Needham Select Board, 1/27/26

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Recording in progress.

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All right then. Welcome to the Select Board meeting for January 27, 2026. And a big thank you to DPW for allowing us to conduct this meeting in Select Board Chambers tonight. This meeting is being broadcast by the Needham Channel and recorded for the Town's YouTube channel and recorded via Zoom. will be available for later viewing. I assume that the Needham observer and the Needham local who are both here are recording as well. If anyone else is recording, please let me know now. So as we usually do, we will start with public comment. If there's anyone in the room who would like to make a public comment, you can come on up now. If there's anyone online who's raising their hand for public comment. Okay. then we will go on along to our first item, which is a joint meeting of the select board and the board of assessors.

So I will invite the board of assessors to come on up. And it looks like Louise, are you joining us as well?

I can.

Gentlemen, do you need to convene a meeting? Yes. They did already, okay.

No, we have not, we will.

Go ahead.

Right now. I'd like to call the meeting of the Needham Board of Assessors to order for January 27, 2026.

OK. All right, done. So you are here because the Board of Assessors has had a resignation and therefore an opening. And we are here to discuss whether and when to appoint or otherwise, a new assessor. So do you want to discuss?

And we notified you that there was a vacancy in December. and my understanding is or I think all of our collective understanding is that we are required that initiates a process whereby we have a vacancy appointment process. Understanding the of the vacancy appointment process and we're now at the end of January. The election is April 14th and we have a candidate who has taken out papers and I think returned papers as well. and is eminently qualified, that we would like to defer, and I have the, I'm looking at the agenda fact sheet, that we'd like to defer and any action on a vacancy appointment at this time or I guess until a time certain. I'm not exactly sure other than the motion that we have that the select board and board of assessors defer filling the current

Vacancy on the Board of Assessors via an appointment process pending confirmation. The candidate is successfully elected at the 2026 annual town election.

sure and we received guidance today by email from town council who suggested that while there is no wiggle room it is shall a point um that there is no and so given that that there is a candidate who has taken out papers on an imminent election that he doesn't see any reason not to defer until that time. So any other thoughts that you want to contribute before we open it up to discussion?

Okay, then do any of my... Yeah, so February through April, how many meetings do you think you'll have?

Well, because we're a committee of three, and there are two of us that are and Willing. We have a meeting Thursday morning. We are fine. How many meetings? I don't know. We could very well have We're going to have four to six meetings because we are about to head into abatement season starting in February. But Mike and I are available and from a scheduling standpoint we are you know we will make it work to do the work that's necessary to get done the work of the assessing department so You can hold on until mid-April? We can hold on until mid-April. We'll try. If you could back off on, say, some snow, that would be much appreciated. I don't do that.

You do that?

Okay.

Just a note on the timing. The deadline for abatements is in early February. Taxpayers are getting, and they tend to Peake later in the period rather than earlier. The taxpayers have 30 days to supplement their information. So a lot of these wouldn't even be ready until about the beginning of March. and then they're also triaged somewhat by the assessor's office so in a number of these cases they require home visits they schedule those so Some work would be done in March, but I think the bulk of it would tend to come more in late March and into April or May.

That's not to say we won't have a meeting in February to go over the applications, to make early determinations, and in some cases, request additional information. But like I said, it's to go through an appointment process, that at this point would likely result in a vacancy appointment sometime in March. After advertising, interviewing, and then bringing forward a candidate, there might be a 30-day time difference. Unless you think we can do it faster.

Well, if the election were contested, it wouldn't seem to make sense to put someone in for a short period.

I think there's some significant onboarding for this position though, right? Once the election is concluded.

There is. This particular candidate who has taken out and returned papers has 44 years experience in the commercial real estate sector. which is something that we don't have and will provide us with a tremendous amount of background and support, experience, knowledge. He even has represented clients to the appellate tax board. So, you know, it really fills a nice.

But there is still some credentialing. So the one thing I would say is that we should be careful The nomination papers are still being taken out. They're not due back until February 24th, so we may have more. other candidates and yeah the other thing is even if we don't people can have write-in campaigns so the fact that one person has taken out papers doesn't really mean that that's the person who necessarily would be in the seat. The other thing you should know is until 33 days before the election, even if someone has returned their papers and they've been certified, they can choose to withdraw. Sure. So those are other unknown possibilities.

In the occasion that we have one or more candidates and when papers close and then the deadline comes when it should they both pull out we could at that point institute our appointment You could do that if at some point in March there were no candidates left for whatever reason.

That's exactly what the language says, running a successful election. So if there's not to be one, then I'm presuming you would invoke that process.

So again, I would be Be careful because you can have write-in campaigns and so I think now we're in the middle of an election and I think we need to be careful to preserve the integrity of the election process itself.

Agreed. Yeah. I think making an appointment, though, with a contested race would probably not be a good. That's what I was suggesting.

Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Yeah.

any other comments? I would just as vice chair and being involved with the appointments I would say it would take at least a month to get somebody in and then you're really left with almost no time and given that we have an election coming up i think an appointment might be seen as i don't know not consistent with that you know wanting a fair election so sure any comments?

Yeah, I think we also are talking about the deployment policy this evening. This could happen again. Maybe we want to consider adding a clause within a certain if there's a vacancy within a certain number of days before a scheduled election. then this by policy will defer an appointment. We can discuss that later.

Potentially. We just don't want to. Yeah. Well, that's a good point. Different discussion. Yeah. Okay. In that case, since it seems like we're all on the same page here, I would welcome a motion.

I move that the Select Board and Board of Assessors defer filling the current vacancy on the Board of Assessors via an appointment process pending confirmation that a candidate is successfully elected at the 2026 annual town election second okay any more discussion all those in favor aye motion passes

should we have our own motion?

Okay that was the second.

We're going to offer the same motion and I'll ask for some offer the motion. So moved. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. When you have a two-person board at the present time, it's sort of a little bit, you don't have as many people too. Workoff.

All right. Well, then I'll just invite you to adjourn your meeting. Did they vote?

Did you vote? Did you vote?

Yes. They did.

Yes. Hustle past.

With a motion duly seconded.

Could I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second? Aye. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Okay, this is what we do. You should watch us sometime. It's a roll call vote for adjournment. Well, if we didn't have a member here. No, it's not.

Okay.

Thanks. We can do more.

No, that's good.

Thanks.

thank you gentlemen thank you thank you thank you okay our our next guest is uh police chief john schlittler here to talk here to talk about local law enforcement's role in immigration. Welcome, Chief.

Good evening.

OK, so we've been looking for a little bit more insight and explanation into the legal framework governing local law enforcement's role in immigration, including the Massachusetts Judicial Court ruling, Commonwealth versus Lund. So if you could sort of talk about that, but also talk about what the Needham Police's relationship is with our residents and how we're going to move forward in this sort of turbulent time.

Sure. The first thing, the role of our police department is to enforce local and state laws, not federal law. That's why they have federal agencies to enforce that. We're not allowed to enforce that. And it's imperative for us that all Needham residents or any victim of a crime or need of help in our community feel comfortable and safe coming to the Needham Police Department for help regardless of their status. as you mentioned the legal framework governing local law enforcement and immigration understanding that framework surrounding local and campus law enforcement's role is essential in ensuring the police departments operate within the boundaries of both state and federal laws.

The Lund decision, which was a Supreme Judicial Court case in 2017, held that Massachusetts law does not provide law enforcement the authority to hold individuals solely based on a federal civil immigration detainer. A nice civil detainer is not a judicial warrant, is an administrative request from a federal agency. And they determined in that case holding an individual beyond their lawful release time solely based on an ICE detainer is considered an unlawful arrest under Massachusetts law. Our officers have been trained in this. We've passed on this information to them. They're aware of the case. It's something that they've been refreshed on yearly through the MPTC, the annual in-service training, and then our in-house training as well.

The key takeaway from this law is if ICE provides only a civil detainer without the warrant, judicial warrant, the municipal and campus law enforcement do not have the legal authority to detain the individual. So generally in circumstances where you would see that is if there's an arrest of somebody who's undocumented and we're waiting for bail to come. to release them or bring them to court. We cannot hold them any longer than necessary to complete the paperwork and bail so that immigration can come and get them. So basically what happens is as long as we do the normal paperwork and they're released and face bail or we take them to court we can't delay that so we can't stall so that you know that to give immigration time to arrive.

and we really technically haven't had that with the exception of a case here or there. And like I said, our sergeants who are on every shift are aware of this standard. under the one decision and what they can do and what they can't do. The federal law is affecting local law enforcement role in immigration. One of the takeaways is local officers cannot obstruct or interfere with ICE operations, any action. that deliberately impede federal officers could expose officers and department to legal liability. While immigration enforcement is primarily a federal responsibility, several federal statutes impact how local and campus law enforcement interact with federal immigration. When can Massachusetts Law Enforcement Act

If ICE presents a judicially issued federal arrest warrant, law enforcement agencies should treat this the same as any other federal arrest warrant from agencies like FBI, DEA, or U.S. Marshals. If an individual is suspected of a federal immigration-related crime, the example of human trafficking under the U.S. Code 1324. So those are some things that we can take action on, but it really comes down to a judicially issued arrest warrant. where the civil detainer is where the federal authorities have the ability to detain on that where we as local law enforcement do not.

Chief, you've spoken before about the need your desire to be present. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

That was common.

Sorry, I thought you... That was a very pregnant pause. I mistook it for the end.

No, no, no. I think since we... started seeing this around 2016. When we initially thought about this, it was It was our thought that we should be there to make sure that we're providing safety and security and the scene is safe for all people present. the thing that we don't What we want to do is show up when it's ongoing and we're getting a 911 call that something's going on and we're not aware of the situation and we show up and it's chaotic. It's dangerous. We want to go to keep the peace. We want to go there to provide resources that we can to people that may be impacted by that.

and that is the philosophy that we've had and also why being present and keeping the peace With the Mass Post Commission and part of that, General Law Chapter 6E has our officers and all officers across the state have a duty to intervene. if they feel that there is an unnecessary or excessive use of force that's being used by any officer. We're held to that standard regardless if it's campus law enforcement or federal authority. We still have a duty to respond to that.

I don't want to jump the gun again.

I think the hard thing that we have is our officers are put in difficult situations every day. and we try and arm them and give them with the information that they're needed to handle these situations with the knowledge of the laws, with our training, the de-escalation, and it's important to have a relationship with our federal law enforcement partners because we do we do have you know in the past worked with them on task force whether it be human trafficking, joint terrorism task force, narcotics task force, secret service. So it's important to keep that, our connection with them and our relationship with them because we want to know if they're in town. It's important to us so that we can be there and to protect the Needham residents.

Thank you. I'm going to open the discussion.

Madam Chair, if I could. Thank you so much for speaking to us about this. And I know this is a difficult issue for everyone, and in particular, local law enforcement. I want to note what we all know, which is that the evidence that ICE and the Border Patrol are violating human and civil rights has been accumulating. In addition to killing two protesters in Minneapolis, Renee Goode and Alex Preti, ICE and Border Patrol have invaded homes without a criminal warrant. According to MSNOW, they have shot into cars at least 14 times since July. According to ProPublica, they have employed banned chokeholds more than 40 times. Needham strives to be a safe and welcoming town. And I'm going to read our select board vision right now.

which says Needham is a safe and welcoming town that people are proud to call home, where neighbors care, respect differences, and contribute to the global community. So we're in a new situation where we have an arm of federal law enforcement that is violating people's rights on a regular basis. and this raises the question because traditionally we have granted an automatic deference and cooperation to federal law enforcement for good reason and there was not a reason to question that. However, now I think we might want to review our policies and practices to see if we desire to make any changes. We obviously have to follow the law, and I really appreciate your summary of that. But we don't want to unnecessarily facilitate any abuses by ICE or the Border Patrol.

So I believe we should review our policies and practices just to see if we still like them as they are under the current circumstances. I will say this is a really complex issue. There are not any easy answers and we're working under many constraints. Again local law enforcement is put in a very tough position here. The Massachusetts AG has put out guidance to communities. And as the chief has told us, according to this guidance, it's illegal to obstruct or impede ICE. At the same time, the AG's guidance makes clear that we are not obligated to help or facilitate. So I'm going to quote from the guidance. It says, Local law enforcement agencies cannot be compelled by the federal government to carry out federal civil immigration enforcement. And this is based on the Lund decision, as the chief has explained to us.

There are some communities who have chosen to go further than one in restricting the interactions their police may have with ICE. Some of those policies might make sense for us. Some of them may not. It's not a simple question. I think that the safety issue that the chief has raised is a very serious one. And as we see dangerous interactions with protesters and observers. That's a new thing that has happened, I think, since a lot of these communities have created these policies and bylaws. but the select board has oversight over the police and I guess I think we should review our policies and practices and I'm interested to know what the rest of the select board thinks and whether we might have consensus to ask the town manager to conduct a review of those policies and practices.

Yeah. Thank you, Kathy. Kevin, anything?

Yeah, two things. One is Overall, I don't want the Needham police, I think, to be paint with a broad brush of thinking that with proximity and with uniforms and whatnot that you work for ICE. and I think it's important to, as you stated, that you do not. I appreciate you want to have a working relationship with them, but I like that you, said you want those victims and those in need to feel they can always go to the police, that you are working for the Needham residents. So I think that's a key takeaway. I didn't know that you were allowed to have an excessive force standard. So if you saw excessive force, would you step in?

We're required to, under the law, currently under the Post Commission, Mass General Law Chapter 6E, I think it's Section 15, which is a duty to intervene.

Okay.

Good.

That's good. I'm imagining that gets ugly very quickly.

It does. And I think that's where we go back to you know having that relationship to know that they're in town the last thing is we want people coming into town without telling us the previous relationships that we've established that if they call and say hey this is what we have to do if we're there We're going to be able to step in if we need to and protect the individuals that are there, both law enforcement and civilians and the residents. It's important. I'm a commander of a narcotics task force. And one of the things we do when we do multi-agency, if we work with Boston, if we work with other towns,

anybody that's going to be involved in that enforcement operation is in the briefing if you're not in the briefing then you don't go because of the the way that we operate the safe words so that everybody sees face to face who is who, the uniforms that you're wearing and so forth and that's kind of some of the rationale behind it because whether you know you could come back and say we don't want you participating well If we get a 911 call that there are people that are armed that are doing this, we're going to be responding. We're not going to know what it is. And we're going to show up and it's going to be a blue on blue situation is what we call it when it's police officer on police officer. We've never seen them before. So that's one of the things I'm trying to avoid, we're trying to avoid as a department to get anybody hurt. The more control that we have over it, I think it's better for everybody involved.

Right. I'd like you to keep that relationship. When you talk to them, do they kind of understand that they're sort of beyond the pale? I mean, like...

I can't speak to other parts of the country. I think that the officers up here work with us. have been working with us for years, federal law enforcement partners. I think most of them understand the standard that we're at. I mean, the federal law is different. in terms of certain procedures that they do, criminal procedures, but in general, It's a smaller state, so we all work together, and there's a general understanding. But the fear is that if there are people from outside, we want to have some idea of what's going on.

And I agree with Kathy. The best time to have a policy written is before something happens. So I mean, do you have a policy? I mean, you've talked to the

So all the officers, obviously the one decision governs what we do. That's the law that we follow. you know i think everybody's on the understanding of how we want to operate if there's something that is going on they will notify the lieutenant myself Okay. And, you know, the office will respond accordingly in conjunction with the law. Okay.

And thank you for navigating this. Yeah. It was hard.

Thank you for being here and answering our questions. I want to thank Ms. Dowd for her comments as well. maybe I need to understand the duty to intervene better as well because in other parts of the country that may not have this same standard, I've heard that local law enforcement is not being allowed to participate. And so I guess I want to make sure that that can't happen here, that local law enforcement can participate.

I don't know the circumstances that are happening in other parts. I haven't heard that. I think that might be a decision that might be higher up than the law enforcement. But my intention, it's our town. We're going to respond. And we're going to do what we can to keep everybody safe. They don't have authority to tell me or the police department that we can't go to a place in our jurisdiction. So we're going to be there to keep the peace and protect our officers and the residents of Needham.

Thank you.

So I think all of this is quite challenging because the policy actually works as long as Ice and CBP engages with the chief ahead of time in accordance with the policy so that the teams are coordinated. My understanding of what's happening in other locations is that those teams are not coordinated. So the local police are hearing about it via a 911 call with an incident that's already in process, in which case you're coming late. Often they're arriving after. Somebody's been murdered in the case of the last two. So I can appreciate that it's very challenging. in terms of timing. I certainly appreciate your working to try to stay coordinated. And I think knowing who's involved in an operation and that the operation is valid

I think that was one of the other things that we learned, at least in Minnesota, is that there was a warrant, or they were seeking an individual who in fact had no criminal basis. for being sought, which I think is also a requirement for our typical participation as I understand it.

For us to make an enforcement, it would have to be a judicial issued warrant for us to be involved in the enforcement. The civil detainer and so forth that we cannot enforce. We cannot detain or hold any longer than reasonably needed to get the process done.

Similarly, if you through some other random action were to arrest an individual or find an individual who had an outstanding criminal warrant for them, My understanding is that under that circumstance you would hold that individual if there's a criminal warrant?

So if there's a warrant for the federal authorities, then it would be whoever issued the federal Warrant, whether it be DEA, FBI, if it was an ICE investigation which resulted in criminal charges.

But if it's a Massachusetts investigation?

than whoever the authority is, wherever it's federal court or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. So if it was Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we would take them over to Dedham District Court. If it was a federal warrant, then the federal authorities would come and take that individual to federal court in Boston.

Okay, I think this is important because there keeps being language like local communities in sanctuary cities are letting criminals go. and I don't believe that that's true, right? If there is somebody who is here who you find who has a criminal, you would treat them like you would anybody who you find who's a criminal and they would go to court in the proper jurisdiction.

Yes, correct. If there's a criminal warrant that's issued.

If there's a criminal warrant. Yes. Right. Okay. All right. So I just think all of it is extremely challenging when there are situations like they're operating under in Minnesota, where you have 600 police and 3,000 and other officers who are on their own mission not coordinated. I hope that if it comes to Massachusetts that we are able to coordinate activities for a legal purpose.

I do as well.

Thanks, Mary Ann.

I guess just looping back to the duty to intervene, that's a state law.

It is.

at the same time where I see a potential conflict is the federal law that says that it is a criminal offense to impede or obstruct ICE or the Border Patrol. so I can imagine a situation where a local police officer whether from Needham or anyone else sees a duty to intervene intervenes on that basis but is nonetheless criminally charged if the federal authorities believe that that is obstruction and impeding. So I think it is a tricky business. I guess I would love to get reaction from my colleagues on my suggestion to review our policies. just to see if we feel the need for any change.

I'm always in favor of reviewing the policy. This is something that is absolutely on the minds of our residents. and they want reassurance and and I think it's important that we all understand that the town of Needham and the police that the Needham police will offer the reassurance that we are able to provide, which is not going to go as far as a lot of folks would like. And that's just the facts. But to review the policy and to understand what it is that we can offer I think is really valuable. I also want to acknowledge that the Needham Police have done a lot of work over the past few years to remind everyone that they are both a friend to this community and members of this community.

And when we talk about the police intervening and protecting us, we have to remember that these people are part of our community. They are Needham. some of them are Needham residents but whether they live here or not they work here and they are part of our community as well and we want to make sure that we don't unnecessarily jeopardize them either, even in the line of this very dangerous career that they have chosen. I think this is a time of constant change. And that means the rules are constantly changing or being disregarded. I think that's what we're seeing across the country now. There is sort of an official lawlessness or changing of the rules sort of all the time. And I can envision that that will make it very difficult. And so I think a review of the policy under those circumstances is a really good idea.

And I guess in a very specific way, not sort of just a general philosophizing kind of comment. One of the things that really concerns me about what we're seeing on the news and in other communities and local communities just like ours are folks showing up in no uniform. are in variable uniforms. And you've made a point of mentioning that you have a good working relationship with the people that we know, the people who work and live in the area and who you work with on a regular basis. And I guess what I'm worried about is that those are not going to be the people that a situation like Minneapolis would bring to this area. Not only do we not know their faces, we don't even have any certainty about what they're wearing to help identify them. And I'm wondering if you can if you have had any thoughts about that yourself, if you find that this sort of anonymity creates its own difficulties.

So from what I'm seeing is most of officers that we see have, whether they have identification from a badge or a vest that has markings on it that identify them. I know that's what we do with our detectives and so forth. I don't know if that's, you know, I can't, specifically speak to what's going on in Minnesota in terms of what they're wearing and how they're being run out there. from everything that I've seen it doesn't mean that's going to be the case because things change so quick that they have vests that they have a tactical jacket a raid jacket or something that has identification on it that identifies them from their agency

you know so in Massachusetts you have to carry an ID with you you know I don't know what the federal laws are but from what I've seen that they have some type of markings some type of you know a tactical vest, a bulletproof vest that has some markings determining what agency they're from.

I'm just thinking, certainly the latest images that I've seen out of Minnesota do suggest that, although it's kind of hard to identify that when somebody's driving by and macing you. from a car, which I've also seen videos of. I do recall when we saw the videos of the Turkish student from Tufts. At that time, those I hesitate to use the word officers, but those folks who took her away were not in any uniforms. So again, we can hope that the people who come here come in a uniform, and certainly we are in a better position if they come in a uniform to identify who we might be working with.

I guess I'd love to know that we are all, but you specifically, are watching the situations that are evolving in other communities and sort of doing a worst case scenario evaluation with you're here on a regular basis because it is changing so fast.

Yes, and I think in a controlled environment, I don't recall the incident you're talking about, but if it's in a controlled environment where they're going to speak to somebody, they and I'm assuming because I don't know the outcome of that, but they would have provided credentials with the FBI. You know what they do, DEA, they would have had credentials with them, said, We're with immigration. Again, I can't speak to that because I don't recall the incident.

So, John, I think I'm on maybe a slightly different place than some of my colleagues. This request to review the policy, it's not clear to me that there is a policy. What you've said to us is that your actions here are guided by guidance you've been given by the state based on Lund. does Lund also include the duty to intervene or is that a separate piece of legislation?

That's separate through the post commission, that statute.

So that also though has some guidance that's been given to you by the state does that guidance get incorporated into a Needham policy or does it just operate as guidance from the state?

The duty to intervene is in use of force. It's in use of force training. We've had Our trainings that we do with defensive tactics, firearms, and so forth, duty to intervene is always brought up. It's only two, three years old. So it's something that we've seen in in-service. So it's refreshed every year at least, not multiple times every year.

So you're doing training and there is in fact a policy that we could look to on that that could be reviewed.

There is. So I can get the policy that we deal with.

Is there a policy related to Lund that can be reviewed, or is there just guidance?

There is not. That's just a judicial case that came out that guides The information we got is a guidance from the Mass. Chiefs of Police. Their legal attorney put that out to offer guidance to our officers, local and state campus law enforcement on this decision and how we are to interact.

So I just wanted to make clear that the number of policies that we have to review may be more limited that we would hope exist. And we may wish to review the guidance that exists as well, but we have to understand that's not something that we can actually change in a policy. And I guess the piece that I'm thinking about is, I appreciate that you've described for us a world that has been our experience in the past, but I'm not sure it will be our experience in the near future. working with ICE and Border Patrol. That's my concern because that's what other communities are finding. and I guess I wish that I were hearing more from you. So I'm wondering if it's happening that local police chiefs are

talking about across with each other what is Massachusetts going to do with the unusual circumstances that are presenting in other communities. because I think the ideal of working together may not be what we have, even though I completely agree that that is the best case and that that is the way to have action that is appropriate. for immigration based on our understanding of what the goals are.

And I think that's, you know, our concern. We're very aware that it could change. We understand that. We have meetings, you know, local chiefs, we have Norfolk County Chiefs, we have the Mass Chiefs that we're constantly looking for guidance and if we're seeing changes then the legal People from the Mass Chiefs will put out guidance based on recent events. So that's always changing.

What are they saying? What are the other chiefs saying about that?

I think for the most part, I think the Chiefs, you know, we've been aware that this, you know, has been going on. I think from, was it 2016 is when it started to come up and obviously we haven't had a lot of it but now things seem to be ramping up so I think people are concerned but they're relying on the information that they're receiving from the Chiefs within Massachusetts and the guidance that we receive from the Mass Chiefs to see if things are changing and what we're going to do. If there is a change in the law, if there is a change in the way that they're responding and so forth. It's something that we deal with as it comes and obviously we can't predict the future. We can't do a case, you know, A what-if type of case.

I think we have to rely on the best guidance that we have from our legal representation that sends us information to say, hey, these are the things that you should be, this is the guidance that we're going to give you at this point to follow the laws that are established in the Commonwealth.

I just want to respond, Mary Ann, to the idea of what policy there may be. I think it's very true that whether it's state law or federal law, we're not going to change that. However, there are degrees of freedom that we have where we could make some changes if we wanted to. So there are cities and towns that have laws and policies that speak to this issue. I think it would be good for us to consider those now. We may reject all of them. We may think some of them are good, but I think that It is possible that we may see a surge in the Boston area. We don't know, right? This is unknowable. But should we see such a surge? Things would change and we would have those unknown officers around.

And I do think we're in a fundamentally different situation than we were a year ago, where we have federal law enforcement that is violating people's rights. in quite serious ways so i just think it would be prudent for us to look at our policies and practices not just policies but also what are we doing consider, is there any change that we wish to make? We might come out saying none, but we might have a few things that we would want to change. But I think now is the time since a surge is possible in the Boston area.

This is such a Miles project.

Josh? I guess I have a question maybe for the Chief. So are there any policies either in place or proposed that would prevent or minimize the likelihood of acts of violence happening in other parts of the country with the involvement of federal authorities from happening in Needham?

There's no policy that's going to determine what's going to happen in the future. There's nothing that's going to say a what-if type scenario. you know we're governed by the laws and the decisions of the court that's how we respond but there's we can't put a policy in place that's going to stop an outside agency from from doing you know following their laws or you know doing things that they want to doesn't mean that we're going to be part of that but You can't have a policy that's going to predict that or address it because it's a what-if type scenario.

Yeah, I don't want the Needham Police to be complicit in any of that at all, but I do want the Needham Police to be able to protect the Needham residents from those acts.

If I could just add as well, I just want to reflect back that when I hear the discussion about policies, I think that I'm hearing it from you all broadly. Because I think the goal is what informs how Needham police officers are trained, how they know what to do in certain circumstances. So I think it's court decisions, it's post-certification and guidance and state law. It may be department policies, all of those things. So I just, I don't want somebody here that if we don't have a particular policy in place, the rest of that structure isn't there. And I think part of what you're suggesting we do is compile all of that, synthesize it, make it much more accessible for people to understand where the training is, what's driving that guidance to officers because it's there even if it's not like one particular policy that we can point to.

I think people are looking for this right now they're looking for whatever reassurance they can have and if we have reassurance we can offer even if it's limited because I agree with you I don't think we can There's no policy that's going to handle someone doing something that they're not supposed to do. That's basically what crime is. But if we can make it accessible, that is something that They can hang on to, or at least understand what boundaries exist. Making sure that the landscape is visible would be helpful, I think, as at least one step that we can take. So I would be in favor of a policy review, and we'll see where that goes, what it results in, but I would be fine with that. Do we have consensus on that?

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, it's good to know where the markers are. Put down some markers.

I think that's the point.

We're not predicting the future. It's actually very good to hear from you today that there's use of force restrictions. Didn't know that.

Thank you. It's a hard time for everyone, at least in particular.

It is. And I think we've, in the past several years, have done a lot to reach out to our community. And that's something that we want to protect and that we cherish. We want to make sure that we're representing all of our residents in Needham.

And as I said before, I think we all want to make sure that we don't take that for granted and put you in a situation that's dangerous for you, but we appreciate the willingness of the force to do that job.

Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. John, and I'm again going to say that your social media account is killing it.

Yep. Yep. I can say it's all right. He's doing all right. I don't want him to get a big head, but... Dr. Gutekantz wasn't happy.

All right. So we're going to move along now to an Envision Needham Center project update. We're going to welcome Margit Spiller and Tim Bulger and Karis Lustig. Margit is from Apex, our consultant. Karras is our DPW Director and Tim is the Envision Needham Center Working Group Chair.

They might want to introduce other members of the group who were just here.

I want to make a note. Before we start, there was a revision to the packet late that had some changes to this presentation. I was informed that for the most part that there were typos and a couple of minor edits but there was no substantive change and I also want to invite you to recognize other members of the committee, if you'd like, who are in the room, but not at the table.

Sure, I will. Diane Nanny is here from Michelson Shoes. Artie Crocker is here from the Planning Board. There was a list of people online. I think Liz Hay was online from Bar 3. And I mean, Baker was there from Provider Gifts. Lisa Elcock was there, was online. and that was all I saw. And Karis Lustig as well.

Karis, let me just say how impressed I am that you were upright. Thank you, thank you. After leading this snow removal and first responding effort. So thank you for that. where's yours?

I'll start with a quick and then we'll just lead into the presentation so back in the spring the project was recharged to look at three different possible alternatives for our downtown for concept plans to help get feedback and provide, I think, a little bit more direction and context about the different paths we can move forward with our downtown. We have had approximately 20 years of work that we have put into trying to redevelop and upgrade the infrastructure within that corridor. This would be one of several phases that would need to be done in order to upgrade all of the infrastructure. and what you have today is a presentation on those three different alternatives before we go to a public outreach process that will begin next week.

with an information session and a survey trying to gain some more information as well as get some preferences on which direction people would like us to go on those three concept alternatives.

Kevin is on the committee.

So just to be clear for everyone, this is an update to the select board prior to your last public session. This is not the handover to the select board. There will be reconciliation of public comment and more stuff. to be added to the whole experience before it is officially turned over.

And this is where we're at now. There'll be an information session next week for the public to have their chance to ask questions so that we understand what things they aren't understanding. to see if there's anything else we need to put back into the information for everyone else. So it's just an update for you on where we stand today.

Thank you. Great. All right. The intent, obviously this is a very complex project. I'm pointing it in the right spot. The intent of this presentation is to keep it high level, but happy to get into details about anything as needed.

Could you start with just the goals of the project?

Yeah, so they're kind of documented as existing conditions, framed in a way that these are existing conditions that we would like to

I think one of the challenges, this is a little bit an upside down process in that the goals are being defined by public comment as opposed to providing goals to structure the design. So the goals of this particular process are to, and I think we'll be talking about existing conditions as far as what are the needs that we're addressing that are imminent. and then the bigger question is what do you want your town center to look like so we know we need to upgrade the infrastructure in this area you know when you start upgrading infrastructure you are now pretty much re-establishing where that infrastructure is for the next 50 years. And there was a lot of focus on what, you know, what do we want the future of the town to look like? And so the goals really...

We have goals about, I'll call them all three concepts that are being offered to you meet the goals of providing safe transit or safer transit than existing for every person who goes through the downtown. they provide, generally speaking, and she'll go into more detail, but that would be the overarching. All three projects representing meet the criteria that is set up in the project. But each one of them has a different trade-off or value that then you can decide which one you want to do. So each concept actually has sort of its own set of sub-goals. that I think will help us define better when we get into the next phase what people want. So some of them have safety for pedestrians as paramount. Some of them have transit-related goals is paramount. There's not one that you can't design one that meets everything. So the there's some fixed goals that will start off with the beginning.

And then when we go through each design alternative, there are trade offs that will be established that we're trying to get public input on defining those goals.

So the input is on how to achieve the goal of, I heard safe transit, that sounds like the main goal, right? And then how you achieve it can vary.

yeah so i think the main goal is actually rebuilding the infrastructure um and then we want to put it back better than we have and i think there were some pretty universal concepts that we talked about when it came to this corridor. And I believe, generally speaking, maximizing safety was one of them. and so there's multiple ways of achieving that and I would say that all three alternatives that are being presented achieve those minimal goals that we are discussing.

Thank you.

OK, so the presentation today will just briefly provide a project overview, project limits, Keeke, existing conditions or needs in the corridor that we're looking to improve, and then just the design process that we've taken to date and would like to move forward with. will briefly provide an overview of the three latest conceptual design alternatives, which are a four lane alternative, a two lane alternative with minimal turn lanes, and then a two lane alternative that has more turn lanes within the core of the downtown. Next are, which is the bulk of the presentation, evaluation tools. So as Karis mentioned, all of these alternatives have trade-offs. So what alternative someone would prefer to move forward with,

depends on what evaluation tools or metrics they prioritize themselves. we are simply providing from a best practices perspective how do the three alternatives kind of stack up for different metrics and then we'll briefly talk about next steps and then open it up to any questions you have So project limits, this phase of the project is looking at Great Plain Avenue from slightly west of Linden Street to Warren Street. In terms of existing conditions, one of the main impetuses of this project was the undersized subsurface drainage infrastructure along Great Plain Avenue.

During the 2023 flooding event, there were several businesses within the project limits. The upper right pictures of the YMCA parking lot, which is within the project limits, that had considerable flooding. it's expected that moving forward rainfall events will continue to be higher intensity and that these flooding events will continue to exacerbate over time so Yeah, go ahead.

This Y where this happened wasn't in the physical project limits, but I think part of the discussion was that water goes from there through the center of town and somewhere else. Thanks.

Thank you for watching.

Can I ask a question? At one point, I remember Karis mentioned that if you upgrade drainage infrastructure in the center of town, it can create bottlenecks later downstream. Do you know where those bottlenecks would be?

yes and what i will say in this particular case and part of the philosophy has changed about how to manage stormwater right so before it was build big pipe big pipe conveys to Stream or Pond. I think part of what we've discussed, and again, we're on the topical levels, but when we get down to designing, is using more creative solutions to create infrastructure storage systems that don't necessarily rely on conveyance, right? So how do you store the water somewhere within the right of way underground so that all the systems that are around it can catch up and then that water either leaches into the groundwater or then goes into the rest of the drainage system. So you can do design features and it depends on how creative we want to get on some of the landscaping and some of the other amenities. There are a lot of different drainage design features that don't necessarily require conveying the water to another part of town.

many of these surface level features because the types of events that cause the most flooding are very high intensity and very short duration they basically allow the water to enter the closed system more slowly so it gives an opportunity to just keep the flooding in an area that you intend it to be and not in a parking lot or a business.

may not be related to the size of the pipes.

It might not just be upgrading the pipe size. It's going to be a much more complex ecosystem and how you would develop that right-of-way. And I would say that's been a change in the entire... Industry in the past decade because you just can't build pipes big enough to manage these systems. You'll create a backlog. If you don't create it in our system, you'll create it in the Charles.

and I will just note like I think any scenario we would still want to upgrade the pipe sizing. It's just that's not the only, you know, done in combination with the service level treatments is more effective. The next existing condition, the existing sidewalks within the downtown could certainly use an upgrade in terms of their width. while they do meet minimum with requirements from an accessibility standpoint you can see for accommodating two-way traffic, especially if there are multiple people walking in one direction. It can feel narrow, especially when you're looking to accommodate trees, parking meters, benches. and other amenities behind the curb line. There are also instances within the project limits. There's just one example shown here where the curb ramps do not meet accessibility standards.

So to Karis's point, this is one of the core goals of the project that any alternative would include is meeting, bringing existing infrastructure up to Accessibility Guidelines.

I just want to add to that. Our current design that we have in the newer component of the downtown and existing relied on what are called apex ramps, so ramps on the corners. I just realized the irony of the name. But they're on the corners, not unidirectional. And so they force somebody who needs those ramps in order to enter the intersection to go a longer route as opposed to the most direct route. So they're compliant, but they're not the most successful. And then we also have issues with the not necessarily the width, but the slope of the sidewalks. And so we have a challenge and that the right of way goes to the building fronts, just so everyone knows how So we're actually using the building fronts as sort of the beginning of where the sidewalk has to be. And then you have to make your slope and then you have your road that gets designed. and if you don't do it correctly you could end up with like an eight foot granite curb which you don't want. So it's a very tricky narrow corridor just in general to design.

So it presents its own challenges inherently.

Can I ask you a question? So given the storm, if you expand the sidewalks, does that mean that businesses are now responsible for plowing that expanded sidewalk?

No, so all they're responsible right now is for five feet clearance, and that would maintain. I think there are In every scenario, right, there's going to be pros and cons. A wider sidewalk is easier to do sidewalk removal from the town's perspective than what we currently have. One of the issues, if you see there, I can't get a piece of equipment that is what we use for sidewalk removal down that road. so we don't offer it. And I'm not saying we 100% would if we constructed a wider sidewalk, but we are limited in our ability to offer it right now because we simply can't fit the equipment there. So if you had a wider sidewalk, either I or a contractor working for the businesses or multiple businesses can put larger equipment down there that would clear it more effectively. The second thing is right now we have very limited space to store snow because Everything is being used for transit. In fact, you'll see all the parking stalls are currently occupied with snow because it's the only place we have to put snow.

We'll be doing a hauling tomorrow night and then subsequent nights to free them. A wider sidewalk could potentially give us a little more space to stack snow without impeding traffic, parking, or pedestrian space.

So it's either easier to clear or easier to pile on. Yes.

OK. Anecdotally, my office is on Highland Ave, and I'm responsible for clearing the snow there. Now that office has a 10-foot sidewalk than what existed before. And when it was four feet wide, all the snow on Highland Ave was piled on the forefoot. Sidewalk, and I had a snowblower that I had to get down it to clear it. Now that there's a new 10-foot one there, it's much easier to kind of push the snow to each side and get through it, and it's much cleaner and it's much better done.

I would also say the stacking of amenities is also very important. And if you see in our current layout, all the amenities are on the furthest component of the sidewalk. So they're right along the parking stall. So for us to take in large equipment and remove that tomorrow, It's going to be very challenging if you either move those amenities a little bit closer. Right now you can't because you can't meet ADA, but if you have more space to pull the amenities away from where people park, it gives you a much easier and faster ability to remove snow as well.

Very many of these you mean like parklets?

Like trees, parking meters, pedestrian scale lighting.

And then just last bullet was just recognizing that given the existing sidewalk with any business uses within the public right of way or limited to directly abutting the door. So a wider sidewalk would, I don't know, that's part of physical limitation and part of policy limitation, but a wider sidewalk would allow for more of those uses. All right. Next existing condition is motor safety. So within the last years that we have official data from MassDOT, which is up to 2022, there were 113 crashes within the project limits. Interestingly, 35% of those crashes were sideswipes between two vehicles in the same direction, which I think is inherently due to the confusing travel lane layout, especially between the railroad tracks to Highland Ave.

So we've heard a lot of feedback about um you know a driver wanting to go straight getting stuck behind a vehicle that's making a left and trying to get into the other lane so those are the types of conditions that contribute to those crash types and of those crashes about 11% resulted in an injury.

And the remaining 65% of crashes are

could be turning vehicles, vehicles in opposite directions between a vehicle and a non-motorist. etc. Just a single vehicle.

There's a big concentration on the heat map at intersections. Exactly, yes. But this project doesn't focus on that? It focuses on the sides.

It focuses certainly on the intersections, but the sideflips are something that um the alternatives that remove that second through traveling would avoid. All the alternatives propose a reduction in the intersection limits, so the crossing length at non-signalized intersections, reducing the curb radii for turning vehicles. So best practices to make intersection movements as slow and safe as possible.

I think all of them also will address some of the width in the intersections of Pickering and Linden. right now it's often not super clear where people are supposed to merge and unmerge and it will help provide clarity there and so it also will hopefully make it feel like you're entering more of a business people area. So people will be more aware and drive slower. So all of them have features that we're hoping that are designed to make sure that motorists, well, everybody really behaves safer within that corridor.

Side swipe accidents can happen at intersections as well. Yeah.

To Carissa's point, all of the three alternatives at the either end of the project limits are all identical because in the existing condition there is only one traveling in each direction. and you can see between the existing curb line and the proposed curb line, there is so much excess pavement that's not necessarily being used for any good and reallocating it would provide only a benefit. OK, so then non-motorist safety. As we all know, there was one pedestrian fatality within the project limits back in 2007. But we're really looking at what risk factors does existing infrastructure have that even if it hasn't resulted in an accident to date it contributes to the potential for a future accident.

So one of those is the average crossing distance for non-motorists, specifically at unsignalized crossings. because the signals in the intersection do have an exclusive pedestrian phase that's a safer condition but you can see you know here crossing Great Plain Avenue. The average distance for unsignalized crossings is 57 feet, which is certainly could be it's just a long crossing. So there are opportunities to reduce those crossings in every alternative. Can I ask a question?

Is it long for the amount of time it takes to cross? It's the amount of time that a pedestrian is in an exposed and vulnerable position. So you want to limit that as much as possible so they have less time where they're in a place where a vehicle could hit them.

But like at the signalized intersections, if you extended the exclusive crossing time, would that limit

Everything has a variable, so it would impact traffic significantly if we increase that time. When it comes to the signalized intersections, the disruption in the flow of traffic is one component. And then it also assumes people are fully engaged in paying attention. So being exposed even in a signalized intersection has risk.

that was exactly the project with a family member who had that occurred.

I would imagine that different types of crossers also take different lengths of time. Someone crushes, for example, or with a stroller.

And then another existing safety issue that all of the alternatives address is the visibility of crossing pedestrians. A lot of conditions within the project limits now that a pedestrian waiting on the sidewalk is blocked by a parked vehicle, so they have to inch out into the roadway to be seen by a motorist for them to stop. And then finally, because there are no dedicated bike facilities within the project limits, those that do choose to use bikes through the project limits have either used the roadway or used their bicycle on the sidewalk, depending on their level of comfort and preference. So that just you know, leads to conflicts either between pedestrians or those on bikes or those on bikes and vehicles.

And then, you know, talked about this before but because Great Plain Avenue as a corridor through the town is typically one travel lane in each direction and then widens to two travel lanes in each direction within these project limits. That's why some of the alternatives that are being considered look at what would the implications be of having that consistent cross-section of one through lane in each direction along the entirety of the corridor. Okay. In terms of the design process, as recommended by the board in last year. We've broken up the conceptual design phase into two phases.

So the first phase is looking at what is the preferred traveling configuration and thus where would the proposed curb line be? And then once that preferred alternative is selected, then with the space that's now available between the proposed curb line and the existing back of walk or the face of building how does the community want to allocate that space, whether it's streetscape amenities, dedicated bike facilities, sidewalks, parklets, etc. So the alternatives that we're presenting today are for phase one. So you can see everything between the curb line and the face of building is purposely bare to give that Blank Slate for Phase 2.

And then depending on what conceptual alternative is chosen to move forward with, I know the FHWA grant was given back, but the town could choose to do a pilot demonstration as an optional step in the process.

Anything before I get into... Do you have any other questions before we look at the actual cross-sections?

We've only budgeted for Phase 1, right? Have we budgeted for anything else?

So the town for the... at least the last 10 years has been reserving Chapter 90 resources for this corridor. There are sufficient resources in that allocation to accommodate through design and probably a decent percentage of construction, not all of it. But we wouldn't move forward with that without talking to the town manager and potentially going to town meeting.

Maybe I'm getting ahead of things, but I'll ask at the end.

Just looking at the alternatives for the corridor, we broke it up into four sections. For sections A and sections D on either end of the project limits, there is one proposed alternative, and then sections B and C are where the three alternatives diverge. you'll see that in the subsequent slides. So for Section A, which is the westernmost part of the project, this is an instance where you can see the existing conditions, even though It's one travel lane in each direction. The pavement is wide and might lend to some confusion for drivers of, is this two lanes or one lane? So just looking at key existing features, the existing sidewalk width varies from about 5 to 12 feet.

and the average crossing distance at these unsignalized crossings is about 50 feet across Great Plain Avenue. The proposed configuration, you can see, holds a consistent travel bandwidth of, I believe, 11 feet throughout this stretch. and then has defined on street parking spaces that are the distance between where a car can park and the closest intersection is enforced through the construction of bump outs, which not only it has multiple benefits. So it reduces the crossing distance pretty significantly. So the average crossing distance in the proposed condition is about 30 feet versus 50. It improves pedestrian visibility considerably by getting them ahead of those parked cars.

And then it also reduces the... it encourages slower turning speeds for vehicles that are maneuvering through that intersection

Can I ask a question while we're on this slide? So the difference in the parking spaces is due to the bump outs?

Yeah, so there's actually, we found in the existing condition, Needham has set guidelines for how close a parking spot can be from an intersection, and the existing condition doesn't adhere to that. So the proposed condition would be aligning with policies.

And then also on the bump outs, snow is on all of our minds. Does it affect plowing at all to have these bump outs?

We have added some bump outs. They're not as, because we did an apex intersection at the current core downtown. We go through and we actually remove all the snow in the downtown on those intersections. As part of our current hand plan, we have four staff who work for 48 hours straight shoveling and using small equipment to remove the snow. So in one way, it does give us a little bit more space to lose the snow because you have Right now it's sort of an exposed area that doesn't have anything on either side. Now you have some space that you can actually pile snow, which right now we can't. But it wouldn't change substantially our approach to how we would manage the snow.

Can I ask a specific question about the intersection at Maple and Great Plain? So this is just an example of, I think, what a dangerous intersection we have. So there are cars that come down Maple towards Great Plain and want to take either a left or a right, in both ways, in the current condition, it's very difficult to see oncoming traffic. In this proposed condition, Does it make it easier? Because I'm seeing if there are parked cars, it seems like cars have to come forward even more.

they realistically probably will inch in front of the crosswalk, but it will be easier because there is you can see in the existing condition the eastbound traffic is ambiguously, maybe one, maybe two lanes, whereas in the proposed condition, there will certainly only be one car coming from the west. So I think in terms of number of cars to keep track of to find that gap, it will be simpler.

So it seems like there would be a line of sight from the stop line behind the parked car to the west across the sidewalk.

you have a better sight line in each way that you're coming at it. So if you're approaching from Maple Street, you can see further if there isn't a car parked closer to it. The further they get away, the more you can see down Great Plain Avenue and see who's coming.

might actually encourage people to stop the stop line instead of in the middle of the crosswalk.

There's some room built in with the bump outs as well to kind of proceed into the intersection without actually entering the lane. So there's that component as well.

There are also a couple instances here of those apex curb ramps that Karis mentioned. So you can see at Glen Doon as well as Linden, those would be change to a unidirectional?

Colleagues, I'm going to ask us to hold all but the most important questions. This is a very long presentation. Yeah, I'll try to be as quick as possible. Well, I mean, yes, thank you, but also I know we're all anxious to hear every detail, but we've got to get the whole picture. And we've got to keep on keeping on.

OK. So moving on to section B. OK, so this section is where the three alternatives begin to diverge. So these slides are presented as the four lane alternative, then the two lane with turn lanes, and then the two lane with minimal turn lanes. Here, from that previous Section A, the four lane alternative expands to a condition similar to the existing condition. you can see we're still incorporating bump outs to the extent possible at the railroad tracks all of these alternatives mimic the design requirements of the quiet zone. So you can see there is a wider sidewalk at the crossing there to accommodate that infrastructure.

The big difference between one of the big differences between this alternative and the others is the project limits stop on either side of the town common. and retain the infrastructure that was rebuilt a few years ago. Let's see, I'm just looking at, The key takeaway is make sure I got everything. So in terms of changes from existing conditions, while this alternative would bring the sidewalk up to ADA compliance. The sidewalk width does remain similar to the existing condition at about nine feet. And the crossing distances remain similar, especially at Chapel Chestnut because we're not changing them. The next is the two lane with turn lanes or hybrid alternative. You can see this alternative maintains that two lane cross section.

up to the railroad tracks, and then we establish a pocket turn lane at the intersection to accommodate left turns onto Chapel Street. Here we're able to increase the sidewalk width from 9 to about 16 feet, and the crossing distances at the Chapel Chestnut intersection go from about 65 to 40 feet. In addition to the turn lane onto Chapel Street, there's also in all of the alternatives a turn lane from Chestnut onto Great Plain Avenue, given that the fire station is down the road. This alternative does not include a turn lane from Chapel onto Great Plain Avenue. It would still allow any turning movements to occur, but it would all occur from that one traveling.

One of the benefits of removing the turn lane from Chapel Street is it allows a new row of parking spaces along Chapel. That's out of the limits of this view, but does increase the number of Parking Spaces. I think it's on the parking tally for the next section, but just something to note. Last alternative for Section B is the two-lane alternative, very similar to the one previously shown, but the only turn lane that is included in the proposed conditions is Chestnut Street onto Great Plain Avenue.

So you can see not including the pocket turn lane onto Chapel Street allows for a wider average sidewalk width, as well as shorter crossing distances at that intersection. Okay. Moving on to section C, this is the four lane alternative. So I mentioned in front of the town common, the existing infrastructure would remain, but looking at the Dedham intersection to the east, One thing, one design feature that is currently included in all the alternatives is the elimination of the slip lane or the um right turn lane from Dedham on to Great Plain Avenue because that right turn lane is outside of the signalized intersection it does

eliminating it and making those right turns have to go as part of the signal system does improve pedestrian safety at that intersection. Right turns would still be accommodated. And we did perform a trial with the Needham fire truck to make sure that emergency vehicles and fire trucks could still make that turning maneuver. This is also one of the main opportunities for a new public space in the four lane alternative because the sidewalks aren't consistently wider elsewhere in the corridor. This could be kind of a community focal point. last thing i wanted to note for the four lane alternative in this area is it does you can see in the existing condition east of Dedham there's still two travel lanes but one of the travel lanes is taken up by the, is it a parklet?

Yeah, so it's not really used. And then just a block east of Dedham, those two travel lanes merge into one travel lane. I just want to make a comment.

When we did the phase one of the project, that was always intended to be one lane. I think in every plan I found back to 2002, it indicated one lane. So right now all it does is simply in a very small section open up to two lanes and then back to one lane. It's not doing any storage as far as moving traffic more efficiently through the downtown.

So that allows the crossing at Pickering to be significantly shorter. It also, there's no merge in the project limits, because you can see to the west of Dedham, there's only one through lane coming past the intersection. Looking at the Tulane with Turn Lane alternative, you can see in front of the Town Common, the cross section is changed to one through lane in each direction, but then pocket turn lanes to accommodate turning vehicles onto Highland or Chestnut. So then at Dedham Avenue, there are two turn lanes approaching that intersection. One would be a dedicated left turn lane because that's a very heavy movement through the corridor.

And then the other one would be that through right. all of the alternatives have extensive bump outs at Pickering, which reduces those crossing distances significantly. And then last one, the two-lane alternative, again, very similar to the previous one, but not including the turn lanes. just pushes the envelope in terms of the reallocated space that could be utilized for other uses. So you can see immediately to the west of Denham Avenue, that's a significant Increase in sidewalk space, it could be a surface level stormwater BMP, benches, etc.

This also for the two lane alternative has the most increase in parking for this section. It goes from 34 spaces to 48. for this section. That's mainly due to increases in the number of parking spaces on Chapel. But then you can also see there's a new parking lane on Dedham because that one travel lane is then reallocated to parking. And then lastly on Section D, from Pickering to the eastern end of the project limits, Warren, this is another area where the existing conditions, the Pavement is much wider than it needs to be. So by establishing that consistent travel lane width, we're able to increase the sidewalk width considerably with no change in traffic operations.

and the Pickering intersection in particular, you can accommodate a large bump out, which will improve pedestrian safety, visibility and encourage slower turns.

I don't know if these will work. We put together animations to help show the general public what it would look like and how each section would morph from one to another to show the tightening of the turns, the changes in the traffic pattern. they will be presented at the information session and we'll have them posted online for the duration so residents can and you all can view them at your leisure yeah and they're already on the project story map site so you can look at them there

So there's one showing the change in a typical cross-section and then one showing that slip lane area, Denim Ave, pulling out and creating that new space. Okay. Next, going to go over some of the key metrics we looked at for each of the alternatives. Again, none of these alternatives are the best or the most advantageous for all of these metrics. So it's just making that trade-off in terms of which alternative best suits the metrics that are most important. from a personal perspective. So looking at each of these metrics, I have a slide that's kind of best practices in terms of how we evaluated each alternative and then

a second slide in terms of how each of the alternatives were rated or considered. From a safety perspective, we talked about a lot of these, but the degree to which speed management features are incorporated. A collision is more likely to result in an injury or fatality if a driver is going faster, so making sure that drivers through the corridor are going at safe speeds. was an inherent safety attribute. also reducing the number of conflict points. So this is particularly at intersections has the intersections have the most like highest likelihood of two cars colliding.

So if you reduce the number of opportunities that they can conflict with each other, you're reducing the impact that conflict will occur. Shorter crossing distances reduce the amount of time that a pedestrian is vulnerable. You can see the graphic on the right. If a pedestrian is crossing at an unsignalized location with four travel lanes, they have more cars that they have to keep track of and make sure don't hit them versus if it's just two lanes. So just looking, as Karis mentioned, we're only proposing alternatives that are safer than existing conditions. So all of the alternatives have a safety benefit. Because the two lane with turn lanes and two lane

Alternatives do further some of those metrics I provide in the other slides. They do incorporate more safety interventions than the four lane.

And I would just say we're going to be providing the and Vision Needham Center Working Group went through all of these items, talked about all the different comparisons, the language we were using, So this is what that information is from. That'll be like a one pager that people can look at so they can kind of digest the information in one place.

Okay. Next metric was mobility and access for non-motorists. So there's a term level of traffic stress for those that are either walking or biking. So for those that are walking. The amount of stress they have is dependent on the width of the facility and how close they are to moving vehicles. for those that are on bicycles. You can see it ranges from sharing the road with a vehicle versus having an off-road dedicated facility. The other metric we considered, there are two different accessibility standards. One is Americans with Disabilities Act, which is the Minimum legally required guidance. But there's also PROAG, which is Public Rights of Way Accessibility Guidelines, which will likely be law in the near future. And it's kind of best practices.

So there are some features that are recommended by PROAG like you can see what an accessible on-street parking space looks like that would take up more space than the ADA requirements.

Is that like a van with a ramp? Is that vans or ramps? Exactly. Vans with ramps.

So all of the alternatives will achieve minimum ADA compliance, given that the two lane with turn lane and two lane alternatives have more room to work with. Some of those Accessibility recommendations that take up more space could be more easily accommodated. while none of the alternatives currently show bike lanes because that's part of would be considered in phase two we did want to note that the four lane alternative would exclude the potential for bike lanes whereas other two would allow it to be considered. Next is traffic flow. So we recently went through a more nuanced traffic analysis that considered

that an alternative that reduced the roadway capacity through the project limits would result in some of the longer regional through trips that are going through the project limits to choose alternative routes, which we're terming diverted traffic. We noticed early on that many of the trips, vehicle trips going through the corridor are Very long. So you can see we looked at the school dismissal peak period and a third of the trips are longer than 16 miles. So when we were looking at the traffic operations and proposed signal operations, we looked at what movements through the project limits are those longer trips coming from and how can we prioritize local trips over those longer trips.

So specifically, Dedham Avenue onto Great Plain Avenue and vice versa, Great Plain onto Dedham Avenue had the longest trips out of any movement. So the assumption we made is we assume that when a travel time for a certain movement through the corridor in the proposed condition is two minutes longer than it is in the existing condition and just for reference, the existing travel times are like two to three minutes through the project limits. So once they were doubled, those longer, more regional routes or trips would choose a different route because they have more options available to them.

Can I ask about that? So one of the common routes is to 128 when you go down Great Plain. Well, 135 the whole way, Great Plain, then Needham. If someone has an alternate route, I think you'd have to go either to Kendrick or to the off-ramp at Highland Ave.

So what we're actually finding is that a percentage of the traffic that comes through during the peak times is actually non-needham traffic. so they're people like starting in Wellesley and they're going all the way to Boston but they're cutting through Needham as opposed to going directly to 128 and so the question is that's the traffic the 34 percent that we're articulating in this It's not starting in Needham and it's not ending in Needham. It's using Needham as a traffic corridor. The goal is not to like if you live on one side of Needham to redirect you away from the town center. The goal is for people who are making long trips to like 16 mile trips where Needham is in the center reprioritizing that trip. So Needham is no longer in the center. And these are all individuals who are not stopping in the town center. So they're starting their trip and they're ending their trip. outside of Needham.

Presumably people starting their trips in Needham and going to 128 would take an alternate route as well, could.

I think the goal would be that if you shed off that extra load, they don't need to go to an alternative trip because they're not running into the same roadblocks.

The proposed travel time is similar to existing, so they wouldn't need to.

Understanding that we don't want to interrupt since we're on this topic. This is the one that I really don't understand. How do we specifically shed off these? and not the local.

Yep. So the traffic signals can be timed in a way that provides better operations for the movements that have more local traffic. So they can have a longer green time than other movements. They can also, in addition to green time, because the two signals are so close together, there can be an offset between when one turns green and the other turns green. like if you're turning left from Chapel onto Great Plain Avenue, you turn left and then the next signal is also green so you're not stuck in between the two intersections.

I'd also say that the modeling is looking at human behavior as well. And so if you're looking at somebody who is going through Needham Center as a long commute route, not somebody who's using it as a way to live in town or a destination point, they're going to look at what the alternatives are and they're coming through Needham right now because it is the fastest way for them to get where they're going. If when they run their you know their ways in the morning it's no longer the fastest it will redirect them away whereas if you're coming from Needham there are less opportunities for it to redirect you away If you're 10 miles out, there's probably 100 different ways you can accomplish your goal. If you're in town, there's probably only two or three different ways to accomplish your goal.

So this relies on the idea that these people will be using Waze or something similar. This is all based on behavioral modeling that we have. And that Typically, if it's going to take two to three minutes longer to come this way, Waze will tell them to go another way. That's correct.

Waze is already doing that for me. I will have to go through the center of town, and it'll tell me to take Garden Street and May Street, to go around the center of town.

When you look at ways in Google now for Needham, especially for a lot of these long trips, going through Needham Center and going around is almost exactly the same. So there can be very little change that sends you somewhere to the other side. Same for you. One minute in the center of town for somebody who's in Dedham could mean going on the highway up to the next Route 16 or Route 9 or something up there further to get around Wellesley and so forth.

But does that mean that it creates bottlenecks in other locations?

You mean in Needham? I guess I'll say in Needham or not in Needham.

I was I mean it might I would say the only way to know for sure we didn't do a traffic study of the entire town would be to monitor those inter intersections, we have good reason to think there would be increased traffic at to see if there's a change in operations and adjust those locations accordingly. So maybe it's, you know, right now there's 50 50 traffic on every approach and then in the proposed condition it would be 60 40 so that has to be retimed it's all speculative but we're talking about installing cameras that could be changed so it could be an iterative approach we currently have those cameras within the project limits.

All of the intersections? The ones that are impacted by this project. Oh, OK. I thought it was just a few.

Great. So just to follow up on that. So if we're trying to shed off these particular longer trips, and and the longer trips are typically basically taking 135 it sounds like let's say they're going from Wellesley through Needham 135 to 128 south but that you would make that whole 135 trip slower effectively and make other trips that tend to be more local faster through changing the lights? I'm just trying to understand.

I don't think the local trips would be faster. I think they would not be as negatively impacted.

But you would specifically be making Those trips that tend to be longer, those routes, like let's say that 135, you would be tending to make that a little bit slower with the timing of the lights.

People are choosing to use 135 instead of other slightly larger roads that exist. And what you'd be doing is trying to push them back onto those larger roads.

But by timing of the lights to make it a little bit slower.

I see that Marianne has a...

Well, I was just going to observe, having been here for a long time, I've lived through this discussion multiple times. One of the last two that come to mind, all kinds of issues with this discussion on Central Ave. a number of years ago when we replaced the bridge between Needham and Newton. And what happened at that time was Central Ave, that was back to back for hours every day, has never returned to that state. because at the point where the bridge was reconstructed, everybody found another way to work around. Okay, so traffic migrates to the path of least resistance. And that's essentially what's being suggested here is that if this becomes a more resistant path for longer traffic, those routes will find a less resistant path to choose. The other example that I was thinking of in addition to Central was we had the same discussion around Muzzy with respect to Gould Street. Again, with the alternatives that people had with where they could go to essentially get on 128.

and they would do the same thing, choose a route that has less resistance for where they're trying to go. And this happens in a landscape where people are also factoring Commuter Rail as another alternative. There's all kinds of things that people could consider as their alternative. And that will happen here as well.

So I remember that discussion about the bridge in Central. you know it's like water you know water finds the correct it always goes downhill but there's also a capacity I mean if there's not much enough capacity then the water starts flooding like it just goes everywhere and so that's why I think there are concerns about Traffic, and if the traffic is going elsewhere, is it going through neighborhood streets? Is it going through...

I'll just say, I think the same logic was having also been here for a long time, but talking about the Adelaine project for 128 that was supposed to solve the entire regional area for congestion and yet had the exact opposite effect. So adding additional lanes doesn't inherently, there's sort of, it's called implied demand?

Induced.

Induced demand, thank you. Yes, it's up for a while. and so when you sort of you build it they will come and it didn't actually have the effect and you know engineering is a science but it also has a social science aspect to it and so you're looking at behaviors and how behaviors will be impacted. And the thought was, if you build from a strictly water type capacity, right? Water doesn't have a brain. Water just goes where it goes. The logic would be if you build extra lanes, you will solve all the problems. The reality is that is not always the case. And so you have to take the social science aspect into it as well. The modeling that we have now, even compared to when we first did this project 15 years ago, is significantly more sophisticated as far as how it tries to replicate both the social science aspect of it and the physical constraints that you're operating with. and that's what we're using to get our data.

I did just want to chime in on the neighborhood roads being affected. Another reason to prioritize local trips and encourage the longer trips to reroute is the likely routes that they would be rerouted to are other arterials or highways and not those neighborhood roads, versus if we penalized local trips, yes, they would be choosing other routes that are in the immediate vicinity of the project limits. and just this slide puts it in perspective into what the magnitude of vehicles we're talking about being rerouted. So one, we're only looking at the heaviest peak hours of the day. So this red line is the existing traffic volumes over a 24-hour period.

So it's taken from one day in September. and then the orange is the two lane alternative, which has the largest traffic impact. And then the green is the two lane with turn lanes. So you can see in the absolute most impacted condition, which is the two lane at 3 PM, it's 200 vehicles being diverted over a one hour period. It's, you know, a few vehicles per minute.

So I'm going to say I don't understand this chart. I spent some time with this. The hourly traffic volumes is existing volumes. So essentially the Gold, and the teal lines at the bottom reduce that traffic from the top? I just want to be sure I understood this.

Yes. So they're just carving off the peaks?

So the other thing that seemed odd to me about that is this shows at the peak an hourly that's over 900 vehicles. I know I saw some slides that I think Diane forwarded that showed a traffic count that actually showed that hourly. peak at 600 vehicles. So I wasn't sure why it was 900 here versus 600 there. I think it's east and westbound.

So it's where the traffic is coming. If it's all coming in one direction, you have to shave off more if it's coming in multiple directions. Got it. Thank you. have less that has to be reduced.

Yeah. So this was the amount of because of the reduced capacity in these two alternatives, this is the amount of traffic that needs to be shaved off of that red line to keep travel times for those that do still go through the corridor within that two minute.

Well, this isn't predicted. This is what needs to happen in order to keep it within those two minutes. Is that what you're saying?

yes yeah based on modeling so so if less traffic is diverted then the operations the travel times for trips within the corridor would be longer yes

but it's saying because it's longer, it's more likely that people will choose a different route, right? That's the social science.

case study, Wellesley did this on their section of 135. And again, they found for the few weeks that they implemented in the beginning that there was congestion and it was difficult. And then I think just like the water scenario, people found a way around it and it's not a discussion anymore. I think the tricky part is we're in that initial precipice and not the after component. And the reason just for context, the four lane is not in here is because there was no, in fact, it was at parity or slightly better improvement of traffic flow from existing.

just this concept about diverting traffic. If there's no alternative, people will suffer through traffic and grin and bear it, I guess. I guess I want to understand, are we making traffic easier in one location, worse in another? because I think I'm a little muddled on this question.

So I think what for me, the number of trips per hour, I think, is really important. So if you're talking about 200 trips per hour, you're talking about a couple of vehicles per minute that would be taking an alternative location and assuming they would likely not all go at exactly the same route, you're not really creating a massive influx of traffic in other locations.

So maybe I can ask it differently. So this... This scenario, by diverting traffic in these amounts, would keep the increased travel time to two minutes. I think the base is two minutes, right? Between two and three minutes. So you'd be doubling the travel time in this scenario. If there were no diversion at all, how much increase would there be in the travel times?

so again this goes back to the social science component of it and social science says that won't happen that at some point we actually asked them to run the models in the beginning and it got very confusing for the working group because it basically broke the machine yeah like people don't wait you get two, three traffic signal cycles out, people will leave. That's just human nature. So the model kind of didn't know how to process that information.

So maybe I can ask it a different way. Is doubling the travel times the best case scenario?

I mean more traffic, more longer trips could diverge and it could be the same as like all the alternatives could have the same travel times.

So it's a predictive scenario, not necessarily a best or worst case. The models are telling us that this is what predictably would happen, not that this is what will happen in the worst case scenario. or the best case scenario.

Sorry. No, I mean, is there any likelihood to think that more traffic would be diverted? Is there any chance that you make these changes and travel times would not change?

you could have a mode shift too, right? So there's a lot of variables that are involved that could have an impact on the traffic. I think what we're trying to look at is current conditions to anticipated current conditions.

I think they're predicting according to best knowledge, what will happen. Let's keep going.

OK. So I keep changing it. So how this metric is summarized in some of our guidance is the percentage of regional through traffic that we anticipate to divert. So that's 0% for the four lane, 0% to 5% for the two lane with turn lanes, and then 6% to 11%. for the two-lane during those peak hours. And then also we note the change in expected travel time, both in off-peak hours and then in peak hours. important to note on off peak hours, we don't expect a reduction in capacity to have any meaningful change in operations. It's during those congested peak hours where the travel time would increase two to three minutes for the alternatives with lower capacity.

And that's, sorry, that's with the diversion.

Yes.

Okay.

Next key metric was economic development, which as we all know is a very nuanced and complicated metric to try to summarize. but some of the factors that went into our discussions on this are the amount of on-street parking that's provided, the ease with which businesses can get deliveries, opportunities for outdoor dining or outdoor gathering, and then the anticipated increase in foot traffic, which is very closely related to streetscape and urban design amenities, which is covered in a separate metric. How we agreed to kind of synthesize economic development is looking at something that's very easy to measure, which is on street parking supply.

All of the alternatives provide similar to existing or more on street parking spaces. We summarize these with a range, with the higher range being what's shown on the plans, but giving some flexibility to New dedicated loading zones for delivery vehicles, as well as particularly in the four lane alternative reallocating one or two parking spots for some amenities given that there are limited opportunities elsewhere in the corridor. the summary does also just tally where within the project limits there are changes in the on-street parking given that a lot of the changes particularly for the Tulane Alternatives are on Dedham and Chappell.

Next is streetscape and urban design opportunities. For a downtown area like this, that would be the ability to provide that minimum pedestrian clear zone, but then also have a dedicated zone for street furniture, street Trees, etc. And then potentially also that frontage zone for businesses to be able to occupy some of the right of way. All of the alternatives provide some improvement over existing conditions, especially with that Denham Avenue slip lane. But inherently, the two lane alternatives provide more opportunities given the wider space between the curb line and existing buildings. Next is sustainability and resilience.

So all of the alternatives would incorporate a improvement to the closed drainage system within the project limits, but we're also looking to provide surface level stormwater treatments, which not only have that benefit to the stormwater system capacity, but also have an aesthetic benefit. You can see they can be designed in a very thoughtful way to synergize with other streetscape amenities. and then Street Trees would also provide urban heat island benefits in terms of providing shade within a very impervious area at the moment. So similar to the previous category, all of the alternatives provide a benefit. They would all allow for improvements to closed drainage and some degree of surface level treatments. We would expect more opportunities

with the two-lane alternatives than the four-lane. And then finally is the anticipated very conceptual construction cost, which is similar for all the alternatives, but is affected by mainly the project limits. So as we mentioned, the four-lane alternative would remove that core block in front of the town common from the project limits. So that inherently would reduce the construction cost of that alternative. All of our estimates were based on public prices from the MassDOT website and as well as the anticipated construction duration. So we estimated the four lane alternative to be the least expensive at about $13.5 million. And then the two other alternatives were remarkably similar at about $15.2 million.

and all of these numbers include five years of escalation costs assuming the anticipated construction year would be five years away. and just finally want to know as Karis mentioned we've with the help of the working group curated a few resources for the public as they answer the town survey coming out. There's a key topics guide, which is similar to the table presented in the presentation, which is a high level look at each of the metrics. The town staff also prepared a FAQ document to answer a lot of questions they've been receiving. We have the story map site and then a more in-depth kind of matrix available on the town website. and finally we'll be posting a survey starting next week for Two or three weeks?

To the 22nd.

To the 22nd. That has questions focused on existing behavior in terms of travel patterns and parking, as well as design preferences for moving forward. and those will be shared with the board.

Okay, and a postcard went out to all Needham residents to inform them of not only the survey, which will open soon, but also to give them advance notice of the public session, which is being held again when? Okay, February 4th at Powers Hall. At what time? 7 p.m. So put that postcard on your fridge or wherever you put those things to remind yourself to go and also to fill out the survey. All right. Well, that was a lot and awesome. Thank you for that. I'm just scrolling down there. There is a lot of information in this packet. So just getting to my thoughts. I will open it up to colleagues first. Do you want to start at the end? Sure.

Well, you know, I live and breathe this stuff. I have. It's been a long time, and we've done a lot of work. And thank you for putting this together. And the committee has been great. I'm a little surprised. because I think the takeaway is we're talking about all this. It's how many lanes, four lanes, two lanes, a hybrid. and there's always talk about throughput and we can manage the throughput and I think there's a huge disbelief out there that you can't do what you do in four lanes and two lanes. But it's interesting to see in the graph here that a non-peak travel time, there's zero minutes added. which I think sounds like magic, but engineers apparently can do this. Correct. But I mean, I think that's a huge takeaway because no one, I think, believed that that could happen. I always had a raised eyebrow wondering if that was possible.

But you're saying we could have zero additions in time for the amount of throughput, correct?

for the non-peak times.

Yeah, for non-peak times, okay. I expect that downtown Needham will be really busy at peak times. Okay, but otherwise, for day in, day out, The amount of lanes can be managed. Correct. All right. That's a lot. Wow. Thank you.

Kathy. Sorry, I'm going to bang away on the traffic stuff again. It's really annoying. So when looking at some of the earlier presentations, it was talking about delays of like 20 minutes or something. The fact that we're not seeing this now is all due to the diversion.

Correct. Basically, when they ran the modeling without having diversion, the model broke because it kept it wants to put people through the intersection and it kept stacking and stacking and stacking. when it knows that's not how humans behave.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

So the other thing is on the where is diverted. That one I'm still struggling with a little bit because sometimes when I use ways, it doesn't always take me like, let's say the main road that I want to take is crowded. It doesn't always take me to another main road. It will often divert me onto little tiny streets with kids playing and horrible left turns and other things. So I'm just wondering what confidence we have that the diversion would not actually be onto our own side streets.

I think one of the things we've talked about in the committee is that we already have diversion onto side streets that people who live within Needham know how to use our roads the most effectively and make their choices based on that. And one of the things we didn't really talk about much in the presentation, but I think is a huge component of just our downtown period is the train. and the train is factored in to those two minute wait times and the four minute wait times and it is incredibly disruptive for how people flow through the town and I think people avoid that who are from the town anyways because they know how disruptive that can be More so than any congestion that we have. The major change is that it's the start point and the end point. So instead of Let's say they have maps as part of some of their materials. We tried to truncate them as much as possible to try to keep this brief. And I believe some of them will be presented at the information session.

So it will show that if you're Let's say here, Needham's here, you're here, and you're going here. Right now, it actually might pull you down and back up. Well, if it's going to tweak you around Maple Street and Ogre, It's not going to pull you all the way down here just to tweak you around the downtown. It's going to find another route that's easier. So it really has to do with the destination and the origination of the people taking those trips. And those minor modifications around our town center won't be the most effective way for them to get to where they're going. It's going to be a completely different route.

Again, we're looking at trips that are 15, 20, 25 miles long and originating. You can tell that they're purposely avoiding the highway.

Yeah, and I guess I would just say, even let's say if all the diversion is longer trips, I know some of our business owners are concerned about those trips being diverted because those people will stop in the shops. And so I think it's something to think about that it's not that those trips have no value. They may have value.

We also have more data that does sort of indicate where are the people going to our businesses are from. And we didn't see a correlation between where the trip started, where the trips ended and where people are coming to shop in our downtown. So those are also data points. I'm not saying that doesn't ever happen. I'm sure it does happen, but it's not a strong correlation.

I suppose people could have two kinds of trips too. They could have the commute where they go the fastest way possible and then the trip home when they know they have a couple of errands to run and they could come the slightly slower route to make those stops.

so I think there was an older retail principle that I recall being a huge part of the first time we renovated the downtown that basically said the more people who see your business the higher your business the better it performs the more valuable it is again these are sort of like pre-internet concepts so I'm not sure that was the principle and I what we found in our data was more that our downtown is being serviced by neighboring communities not somebody driving from like Holliston down to Westwood. So we didn't see that correlation. And what we also tracked in this data is not people who are stopping on their commutes. So if you were driving from Holliston and you stopped and you grab coffee and Needham, and you continued, you're not factored into that 16 mile trip that we're discussing.

Yeah. that would be considered two separate trips.

Oh, OK. So that's a point that we should emphasize, we, you, should emphasize in the public forum because I think We were under the impression that you were conflating those two. So if these are different, this is not a public hearing, then we should emphasize that so that people understand.

Yeah, I think generally speaking, we're trying to present information to help people make informed decisions and everybody is going to come at it with their own perspective, their own preferences and their own desires because they all use our downtown in a completely different way. And we want people to feel comfortable expressing exactly what they would like their downtown to be. But we're also trying to present as much factual information as possible at the same time.

Do you have more? Josh?

Sure. I guess I'm having trouble evaluating the options because I feel like the goals are not clear. And so for me, If rebuilding is a goal, I don't think that's a good goal. I mean, I think safety is a good goal. I think trying to improve efficiency is a good goal. But I feel like we may have started in the wrong place. I also think it cost us because you know start starting the wrong place we've spent over eight hundred thousand dollars so far and if we wanted to continue like fifteen million dollars we don't know where the budget would come from we haven't really discussed. Well, you mentioned there's some chapter 95.

There's some chapter 90. The state just unleashed a brand new Complete Streets program that frees up significantly more money that was available. That's a brand new thing that came to us in the last few months. and depending on which opportunity we go for there are some economic development grants that we can go for if we make more changes they don't tend to incentivize you know not you know if you're just rebuilding infrastructure they don't want to be part of that they want it i completely understand with what you're saying with the goals and i think that's one of the struggles we've had as a committee as well

Yeah, I want to make sure that we spend the money wisely and we don't go down a path to spend more money to realize that we designed something we don't like or don't want to pursue. I guess I'm waiting on the survey results a lot. And for me, that's going to inform whether we even go to phase two or not.

Marion. So I'm certainly interested in hearing what people have to say at the hearing, but I would say I I'll start from a perspective that says I'm not worried about people who are using Needham as a through way. I'm more interested in ensuring that we have a downtown that for people who want to shop there works well for those needs. And I appreciate the attention that's been paid to parking in these. I feel like parking was a huge concern. and I know I looked at previous plans and I couldn't tell where the parking was. I have a much better sense for that now, so I appreciate that. I understand the idea of diversion, and I would certainly like to see some increased amenities in our downtown. But I know everybody has different ways that they think about it.

I guess I'm just thinking about The public survey, I think what we can expect from our public survey is lots and lots of opinions, many of which conflict. We have a town of 33,000. you know everyone complete your survey um but i think you know it's it's impossible Well, maybe not impossible, but improbable that we will get a clear direction because everyone here uses this area of town. and has opinions about it. There isn't one group of stakeholders. There's many, many groups of stakeholders. And being sensitive to how all of those needs intersect is really the challenge here. So I guess I want to say thank you to the committee.

This committee has had an enormous amount of scrutiny, and that's our fault. The Select Board changed the direction of this project, which has been planned for over 20 years. And that is completely reasonable. Things change in the course of 20 years. But it fell on the committee to deal with a lot of The feelings about that. So I want to say thank you because I know that's a hard job. And I want to just ask that the community takes a deep breath. keeps an open mind. There are a lot of good ideas here, and you may not like all of them, but the idea of considering All of the ideas presented is really important. I'll remind everybody to enter this fray with a framework of curiosity.

and asking questions about why things are and how we can all work together. This is the centerpiece of our community, one could say, and it would be nice if we could all work together to make it the best it can be. it would be nice if there was a little bit less adversarial stance and more of a community posture where we're all working together because that's really The Goal. And no matter how it turns out, we're all going to have to live with it. So I would just hope that everyone can walk into this community forum and the survey with an open mind.

So one of the other things I'm thinking about is I hope that the committee and the community can collectively get to some better understandings about traffic. understanding the traffic is hard and that's part of the challenge. I think, you know, even for this group, people are still trying to puzzle that out and think about what that means. It's worth the attention that you're spending to talk through those issues because they are challenging for people to understand. And I just want to say it's worth the time invested in helping people. to see how that works.

I'd also say, I think this is a great opportunity for the town. We won't have this opportunity for another 100 years. And the idea that we could improve safety improve the downtown so more people visit there, and ultimately, I think, improve the economic vitality of the downtown.

And improve our infrastructure.

Right. And character and structure. Excuse me. Yes. We're putting the icing on the cake.

Katie.

I just wanted to comment too that after the public forum and the survey, the working group will compile that information. and bring it back to the board. But at that point, really, the baton gets passed across the table. And so I just wanted to flag that to anticipate what's coming next. My recommendation is I know the board would like to do a public hearing. If the working group wraps up end of March, early April, I would anticipate or suggest that we look to May after town meeting for that public hearing so just no dates are set in stone but I just want to give a sense of kind of where does this then go because I know people will be curious about that.

Excellent. Thank you. I'm also thinking about the public hearing, right? Explaining this, the first one, explaining this, just laying it out, I understand that we ask some questions, but it takes a long time. So I'm hoping that members of the public are also able to feel like they can ask. There's enough time to ask that question. So I just recognize that whole balance. It's going to be a challenge.

It's not a hearing, necessarily. It's an information session. And I think what we want from it is people to ask questions like you did here because it's really helpful to know what you're not understanding and same with residents as well so That will take a long time, yes. There could be a lot, but we want people to not be nervous about that, to come forward and ask questions, things you don't understand, so that we can, everyone knows kind of what's missing, what piece is missing.

I'm going to make a suggestion that you think about using a tool like Mentimeter even just to say on this slide how many people have questions and just let people hit the button to just kind of get a read as you're going through.

There are lots of people who are going to want to admit that they still don't understand. with the diversion tactics. So giving them an opportunity to anonymously say, like, I still can't.

We are planning on using Mentimeter and allowing for people to ask questions on their phone and it be anonymous.

We're also giving the opportunity for people who don't have phone access to handwrite questions so we can try to compile them because we also like in the interest of time and we know like diving into this is really hard. Sometimes it's very hard when someone's asking a question to then hear the answers to other people's questions. And my guess is you're going to have a lot of people who all have the same question. So we want to try to focus on really content-driven communication.

That's great. I think keeping in mind the comments from the May 13th public hearing might be helpful because I think many people have the same feelings.

So agreed. And I think some of those comments were informed in the secondary consideration of trying to maximize parking, try to analyze traffic flow and trying to dig more into what the benefits or potential drawbacks of each scenario could be as well.

Okay, so just for anyone who didn't hear it before, February 4th, 7 p.m., Powers Hall, public. information session. And on that date, the survey opens and will be open for a while, over two weeks. So everyone got a QR code in the mail, or if you haven't, it's because of the snowstorm.

and it'll be coming and you can also probably find it on the website I just also want to echo and I know we're working with the business community as well the goal is not only just to get residents to take it but all the other stakeholders in the town So we have a lot of people who visit the town from out of town. We have people who work in the town, who frequent the various, they use the downtown in a various variety of ways. So the goal is to get a broad perspective not just of residents but of people who use our downtown for a myriad of reasons.

In the survey, do you have a question to differentiate?

We do, and you can do multiples, right? Because we know we have people who live and work in the downtown. So we have it set up that way.

thank you great and the committee yes it's been a little difficult but It's rewarding. And the members that are on there have all had wonderful input for all of these pieces of document that you're seeing here. And I think it's been really helpful, especially from the business owners, getting those details down. It's good. It's a good thing. So we've been having a good time.

excellent well thank you thank you all of you thank you thank you

Any discussion? All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Okay, next up, we have Gabby Queenan, our sustainability manager. to discuss the Climate Communication Strategy and Sustainability Grants. Welcome, Gabby.

So I'll just plan to provide a brief recap of the climate communications memo that was included in your packet. And I'm happy to take questions and discuss before chatting about sustainability grants. As folks might recall, on the Climate Action Roadmap, the development of a climate communication strategy was selected as a goal. I believe it's goal 1.2a. The goal being to enhance climate literacy and climate leadership among residents and businesses. Back in FY24, the Climate Action Plan Committee had made a recommendation to the Select Board to include this as a priority, and it was included as a FY25, FY26 priority by the Select Board.

So the goal really with the climate communication strategy is to develop a more regular, consistent presence for climate information, climate actions that can be accessible to a wide range of users within Needham. So thinking of audiences as businesses, residents, nonprofit organizations, houses of worship, landlords. I really try to reach a wide suite. So the goal with the proposed draft is that we would take the six categories of the Climate Action Roadmap and divide those over 12 months, dedicating two months per topic. So the focus would be clean energy, net zero buildings, transportation, natural resources and waste, resilience and public health. So with messaging, there would be identification of the category, what the significance is of that topic as it relates to climate change, and then a specific action that could be shared to help address that topic.

So there'd be a mixture of virtual and person outreach, trying to again reach as many audience members as possible. So the goal of this proposal is that we would plan to do this outreach over the course of the year, come back at the end of the year, reflect with the Climate Action Committee, with our wonderful Communications Director, Amy Hilsen, to kind of take away lessons learned and refine as necessary, ultimately with the intent that this is a program that's offered every year. It becomes part of the communications for the town. We've talked a little bit with the Climate Action Committee about are there some ways to track progress, measure impact. That's something that can be. It's a challenge. It's one thing to measure clicks or impressions on a post. A little bit more difficult to track who decides to go after their Eversource rebate because they read about something in the newsletter. something that we're still talking about for ways to try to, again, measure impact.

So just in regards to what communications will look like, they would all include the town logo and then also include the sustainable Needham logo that was developed when the roadmap was created. So again, trying to have that consistent messaging presence. Again, what's included in the packet kind of does a, excuse me, in the memo does a breakdown of online and in-person opportunities. So some of the more standard presence would be social media posts, News You Need in Posts, a regular sustainability office hours once a month for folks to drop in, and then a mixture of, again, either in person or online opportunities for some additional outreach. So that's kind of a broad brush of what's proposed there. But happy to take questions. And I would love to hear feedback from the group if this is the direction you're hoping it's supposed to be going.

Yeah, I love it. It was great. Even when we talked about hiring a sustainability manager, we talked about how would they interface with the community to raise awareness and education amongst residents. This does it. Thank you.

Good, glad to hear that. I also love it. The only thing that I wish you had talked about is all the money that you have brought into town. Oh, thank you for the practice. I felt that that was missing. But I know that's a different topic, but I just think in terms of, you know, how pleased I am that you're here and that we created this position and hired you. I mean, this is wonderful and all the money.

Is this something that you can do with the resources you have?

Yes, so the draft tried to be measured, thinking about capacity. And to be honest, some of the timing for especially the in-person events tried to think about Grant Timelines, and when a lot of the more heavy writing happens. So that's the goal is that this is feasible with existing resources. It might be possible we could We cut back on some things or maybe others can be expanded, but this first year will really be a test of that.

Great. Good luck.

Thank you. I also love it. I'm a huge fan of editorial calendars, setting sort of the plan for communications so that we know we have a plan and then hopefully just executing on it so this looks like a great proposal for how to move forward I appreciate it

Gabby, my question is also about money, which is, first of all, this is awesome. You're awesome. But I guess I'm concerned that potentially most folks don't don't take these actions necessarily because they're good for the planet or because they're thinking about climate action. I think that is some people, but not all. I think a lot of these, topics are also things that can have a real impact on a family's economic health, though. And so I'm wondering, is there a way when you write these Outreaches, whatever they're going to be. Can you think about emphasizing the money savings that would in many cases accompany these. If you're working on your sustainable landscaping, you're watering less.

you know planting trees you're possibly shading your house and therefore not using as much power to cool things like that um because i i think While these are nice to-dos for most people, that's not necessarily going to move the needle. And I would like to think that if people understood kind of also what's in it for them, that it might make it more impactful.

Yeah, absolutely. I think the framing of the messaging, thinking about you know, bottom line, dollar impacts is huge. And I think that's, you know, I've seen that pretty consistently with a lot of climate messaging. the emotional pull that maybe draws people in it's you know how does this impact me especially something like climate change is a you know a global issue it feels you know a little bit a little bit hard to connect with sometimes. So yeah, absolutely having a focus on the economic angle is key. So we'll make sure to work that into the messaging. Because yeah, we want everyone to be able to read something and think, OK, how does this impact me at the end of the day? because that's what will hopefully get folks to want to take an action.

Great. I mean, so much of this is protective. You know, it can reduce flooding. It can, you know, reduce all kinds of climate impacts so providing cleaner air for your children or just a cleaner yard for them to run around in barefoot so anyway thank you.

Do you have a grand update? Yes, I do have a grand update.

Sorry, I forgot. Always? I jumped in on the first part. Yes, so I was just going to provide a summary for outside sustainability funding secured for calendar year 2025. So we brought in just over $479,000 in calendar year 2025, which was a 13% increase over calendar year 2024. That was about $423,000. and this past year we submitted 20 applications, 10 awards, 7 denials, although a few of those were federal programs that have since dissolved. Three outstanding applications still waiting to hear back on. The largest award that we received was just about $180,000 from Green Communities and the smallest award was $7,500 towards our F-150 Lightning purchase for our first electric pickup.

We also received a few grants from new programs that we hadn't received funding for received funding from previously. For example, EE EA Cooling Corridors. We received 92,000 towards 46 trees. They'll be planted in some of our warmest neighborhoods. So excited about that. For upcoming and outstanding funds looking towards calendar year 2026, we have several large programs that we're looking at. the first upcoming very soon will be our first climate leader communities application so that will be coming very soon, very beginning of February. So we'll be looking at applying for funding to help support the installation of solar at the Cogswell building. So that's about a $600,000 request. And then we'll also be looking at applying for the municipal vulnerability preparedness program.

that's a spring application we'd applied previously unfortunately weren't awarded funding in the last round but we'll be looking at a slightly different scope for for modeling for flooding and restoration of the drainage basin that's just behind the Linton Chambers area. So that small portion is slightly different than our last application. And then looking at another green communities application as well for this spring for lighting, LED lighting upgrades at High Rock.

so you mentioned the climate leader program which we qualified for in 2025 and that has a like a kind of a guaranteed Grant. Threshold? Minimum?

Yes, it's a good question. So the program, the maximum award per community is $1 million. And the programs, you're only eligible if you've been designated a climate leader. So we're very fortunate that we were able to know those criteria in time to get in for this grant round that's open through FY27. Excuse me, through 2027. There's no guarantee that our proposal will be accepted. It is possible that we would not be awarded funding, but we're in a very exclusive group and being able to even apply for the funds in the first place. If for some reason we weren't awarded for this round, the next application period is in August. So at that point, hopefully we get feedback and be able to tweak an application if needed.

Great. So it sounds like 2026 will be a good year.

Yeah, I'm going to put in some good applications.

Gabby. So you said one of the grants was for LED lighting at High Rock?

Yes.

How many schools have we not updated to LEDs?

Just High Rock and the high school at this point. So those are the last two. High school will be maybe a multi-year effort. All right.

Thank you.

Anybody else? Thank you again.

Yeah, no, I just add one thing. You talked about, you know, you do this education stuff and how are you going to quantify success? But I think the problem with education is it's like sowing seeds. You don't know where they will land or where they will root and what will grow. so I mean take that with it to be philosophical yeah I think it's um good luck thank you thank you oh and before you leave

because Gabby is the staff liaison to the Tree Committee. I want to mention that the Tree Committee is running a forum with the Charles River Watershed Association. and that is going to be on February 9th and it's Zoom only so you can do it in your pajamas and I would encourage everyone to sign up for that and where can they find the information on where to sign up for that?

So it'll be in News You Needham this Friday. It's going to be on the Tree Community website as well. And it will be shared. through Green Needham. They'll be putting out a post soon.

So this is the result of a year-long study by the Charles River Watershed Association on the Watershed Area, Tree Planting, and a Tree Planting Regional Plan. But it includes Needham, and it will be fascinating. And it's only an hour.

When's that date?

February 9th on Zoom. At 7 p.m.

Awesome.

Thanks, Gabby.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Okay. This is a light meeting. Let's jump into the budget. So I think we're definitely Dave Davison is coming up, and Celia Simchak, and Liz LaRose, Deputy Town Manager, and of course, Katie King, our Town Manager.

circle around there's a lot of information so you know the only thing we look forward to more than this is the audit But I am going to say I'm a firm believer that budgets are the manifestation of your priorities. So we are hanging on to every word.

And so before we start, just want to note that there was an updated packet that was sent out late this afternoon. Snowstorm, a whole bunch of reasons. There were a couple of documents that didn't make it into the original packet. So if anyone is following online, that packet is available in the normal place. and you should check it out because it's got all these supplementary materials that were not in the original packet. Okay.

Great. Thank you. Now that it is 7.15, I should have brought some chocolate or some other. things to lift the energy because there's nothing like talking numbers. But yes, thank you for your patience with the documents. And I will say that the information for this packet each year tends to be a little bit last minute because it always follows the Mass Municipal Association's annual meeting at which the governor I think always announces what she or in the years past he is filing in their budget related to state aid. So there is always kind of a last minute reconciliation. given the timing, which I wonder if the charter drafters knew that at the time.

And this year, you could just lead with the headline, right? The good news was the reveal was a positive reveal.

and we will, yes, share specific numbers. So under the town's charter, the town manager provides a recommended balanced operating budget to the finance committee. by January 31st, which means I have until Saturday for us to compile everything. But this really is the nuts and bolts of and the major decisions made in the fiscal year 2027 budget that I'm recommending. Huge thank you to the three folks here in front of you, but so many more as well. Wendy Fong in our Finance Department. She does a lot of behind-the-scenes work. You know Miles as well. And hopefully he's not watching this right now. but department managers and their finance staff put together all of the submissions that drive this whole process. And we work incredibly closely with the superintendent and his team. and I did consultations with the select board, the finance committee and the school committee.

And we're really just halfway through the budget process and all of that's been done. Huge thank you to everyone. So let's dive in. The PDF is in your packet starting on PDF page 88, I believe.

This is only if you have the new packet, right?

If you have the new packet, yeah. and would you like a printed? Yep, great.

Thank you.

So I first wanted to start by sharing a statewide perspective on municipal budgets. The Mass Municipal Association has released two reports in recent months. really talking about challenges that local governments face financially and recommending some solutions. So in terms of challenges, these are outlined in the report, A Perfect Storm. Really, it's a confluence of a few things. Cities and towns are facing rising costs. Sluggish state aid, which will kind of go into the Needham experience in a little bit. cities and towns have limited revenue tools in terms of our ability to identify additional revenue sources as limited by state law. and, of course, our primary revenue source is property tax and that has restrictions in place under Prop 2 1⁄2. The Navigating the Storm report identifies some solutions. I'm not suggesting that these would work for every community or for Needham, but these are

and many suggestions for things that they are hoping that the state were to think about primarily on behalf of what would strengthen local governments in facing these financial challenges. So some of those solutions, the top one is requesting that the legislature increase unrestricted general government aid. It's our most flexible form of local aid. and the report calls for $351 million increase in UGA. This would get us back to the that were before the Great Recession in 2008, 2009. Once you factor in inflation, that would not quite get us there, but it would start getting us back on track. The report also suggests allowing local options revenue, local option taxes as additional revenue tools.

or more flexibilities for communities to look at tax classifications and the shifts that are currently allowed and also recommends adjustments to prop two and a half as an example allowed communities if they needed to go for an operating override to the voters, letting the voters do a multi-year override at more gradual amounts, which is not something that is a lever available today. So again, I want to be clear. I'm recommending to you tonight a balanced budget. We are not in position in Needham. where we need an operating override but this is just the fiscal picture writ large in the state and some of the structural challenges that cities and towns have. So Needham is better situated than many but we're not immune to these trends that are happening and kind of the structural challenges. Davis. So let's dive in. So this is the budget overview.

Really what we're looking at is general fund, the total for sources, which is revenue, and uses, which is the recommended expenditures in this budget. So there's a lot of numbers on this table, but I'll just call out a few. Overall, the total sources estimated for fiscal year 2027 is $264 million. I'll say $264.6 million. Keane. That's an increase of $4.8 million over the prior year, which is an increase of just 1.8%. um the uses total the same in terms of proposed for fy 2027 because as i mentioned this is a balanced budget So I will just call out under the uses the operating budget line.

For the fiscal year 2027 operating budget, I'm recommending $247,101,465. That's an increase of $11.5 million over last year, 4.9%. And we'll get into more details on both the sources and the uses.

Can I ask a question? Yeah. In the request column, Pat 4027 request, does that include any DSR-4s? Is that level funded?

Requests include DSR-4s. And DSR-4s are performance improvements that departments ask us to consider in terms of new investments for them to do a service or a program that we don't currently offer today. Great. So moving on, general fund revenue, this just breaks down more of the sources. So I'd say to walk through, everyone knows what property taxes are, but it is by far The largest source of revenue that we are reliant on this year, 80% of our general fund revenue is estimated to be coming from property taxes. $210.8 million. State aid and local receipts are the next largest sources. State aid is largely Chapter 70 aid, which is education funding.

and what I mentioned previously, unrestricted general government aid. For FY27, our estimate for that is $17.5 million. Local receipts includes motor vehicle excise tax, meals and hotel tax, and some other receipts. And that current estimate is $17.3 million. Other available funds are sources like stormwater fees, the settlement dollars from the opioid lawsuits, as an example. and Free Cash is not free. It is funds that we ended the prior fiscal year with unexpended. So either we had a cost come in lower than we had anticipated or we had revenue come in higher than we estimated. And so those unexpended dollars get certified for our use in the next fiscal year. And that is called free cash.

Looking at state aid, cherry sheets. I tried to take out as much jargon as I could find in this, but I think the previous town manager would always mention that it's called cherry sheets because this used to be printed. on red colored paper at the State House. This is the information provided from the state government to cities and towns about what our local aid would be and what our state assessments are as well. Every year the state does a revenue estimate for their own budget, and they try to reconcile across the House, Senate, and Governor, so they're all working off of a similar number. The percent growth they're looking at for FY27 is 2.9%. So growth has been slowing at the state level. And so what's shown on this slide is for FY2027, Needham state aid is estimated at 17.5 million. That's an increase of 3%.

that is the figure that the governor included in what she announced at the MMA meeting this weekend. And just a process note that the governor is the first budget and we have a long ways to go before the state budget is finalized. And always cities and towns including Needham, we finalize our budget in May. the state budget does not get finalized until July. So we try to estimate conservatively and kind of go off of the governor's number. Historically it tends to go higher as it gets through the process. but it depends what resources are available.

Kitty, we've talked about the state sort of discussing the idea of being able to pull back funds midstream. Can you tell us where that stands and which of these sources that would apply to?

Yeah, so the context for that is the governor already has statutory authority in the middle of a fiscal year to make reductions within the executive branch. What she sought this year was to make reductions mid-year unilaterally. outside of the executive branch without legislative approval. So local aid falls outside of the executive branch. My understanding is that that request has not been taken up by the legislature, which means that they are maintaining their role in that process if there were to need to be reductions mid-year to local aid. and Free Cash. This is also a very busy slide, so let me just try to point you to things I think are most relevant. First, what you don't see is a row at the bottom showing certified free cash for fiscal year 2025. That process is underway.

So we're doing that accounting work in order to submit. So the bottom line here is not the free cash available for the FY2027 budget. That's what kind of informed the FY26 budget. but what I do want to call out is we have a budgeting policy where only a portion of Free Cash can be used to support our operating budget. And really a core principle of our budgeting in Needham and best practices, recurring expenses need to be supported by recurring revenue. and if you have one-time revenue you should in large part spend it on one-time costs and so what you can see in this table is kind of the breakdown of how we do that so the third no

the fourth and fifth columns show under our budgeting policy what amount of free cash in a given year is used to support the operating budget. And that's something we feel comfortable sustaining. and then the subsequent columns Capital, Financial Warrant Articles and Reserves is showing the one-time uses that we use free cash to fund.

Can I ask about sources of free cash? In the past, I think it had been evenly split between revenues in excess of what it was expected and expenditures. and so on, less what was expected. Is that about the same, that it's 50-50?

It tends to be, yes, both revenues and expenditures contributed towards it. The last few years, The full free cash certified was not used and had to hold over to the next fiscal year. The amount that's rolling over to the FY26 certification once it gets certified is much less than the previous year. And that's one of the reasons that the forecast is that free cash will be similar or maybe less than what we had last year.

Are there limits on the kind of amounts that we can use? for, for example, debt stabilization, like whatever is not used for operating budget, et cetera. Are there limits on where else we can put that money versus buying?

I wouldn't say limits, but tradeoffs and prioritization. So when we have free cash certified, if there is anything in excess of our current estimate, then the conversation is what gets funded from tier two capital that we're currently not able to accommodate versus what might we want to put in any of the stabilization funds. So there's not limits, just choices.

Okay. Thank you.

and budget drivers. So if people remember these slides from last year, the slide is exactly the same because the budget drivers are what they are for municipal budgets. A few things to note. Employee benefits, the group insurance line item in this recommended budget includes an estimated health insurance premium increase of 13%. and that's high but consistent with the industry right now. We did undertake a health insurance analysis to look at, right now we're in a joint purchasing group, to look at our alternative options for how we could purchase insurance. And I would say the punchline is that it concluded that we're in the most advantageous position that we can be in.

so that is good news that we're kind of on the right path but it still means that that rate increase is certainly not something that's particularly sustainable over the long term and so but again that's a but sector-wide challenge that everyone is facing. School enrollment. included in my budget message. It shows the trend of school enrollment over time. What I would say generally is the latest demographer study for the school district shows that enrollment is flattening and it's projecting that Needham Public Schools will not return to pre-COVID level enrollment in the next 15 years. So right now we have 65 fewer students this year than we did last year. And over the next 15 years, the projection is that we'll gain back

a little over a hundred students so really kind of a flattening and something that's been consistently seen with comparable communities around us. And in terms of staff, employee salary and wages and benefits is a significant portion of the budget on the town side and on the school side so we're really thoughtful and conservative about when to add staffing and to what extent so this we'll get into the details but this recommended budget includes 1 FTE addition on the town side, and that's across all town departments. And then the school committee voted budget is 5.1. FTE increase over the prior year.

As a reminder, the budget is driven by the priorities that the select board sets, not just because it's written on the slide, but because when departments submit their budgets, they're asked to articulate why their submissions link to which goal. and that's part of our vetting process. And that's true for, well, I'll say that. I want to talk through what's recommended in this budget as performance improvements. So these are DSR-4 requests that are recommended to be funded. Let me just walk through each of them. The field assessor is the additional one FTE that I'm recommending. The kind of additional cost that is listed here a portion of that is in the finance department for salary and wages and the amount reflected for town-wide expenses is where we budget the benefits associated with that additional employee.

So the total cost is the aggregate of those two. So the field assessor, we would transition a part-time position into a full-time one. and this will enable us to do the cycle of inspections that we need to do we have to do 5,000 in the next four years I believe is for assessing and So we need the added staff capacity to stay on track to fulfill those inspections. We did also the team reviewed what it would cost the town to contract this service out and estimate was $175,000, and so it's actually financially more advantageous to have an employee. The next item is a mail processing equipment for the finance department. Our current one is out of date, obsolete, and we need a new one. So this is core for getting out mailings, bills, et cetera.

Does this overlap at all with the town clerk's new equipment?

Yes, the equipment that was purchased, it was time stamping and opening. This is the ceiling, I mean the stuffing in the ceiling.

We issue a lot of mail. OK. Cloud connected irrigation controls. there's some pun here around cloud irrigation that I can't quite get out but the request is to We have 17 irrigation systems right now that all need to be manually controlled. So if we need to make changes, there is an employee physically going out to the irrigation system on site. This would let us connect all of them wirelessly to the cloud to remotely control them. Of the $32,000 increase, $30,000 of that is one-time costs for hardware and training. So the ongoing cost is $2,000 to the operating Greenbudget. The next investment is a part-time reference librarian, and this is to support specifically our new young adult space that's going to be opening in the spring. So the library has requested this for a number of years, but this would

bring someone on board for three nights a week plus Saturdays to help staff the YA space and do programming and support. We have one young adult reference librarian on staff right now. And this would really be able to augment what she's able to do as well. And then lastly, the last two items for the library are software Fees and the website maintenance website. The library has a website separate from the towns to really support the mission of the library. It had been funded initially out of private dollars raised by the Friends of the Library. And so this request was to bring it onto the operating budget, which I think is appropriate. It's a core part of their

their work and they have a staff scheduling and management tool as well that helps them manage their staff shifts and with particularly a lot of part-time employees so that's recommended to be included. I do want to note I don't have the list of DSR-4 requests that are not funded, but I want to say that they all of the requests would add value to the town and there were quite a number of them that I really really personally think the town needs more staffing or etc. But it's just a matter of resources available and having to make choices. So for folks that don't see a particular item on here, it's not kind of weighing in on the merit of it. It's just that when resources are available we could recommend them at that time. Okay, changes to submitted budgets. So submitted budgets

means both base budget, so what the cost in FY27 would be to do what you're doing this year in FY26. That's a base budget. And then the DSR-4s, the performance improvement requests, are submitted in parallel with the base budgets. but what you're seeing on this slide is reductions made from the aggregate of those. So some of these reductions are from base budgets, many of them are from DSR-4 requests that are not being recommended so are going to be deferred. And I'd say to give you a sense, the reductions here from the submitted budgets for finance department, planning, building, health and human services, council for arts and culture, those are all deferred new requests. as opposed to those are not cuts to the base budgets.

Could I ask as you go through this to highlight where there were cuts to the base budget?

Sure. So group health insurance. Let me see. Workers' compensation, injury on duty, 111F. CPS, and Reserve Fund. There are some reductions from the base budget, and I would articulate them as fine tuning of estimates as we've gone through the budget process. So they're not reductions from the FY26 funded amounts. They're reductions from our original estimates when we submitted for 27. Thank you. Department of Public Works I'd say is the only one again where that one includes both some adjustments downward to the base budget but also funding of some of their one of their DSR Fors, and deferring others. So the cloud irrigation we funded, that's a new investment. But a reduction of the base budget

For DPW, as an example, we reduced our budget by $35,000 because we used to have copper phone lines. We now have Zoom. And so the maintenance costs to support those has transferred from DPW to IT. So that sort of, yeah.

Good cutting.

I know about education. So the school committee did vote both the need in public schools budget and the municipal IT budget. at their January 20th meeting. So these numbers that are included in my recommended budget match their voted budgets. Needham Public Schools increase is 4%. Municipal IT, the percentage looks much larger at 12.6%. And I would say that is the We have a portion of the IT budget that supports town departments specifically, and we have important cybersecurity investments included there. So the hiring of a cybersecurity officer for both town and schools, that FTE is split between us. and this would also fund two factor authentication on the town's side as well.

So important investments that have come out of our strategic plan. and Minuteman Regional. We have an assessment that is largely driven by the rolling average of Student Enrollment. We have more Needham students going, which is a great thing, but that reflects in a higher assessment. We don't have their final assessment yet, but this was the preliminary provided by the district.

When students transfer to Minuteman, does that impact the declining enrollment or the flattening enrollment at the public school here?

our total enrollment at Minuteman is relatively low like headcount wise so I it wouldn't I don't think it'd be material change I think our We have five additional students going this year compared to last year. Funds and other transfers. So these are what I'm recommending for appropriations. The top three are into special stabilization funds. the $64,000 into the athletic facilities is a portion of field user fees that we allocate each year. Capital facility fund, likewise, our policies dictate 2% of estimated free cash get appropriated each year. So that's the $314,000.

I'm recommending $500,000 in free cash go into the debt service stabilization fund. and the remaining items are I guess, what do I want to say about them? We have enterprise funds for water and sewer where we budget separately for them. The $885,000 on this slide is the transfer from the enterprise funds to the general fund to support the work of the drains. which is the same employees and the same equipment.

Question about the stabilization funds. Given the new policies we passed and the priorities, I'm also noticing that free cash is decreasing. Are these all consistent with the new policies?

So the new policies, there would be no trigger into the debt service stabilization fund. So my recommendation isn't driven by the policy, but in terms of a prioritization that I'm recommending. The other two are driven by policy.

Yes, capital facility fund is specific to the policy and the athletic facility fund is also specific to the policy of the is the percentage of the fees collected by Park and Recreation that go into the fund to cover the cost of the carpet replacement. and to remind the board that town meeting also adopted the provision special stabilization that 40 percent of the Rosemary pool receipts will automatically be deposited into the athletic facility improvement fund to pay for future capital costs, lower cost capital expenses for maintenance of the pool. Thank you.

The remaining bullet items, allowance for abatements and exemptions, the $2.66 million, that's what we call the overlay to fund abatements. State assessments are what we're required to pay out from the cherry sheets. So that's 1.7 million. And other amounts to be raised is Tax Title, and Cherish Sheet Offsets. Cherish Sheet Offsets is an accounting mechanism for things that come to us through state aid, but that town meeting doesn't appropriate. So we just have to... allocate them out as expenses outside of the budget process. Okay. Getting closer. Other financial warrant articles. So these are what in Needham Budget Speak we call DSR-5s. And what's listed here are those that I am recommending be funded.

either by free cash or opioids has the stabilization fund. So the facility maintenance program, this is our an annual article that we see to support building maintenance and the ongoing work they need to do in all towns. and School Buildings. Fire Department Master Plan. This is a master plan kind of for operations and staffing. So looking at what are the trends in the fire, World, and Needham and how to figure out kind of benchmarking for future planning. With FIRE, it's different from a staffing level because we staff on groups and so if you need to add staff you tend to do it in steps instead of kind of one at a time gradually and so to think through how what would be a trigger point if there were to be one in the future this master plan will help us think through that Fleet Refurbishment.

We've seen this one before, but our Fleet Maintenance Division uses these funds to extend the life of vehicles. They do, you know, fixing brakes and corrosion and get more life out of our investments. opioid programming. This is appropriating out of the funds we've already received from the nationwide settlements. And this would support ongoing work from our we have a Needham opioid plan that aligns with the settlement requirements for how we spend these funds. Planning Consulting Assistance is also a perennial request. These funds are used by the planning department to support planning board goals and to hire outside consulting. consultants or assistance, technical assistance to support planning or regulatory requirements that fall under planning.

Property Tax Assistance Program, you know what that is, a small repair grant also. We are spending down the existing appropriation, so requesting $50,000. the Stephen Palmer tenant relocation assistance we've talked about at length. The dollar figure here is the balance of the maximum total for that program. was 280,000 and we received a reserve fund transfer from the finance committee for 50,000. That figure might move just depending on the spend down of those funds. and then Swale Rain Garden Program is a really interesting idea generated by our DBW team coming out of the Stormwater Master Plan. This $120,000 would let us do basically public private partnerships where we would identify areas on the public right of way where stormwater runoff goes into a private property. that would benefit from the creation of a rain garden.

And so this would allow us to, with the agreement of the private property owner, design the soil and rain garden and do the initial installation and then train the property owner for how to maintain it over the long term. and this would have benefits for runoff from our roads but also NPDES credit of having kind of strategies that aren't just on public property. was one of the things that got flagged in the stormwater master plan. And this is a more reasonable dollar amount to try to get at kind of how do we find those opportunities.

Would this fund feasibility, design, or construction?

The estimate is, depending on the property, that we could do maybe 10 or 15 individual rain gardens. so it depends you know on the actual site but it would so we'd be able to do the design work in-house and then this would support funding the installation of the rain garden yeah

Sorry, I asked this last time. Do you know now what source of funding for all these? Are these all tax levy?

They are all, I'm just looking down, they're all free cash except for the opioid programming, which is the opioid stabilization fund.

All free cash, okay. All free cash, yep.

briefly on the capital. Just to say from when the capital improvement plan was voted on in December, the only adjustment at this point is the for the Newman playground has decreased by $100,000 because the schools were able to secure state funding in that amount. So we'll update that article before It goes on the warrant for the lower amount. And again, just a reminder that once free cash is certified, we'll come with recommendations about Tier 2 and potentially transitioning the improvements at the center at the height from debt to cash. Nash as one potential option. So more to come. Lastly, Community Preservation Fund. I wanted to provide the estimates in terms of revenue generated locally, 3.8 million. and the estimated state match at $361,000.

Also listed are the reserve balances. The community preservation committee is vetting their applications now. and I believe February 24th is the consultation date that we're looking at for them to come to your board meeting and discuss where they are with their applications. so that is uh all i have except to say process wise for folks who may be new to local government and the Needham budget process. As I mentioned, this recommended budget is due to the Finance Committee Saturday, so Friday. Finance Committee's draft budget is due February 22nd with a final budget from the Finance Committee March 15th. And that ultimately goes on the warrant.

And then when is free cash certified generally?

as soon as we can get it. We are actively working on it, so I don't have a time certain. Thank you. Other questions?

Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

next we're gonna talk about accepting and referring zoning from the planning board this is a ministerial act

it is and I will keep it brief the accessory dwelling unit article is to align with changes made in state law and the article two are zoning changes requested by North Hill. Article 2 only applies to that property. It would allow for a four-story independent living apartment building. They're looking at 44 units right now. but this is a ministerial act so this allows the planning board to hold hearings to process these amendments for the warden.

Can you remind us what the town meeting passage requirements are for these kinds of zoning? Accessory dwelling units, is that 50% because it's potentially housing? And then the apartment dwelling?

It's not, I believe it's a simple majority.

I believe. ADU is a simple majority. I'm not sure about the North Hill, but that's probably a simple majority as well. I can double check that.

Thank you.

It's 40B.

Madam Chair, I move that the Board vote to accept the proposed zoning articles, Article 1, amend zoning by-law, accessory dwelling units, and Article 2, Amend Zoning By-law A2 Apartments Zoning District for referral to the Planning Board for its review, hearing, and report.

Second.

Any discussion?

All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes. Thank you. Okay, so next is our town manager's report.

Very brief. I just want to give a huge, huge thank you and appreciation to our team who did this storm response. I know it's been mentioned already, but this was a very long duration storm and folks were out there plowing and hand shoveling and on sidewalk plows for many many many many hours and it was light and fluffy which is great but they did just such an excellent job and I want to also give context. There's a lot of on street parking spaces that are filled with snow right now. That is intentional. That is the place that we can put it to make sure that the roads are clear and safe. as our immediate storm response goes through. So we will have hauling starting tomorrow night. and it may go into additional nights if it takes longer and the kind of gap in time between the roads being plowed and the hauling that

It occurs is really for two reasons. First, that the hauling can only happen at night when the businesses are closed. So it's not something we could do during the day. but also the team that does the clearing and the hauling is the same team that has been doing the plowing and the shoveling. So we need to give them a good night's rest tonight so that they can operate the hauling equipment safely tomorrow night. very impressed all the way around with DPW team. And of course, police, fire, health and human services, emergency management, the schools, so many people involved in the response. But we have not had to use that muscle to that extent for a while. and I was commenting that I think there are 10 year olds that have never seen a storm with a foot of snow all at once. So it's quite a good thing to kind of get back into the rhythm.

Congrats to the whole team.

Really impressive.

So I will note that my Blue Hills weather update for the day actually indicates that this is the third largest January storm since 1885. So it looks like a lot of snow. It is a lot of snow that's out there.

Yeah. Yeah. No, they do a great job. And it's a big one. So tip of the hat.

And I'm just going to say I'm grateful. I had tremendous fun out riding in the snowplow. I did go on Sunday night and Sean was a great host and we went all over. And I will also add it was really frustrating because I think all in that stage where the snow was the heaviest, sort of during the game kind of time, everybody was struggling with their windshield wipers. which was they were all just building up snow all the time so literally he kept reaching out the window and flicking it to try then people had to line up to go spray their windshields just to clear that so I learned that there is such a thing as heated windshield wipers, and you all need to be on board with them next year. It's clearly something that could be immensely useful in plowing the roads.

before we leave the town managers can I just ask last meeting or maybe the meeting before we heard about a potential update on polling places from the town clerk and I'm wondering do we know when that is coming back

The town clerk and I are scheduled to meet this week or next to talk through the options. But I believe the goal was to have a change in polling for the fall, not for April. Oh, not for you. Was that right? was my understanding.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Okay, so our next item is a discussion of the Select Board Appointment Protocol. There are suggested revisions provided by our town manager and our legal counsel.

I don't have the town council on the fact sheet, but if you want an overview of the recommended changes. If you're willing.

Yes, sir. Thank you.

Hello, everyone. Okay, quick overview. So we were asked to take a look at the select board's appointment policy, and in particular, section three of the appointment policy, which governs joint appointments with that are made between the select board and another board in town. As that section of the policy currently is drafted, it instructs the vice chair to coordinate with the representative of the other board that has a say in the joint appointment. Coordinate with the other board designee and come to a recommendation that they then make to the full board. The last time that section of the policy was applied I believe was last spring and with when it was used to fill the vacancy on the housing authority. And that appointment process resulted in, as the board is aware,

A open meeting law complaint and a finding from the Attorney General's office that that process should have been conducted subject to the open meeting law. So that's, I think, the main impetus for taking a look at this policy now. to see what revisions are necessary to bring the policy in line with that ruling from the Attorney General. So that's what we did and have made several, you have in your packet, Marked up version containing several suggested revisions to the policy. What those revisions do are a couple of things. first and foremost make express that when the select board vice chair meets with the designee from the other board that has a say in the appointment those communications between the Vice Chair and that designee and meetings between the Vice Chair and that designee will be conducted subject to the Open Meeting Law consistent with the Attorney General's ruling.

The revisions also make reference to General Laws Chapter 41, Section 11, which the current policy does not. but that's the section of the general laws that provides for joint appointments in the first place. That statute is why we do joint appointments. It provides that when there's a vacancy on another board, the other board notifies the select board select board and that board then ultimately meet and make a vote to appoint the successor together. So the new suggested revisions make clear that this is all happening under 41 section 11. and I think finally the suggested revisions say instead of the vice chair shall meet with a designee from the other board, the vice chair may meet with a designee from another board.

there's no legal rule that says there has to be that coordination that's just historic practice in town but i thought changing that shell to a may would just offer some additional flexibility going forward and that decision can be made on a case-by-case basis as these vacancies come up.

So Chris, what would be required for documentation of those meetings to coordinate on it? Just so for people who aren't aware, when you're appointing, you're appointing for a board that you most of the time have no connection with. So you can look at the charge online, but you don't necessarily know what skills are desired by the committee or how the committee functions. you can't necessarily answer the applicants questions about how the committee works and what their schedules are like or any of that so as the vice chair there is a you know to conduct a good interview and to provide information to the applicant, you really need to coordinate. And so I'm wondering, when you're collecting that information, what's required? Do you need to take minutes? Do you need to videotape it?

Under the ruling from the Attorney General, the way this would work now is that the two, the Vice Chair and the designee from the other committee would set up a meeting and then meet with a posted agenda, minutes taken, and the meeting conducted in open session, have a conversation about what they were looking for in an applicant.

Can I just make sure that we're all talking about the same thing? Because I think what you have been describing is the joint appointments. Yes. There are also changes to the standard appointments. I'm talking about the standard appointments.

Yeah, that's why I heard the disconnect there. So the vice chair is appointing an applicant to the arts and culture committee. What happens?

under the current policy, the vice chair will invite the relevant committee chair to conduct to participate in that in that Interview. I suggested that we delete that language, which would still leave the vice chair with the discretion to invite the vice chair if they wanted to, but would have that no longer be a requirement of the policy. But that's not articulated here.

but if would it then not be then we would be into a subcommittee and have to post it and all that right if we wanted to invite

The safest approach would be to treat that the same way.

And that means it's public. So all of these interviews with people wanting to volunteer would necessarily be public.

The interviews don't need to be public. And that's something we haven't talked about yet. But I think the initial coordination between the vice chair and the representative of the other committee should happen in open session to figure out scheduling, what they're looking for in an applicant, things like that, logistics, pre-interview logistics. but there is an ability to conduct the actual interviews in executive session if the subcommittee wants to do so. under the open meeting law preliminary screening interviews can be conducted in executive session if the chair of the subcommittee makes a determination that having those interviews in open session will reduce the pool of interested applicants. So.

in that case if there was a desire to hold the interviews preliminary screening interviews in executive session that could be done but the subcommittee would need to post an agenda meet in open session vote to go into executive session conduct the interviews in executive session come out and close the meeting?

It'd have to be posted, right? 48 hours. That would need to be posted.

OK. And then how would they make I mean, ultimately it's up to the vice chair to choose what the recommended appointment is. It's not a joint decision. In the standard process, it's not a joint decision. Is there a requirement for an open meeting interview with the recommended candidate? Or what happens?

No. The point at which the interviews need to be conducted in open session is when it moves from a preliminary screening process to a group of finalists who are being interviewed. I don't think it normally works this way in Needham practice, but if the select board and the housing authority, let's say, had wanted to interview the two finalists,

We're back to joint appointments again. I'm okay on the joint appointment. I'm worried about the standard appointment.

This is going to take So much longer. The policy, though, that you have here is not at all what we're discussing. Let's take standard appointments. The policy that you have here is simply that the vice chair does it.

Yep. Yes.

Right?

It's not a committee then.

And then I guess the question is, is there a way if the vice chair is doing it without the committee chair. Is there a way for the committee chair to simply provide in a one direction communication here to the vice chair. Here's when we meet. Here are the qualifications that we generally look for. You know what I mean? Yeah, something like that. In a one-way written communication so that the vice chair would have that without needing to have subcommittees.

Sure. So I think a couple of things can happen without it under the standard appointments process without creating a subcommittee or being subject to the open meeting law. The chair of the other committee could correspond with the Vice Chair, and that wouldn't be a meeting.

And those would be public documents.

Those are public records. If anybody asked for them, they would be public. Okay. And I think if were not included in the policy. but left to the vice chair's discretion. And the vice chair wanted to put in a phone call to the chair of the other committee to say, when do you meet? What are the obligations for an appointee to the position? learn about what is going to be needed to both fill the position and have the person serve going forward. that phone call would I don't think be a that conversation wouldn't create a subcommittee or be in a meeting under the on-committee law.

because that would be the simplest, frankly, just.

Well, I mean, it might be the simplest, but it also seems like if you're exchanging emails, like if you had a standard tell me these 10 pieces of information when you meet what you're looking for, blah, blah, blah. and it's a form and you just give it to the other person and they email it back. There's kind of no ambiguity there. Yeah, Miles could do it. You know what I mean? It's part of the process.

It wouldn't even be me, right? Yeah, exactly. It would be Miles. Provide this so that we can do the interview. It's part of the posting process.

I think leaning on staff to fill those gaps is the clearest way to avoid creating a subcommittee.

you avoid the appearance of an open meeting law issue with a phone call like just keep it written and available and

Well, it would make total sense to have it just as a standard part of the process because you always want to know all those things. When does the committee meet? What does the person have to do? Are there particular skills that or whatever expertise that this committee is looking for. And I think that's what you really need as vice chair. I'm into simple. so that seems like just standardizing it and then the vice chair would do the interviews alone well with staff with miles

So I'm going to reflect that sometimes open meeting law is a good and sometimes it is a loss. I perceive that it is a loss here. And I guess I only perceive that because we got to this policy because there was a lot of frustration among committee members that they were not being heard. And I feel like we've been much more successful in the period since this policy went in place with committees feeling like they were heard and like they got committee members that were responsive to meeting their mission and being successful contributors. I am a little bit concerned that with removing all of the language, whether it's about consulting or really recognizing that there's a role, I think, that at some point that will be lost again and we'll be back where we started. There were definitely times when

even in consultation. I would have made a different decision had there not been input based on the interview from the committee. Chair, or whoever it was who joined me on the interviews when I was doing them. So I agree. But at the same time, we have to make sure that we're above reproach, and I'm not sure how to do it otherwise.

I mean, it's a balancing act. And I think there's a couple of different approaches that we could take here. The one suggested in the draft is to remove the language that the vice chair will consult on a standard appointment. alternatively it could say in the event the vice chair consults on a standard appointment at the outset of the process, they should consult with town council and town manager about the implications under the open meeting law. So, I mean, we could flag it. And so the answer, you can create as many subcommittees as you want. The only consequence of that is you have to comply with the requirements of the open meeting law. So if inclusion is the better policy objective,

we can always include people from the other committee even on a standard appointment as long as the policy I think makes express that everybody's got to be thinking about the open meeting law consequences of that choice.

I will just say that getting through it when it's really busy at the peak time would be

I mean, you're doing like... Very onerous. You're doing five to ten of these a week.

Yeah, I just don't know how... I don't think it's practical. I mean, you know... I think a standard form, giving input. I take your point, Marianne, but having the subcommittees and doing all that for every single appointment

Oh, I'm not suggesting that that's the way to go. I'm just recognizing that it's a loss. Yeah. Yeah.

Practically, the way it works is that You meet with the chair of that committee. You tee up three or four candidates. You do them. If one were to miss, You missed your time. You have to repost that again to get to that person. That's 48 hours. I mean, this is just such a mess. and I agree with Marianne this is this is a point where this is a loss but we logistically it's impossible I like the idea that the vice chair could talk with the committee chair, but I think all that would be foiled. It's like, wait, are the decisions being made? Can I tease out that you guys are preferring a candidate? you know what were you talking about I think I think just be a lot of hazards I think I think we have to be aware of with open meeting we I think we should think

maybe review what that input sheet looks like because I do think it's more than just you know kind of hours and who's on the committee and for sure and that kind of thing I do think that we're going to end up having to ask for some written input and we may not get anything back because we've asked for written input and it's just too much for somebody to get around to but

I think you have to ask. Well, I think it could be fairly streamlined that when the committee has a vacancy that you know i would keep the form kind of simple and then maybe allow a blank space for you know they could really write what it is that you know the basics would be there not like 10 things like you know when do you meet all that stuff and then sort of a free forum and then that's up to them it's up to the committee chair at that point like if they have something they really want it's on them to write it down you know, if they can't spend two minutes to write something down, then they're going to get what they get and they won't be upset. I just think this is the only way.

I can see having to post a meeting for every interview for a standard appointment could be time consuming you know people's schedules run late all sorts of things could could run amok but for for the initial meeting. If there's an initial meeting between the vice chair and the chair of the committee being appointed to, That seems like it's less onerous to just post something for that one meeting and then have the vice chair conduct the interviews.

I mean, I would frankly say that in a lot of cases that wouldn't be necessary. And maybe that's always an option. I guess that's what we're hearing. If we really feel like there has to be a meeting between the two chairs, then there's always the option. But I think it's going to be the exception rather than the rule. Because even then, there's so many committees. You know, it's not like you have like three committees and each committee has 10 candidates. You have 15 committees and they each, you know what I mean? And it's all at the same time.

Can I ask a different question? So this might apply more to the joint appointments. there was discussion of having them in executive session if there were preliminary screening committees. That presumes to me that there's a final screening committee, like having an interview in front of the joint board. Maybe.

I could look into that. I think you may be right. Yeah, I can think about that.

Well, can I ask along those lines in the instance that we had, right? So we recommended two candidates for the joint boards. and then the joint boards voted without interviews. What would that be? would that be, would those initial ones have been initial screenings because we, or were those final interviews or what were they?

To both of your questions. Because there were two finalists advanced to the two bodies that were responsible for the appointment. all of the interviews that preceded that joint meeting of the Select Board of the Housing Authority could have been conducted in an executive session. Because they would have been screening. Had we- treated those media interviews like they were subject to the open media law in the first place. Those could have absolutely been preliminary. Those were preliminary screening interviews.

But would be posted, would go into session, would go into executive session.

posted as an open meeting on an agenda with the date and time of the meeting without the names of the applicants. Then the interviews can happen in the executive session and then you know at the subcommittee comes out of those executive sessions with a list of names that they want to advance to the as finalists to the two boards making the appointment

And any discussion between the two chairs of the two boards after the interviews about which ones they would advance? Can that be an executive session or not?

Yes. you can discuss and digest the interviews themselves amongst yourselves without the applicants in the room in executive session to make the decision to on who to advance to the full board

So then are we saying that the two finalists in this case that advanced their final interview would be public?

I don't think there needs to be an actual finalist interview as long as there's multiple as long as there's a group of people coming out for It doesn't need to be a formal interview. I mean, in that example, there was a meeting. There were two finalists advanced. Those were discussed by the joint boards. That needs to happen in open session. preliminary screening of the seven or nine original applicants can happen in executive session if not required to happen, but can.

So what if we had done everything the same except posted, opened the meeting, gone into executive session for each interview, it would have been okay.

And the minutes.

Yes.

Do you need to go into executive session for each interview or you can just go in at the beginning of the interview block?

I believe you could schedule a four-hour executive session.

Schedule people within that. right okay people know you're there for the purpose of conducting interviews for ex-joined appointment as long as you properly enter the executive session at the beginning and exit it at the ending and then following the decision the minutes are released

that's an interesting question and in some sometimes yes sometimes no there may be cases because those because that purpose eight which is the one we would use in this example is intended to protect the identity and the reputation of the applicant for either employment or appointment. It can be used for both employment and volunteer board member scenarios. I think there are cases where you would want to keep those minutes protected long after the appointment is actually made. because even if we the town have chosen who gets the job, you still want to protect the applicants who were unsuccessful.

Could you release with redaction?

you could it would be a choice if if anybody asked for those minutes it would be a choice between heavily redacting them or well also it'd be video because there's zoom usually these are not enjoying but it's

Yeah. No, the meeting is on Zoom. It could be.

Well, it could be.

It could be. You're not meeting in Town Hall. You're calling in.

If it were done in executive session via Zoom, the recording would be as privileged as the minutes of the executive session. It would take a vote to release them to change that.

There's no requirement to record Zooms.

Yeah.

Okay.

Marion. And Chris, when you're talking about that with holding the minutes, you're really thinking of employment cases. I am. It's not our routine joint appointment in the town, I think. To me, that feels a little bit different, and I would have thought town interest forms could be FOIAed anyway. if somebody wanted to.

No, I think the continued protection of the minutes after the appointment is made is more relevant in the employment context than the volunteer board member context.

All right, Josh, you have a question. Can members of the full board have access to any executive session minutes of the subcommittee? So to review before the final vote?

I don't believe so, but I'd want to think about that. No, I mean, the minutes are the minutes of the subcommittee. And I don't know that the parent body or both parent bodies in this case would have automatic access to those minutes.

Certainly it was true for all of us in the case of employment issues that there was not that access.

that's one reason why I'd like to preserve the option at least to have a panel interviews of finalists so that we can hear directly that the full panel can hear directly from the candidates because

otherwise only the person who's done the interview will be able to hear directly from the candidates to me that's the value of delegating to the subcommittee or a specific member of the board to do that work

I don't think the full board would ever hear anything but the finalists because that's the point of the subcommittee but also I mean, I guess I'm less reticent to have finalists be in public than applicants across the board.

No, I agree with you. That's what I meant, the finalists.

But I still don't know.

I mean I would have to think about that yeah I mean are you thinking for the joint appointments in particular the joint yeah there's nothing in the policy that precludes that right

There is not.

There's nothing.

Maybe I read into too much. We had language there about the vice chair and the other committee representative will determine the process. and that was taken out. So it read to me like there was no option anymore to have interviews with the finalists.

no by deleting and so no that was not the intent of the deletion okay thank you

Yeah, I mean, the finalists could just come to that open joint board meeting and speak if we decided we wanted that. there's nothing in the policy that says we can't because that's the open that's the culmination and it's open and so if we're gonna if we're gonna move forward i'm going back to the standard appointments because as much as

the joint appointments are the headliner here. We do many, many, many more standard appointments. So if we're if we're going to make these changes? Does this form that we're talking about potentially need to be part of this policy? Can it be separate from the policy? Do we need to determine these things ahead of time? with the policy?

Not from my perspective. I think we already have staff support to the vice chair. And if part of that intake is that we understand what the committee chair wants from a new candidate or the logistical questions, I don't think that. I actually don't think it should be baked into the policy just so that we can change it as needed. And it's generic information. Yeah.

All right. Any other thoughts, questions before we leave this? No? Okay.

Thanks, Chris. Thank you.

So we're not voting? No. No. All right. All right, committee reports. We're getting there, people. Let's just start at the end here, Kevin.

Bear with me. Jump to Marianne. I wrote up my other agenda.

I'm always biased to that side.

I think it's because Katie's down there. Marianne. So I think the only... The committee report would be large house committee did bring their work product to the planning board last week. I think that was last week. I'm not missing a week here. The planning board now has all that and will start their process for public hearings. I think there was a lot of gratefulness. and the committee for the work that they did and the data that they brought backing up that work and there were a couple of areas that I do think the planning board is likely to try to think about whether they're in agreement or not and to listen to the public on. So I encourage the public to stay engaged. We don't have a hearing schedule yet, but I think we'll know what that is shortly. So I think that's the one committee.

Great.

I attended the MLK celebration, as I know many other people did. It was really good, well attended, and the kids did great with the puppets and the dancing. I mean, yeah, it was a good program.

Great. Kathy? General bylaw was postponed. It was last night, so I have no update. Except that you spoke. I spoke at MLK, yes, which was lovely. Very good. Ceremony.

Seal and branding. We had a meeting today. We made a few tweaks on the seal. And hopefully, a final vote will be forthcoming soon. Envision, Needham Center. Honestly, you guys know as much as I know now. You don't need to hear more today. And finally, yesterday was the scheduled Ford Award. um, event. And every year Denise Gerlach would go and say, you know, this is always on the worst weather of the year. And because it always was like this, you know, sideways rain or sleet and, and it really was once again. and one of the worst weather days. So it stays true to form. It will be rescheduled.

She is very wise. That's all I got. The tree committee met. We only have five meetings left until our select board handover, so that's super exciting. because it means we're getting somewhere. In our last meeting, we talked a lot about mitigation fees and came up with a tentative mitigation fee plan that all of the committee members are testing in their own backyards to find out what the consequences would be on lots of different kinds of lots. So if you're interested in mitigation fees, check out our next meeting. In addition, I'm going to just say once more that on February 9th, the Tree Committee is sponsoring um a presentation by the Charles River Watershed Association which again talks about trees as a climate solution um the the

The Charles River Watershed Association area, which Needham belongs to, is losing canopy. 6.9% lost between 2008 and 2021. They have created a regional tree planting and protection plan. and they will share that in their in this forum this is newly released information so you haven't seen it before you should tune in It's at 7 p.m. on February 9th and it's Zoom only. So as I said, you can do it from home. And then lastly, I just want to note that a lot of town staff and myself and Marianne, attended the Mass Municipal Association Conference Thursday through Saturday. In some cases, I was only there on Friday, but it was full of

fantastic information to support our staff and education and current status and and future planning and just really uh grateful that the staff had an opportunity to take advantage of that amenity I guess and that's all I have so With that, we're going to remove to executive session under exception six. to consider the purchase, exchange, lease, or value of real property if the chair declares that an open meeting would be detrimental to the negotiating position of the town, which the chair does declare. and not to return to open session prior to adjournment. So moved.

Second.

Okay, so I assume no discussion. Please, no discussion. It's late. So we're going to do a roll call vote. Kevin?

Aye.

Coffey. Yes.

Yes.

Marianne. Yes. The chair votes yes. Good night.

Good night. Good night.

Recording stopped.