Needham Select Board, 1/13/26

Thank you.

recording in progress uh welcome to the select board meeting for january 13th 2026 um this meeting is being broadcast by the needham channel of the Town's YouTube channel and via Zoom and is being recorded for publication and later viewing by I assume the Needham Observer and the Needham Local. If anybody else is recording this meeting, the time to let me know is now. Okay. So normally we begin with public comment, but I would like to begin this meeting instead by noting that the community lost two members over the holidays. Staff member Christina Collins, who worked in Needham's treasury office, passed away unexpectedly on January 5th. after a brief illness.

And on Christmas Eve, Needham resident and Syracuse University senior Kayla Corrigan passed away in a house fire. And I want to express my and the board's sincere condolences to Christina's and Kayla's families and we know that the community is grieving for both of these women. I'd also like to express our gratitude for the Needham first responders who worked at the scene of the fire aided by first responders from many neighboring towns. and I'd like to have a moment of silence to remember these two women. Thank you. And we will now move into our public comment period. I know we have one public comment. Chris Supple? come on up I know you gave us some advance notice and thank you for that so have a seat we're gonna give you one of these I'm gonna remind you this left board does not

it's not a conversation we're going to listen to what you have to say for about three minutes or so um and then um just start with your name and your address please great well thank you madam chair and members of the board appreciate this

Katie, how are you? Appreciate this opportunity to speak with you. I'm Chris Supple. I live at 62 Harris Avenue. I've lived in Needham half my life, probably mostly lived up on Birds Hill on Edward L. Road, very near Mr. Keane here. and I've got eight brothers and sisters so we've been kicking around town for a long time. I live right behind the golf course now. I bought that house, two houses there for the reason to be there. I have two kids with severe autism. and they spend a lot of time with me out on the golf course and it's a good community thing for them and you know one of them he's become kind of the little mayor of the golf course it also came along with a golf course crossing and a train horn and I was fully aware of that obviously when I bought it. I knew there was a process underway, a quiet zone process and I know it's happened in other towns and I figured it would happen here too and I'm still hopeful it will. I can't believe how long it's taking.

I didn't expect it to go along at this pace but I've worked in government for a good chunk of my life so I know things. can take time, particularly when you have three, you know, federal, state, municipal. I understand, but it's very frustrating. I know the MBTA quite well. I worked for two governors, Weld and Salucci, years ago, and I helped oversee transportation agencies, so I've been working with them forever. I've been talking with them about the whole project and you know the quiet zone project in general and the golf course crossing in particular and I'm a member at the golf club and know the folks there and was able to get them to agree the golf club to agree to close the crossing during the winter and then the MBTA agreed that if the crossing is closed they will tell the conductors don't have to blow the horn there in non-emergency situations. So I thought I was done. I thought we were all set. But the town doesn't want to do it, from what I can gather. And it's a three-month agreement, December 1 through March 1. So the clock, you know, running out the clock doesn't help me much.

or any of my neighbors, and it's not just me. You know, Safer, Quieter, Needham did a map where they showed how many, about 1,500, I think, within the 1,500 tax parcels, they call it, within the the zone that they're impacted by the train horn. So if you have three people in every house, you figure that's a little south of 5,000 people. there was a petition that went around some of you may have seen it was signed by seven or eight neighbors so it's got the attention of a lot of people it isn't just me but I'm probably the most impacted person in the town where I live you know right in relation to that spot so I understand That doesn't necessarily make me the best spokesman for this whole thing. What I will tell you, though, is you got Hershey Station there. and then there's a crossing on either side and they're very close to each other. There's the golf course crossing and then the Great Plain Ave bridge. And when the golf course is closed, there isn't a lot of traffic. We don't need two crossings. We really don't.

And dogs don't need to play nine holes of golf. The dog walkers can go up to Great Plain Ave. and the other thing is we're talking about not blowing a horn here and there's been a lot of talk about Gates I've clarified with the MEGA I was with on the phone with Mike Miller today, they don't care if it's a gate or chain link fence. So there's a chain link fence right now that runs all through town on both sides of the tracks. so to me it's kind of maddening because if there had never been a crossing there nobody would worry about chain link fence because that's what we have everywhere else you know what i mean everywhere through town is chain link fence so what you could do for those three months is come in and just make that chain link fence continuous. So it wouldn't be any different than anywhere else. and I heard somebody at the last Quiet Zone meeting saying, oh, well, the kids cut chain-link fences. Well, the kids might not be as smart and need them as they used to be because you don't have... you can just go over to Hershey 20 yards away and there's no fence. It's wide open on the golf course side, the whole length.

and there were two crossings people cross there all the time and then on the other side it's wide open up near Great Plain Avenue from Great Plain Avenue so You don't need to cut a chain like France. You can just go up to Hershey and walk around. And the other thing is the MBTA guy, Mike Muller, put it very well. Horns don't prevent people from going on to the right of way, as they call it, onto the track. so you know when you start when you're talking about stopping blowing the horn you don't need something that's like impossible for people to get in the track because people can just go in there right now as a matter of fact and i've made this point several times one of my kids That crossing isn't safe for one of my kids right now. There's nothing there. And a horn for somebody who's hearing impaired or somebody who's intellectually impaired like my kid

if there was a can of coke on one side of that tracks and he was on the other side he would go for it without regard to the horn so all you're really talking about is replacing the horn you don't need something like 30 feet that somebody couldn't scale because that's really not what you're trying to do. You're trying to make sure people don't go in there by accident and without knowing it. I guess my point is the golf course has been very cooperative. The guy who really loses out on this is the greenskeeper, Timmy Hood. he's a great guy and he has said no problem he'll put plates on the mowers he doesn't want the neighbors to have to listen just so he can drive his truck across and you know the sledders and the dog walkers they can choose which side they want to be on they don't need to go across and they can go on Great Plain Avenue if they really feel they they need to cross so to me

it seems like it's an overused phrase but you know a win-win whatever you want to call it nobody loses out and the residents get three months with no haunts so thank you thank you very much for your time appreciate it thanks for coming in

Is there anyone else in the room who's here for public comment? or online? OK, thank you. All right, then we're going to move into our first agenda item, which is our snow and ice update. And we'll welcome Kara Slussig, Shane Mark, and Tyler Gabrielski.

Happy New Year. So I think typically I have given a presentation earlier in the season to the select board, mostly because since I've become director of public works, we have had some pretty significant staffing and contractor challenges. and fortunately this year we're I'm happy to report we're in a much better situation so I didn't sort of have to give the the dire pre explanation about what was going to happen on the staffing side right now we're only down four FTEs in the operating staff I think two, three years ago we were down 18. So that's a fairly significant improvement that we've had. We have seen an improvement in the hiring market when it comes to both licensed and unlicensed staff. It's still not maybe where we were five or six years ago but it's better than where we were two or three years ago. So that's been a benefit. We only are down one custodian on the school and town side so that they perform all the apron clearings for the buildings, which is a huge task as well.

and then on the contractor side, I'm happy to report we've had several contractors who have left Needham come back into Needham this year and I will credit our assistant superintendent of highways, Eric Lanigan, who is one of, along with Tyler, runs the snow program for the town and he actually reached out to those contractors and was able to entice them back in partially because of the structure of our contracts we have some front-loaded incentives that can be very expensive for contractors to participate in a municipal snow program and so I think that helped and I'll also say I think Needham has a really good reputation for paying on time and not every community has that as well so we're in a better place I will say we're not where we were 20 17, 2018, as far as the size of the equipment. So we have some larger pieces, which will make doing things like clearing main roads and parking lots easier.

but we are still getting more applicants from landscaping companies with smaller trucks than we would prefer. So we're doing well. We're much better than we were last year. We still would like to get more people who operate heavier equipment to participate in our program. I just say on the hauling side, we have a contract for hauling. We really didn't do any hauling events in the last year, so it hasn't been as much of a concern, but I'll just mention the IG and his... Quarterly Publication actually talked about the snow hauling exemption that we're looking to get from Chapter 30B at the state level. which basically when I talk about all the other snow contractors, we're able to do a process in which we advertise the price and people apply to work for us versus a competitive bid process where we have to go with a low bid. for hauling that is not exempted currently. And so we have to go with the low bid. The downside with that is that many of our plowers also haul.

Hauling is easier on the equipment. We are more attractive if you can both haul and plow for the town. We think our process is fair and transparent. It's just a slightly different process and this IG actually has agreed to that interpretation and is supporting that change at the state level. So we're hoping that moves forward. I think one thing we've been challenged with more recently, and this year's been no exception, is just the unpredictability of our winter weather. It used to be we had a cold pattern. It settled in. We'd have storms come in. and we would manage it that way we're seeing still even though it's a colder winter ebbs and flows and the amount of The temperature, the precipitation type we're getting right now, we had snow a couple days ago. Right now, we have no snow pretty much around the town. It's been a challenge as far as just operationalizing our events. We can't predict as much as we would like.

So I'll say I think every forecast we've received this year has been wrong, but in various directions. So you're definitely going to get snow. We get rain. You're only going to get an inch of snow. And we got four inches. So I think that's just a challenge that we're trying to adapt to. I think just generally people have become less accustomed to driving in snow and operating in snow. So we're also dealing with a population that is less familiar with it. and one thing we had come up last week when we had the wet weather and then followed by like flash freezes in the morning is just I think a quick explanation about how we do our salt treatment. So I think I heard some comments like Oh, the town didn't pre-treat or, you know, why is there ice? There shouldn't be ice here. We don't have an ability to remove ice simultaneously from the town. So we have tools in our toolbox and Shane could talk for hours.

the whole evening on what those tools are but they don't work instantaneously and they don't work in every circumstance so when we have wet weather particularly overnight either intense thawing or a rain event Our salt doesn't function. It just gets diluted and it washes down the drain. So then when you get a flash freeze that comes in usually around 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning, right before rush hour, it freezes the entire town simultaneously. and then we go out and we treat it but that treatment doesn't work instantaneously. The salt has to be activated. Either the sunlight will activate it with some melting and it'll turn into a solution and it'll Drain, or you'll get frequent traffic that sort of grinds the salt into the ice. So we just sort of ask for patience and thoughtfulness when people are driving in the mornings and they know that it was a warmer night and they know that It's a colder morning that there may be some residual ice on the ground and to make sure to proceed with caution. We treat all of our aprons. We have sand barrels available at our

Public Properties for people to put down on icy areas. And we would encourage people to do the same as well. With that, I'll turn it over to Shane just to talk about some of the things we're looking to add and continue to our program.

As a segue to that too, one of the other challenges is during these warmer nights to the cooling mornings when that fog comes in the road temperatures will drop at night and that's what really affects the roads freezing up so as those road temperatures are dropping below freezing and then that fog comes in the moisture and that fog is what causes that black ice so that's that's why oftentimes where in the evening roads will be clear and wet no issues but by the morning There'll be some black ice out there. So some of the advancements in technology over the last 10 to 15 years has been amazing. One of the things we're are going to be implementing and you can see it on page 3-1 of the CIP for FY27 is our brine maker. provided that gets passed at a town meeting that we'll be purchasing a brine maker in the new fiscal year, installing that. How will that

Help is currently when we're out there doing anti-icing or applying brine, we're purchasing that brine and that costs us roughly $1.75 per gallon. and when we produce our own brine the rough math is about 10 cents a gallon to produce our own brine so we'll be saving that way plus we can control the organics we keep we put in it and we can tinker with the mixture on how how high of a percentage we want with organics or other alternative Clorides that we put into that. So one of the other things we're looking and it's in your CIP as well on 3-52 FY 2030 for your reference. is our ARWIS stations. That's our road weather information systems. And that's in their informational for the time being. But what that is,

is if you're driving down the highway if you ever see the monopoles with the like a little wind tower on it you have a fan and a camera that's a road information system and what that does is it's measuring air speed, it's measuring the humidity of the air, it shoots a laser down to the ground or there'll be a puck in the ground so it can give you The humidity, it can tell you if that pavement is wet or dry. If it's wet, it could tell you whether or not there's been chemical treatment on that pavement. It can tell you the pavement temperatures and it can also produce a forecast on what's happening or what's predicted to happen based upon those road weather information systems that we have. Once that gets approved we'll be implementing that. Two of the other things we're looking to implement that goes in conjunction with this is pavement temperature sensors.

when we do snow and ice control we don't care what temperature it is outside the air temperature means nothing to us it's all about what the road temperature is because salt is not effective below 15 degrees As the temperature drops, salt becomes less effective. It will work to negative, but once it hits that 15 degree mark, we have to start supplementing with either a mag chloride or a calcium chloride in order to give it an extra boost. So when we're out anti-icing before we go out and we apply anti-icing or the brine before a storm or when we're putting the chemicals down during a storm, it's all important for us to know what the pavement temperatures are because that allows us to make management decisions on whether or not we need to bump the salt rates higher or tinker them down or whether or not we need to go to a different organic or a different chemical other than just straight calcium chloride, which is just salt.

So the last thing we're looking at, and this kind of goes into conjunction with what Karis was talking about with the plow contractors. is even though we have the plow contractors we need we don't have the sizes that we need so in our operation we pair our equipment up so every route we like to have at least two pieces of equipment on every route So what that means is now we have smaller pieces. We have pickup trucks, 350s, 450s, which really aren't meant for on-street plowing. They're great for parking lots, but not really on-street plowing. So what we're looking to implement with other Other agencies have done this for a while, is putting wing plows on select pieces of equipment. What a wing plow is, is it's simply that. Imagine a wing. So it's on the side of the equipment. it's a plow that's attached that you can bring it down so now you'll have a plow in front of the equipment which is typically an 11 foot to 12 foot plow now you could put a wing plow down that's another 10 to 11 foot

and now you can have a 20 foot swath of plowing as opposed to only 11 foot. So why does that matter to us? is if we implement wing plows on the correct routes like our mains now we can reallocate pieces from the mains into the residential streets and get a more effective plowing operation. So these are things that we're looking at implementing as we move forward with our snow and ice operations.

And then I'll just, Tyler can give an update on where we are so far in this year.

So we're at the start of the season. The forecasters that we work with were predicting a bit of a return to the mean this season with a weak La Nina pattern. expecting more moisture and more snowfall overall. However, we have seen a more similar pattern to previous couple years. So we have undertaken 11 snow operations up until this point. but only one of those actually called for a full plow operation with our contractors. And out of those, only four would be what we would consider to be a full-on snow event rather than just kind of a dusting or a refreeze. And we are seeing a lot more, as previously mentioned,

of that refreeze and cold fog that's adhering to the pavement and resulting in black ice. And while overall Moisture has been it's been a less wet season than last season due to the sort of fluctuating temperatures. We are seeing fog and just normal rain that Refrigerators. they'll go into solution, kind of be diluted, and then need re-treatment. We'll have to repeatedly re-treat the same areas, especially the local rows, which are not treated every single event. So all told, we're at 8.4 inches of snow for the season. But looking ahead to the rest of the season,

We are in a bit of a lull with precipitation at the moment, but it's looking like there will be additional Storms in the remainder of January. The one this weekend seems like it'll stay to the interior of the U.S. of the Northeast. So probably OK with that. But we are monitoring another system that will come towards the end of the month. That could end up being a much heavier plowable event. And then because of the pattern, February should be a little bit milder, probably not as much snow. Sorry to disappoint you, but March has potential for another large event. So we'll be keeping our eye on that.

So we're still anticipating and ready for some plowable snow over the next six weeks or so.

One other thing I want to just say when we talk about the fog is we have seen comments about why we haven't treated or why you don't see granular salt on the roadways. We don't have a habit of putting down granular salt before a snow and ice event. There's several reasons for that. The main reason for that is when you put granular down and it's dry. it's a bounce and scatter so most of the salt you put down ends up in the gutter line as opposed to the drive lanes where it belongs even if it does end up in the drive lanes when the traffic gets on it. All the vibration in the car tires kick it to the gutter line instead of in the roadway. So that's why you won't see us out there pre-treating with a granular material before it is snowing out. We may go out there just a few minutes before a freezing rain event and do that but Again, the other thing to Karis' point is salt doesn't work until it goes into a solution. So even if we put granular material out there, it won't do anything until...

it gets diluted and goes into a solution. And that magic number is 23.3% solution once it drops 23.3% chemistry. Once it drops below that, it's the dilution of solution, which Karis referred to. And whenever that solution drops and it dilutes dilution of solution, it means we have to put more chemicals down. So that's kind of why we do what we do.

Yeah, and even if you can't see the treatment on the roadway, we have been using quite a bit of salt. We just had a delivery to refill the salt shed because we have been having a lot of salting events. In fact, the last two weeks or so, we had multiple back-to-back days where shifts were necessary, so the staff were a little bit tired, but we have to this point used 1,800 ton of salt. So sometimes even if you don't see it in its rock form, it's definitely out there. We've applied a lot of material, especially when we have to repeatedly treat with these refreeze events.

Thank you. All of you. Shane, I have to tell you that it makes me inexplicably happy to hear you talk about the brine maker. I can't really explain that. But you, I don't want to hear about storms in March. I was going to say you heard it here first.

Don't make promises you can't keep.

Yeah, no, this is great. Thank you. And thank you also for the very appropriate reminder that even We all need to use our common sense. We are from New England. Let's be our best New England self and be careful, especially in the morning commute. Anybody have anything they want to share?

Just one question. You mentioned only one event that called in the contractors so far this year. I remember with our contractors we guarantee a certain number. What's that number?

I believe it's nine hours that we guarantee, and that was actually based on the average number of hours that we, I think it's like the least number of hours we've ever called a contractor in. I think our, do you know how long the event was for? This particular event caught us a little bit off guard. Initially, it was supposed to be a two-inch predicted storm, and then we got a band that came in and dropped an additional inch, and so... We had to practice that muscle and get everybody in here quickly.

So the plowable? Yeah. Yeah. All told, that was a 24-hour event. Not all of the same staff that whole time, but utilizing the contractors and alternating salt shifts, it was a 24-hour event.

one unintended side effect of the minimum is that when we have storms that are on the line and we get deeper into the season, we're more inclined to call them in proactively because the prepayment is contingent upon showing up when we do call. So if let's say we had a four hour event and three vendors don't come in, they don't get the nine hour minimum.

Thank you.

I also wanted to say thank you for the notes that you do have salt and sand available for residents of town. So I just wanted to mention that. I did take advantage of it, and I did it actually at the RTS, which I learned from my husband afterwards was not where I was supposed to have gone. So for everybody else, the answer is I understand it's at DeFazio, at the lay-down area somewhere over there.

Yeah, so there's a series of concrete bins to the right of DeFazio. And the bin that's closest to the park, the fields, has a sand-salt mixture in there.

Okay. So at any rate, just so people know, they can go pick that up. But meanwhile, thank you to the guys who very helpfully said, yeah, this is the pile you want. Go ahead and shovel it into your bucket. Anything?

Yeah.

Go ahead.

All right. Five points. First off, thank you. Eric Lanigan, happy to hear he's doing snow fighting. That's great. Two, where's the salt from? I remember years ago came from Chile.

A lot of it comes from South America. I don't know. Our current contract is with Morton Salt and I don't know where they specifically import their salt from.

It's sourced from multiple locations, probably a combination of US and non-US sources. Okay. No, just wondering if there's like tariffs or anything that was hitting us at all. We did see an increase in the unit cost for salt. We actually had to we are participating in a cooperative bid with multiple other municipalities and they did rebid because the initial price was a 75% increase over last year's cost. But that was largely due to the fact that Morton did not participate in the bid because their bid was late. So when the cooperative rebid, they came back in at the lowest cost. So it's been a modest increase.

Okay, so we're liking the brand maker really a lot. Ours, when storms don't happen nine to five. In fact, I noticed some was like a holiday weekend at night. What does that do to- Always on a holiday weekend. It's always on a holiday weekend. We're taking on the teeth, right?

So we have a budget that's specific to snow and ice, and I believe it's the only thing in a municipality that you are allowed to deficit spend. We have not hit the budget that we have My tenure with DPW, which is over a decade, I think we've only been under that budget once. I think because in the seasons where we don't see large snow accumulation, we do get a lot of icing events, and those are quite expensive events compared to snow removal. So... The financial impact has been consistent, I would say. I would say it's more the impact on our staff physically. We don't, unlike trucking or other industries, we don't have like a and the industry maximum of how many hours you can work consecutively. We break our staff four hours every 24 hours. But as you can imagine, if you have these long duration events that If we end up with a blizzard that gives us 24 inches of snow, you get adrenaline that runs, that kind of keeps you going.

When you have 24 hours and you get two inches of snow at the end of it, it is just a slog. So I think it's more the... the physical toll that it's taking on our staff that has been challenging this year.

Are you still doing the hotel rooms?

When we have events that require overnights.

The weather station, where would you put it?

Right now, that's to be determined, but Tyler might be able to talk about that. No, he's done it.

I mean, I know it's pie in the sky. It's still early. So there's different configurations for that kind of system. The current thought, and this is... the request has remained informational only up to this point. The current thought is that there would be a central main station that would have more sensors and other features to detect weather wind speed other things like that that would be located in this in this downtown here okay and they can actually be mounted to light poles and existing structures so that they're not, you know, and we're not building a tower. Right, yeah. And then there would be three to four in-pavement sensors located around the sort of we would divide the town into quadrants and then put one in each of those four quadrants. And they are basically they look like kind of like hockey pucks are embedded into the roadway. And then they would sort of synchronize with that central tower. And that would be our setup.

And we also have the ability to do a mobile station where we could put it in a vehicle and as that vehicle travels throughout the town chasing the routes, it will gather all that information and send it back to the main. All right. This is exciting.

And so to the next point is, Tylan wants to know, okay? Want a lot of it. Thank you. We'll get right on it. I appreciate it. Thank you.

My question was answered. I was really interested in the road weather station device, but I really appreciate all that you guys do and the great thought that goes into doing this. How many variables and how those variables affect the way you handle it? I think people don't probably have any real appreciation for how sophisticated the operation is.

I just want to put in that I want to come back when the brine maker arrives. When we do the commissioning on the brine maker, I would like to be there. This is so looked forward to at this point.

We need to, like, break a bottle or something. Right, commissioning of the brine maker.

Cut the ribbon.

Can we name the Prime Minister? We can. We should have a turkey. Thank you very much. Okay, so our next agenda item is an update on the quiet zone and a discussion of the golf course crossing seasonal closure with our town manager and our director of public works.

Great. Thank you, Madam Chair. So when we last met about a month ago, there was pending questions about the We had an agreement that the MBTA would ask the town to sign if we were to do the seasonal closure. We had an example agreement that a private property owner had in place with the tea that they had provided to us, the tea had provided. as an example of the sort of thing that we would be asked to sign as the property owner. And so we had questions for our town insurer, Maya. We have heard back from Maya, so I just wanted to share that update. and they reviewed the agreement and stated that the proposed agreement would not affect the town's insurance coverage as we currently have it. And kind of with two caveats, currently under state law under tort claims act the town's capped in the amount of liability that we could be sued for.

And so they would just want to make sure that we didn't waive that cap. And there's nothing in the agreement that would waive it. And the second is that their opinion about this would change if the T was asking that we indemnify them. But again, Town Council had already reviewed the agreement and said that the example that we're shown does not request that we indemnify the T. So from that perspective, I think if the agreement that we've been given is commensurate with what would be in place for the town, from an insurance perspective, we're comfortable with that from our insurer. and so those questions have been answered. What I wanted to also discuss really is about next steps. We're about six weeks out from when a pilot, if we were to do it, if the board wanted to move forward with it. We're about six weeks out for when it would conclude. So the discussion was December 1 to March 1. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about

and all of those operational steps that we would need to take and on the administrative side, but also get some guidance from the board because we're just reconvening after the first meeting we had about this last month. and so on. Operationally, if there was interest in moving forward, this would have to get the agreement drafted and executed in place specific to this property. should be a discussion about signage, public education. But I wanted to have Karis talk a little bit about the fencing itself. And we've not kind of discussed in detail logistics, but just want to see if Karis could speak to that.

yeah so I think when we've talked there's potentially two pathways to move forward one is that the golf course would install fencing and the second is that the town would install fencing if the town did move forward and decide that it wanted to incur the expense and the time to install fencing, we would need to engage the town does have an on-call fencing contractor. So that is an advantage. But my experience on having done similar projects with that contractor Thank you so much for joining us. with our current contractor.

Do we have a sense about how long it would take if the golf course were to?

I don't know. I mean, for us, we have to work with a specific contractor. They have to have prevailing wage. And those are all things the golf course would not have to do.

Right. I just feel like it's important that the public understand that municipal purchasing takes a long time. There's a lot of steps and you have to use particular contractors and so on. So it's not always such a just get it done kind of have we been in touch with the golf course about whether or not they would be interested in taking that particular portion on?

We haven't. And I think, you know, the guidance that we're seeking from the board is really about decision making. Right. So these are the steps we wouldn't need to take if the board wanted to do this. and we had it as discussion only item and I think my question for the board is you know what information do you need before you come to a decision? Does this warrant a public hearing? Do you have any remaining questions? or not, and I think that discussion we hadn't had yet with the golf course.

Can I ask you, Mary Ann, has this been discussed with the Quiet Zone Committee?

So we had a meeting with the Quiet Zone Committee in December, and these were some of the questions that were raised, including going to Maya, et cetera. Katie has brought it here tonight at my request because the next available time that we can get the Quiet Zone Committee together is February 3rd so we will hold the meeting on February 3rd because we actually have other business related to the actual quiet zone that we need to get the committee back together for but Given that timing, I had asked if we could bring it here just to have a discussion about how this process sort of lands. I think Katie hasn't talked about, right? There are other things. If the golf course were to put up the fence, does there need to be an agreement between the town and the golf course related to the fencing right the agreement that we received from the MBTA didn't include a gate at all so clearly there's additional language relative to gates and keys and all of that we haven't seen that yet but that could be part of it.

And then this question of a public hearing. I think if we had it was a regular process, right? This was not something we envisioned when we had our goals meeting in the summer. It was not something we envisioned when the quiet zone meeting met in the fall, right? Because the answer from the MBTA at that time had been no. all right so it didn't go into a work plan is the part of the challenge we're dealing with here but if we were to do the things that we would normally do to be sure we've dotted our i's and crossed our t's and we've consulted with the public who we've had Both sides of the story come and ask us about wanting to keep the crossing open and wanting to close the crossing. So typically we would have a public hearing. All those things, again, take time. in the now six weeks that are left with where available nights to have a public hearing and how does that fit. So those are all considerations.

I'm not sure where the board is it really would be was my recommendation to Katie that I think this is something it was new information to us that came right before the implementation date that perhaps we put it in a workflow to look at for next year so that we can figure out what all the pieces are and go through the process that we typically would with the public. and then see where we are and how it fits and where we are on other elements of the crossing and what we learn. as we proceed forward we expect again with the feasibility study to look at the culvert crossing at the golf course.

Yeah, because I feel like it bears reminding folks that we thought we had a temporary solution for some of the train idling and some of the train noise. When was it? Even last? I think at this point it's 18 months or two years ago. That we thought was a great solution that everyone would be happy with, and it was roundly dismissed by residents when we had a public hearing. So I guess I

I don't presume without a hearing that we know where people actually are. I think to Katie's point, signage and having awareness, because what we do know is, as Chris said, There is definitely a lower volume of crossing when all the golf course folks are not going back and forth. But if you walk there at any time, or certainly it's easiest to see when there has been a dusting of snow, there's more than one set of footprints there. So there's regular traffic that goes through this crossing from the neighborhood.

So that's the question.

How did this, so Mr. Supple said at the beginning that the MBTA and the golf course had come to an agreement. Is that true?

The information that I have is that Mr. Seppel had asked if the seasonal closure was an option and had heard directly from the T to him that it was. So I don't, as far as I'm aware, there was not a meeting or an agreement with, certainly not with the town, but not, I don't believe directly between the golf course and the tee.

And it would be fair to say, right, that in that understanding, the tee or the golf course hadn't been presented with, they would have needed to sign an agreement, which we now understand from the tee they want the property owner to sign, which is the town. right so there's other elements that what the golf course says all right is that they will do what the town wants and needs them to do

so okay so um i i think this is a seasonal closure and i guess i i just want to understand is this an agreement that applies in perpetuity? Or is this an agreement that's renewed every year? I mean, I think the go ahead. I don't want to interrupt.

No, just when I have direction from the board that this is something you want to do, that would be, I think, something we could solidify in the agreement with the T. You know, is it a one-year pilot? Is it a what's the ongoing thing? What's the point of renewal? So those are the sorts of questions we would sort out directly between the town and the T when we were crafting the agreement. yeah yeah but we didn't have those conversations because we're just processing now is this something we want to do

Josh, the other thing, though, is we are working on trying to understand the feasibility for a permanent solution there. If the permanent solution were in place, then this would not need to be renewed.

Well, sure, but the permanent solution may be years out. I think there's no reason to delay a temporary solution if we can get to a permanent solution later.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I think what you're asking is not if in lieu of a permanent solution, do we want this temporary solution? I think what she's asking is do we want to try and pursue this before the end of the pilot season or not?

you know for the next december to march period is that yes and i i guess in my mind just thinking about the board schedule if if there is additional questions you have or you want a public hearing. I think the pathway to get to completion before March 1 probably it's not possible. If you were ready to make a decision without a hearing, without any additional questions being answered, I think it would still be challenging and we basically would be racing to get something in place for a week or two. were six weeks out. So, you know, I think that's just what I wanted to frame and, you know, have a discussion around to try to map out like, okay, so what do we do next?

Madam Chair, can I add one point?

This is really a board discussion at this point. I appreciate it, but we have all read your emails, so I think we have a very good understanding of your position.

You could do it for 700 bucks in a day.

That's not something that the town can do. Well, again, the town needs to work with the golf course to see. I appreciate the information, but this is part of why It's more complicated than it appears to the public. It's just there are a lot of constraints on the town.

You can do it tomorrow for 700 bucks.

Okay, thank you. I will turn to my colleagues. Do you guys have any... Comments?

I would say in general that I'm very sympathetic to this. And I think people are suffering from this. And I think the quiet zone effort's really, really important. And in principle, it may take a while to get the permanent solution. And so having the temporary one, I think, is valuable. But I am hesitant to do it without a public hearing, just because That's something I've learned in my first term here, that things surprise you. And it would be hard to know what the reaction is. And also, even if our best efforts pretty much could give a couple weeks of relief, I'm not sure that those couple weeks are worth what we might miss. I think it's great news on the insurance.

but I would want to make total sure on that liability front and then the public hearing so I mean I think I would be are strongly supportive of moving forward with the effort for next year to try to get it done next year because I think the culvert idea is not a year off, right? So it is likely that next year we would need the temporary solution. But I would like the public hearing. really make sure we understand our liability and educate people, put the signs, do this in a considered way for the next season, I think. Kevin?

I think We're going to be doing this until the culvert project is done. So I think it's happening next December. So we're going to be doing it. I like the idea of trying to, if we could, if... Everything lined up, I would love to do it this year. I'm not sure, you know, if we had to do it sort of, you know, soup to not said what a gate and stuff like that. But I'm not sure we could do it. Could we just extend the sort of knit the chain link fence across and does that do it for this year? But if we do it for next year, I think we would want like a proper fence and whatnot so but we have a time to do that um but i would if if we could do it as a pilot and if we got You know, if we got several weeks out of it, does that help?

And I appreciate, though, that nothing is going to be simple, that there'll be diminishing returns as we do more work to get a shorter pilot. But I would still love to try. so in a weird way I'm thinking like if we could do it if lightning strikes suppose the fence works We get an agreement really quick, something like that. If it all works, that'd be lovely. That'd be great. But is there a point we want a circuit break to say at a point, like, this isn't working for this year? And do we give you the authority to do that? You know, if it's going to take, I would love to try it.

Yeah. We're not just talking about throwing up a fence. We're talking about a fence that has a gate that locks and unlocks, correct?

Yes, I think we have to get a little bit more specificity. So a lot of the examples we were given are from Farms. Private ways. We did talk to the town of Beverly's public works director who has several of these private crossings. they have one on a private way that they have one of these agreements to that they actually don't have any barrier to so i think we have a little bit of discretion so i think we'd have to decide from our comfort level how much is it a swing gate is it Is it more of a fence? What's our level of comfort with what we install up there?

Okay. For this year, I would say... Yeah, I would want something more permanent, but for this year it'd be a pilot. I understand that.

Josh. Yeah, so even with six weeks, I'm thinking, or however long we have left to March 1st, that even seems like a short amount of time. But if we're... all interested in pursuing it for next year, I would say let's start it as soon as possible. And if we can get it this year, and we hear from the public and they're supportive, then that's great. I would say let's give the town manager our blessing to pursue it further with the understanding that it may not happen this season, but that's my stance.

I think that it makes a lot of sense to understand what needs to be done for next year, given what we've learned, and to figure out what's required to put it in place. I probably would not be in the camp of upending Katie's schedule with everything that's going on right now that we're hoping to keep on track. to town meeting because it feels like there's already an awful lot on both Katie and Karis's place between now and town meeting warrant closure time. that needs to be organized, but certainly to fit it into the work plan where it makes sense. And certainly the board could figure out when in the scheme of things we think it can make sense to have a public hearing. Those are pieces that make sense.

OK. So I agree. Well, it would be great to have it ASAP, but I think it's unrealistic just given even if the golf course were to say that they would take this on, there's still contractual agreements that need to be worked out. It seems unrealistic to me, and I wouldn't want to give anyone false hope that we could make this happen prior to the end of the pilot, which is anticipated to be March 1. So I would say, you know, maybe everything will go perfectly and everything will slot into place and we'll be able to do it on time but I don't believe that that's the case so I would say let's pursue this as quickly as feasible, given all of the other priorities that we are balancing, but certainly to make this happen for next year.

Because I agree, I think the culvert is quite a ways away. and if this can provide some relief in the short term, that would be great. I do think, again, I'll say I thought we had a great solution 18 months ago for some of this train noise and we were disabused of that notion pretty soundly. I think it's important to check with the public. I know that there's a lot of people who really, really want this and want it now. And I think that if we were having this conversation in November or December, we would move heaven and earth to make it happen for this pilot season but as we're approaching the end i think that's That's not realistic. So I would say let's pursue as quickly as possible, but with an absolute deadline to have this feasible for next year.

I appreciate the direction. That's helpful. That gives me what we need. So I'll find time on a future select board agenda with the chair to do a public hearing. We'll get the wheels in motion with the agreement directly with the T, working through the logistics with the golf course and the fence. and it's helpful just hearing that um you know practically speaking that you do want the pilot so um we will uh get those wheels moving um and more to come so great excellent

Thank you both.

Chair, move the consent to appointments?

Yes, we can do that. Second.

Madam Chair, I'd just like to point out the stormwater bylaw committee is being liquidated, which I think is appropriate.

Just cut it yourself. Thank you for pointing that out, Mr. King. OK, our next, so sorry, we're going to vote. Yeah. All in favor of moving the appoints and consent. Aye. Aye. Okay. Excellent. Motion passes. Moving on. We're going to have a Play Store AI pilot update from Liz LaRose, our Deputy Town Manager.

everybody we have a nice presentation for you i thought this was going to be the most techy thing of the evening but then i listened to shane speak and it's definitely not So as you are all aware, we had a one-year pilot of Placer AI. So if you want to flip to the next slide for me, Carol, thank you. During the pilot, we looked at historical visitation data across several municipal locations to better understand attendance and visitation patterns. Multiple departments participated in the pilot, including the DPW, Recreation, Public Health, Communications, and the Office of the Town Manager. The purpose of this presentation is to walk through what we learned and to evaluate the tool, the value of the tool relative to its cost and our capacity to use it before deciding whether or not to renew it. Thank you. So what is Placer AI?

It is a location analytics platform that uses anonymized, aggregated data collected from mobile devices to help understand how places are used. so in layman's terms when you download an app on your phone and you fully read all of the terms scroll all the way down and click accept they're using that data from your phone when you're in a location It can show patterns such as overall foot traffic volume, time of the day, seasonal trends, where visitors are coming from, where they go before and after visiting a location, general demographic characteristics of visitors. It's important to note that there's no personally identifiable information collected or shared with us from this platform. So for this specific presentation, I wanted to highlight some high level examples from the data to give an easy to follow overview of the types of insights the platform can provide. So it can help municipalities understand facility usage trends, estimate event attendance, and uncover economic development patterns.

It can also inform planning and infrastructure decisions and even support grant applications and reporting by providing concrete data driven evidence. The following examples will give you kind of a sense of how the tool can support some of these applications. So you'll see some visual examples throughout that are taken directly from the platform just so you can get a sense of what we see when we're in the platform. Some of these are specific to town locations which is I use the RTS, the library, town hall, and the town common to just give this overview and the data is from the past five years to analyze trends. So the RTS, a well-loved and utilized town location. There have been 36,000 visits over the past year with an average visit time of 18 minutes. The busiest days are Saturdays, and the busiest time is 1 p.m. to 2 p.m., which is overall not just on Saturdays.

I grabbed a snapshot of the past five years on the left. to show you the trends in visitation. There was a dip in 2023 and a huge increase in 2024. I was not here, and I'm not actually sure why there was a dip, but you all might know better than I do. I also grabbed the prior and post visit report to show, so that's on the right. It shows where people are visiting and their travels. So you can see that McDonald's is the most popular location for both for both, before and after. There's a few out of town locations that were popular before and after, including an auto service shop in Natick and what is possibly an antique store. Although I Googled that, it might have closed. Yeah, I looked it up too. Got to go there. But it's interesting data to have. Thank you. So I did the Needham Free Public Library as well, not for any bias on my part for libraries.

The library had 92,000 visits in the past year. with an average visit time of 84 minutes and the busiest day on Tuesdays, busiest time at 3 p.m., which is probably having to do with school letting out, right? Here I thought it'd be interesting to highlight visitors by origin. So you can see on the left there's a map and you can see that about 60% of the visitors are Needham residents with a large amount coming in from Newton and Boston after that. something to take into account with this data though is that it can be a little bit skewed because it's also accounting for all of the staff that are coming in every day from different locations and staying longer periods of time obviously I did the prior and post here and you can see that there's a lot of community locations being traveled between with the Dedham Plaza being the only out of town location in the top 10 prior and post.

and then I focused on Town Hall and this was really to give you an example of how the data can be heavily influenced by staff presence and skewed so it's a little bit difficult to understand the trends when you're looking at town locations. So employees traveling to and working at the location skew the visitation metrics, obviously. So over the period analyzed, which was a year, there was approximately 6,000 visits with an average visit duration of 103 minutes, which I would guess is not actually accurate. the busiest day was Saturday likely driven by events at Powers Hall followed by Monday which aligns with standard business operations and peak visitation occurred at 7 p.m. Again, I would say the next highest peak visitation is 3 p.m., which is more during business hours. The prior and post locations expectedly include a majority of Needham Center businesses and a nursery in Lincoln. I'm not really sure if there's a correlation there either. You all would probably know better than I.

Next, I wanted to show you how the data can be used to analyze event-specific metrics. I looked at the blue tree lighting from this year and the previous year. Attendance was very similar across both years, and the demographic data was consistent, so it was primarily families. I also reviewed weather conditions for both events, which isn't a metric that the platform offers. It's something that you would do separately. to explain the slight difference in attendance. So this illustrates that while the platform provides valuable data, there's often multiple external factors to consider beyond what's captured within the system. So as you can see, this year it was were wet and 19 degrees and last year it was clear and 42 degrees so that might have accounted for the extra 200 or so visitors to the event. So Placer AI has several clear strengths. The platform provides robust, visually compelling data. It's a newer AI tool designed for guided analytics. They actually launched a chat GPT style enhancement in December, literally a week before our subscription ran out.

It can be particularly useful for analyzing large events, examining long-term trends, and supporting one-off planning studies. It also can be a helpful resource for grant support and reporting. at the same time, there's a lot of limitations to be aware of. It's an annual subscription with extra fees if you want contractor access. and meaningful use requires staff time and capacity. Data is limited in certain areas such as schools and parks due to privacy considerations, so getting data on recreation events would be very difficult. and the system experiences a good amount of bugs. So there's query overload. My computer crashed several times pulling some of the larger reports. It doesn't allow aggregate report polls, so the analysis isn't really plug and play. You have to pull several reports and compare them. the traffic data specifically is somewhat limited and much of the basic data besides traffic could be obtained through free tools like Google Analytics if we were to implement them.

so overall the platform offers valuable insights but it requires careful consideration of costs staff resources and appropriate applications so I'm here to answer any questions and hopefully to be helpful for board discussion on these findings. While I think Placer AI provides valuable insights, its benefits require dedicated staff time for the data polls and analysis. which is not consistently available, making it underutilized relative to its cost.

Thank you. I'm going to start with a couple of questions. I understand that our subscription has ended. Do we have access to the data that was collected during our subscription?

Only what was pulled before it ended. So I pulled several reports, but I mean, I didn't pull everything because I wouldn't know what to pull.

okay yeah um and the reports that we do have i mean depending on what they are even could we are we sharing this with committees and entities or the public who might be interested in seeing this? We can, yes. depending on what they are.

Right. I think it's of more interest. I don't know how useful. Right. It's of more interest to staff, I think, because it's more trends based on our events and on our practices and on our operations.

Yeah. I guess what I'm really wondering is whether this type of data could possibly replace some of the costly traffic studies that we're constantly doing for various Times. One of the critiques that we often have of our traffic studies is like, well, that was the wrong day or the wrong time or the wrong whatever. But with something like this where we're analyzing data and we have data from a long time period, we would maybe get more averageable Data. And I'm wondering if you think that's valid.

So the traffic counts is actually they had the least amount of information when it came to traffic in the system. it was an aggregate. I would say that I think the new traffic signals do real time counts, which is more of a preferable method to collect that data. It's more specific.

OK, yeah, fair. All right, so I'll turn it over to my colleagues.

I had a question. So we've obviously had staff turnover, and you were not here. when this came in, but I remember it being discussed as something that would be helpful for economic development. I'm just wondering, What was, to your knowledge, understanding that you've only been here since you've been here, but to your knowledge, what was the most successful use of this or how was this most helpful?

So I would say it was most helpful in a way of understanding trends for municipal building operations and events, pretty much. from a business perspective I mean it's a question of maybe a municipal role versus a business or chamber role and how to use it so you can see the prior and post right so you can see before I went to this one specific business I went to this big chain store in a different town so that could be helpful in a larger sense but you would need someone to pull all of that data. And you basically need someone to analyze things that are not within the platform. If you wanted to use it to see how a construction project was affecting a business, you'd have to pull not just the data from this platform, you'd have to know what other variables are also affecting it at the same time.

And I feel like the benefit comes from history, right? You'd need to know how many visits that business had prior to any construction starting, then what the construction

level was I mean right and the history goes back 10 years they do have 10 years worth of the um the data in the system so you're getting data but not trending or context right you need someone specifically in that role to do that okay

Okay. Any other questions?

Yeah. What's the cost? To renew it, it's $24,150. Okay. For the year.

Yeah. No, I'm surprised at how... like, unuseful, some of the information is. I mean, that people going to the RTS and do errands before and after. It's like, that's called a Saturday. and then you know even you're right if you can't suss out the employees at working town hall it's like you see where they go before and after it's like yes they're going to get gas before they commute home or pick up prescription and so like that's interesting I'm not sure it's worth the price.

It's not relevant to me.

I also think consultants would let them use it and they'll give us stuff because they all have it. Even with traffic studies and stuff, the state has a GIS program that also measures traffic stuff too. So I'm not sold.

and to add a consultant. So you'd have to pay the base fee and to add a consultant to be able to use it. Each consultant would be $6,000 on top of it.

Okay.

Oh, okay. And question?

Oh, so aside from your survey that you did, do you know, prior to your work, maybe prior to you being here, what use cases the town has had for it?

so primarily the RTS was in that system and using it to look at trending like dates and times

So the work that they used it for was for the survey for their hours, and did that data that we saw regarding visits come from Placer AI, or did that come from something else, right?

Yeah, I think they were using it as a comparable tool.

Do we know if they did a comparison at the time? And was there any sense of correlation? I do not know that, but I can find out. I can see Karis is sort of nodding, so I think there might have been correlation between this and the survey that we got. Okay.

all right could i just add for context for those who are viewing that might not know this um this was funded by arpa so we had one-time money that we could use for economic development purposes and so we had asked the board if we could trial this with that one-time money to see if we could translate, learn the tool, translate it from providing some interesting insights versus is this a way to give us a tool to give new information, to inform a policy decision, to inform operational choices we were making and how effective is it in doing that? Because the value statement of interesting, cool, things to know versus you know is this a tool to help us make better decisions for the town or have better insights and I think on balance kind of that's the recommendation that Deputy Town Manager has landed at that I support that at this point it doesn't feel like the data that we would get out of this relative to the price is

as additive, and often when we are going to hire consultants anyways for a project because they're doing many other things, they tend to have access to data and tools that are exceed what we experienced here. I think from my perspective, I just want to appreciate the ability to try something, see if it works, and if not, then let it go.

Agreed. True. well thank you thank you thank you thank you all right so we're going to move on to the town manager's agenda i'm going to call it an agenda because it's lots of bullet points it is your agenda yes

So my first item is open the Annual Town Meeting Warrant. This is the point in the calendar where everyone's like, what?

Is it already that time? And it is. So the annual town meeting, Warren, just to say a few things about it, this is right now a List of preliminary articles. I put out a call to departments and boards and committees before the holidays to make sure we had everything that might be brewing. and so this list will change. It will evolve. So things may fall off. Things may get added if somebody catches something that I have missed at this point. And also things may shift to the special town meeting warrant if things need more time, if a particular article needs more time. So this will basically be a standing item on your agendas moving forward. I'll update you on what is moving and changing as it goes based on the pace of work.

I also wanted to ask if you all would keep in mind items that you would like a presentation on that you may want public hearings on so that I can know that, kind of know what's in your head, start mapping that out as we have. have two meetings a month, February, March, April. So that's the time frame ahead. so just high level looking at the preliminary list of articles you know some of these are annual items committee reports we have the general bylaw review committee that will have concluded their work and we'll have a review Port to Town Meeting. The human resources articles are the annual establishment of the elected official salaries. and then the four collective bargaining agreements that expire in 26. These are placeholders in hopes that we have successor agreements for those.

The finance articles are the operating budget overall and our enterprise fund operating budgets. but also DSR 5, so financial warrant article requests, requests made from departments in the budget process. Not all of these have been decided on yet if we're going to recommend to the board that they be funded, so more to come on that. in the budget discussions, but we have them listed here. Let me say some of these are us appropriating funds that are already coming in for an intended purpose, but we need articles to actually appropriate the funds. So the opioid programming is an example of that. Spending of State Funds for Public Ways. That's our Chapter 90 money. And at the Annual Town Meeting, we always have the vote on the spending limits of revolving funds. So normal course of business.

This year, we're shaping up to have quite a few zoning articles. Some of these may move to the special. But large house reviews, work is transitioned to the planning board. Accessory Dwelling Units, Pollard Zoning. North Hill has been before the planning board requesting zoning to add additional units at their site. and I'll wait for the citizens petition. Tentatively, there may be a change in the definition of a corner lot and The very brief sentence I will provide to that is to give clarity about does a corner lot have two front setbacks and two side setbacks? Does a corner lot have a rear setback? So this would bring clarity to that question. We have CPA articles. These are the applications pending before the Community Preservation Committee now.

Capital articles, what's listed here are tier one cash, which general fund cash capital and sewer and water cash capital fund multiple projects. We just haven't listed them out. We've also noted tier two borrowing if we are make changes to advance anything from tier two to actually being able to fund additional items in our capital program. For general and committee articles, the general bylaw review committee will have their report, but they also will have a recommended article for some cleanup items throughout our general bylaw. So that's why the article is listed there. Subdivision Easement Acceptance, these are subdivisions approved by the Planning Board, and in the conditions of those approvals, they have asked for easements for the town for various reasons. and Town Meeting needs to accept those easements on the Town's behalf.

the Retirement Board has voted to request an article for town meeting to consider an increase again to the base on which cost of living increases are applied for pensions. So the increase right now, the COLAs are applied at $18,000. the Retirement Board would like to go that COLA base to be increased to 20,000 and we'll have more information from them about kind of what that means. What would that mean for our pension system?

Does that mean that we don't yet really understand the why behind the request? I mean, I get that it's on a higher base, but just in terms of what led them to this conclusion that this was the right level of the ask and what size is it? Do we know any of that information yet?

I don't want to speak for them so they have that but I just would I think want to ask them to come in and present to you or write a memo so the board can have more information so more to come on that one. approving of the town seal the town seal and branding committee is moving their work along so we have an article if that is ready and then we don't know yet recommendations for Appropriations into our various reserve funds. But we have placeholders there. And at this point, I'm only aware of one citizen's petition. But of course, this is subject to change as others may come in. but 888 Great Plain Avenue is the old Hillcrest Garden site and the current property owner is looking to do a citizen's petition to rezone there.

That's all.

That's all, and there's a few on the special town meeting list that we'll get to at a future meeting.

Could I request a presentation on the planning consulting assistance? Sure. Thanks.

And I think the planning articles generally.

And if you want to review this list and just shoot me an email at any point, that would be helpful. Thank you.

Any other discussion? If not... Just a question, actually. When, and I should know this, but when does the Community Preservation Committee typically vote?

I have their schedule here. We tentatively have their consultation with the select board February 24th is what I'm holding. And let me see, their vote right now is scheduled for March 18th for them to make decisions.

Madam Chair, I move that the Board vote to open the warrant for the 2026 Annual Town Meeting.

Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay, the motion passes. So we'll move on to take a look at our 2027 budget priorities. Thank you.

This one, actually, folks don't need to come up. I'll have the team come up on the next one. Because we had talked at a few meetings about having the board vote that your goals as adopted over the summer retreat would be your budget goal. just asking that that vote occur.

Sure. Madam Chair? I move that the Board vote to approve the Select Board's fiscal year 2026-2027 goals as adopted on August 12, 2025 as its fiscal year 2027 budget priorities.

Second.

Any discussion? Yeah. So I think these are good goals. We all voted for the goals. For a budget statement, I guess the one thing that seems to be missing is affordability, like things about money and spending. So I wonder if people would be open to adding a goal about affordability. I mean, in particular, the things I'm thinking about is aiming not to have operating overrides and aiming to stay within and our capital policies.

Don't we have those goals already? Isn't that?

Economically vital.

Well, we haven't.

And responsibly governed, I would imagine.

And also in the budget documents, it was policies, town policies, town. It's right here. Hold on. Bear with me.

Calvi.

I guess, I mean, we, and maybe I'm misunderstanding where you're coming from, Josh. We have the 3%, the 10%. We have those as policies no matter what. But those just stay. these are ones that we decide on a discretionary basis you know every year so I guess um i hear what you're saying because it's obviously very important and very much on everyone's mind and i think we all share that priority but i think those sorts of disciplines actually don't change you know and but these might

Yeah, I guess as long as we're comfortable that we are maintaining and staying within those existing policies, because as I read the goals, they're everything we want and if we i mean we can justify almost spending almost anything in service of the goals i just want to make sure that there are constraints as well yeah that that limit us and how much we spend

Well, the policy guidelines that limit us and constrain us, like absolute restrictions and constraints.

I mean, that that's so Yes and no. I agree with you partially because our 3% limit has been very strict. We, by practice, just have not exceeded the 3%. The 10%, you're right, that has been more flexible. and then you know in terms of operating overrides that's just my preference like if we can avoid an operating override that would be something I would be yeah that's part of our policy yeah and I think operating overrides

may fail. You know what I mean? Those are the kinds of things that I think voters are kind of like, hey, you know, like live within your means. I think that they are rare for a reason and people are skeptical of them. But I think at the same time, Well, I think we already avoid them, I guess I'm saying. Yeah.

Yeah, it's also in the capital improvement plan, January 2026, section 514. It's the debt management policies.

Yeah, in our purple book.

Yeah. So I think I'm comfortable with that. And I also don't think in mid-January we should start rewriting what we voted on in August. But I'm comfortable with these right now. That might be a next August plan.

I guess if we want the goals that we set over the summer to be budget goals as well, then I think we should include that.

I guess the thing that I think about operating overrides, which have been not frequent here, is that nobody loves an operating override. I'm not sure that we need to say that. But at the same time, if the board were to reach a place for some reason where they believe that that was needed and where the board needed to commit Levy, Levy, Levy, Levy, Levy, Levy, Levy, Levy, Levy, Levy, question because i think the baseline operating perspective is you operate within the budget you have i mean i mean that's i think where we start all the time i think that's our philosophy but i would i would be

I think it's important to keep an open mind. And I don't want to constrain. the board ahead of who knows what. It's not our policy. We've committed that it's not our policy. I don't want to further constrain us, necessarily. I think it'll come, as Marianne says. Each decision will be a board discussion. For me, I'm happy with these goals.

Yeah, I'm happy.

Goals.

Yeah, I'm happy with this.

Aspirational. No, no.

I'm comfortable with the suggested motion because a budget is the ultimate policy document. And we just made this a priority. This is what animates the budget. are existing goals, so I'm fine with that.

All right. So the question on the table, though, is whether we're going to approve these as our budget priorities.

So I made the motion.

Did you? I didn't hear that. Okay. Right. It's all coming back to me now. Okay, so having had the discussion, let's take a vote. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Okay, that was everyone, so the motion passes.

So for our next item, I would ask if Dave Davison, Liz LaRosie, and Cecilia Simchat can join me. And they'll join your next meeting as well. Tonight, I just want to share. what we received from departments for requests. So at your next meeting, I will present the town managers fiscal year 27 operating budget and it will live within the resources that we have. We are working through the process now, crunching the numbers, fine tuning everything. to get ready for the 27th. But so tonight I just want to make sure anyone who's looking at the documents in the packet, no decisions have been made. These are what were submitted as requests. But I think they give us helpful Insights to talk through in terms of department needs and some trends that we're seeing.

So I do want to walk through, I guess, some framing thoughts first on this document. it's the fiscal year 27 budget request summary. Let me see if I can tell you what the PDF page is.

It might be page 29 in the PDF.

Yes, thank you. It is page 29. Thank you. So just a few high level kind of thoughts at what you're looking at. So in terms of the columns and the headers, there's some budget speak, Needham budget speak in there. So about in the middle column, fiscal year 2027 base, we asked departments to submit based budget first, which is what is the cost in FY27 of what you're doing this year in FY26? and that gives us a sense again of base cost increase to provide the same services, have the same staffing levels, have the same initiatives and programs available to the community. Two columns over from that, it says FY 2027 DSR 4. That's a Department Spending Request, Sheet 4. DSR4.

But what that really means is that's the opportunity for departments to tell us, what do you think you need in terms of additional staffing or additional budgetary support? either because something has changed in the work of your department there's a new need that you need to meet that you don't currently have the funds for or there's a new initiative or service you want to propose that the town could provide and what would the either salary or expense costs in our operating budget look like to do that additional work? So a DSR-4 is something new and additional that we're not currently doing and what would the cost be in 27 to do that fiscal year 27? So I also just want to know, Dave has all of us on our kind of clear path and well documented and forecasted. Sustainability Target, which is that recurring revenue over the long term for Needham has sustainably been between four and four and a half percent.

I'm not commenting on our revenue projection right now for 27. We'll walk through that at your next meeting. But generally we think of that as recurring revenue that we have been able to rely on historically. I say that because if you flip to the final page of this spreadsheet, The final bar says total operating budget, and it shows percent change. And so the base budget percent change is 5.4%. that just very high level is telling us that costs are growing faster than what our sustainable recurring revenue trend looks like. so again very high level but these are the things that if folks in town are like what's going on with money we don't have the budget out yet we won't have until two weeks these are things that we look at when we see requests come in to help us think about what resources and expenses look like compared to each other.

Sorry to jump around, but I do want to flip back to the first page and just know a few things that I would anticipate getting questions on if you were looking at this sheet. But so townwide expenses, this is a area where growth is extremely exceeding the cost increases are higher than they are for other things, particularly health insurance. And so we'll talk more about this at your next meeting, but you can see right now the percent change over last year is 10%. and this is to support health insurance for all town and school employees and so it's a large portion of our budget. I want to call out in line nine, classification, performance, and settlements is where we centrally budget funds that are for union contracts that are not yet settled.

and other kind of management merit bonuses, things that fall outside of salary increase costs that are already baked into department level budgets for FY27. We have four contracts, as I mentioned, that are currently we're working on that are due to expire. So this amount that's being budgeted looks very high relative to maybe last year, but it really ebbs and flows. Do we have one contract that's coming due this year? We have four contracts. So I don't want anyone to see that number and kind of read it out of context. When contracts are settled, that same dollar amount is reflected just through the department budget level instead of centrally here, if that makes sense. So once a contract is settled, we transfer those funds necessary to the appropriate department.

2,000%.

Yes, so the 2,000% increase. I don't want anyone to... So with that, I guess let me pause, see if there are any questions. kind of foundational thoughts that Dave would like to share, but then I guess I'd want to hear your questions rather than go through each line item.

and others as well. Katie, could I just take your example with that past line item for a moment? So when we look at the fire department and it shows a percent change of 2%, that's because the fire is in contract negotiations now. Correct. Yep. Just wanted to confirm for everybody and people who are following at home too.

Yes.

So they know what to look at.

Yep. . Dave, anything before we turn it over to the board you'd like to add?

No, just questions.

Great.

Thanks. Debt service going down.

Interest rates. It's actually payments coming offline. What project is tailing off?

It's a number, but it's debt exclusions and CPA debt are both declining because we have nothing still. to be borrowed for other type of funding source.

Can you repeat that?

There are no more debt exclusion monies to be borrowed. So the debt's going to decline each year. There are no CPA debt projects still to be borrowed. And so that will decline year after year.

Until such time as more debt is authorized.

Until such a time. Way to near.

I had a question. Actually, on the health insurance, that 11%, I know the town has been really creative in the past about finding ways to manage that. Is there any hope of that? Or is this the number we're looking at? Or could it even be higher? Like, how firm is that, 11%?

We won't have a sense of what the health insurance rates will look like until late February or early March. There's nothing that's happening in the industry that's going to suggest it's going to be significantly different. We're talking the difference may be a 1% or 2% difference. As a reminder, this is not only health insurance, it's life insurance, it's Medicare, it's Social Security, it's unemployment expenses. So there are a number of things that are incorporated into that line. So even if you had one area going down, you could have another area going up.

Maybe just piggybacking on the health insurance, I guess that's one reason why, for me, increases in headcount should be if you look absolutely necessary, let me say it a different way, should be considered only when absolutely necessary. Because not only is an increased headcount going to have a salary, but then they have you know, health insurance costs that are going to increase far more than their salary is going to. And so when I look at the DSR-4s, a lot of them are headcount requests. I guess I would just encourage you and the Finance Committee to

consider them very carefully yeah it's an important comment and i would just note so folks can see it on the spreadsheet if you're looking at line three that group health insurance and you go under um FY27, DSR4. That's where we make sure that we don't lose sight of what the added townwide expense, health insurance and benefit costs would be. So that number reflects if we were to fund the added headcount. then what would the impact on this townwide expense be because it is meaningful and you need to make that choice kind of holistically. So thank you.

It seems to me that I recall an adjustment in our Minuteman assessment this year. I thought it was an assessment down. I was also going to ask about Minuteman.

We never got our Minuteman meeting scheduled for the fall. and I don't know that we have one on the calendar for the spring, but normally I have some insight into what's coming because we've had that meeting and we know what our enrollment is and we know what's happened. at this point I have no idea what's happened it would be great to even though we didn't have the meeting to get the information from them and then I would be interested in hearing what our view is why yeah Hopefully it's that we have increased use. That's always the desire on Minuteman.

I can share the information that I do have. So this number, I can't. on line 20 was our initial estimate just based off of increases that we've had in years prior. So that was without any data yet from Minuteman. We subsequently recently did get a preliminary assessment dollar amount from the Minuteman. It's about $88,000 less than what's projected here. So we'll be able to make that adjustment in the town manager's budget. And I think normally we get a second update from Minuteman before the finance committee finalizes their budget. So we have had an increase in enrollment. This year over last at Minuteman, the freshman class incoming is five students more than the senior class that exited. and this has been the trend for the last four years.

So the increases to minimum assessment have been double digit percentage because it's based on the four year rolling average of student enrollment. and each year the freshman class has been bigger than the graduating senior class. So I think it is achieving the policy goals that the town had that Needham students utilize that opportunity to go to school there. and I think the thing that I'll be interested in discussing with Minuteman and watching the trends is when We kind of max out at the number of seats Needham can have. I'm anticipating the assessment will kind of start to plateau. And so I think that would be a good discussion to have moving forward.

So what they had said to us last year was that they actually had additional spaces that they could allocate to us which we did get last year and it sounds like if it's plus five again this year that again we would have gotten to the point where they would have had some capacity to allocate us some other seats. I think as Belmont has wound down and there's also been some shifts in Arlington, that that's sort of where the capacity has come from that has yielded the opportunity for additional seats that have come our way as students have wanted to go there so I don't know yet that we know where it will actually kind of net out and they will not be able to allocate any more seats. But that's an interesting question to ask if they have insight about.

Can I ask, just on the bottom line, the last row, so if all DSR4s are funded, it would be an increase of 5.8 percent. If none of them are funded, it would be an increase of 5.4 percent. both of those are above the four to four and a half percent growth rate. Correct. So are you considering that they would have to be cuts to the level service delivered if we wanted to not have an operating override?

So we're working through that process now, and that's what I'll present on the 27th is where we land on that.

Yep. And that has happened before. I mean, this is a part of the process every year. Yep.

We oh, any other questions?

I also want to note that in your packet is the list of DSR 4 requests, just a listing of what those were, and also DSR 5 requests, which are requests for financial warrant articles at annual town meeting that aren't items that would be baked into the operating budget. So not year over year items, but more one time. funding items that we process within the budget as well.

I have a question. Are all the DSR-5s funded through the Times Levy or proposed to be?

I'll let Dave speak to the financing sources.

That's all part of the whole budget plan and planning process is when first we go through what the actual requests are to understand what the request is. The next thing is what resources you have. and we make a determination of how to fund our recommendations and that we take into account, of course, general fund recurring. Bunnies, one-time receipts, and free cash.

Thank you.

I had a question about the fire department long range master plan. Yeah. So we have a bunch of new facilities. I guess I'm wondering, can you just talk about what would be incorporated into that master plan?

it really is a staffing study, so not facilities. And the fire chief has been giving a lot of thought to when the department may need additional firefighters and how would we know and on what metrics. So that request for funding is to be able to have a consultant come in, run an analysis, do considerations of metrics that wouldn't help inform appropriate staffing levels or affirm that we have the current correct ones and also look at comparable communities and staffing models, taking into consideration you know mutual aid and population and we run a paramedic ambulance service other communities don't so factoring in all of those things so the chief's goal with that request is to help him make informed decisions about future budget requests.

Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, we have a lot of work to do in two weeks, but stay tuned.

Thank you for the presentation. Great clarity. Great. Thanks.

Thank you to the team.

All right, so now town manager report, if there's more.

Very short. There's just two items that I have been asked about and hearing questions, concerns about that I just wanted to make note of. We had questions right around the beginning of the year about tax bills, property tax bills, and they did get mailed out. They were delivered to the post office on a normal schedule. My understanding is people have been getting them. They've been coming in and paying them. But I just wanted to make a note to say tax bills are on track and folks can always go on the town website and we have an online bill pay option as well. So if you ever happen to not receive your mail for some reason, you can always go online. Also hearing a lot of concerns and anxiety around immigration and customs enforcement, how the Needham Police Department works with other law enforcement agencies. And so we're going to have the police chief join you at your next meeting. to talk about that.

Thank you. Okay, so next up is a board discussion about the changes that we are set to approve regarding the charge and composition for the Steven Palmer Development Review Committee. and this was in our original packet on the consent calendar so the information is you know for me who didn't changed the packet. It's down at the bottom if anyone missed that change. So a discussion of updating the composition, adding one member to the committee to represent the school committee. who has jurisdiction over this parcel.

Oh, I just want to note. So we discussed back in February of 2025, including the school committee on this committee. And at the time, they declined. They didn't think they were It was in their wheelhouse. I'm really glad that they've reconsidered. So I think this is good.

Well, I think, to be fair, at the time, they didn't know they had jurisdiction, and neither did we. No, we did.

No, we did. We discussed it in February 2025 at at least two of our meetings.

Yeah, they were ready to give up the jurisdiction to the select board. And maybe that feeling has changed.

The feeling has definitely changed because they told the town manager that at that meeting.

Well, yes. So the reason that they are, I mean, they changed their mind.

So we're accommodating them. and so they are absolutely entitled to do whatever they want with their property. Because the Stephen Palmer Committee reports to the Select Board, I guess I wouldn't ask them if possible to to make a determination as soon as possible because this committee really can't function if if it can't report the select board on something that has underschooled committee jurisdiction or at least it makes it very difficult, I guess.

If I could just share, I was at the school committee's January 6th meeting and had this initial discussion with them and just want to convey my sense that The feedback that I heard was they were supportive of the committee and the process continuing on the current track. So I didn't get a sense that they didn't want that process to continue. So I hear your concerns, but I... I didn't hear them express any requests for the process to be paused or changed.

But it's good that they're going to be involved.

Right. So thus far, jurisdiction will be with the schools. But like the special zoning that still exists. will be in place until it's ever changed, right? So it's not necessarily school zoning. It's SRB, right? Zoning.

The underlying zoning is in place. The variance was specific to the current use.

All right. That'll be a strange. It'll be a good mix.

So once the committee determines a direction or reports to the select board and we accept and determine a direction, then there will be changes in zoning potentially that would need to occur. depending on what the use is. I mean, we just don't know that.

Can I just ask, just building on what Josh was saying, if we don't control the property, if it's not our jurisdiction, the committee telling us, I mean, is the committee telling us what the purpose is or is it telling the school committee?

Thank you. I'm just confused. If this is their jurisdiction, how is this going to work?

So the current committee is established by the select board to make recommendations to the select board. Again, from the conversation with the school committee at their last meeting, there was not a request for that process to change, but I, you know, imagine at future Stephen Palmer committee meetings with an appointed school committee member, it will absolutely be part of the discussion that the committee is having about how do we reconcile this and at what point do we make decisions about the use versus the ownership. And I think that is now part of one of the challenges with the reuse of the site that the committee is going to have to grapple with.

Right.

because I guess as long as it's under the school committee jurisdiction, the select board, it's really not our purview to make decisions about it.

well it actually isn't our purview to make decisions about it anyway it's our purview to make recommendations right and those would go to town meeting at any rate but but I certainly presume we would be consulting with whoever else needs to be involved I just think we don't know what those recommendations are at all right now so right so in the short term we need to add that school committee representation to the

to the committee so that we can have those conversations and sort this all out by the time we have a recommendation. Yes. So that everything is squared away.

And maybe the school committee needs to have sort of a come to Jesus moment where they decide, like, what do you guys want this? I mean it's their jurisdiction but clearly it may go on down a different road but I think they need to sort of think hard about what they want. I mean how do they want this to look? because it is going to be their jurisdiction.

Yeah, and I'm sure that the committee will have those conversations.

Madam Chair, I move that the Board move to adopt the revised Stephen Palmer Development Review Committee. Second.

Who was that?

All in favor? Aye. Okay, the motion passes. And so we're going to move on to committee reports. And so we'll just maybe start at the end and move this way. So, Kevin, do you have committee reports?

I do. Hold on. You know, this is my old packet. because I marked it up before where the revision came out. Envisioneum Center met, and we are anticipating a presentation on February 4th. It's a Wednesday with a snow date, if Tyler's correct. and Promises will have a snow day and use February 11th. There will be an online survey that will be open for two weeks. I did office hours on January 7th. The line went out the door. The questions are town services, housing development, and lack of pedestrian safety. And finally, seal and branding met. And we're going to do the headlong charge to get to town meeting. We think we have a good seal. We're going to be tying up loose ends together and to make all the deadlines. So you heard it here first. Thank you.

Kathy? T. Chalk met last night and Reg Foster of Needham Housing Authority came in and gave us a sort of off schedule update on how they're doing just because they've had some good news. which is, so as you guys are all aware, they have two projects that they're trying to move forward. They have the Seabeds Project, which would go first, and then they have the Linden Chambers Project that needs to go second because it is contingent on the seabeds. So on the seabeds, they have their state funding. They are looking to close in June of this year. And then it would take... This sounds crazy, but this is what it is. It would take four or five months to get... The Electric and everything hooked up. But anyway, it's moving and they've got their money, which is huge.

even more surprising and a bigger accomplishment in a way is Lyndon Chambers in the last round, they did not get the money But in this round, even though the Seabeds Faircloth Authority will not be quite, it's not all tied up yet, the state has actually said that they are eligible to apply and that it was a very high level person who emailed This woman, Katie Racer, from EOHLC saying that they are eligible, that she felt comfortable that they had solved this problem. So that's pretty huge. So those are moving forward. So really, really good news. there. And the town support has been very important in that process. The CPA funds, zoning, the pilot agreement, everything.

can I ask, being eligible to apply, it still doesn't guarantee.

It does not guarantee, but they did not think they would be eligible to apply. I don't want to get way in the weeds here, but there's this Fair Clause authority that they needed from CBEDS they won't actually have that until CBETS closes in June, which is past the window for applying. So what EOHLC is basically extending some kind of trust or grace to them saying, yeah, we see you've figured this out. But they didn't expect that they would get it. they've also had some creative thinking about how they could trade with another town that has Faircloth authority coming up sooner and that they could take theirs and then give the seat bets later so they've been very creative but net net they managed to persuade the state that they would be eligible which was not what they expected so a triumph but no no guarantees but all of this stuff i think until it's done there's no guarantees you know but it's it's you know it's moving

It's excellent tea leaves. Yes.

Yeah. And Faircloth is Senator.

Yes. Yes.

Thank you.

Great. Anything else? No.

Okay. Josh?

No.

Mariette? Large House Committee met last week. It meets again tomorrow. It's expecting tomorrow to review version of zoning language that could be voted to be sent to the planning board so the planning board can then take up the matter. as the next step. And so the committee spent time sort of walking through all the different parameters again to try to develop a consensus position in a couple of areas or in a number of areas. to recommend what could be sent to the planning board, what still provides the planning board some leeway that they can engage the public around for a conversation and some more to come. And what we would expect is that it will go to the planning board, the Planning Board will make a decision about some level of zoning to refer to the Select Board to do the back and forth and then start that whole mechanism again with public hearings.

for the time being there's a very tight timeline that would get to the Maytown Meeting. There's a slightly relaxed timeline that gets to the special, but everybody is still trying to work to get to that point. I think when the Large House Committee started, there was a hope that the changes would be very simple. and as is true in zoning language, by the time you work through setbacks, FAR, lot coverage and height, It no longer looks quite so simple as it seemed but they're going to try to convey it as directly and as straightforwardly as they can. More to come with all those areas in a table once it can come forward that way.

Stephen Palmer met last night. There were some 50 people in the room upstairs and another 31 online, so a pretty good turnout. what I would say in the first session of meeting with the public let me also observe I believe everybody was there from the school committee either in person or online except Mike O'Brien maybe I'm not sure I saw Mike O'Brien but everybody else. So there was high attention from the school committee to the matters that were being discussed at Stephen Palmer. Housing for sure was high on the communities list online and in person. for potential use for the site in some configuration. Particularly, there were two things. One was for a high percentage of affordable units. Another school of thought wanted condos.

There was also a lot of sentiment for intergenerational either living arrangements or other arrangements that created intergenerational active active spaces was one thing because there was a notion of a community center so something that could be used there or could it be partnered with a preschool daycare again so you could look at intergenerational opportunities for People. Those kind of partnerships were of significant interest to the folks who attend. The question of preserving the building had very mixed answers, so there was no clear consensus.

On that front, the idea was raised about whether it was a complete parcel that was owned by the town and the parcel on which the building currently sits. could sit at one end of the lot or the other end. So that sort of idea had some discussion thinking with people registering and understanding that there were being changes probably coming forward on 888. where Hillcrest Garden was, which is at the far end, and that aligns with the why. So lots of things for people to think about. at the evening and of course the bottom line is all of that with keeping in mind that the town has a very limited amount of dollars because we have a significant capital investment schedule ahead of us related to the Pollard replacement and other projects. So that will be a factor as it moves forward.

But this is the first of three public hearings. And so we look forward to hearing from Barrett Associates, how they synthesize all that feedback and some recommendations for how we will move forward on next steps.

I would say you guys ran it really well. It was a good meet and everyone was really thoughtful. It was very encouraging.

And I agree. I was there as well. It was a good summary. From what my takeaway was, you're right, there was a smattering of all different ideas. But I guess the most common that I heard from all of the breakout groups was housing.

Right. Yep. From everybody.

Great. I'll just add that yesterday was our latest tree committee meeting, and we had a really great discussion about mitigation fees. We are still working on all of the bylaw language definitions and regulations, but one of the stickiest points is what what the outcome would be, what the cost would be for people to manage this bylaw and how it would how we could encourage tree planting and planting of trees that would really be beneficial. in the long run. And so it was a very thoughtful discussion, but we were down quite a few members. So we decided to carry that discussion over to the next meeting, which is on the 21st. So join us in person or online to hear the outcome of that.

And I also just wanted to give a shout out to Needham Resists, who organized a vigil on the town common this weekend commemorating the killing of the Minnesota woman, Renee Goode, was a very thoughtful and peaceful and within the context, positive gathering. And it was very much appreciated. And with that, we will. removed to executive session based on 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, and the chair so declares, and would not return to open session prior to adjournment. Second.

And so we will have a roll call vote unless there's any discussion. Okay, Mary Ann? Aye. Josh? Yes. Kathy? Yes. Kevin?

Aye.

And the chair votes aye. Good night.

Thank you.