Select Board January 27, 2026

Good evening. I'd like to call to order the January... I'd like to call to order the January 27th, 2026 meeting of the select board in hybrid format, both in the Giuliani room at Town Hall and on the Zoom platform. Welcome, everyone. We're being broadcast live on Comcast Channel 8 and Verizon Channel 40, and it'll be available for later viewing on wellesleymedia.org. Here from the Select Board of Vice Chair Tom Ulfelder, Secretary Coletto Frank, Beth Sullivan Woods, Kenny Largess, and myself, Marjorie Freiman, Also in the room is Executive Director Megan Jopp and Assistant Executive Director Corey Testa is recuperating at home.

Before we start, on behalf of the board, we would like to thank DPW, Director Dave Cohen, and the entire staff. for their terrific response to the weekend storm. Between pre-treating and preparation prior to the storm through two days of snow, staff put in very long hours and worked diligently to clear the roads and make town conditions safe for residents, employees, visitors and commuters. So on behalf of the board, we'd like to thank DPW and everyone who worked over the weekend. Okay, our next agenda item is Citizen Speak, and I believe Megan has the list.

The first speaker is Deed McCollum.

Hi, Deed. Good evening. Thank you, everyone. I came here this evening just to talk about my concerns about the delay of decision making for the MassBay project. As people initially expressed concern about cutting down the forest, and there has been no discussion about cutting down the forest. Everybody agrees the forest must be preserved and the consolidation of the project hopefully would be contained to the five acres. at MassBay, and there's many benefits to the town. And I think by delaying project and delaying decision making and not working collaboratively with the state, we're putting ourselves both at risk of not being able to preserve the forest long term.

and we're adding cost to any future project. So housing, as you all are aware, is a critical need and I was at the real estate forum by the chamber today and Senator Will Brownsberger was there and said that he, when Karen, when the... What is it? Senate President Karen Spilka gathered them all together to ask what their legislative priorities would be in 2026. Everybody said housing. and Housing because it's critical need for Massachusetts to retain its talent to attract and grow businesses. and to house our current residents to bring in future residents and we cannot go forward as a state

We need housing. So that was made abundantly clear in the meeting. Also that, let's see. I want to make sure I capture everything the response to save the forest has been agreed upon and so I think we need to move forward and I know you all wanted a visioning session and I think a visioning session is in we're in need of a visioning session to say how does the rest of this project move forward and then to be able to deal with you know things site plan review and the parking and all the infrastructure costs and all that but that will come but we need to move forward with this project in my estimation

So I really ask that we bring our residents together to participate in the design and thinking creatively of how to move this project forward. to avoid unnecessary costs, delays, and your time, quite frankly, our town's time in further debating this. So thank you very much. Thank you very much, Deidre.

Next we have Anne Mara Lanza.

Hi, Anne Mara.

and Marlonza, 18 Oakland Street. And I'm here also to talk about the MassBay project. I assume that you all read the letter that Building Better Wellesley distributed a couple of weeks ago to you all and also to the community. We are advocating for a collaborative approach to this project. There are three important pieces to this, the forest, the college, and the housing. working collaboratively we believe will create the best outcome in all three of these areas so first the forest as Deed mentioned We are all on the same page on this and I think that you have all heard loud and clear that the forest has to be preserved and we've asked all of you to do your best to do that. It is really great to know the state agrees with this. So there is no one who wants to tear down that forest. They are advocating, the state is advocating for housing on the parking lot only. This seems to be what we all want. So that's great.

we don't think that we should be wasting money on a lawsuit when we can just sit down at the table and get what everyone in the community wants So secondly, the college. Our community has a strong commitment to education. This project gives us a chance to illustrate that commitment by supporting the educational advancements of our local community college. Mass Bay has been a very good neighbor to us and I think that we can be a very good neighbor to them as well and finally the housing housing in Wellesley as we all know is incredibly expensive It makes it very difficult for young families to move here, very difficult for our seniors to stay here and incredibly difficult for our workforce. So is 180 units the right number? I don't really know the answer to that because I don't really know what 180 units looks like.

it certainly isn't the nines that's 350 units and probably if the state had told us they wanted 350 units we would be thrilled that we had gotten them down to 180 units so there's a little bit of framing going on here So what does 180 look like? Recently, I was made aware that at the Woodland train station by the hospital, that project there is 180 units. so I want to encourage everybody to go drive by and take a look at it that project looks like townhomes from the front but hidden behind is a multi-story building and hidden underneath is parking It's a really good example of what happens when the community collaborates with the developer. There was a lot of input back and forth to develop that project and people seemed pretty happy with it. Now that might not be exactly what we want here, it's just an example, but I do think it's really important that we as a community get the same opportunity to weigh in. So in supporting what Dee just said, I have two asks for you.

First is please do hold that visioning session and give the community a chance to say what we all want. and others. Please work with the state collaboratively. that everything that our community wants is included in that request for proposal because that is our opportunity to make sure the project is what we want. So thank you all for all your work you're doing on this.

Thank you, Anne Morrow. The next person is Laura Robert.

Hi, Laura.

Hi, I'm Laura Robert, 10 Greenlawn Avenue. I also wanted to say a few words about MassBay. These are bright lights. So my understanding is that it remains unknown where housing will go and how the forest will be affected. Some believe the forest will be saved but to my knowledge we do not know this and no representative has said the entire forest will be saved. The point I want to make tonight is that saving our forests beyond its footprint is essential to saving it at all. while it would be good to have an expert opinion on it I don't believe it's okay to lose some of the forest or some of the wetlands or develop the forest edge

My understanding is that the speculative size and scope of development confined to the parking lot scenario, that's just a scenario, Wood for the first time to this, I'm going to call it an 80-acre ecosystem because it's sort of contiguous to, or it is contiguous to our centennial reservation. So for the first time to this 80-acre ecosystem, we will be introducing under some scenarios significant artificial light at night for the first time. as well as wind invasives and perhaps a drying effect which creates a loss of interior forest conditions not just for the Mass Bay Forest, but for the 80 acre parcel. So chipping away at it is not OK. And again, I think we should get a consultant.

opinion, but chipping away to achieve an arbitrary one-size-fits-all state-mandated development is unnecessary. So again, the forest and centennial, it will sort of shrink functionally, even if the acreage remains mostly the same. So you start chipping away at it. you're going to lose some of the functions. And for folks, something I just wanted to say is that The development shouldn't diminish the forest and adjacent centennial reservations' ability to provide critical functions such as wildlife habitat, sequestering of carbon, mitigation of stormwater runoff, and more. These are free assets that could be preserved with smart planning. And if anything, a new buffer should be created between the forest edge and any development.

So this goes back to sort of, I know we had conversations about another parcel in the same area, and the need to really maintain a buffer between the two. So I've swing the other way in terms of what's happening there. So if we don't really think about this, what is 80 acres of nature now will just become sort of a backyard buffer to a gigantic development possibly. So for those reasons, I hope that you'll continue to challenge the state so that we can do smart planning, preserve all of those current free assets that we have, doing a job that has a reach beyond the property for the citizens of Wellesley. And especially I wanted to thank you for your letter to the state asking for answers to really important questions. So thank you.

Thank you, Laura.

That's all I have, Marjorie.

Is there anyone else who'd like to address the board? Come on, Leslie.

Megan? I believe Jen Grover signed up through Stephanie.

You're welcome to speak anyway.

I just want to make sure.

Thanks, Corey.

I don't know if anyone saw Renee Law's opinion piece last Friday entitled, Is Inclusionary Zoning Illegal? It was a very interesting article, and I won't go over it here. I'd point you to read it. It was really interesting. But I had a reaction to it, and I think it really applies to what we're dealing with here. Renee Loth is right to be skeptical of what she calls the abundance agenda. and its promise to create affordable housing. Many housing advocates, developers, the Pioneer Institute, and state officials believe allowing by-right development as well as eliminating inclusionary zoning will streamline the process creating incentives for developers to build thereby increasing housing supply, lowering prices and creating affordability. That's a theory. a developer lawsuit in Cambridge supported by the Pioneer Institute seeks to eliminate affordable housing requirements.

This effort closely parallels the state sponsored Affordable Homes Act of 2024, what we're dealing with here in Wellesley. And that's why I think it's so appropriate. which has already eliminated the requirement for affordable housing. So it very much parallels what the new proposals are. This effort, excuse me, The AHA therefore offers us a window into all the things that can and may go wrong when inclusionary zoning and local review, local review is very important, are eliminated in favor of by-right zoning. The consequences of the AHA's abundance agenda are stark. According to the law as written in Wellesley, developers could be permitted to clear cut a forest to build 180 or more market rate units far from transit, grocery stores, and essential services. The 45-acre parcel deems surplus under the act

constitutes a significant share of the town's limited forested land, eliminating vital climate, wildlife, and recreational benefits. The law also classifies a fully used 650 space parking lot as surplus. with no plan for displaced vehicles needed by students at MassBay. Compounding these mistakes, the AHA waives all environmental and wetlands protections and eliminates affordable housing requirements altogether. the developer need not comply. Had this project been subject to local review, which I think our town does a great job of, it would have required affordability, 20%, environmental compliance with the NRC and wetlands, master planning, and transit-oriented siting to preserve an irreplaceable forest so vital to our town and its residents. In other words, smart planning. As Loth observes vibrant, inclusive communities

that preserve needed open space and develop housing in appropriate locations don't happen by accident but through thoughtful interventions. Serious housing strategies need local input and democratic safeguards. something completely absent in the abundance agenda and specifically in the AHA and we're dealing with that. Without local input, mistakes and oversights affecting affordability, site location and environmental protections will most certainly occur in favor of creating lots of housing even when it's in the wrong location. So I urge you to take a look at that article. It's very interesting. Thank you.

Thank you, Leslie. Jen, did you want to speak? Just please give us your full name and your address.

Jen Grover, and I actually live in Framingham but work in Wellesley. I'm actually speaking on behalf of the animals in the forest. They don't wanna lose their home. The trees don't wanna be cut down. The insects love where they live. We're losing so much land as it is that the developers really just want to come in and make money. In the long run, they're not going to care about the environment. So I really, really hope this land gets preserved and protected. It's just, it's so beautiful out there, and I really hope the choice to save it is the right choice. Thank you.

thank you very much is there anyone else yes please no I'm sorry you need to come to the table they can't hear you on TV Oh, yes, I'm sorry. Yes, that's our, yes. We take comments on agenda items when we're discussing that item. Okay. Anybody else for citizen speak? Yes, sir.

My name is Dennis McKay. I live on Oakland Street. I've been a resident for over 30 years in Wellesley. And I want to make three points tonight. The first point is that the state forest which abuts Centennial Park and extends up to Maugust Hill must not be destroyed. Absolutely not destroyed. It is a jewel and a gem that has been used and enjoyed by townspeople and other townspeople for decades and it's still used to this day. It should not be removed. It's too much of a jewel. It's extremely bad idea to do so. Second point is the MassBay Community College project. the thought that they can build a brand new structure, remove the existing parking lot to the other side of the highway,

is an impossible project. It will not work. There's not been a feasibility study reported yet. The traffic situation alone, the demands on the town for accommodating potentially 180 units of housing is just too much of an impact on the town. It's totally inappropriate project. My third point is the Affordable Housing Act. It cannot be let to preempt the local zoning requirements of this town. I think it's totally inappropriate it should be appealed and worst case if the town is willing to it should sue the state for conducting this I think inappropriate act to eliminate local and town input.

I mean, witness the very bad idea of this whole location. So, and some save the forest. preserve the current projects, including the parking capability, five acres, and attack the AHA. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Anyone else? Okay, thank you all very much. Yes?

Hi, I'm Brian King in Precinct D. I just wanted to say I'm probably one of the newest members of the town. Only been here for about four years now. But when my wife and I and our dogs first moved in, we were at Centennial Park every weekend. and that was our favorite place to walk the dogs and I will say this we've since had two children and we don't get to Centennial Park as much as we would have liked these days. But I do know this, as my children get a little bit older and we have a little bit more free time again, I want them to be able to enjoy that park as much as I did. And if it's cut in half, we are not going to be able to do that I have large dogs that like to run around. We need the space of that forest. And if it's cut in half,

it will make it unusable for me and my family. And so I just really hope that we do everything in our power to try to keep that park in place the way that it is today, the way that I enjoyed it for the first couple of years that I was here. and that I hope to be able to walk with my kids when they get a little bit older. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Okay, we're going to need to move on, but we encourage citizens to keep coming to Citizen Speak and writing to us. I think you all know we read every email that comes in and we're listening to everybody who's offering their concerns and their opinions. So next is our executive director update, Megan.

Just a few brief comments. Marjorie addressed the excellent work the DPW crews have done over the past two days. I did just want to note that in speaking to the DPW director I wanted to alert people that snow removal will commence tomorrow night. that's largely impacts on commercial areas to try and get the snow out in between the walkways in the street to allow access from our and so you'll see crews out in the evening removing snow. We are expecting in the forecast another significant snowstorm this weekend, and we would expect operations to be similar to how they were this weekend with potential for snow removal. Dave will be jumping on for a winter supplemental later and can certainly provide an update. The other thing, just a couple reminders with regards to the town meeting process.

We have some public hearings we'd just like to announce as we get closer. The public zoning hearing was scheduled for February 9th at 6.30 p.m. with the planning board. and then the advisory public hearing on the warrant is scheduled for February 25th starting at 7.30. Slate for both town meeting and open board committee positions has been set. So there are some meet the candidate nights coming up. People are interested in following those. Sustainable Wellesley will have a meet the candidate night. on February 11th at 7 p.m. in the Wakeland Room, and the Wellesley League of Women Voters will be having a Meet the Candidate Night on February 12th at 6.30 to 9 p.m. at the Wakeland Room at the library as well. that information is on the community calendar along with some other great events that we'd encourage people to take a look at.

Thank you very much, Megan.

Marjorie, I forgot the main thing. The town was fortunate at MMA to be awarded the website of the year for our population this year so I want to thank our communications director Stephanie Hawkinson and Andrea Arango, our communications specialist, along with our IT staff, and in particular, Mike Thompson, who largely run our website.

Yeah, it was very exciting to see Wellesley up there on the screen when they announced the winners and just a point of kind of light. When they started the MMA, they dropped the screen down and they had Matt Damon and Ben Affleck and Jimmy Fallon reciting all the names of the towns and cities in Massachusetts. because the representatives from all the towns and cities were there. So that was pretty funny. And Colette and I cheered very mightily when they got to Wellesley. Okay, our next agenda item is the consent agenda. We have one item on the consent agenda, which is to approve increased seating and expanded operations for expanded hours of operation for Trulies at 35 Grove Street. No one has asked to have that removed, Megan? Correct. Okay. Colette, may we have a motion, please?

So move to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay, our next agenda item is to discuss and vote PSI 2504, Traffic Recommendation for 592 Washington Street. Under the Planning Board's rules for review of a municipal systems impact study submitted in support of an application for a special permit for a project of significant impact, the Select Board reviews that study for traffic and pedestrian safety to determine whether the development is adequate based on established standards and to submit to the planning board any recommendations for the record. There have been some late developments, so I'll turn that over to Megan.

Well, with us online tonight are Dean Barron, the project owner, along with Jeff Dirk from Vanessan Associates, the proponents, traffic consultant. and then Alan Cloutier, who is the town's peer reviewer from Ty and Bond. I just passed out just a slight revision to the initial draft. We just had some minor corrections that we wanted to put before the board. which is redlined for you to take a look at. The planning board did take up this agenda item last night and did approve with conditions the special permit for the density, not obviously the project of significant impact. and so I will I guess turn it over to Dean and to Jeff to give an overview. The board has received both the peer review comments from Tye and Bond, the response to comments from Vanessa and Associates, and then Tye and Bond's follow-up to that.

Hi, Dean. Would you like to start?

Sure. Good evening, Board, Dean Barron and the applicant for 592 Washington Street. We're here tonight to address the traffic study that was reviewed by Ty and Bon generated by Vanessa Associates. I'll hand it over to Jeff Dirk to give you a breakdown.

Thank you, Dean. And good evening. Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the board. For the record, Jeffrey Dirk with Vanessa & Associates, the transportation consultants on the project. So if you wouldn't mind, Madam Chair, I'm just going to share my screen. I have a very brief presentation. of course okay thank you you can let me know when you can see my screen yes we can see it okay i'll make it a little bit larger here we go So as Megan had mentioned, we did prepare a transportation impact assessment for the project. I'm going to focus on kind of the PSI requirements because I know that's what the board is primarily concerned about. We do appreciate the peer review that was done by Ty and Bond. I would say it was done in a very timely fashion, given that They had probably a week to review the transportation assessment that we prepared. So we do appreciate that. I will go through some of the items that have been responsive to the peer review, which we think resulted in some constructive feedback.

changes to the project that we also presented to the planning board last night. So first off, the traffic study was or transportation assessment was prepared in accordance with MassDOT guidelines but also addresses the specific elements of the PSI requirements as well. It includes an evaluation of traffic volumes as well as pedestrian and bicycle accommodations and public transportation services, as well as safety. As it relates to the PSI, of course, one of the areas that we focus in on is pedestrian and bicycle accommodations. In this case, within 600 feet of the project, but also given the fact that Wellesley Square Commuter Rail Station is within one mile of the site, we also... evaluated the conditions beyond that 600 feet. And we do, as I said, had some comments from the peer reviewer related to that connectivity and the pedestrian accommodations that exist.

Now looking at the trip generation for the project and again comparing it to the PSI requirements, the project is expected to generate between 16 and 20 peak hour vehicle trips based on the 19 units that are proposed. that is below the 50 peak hour vehicle trip requirement of the PSI requirements. But we also know that there's also circumstances related to where the site is located. that do call it into the PSI review criteria. But as it relates to traffic volumes, we're below the PSI thresholds. we also do not increase traffic at any intersection by more than five percent both on a daily basis but also during each of the peak hours so again those two criteria are really absent the location of this project, the project would not exceed the PSI requirements relating to traffic. looking at the impact of the project.

The project was not shown to have a significant impact or increase on motorist delays in vehicle queuing. And again, focusing on the PSI requirements, there are no changes in level of service. that occur as a result of the project. There are intersections, Wellesley Square in particular, where we have movements that are operating at or over capacity. So that would be your level of service of E or F. looking at the project's impact on those conditions. The delays did not go up by any more than four seconds or less. and the impact on vehicle queuing was no more than one added vehicle in queue. So it's a really not an impactful project. And I think the peer reviewer has confirmed those findings. The driveway to the project operates at level of service of B, so very minimal delays and there's negligible vehicle queuing and that we don't have vehicles waiting on the driveway trying to get out of the project site.

The Wellesley Square intersection, which is Washington Central and Grove, that intersection was identified to have a rate of crashes. in relation to the volume of traffic going through the intersection that was higher or above the state average. So we did evaluate what those numbers Crashes, what's happening there in terms of the types of crashes and where they're happening on each of the legs of the intersection. We did have some recommendations, which I'll talk about in a few minutes. The peer reviewer noted that this intersection will be reconstructed as a part of the upcoming Wellesley Square improvement project, and that would address not only capacity, but also safety at the intersection. As I mentioned, a review of pedestrian and bicycle accommodations in this case within a thousand feet of the project that included the crossings that would take you from the project site back and forth to the commuter rail station was also reviewed as a part of the project.

We did note the sidewalks were recently reconstructed, but as we look at some of the crosswalks and where the wheelchair ramps are, there are some deficiencies as they relate to meeting Americans with Disability Act requirements. and so we'll talk about how the project might be able to advance some improvements in conjunction with both the Wellesley Square project but also just working with DPW as well. Lastly, as it relates to safety, we did look at sight lines coming out of the project site. I know as the board is very familiar with this location, there is parking along both sides of Washington Street. So as you're exiting the driveway from this project, in order to retain the sight lines that's required. The maneuver that's needed is what we call a three-stage maneuver where the vehicle comes out to the driveway, has sight lines to pedestrians in the sidewalk. When the sidewalk is clear, the vehicle then moves across the sidewalk to a point where

they're using the parking lane there as kind of a buffer between where the vehicle is and the through traffic on Washington Street to a point where they can see the vehicles that are approaching them Then they make the exit. So that's the three stages. It's basically stop, look for pedestrians, move into the sidewalk, look for traffic on Washington Street, and then complete the turning maneuver. So those are the three stages that are required. to exit this driveway as well as any other driveways along this section of Washington Street. So getting into a little bit more detail, the project site is shown in this location here, the Wellesley Square commuter rail station here, Wellesley Square in this location here. This is just the existing conditions of the property. The one thing I just wanted to point out as we look at this is just the amount of impervious area, not my area of expertise, but I think just in terms of the overall context of the project. When we look at the proposed conditions, you'll see a lot more green space as it relates to the property.

This slide shows the study area that we evaluated. Initially, the consultant, given the low trip generation for the project, asked us to just look at the driveway because that would give some indication as to how the site would function. The actual study that we prepared looked at this entire roadway network stretching along Washington Street from Weston Road, Denton Road, northerly to the Wellesley Square, Central, Washington, Grove Street intersection, as well as Church Street. What is important as we're looking at this, not just the context of the study area, but what is shown in the orange lines is where there are sidewalks. where you see the blue lines, that's where there are crosswalks. And so really the intent here in looking at this area is that highly walkable area, and you can see the connectivity between the project site and the Wellesley Square commuter rail station. So although I'm mentioning 16 to 20 peak hour trips,

It's acknowledged and I think your consultant acknowledged as well that we're expecting given the location that there'll be a high number of walking and bicycle trips as well. and so this roadway network shows that we have all of these amenities available to the project site to be able to reduce automobile trips as well as the parking demands for the project. We also have bus service generally in the area, not directly at this site, but the Regional Transit Authority does offer what's called the Connect service, which is an on-demand service. buy an app on your phone where you can request a ride by having a shuttle come down. So that's an opportunity that exists given the location of the project within Wellesley Square. So this slide shows the building looking down from sort of a plan view of the building. You do see the building layout that's being proposed, much more green space than what you saw in the original site plan.

I'm providing this just to show kind of the orientation of the building, where the driveway is as we're evaluating it. The parking is underneath the building itself, so you see the ramp going down from Washington Street. So as opposed to looking at surface parking, the parking is beneath the building. So that does offer some opportunities, not only for green space, but also for more circulation as it relates to pedestrians and bicycles. within the property itself. So this is the 19 unit project that you see in the building itself. And then getting back to my area of expertise, which is traffic and transportation, this is the trip generation for the project. This was developed based on trip statistics published by the Institute of Transportation Engineers. The most recent edition or Publication of these trip rates was done in August of last year. So it's very current data. It does reflect kind of the conditions and things that have changed because of COVID.

and so it's the most up-to-date information has been shown to be really predictive of what we can expect for traffic in this case for a multi-family residential project. So the top number that you see reading across the average weekday, this is the two-way 24-hour volume. So if you counted all the vehicles entering and exiting, standing at the driveway. This includes service, delivery vehicles, everything that you need to serve a multifamily residential project. and we'd expect that it would produce about 228 vehicle trips. That number we would look at in relation to about 9,500 vehicles per day that are going by the site on Washington Street. So the increase in traffic as it relates to that is just a little over 2%. So it's below that 5% PSI threshold.

Now, during each of the peak commuter hours, so the weekday morning peak hour, which you can see in the chart here, occurs between 7.30 and 8.30 a.m. based on measurements of volume of traffic along Washington Street. We expect the project at 19 units would produce 20 vehicle trips during the evening peak hour. And along Washington Street, the evening peak hour is 4.15 to 5.15 p.m. the project would produce 16 vehicle trips. The existing traffic volumes during each of those peak hours on Washington Street is somewhere between 730 and 750 vehicles per hour during each of those peak hours. So again, the 20 to 16 vehicles is somewhere between two and a two and a half percent increase in traffic, again, well below

the 5% threshold and that's measured right at the driveway as you go north or south from the driveway the numbers are smaller than the 20 or 16 and I'll show that slide in a minute so this is the trip dispersal so as we look at the 20 vehicle trips, 16 vehicle trips. This is how that traffic disperses itself onto the roadway network. This is based on US Census data for residents of the town of Wellesley. It's also refined based on existing traffic patterns that we measured on the roadway. So that takes into account how people are actually using the roadway network. So you can see the traffic is fairly dispersed with the majority of the traffic heading on 16-135, so Washington Street to and from the east of the project site. 25% is more or less to the south of the project site. So the purpose of this is really to look at as we look at that 16 or 20 peak hour vehicle trips,

and now we disperse it under the roadway network. You can see as you get away from the project site, the numbers get much smaller than the 20 to 16. And as we look to the south of the site, you're really talking about traffic volume increases of about five to six vehicles. and that would account for no one walking or biking so that would be just everyone driving their car to and from the project site so this really just speaks to the fact of that it's not an impactful project as it relates to Traditionally, what we've been reporting to you is levels of service delay and queuing at intersections. Now, as we did look at the impact of the project, we did note a few existing conditions, situations, and really congested conditions as the board knows relating to Washington Square. So we do have movements that are operating at or over capacity under existing conditions. Those conditions will hopefully be alleviated with the Washington Square improvement project, which will have some traffic signal timing changes.

and updates to that intersection, as I said, to enhance safety, but also to accommodate the traffic flows that happen at the intersection. We also noted that the Weston Road and Denton Road approaches during those peak hours did operate over capacity. And the reason for that is the large volume of traffic on Washington Street. So vehicles exiting from those movements do need to wait and they're delayed and there's residual queuing that happens but again the project's impacts on those movements is very minor I think we noted no more than One added vehicle in terms of queuing at those intersections. So again, not significantly impactful. And again, about five to six additional vehicle trips added to those intersections during the peak hours. So as we considered all of those conditions, we did have some recommendations as they relate to the project, the design of the project, all of which have been incorporated into the plans themselves. So the driveway to the project will remain in its present location.

It will be 20 feet in width, which is approximately what it is today. It's a little bit wider, but not by much. That 20 feet in width is sufficient for two-way traffic, but I think importantly, what it also does is by keeping the driveway as narrow as possible but still accommodating emergency vehicles as well as two-way traffic it limits the area that the driveway defines where potential conflicts would occur on Washington Street and really thinking about as a pedestrian crosses the driveway you don't want really wide driveways you want them as narrow as possible so that the pedestrian is less exposed to vehicular traffic as they're crossing the driveway. So the 20 feet in width accomplishes all of those desirable goals. Within the project site, the drive aisle in the parking garage is going to be it's over 24 feet in some locations, but it's at least 24 feet. That is sufficient for vehicle maneuvering within the garage. It accommodates the backing maneuvers.

23 feet is the minimum that's desirable for that in a parking garage with 90 degree parking. vehicles exiting the project will be placed under stop sign control with a marked stop line. One of the things we did discuss with the planning board last night and Dean agreed to implement was is a warning device out there that you typically see within parking garages to let a pedestrian know that a vehicle is exiting the parking garage. there will be good sight lines for the vehicles exiting that a vehicle exiting will see a pedestrian but also a pedestrian will see the vehicle but it was decided that this added enhancement at the request of the planning board would just enhance safety for pedestrians. So we've agreed to incorporate that into the project's plans. Signs and pavement markings will be compliant with standards as would be expected. A sidewalk is provided within the site that extends out to Washington Street. So again, that connectivity for pedestrians. You did see on the plan that there's

Crosswalks, both to the north and south of the site. The crossing at Church Street does include a rectangular rapid flashing beacon for crossing Washington Street. And then, of course, as you get up to Wellesley Square, there's signalized crossings that are incorporated into the signal system. The sidewalk will cross the driveway flush. So it's what we call a pan type driveway where pedestrians have the right of way going across the driveway. rather than having to step down and then step back up across the driveway itself. There will be EV charging stations within the project. Lastly, these last two recommendations deal with site lines. So as I said, we do have adequate sight lines to both pedestrians on the sidewalk and then to vehicles on Washington Street with that three-stage maneuver. We will be providing a site triangle plan that was requested by your peer reviewer that illustrates that three-stage maneuver. That's something that we're working on actually today, so that's going to be available to show how that works and that we do have the proper site lines.

But these last two things are making sure no signs or landscaping that would block visibility. And then lastly, you know, getting back to what Megan was discussing as it relates to snow removal is as we're removing snow from our project, we wanna make sure it's not placed in an area where it would inhibit sight lines. So that's the last recommendations to make sure that that happens. Now looking off-site, which I know is a consideration as we look at the PSI requirements. And as I mentioned, we do have recommendations mostly to be suggested as a part of the Washington Square Improvement Project. And I believe both of these are incorporated into that project. So we want to make sure that as we're looking at safety, that the pedestrian crossing times are adequate but also importantly that the yellow and all red clearance intervals these are the traffic signal timing pieces that have vehicles enough time to stop

at the intersection but also to the extent that you can't stop that you get you can pass through the intersection before the green light comes up in the other direction so to make sure that those settings are proper for the width and design of the intersection and the speed of traffic. So I know that would be evaluated as a part of the Washington Square project. And then lastly, looking at the way that the signal phasing works, and I think your consultant picked up on this as well. There are some conflicts specifically as it relates to left turn movements overlapping with right turn movements at the intersection. So I know that as the phasing is developed for that intersection, there is going to be a review of looking at protected phases there and making sure that vehicles, specifically like a right turn U-turn that's happening there at the intersection to go from Washington Street onto Grove Street southbound that some of those conflicts as it relates to the signal phasing are going to be a part of the improvements that are implemented there.

So again, these are just our suggestions and looking at the existing conditions, but we're also well aware that the Washington Street Improvement Project is going to address a lot of these conditions. So pedestrian mobility, as I mentioned, both ourselves in our review, but also your consultant was good in pointing out the fact that we have great access to the Wellesley Square Commuter Rail Station. However, there is some need for improvements to establish a good ADA compliant connection to the station from the project site. So even though sidewalks have been rebuilt, there's still some needs for additional improvements. and so the applicant in responding to the peer reviewers agreed to consult with and coordinate with Wellesley DPW to come up with a plan to improve the pedestrian accommodations. and then to work to develop a financial contribution to the design and construction of those improvements that's commensurate with the impact of the project. So I think that's just a discussion and a consideration but the applicant is certainly willing to

work with DPW and then to make a financial commitment to undertake improvements to improve those conditions for pedestrians, not only for the project, but also just generally all pedestrians in the area.

Jeff, would you mind if we jump in with a couple of questions?

Absolutely. Thank you.

Go ahead, Beth.

So Jeffrey, if you go back to page 10, In the report we received on page six from you, it says that the driveway will be at least 24 feet in width. And your recommendation says 20 feet. So that seems to be a meaningful reduction from the recommendations in the report. So I was wondering which of those numbers is accurate.

So the 24 feet would be, I would say it's ideal in an ideal situation. And I would say probably removed more so from a downtown area or a central area such as what we have here. I think the real critical piece of it is what is the traffic intensity as it relates to the project, which this is a low intensity development. If we were generating, let's say 50 or more peak hour vehicle trips, that added width is better because of the fact that you more than likely will always have a vehicle entering and exiting at the same time or that that potential increases with the increase in activity along the driveway. So with increased activity, you want additional width to allow for that to happen. This is a low intensity development in a downtown area. And so the narrower width at 20 feet is sufficient for the peak hour volumes that we're talking about. But I think importantly, it accommodates two way traffic, but also minimizes

the width of the opening. So that's significant. So I would say, yes, this is a change and this is what's reflected on the current site framework project, but I think it's a beneficial change. The added four feet width, to your point, it's meaningful as it relates to maybe the percentage increase over the 20 feet that's there. However, as it relates to this project, it offers no additional benefit and I would argue it's more of a detriment to the pedestrians in the area.

And just for clarification, how wide is the driveway right now?

Dean, is it closer to... 24, I think. It may be closer to 24 feet in width as it is right now.

I think so.

And Jeff, that's big enough to accommodate turnaround? It says for the largest responding emergency vehicle, that's 20 feet is big enough?

Well, so as it relates to the project site itself, there's not a turnaround accommodation within the site. There is for smaller vehicles to go down into the garage and then they can reverse direction. larger vehicles such as the fire truck would pull into the driveway and that and then they would if there's an emergency they're going to pull into the driveway and then they would back out is how they would maneuver here because they don't need to, given the depth of the site, they're not actually gonna pull in and make a three-point maneuver. And I think the length of the driveway doesn't exceed the distance on the fire code that would require an onsite turnaround. And so we have the accommodation that's required for Life Safety Access. But again, your fire chief will kind of render that opinion, but just in looking at the fire code, the length of the driveway doesn't exceed the requirements that would require like a hammerhead turnaround within the site.

Jeffrey, is there a sidewalk for the pedestrians to leave the property? Okay.

So this is the proposed condition site plan. So here's the front entrance. So there is a sidewalk here. There's also a patio area here that also has a sidewalk with a ramp.

So they are not supposed to walk on the driveway, is that correct?

Correct. That's exactly right. The driveway is only for vehicles.

And they can see, they can turn in from Washington. I'm familiar with that driveway. It's a tight turn in and it's a tough exit out at 24 feet. So that's why it hit me when you mentioned it. The visibility is challenging. And so if you're a fire truck, can you take a tight turn in with a car? in the other lane?

So the width, really the 20 feet in width starts in this location here. The throat of the driveway, which is where those turning maneuvers are going to happen, remains as it exists today. So that narrower width really only happens as you get to the point here where the ramp starts going down into the garage. So the throat doesn't change in terms of the width. And that's where the actual vehicle turning maneuver happens.

and my last question is did the Did the change from 24 to 20 feet happen so that our peer reviewer was aware of it? Or did it occur afterwards?

I'll let the peer reviewer respond to that obviously because it's a part of his review. It was shown on the site plans that he looked at, but it is not reflected obviously in the traffic report that he reviewed. Thank you.

Any other questions for Jeff now? Okay. Okay. Thank you, Jeff. You can continue.

I'm sorry, I'm getting close to wrapping it up, Madam Chair, and thank you for the questions. So we do have recommendations as they relate to transportation demand management measures, and these are measures obviously to reduce the amount of traffic produced by the project as well as the parking demands. So we will have a transportation coordinator that will manage this program. They'll be providing information to residents, both in a welcome packet, as well as making sure that on-site and website-based materials promote obviously the Wellesley Square commuter rail station, as well as alternative modes, including the Metro West Transportation Authority services. We talked about the pedestrian accommodations that connect to Washington Street. We will have specific amenities within the site to facilitate telecommuting, which is a significant portion now of the type of activities that happen within residential communities. So this is like having a business office, a meeting space so that you can get out of your residence and go down and have coffee or meet with someone.

outside of your residence. And so that will be provided within the site. There'll be a central mail room with a package delivery station. We know the post office is close by, but if we can eliminate other than walking and biking trips there by having accommodations within the site, that's, again, a measure to reduce costs. on trips associated with that type of activity. We did discuss this last night with the planning board. They had requested that we have four guest parking spaces within the site. And specifically, this was in response to some of the comments of the peer reviewer with having these extra spaces within the parking garage that will be not only for visitors, but pick up, drop off, ride share, delivery service providers and service vehicles. So we had the discussion with the planning board about adding additional gas parking within the project. So we've done that within the parking garage. And then we have secure weather protected bicycle parking within the garage for a minimum of 20 vehicles.

And then very lastly, in terms of the peer review comments, as I said, we're going to be responding to all of those because we think it's an improvement on the site plan. Here's where the bicycle storage is showing for the 28 bicycles within the garage. And again, most of these comments relate to the garage itself. So the four guest and visitor and rideshare parking spaces are on this location here. So when you go down the ramp, they'll be signed appropriately so they'll know where those spaces are. The aisle dimensions within the parking garage are at least 24 feet throughout the garage. There's been some modifications to some of the parking spaces to address the comments relating to tight turning maneuvers. in this area of the garage so there's been a shifting in the spaces to create additional offsets so that there's room if you back out of the space to cut your wheel make a turn and then exit One parking space here has been lengthened in order to improve the ability to enter and exit that space.

And then we've also confirmed that the garage is fully accessible. So there's a question about as a handicapped person is exiting these spaces here and they're getting to where the elevator is, wanting to make sure that there's no vertical features that would restrict their ability to get there. And so we've confirmed with the architect that that is the case, that there's no obstructions. And then lastly, as it relates to trash and refuge, Refuse, that will be stored within the garage and rollout containers. They will be then brought out of the garage and picked up within the driveway area. So the trash truck will pull in, pick up the trash, and then leave by way of the driveway. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen and I will turn it back over to you, Madam Chair. I'm happy to answer any questions you have now or after you hear from your review consultant.

Dean, did you want to say something?

Yes, last evening we decided to make some adjustments to the ramp in order to preserve the beach tree and the 24 foot driveway was definitely cut down to 20 feet so that we can tried to keep the impact to the root system as minimal as possible.

Okay, thank you. Does anybody on the board have questions now? Yeah, go ahead, Kenny.

So in terms of the parking spaces, what is the minimum size of a parking space and where do these spaces line up with that?

So I think Dean's checking the plans themselves. I believe they all meet the town's requirements for the parking spaces. I think Dean will get you the exact dimensions.

Town parking spaces, non-compact spaces are eight and a half feet wide by, I think, 20, eight and a half by 20, or eight and a half by 18, excuse me. They would need to comply from a zoning perspective.

Understand, but are these, is this the minimum? Because it looks really tight in there to me.

The minimum, you can only have up to 30% compact. Those would be seven and a half feet wide. So if, I don't know what the dimension is offhand.

So the parking spaces are 18 feet long. I'm sorry, 18 and a half feet long and eight feet wide.

Okay, thank you very much.

Nine feet by 19, I was just informed. Sorry.

Nine by 19. Okay. Okay, Alan, would you like to give us the tie-in bond review?

Sure. And I'll try to be brief because I think Jeff touched upon a lot of this stuff already. So we did review the traffic study that they did. and they did it they followed standard guidelines as far as doing it we verified the the counts that were done the chip generation in the capacity analysis and basically had the same conclusions that Jeff did. It really doesn't increase the amount of traffic that much on the roadway. I think we I had even done my own calculations and it was, you know, the intersection with the highest percentage increase was at church was 1.7%. So it was definitely below the PSI threshold as far as an impacted intersection. But then further, it really didn't cause any changes of level of service at any of the intersections. It wasn't a big increase in delay.

so overall just the size of the project isn't really a big generator of traffic so you know when you look kind of outside of the immediate site or the immediate site driveway overall it's not going to be a Be of really large impact to the area. So I guess kind of a few of the comments, especially on the most recent memo that we did that came out Friday. As far as the site distance, Jeff had already kind of mentioned it. It's pretty typical of areas that have on-street parking. You can't meet the normal site distance requirements, which is usually... 15 feet back, you pull up and you can see pretty well come out which is great in most locations. Anywhere where you have on-street parking, you're not going to be able to do that normal type of maneuver. So the three stages, pretty typical. However, kind of the question is, well, how far do you have to pull up?

so I think that's where that graphic is really important because it's going to have to kind of be laid out you know are you you know just into the parking lane a little bit? Is your front of your car extending into the drive aisle? That's kind of the more the concern we have is, do you have to pull up so far that you're blocking northbound Washington Street traffic as you're waiting to be able to see if you can get by southbound traffic. So I think that upcoming graphic, I think that's going to be important to really understand how much of an issue is that. As far as the pedestrians that are crossing there, yeah, there's a building right there. So I think putting in that pedestrian warning device, I think that'll be important. And that'll be kind of a big help. to kind of talk about the pedestrian getting to the commuter rail. That was definitely a concern that we brought up.

They did the initial analysis, which really did look at the sidewalks in the area. And for the most part, There's some good sidewalk conditions in this area, really in the downtown area of Wellesley. So it was really now actually getting... to the commuter rail which you're kind of going through a parking lot so it's kind of a little atypical I think maybe with some of these but we want to make sure people can get all the way to the commuter rail. I think that'll be an important part of this project if people can walk there easily. and Safely, that'll only decrease the amount of traffic that's generated by the project. And Jeff was correct when he said that when they did it, they followed kind of the standard Institute of Transportation Engineers volumes they didn't do any reductions for hey if we get a lot of people taking the commuter rail you know they're kind of following the you know assuming that there's not a nearby commuter rail station so hopefully it can be a little bit less by again just being so close to that commuter rail

So a couple of, I guess of our, well, I guess one thing I want to mention before I get to onsite, the Wellesley Square. that intersection. So Jeff had kind of mentioned on this a little bit before. There are potential safety improvements there. It is a little, let's say awkward, but it also kind of goes against the rules as far as traffic signals. that people could take a left on the Grove but really the indication coming from the other side of Washington wouldn't give people on Washington northbound they would have no clue that somebody might be able to turn left in front of them because they have an arrow green arrow now restricting left turns or something like that is goes far beyond the scope of this other project you know um You know, this project wouldn't be responsible for doing term restrictions.

That would obviously fall for, you know, be part of a kind of a townwide or some kind of different project than this. Now kind of getting a little bit to on-site, one thing that we did ask for, I think in this, I mean, some of these are when you're getting a site plan versus, you know, people going in and who has authority. The line can be a little blurry. But there were some discussions as far as the 20 foot wide roadway or driveway. We had actually kind of brought it up about doing a turning template. At the time, we were more thinking about once you come in actually taking that right turn. But I think that'll be also very effective as far as showing it. emergency vehicle, fire truck and dumpster or trash truck kind of coming in the site to not just make sure that it works from the town's perspective, but really for the residents perspective. if they come down, can they make the turn?

These are stuff that you can kind of run just to make sure that you don't have any modifications. Usually turning right is kind of the more difficult part. So making sure people can actually take a turn right get into the garage and especially with a new parking space is even more reason to kind of verify that the turn can be made. But that goes into as far as running a fire truck. We want to make sure, especially with the narrower driveway, make sure that the fire truck can get into the site, even though knowing they're going to back up, you know, if there's any tweaks that need to be made, you know, after looking at the template. that'll be great. Kind of a question I guess maybe that came up earlier. I know the dumpsters are going to be wheeled out and be picked up. And that's kind of new. So I just want to ask, is then the dump truck going to back out of the driveway?

No, it's backing down to the bottom, loading the trash on the truck and driving out the room.

So is he... Is he backing into the site? I mean, okay. So he'll kind of loop out onto Washington Street. He's going to kind of turn left a little bit, back in.

Well, we're using a smaller apparatus of not using those big 10-wheeler dump trucks and trash trucks. We're using a six-wheel trash truck. And we had really good success with that at 26 Union Street that we just finished. Roll the dumpsters out, empty it, and they drive out. Also, the point of entry at the mouth of the ramp is 26 feet.

Mm-hmm.

have plenty of room to pull up technically 10 feet past the edge of that radius and back in at the 50 percent point and turn at 90 degrees and end up right down the middle of the ramp and load those Roll the dumpsters to the truck, empty them, and drive out.

Okay. So I'm just trying to go through the rest of my list, make sure I didn't have anything else. Okay. Yeah, so I think the turning template, I think it'll just be helpful to kind of really show that graphically as far as what the impacts are. It already, the site plan looks like it definitely addressed a few of the other issues that we had put in. Yeah, so I think that's kind of the really I think the site distance. Oh. and obviously, I guess enforcing or making it a point for, I know Amazon doesn't always like to pull into places when they're making deliveries. and as the deliveries we're worried about a few things if if that parking out in front wasn't heavily utilized you know be able to pull right in you know you drop off your Amazon package or DoorDash or whatever then take off but I know it is pretty well utilized So,

If people aren't pulling in or they're doing something, we don't want anybody double parking. We don't want anybody pulling right up to the driveway either because that's going to really make it difficult for somebody coming out to be able to see left or right. So I think that's maybe kind of a bit of a management thing. but it's just something we kind of wanted to make sure everybody's aware of.

We take the opportunity to put some signage up about six feet off the ground so the delivery vehicles could see that we want them to use the ramp, get off Route 16, not double park. We've also had luck with making some requests with FedEx and the postal service and UPS, Amazon, Prime, and telling them we want deliveries between 9 and 3. We don't want them at the peak traffic hours. and avoid as much activity as we can.

My questions are related to this particular topic. So my question about the parking spots and the size goes to the issue of the deliveries. Yes. Yes.

pull onto the ramp but all the other deliveries we're going to request that they come downstairs unload near the elevator and then we have a concierge person in the building that's going to help manage that okay We're trying to mitigate the double parking. Amazon people just dumping the vehicle anywhere they want and running to multiple locations, trying to keep FedEx using smaller vehicles. If they have to come in, they have to go into the ramp. and I have a pretty good rapport with Amazon and FedEx. We've tried this on other locations and the drivers seem to be pretty respectful of what we're trying to do.

And these routes are usually assigned so we get the same people most of the time and we can talk to them and hopefully encourage them to use the right access points and time it when we want it.

so it strikes me that I take your word for it that that works but that is all dependent on people following the rules and if they don't follow the rules I think practically speaking the place they're going to park is on Washington Street and if they do that that could create I would think pretty significant issues if it depending on the time of day so what's plan B if they don't follow the directions.

Concierge is going to be positioned in the front of the building and his goal is to help people with bringing in suitcases, FedEx deliveries, contractors coming in and trying to do some work on the facility. We've made the ceiling height taller in the garage so they can accept construction vans. and they clear space for them so they can stay inside and out of the way. And the goal is to try to keep as little activity in the front of the building as possible and try not to congest Route 16.

So I take that this is sort of a big focus area where you'll dedicate resources to make sure that the packages come in and out fast.

Right. And at this time, the Belclair has actually instituted this process and it's worked really well. And we've talked with residents over there and the management team, and they've told us that once they had somebody on site from eight to four helping with this, it cut all the problems down.

Thank you.

I just have a couple of questions. I'm not sure if it's for Jeffrey, Alan, or maybe even Sheila, or actually Dean, maybe two. One is, and then maybe Dean, this is for you. are you going to encourage residents to consider using like a delivery day so you know for example with Amazon you know there's a discount for certain things if you use a delivery date cuts down on deliveries and etc etc and if your residents are inclined to use a certain delivery dates can certainly reduce frequency. So I don't know if that's worth putting in your welcome packet as something to work on as a community. and then Sheila or Alan, I know we looked at the access routes to the T station, but the route one bus stop is not that far away either. And as a direct connection, a pretty frequent and reliable connection to Woodland. and so have we looked at that to see if there are any improvements that need to be done in terms of access to that and I think it would all be fine. I've walked it myself but I'm not a traffic engineer.

We haven't considered restricting the dates. I never thought of that.

Well, not restricting, but just encouraging people to do a delivery date.

Yeah, we could, sure. One of the reasons we have the Belclair Institute of the Concierge was because they had too many days of activity. And I think it's a good idea to try to get people on board with that.

and then my last question is I know some of the residents were concerned about our neighbors were concerned about exiting vehicles and pedestrians and bicyclists walking by and you know vehicles exiting at speed and I think there's been some modifications I know there's been some modifications since the first discussion with planning and there's flashing lights and there's a visual cue. Is there anything else that could be done or is that pretty much the best quality? modifications that can be made for pedestrian safety crossing the sidewalk there.

Well, that building has been there for 115 years. And if you've been around the town, the Waterman Funeral Parlor held some of the biggest funerals up to 300 people at a time. we haven't ever heard of any incidents crossing that sidewalk with cars with pedestrians or any accidents so we're pretty confident that with the uh the warning system for the pedestrians and uh We've also changed the grade on the ramp. So a section of the ramp is level with the sidewalk, which is higher than the road. So we'll have a pretty good sight line now, as opposed to being coming up a hill and then going over the sidewalk and back down to the street.

I do think that's a big improvement to be honest because when you're, I live on a hill and people, they gun the hill and then trying to get it to slow down is definitely an issue.

Marjorie, Dean, didn't you add I think as part of the discussion a brick wall Bending, too. So that will also enhance the visual separation between the driveway and the sidewalk.

Right. So there's a color differential. Paver that goes right along the edge of the sidewalk. And that gives people line of demarcation. So pedestrians know to stay on one side and cars on the other.

Jeff, would you mind putting back up the slide that shows the apron of the driveway that you were explaining to us? So Megan, how close do cars park on Washington Street to that driveway? The reason I'm asking is because the board has discussed and in fact removed parking spaces in a couple of places where it's really critical. And I'm concerned about Alan's comment about how far the cars are going to have to pull out in order to be able to see both ways on Washington Street.

I think it's about 20 feet from the driveway.

And Alan, in your estimation, is that sufficient?

Well, this is why we wanted that side triangles to kind of just show, um, to kind of have a look. Actually, in a way, I think the other direction might even be the one that's a little bit more critical.

Can you tell us what do you mean by a sight triangle?

So what happens as you're pulling up to the roadway, you know, you're not in the middle of the road. You're kind of on the driveway waiting to look out. If you look to your left and you look to your right, you know you're not looking directly across you're kind of looking at where the vehicles are driving in the road so you kind of have a little bit of a triangle effect there I'm just concerned if it's SUVs you might not be able to see over them Yeah, so normally when you have on-street parking, a lot of times you can't. So this is where, again, if you don't have on-street parking, it's still a triangle, right? But, you know, if you don't have vegetation on the edge of the road, you can usually see it just fine unless it's a sharp curve. When you have on-street parking, it's usually never far enough away to have no impact on sight lines. So that's where usually you go up and then you inch up a little bit forward. a little bit further. Now, what we don't want to do is have you to have your front end in the middle of the travel lane, right, as you're trying to see.

So that's kind of why we want to just kind of verify, make sure we're OK there. We don't want to be creating an issue, although I guess this place was open before, but we don't want to, I guess, reintroduce an issue. and that's where also if you go geez you know what this is really bad then maybe you're more okay does one space need to be modified taken up taken out um So I think that's where, you know, we just want to have that down for the planning purposes.

Thank you. Other questions from the board? Tom?

I appreciate all the work that's been done and the questions that people are asking. But I think it's important to remember that there really is an issue of human nature here, too. You get into the winter holidays. you have 15 deliveries from Amazon Prime and new drivers and they're going to double park because that's what they've just done at three stops before so I appreciate the fact that everybody and Dean are working hard to try to create I think we have to realize that human nature is going to have an impact on how successful some of these efforts really are. and I'm sure with Dean that there'll be an ongoing effort to come up with additional solutions and to improve on the intended solutions that have been put in place now.

So I certainly support and think that this stage is very important in terms of trying to foresee the conditions that we might face out there. But I also think that this project is too important. It serves as an extraordinary example of maintaining the front architectural facade and yet increasing housing. I really think that Dean and his team should be congratulated for the impact this will have and the example it will set. for other residential projects in town. So I do certainly support this project and I appreciate all the work that's gone into this with Jeffrey and Alan and Dean. and Sheila and others to try to solve these problems prospectively.

Thank you. We're trying to preserve the entrance into Wellesley and keep every inch of this building the way it is. And I was just informed by my engineer that the edge of the ramp to the first space is 20 feet.

Okay, thank you. Sheila, is there anything you'd like to add?

No, I think the board did a good job covering everything. Okay, Megan?

Let's just see what Megan has.

The only thing that's outstanding is fire continues to work on the plan. I know the planning board last night as part of their discussion discussed maintaining the tree. with fire that might be an issue but you know there there's still chance to work through that because keep in mind that any given point there could be vehicles parked on street which Yes, they can pull into the driveway, but it's then backing out or more staging for ambulance and police as well. So that continues to be something through site plan we'll have to work out to meet satisfactory resolution with fire, but I just call the board's attention to that. That's an ongoing matter that they're working on.

Thank you. Beth?

So I had one thing I didn't understand. I think the question's for Dean. When you said the concierge is going to meet the packages, is the concierge in the basement? or is he at the front door?

Front lobby.

I didn't hear you front lobby so he stops on the ramp and goes out to the front door is that what happened I just can't visualize it I'm sorry

It could be either or. He could stop on the ramp if he's got small packages and the concierge would meet him and take the packages in. We don't want any packages left on the front door. It's too busy an area. There might be some bad things happen to the packages. And if they're larger packages, say a furniture delivery or something that would come down to the bottom of the ramp, unload in the area where we have storage. And then when the owner is back, all the units would be brought to their unit.

So the most likely thing is to park on the ramp and then stay on the ground level. I'm just trying to visualize it. It's not a pro or a con. I just couldn't understand it.

We're trying to create a situation where the concierge meets these people, comes out, gets them to bring everything in the front of the building, and drives out of the ramp back onto Route 16.

Okay. And... So from where the tree is, is it possible to widen the edge of the driveway? so the picture you showed us Dean is that the 24 foot driveway or the 20 foot driveway the picture that Jeffrey put up is that the latest Jeff

Yeah, I'll pull it up right now, Gene. Let me look. Okay, I just verified on the plan that's 20 feet 5 inches, that width of that ramp.

Okay, so that little teeny piece of green that we see between the blue building and the green, that's 4 feet?

Yes.

Go ahead, Kenny.

As we were talking about the ramp, it struck me one other thing. So the idea that we'll use an Amazon truck of decent size as an example, it pulls in, packages come out, It turns around in the garage?

No, he backs into the ramp.

Wait, so he's backing in off of Washington Street?

Or drives in, and then the concierge helps him out.

Right, so if he drives in in a big truck, he then backs onto Washington. How is his sight line going to work? I get it when it's a fire truck and, you know, there's a lot going on if a fire truck's there, but... That Amazon truck could come three, four times a day and it's backing out without any vision?

The concierge's job is to meet them.

I got that. My question is, how do you back up? Is the concierge going to then stop traffic and let them back up?

I think he'd let them wait for a break. We were trying to have the deliveries between 9 and 3, so we're not at the peak traffic hours.

So can I, Dean, does the concierge walk across the grass there? Is that what happens? I'm just trying to visualize it. I apologize. So he comes out the front door, which is that white box right there, right? And he walks across the grass and down the ramp?

Straight down the walk to the sidewalk and over to the edge. and he meets the guy.

Oh, so the guy starts right away. He's not in the garage yet.

Right. He's in the front and that's his job is to be looking out for these packages for these trucks. and he's helping people when they come in and out of the airports with their suitcases. We're trying to create a system where this person is proactive and trying to mitigate the issues that occur with these deliveries.

Okay, anything else?

I have one other question that I don't think is necessarily this project. So commuter patterns are changing now with people going back to work. Well, it is kind of on this project because it's the way that the ins and the outs are calculated, so the model. is the model forecasting for go back to work? Because I'm assuming this says multifamily. So it just seems there are so many trips in the middle of the day. Mr. Dirk said that the ITE I'm just asking Colette, I just was wondering are the models changing for the go back to work push that's happening?

and others. So they are to an extent. What we typically do is the numbers that were provided are not adjusted to reduce the amount of traffic to account for a large percentage of work from home or such. We have statistics that would allow us to make adjustments, but I think, and your consultant will confirm this, we typically don't do that because we'd be undercounting. We also, in this case, we didn't take any adjustments for people using the commuter rail or walking or biking. It's a suggest it's a, you know, a selective approach that we would look at. But I would say right now, no, we're not accounting for a large percentage of work from home.

Great, thank you.

Okay, I know we have people here who wanted to comment. Please come forward.

My name is Sheila Boyle and I live at 594 Washington Street right next door on the south side. And I've lived there for 40 years and I know this neighborhood so I can time the lights and not even have to press the pedestrian button. So I apologize because those on Zoom have heard these comments, most of them last night, but none of you have heard them, so I'm going to read them again. And I have... Ann Jackowitz is with me. She's one of the trustees in the building as well. And in terms of the residents coming, exiting and entering the property, I don't think there's going to be any change from what was there before because there were businesses, there were real estate agents, there were customers in the back of the building so I don't see any impact change on that at all. The impact though is in the traffic because you've all been asking questions about it.

There are three adjacent buildings on Washington Street, 600, 594, and 592. and they are located on one of the most congested streets in Wellesley. Busy all the time with pedestrians, passenger cars and commercial vehicles. And between 594 and 600 next door we share a parking lot and a driveway with them. But we have the same number of units combined that is in this building, the proposed building, 19. and we share the driveway in commercial vehicles from UPS, USPS, FedEx, Prime, moving companies, moving in residents. moving out residents, large box retail stores, private trash pickup, Comcast, Verizon, Town of Wellesley, and many others enter and park in our parking lot and driveway.

some of them make quick deliveries like Prime and FedEx and UPS and others might stay for several hours Town of Wellesley for example or Repairman while performing some service for the residents. And sometimes there's an emergency vehicle or two or three. And I think you get the picture. It's busy with traffic that comes and goes all day between our two buildings. and we have adequate parking for those vehicles and so there is no disruption to Washington Street whatsoever. The homes on the other side, there are condos over there and there are private homes over there. They also have driveways and some of them go in the back and where trucks can pull in and park. And now we're going to switch to 592 Washington Street. In the current plan, there are 41 underground parking spaces for residents and visitors. and they access that from the

driveway, and the ramp, which seems to be pretty close to the sidewalk. It doesn't seem very setback, although I've not gotten a clear distance of that. So it goes with downward slope. Missing in the plan, however, is above ground parking and I question the turnaround space for delivery vehicles as was questioned already. I'm not sure that it's big enough and there's just no above ground parking in the plan. What if someone has to come in Repair, anything that's going on in the building. For example, Belle Claire has had numerous things go wrong with their building. And they have construction vehicles there and everything. So I know that things are bound to happen.

Obvious options would be, as mentioned, Double Park and Washington Street, drive into the driveway and hold up traffic while you're backing out, or, which was suggested by the developer, back in and you're going to hold up traffic in that scenario also. None of these options is practical. And having a having concierge, I think, is necessary in a place like this. But to have the concierge, as you said, Beth, running across, meeting the Amazon I don't think it's practical to do all the things that they think that this concierge is supposed to do or will be able to do. because and the main thing is where are the trucks going to park while the concierge is doing this if there's two trucks that come at a time some same time we have that happening and what are they going to do there so

This is already just a terribly congested area with just yards away is a well-traveled intersection with a bump-out crosswalk that actually reduces any kind of extra space on the street, makes it even narrower. and down the street is a major five-way intersection with long traffic lights that cause backups especially during morning rush hour when it stretches all the way back beyond 600 Washington Street. And I live there and I try to get out in the morning and I know exactly what it's like. Those of us in the neighborhood know from everyday experience, traffic is constantly backed up in that one spot. just where the crosswalk is and the left-hand turn onto Church Street because someone's either waiting for people in the crosswalk or waiting to take a left turn or both at the same time. This is a very real, unexaggerated picture of the traffic. Like I said, I've lived there 40 years.

And I think any new development in the area needs to have adequate parking and turnaround space to accommodate the commercial vehicles. in order to avoid making traffic congestion any worse. The fire department also has concerns that they described in a recent review. And I was told last night that there is that the driveway as it comes in the fire engine can only get down to the ramp which is in the front of the building. If he goes up on the other side which is described in some way He can only get to the front of the building. There is no way to get to the back of the building and put out a fire that happens in the back of the building. It's just not doable. And I have not heard any solution to that.

So also now if the pedestrians, the double parking and the nightmare backing in and out, I just mentioned also worsened safety in the area with constant pedestrian traffic and crosswalk users. Sidewalks are busy with shoppers, diners, commuters on their way to and from the train station, walkers out for fresh air and exercise, and parents and their children on their way to and from Honeywell School. it's obviously could be very it's pretty risky for a lot of people especially if you cannot see what you're doing behind So the current plan includes more units than zoned for, showing a footprint that takes up almost the entire property, way to the back. The density of the project is my idea. The density of the project could be reduced to open up more space in the rear of the building where there could be above ground parking and turnaround space for vehicles.

This area could be accessed by keeping the driveway that's there now currently along the funeral home. It goes all the way to the back where there is parking. Keep that and relocate the entrance of the underground parking garage to the back so that this driveway is long.

to please wrap up.

Yeah, okay. It's long and it would give the emergency vehicles access to the front and the back of the building. which, as I said, they don't really have it at this point. And I think the needs of the community for pedestrian safety and traffic decongestion should take precedence over increasing the density of this project. Thank you.

thank you very much would anybody else like to speak come on please

So my name is Anne Jakowitz, and I also live at 594 Washington Street, the south side of the 592 development. Jeffrey, I think you had a great presentation. Really, really impressed with all the information there. And I agree with you that I think it, from a resident standpoint, it is a low-density facility. development. But from all of the other concerns that have been raised with regards to delivery trucks, mail trucks, and the fact that this is in a walkable area, I'm very, very concerned. So fire access, emergency access. There has been a report that it's deficient for emergency vehicles. I think, Alan, you raise a really good point. It'll be interesting to see what the turning template looks like.

Last night at the planning board, Dean agreed to provide what wasn't available for guest spaces. but now the guest spaces are going to be used for guests, pick up, drop, Dropoff, Service Vehicles, Rideshare, and now Furniture Delivery, all sorts of things. So the four guest spots are going to be used for all of these deliveries. and I don't know what the zoning ratio for handicapped spaces, but I see the two handicapped spaces on the plan that was shown. Trash removal, very concerned. In our building, and I am a trustee at 594, I'm in the front building. There's seven units, single occupants, and there's a back building, two occupants. There's nine people. We share a drive, and I'm telling you, every half an hour,

and the demographic of our building of our nine units is older so whatever that means but we get all sorts of delivery trucks we have a big trash truck that for the seven residents we have big what was like E.L. Harvey, but what was Roy's. two big recyclables, and four other barrels. I can't imagine for a 19-unit condominium development, one bedroom, and then the rest are two bedroom and three bedroom, how that's going to work and how that's going to be rolled. controlling deliveries between nine and three. I just think that's not realistic. I don't know how you do that. Washington Central Grove, it was said that that's a higher crash rate. And I've got to imagine that Dent that Denton and Weston is as well. This is located right in the middle of both of those intersections. And the idea that trucks are going to pull in

and back out or back in and pull out all while we're walking by and or park in front of the development. I just, I don't see it. I think human nature it's hard to monitor this is going to have to be a superhuman concierge somebody that can run out and get packages can direct traffic it's We have room for parking, resident parking, guest parking. I have a mobile groomer. My mobile groomer can come and park in the back. And there is not room. I mean, and this is a high density. We're in a low density.

some of the concerns you're raising about delivery and parking are not our purview in PSI. We're looking at offsite impacts on the intersection and the traffic. So would you mind confining your comments to that? Because that's what we review. We don't review as much as the planning board.

Okay. I think it impacts that. but I guess you know I don't want to go on but I mean I agree with Sheila's comments very very concerned not about the resident parking but about the deliveries in a high density area. and the turning, I don't get. Thank you.

Thank you. Anybody else?

Okay. Just one thing. After hearing everything that you both described, you were using a driveway as a parking lot. So that's not the intended use. The backing up, people back up in big trucks. Thank you. Thank you. This is super dangerous. And I think this is a great project, but it needs on-site parking above ground so that delivery trucks can turn around, can park. and you don't create a situation. If somebody's parked in that driveway and the fire truck has to come, then what? It just doesn't seem like it's the right way to do it, the driveway.

So the fire truck issue and being able to circumnavigate this building to provide public safety, I know that's been an issue with buildings in the past. Is that part of this review, or when do we weigh in on the fact that we can't provide fire services in the back of this building?

So there are multiple ways to provide fire service without a truck. So as part of the third party peer review, which we conduct, and outside of any permitting, meeting the fire code is just as is a requirement just like the building code so keep in mind this is a sprinkled building there's other mechanisms instead of having to have a truck Go to the back that you can have essentially a hydrant connection to the back that would all be vetted through the peer review. There are very specific requirements within 150 to 200 feet. I forget which this one particularly is. Fallsunder, but the fire department is clearly working with engineering and the applicant on addressing those questions. And we have a third party peer review who does that to meet compliance with the fire code.

that's a that's an architectural design and that's a site plan issue so the issue of having ambulance police and fire report and then the ambulance needing to get out if it's the first in

that seems to be- That's a staging issue on site.

So that's a staging issue.

And we've identified that in our letter.

As part of our concern, it seems to me the structure of this, which I have to say, Dean, I'm thrilled that you're preserving the building and the facade. So it does seem to be an invitation to double park because I think you go once and you find out that you're going to be on a ramp and then have to figure your way out. as you say the truck drivers are pretty consistent on their route. I think they'll learn to try to double park and I think that's an impact that we need to be concerned about in the heart of our downtown. and I don't feel that's adequately addressed in our letter but I do think that we need to send that we are concerned about

the fact that the current on-site storage of units could encourage off-site traffic congestion particularly with delivery vehicles.

So we have concerns about parking and deliveries. How would the board feel about approving the traffic peer review prepared by Tye and Bond with inclusion of those comments in our letter.

What's our option? I don't know what the timeline is because we delayed. I don't know what our window is because Dean has shown some responsiveness in trying to work with Neighborhood Feedback. Is it something, Dean, you want time to figure out other traffic mitigation strategies? You're muted. You're muted.

Okay, I'm sorry. I have a couple comments that might help put your minds at ease. First of all, the building is fully sprinkled. It doesn't need two accesses. Second of all, with the fire department's input, they asked us for a second access to the front of the building. which we created and filed with the planning board. And I believe Jeff knew about this from the meeting we had and we've added this. So now there's a second access for fire apparatus and they can reach anywhere they want from these locations and they feel confident it's sufficient.

Dean, just to confirm, that's the geotech on the right side?

Well, we changed it from geotech to actually a granite pad that's 14 feet wide and about 30 feet long, and it goes right up so they have complete access to the right side of the building. I mean, if Sheila Boyle wanted to grant us an easement so we have fire truck access to their side, we'd be happy to take that. But we've come up with another solution. The other thing is, again, there's a 115-year-old building we're trying to preserve. If we tore this thing down, we could make any parking arrangements we wanted. We're working with an older building, an existing footprint, and a huge beech tree we're trying to preserve. and I think this project merits a few concessions for trying to preserve a building that's I think the entryway into Wellesley on Route 16, I think it looks far superior to some of the other buildings near it and has a lot more character. And that's what drew me to the project and preserve it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dean. It's certainly not that the board doesn't support the project, but our responsibility is to traffic and pedestrian safety. So we're trying to be thorough in that. We could vote to approve the traffic study and to Bolster our comments about, remember those are onsite impacts, parking and deliveries. It's not ours for PSI. I'm talking about parking on the site. Turning around, parking on the site. Kenny's comments, Beth's comments. We're talking about traffic on Washington Street and we are concerned about that.

I don't see what else we can do because we're giving our comments for other stages in the review process so I think it's appropriate to add our comments given the discussion we've had and I'm not sure that there's anything else that we can do at this point except note that

So Marjorie, I would suggest we approve that the report has been professionally prepared and that we allow and Megan to bolster the letter and bring it back to us next week for approval.

We're not meeting again until the 10th. What's the time frame for this? I think Dean's going back. Are you going back on the 19th? Yes, they're going back on the 9th.

Okay, so what we're going to ask Megan to do is to bolster the comments about all of our concerns and distribute it to the board. for review, and then each one of us will send it back to Megan so we don't hold up planning, but we won't bring it back to another meeting.

Okay? And Marjorie, for clarification... We are not focused on on-site impacts but the design of on-site and its potential flowage to off-site the off-site impact that it could have is within our catchment. Is that correct? No, I'm asking if that's correct.

Yes, it would be correct. It would need to generate Kewing over a level of service to decrease it further. And it would also have to impact by particular vehicle trips at a signalized and unsignalized intersection, which regardless of what happens at on a regular basis, that wouldn't occur.

The threshold is too high to hit. And Megan, the 190 or so trips that are kind of between the rush hour periods. that percentage that I'm assuming those are likely to be trucks and deliveries and all those things so that should be a meaningful percentage shouldn't it?

The percentages are very conservative here, and as they've indicated at the intersections, it's less than 2%.

No, not during the peak periods, during the off-peak periods.

that we only measure based upon the zoning on the peak hours.

I'm quite confident that Megan and Marjorie have heard all the concerns and comments from the board and that in an effort to allow Dean and his team to be able to proceed forward to the planning, I'm comfortable with the plan as proposed by Marjorie.

and the other peer reviews and site plan will continue as well. So Collette, could we please have a motion?

So moved to approve the traffic peer review prepared by Tyne Bond as professionally conducted and to issue the accompanying recommendation letter to the planning board as amended with comments from the select board's conversation tonight, which the executive director will work with the chair on incorporating.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

Aye. Marjorie, that included that we're circulating it and giving Megan feedback, correct? Yeah.

but we're going to see it before it's finalized. Aye.

We just don't have time to bring it back to a meeting to allow planning to proceed, but we will all review it. Our next agenda item is to discuss and vote the winter supplemental for the Department of Public Works, Megan.

I think the thank you. Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. Forgot you were all there when you're not in front of me. It's so hard to remember you're all there. Dean, Jeff, Alan, Sheila, thank you all for coming. We appreciate you taking this extended time to answer all our questions and get us ready to help you move the project forward. Thank you.

Good night.

Marjorie, Dave Cohen is online to address that. Hi, Dave.

Hey, good evening, everybody.

I hope you heard our thanks to you at the beginning of the meeting for your department's yeoman work over the weekend.

I did. I appreciate that. And I'm certainly going to echo that. Folks have really been stepping up and grinding out a tough storm response. But yeah, I'm very proud of the the response and the effort that continues. So the work is just getting started. So bringing you tonight a request for supplemental authorization for $500,000. as you've seen in the memo that we supplied. We've had, well now it's been I think 15 events that we've had. and this last event brought us about 20 inches of snow and 35 hours or so for most of our folks. And then some folks just kept going right on through. So it was 40 plus hours of response for many folks. And the timing, as you'll see, it's uncanny that most of our events this year

just seem to be coming on the weekends, which are either overtime or double time. And so we're having to deal with that. and so at this point we were recommending a $500,000 supplemental authorization that will hopefully get us through the rest of the winter but at the least will get us through what we expect to be at least one snow removal, another storm coming this weekend potentially, and certainly, you know, whatever might come our way while the cold weather is with us for the next couple of months. So I think I'll leave it there and just take any questions that you have. Happy to answer them.

Thank you. Anybody have any questions?

Okay, Collette? Move to approve the winter supplemental request for $500,000 from free cash. Second.

all in favor aye Dave please extend our thanks to everyone in your department and we hope everybody stays safe hopefully next weekend won't be as bad let's hope so we'll do thank you very much thank you Okay, our next agenda item is a budget update for FY27. And I know Rachel is on as well. Hi, Rachel. Thanks for hanging in there with us. Good evening.

We wanted to give a couple updates. So with regards to health insurance, which is obviously a big driver this year, I did receive some preliminary information in preparation for the steering committee meeting, which is scheduled for February 5th. which we then would anticipate a vote February 12th. February 12th, that Thursday, the following week. So as part of that, initial estimates are at like 9.98% without any in particular use of Trust Fund. So there is some variability that could be applied. The steering committee will have to discuss that. So I did do a calculation in the sources and uses that was provided to the board at a 10%. Increase, which decreased our overall deficit. In addition to, well, and I should note, that is excluding JLP1s.

If we were to retain GLP-1s, it would be a 15.1% increase, which I know the West Suburban Health Group communities wouldn't be able to afford. so with that reduction in addition to looking at we've been on our dialing for dollars mission to reduce our cash capital so school committee has reduced by approximately a little over $300,000. The NRC has reduced $35,500. Library, $25,000. We have been in consultation with DPW. I got to check one thing with FMD. Dave at present can reduce by likely 215. And Joe, I got to touch base with IT. We're evaluating still.

some of it's a cyber issue and one's a flyover which is instrumental for really all of our GIS work and so we're going back and forth on that. Public safety was actually really limited this year and I had provided the board an update on that where there's really not much we can cut there. It will be painful to get to a million, so if we can get to a reduction to a $1 million deficit to fund that with free cash, which would have previously been discussed. So reducing this deficit from $1,280, $1,339 to basically a million with the potential cut of both COA proposals as well because the one was a shed they hadn't had a whole they had not had conversations with FMD they are still contemplating it amongst themselves and they had an AV but I know they're doing some other AV work with

I don't want to say gift funds, but other funding mechanisms. So that would be continued. So that's one proposal for us to consider. and then the other thing that we just had not done to date and as part of our budget supplemental was to look at voting the budget oh and I'm sorry I meant to pass this out my apologies the other thing and Rachel could certainly Here you go, Kenny. Walk you through this. This is tough to read only because of the scale of the font, and I apologize. I tried to blow it up to an 11 by 17, and I certainly can send you the digital file, which then you can zoom in on. but Rachel and her team have also done the carry forward analysis. It is not completed 100% yet. They're still in conversations with DPW and FMD but these are all the other departments. Rachel, are you still on? Did we lose them? Hold on. We somehow lost them.

Hold on one sec.

No, I'm on. I just wanted to give Rachel the screen. She was having some internet problems. Let me text her.

Yeah, I think she fell off. I'm looking at my screen where I can now see everyone, and I think she fell off. So maybe we give it a minute.

So Megan, based on this carry forward, there's $4.2 million. still in the budget being carried forward, but you're working with the departments to ask them whether they still need to hold on to it all?

Right, so the complete, where it says 615 in red there, that will be turned back through this announcement. But again, this does not include FMD and DPW as of yet. and you can see in the notes we've tried to go through and see exactly where people are on it because keep in mind there's some that are Longer term. So this is some from 2020. There's one from 2019. The 2020 for us, just so you're aware, it's carried over in capital but as the board longer standing board members may recall when we did the resolution for the north 40 in terms of what we had to do for the mass contingency plan We had funds that we have to carry forward for basically the next 30 years to do reporting. That's what that particular for us is.

It's our annual reporting fund that gets carried forward. Oh, hold on. She just texted. Rachel just tried to get back into the meeting.

Megan, would you remind us when West Suburban votes the health insurance?

So I believe it'll be February 12th. February 5th, the steering committee would review all of the data and make a recommendation. So that gives us a much clearer picture. I will say last year when we had the discussion, the steering committee didn't have an ultimate recommendation at the time because we were split over the amount of trust reserves to use. It was sort of two of us wanted to be far more conservative than two others. given the, you know, at the time we were, they call it, you know, running hot. We were going over our monthly cost because of claims. So we sort of, we brought it to the full body to understand where they wanted to be. and we did appropriate some of our trust reserves and we drew down to about 11%. We have the same eight to 12% reserve policy. Rachel's jumping back on.

and so that and we also split up last year. So our high deductible, our Harvard program in particular, was being supplemented by Blue Cross. So Blue Cross, we actually gave a lower amount and increased Harvard Pilgrim slightly higher last year. So on average, the rates were 3.8, but it was really like, Blue Cross was at 3.3 and Harvard Pilgrim was at 6.8 or so. So this year it's a lot more Kling, Cut. We have a different cash flow analysis because we have a prescription drug manager now, PBIRX, which is before we used to get our rebates essentially at the end of the year, so now it was a little bit of a hit to our cash flow at the start of the year but now it's a month to month so we can see the results a lot earlier and it's been very successful so Conservatively, I put 10% in.

But there's a good chance it could be like 9.9%, which would be good. The other thing that was factored in was those deductions in the cash capital. Rachel, I just handed out the carry forward analysis. So I don't know if you want to just maybe touch on the work that your team's been doing to meet with everybody on that.

Sure, great. Thanks, Megan. And let me see if my connection is good now. Can you hear me fine? yes okay great so so yes so we wanted to look at prior year cash capital so just as a reminder departments are appropriated cash capital for a fiscal year but oftentimes that work or those projects take more than that one fiscal year to complete so we allow departments to carry forward prior year cash capital. So historically, we've allowed three years to automatically carry forward. So again, given that we were looking to departments to defer some of their FY27 requests. We wanted to go in and look at what prior year capital, what was the status of those projects. So Megan, do you want me to try to share the screen or you said the board had

we handed out a hard copy yep oh perfect great so if you're looking um if you want to just go to the last page just high level um prior year capital so that's fy25 or prior that was carried into FY26 was just over $6.2 million. Our analysis looking at what's been spent so far, what's still... available to be either completed in progress or not started. So just over 4.2 million. so we asked departments to go through identify the status is this capital project completed is it in progress or has it not been started yet so you'll see anything highlighted in green those are going to be

the capital items that are in progress or not started that departments are going to actively be working on and then anything in red we were highlighting some departments identified some residual carry forward monies so this could be prior capital money that got carried forward and they've determined they're not going to use those funds or they've they completed the work in this fiscal year, fiscal 26. So those projects are complete and that money will end up turning back. so high level looking at the the totals we've identified so far around 61,000 um of unused prior year cash capital that departments have identified. That work is complete. Those funds will turn back. And we still have about 4.1 million that are active prior year capital projects.

as we thought departments are still actively working through these prior capital and again this does not include FY26 so all of the capital money that was appropriated for the current fiscal year is also underway so again happy to take any questions if you've had a chance to kind of Peruz, High Level, some of the responses from the department, but we'll continue to work with departments as we go through the remainder of the fiscal year, identify projects that are Complete, and potentially turn back to free cash, and then also continue to carry forward any monies that departments will need into fiscal 27.

Questions, comments? So Rachel, I see suns highlighted in green and suns highlighted in red. If there's no highlight, what does that mean?

Oh, thank you, Collette. So there are some departments that haven't responded just yet. Some of our large departments, FMD, DPW, they're still working through. So If there's no highlights there, we're still waiting on some feedback from the department. So again, this analysis is still underway. But any departments that we've kind of color coded the status, we've received responses as of earlier today.

The other one I'll just call out because it just happens to be on the last page sort of in my eyes online was youth commission where we anticipate that obviously being turned back because we got a van through a different earmark process. but it's just until we talk to the department head that has not been highlighted. Marjorie.

Go ahead, Tom.

Rachel and Megan, isn't one of the questions whether some of these departments can reduce their request for fiscal 27? equal to the resources and time that it's going to take for them to complete work for which they already have allocated funds.

Yes, that's one of the questions, and some have done that definitively. The largest of our capital components are always DPW and facilities. We're still working through with them.

Rachel, could you explain to me the difference between operational services, which looks like all technology, and IT? Because it looks like there's about $800,000 or $900,000.

So are we looking at Department 155, Information Technology, and 340? Yeah. Oh, so 340, that's going to be the school.

So 340 is going to be school department. Thank you. I just didn't understand. And then on the, where did I see it? The library one. which is 610 where it says $10,000 available zero or it says year-to-date expended but it says complete. So what is that one?

It looks like 10,000 for time card system. I may need to take that back to the library to confirm it does look like they indicated that status was complete but to your point it doesn't look like they

So that color, is that a different color? I just didn't know what that color meant, the 10,000. Is that you flagged it to figure it out?

No, so we flagged anything with a status of complete. We flagged in red just meaning that those projects are done, those projects are stopped, and that we'd be potentially turning back those monies.

So ours is kind of orangey brown. That's why I was asking you. That one's not red.

It just must have printed that way.

Oh, okay.

I printed one to make sure it would fit and then copied it.

Because there's another, like Morrison's Pond is that same kind of... Off Color. I just didn't know what that color was.

You're saving money on toner.

The middle of the page, too. It's pretty fancy.

Rachel, I just want to say thank you for your team doing all this work. It's a lot of legwork, very labor-intensive, but it's a great... We have a spreadsheet to have because we can look at it next year and see whether those projects are complete and continue to work on carry forward it's really important I think that town meeting understands that there have been projects that were funded that are not complete and that we are working on this because it's a fairly significant amount of money over six million dollars and it's really important work so thank you very much. Are there other questions?

I think it's a good practice that we do this and maybe we can do this annually but I'd like some time to look at it and thank you for doing it and we can get back to you my question is I'm hearing you saying Megan is you know the deficit right now is like 1,280,000 and change. Does that anticipate the million dollar of cash capital reductions? And we haven't quite got there yet, or I just want to make sure I'm clear on that.

So this currently anticipates what we've received in cash capital reduction so far. I had a conversation with Dave Cohen, who can do about 215 immediately. And I have a question for Joe. So in total, that would be a little... Excuse me, would be under a million. We'd be in the vicinity of 680 or so. that would bring the deficit down to about a million dollars. So the question to the board is do you want me to continue to try and get cash capital or do we want to apply a million dollars which was an initial proposal to close the budget?

Okay, I mean, so we're in a better place than we thought we would be by about 300,000. And you've done a lot of work to see what cash capital we can get to. But now we're getting to the point where it's getting painful to cut more. Is that why I'm here? Okay. I mean I think that we haven't socialized the idea of making difficult cuts we're trying to do the best we can to bring this down because of the way health insurance has happened and this where we are is I think it's still we're using free cash to help meet the gap of health insurance but we're still applying less than the health insurance spike so I think we've done a lot of work to make this as small as we can. Am I capturing that correctly? Which I think is what we signaled we were intending to do at one of the very first discussions when you said

there's going to be a challenging year there's going to be we've got work to do on health insurance and I think we might need to apply free cash to deal with the health insurance and we'll take that separately and I think we've done that and that's what we've been signaling all along I don't think we've been signaling since the very beginning that we're going to start making cuts to services or things that people want us to do if we wanted to do that I think we'd have We should have been signaling that earlier. I'm comfortable with this approach, especially given where we are with reserves, which we had been bolstering for the difficult time that we're anticipating Navigating, and then also looking forward that we might continue to have these issues with health care, but we have a plan to address that in the medium term, I think.

Tom?

Marjorie, you may be going to raise this, but it's appropriate now, I think. Marjorie and I met with the chair and vice chair of the school committee today as part of a regular meeting. and as a result of that meeting I'm going to go in the opposite direction on one item and that is I don't agree with asking the school department to cut the projector. and Screen at the Middle School Auditorium, if the screen was part of that. They cut that out and I We have had issues with the screen and the projector in that auditorium for a long time. It was part of the consideration about whether we could hold town meeting there. it is used tremendously by the middle school. It's a potential community Meeting Center and has been. I remember with HHU, the number of community meetings we held there.

I think that's penny wise and pound foolish to eliminate that. Given the pressure that we are always putting on them about where we're going to hold town meeting or special town meeting, I think we ought to make sure that auditorium is equipped with a working current projector and screen.

So for the rest of the board, what Nikki told us this morning, and I was going to review this a little later, was that they decreased FF&E. and from their cash capital. And then she told us about the screen which apparently works today but is unpredictable. and I discussed it briefly with Megan and we asked the schools whether they could pay for that screen which Nikki estimates at $30,000 out of their revolving fund. and emphasize that it is critical for town meeting that we need to hold town meeting at one of the schools and if it needs to be at middle school, we need a working screen. and the Select Board contributed to that issue last year, two years ago? Two years ago. So I think we've made it pretty clear that it's important how that gets funded, whether it's the FF&E that's shown here. But I agree with Tom. It is important to follow up on.

I think it's the projector though too, right? You were talking about the screen.

Well, we know it's the screen. Nikki wasn't sure if it's also the projector.

I thought the projector had actually been fixed.

I thought so, too. I thought she was saying, too, that she wasn't, that it worked. I thought she applied that, too, to the projector, that it worked today, but it's unclear. But she was going to check on that.

I can't imagine asking them to cut the screen or the projector because it is a town resource. And I would go so far as to say if they can't do it, maybe we should look in. I.T. and see if there's some room.

Just to be clear, we didn't ask them to cut it. They made the decision to cut FF&E. It was their decision. We did not ask them not to fix the screen. So it came from the schools.

I would make it clear to them we need to have the screen and the projector working. That's kind of critical for the town. Agreed.

But that's why you have the rental revolving fund. That's one of the spaces that is rented out, and we use those funds to refurbish those spaces. So to me, outside of cash capital, because again, cash capital is effective July 1. That's not working today. That should be fixed today.

So that question is pending with the schools.

I agree. I did not appreciate being put in the position of having some very senior time meeting members irate at us. for saying that we would have to have no projections. And then I think that you spent two days, Megan, scrambling around the state and with help from Beth. No, I know, but I'm saying that in the days before time meeting when there's often crises that we need your time for it's not a projector I really do think that that needs to get fixed no questions asked

All right, so the question is still out there. Are we comfortable applying a million of free cash to close what is essentially the gap for health insurance, knowing that we have plans for the short and intermediate terms to cover it after this year?

I am not for the same reasons I said the other day, which I don't need to elaborate on, but I don't think we should be closing an operating budget with the free cash when we can cut discretionary spending.

Well, I think it's an unusual year that our health insurance costs are going up almost three times, 10% versus 3.8% last year. and we are looking forward as a way to close the gap. We've asked all the departments to cut and I think we're getting close to cutting what we might call core or essential services. So I'm comfortable with it.

I would like us to wait until the health insurance number actually comes in and we know what the real decision is we're making which sounds like we'll have it by our next meeting and Megan is also waiting to hear from and significant departments. So I think we'll be in a better position to make our decision when we hear back

Yeah, I'm not asking the board to vote that necessarily tonight. So there's two things going on. We're trying to close the budget. Meanwhile... over the next three weeks, we have to draft the town-wide financial plan. So in terms of those broader policies on how we're going to close the gap, and that number is going to shift, to your point, until everything is absolutely finalized. but the broader goals of how we're going to get there whether that number is a million or a 960 or 900 is the way we it's the direction that I'm looking for. The only vote we were looking today is just actually on our operating budgets, not the total sources and uses. or application of free cash. We will also be working.

We're not meeting next week, but we'll also be working for the meeting on the 10th to have motions, which are obviously literally writing for writing down the final numbers.

Right. So we won't have the West Suburban final numbers. We'll have indication from steering committee, but not final numbers on the 10th. We're not meeting on the 17th. So we won't have a meeting again until the 24th.

So we will have likely on the 10th, we'll have a good direction. On the 24th, you will have a draft timeline financial plan. and Sources and Uses with which those bottom numbers with regards to Article 8 would need to be voted.

you know it's interesting Kenny I don't believe that these are discretionary that this is discretionary spending I think what's discretionary is whether we spend it now or whether we spend it a year or two from now at a higher level, at a higher cost. So generally every year, one of the things that we have to deal with is that we start with an enormous number for cash capital, which is all the accumulated postponed projects plus the new projects for that year. And we go through the same process where we squeeze them forward. where we asked the departments to help us prioritize what really is necessary now. I think we're in a position where we're also looking at the reserves and we've been having that discussion and I think when we looked at this and did this work and reestablished, reaffirmed the policy of eight to 12%, I think Colette referenced this at the last meeting,

In fact, from an accounting perspective, we can go to 15. We chose to keep it at 8 to 12. We're still riding above that number. it can affect our bond rating, whether that's likely or not. And I think we are projecting conservative figures and know that the turn back and other numbers are going to be significant once again and that we're going to continue to ride above 15%. I also think that we're being asked to approve in principle how we're doing this in terms of an application of free cash and that the final dollar amount is going to reflect the actual health insurance number so I don't see any reason to wait. There's going to be a narrow number that this is going to vary, but it's the principal, not the exact number that we're being asked to approve now.

I view that the capital is really in line. We would be balanced if not for health insurance, which is a recurring cost. So we're infusing Cash Reserves to offset a cost that will then recur. It's going to stay in our base. It'll go up hopefully less, but it will stay in our base. But the cash capital portion from the departments cutting that isn't really solving the ongoing problem of being out of sync. And I thought that's where we were last week, that it was cutting the cash capital wasn't really the issue. it said our recurring operating costs is a million dollars higher than it was last year.

And so I appreciate that we're squeezing the cash capital, but getting into balance that way is actually hiding. the fact that the budget is going to maintain its out of whack state with the only I think opportunity with that kind of increase in the base and not doing anything more substantive in terms of cutting ongoing operations is the promise of OPEB and pension costs coming down because those two are recurring so that those two could in the out years offset each other, but in the short term, the health care is rising when we really, if OPEC had come out already, we would be back in whack. I think.

Yeah, I mean, if you delay cash capital or other free cash projects, you're just going to have to pay for them later.

Well, the increase in health insurance would be taking the place of our ongoing OPEC costs. They're both recurring costs that happen in our budget every year. that one's going away because we're fully funded but insurance will be taking its place.

And that's what I mean is that, yes, we are applying free cash on operating costs, but we know in the relatively short term, I'm calling it the medium term, that we have capacity that's going to open up to address that. I see this one very differently from, oh, we've got recurring costs, heating, lighting, electricity that we can't afford.

I think you and I are aligned in not cutting cash capital as a way to address an increase in true operations costs.

Well, either we cut operations or we apply free cash to close the budget. That's our choice. And I agree with Colette. We did not signal last year that we were going to cut into services and operations. We said no new FTEs, no strategic initiatives, but we did not say we were going to be cutting services. and to solve a short-term problem, I don't think cutting services is the right way to address it. And those are our two choices. We have reserves in excess of our policy. and as Tom said, there's risks to that. It is taxpayer money, but the health insurance is a cost that increased beyond our control. and we have to cover health insurance for our people. So how else are we going to do it?

When we know that there's a solution coming around the corner, I think we're just digging ourselves out from the cuts we made a long time ago. which you know ended up being very costly in the long run so I wouldn't make a decision to cut unless we had really thought about that carefully.

The only thing I would ask is and it's way above my understanding is I would ask IT to look at what's been accrued and what we did within the town hall project and what's in his budget to see if there is expense room across those three. I can't tell if there is or isn't. IT has been a very expensive area for us, as it is for all organizations. But one of the things that the analysis shows is that there is a very significant accrual of technology costs. We know that there was a lot of technology in reopening Town Hall. even with switches and things. And there's a good expense budget in this year's technology budget.

So I would just ask him to take a careful look if there's some redundancy that is not necessary. I can't tell, and where this analysis is new, you know, when things accrue for a long time, sometimes... It's helpful to take another hard look at that.

Brian doesn't have a lot of old carryover. No.

as a pre-town hall though it's pre-town hall so just if he could double check and see if any of those fit within the project

I just don't know Megan yeah his issue with the town halls it's actually going to cost us more because the system is so sophisticated that to have once we own it because it's still under the jurisdiction of um whoever the contractor is. We haven't taken possession of it. Great Hall, by the way, I think is finally back online. The maintenance and the service contracts for this are going to be more expensive than what we previously had.

And Rachel's continuing the work with the departments. Kenny?

So I don't think the feasibility study for the DPW goes to... if we didn't do that, we'd be cutting services in any way. I think Dave was clear about that. It's not a we can't deliver the services type situation. He said they'll deliver the services in any event. and the second is I don't disagree with you Tom by putting it off you could be increasing the cost you could be the one thing that I don't necessarily agree with is the bond rating I think is far more dependent on following your policy than carrying too much reserves so if your policy is x and you don't follow your policy you could affect your bond rating if

your policy is Y and it's high and you follow it I think your bond rating is what it is just one point on that so the DPW that won't impact the operating closure that's just separate and distinct because that's a free cash application outside of our operating budget. So that's not a cash capital item. I just wanted to clarify that because it

and I do think we just end up spending it and next year and we talked at Lland the other day about we do need those answers because that campus is complicated and we need we kind of need those answers for the master planning that we need to do for the capital planning so

Let me give you an example.

Sorry.

Tom had brought up, which I think is a good idea, looking at that entire campus, that entire area as a holistic thing. if you spend $850,000 now and you decide you want to do something with the portion that's attributable to the fire, you could probably have some economy of scale by rolling that entire thing into a single feasibility study, or maybe not. But what I'm saying is, Just pushing it off doesn't mean you're not doing it, but you may find economies of scale by pushing it off and thinking about it more holistically.

Okay, I think there's a majority of opinion that we should use free cash. I know there's dissenting opinion, but I think the majority agrees that we should use the free cash to close the budget. and we will wait to hear about West Suburban and the rest of the cash capital carry forward. Rachel, thank you very much for that. So we don't have to vote on that tonight. What we do have to vote on is the select board operating budgets.

and Rachel did just raise so I just want to call it to the board's attention that then so the numbers are for the general government so that would be you know inclusive of which I is the intent just so we're clear it's you know that's inclusive of the smaller planning board and and those two not not the ones that are separate like rec health etc but the ones that fall under general government

So move to approve the select board budgets as follows. Select board. General Government including FMD $21,576,041 Public Safety $17,985,372

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay. Rachel, thank you very much again for all your work with this, the townwide financial plan, getting ready for town meeting. Thank you, Megan, and we'll look forward to some more updates on that. Our next agenda item is ATM preparation and the first piece of business under that is to discuss and vote the town clerk salary.

the board had previously discussed this at the last meeting and so I did supply the I had talked to Beth too about running the numbers that we had talked about and just put in that table the class and comp you know so if the the position had been identified at a or had been identified at a Jop Group 14, what that position would be with the then just adding on to that what the COLA, the 1% increase and then the projection of Merritt be added to that for the board to review. The variation is essentially like a $4,000 variation that I think would be under the board's consideration.

and the last information that we had from Dolores is that the town clerk position would score on the class of comp at a level 14, and we've been putting our employees, that's the 75th percentile, so we've been putting our employees into that range at the bottom of the range, which is 126,684. And then if we add the 2% COLA, the 1% service adjustment and the 2.5% merit, Delores' proposal is 129,690, which was pretty close to where we started. Tom?

I think the issue to me that was the very reasonable question that was raised about the distinction between the 50 and 75th percentile, I think resolving that and assuring us that we were calculating this salary as a matter of equity exactly the way we've calculated the others in the class and comp. were the outstanding questions that I had. I do want to be clear that from my perspective, both Casey and the staff in the clerk's office do an outstanding job, and we're really very lucky to have them. and others. they work hard and they deliver. So to me, this assessment tonight is really about whether we're treating this particular employee exactly the same as the other employees through the class and comp study.

recognizing the quality of the work that she does individually and that the office does.

well in fact you know town clerks are not always on the class and comp plan so to put her on the class and comp plan works to her advantage while still having differences between her salary, I mean her job and appointed town clerk job. If town meeting wants to change, the town clerk status from elected to appointed, that's fine. But we have an elected town clerk and putting her into the job group 14 works to her benefit. So the motion is, or the approach that Dolores supports is salary of FY27 of $129,000. Did I say 690? Yeah.

So are there any comments on that? I have a comment on that. So Dolores does not support putting Casey into the job group 14 salary range. That is in the salary range. No, I think the green one is the salary range. So that would bring it up to $133,000.

No, the salary range is the green MGT class above that where it says 126, 684 to 171, 023. Right, and so when you comp it up, Megan.

I'm just wondering, Marjorie, if you read the pink box instead of the blue box. Greenbox. I just think that maybe it was a pickup of the wrong color box. because the green box is the one that starts with the class and comp range of 126 and nets out at 133.

So that's if you start with the bottom of the range, but either one is within, one argument is either one is in the range. And so even if you take the FY27 range, well, then I just got to pull up my note. which would be effective, which would be 129, 217 to 151, 830. It would still be at that range, within that range.

So you start.

I was in the green box.

The starting salary for FY26 in Job Group 14, which would be for this year, is $126,684. but that was adjusted to be in this class and comp from that includes COLA for this year right Megan?

So the range, the 126 to 171 is the Job Group 14 range. For the 27 range, which hasn't been set yet, would be set by town meeting. that range would be a two percent increase which would be the one which would in 27 be 129 217 right so as a base so arguably The pink box, which was the average calc-ing it out with a COLA, a surface adjustment, and Merritt is over that at 129,689. looking at the average ACOLA projections for 27 from Dolores and then adding a 1% service adjustment and the merit brings it to 129,916. and the other calculation is if you took the 126, 684 base from FY26 or current year.

and then added COLA, the 2% that staff would be getting and the service adjustment which the town clerk did not receive last year but other personnel surveys serving the town longer than a year did receive, and then a merit increase. That would be the 133.772.

So if the town clerk's position... was exactly the same and the only difference was it was an appointed position. If you go through all that math, the amount that she would be paid is 133,726. Is that right?

potentially would depend upon in this if it was the existing person yes

Right, we're setting the salary for the job, not the person, and she's not appointed. There are differences in being appointed and being elected. If town meeting wants to change that, and make her appointed, they can, but she's not. So to average in appointed salaries, which are always different than elected salaries, is like apples and oranges to Wellesley. It's not the same thing.

What I see from this is if we take the elected average plus COLA, plus service, plus merit, she does end up within the class and comp range. So it does seem... I mean, I do think, and I've tried to go back to like, what are we doing here? And we're setting the salary for position. and I'm glad Marjorie brought up it's the job not the person and the person and the performance is rewarded through merit but when it's an elected person there's no there's no evaluation so we're giving merit with no process to say you've done a good job and you know based with all the other people that we're evaluating you know there's a range and you know somebody gets you know x percent and the maximum the minimum's that the maximum's that and how do you compare you know different people we don't tend to do that you know Megan would do that for more people or

you know Joe would do that for more people so we don't I don't have a ban I don't have a lot of information to say you know we didn't say that's not our job is to set goals for the elected clerk or to evaluate her or anything like that so I'm trying to get to the place where you're taking a reasonable approach knowing that she's elected and you know that there's also there's no vacation there's no sick day limits there's all sorts of different things between her and other department heads but being fair it ends up within the class and comp which we're trying to do so I think that's a reasonable compromise between making sure she's fairly paid and not falling behind within the class and comp but she's not an employee, she's an elected official. and trying to acknowledge that.

And if we want to change that, we should go through a process to change it.

I also want to say that I think there are a couple really strong advantages to having an elected clerk. First of all, she's accountable to the voters. . Second of all, he or she lives in town and there's a definite advantage to being a resident. but I think one of the more important issues is that an elected official cannot be subject to the same political pressures as an appointee. If the person reports to another staff member, There are possibilities for, let's say, undue influence, whereas Casey, our town clerk, is completely independent. and I think that's really important and that may be why we have an elected town clerk in the first place for some of those reasons but it's different than it's on a different scale than appointed and that's where we are now.

So my understanding of what we did with class and comp is we didn't... compensate people and hope they fell into the range, which is how the town clerk's getting into the range in the pink box. We set them at the bottom of the range and then we moved them up, which is the green box. and that's a philosophical difference. If we do what we did to every single other employee in this town, we started them at the bottom of the range and then they moved up based on COLA, longevity and merit. And that is the green box. So I appreciate the, I'm really grateful that we're revisiting this.

I really do think that having all of our paid employees, no matter how they got to the job, in the class and comp gives us a basis of equity for how we treat those who work for our residents. and for that reason I move that we approve, we recommend to town meeting a salary of $133,000. I think it says 724. I'm not positive, however.

The green box is 133-772-60, so round up 133-773. Yes. Can I just have one point? That's on the motion. That's fine. A point of clarification. So for the class and comp, for those individuals last year, we moved them to the base. We did not add COLA to that. They did receive a service adjustment and they were eligible up to based upon the review. So this is slightly different in the sense that So they would get COLA this year from being on the bottom of the base. So I just know that's a distinguishment.

I would say this acknowledges that we skipped a year. And skipping that year was a meaningful... reduction in salary last year and that's why I would say you start at the bottom of the range. Okay, so you have a motion on the floor.

Well, I'd like Clarification here. What I said earlier on is that I would like to see her treated as everyone else was. and so if you'd run through that math again what you just did I'd like to know what that number is if you didn't add the COLA what we did for every other employee

So for FY27, the base, which that's not being reflected here because that's the 26th base, would be the 126th. For this time, I think it would actually shake out because the 129 I think would be what the 2% would be this year's base.

Well, but let's go through those numbers. I'd like to actually have a calculation because that's what I've been saying is that we can't say we want to treat it like everybody else. But by the way, I didn't know the COLA was eliminated and therefore we're going to figure out some work around. If we treat her exactly as we did everyone else in the class in comp, what's that number?

So it would be? Last year was 3% we went up, right?

Let's let Megan... No, I'm just clarifying that it's not the same number.

So for 27, applying the 2% COLA to the range would make the range... Hold on, I just got to look here.

So I'm just clarifying. Megan, I thought COLA was 3% last year.

But we're looking at 27% range.

Thomas saying if we did it last year.

We didn't apply the COLA. So last year, Mike Grant, I'll use that position, the building inspector position had to be upgraded. So it went to the bottom of the range. That's the market. There wasn't then a COLA applied to it because there was already a X percent increase to that. Then a service adjustment was added to that. Now this year, obviously the COLA then is additive to that.

But I'm going back. I need the number. I want to know what the number is.

Well, there's two ways to look at it. Because if you're looking at 26, we would bring her to the 126. for FY27, that 126 number is going to shift by 2%. So the base would be... 129, 217.

This is a recommendation for 27. For 27. It's not to put her on retroactively another year.

Yeah. So I think she ought to get the benefit of the fact that we're doing it for 27 because it's a town meeting action for July 1.

Right, so for 27, which would be the salary, it actually probably shakes out to be the 133 because we're adding 2% to that base.

So I'm looking for her to be treated like everyone else for 27, because I think that's the most defensible process in numbers.

That's the 133, Tom. So I have a motion on the floor.

I second it.

So Megan. if we use the bottom of the range for FY26 as her starting salary, assume that was her salary in FY26, and we add 2% COLA, 1% service and 2.5% merit, it yields Beth's number of $133,772.60. Yes. That's the motion on the floor. Okay. All in favor?

Aye.

Okay. 133, 770, 260. So let's continue with annual town meeting. And the next issue is to discuss and vote the use of $8,000 of TNC funds from Uber Lyft proceeds.

So Sheila's on with us as well. So this was just the board had had a preliminary discussion on this. We've tried to provide some additional information. Sheila's here to answer any other particular questions. But we just wanted resolution as to how, as we draft the motions, how the board wishes us to proceed. Just as a reminder, hold on, I wrote the number down. The fund currently from past years, it's always a year in the rear. Currently has, the fund has, I just gotta look at it. roughly $101,000 I do have it in my notes but I think I've typed over a bit of it here.

and the TNC funds can be used for planning programs, I'm reading, planning programs and projects that support or improve transportation. which include training and how to ride programs and travel behavior education, which I believe falls squarely within Sheila's proposal for that $8,000. We've used money in the past for the mobility study for summer camp transports and for health and youth transports. So we use it for transport when it's requested. This year it's requested to be used for education and building demand to use more public transit.

As I said the last time we talked about this, I think this is a very reasonable request for work that we can do now that we have a professional in the position and we can institutionalize this work. So I support this. I think it's reasonable.

Any other comments? Kenny.

So I was the one who asked for data to support that it would actually achieve an objective. So I'm still not clear what the objective is. how what we're proposing is going to solve or address that objective and how we're going to actually measure the results of that. I still don't have that answer and for that reason I can't support it. So if we can clearly define what we're spending the money on and what we're trying to achieve, I think... Safety in bike riding and all other forms of transit makes a whole lot of sense. So I'm not opposed to the overall purpose. I just want more clarity on that.

So Sheila, if I understand, it's to increase use of public transit primarily, is that right?

Yeah, it's bicycle riding training as well as travel training for the MWRTA and the commuter rail. targeting because children over 12 years old can ride public transportation by themselves. So it'll be targeting the middle school kids. in high school, but primarily middle school. And then also getting the parents some efforts and getting the parents comfortable with their kids riding public transportation. So it's sort of a good, It's familiarizing everybody with the opportunities that the town of Wellesley has, but also kind of helping push that cultural shift that it's Cool to Ride Public Transportation.

The only thing I'd add to that, too, is we also do senior travel training as well, which I think as people lose Vision, Mobility, it becomes important, you know, to also have that skill. And the other thing I'd mention is, you know, this is in total for the year. I think these funds can only be expended for this purpose we cannot use these these are not general revenue funds they cannot be expended for any other purpose so whatever we don't expend would revert back to the fund

So I think it's important that we expend the uber lift funds and that we do it in a way that does productively impact the transportation usage. I'm inclined to approve a higher number but not the specific programs because I think there may be some other opportunities that come up that are maybe event driven opportunities to use a transit service. So I'm going to bring up a merchant event. so let's say during the holiday season running a shuttle from Tailby to on Central Street that lets people move their packages back and forth as a pilot to get comfortable with

or down the main drag of Route 16 from, you know, do the spine during the holidays when we wave parking, but also let people do more of their shopping without having to move their cars. So I would... I would propose we give a little bit more latitude and let Sheila come back to Kenny's point with some more concrete recommendations over the course of the year to free up the funding. We have $100,000 in that fund. I would say we should authorize $15,000. and Sheila should during the course of the year come back to us with recommendations that have data and buttoned up recommendations around them.

So does that mean you're authorizing the money but you're not going to authorize her to spend it? Without the data and the recommendations?

were securing the funding and as she developed programs that she presents them and they get approved. I think this board is interested in having these kind of programs. and I think that Sheila's done a lot of work on the concepts of them and I have every confidence that she will have firm plans

Well, her request now is for $8,000 for education. If Sheila wants to talk to you and work on a trolley or something for the holidays, we are going to have a fall town meeting. So I would give her the opportunity if she wanted to to work on that in the intervening months. But what we're looking for for town meeting is the $8,000. in TNC funds for the programs we've already discussed. So I'm going to ask Colette for that motion.

So move to approve the request at time meeting to authorize $8,000 in TNC funds.

second all in favor aye all opposed no okay okay Cory over to you for Citizens Leadership Academy okay

My apologies for my voice. So thanks for giving me a few minutes to update the board on the proposed Citizens Leadership Academy and why we believe this is a strong and timely investment for the town. apologies for missing last night's retreat I could not keep my head up so if I am repeating anything that was discussed last night I apologize Wellesley system of government relies heavily on resident participation. We have almost a dozen elected boards, more than 20 appointed boards, and over 200 volunteers annually who work closely with town staff every day to make decisions that affect nearly every aspect of our community life. That system works best when residents understand how town government is structured, how decisions are made and how departments and boards interact.

when people have that context governance improves misinformation is reduced and civic engagement becomes more meaningful and productive Citizens Leadership Academy is a proven, low-cost way to build that understanding. Many of our peer communities use this model successfully to educate residents, strengthen relationships between staff and the public, and develop a pipeline of future volunteers, town meeting members, board members and even town employees. The outcomes in other communities are compelling. These programs consistently increase civic knowledge and trust and they demystify how local government actually works behind the scenes. In some towns, roughly a quarter of academy graduates go on to serve in some formal capacity beyond just volunteering for a one-off thing.

Barnstable, one of the three towns that spoke during the webinar that Marjorie and I joined last year, is a good example. Since launching its academy in 2003, it has graduated about a thousand residents and still maintains a wait list over 20 years later. The demand is there and the long-term return is real. Our proposed Wellesley Academy is designed around elements that make these programs successful in other communities. Sessions are intended to be interactive and hands-on led by our own department heads and staff rather than a purely lecture-based presentation system. The emphasis is on experiences residents don't usually get tours, demonstrations, practical examples that show how policy turns into operations and really running a town. Early planning in a consistent presentation format and strong staff support are critical.

And getting this first year right is especially important because it's what's going to build momentum and interest for future cohorts. just a brief reminder to the board and those watching that this spring's cohort be just the first in what we were hoping becomes an annual offering to the community. Some departments are not represented in this spring's curriculum for no reason other than time, planning, and resource purposes. I have personally spoken to all of those specific department heads and staff about plans to incorporate their work in future academies. Select board would play an important role in the program's success. Staff are asking for the board's overall sponsorship and support, practically what that would look like, it's including to standardizing the presentation template for departments which I'm currently finalizing with Andrea Arango in our office having either myself or a designated select board member attend each session whenever possible

capturing participant feedback and formally thanking presenters and participants for their attendance. Staff would also compile a comprehensive participant binder that includes session materials, budget overview, town meeting guide, and et cetera, et cetera. The memo I provided in your packet should provide a rough draft of the structure of what we envision as the academy, but I view that work plan as a living and breathing document, just like the select board's work plan. Logistically, this is going to be a free program open to residents and people who live and work in Wellesley ages 18 and up. admission will be application-based with the first class capped at 25 participants to keep the sessions interactive and manageable. Sessions will be held on weekday evenings.

Right now we're targeting Thursday evenings from 6 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. with attendance expected and accessibility prioritized. Participants would receive an orientation packet, sign a liability waiver, and have the option of signing a photo release. Feedback will be collected before and after sessions so we can continue refining the program in real time. We're seeking your approval tonight to proceed for a March 26 kickoff. We also need to decide whether if we want to provide some kind of refreshments, how we want to fund it, like through the Babson Fund. and other ancillary costs like printing, binders and other materials. If approved, staff will finalize the schedule for the next few weeks and have the application ready to go by the next special edition of the W at the end of February.

Thank you for watching!

In closing, this is a low-cost, high-impact investment in Wellesley's civic future. It strengthens transparency, trust, and understanding while building a stronger and more informed leadership pipeline for the town. Staff enthusiasm is high. The model is well tested in other communities and we're ready to move forward pending your support. Personally, I've had a really good time this month meeting one-on-one with all the department heads that are participating. and getting a better sense of what they do on a day-to-day basis. So if I, someone who grew up here and works for the town, didn't know all of the stuff that these residents are going to experience, then they're in for a really cool spring. So thank you.

Thank you very much, Corey. Do you have an estimate of what the request for funding might be?

Not yet. I asked department heads in my one-on-ones if they have any costs that they can think of in the next week or so, meaning last week and this week, to send them to me by the end of this week. So I'll be able to provide that to the board. hopefully in updates at the end of this week but I don't expect it to be large I mean we're talking maybe like a few minor things of swag some printing some copying I mean very and it depends on what we want to do with refreshments but That's what I see as the bulk of the cost.

So Megan, if I remember correctly, the Babson Fund is intended for community building and conversation, right? So as far as I'm concerned, I think that's a perfect funding source. I'd like to see the numbers. And I think people can bring their own dinner. I don't think we necessarily need to provide dinner. but I'm very excited about this. I think it's going to be fabulous and I think people are going to love it. Other comments, questions?

I think this is wonderful and I think it fills a need. There was, I'm pretty sure in the feedback from the needs assessment one of the things was getting people to know town government better and so here we are we've already got a program in place to help them you know fill some of those needs again I think it's a good use for the Babson fund we only have one other identified use for that those funds have built over and over and over again. I think it's important that we apply those. People didn't give us money to do nothing with it. I think it's good to have a good program. and I'd love to see and I'm happy to support this as you need people on a Thursday evening. I think it's great. So happy to be part of the team as needed.

So I think this is a great idea. I think this is really well prepared and thought out, Corey and Marjorie and whoever else was working on it. I wish I had this two years ago I think it would be really really helpful and you know I think the data from Barnstable and other towns really shows that it's It has the opportunity to be really successful. And like Colette said, let me know if I can help. I'm happy to.

Absolutely. And to Kenny's point, I think one thing we're hearing from especially newer volunteer board committee town meeting members is, you know, we get a very quick orientation and then we're given all this work and information. Exactly. We've got to figure it out. So maybe this process is going to help us inform an annual or semi-annual boot camp for new electeds or something like that. And we'll further refine this as this goes on.

Tom,

Thank you, Corey, and Marjorie. I do think this is a great idea. On a practical level, I think you're going to find that you're going to want to have at least something like coffee and cookies to offer. and I wonder if after a few classes you're gonna find that people would prefer 630 to nine if they're going to eat dinner at home. 6 to 8.30 with no dinner is an awkward... I mean, I appreciated it, that you want to end at 8.30, but I think you're going to have some adjustments like that, and so I think the real-time feedback is going to be important.

absolutely so Tom I thought the time was kind of an interesting but I noticed on the application it says 6 30 to 9 so the materials say 6 to 8 30 I I I would encourage you to think more 630 to 9 and I wonder if I don't know what you've seen with other programs if eight weeks in a row on a Thursday night Thank you. I would think either fewer nights or maybe a little more spacing. But I don't know the answer to that. I think it would be interesting to figure out. I almost feel like if it was a four-week thing, it might be easier to get more people to sign up.

I would defer to you. You've done a lot of thinking about it. I wouldn't want people to be intimidated by eight weeks in a row or almost in a row with one week break.

Totally. And, you know, we did the feedback we got from the three towns that that offered this MMA sponsored webinar. It's that a consistent schedule was more effective in getting people to show up and then keep coming back. and that threading the needle to get a broad section of a resident group is going to be impossible. But maybe what we learn is for 2027, every third class day is a Saturday and we do a weekend day class and can maybe capture on a weekend once or twice a course an outdoor you know we'll we'll fix it we'll figure it out so that we can if that's the feedback we're getting but your point is is well put

I mean, maybe Corey down the road. And this is really terrific. We can break it into like it's a class on public safety, right? You could have. Building and Permitting and Police and Fire. And then it's a class on resident interactions, like the classes and all of that. we have a name for it, all that. So I think this is a great start and I would just keep your eye out on ways to maybe make it more accessible.

Absolutely.

So of all the models we looked at, eight weeks was the shortest one. There are programs that are running 10 weeks and 12 weeks. and we're just going to have to run it and see how it goes. But I'm very excited.

So when I have a request for Babson funds, I'll come back

Yes.

Otherwise, full steam ahead, and you'll see it in the W and all over the place soon.

Wonderful. Thank you, Corey, and we hope you feel better.

We'll see you tomorrow.

Okay. All right. Do people have extensive comments on the minutes?

No. I didn't even circulate them. There was one and Grammatical change. That was it.

Okay. All right. Good.

So I'm going to make a motion to approve the minutes of January 6th, 2026 as amended.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay, I'll give an abbreviated chair's report. As Tom mentioned before, he and I met with advisory and school committee this morning. We shared with advisory the articles that we will propose to the moderator be included in the consent agenda. Advisory has data from a post-STM survey that's being synthesized and we'll post it on their advisory webpage in the next week or two. After Madison presented the results of their school study, advisory members had questions and they're updating the report to include some new data. We told them that we were discussing with school committee beginning a new school facilities master plan that looks out 20 years.

and that the school was a large piece of what the townwide capital planning committee would need to effectively do their work. HR is going to advisory tomorrow and next week they'll hear about the DPW master plan. We suggested they watch our meeting from last week. and NRC is also going next week. And on February 11th, they'll discuss school budgets for schools. Megan, Rachel, Tom, and I will be meeting with David and Cindy and school committee either the end of this week or the beginning of next week and they have questions about how the budgets are going to be presented so Rachel and Megan will share with them they want to know I think more specifically what kinds of questions we anticipate the school will be asked How the costs attributable to the school will be presented by other department heads.

So we told them that Megan and Rachel can answer their questions. Schools Committee is voting their budget next week and also discussing the Hardy Honeywell Solar Project. As I said, we discussed the school facilities master plan. They have not discussed it yet, but Nikki will raise it with David. I asked her whether the demographic study for which they're putting out an RFP would include birth to age five so that they have projections for their pause enrollment. and Nikki said that yes, it starts with birth and goes through high school age. We've already talked about the middle school projector and schools have begun their work on union negotiations but don't think they're going to be done in time for annual town meeting. There are quite a number of issues they have to work through. and that's all I have right now.

Our next agenda item is an executive session. I request a motion that the board vote to convene an executive session for the purposes of discussing strategy with respect to collective bargaining with fire and library union personnel. as I declare that having such discussions in open session would have a detrimental effect on the town's bargaining position.

Move to enter executive session under Mass General Law Chapter 30A, Subsection 21A, Exemption Number 3, to conduct strategy with respect to the Wellesley Firefighters, IAFF, Local 1795. Wellesley Free Library Staff Association and Wellesley Free Library Supervisor Association and to invite Megan Jopp and Corey Testa to join as the chair has declared that having such discussions in open session would have a detrimental effect on the town's bargaining position. Following the adjournment of the executive session, the board will return to open session for the sole purpose of adjourning the meeting.

Second.

Beth?

Aye.

Tom?

Aye.

Collette?