flynn. were here tonight. Tom Polito could not make it unless he is zooming in. I don't think he's zooming in. And Mark Perot, who is working late. Slide three.

So I think one of the most important parts of the whole effort actually began with the work that the select board and the town manager did to establish clearly the scope of the working group. And as you can see, the six bullets there summarize the charge that we were given back in June, July 2022. Next slide, Leon. There's been heavy emphasis the last couple of years on communication with residents, and the working group is just an example of that. We paid particular attention to make sure our minutes and recordings were on the website as soon as possible after the meetings. We tracked the social media metrics pretty carefully.

So you can see that we had over 8,000 web page views through October 25 and more than 1,000 subscribers to the Town Green email list that was managed to the Communications Director here in Town Hall. We made substantial, significant outreach to relevant boards and committees, and I'll show that on the next page, as well as 20 periodic updates in the Dedham Times. Next slide. Here are the summary of the meetings that took place for a couple of years. I had to check my numbers twice. I wasn't quite sure. I remembered all of them. I actually don't remember all of them. There were so many of them. The biggest year was 2023. So it took us a few months after the town meeting vote to get up and running and then really were full speed in 2023.

with pretty much monthly meetings, as well as meetings with 13 elected and appointed boards throughout the summer of 2023 to give them an update, give them a chance to weigh in, planning boards, ZBA, Council on Aging, Health Department, Parks and Rec, any number of them that we met to make sure people were aware of the project and had a chance. We felt it would be such a publicly visible project, we wanted to make sure we got as much input as possible. Next page. Working with the town manager and director of procurement, issued a request for qualifications. Fortunately, we had very good candidates bid. And in the end, we selected Halverson, Tye and Bond Studios, which worked out very well. We're fortunate to have them bid. They're a pretty major design firm. Do probably more parks than anybody else in New England. Next slide.

I just wanted to take a minute to remind people of the work that was done prior to the formation of the working group by people who came up with some of the initial designs, which you see across the top row of illustrations on this slide, and then the Halverson the two primary Halverson designs on the bottom part. And in the end we went with the one we recommended to you and the town manager, the one on the bottom left. That was the preferred design and that's the one that went out to bid. Slide eight. So do you remember the many news articles on pretty volatile construction environment cost up and down, really rising rapidly. And that's the environment we went out to bid in. And as the design became more detailed, the cost estimates that were being provided throughout the life of the design continued to increase. So that was a headwind.

In addition, a low-qualified bidder actually came in $400,000 above the cost estimate. And furthermore, the state earmark, which was originally $200,000, was cut in half. and there was an unexpected soil removal cost of about $90,000. So there were quite a few challenges, speed bumps that we had to adjust to, and that's why we conducted two rounds of value engineering to keep the project on the budget. Next slide. And the final Project that went into construction. The final design that went into construction is shown here. The oval circle is highlighted because in the end, that was the final step we took to bring the cost down, and that was about 100 some odd feet of bench that was removed because it's an off the shelf item that can be added in the years ahead. Next slide.

We also were responsible, we were also charged to seek grant funding, so this is a summary of the grants awarded and the grants that we applied for, but for which we received, for which we did not receive awards for. So we were pretty pleased to have received $776,000 in grants. It was interesting too, part of the contract with Halvorsen included the technical assistance of a grant writer. and it's a highly specialized field, grant writing, depending on the type of project you have. So we've got very, very valuable assistance from one of their staff to help us write and it was really amazing when you were digging into the grants the specific language you really had to use to describe the specific phase of the project or the specific design elements that you wanted to include in the hopes of increasing your chances for winning a grant. So that was immensely valuable because it is very time consuming.

Next slide. This is a summary on the sources and uses of funds for the project. You can see total sources. 3,991,000. Most of that, the lion's share from the town meeting appropriation in May 2022. Second, that was the money raised privately by the fundraising group, 573,000. and then the grants after that and the earmark for 3991. And here on the right side is how the money was spent. Construction, 2.6. Demolition, just under 800,000. about 520, traffic study about 50,000. So in the account remaining today is about 35,000. That money will be spent on the town green, at some point, depending on the recommendations of the town manager to the select board.

The town manager will be taking input from a couple of groups, which I'll mention in a minute. Next slide. So we believe we have fulfilled our scope As you know, the ribbon cutting was held last April 30th. I checked the groundbreaking date. The groundbreaking date was May 2024. So construction of what you see out there actually took about 11 months. and so it's great to see and It's great to see the construction fence up today. I noticed a few, I think a few of the pavers had already been removed in preparation for installation at the pavilion, which will take place over the next couple of weeks. The pavilion's already been, The funding for that is already accounted for. The construction of the pavilion doesn't affect the numbers you saw on the previous page. That item is funded, but not yet complete. And the same with the final phase of the traffic study, which was in three phases. Two phases are done.

The final phase of the traffic study will be done by the engineering department later this year. In the years ahead, Town Manager will continue to coordinate with the Dedham Square Circle and the Friends of the Dedham Town Green about programming, maintenance, and improvements. And I did ask, and I appreciate you giving them a few minutes after my remarks to talk a bit about what they've done and what they plan to do. And our recommendations for any remaining funds are shown here. maybe there'll be an opportunity to put in some boulders and stumps for children to play on because there already is a space allocated for that put in some benches along the curved walkway We also would like to take advantage of some of the suggestions that the Dedham Museum and Archives had given us as far as historic panels. So with content that can be changed periodically.

Next slide. So phase two was one of the remaining, I think it was the last item on the scope of work that we were asked to perform. something we covered actually with the Select Board almost two years ago now. Phase two is anything beyond what you see today. And there were three recommendations that the traffic engineers made. That'll be something on your list of projects to consider down the road. That includes just a raised pedestrian crossing between the town green and the museum. Suggestion to convert the diagonal parking to parallel parking along High Street and then to reconfigure the MBTA bus stop near the Verizon building. So those are all things for down the road for your consideration working with the town manager and engineering.

And we did, at our meeting, our final meeting on December 8th, we asked the people in the room, members of the working group, front of the town, Green and the Dedham Square Circle, for comments on the overall process, which is the final two slides here. So I just want to talk about a few of them. I'm not going to read all of them. There were quite a few. As I said at the beginning, carefully composed, thought out, Scope of work for the Town Green Working Group really went a long way to helping us focus on our efforts. We spent a lot of time and it paid off. The initial public engagement was very, very critical for us to understand as we got to the point where we had to cut costs. Actually, as we were designing what we wanted in the design and On the flip side, as we needed to remove things, we knew in what priority, what sequence to remove elements.

There is an ongoing challenge in the municipal world, right? managing projects. And you try to go as fast as you can because we know time is money. But if you go too fast, you kind of lose the audience. And it's the same thing happens if you're going too slow. You're going to lose momentum. So that's always a balancing act. And it really becomes more complex when you add in the timing of votes required at town meeting because it only takes place twice a year. And the communication effort is always is also Let's see, where can I put this? The communication effort. you have to think that carefully too because people really aren't paying attention in the summer, are they? June, July, August, once school gets out, there's almost like a three month gap where it's difficult to communicate to people and then during the holidays, There's like six or seven weeks.

So you really only have, what's that, 12 minus four, 12 minus five, seven or eight months a year to communicate to people what you're trying to do. and the final item on the page, cost estimates were off by 20%. And that was a really significant surprise to all of us. So there is a suggestion that certainly future capital projects pay a lot closer attention to this aspect and might even be worth it in certain circumstances to have multiple cost estimates being made. We were really that was disappointing, to say the least. The next slide. We did have a very collaborative spirit on the working group. A lot of different perspectives.

but eventually with conversation and additional questioning we're able to come together with a really good design that we're very proud of and the town should be proud of because it's a good looking park. Behind the scenes, myself and Jessica met with town staff regularly. So in advance of every public meeting that we had, we would meet with Leon and or Jason and or Joe Flanagan and or Amanda and or Brady and or Rana. Okay, what's coming? What do you need from the committee? What decisions do you need? When do you need it? To make sure that we always had in front of the working group in advance, a week or two in advance, the information they needed to make an informed So that was very, very important. And I think that saved us a lot of time. No misunderstandings. Everybody understood the deadlines we were up against and what was needed.

also and then the guiding principle of the working group was always as much as we could to add capacity, so not slow staff down, but to keep providing information as fast as the staff and the vendor needed it so they could stay on their timeline. So we worked really hard on that. and that's the conclusion of my remarks. So I don't know how you want to handle it, Madam Chair, whether you want to hear from the other folks first, or do you want to ask questions of me first?

My suggestion is that my mic is at the podium. Focus on this first.

Question from board members.

So yeah, I'll start. So first, thanks very much for a no surprise, well thought out presentation. And I'm just going to go back in a little history is when this project first came to the select board after a vetting process about what are we going to do? What are we going to do with the old police station? And the board had had previous experience many years ago when it was the Avery School. We're looking at what are we going to do with the Avery School? Who wants it? How do we deal with it? And that process sort of was successful of how you find reuse and give everybody an opportunity. and this here, this project here, when I remember I called Mike and I said, I said, you know, we're gonna be putting together this working group. I said, what do you think? Do you think you have some time to, to,

to be on this group, and his response was, I'm doing something else right now. And I forget what, it was another town project, I don't know whether it was a sewer mic or whatever it was, he said, I can't do both. I said, that's okay, you can do the town green and find something else. But Mike, as he always does, he said yes. And you know, this was a very complex project from start to finish. It had everything thrown into the bucket that had to be sorted out. But I knew that it needed leadership. It needed somebody who understands communication and a budget. because the budget I think is where we ran into some challenges, but there were no challenges that were too big that they weren't overcome during this process. And when I look at what we have out there now,

and when I drove by during the holiday season and I saw the lights on and I've seen many activities there before but seeing the lights on during the holiday season sort of put the exclamation point on for me. because that's what it's all about. It's about us as a community celebrating something. And what a better way than for people to go by and see the town green lit up and a celebration of the work that was done. Now, I know, of course, as you point out, Mike, it's really, first, the thanks go to our taxpayers who agreed for over $2.5 million. but then we needed the friends. We needed a group that willing to step up and to do something that hadn't been done in our town for a long time. And they exceeded the expectation

of what would be raised from community, from the community, from the business community, from people donating checks. And it's very difficult to, especially, when we're looking at the times to fundraise and ask people for money. But they did it. And it's a really testament to the people's love of our community to want to take the time to raise money, and to help make a project come to fruition. And then as Mike mentioned, the grant writers. Without the grant writers and those that submitted it, we wouldn't have got the additional money. So really it's a, you know, when I was looking at the Mass Municipal Association, their event coming up, you know, next weekend. Now look at innovation in successful projects.

This is one that we should document for a submission the next time about how a community can come together from all sources in order to make something a success. And so thank you, and I'm looking forward to hearing the others I know. the square circle has already had a bunch of stuff there last summer and great things to come. So it's not really a question, it's just a thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Others?

Just want to say thank you guys. Great work. Great job. Appreciate all the hard work. Came out awesome. Something everyone should be proud of. Thank you. Thank you.

All right, thank you, Mike. Thank you. All right, who's up next? We have friends or the square, circle?

Hi, thank you so much for having us in tonight. Anne Miranda, Dedham Square Circle, 207 Fairbanks Road. I also want to thank Mike, Friends of the Town, Green Working Group, you the select board taxpayers and also the sorry I meant to say Town Green Working Group and the Friends of the Town Green for this investment in our community. as was stated, the town green really is a community asset. And I'm sure we all have seen it in many different ways. but from our perspective, we feel like we have, Dedham Square Circle is grateful for the opportunity for the programming that we were able to do this summer and planning for the future. We were

able to put on a total of or plan for 20 concerts from June to October. and these concerts really added to the vibrancy of our community by attracting not only people from Dedham but also from surrounding communities, people driving by, people leaving restaurants and that really equated to many different benefits including tax dollars that are generated from spending at the local restaurants and people coming to Dedham, as well as a community spirit. And for us, when we bring people to Dedham Square and convert them to will be coming into our fold, signing up for our email list. We continually bring them back to our town for our events.

So this location has provided are an immediate source of impact, but also we feel like it will be impactful in the future as well. Next slide, please. So we'll continue to coordinate with town departments. did the National Night Out this year and we hope to continue to build community connection through working with other organizations in town. on our events, on our free events. Next slide, please. As well as our large scale events. So our Trunk or Treat event, we had over 200 people per hour attending walking through the town green for the holiday stroll.

We also had live music and activities on the town green to bring people to to the space, and we'll continue to integrate the town green into our upcoming events. Next slide. And as far as the impact, the economic impact, people coming to our events brought their money and spent their money in the square, which was really important. And the feedback from businesses was that they saw the impact of bringing our events to the square. and whether it be the concerts, which people bought food before, during, and after, or the yoga classes, which I will get to on the next slide, where people either lingered afterwards with coffee or a bagel or they sat in the space and maybe went out to breakfast afterwards.

The programming in the square or in the town green that we're doing we see the benefits rippling out not just in tax dollars but also in the community spirit that we're seeing and the vibrancy that it's lending to our town. It's a building effect so that when people see folks sitting on the town green, they want to be there and they want to use that space. Next slide, please. Other free programming that we did, as I mentioned earlier, were free yoga classes and Pilates classes. These classes were run by Square businesses, so we are, again, trying to keep the square vibrant by helping the square businesses, but also by offering these programs which introduce the square oftentimes to new people.

coming to the square. And as I mentioned, attendees came back to the square afterwards, so we see the benefits compounding. Next slide, please. We received so many different types of positive feedback from people coming to the square and seeing the town green for the first time. it being an introduction so it was a reason for people to come to see the town green as well as just that sense of community and I keep harping on that because there really wasn't a place in the square for people to, as you know, to gather and this space has provided an oasis and a commerce-free way for people to meet as well.

we continually have requests for all types of programming on the on the town green people giving us their ideas and which I'll be bringing to you later on for your permission but I truly want to thank all of the town departments and the town green working group for their hard work in bringing this to fruition. I just mentioned that about 2026.

Great. Thank you so much, Anne.

Thanks.

And Paquita Bass for the Friends of the Town Green Working Group.

Good evening. Thanks for the introduction. I am Paquita Bass. I'm the president of the Friends of the Dedham Town Green. Thank you so much for this opportunity to speak on behalf of our board to share who we are, what we've done so far, and where we're headed. We'd like to extend our sincere thanks to the Town Green Working Group as they conclude their work. We truly stand on the shoulders of green giants. Their dedication transformed Dedham's newest public space from an idea into a reality. Next. A little bit of our background. Our organization grew out of the community-driven fundraising effort that raised $573,000, as I picked up on my slide, As the project moved forward, it became clear to that group that the Green would benefit from a dedicated nonprofit to steward the space long term. That vision became the current iteration of the Friends of the Dedham Town Green.

We're fortunate to have board members who are part of that original fundraising effort, along with others from across Dedham who bring a wide range of skills and perspective. We're so pleased to have Tara Ekinue to join us from the working group to add continuity to our work. And also this evening, we have Mark Epker and Bill Gallagher are with us tonight. Next slide. So over this past about a year and a half, our focus has been launching our organization. We've built out our foundation. We've established some systems. We're developing our website and social media presence. We're engaging residents at community events and setting up initial fundraising. We're grateful for the working group members who've already offered guidance, and we've met with various town boards and leaders to continue our work. Next slide. So did we skip a slide?

Or did I skip a slide? Let me back one. Or a forward one.

Getting a little laggy, I don't know.

Investments?

Yes. That's OK. So looking ahead, we are zoning in on three priorities, investments, stewardship, and creative community experiences. To achieve these goals, we plan to grow our membership base and host fundraising efforts that make the work sustainable. But we're also working together most recently to explore low cost and creative ways to enhance the park and the experience of visitors based on the working group recommendations. So we're looking at the pieces like the benches, like the play area, like at the plantings and maintaining the health and the the vibrancy of the town green as time goes on and as people continue to visit. And this slide features the three areas that we're zoning into.

and now our fabulous holiday stroll image. Our long-term vision is to help complete and continually enhance the town green. It's a space imagined by the people of Dedham and brought to life through partnerships, community support and the tireless work of the working group. We're committed to ensuring that our town green remains a place where a whole community can gather, connect and celebrate for years to come. Thank you for this time to share where we are and where We are hoping to go and sincerely a big congratulations to the Town Green Working Group.

Any questions? Questions? Comments from board members?

I wanted to wait till all three groups spoke just to really say thank you and it's just amazing how many different people have been involved over many years with this back from what would the space even become, to what might it look like, to getting through the process of the design and the RFP, and now to have a group continuing on to make sure it's the best it can be going forward. It is something we can all really be proud of. having worked in Dennis also like you know back from the first you know initial thoughts of what might be there it's amazing to see where we are and back then the main thought that a lot of us always had was just what a key important piece of property this was right in the heart of our downtown and making sure that it was a use that would benefit our whole town. And it's awesome to be here today and see how that's happening. So thanks to everybody who's been part of it.

other comments from board members?

So I also want to thank everyone who's been involved in it. I know that it was a challenge at first, right, that it wasn't just a town-eating vote that gave everything, that it really became a partnership, and I think it actually gave a lot of ownership of the square and the town green to the people, right? Because they had a lot to do with it. I know the taxpayers put in Thank you so much for all of the efforts and the continued efforts that are going to go into making a destination for people to go get their coffee. I was looking at the pictures of the Pilates and everything. Now, are those people who already know how to do it? So I could get out there and... Okay, okay. All right, very good. Thank you.

Thank you and thank you for everyone involved. I mean, this was a massive effort. to bring this from idea to reality and obviously just in the room of committed individuals here at 9.08 p.m. shows the level of commitment the tip of the iceberg of the level of commitment that it took to make this happen. It is such a wonderful and enjoyable space, one that I've used many times, that friends do the yoga, and I'm sure there are so many more activities that will and community building, as you mentioned, that will happen in that park. So thank you so much for everyone who was involved. It's truly a gem of Dedham Square now and forever. So thank you.

Madam Chair, I make a motion to dissolve the Town Green Working Group.

Second.

Hearing a motion and a second, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. All right, your work is complete.

Thank you.

You're free for your next project. So Mike, what are we signing you up for next? All right, thanks so much, everyone. Thanks for staying. All right, now to go back.

the warrant close the warrant for the 2026 spring annual town meeting as is indicated in the town charter the town meeting springtown meeting is held the third Monday of every May This year, that date is May 18th, 2026. I am asking the board to consider a date to close the warrant for that meeting at the end of business on Friday, February 13th, at 1 p.m.

I move to close the warrant. at the close of business, which is 1 p.m. on Friday, February 13, 2026, for the 2026 Spring Annual Town Meeting, which will be held on Monday, May 18, 2026.

Second. Hearing a motion and a second, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed, no. Warren is closed. Next up, status of the Cable Advisory Committee.

We're going to postpone that to the next meeting. and more information we want to gather for the board before we have the discussion.

Okay, excellent. So we have a presentation of the FY26 quarter two budget update.

Do we have the memo, or we can just work off of... We do have a memo.

Okay, the board has it.

If you can put it up, I think, in my opinion, I think you should. Take me one moment. I don't want to. Brady can talk in the meantime.

Of course. Yes. Well, I'm sad I missed the initial budget update at the beginning of the meeting. We were next door doing the Capital Expenditures Committee vote, which is very exciting. I think we're fully underway with our budget season, obviously. Okay. All right. This is, I'm here to update on the town's second quarter budget status. This report, as usual, is a high-level overview of the town's operating budget, expenditures, and revenues. and like usual I added an update on the local meals tax and local rooms tax. So starting with the general fund revenues, overall second quarter revenues are 5% higher than last year. As usual, most of the departmental variances are permits or fees that are variable depending on when people apply for different projects.

One department we are looking at closely is the building department. Leah, we can start at the second page if you're able. So the building department collects a great majority of the permit fees for our local receipt revenue. Goodwin. Building department revenue was relatively very high in fiscal year 2025 due to some large projects that were going on around town. So we're closely monitoring this next year of collections to inform how we should be budgeting for Fiscal 27 and on. That's sort of an important metric for our local receipts. Last quarter we had a little bit of discussion on the Endicott estate revenues. They continue to be slightly low, but the director still thinks we'll have a relatively normal year. She does recognize that the events sector in general is sort of down overall. She's hearing that from peers, but she does expect a relatively normal year.

Okay.

can go down, yep, to expenditures. So on the expenditures side, departmental budgets are 49% expended, right where we should be. Some of these notes are the same as the first quarter. Some departments appear highly expended, like the town manager's office. That contains the town's general liability insurance, which we pay in a lump sum. The legal department includes our settlement payment for CTA. but our normal legal budget is 34% expended. So we are tracking normally there. As always, we're monitoring public safety overtime. Also on the fire department, we're 54% expended. On the police side, we are 40% expended for overtime. And the largest drivers there on the fire side are accrued time off and then injured leave on the police side also accrued time off and then scheduled training hours. So during the Finance and Work Committee hearings last year we outlined

A new way of tracking public safety over time. So we're looking deeply into the drivers of both police fire and also dispatch just to identify What are the largest categories of spending for overtime? And then some departments also we might flag for being a little under-expended, one notably facilities. tracking the same as last year but lower than that 50% threshold. Partially they have a lot of town utility costs and those typically come with a lag. So over the final two quarters of the year we do expect that to normalize. Okay, so lastly, on the last page of the memo, I'll give an update on the local meals tax and the local rooms tax. As you all know, this revenue is reserved in the Robin Reyes Fund to offset debt service for major capital projects.

So our room occupancy tax through the second quarter is down 5%, and the meals tax revenue is up just 1%. So as we talked about all last year, especially the room occupancy taxes were much lower than fiscal year 24. However, it is important to note that the trend over time, fiscal year 2025, those receipts still were the highest year on record other than 2024. So they sort of grew after COVID. They rebounded to 2024. And then as you know, we know we had some volatility in our hotel stock last year. So the revenue went a little bit down and it seems to be somewhat stabilizing at that. New Position. If these revenues continue to decrease, we will have to look at some assumptions in our financial forecast just for the long-range revenue collections. But right now we're still pretty much on track.

We were using very little increase in the forecast just because of that volatility I mentioned. So we'll see what happens with the hotel stock in town. and that way we can forecast for future years. I also note we do have a fund balance in the Robin Reyes Fund so we can smooth impacts over a couple of years if needed. So I will stop there and take any questions you have. Thank you, Brady.

Questions from board members?

Just thanks, Madam Chair. Just one comment on the meals tax. We all know that last week, I should say on the 11th, Uno's closed on Route 1. Blue Ribbon BBQ closed, even though we have a new Mediterranean restaurant going in to a previously occupied restaurant. there's also a leg period where there'll be no room tax, I'm sorry, no meals tax collected. And if we even go back, we have two other parcels that are on Route 1 that were former restaurants that have remained vacant. And even though across the street, you know, a Dave's Chicken opened up. But my concern is that when we're looking at We're talking about development within our community.

We need to help our property owners find people to rent these properties. El Centro we know is going to be coming up. That's changing hands. In talking to the owner a couple of weeks ago when I was in chatting with Nancy, he had said that his sales went, I believe Nancy said, from 100,000 to 55,000. That's a significant drop in a business and it's not sustainable. So I think as we're looking to We're looking at projects and what we should be doing. We need to have our planning department become an economic development and help these property owners try to find people to come in and to utilize it. Because while we still get property taxes on those locations,

we're gonna get abatements because they're not being used, which is gonna then reduce the amount of income that we have. So it's a trend I think that's happening in other parts of the state. It's hidden here in Dedham. I mean, who knows? The rumor was like in a week or two weeks and it's gone. So at some future meeting, Madam Chair, I'd like to see a conversation with either Jeremy or somebody that's doing the economic development for the town because I want to try to get ahead of this because I do believe that this is not the end. We are still going to continue to see businesses drop, especially small businesses. They just can't afford. They can't afford the overhead and everything else that's going on. So I worked that into the meal stack, so thank you.

Thanks, Jim. Other comments, questions?

Madam Chair, so I mean, I was thinking the same thing and raised an eyebrow with the property tax as well, too, because we're going to be losing a hotel. So I'm not quite sure how that's going to remain the same. And then has the other one. Nair Legacy, is that a hotel reopened? I knew they were doing construction. It's in the process. Right, so that's offline too, right? So we are going to definitely be down on that, which is going to affect our revenues and it affects the raise fund. and I think these restaurants. So I agree having them come in, but I'd really like to see what we're doing to outreach and not just what attorneys are bringing us. what the plan is, because I think that this is in a little bit more trouble than maybe is being stated.

Sure, no?

It's just my opinion on this. I think we're just going to see.

Yeah, you see it first out on the streets, and then we see it in the revenue, the following quarters.

Yeah, exactly. That really, really was what kind of hit me on this. So thank you. Thank you as always for all your work on it.

Michelle. I have a comment but first just to echo that I disagree on the need to focus on economic development. It would be great to have somebody in not just talking about development but support for our businesses. I just wanted to let folks know that I had reached out to Brady actually this week with kind of a comment and a question about this because I was noticing how we see expenses are compared, are actuals to the budget, but the revenue we look at, the actuals compared to last year. And just wanting to understand, I understand that, and she has good reasoning for doing that, but I did request that for future updates we also see the revenue side, actual versus budget, even though, you know, what we can control more and what's important is that we're sticking within our expense budget but even if we're doing that it doesn't help us if we're not bringing in the revenues that we had predicted when the budget was built.

just to have a sense of where we might be at with free cash. I think it's important, other part of it, so I think we're going to see that going forward.

Yep, definitely.

Thanks.

Thank you. and there's also a FY27 budget update. Oh, sorry.

Yeah, and I wasn't prepared to take that.

Oh, I didn't miss it. Great. All right. That's exciting.

Are we moving agenda items? Okay. So for FY27, I know that the board is very interested in that and we are neck deep in the FY27 budget development. currently with all the departments and Brady and the finance department are working very closely with our office on that. So this evening the Capital Expenditures Committee had its deliberation and votes on capital items that had been presented over the last couple of Weeks with joint meetings with the finance and work committee. So that will feed into our capital budget. But today we do have all the submissions from our town departments on their operating budgets for FY27. we've met with all but two on on those and we expect to meet with the remaining two in the coming days so far we are projecting a a request for level service and remember level service is

the amount of funding it will take to provide the same level of service next year is not a level fund, which would be likely a diminution of service because things cost more every year. So far from the high level, looking at our department requests, a level service budget will be a 5.1% budget increase. We're working with the departments. We're gonna try and get that down to about 4.5% on the municipal side. The school department, we were hoping that they would come in roughly in the same level because that's what's in our forecast is 4.5%. Their level service budget as presented to the budget sub is 5.29%. their level one which is what they're calling their sustaining budget I believe which would restore some programs that were cut over the past couple of years and I believe that's the one that was recommended out of budget sub and will be discussed at the January 20th

School Committee meeting, which I've been invited to attend and I plan to attend, is an 8.78% increase over last year. And obviously, I think that that's their recommendation and that will go through the entire process. We're seeing debt service increase 5.4% next year. Some of our major cost drivers that lead to our 4.5% increase is a projected health insurance cost increase of 14% to 15%. Again, we will get actuals on that in a month or so. that's just not a sustainable number. It's very difficult for us to be able to continue to absorb that into our operating budget. But again, we're part of a consortium, the Western Ribbon Health Group, that gets us buying power. We're seeing other consortiums and health groups have much higher increases than that even.

and even in the western part of the state, some of them are folding because these costs are just becoming so exorbitant that their members can't sustain it. It's something that we're grappling with. We did partner with Needham this year to look at our participation in the West Suburban Health Group. and the report that came out of that assessment is that we are still benefiting by being part of the West Suburban Health Group as a community, but that there maybe are some opportunities to make some adjustments in the future to bring down those costs to the community and to our employees. looking ahead at revenues. Again, we're largely making projections based on prior years. The governor's budget hasn't even been released yet, but we can pretty accurate predictions at this point.

As Brady indicated in her report earlier, some of our local receipts are trending well and we're seeing, you know, sizable double-digit increases largely driven by motor vehicle excise and building permits. items that we're still waiting on. We will see health insurance solidified in the next month or so. We'll have our general liability insurance sometime in February. and obviously all the state aid and those things will come in. So we're conservatively budgeting those to try to to try to match our revenues with our expenses. As everyone knows, we have to submit a balanced budget to the Finance Warrant Committee and ultimately have it approved by town meeting.

We are using conservative estimates to try to bring that deficit gap down and we'll work with all the departments and keep you all informed as well as the community as we get there. and our process as much as it has been in prior years. We will have a budget presentation to the select board at the February 29th meeting, is that the date? The budget message is February 26th. 26th. And then March 7th will be our all-day budget hearing with the Finance and Warrant Committee. We'll try to have the materials to you a couple weeks in advance of that February 26th meeting so you can see those. Again, happy to take questions, but that's sort of an overview of where we currently stand. It's still a lot of moving pieces, but I again applaud Brady and the team for all the work they've done to date. I think we're in a good position to try to make the best decisions we can in a in this relatively tough environment.

Thank you, Leon. Questions, comments from board members?

If I could, just one clarification. I don't want to get too much into it. I know we've been here a long time. but when you said the health insurance going up 14, 15% and that is attributed when we talk about the five point whatever, 5.3% increase in the town, that that is, that increase is a part of that five point,

No.

Well, my question is going to be, is that are we allocating, so when we talk about the school side of 8-something, We charge them back, the health insurance. What I want to see is the real impact of town expenses, school expenses broken down by by the benefits as well, and including debt service. So, I mean, we don't have to get into it now, but that's when you come back, the next meeting, budget update. I'd just like to see that sort of analysis. That's all. You don't have to answer that.

No problem. Yeah, we can do that. I believe we did it last year. Yes. For the budget messenger right after, but the health insurance is in the shared cost category, so we can allocate it.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Sorry for the confusion. No, no, no, that's... I asked it every year, so.

We saw it coming.

I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. All good. Yeah.

All right. Thanks. Any other? Michelle.

Just a quick comment that I'm glad to see this on the agenda, and it sounds like that's the plan to keep it on the agenda. just trying to continue the increased collaboration that's been happening between the boards on the budget process and Hoping that at a future update when it's not so late at night, we can hear a little bit too about how some of the suggestions or options from the deficit reduction committee, I know a lot of them are longer term, but where there are things that are getting worked in so that that's not sitting on a shelf, but that we're incorporating that into the planning. Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Brady.

Thank you, Brady. Thanks.

All right, so moving along, town manager evaluation. So the select board has the... annual responsibility of evaluating the town manager. Leon also submits his own self-evaluation. All five board members contributed to the evaluation and I will run through a summary of the evaluation results. Overall, Leon demonstrates strong fiscal leadership and professional expertise with clear opportunities identified for continued growth and communication staff development and community engagement. Scoring for the evaluation range from the following categories, excellent slash outstanding, meets expectations and needs improvement.

and Leon's overall score was highly favorable, landing squarely between excellent, outstanding and meets expectations. And there was great similarity of experience among members. and so to share some qualitative feedback from members, I'll start by saying that one member really put it and I echo that statement. Leon is described as pragmatic, open-minded, and reasonable with deep professional expertise, knowledge of Dedham's bylaws, procedures, and policies. He treats people with respect and is responsive to citizens' concerns and understands politics and the challenges of making public policy.

especially in today's world. And I want to make sure that I mention that the Collins Center when they were here conducting their deficit reduction research and studies offered an unsolicited feedback that we have an excellent town manager. And I appreciate their statewide experience to share that with us. Leanne's fiscal leadership during this challenging time has been exceptional. and recognized as such by all board members. One board member noted that I think the greatest challenge facing our community is the financial situation and Leon has done a terrific job of addressing this. And his work with fiscal team, finance work, many consultants to ensure Dedham's continued fiscal health despite significant outside forces is commendable.

Leon has made solid progress towards select board goals, including the town green, which we just closed, open gov implementation, initiating the facilities master plan. We've seen strides. in communication and transparency with OpenGov, budget and warrant book improvements, community survey, social and print media, and community forums. Some things to keep in mind. There's no such thing as too much lead time in getting materials to board members. The workforce study is a great start in continuing to build skills and expectations across the team. can help with the expansive workload of the town manager. And community events like National Night Out and Veterans events are fun and important opportunities for visibility, connection, and engagement across all neighborhoods.

So in summary, Leon is a highly knowledgeable, reasonable, skilled, and dedicated town manager, quote, who has successfully navigated significant financial challenges. Leon brings valuable expertise, dedication, and fiscal acumen to his role, and that's particularly evident in how he navigated this year's financial challenges. He manages complex technical projects effectively in his earned respect both locally and from outside. So thank you so much for your dedication, leadership, in service to the town of Dedham. We're happy to have you here. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the board. I want to just say that this is really a team effort. We have a whole group of wonderful employees and department heads who really make this town a great place to work and to live and to get things done and I also want to thank the board for your continued support. you all are great leaders and you help us get through these tough decisions and discussions and do so in a civil and constructive way and I appreciate that because it makes my job easier. So again, I appreciate your continued support and our partnership and hopefully we will continue to work together for a long time. Thank you so much.

Any comments? before we move into approval of meeting minutes or last agenda item.

I just want to say thank you, Leon, for your hard work and dedication to the town. You did a great job.

Excellent. Thank you. And having no meeting minutes to approve tonight, we do have a need for executive session this evening. Oh, yes. Yes, so I skipped Old or New Business.

How many Old or New Business? I could just briefly give you an update on the Facilities Master Plan Working Group. We interviewed two consultants. And on December 17, at one of our meetings, unanimously voted to select Our Street as the facility's master plan consultant. Following that vote, we looked at the price proposal, and it came in less than the appropriated amount. So the team had identified a couple of items that needed some clarification and they're working on that by either tomorrow or early next week. We'll have the responses to that. and that the contract be executed at that point. So we have a meeting scheduled, I think, in two weeks to begin to set our plan out. I just want to let everybody know that.

Thank you. Anyone else? Old or new business?

Madam Chair, just one thing. I just wanted to take this opportunity to let everyone know that after much careful consideration with my family, that I've decided that I will not be seeking reelection this spring to the select board. And it's hard for me. So I'd like to say more on my last meeting with your blessing, and it's late, so I don't want to say too much. I do just want to say it's hard for me to say goodbye because I do love serving on the board and I've put a lot into this over the years. I did the best I could for every situation that we have faced and I think that together we've accomplished a lot. In the last 12 years, Dedham is a wonderful and diverse community filled with so many great people, and it's been my pleasure to work with so many of you, most of all because I've learned so much from the people in this town. you know, change me, change my perspective in a good way and it's really been an honor to work with so many.

Wherever I go in this world, Dedham will always be my home. I grew up watching the politics of this town and looked up to so many of the women and men who served on this board before me. And it was always one of my dreams to come one day serve on this board. And I've been able to do that for 12 years. So for the many who helped support me to make that dream a reality, I do want to say thank you. because without that support I certainly wouldn't be able to have gotten into or sustained this position. The main reason that I'm moving on from the board is because after 12 years of service I just feel like it's simply time for a change. I think it's time for a change for me. and I think it's time for a change for Dedham. I think that change is important and I think it will be good. I hope to continue to serve Dedham in many ways in the future and look forward to finding some new challenges professionally and personally. So in the coming days, on Tuesday, I will be pulling papers, but this time it won't be for select board. It will be for town meeting.

and I look forward to continue to working with this community in the coming months for years to come and we'll see what happens and thank you so much Madam Chair and thank you to everyone out there. for giving me a little bit of time to make this announcement. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Dennis. Thanks for sharing that with us. I'll save my comments. To the last meeting. To the last meeting. Yeah, I'm sure this was a very challenging decision. It was. It's been wonderful to serve.

It was, but it helped that I was in the Caribbean when I made it.

We look forward to our last several meetings with you and to a full and warranted goodbye from this board when that final meeting comes.

Okay, thank you. My son is messaging me, hey dad, what is your least favorite NFL team?

All right, so we do have a need for executive session this evening. and the Chair declares that an open meeting may have detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigation position of the public body and submit a motion move to enter into executive session pursuant to MGL Chapter 30A, Section 21A, Subsection 3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation. if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares.

So moved.

Second.

Hearing motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed no. Oh, roll call. All right. Michelle? Yes. Dennis?

Yes.

Jim? Yes. Dimitria? Yes.

And the chair votes yes.