Select Board October 7, 2025

Good evening, everyone. I'd like to call to order the select board meeting of October 7th, 2025. We are in the Giuliani room of Town Hall. Here tonight are select board members Tom Ulfelder, Colette O'Frank, Beth Sullivan Woods, and Kenny Largess is joining us remotely. Executive Director Megan Jopp and Assistant Executive Director Corey Testa are also with us. The meeting is being broadcast live on Verizon Channel 40 and Comcast Channel 8 and wellesleymedia.org and will be available tomorrow for later viewing on Wellesley Media. This is a hybrid meeting, so there may be others joining us on Zoom. Our first agenda item is Citizen Speak. Is there anyone here who'd like to address the board on a non-agenda item? I don't think so. It doesn't look like anybody on Zoom. So we'll turn to Megan, please, for the executive director's report.

Thanks, Marjorie. I have a couple updates, and then I'm going to turn it over to Corey for a couple updates. So one, we wanted to remind folks that tomorrow evening is the second public meeting. at MassBay Community College with regards to development of the potential development.

Megan, I can't hear.

Oh. Hold on.

I think I'm on mute.

That would make sense. You got us now, Kenny? There we go. OK, perfect. He needs to hear. So let me just start over. So we wanted to remind folks about the MassBay public meeting on the development of land. That is scheduled for 6 PM at the library atrium. They have excellent signage once you park anywhere to get into the building and find that location, encourage people to go. I will note that meeting will not be due to other meeting conflicts. That is not being filmed by Wellesley Media. So if you want to understand what occurred at that meeting, you will need to attend. Also wanted to remind folks of the upcoming health fair, which is at the Council on Aging on October 16th. and lots of activities there, lots of information. Encourage folks to go.

And we have more information on the website pertaining to that. I also wanted to remind folks that there's also the Heat Pump Forum and Pizza Party hosted by the WMLP and the Climate Action Committee. That starts at 6.30 with some pizza and socializing. And the presentations are from 7 to 8.30. You need to RSVP to that. That's being held at the Wellesley Free Library at the main branch. and Corey, I know you had a couple updates as well.

Yeah, just some upcoming events and deadlines. For local artists and other cultural institutions and organizations, The Wellesley Cultural Council has announced that their new round of grant funding applications is open and will be closing. On October 16th, the application materials can be found on the Town of Wellesley's website under Recent News, or you can go to the Cultural Council's page where there's a link. If you have any questions, you can email the council at culturalcouncilatwellesleyma.gov or call us at Town Hall and we'd be happy to send you an application. I'd also like to remind folks that registration is open for the equity audit dialogue that is being hosted. by the Civil Discourse Initiative and the DEI Task Force. At the end of this month, the in-person dialogue will be on Monday, October 27th, starting at 6.30 p.m.

refreshments from 6 to 6.30 and then 6.30 is the program and then we're doing a virtual dialogue that Thursday the 30th at 6.30 p.m. Registration is limited and we are keeping registration open until October 17th. Again, the link to sign up is on the website or you can give me a call at Town Hall.

Thanks Megan and Corey. Our next agenda item is our consent agenda. We have two items on the consent agenda tonight. A disclosure for a special municipal employee to allow a police officer to work as a football referee. outside of his regular working hours, and the appointment of four members of the former Wellesley Housing Development Corporation to the new Affordable Housing Trust. Megan, has anyone requested that either be removed?

No.

Great. Colette, could we please have, are there any comments? Okay. Could we have a motion, please? Move to approve the consent agenda.

Second.

Colette? Aye. Beth? Aye. Tom? Aye. Kenny? And I vote aye as well. Okay.

I'm handling this.

Our next agenda item, and I'm very pleased to announce we have our state legislative delegation here, Senator Cindy Cream and Representative Alice Peish. Thank you very much for coming. We'd like to invite you to join us at the table. Representative Peish and Senator Cream will be giving us a legislative update and we will be sharing some of what's going on in Wellesley with them as well. So thank you both for coming.

Thank you. We received an email from your office indicating, I think, four topics that you would like to hear from, and Senator Cream and I have discussed this, and we thought we would Each one of us would lead off on a different one. And then the other would, if there was anything to add from the perspective of either of our chambers, would do so. I'm going to start with the first topic, the MassBay potential project that I think everyone here is very familiar with. I think what we wanted to relay to you all is that Senator Cream and I had a meeting with the DCAM Commissioner, some of his staff, as well as the Secretary of Housing and Livable Communities. That's a new name recently, so I'm not always up to speed on that. But in any event, I think it was a very productive meeting.

The purpose of the meeting from our perspective was to get some information from them about some of the issues that we understand are of interest to the board and the larger community. not the least of which is a timeline and also trying to get a sense of are there any specifics that have not yet come out that we should know about. I would say that the number one, mainly information gathering, I would say the number one message that we got from them was this is a housing project. I know there have been some questions from some about if the priority here is to help and MassBay afford additional facilities, is there another way to do it?

I think from the perspective of the current administration, this is primarily a housing project and to the extent that there are revenues that can be used to help MassBay. They will be, but they did not seem, they were not open to putting this project aside and looking for other sources of revenue for that. They were very interested in what the community as a whole thinks. they encouraged us to communicate to you all that they would be very open to the information that you might collect from various constituencies across the town. with respect to what type of housing, what's more important or what...

what are the priorities? Is it open space? Is it a continuing retirement community? is it Workforce Housing, and I would say that they were very interested in the more specific the better. and they were open to including a lot of items in the RFP if that reflects what the town is prioritizing. And so I think that was the gist of the meeting. They are certainly open to having discussions along the way, and timeline. There is no definitive timeline. They're obviously anxious to have this move forward.

but they understand that it could take the town a matter of months to come up with a broad consensus as to what are the various priorities. and so I think there was some confusion based on some information in the press release that made reference to 30 days that actually had nothing to do with with this project. I'd like to disabuse anyone of the notion that this is going to go out, an RFP is going to go out within 30 days. I think it's very much dependent on they stress that they would like the town to take the time to produce a process that will result in some kind of information that reflects what the priorities of the town. Cindy, did you want to add to that?

No, that was great. We did ask them. I personally We did ask them, is this the first project or where are you? And they did say that there are other projects, four or five, some that have RFPs already gone out. some that they took the auctioned the property off they offered that that in the ones that they had they liked working with the community and I thought that was a positive that they wouldn't rush, as Representative Paesch said, to do their RFP in the hopes so that if you do set up a commission to study, it'd be good that they knew that. I think that they sort of said they wanted to know what was going on.

and that was really the main objective was us to find out is this going to happen overnight and do you have any input and What does this all mean? So I guess this is the beginning of a phase, and we'll go from there. We're happy to, you know... Talk to them again, but whatever. I think they really want to hear from the town. That's where they are at this point.

Well, that's very encouraging. We were hopeful that DCAM would wait to allow the town to do some visioning that hopefully could inform the RFP. So that's a very positive note, and we appreciate that. We want to hear from the entire town. Community, and we want the feedback and the input to be in a format that's helpful and constructive, and that'll take us a little time to get together, but that's very good to hear. Does anybody have any questions or comments on this?

Kenny?

I have one question, Marjorie. So apologies if you already talked about this. I'm on a train and the reception is horrible so apologies and apologies if you already addressed this did they mention anything about density?

Yes. They referenced the four units per acre. and I would say that they are very interested in being able to achieve that goal. this is in the early stages of the process and so you know whether that changes or not remains to be seen but I think their view is that the the legislation by right says four units per acre so that is that is I would say where they are if anything I think they would be thrilled to see more but I'm not I don't want to speculate on the degree to which they

would move from the 180. They seem pretty firm on that.

According to them, the legislation, that's their floor, you might say, the minimum. We even, Representative Pysh had me convinced that if they built on 20 acres, we'd multiply 20 by 4. And that sounded great, but it didn't work. but it was a good try but they didn't seem to deviate from the 180.

That's really important to know that they see that as the floor.

So we've had a series of questions from the community and discussions about the forested piece. and did they give you any sense of how a mechanism could work and if it had to be after the transfer of land or if it could be before that perhaps we could work out an arrangement with the town on some of that some or all of the forest if they preserve their density? Or is that all part of negotiation?

I would say it's all part of negotiation, but I think they are very open to that. I think the answer to that specific question will be part of the larger discussion which may include there's no question that there is a high priority on maintaining as much as possible of that space, I would say, based on what I'm hearing. But there may also be other factors that come into play. such as traffic calming and maybe not wanting the density to be wanting it to be as dense on a small section so I think these are the details that they would say you town come to us and tell us what your

what the vision is, what your priorities are here and then we can have that discussion but I would say there's no doubt that they are willing to talk about that and more than talk about I think they understand that that is likely to be part of the ultimate resolution.

and I think they also if you build on us if you if they are wedded to 180 units and you build on less land the height of the units are and so that's a trade off of how much the forest you want and how high and at some point the town may say we only want X height and so that also could reflect on where you are with that.

Go ahead. one other question that I think puzzles people because thank you for the information that really the priority is housing and it's not the priority isn't kind of a Sale to fund cyber security. It's more housing and then a side benefit. Is there any insight about expectations of what makes it a profitable sale that provides MassBay with kind of a reasonable and so forth. And I think the value for releasing the property as surplus or once they release it is that kind of it yields what it yields because I think people are confused about the two objectives and how linked or not linked they are.

I didn't, they seemed clear that this was a housing proposal and they wanted 180 units. What that is, they didn't say. They wanted to hear. I didn't hear a discussion that may be in their mind, well, we have to get X amount of money because we want this. I didn't get that feeling about that. I got some letters, would they be owner-occupied? They didn't say they wouldn't be. Would they be elderly? They didn't say. So there was, I didn't hear it, we didn't hear it, even if they thought about it. I think that there were grants around for what MassBay wanted to do with it.

And so I thought it was more like it's part of they're doing it other places in the state. they get four units an acre. This is what we think we can do. How can we do this? And the town feel they've had input. I personally didn't think it was a money. ultimately had to get the most money.

I think that's correct. I think that MassBay is very interested in getting a significant, for lack of a better word, you know, Down payment or whatever. But at one point there was some comment that this would not be the sole source of the funding for for the college's project.

Could I offer a potential framing for you to respond to? It seems to me if the priority is housing and they're talking about four units per acre, which they're entitled to by right, it would be helpful for the town to approach that as the way we should be thinking about what is likely to go there. and in our visioning to propose that and have our consultant help fashion different options what that could look like and offer people as you said Senator Cream okay so if you want this trade-off for open space, this would be your trade-off in density. So people really can visualize what we're talking about. Does that sound reasonable?

Yes. I think seeing a plan is very, because We talk in a vacuum and you say, okay, we can save all of the forest. So what does that mean? Does the town... I'm not suggesting they should, but is the town okay with 10 stories? I mean, you know, I think not. So I think that having a plan for people to look at, because it's always hard to visualize what does that really look like and where do we negotiate.

So if we approach it from the understanding, at least the starting point that we're talking about 180 units and what would we like to see? within those parameters. That would be a productive way for us to begin?

Correct. I think this is what you said, but I just want to be clear. I would not limit it to... the open space what other things what other things do you want to see addressed in this project yes terrific thank you go ahead Tom

My concern, though, which isn't really alleviated listening to the results you're meeting, is that they have us in a position where we're negotiating against ourselves. because we know they're looking for 180 units. The Affordable Housing Act is quite clear on that calculation. But they won't tell us that they'll limit themselves to 180 units. So we're in a position, going out to the community, talking to them about what they want and what the vision might be. We go back to them with something that accomplishes 180 units in a visually satisfactory way, and they immediately say, well, that's going to mean we really need five or six units per acre.

I don't think that is that is not at all what they said.

That was never I mean of course they reminded us it was a floor. but they are the ones that said this is what we could do and I didn't We didn't get the impression that you were negotiating. I would certainly, personally, I would certainly not go back to them with 200. You know, I mean, I... I think you would say this is what you read the law to be and this is what we envision. But it may be two different plans, three different plans. What does it look like? What are people going to be – and comfortable with, but I would not go even 181.

from their perspective, they want to be clear because in some other communities, Bedford for example, they got significantly more than the floor because there were other things that Bedford wanted that were high priority and it's a different community. So I think they just want to be clear that more units is an option. I cannot imagine based on the what I'm hearing to date but you know if I think the point they're trying to make is they're not limited if for some reason there was some plan that came forward that had a higher density that's possible but I do not

based on our conversations I would not say that they are going to if we come up with you come up with something that has that many units I think it would be very surprising

Well conversely it seems to me if I read between the lines we also shouldn't go back and propose 100 units. That would not be received favorably. So what I've been trying to impart to the residents is this is a by-right development. and we need to work productively and constructively as a town to help inform the RFP in the most favorable way for you know amenities that we would like traffic calming that we would like Housing types that we would like, a CCRC, maybe a nonprofit developer, whatever it is. But we have to be realistic. And we don't want them to walk away either. And then come back with something we don't want.

I'm sorry Marjorie, I apologize. Your response is helpful because if you're sitting here as one of the select board it's our credibility and reputation that's on the line when we go out to the community and engage them on a charrette to visualize 180 units and the state then comes back and we have to go back to the community with 200 or 240 or 300 units. So that's why we need to know what kind of mobility we have within the choices so that the community feels confident in the job that we're doing representing their interests.

So we're in the same boat in a way. We met with them to try and hear more and we We tried to save. We only build on 20. That's 80. Alice had good math. I was impressed, but I don't know about them. But in any event, I in some ways we're relaying to you so if they did come back and say 200, 250, whatever I think we would be really upset because we questioned them. I mean, of course they said, well, if you want whatever, we're always willing to take more.

Ask a question.

Kenny, did you have your hand up?

Yes, sorry about that.

So 180 is the floor. They have the right to do 180 units. I don't want to be cynical, but why would they even negotiate with us if they already have the right to do that?

In my opinion, they want more. And the only reason to negotiate is because they want more density. And so we're going to have to give something if we want, for example, the forest preserved. And the only thing we have to give is more density. I find it hard to believe that 180 is where they're going with this because they can do that already.

They are also concerned with maintaining good relations with the municipalities in which they are working.

their proposals with the commuter area with the housing has created lots of suits lots of ill feelings with communities that couldn't decided they couldn't fit into what was required. We brought that up to them. I think we got the impression, but I can't say that I wouldn't If I had mud on my face and they'd come back, then I'd have to come back and say, but I think we brought that up and I got the impression that they wanted to work with the neighborhood. I guess it'll be a give and take. You'll come back and they'll

and they may say well you know I don't know what you could ask for that they couldn't give you but maybe and they could say we don't want to do that kind of suppose you said I want $180,000 Luxury, $3 million units. Maybe they don't want that.

I think they could go a long way to reducing some level of stress in the community if they would commit to no more than 180 units.

If that's what they're saying is 180.

I think your proposals should reflect 180.

I just had a question on some of the logistics of this going forward. So some of the things that we have heard over and over again from the residents is regarding traffic. and that's likely to require some sort of improvement to the intersection of Oakland and Route 9 which I'm assuming is a mass DOT product and not a DCAM or an EOHLC. So if we are asking for that, is that within the RFP or is that something we negotiate separately? I'm not quite clear on how that works.

the RFP would be directed at someone who would purchase the land and develop it consistent with what's in the RFP. the developer does not have jurisdiction over that intersection. That would be a separate part of it.

they have to come even if they come up with a plan even under the law they have to come for some approval to the town and traffic seems to be a relevant thing that they'd have to consider.

that wasn't clear to me if they do have to come to us for approval on traffic or if that's something we have to partner with them to go forward with Megan do you have clarity on that?

So we have the capability to look at site plan review so site plan It does look at traffic in some ways but really site plans looking at the ingress, egress of the site, the site circulation. It also then would look at the parking capacity, things of that nature. the off-site implications of that intersection I do think is part of any work we do on our end we actually had a meeting this afternoon with the traffic committee and you know are running some preliminary numbers to what today's levels of traffic flow are so that as we make projections we have a good handle on what we think the increased implications may be. I think another factor in that which is we're waiting on mass bayon is their own parking analysis. I don't know if they spoke to you about that but certainly as we look at where they are going to park their students, faculty, staff, etc.

Where that's located has a significant impact on the traffic flow. So if they then install a parking structure, as we were talking about a traffic committee, off of Route 9, that would alleviate Oakland Street substantially, right? And so, and it may facilitate additional improvements on the Oakland Route 9 intersection. Since they own the other side of the street where the existing campus is, there's an opportunity, even though stone walls, et cetera, to potentially widen that intersection, widen the roadway. and so those are some other items we're sort of brainstorming for consideration as part of that discussion that given the implications you're gonna have to do work anyway, maybe as part of that we can partner to widen the right-of-way

the town could maintain that as part of the public way so I mean those are the things at a staff level that we're contemplating but it really is going to be indicative of their solutions for parking and that is the a big piece of the puzzle to how we're going to look at that site because if they say oh well we can't put that on our 40 acres and we have to maintain that that's a different dynamic on the 45 acres that we'll have to contend with but that's all part of your vision

Right, exactly.

Okay, any other? Go ahead, Beth. I don't think my question actually is for our legislators. I think it's for Megan because what you brought up about the site plan review. do we have review of the MassBay alternative parking solution because I mean that's a big piece of the puzzle right where are all those cars going

You do not. So anything that happens at MassBay falls under the jurisdiction, except for sort of electrical permitting or plumbing permitting, falls under the jurisdiction of the state inspectors and does not go through local permitting.

and my last question was what I heard which was very helpful from both of you implies that as we Evaluate Tradeoffs, and Evaluate Proposals for the RFP, that they would be available to give us feedback on where we are on different choices. So to Kenny's point, we won't get something with a bow for the community that we've gotten some level of Not happiness, but we have a little bit of consensus around and get all the way down the runway and find out that they say no. is that a fair assumption that they'll partner with us on some of those ideas even though it doesn't mean they could say no and we wouldn't want to push it?

I don't think they're going to on every little thing, but it may be that you don't have one plan or that you have more than one plan or that you... I assume there'll be a negotiation. And if what is most important is the egress or the parking, that gets balanced against the wooded area. And that gets balanced to get the number of units. you want to stick with 180 and that makes a lot of sense that's what they said I don't know but every nobody gets everything but I think the process I don't think it's an overnight process.

Well, we appreciate you advocating on our behalf and passing the information, acting as our conduits. We will keep you, Corey will certainly keep you in the loop as we continue our work. We're hopeful. that will be able to get a visioning study early in December and as Megan said we need to wait and see what happens with their parking study because it depends which side of the street they're going to locate their parking on but we would like to do that as soon as possible so thank you both very much on that and I know you have some other updates

So I was going to talk about the funding implications. That's not a good topic either. So I will say that I find it difficult because one day or one week I think we're losing money and then they change their mind and it's another thing. So I'm going to only talk about things that I think we know. because we don't really know what funding is going to happen with the schools. I read the paper and the president says, I'm going to punish them. in New York, and I'm going to take all their money away. I don't know what that means for us as we go down the road. there were one was that the state announced so that big beautiful bill

The tax change in the federal law had a spillover in Massachusetts to the tune of $650 million. So our tax code is somewhat coupled with in some instances with the federal task code. We give the same exemptions. Some things we decouple, but some things, so if we looked at things that were coupled and we didn't know this in time to before we passed our budget. We have some money set aside, but we can't change for this tax fiscal period that started July 1st. even if we decoupled, we can't get that money back. We may decouple for the next fiscal period. So to give you an example,

The recent federal law returned to pre-2022 rules around the ability of business to fully deduct domestic research and experimental expenditures. and that will cost us $288 million to the Commonwealth because we believe that the ability was X and then with the new law they increased that and we are in the position that for this year we have to do that. The federal law increased the federal deduction for state and local taxes. The so-called SALT cap, so you were limited in what you could take off to $10,000. Now it's $40,000. We have to, for this fiscal year, go along with that. And so fewer Massachusetts taxpayers will pay a pass-through entity exercise.

legislature worked around that for the SALT cap. And so that's $222 million for the state. So that's just an example. the legislature gave itself an 860 million cushion when putting together the budget. So we have some room, but we're also worried about what's going to happen We know that a lot of other key points are some of the subsidies for wind, some of the subsidies for EVs. all of that is expiring and it doesn't look like it's going to increase. We know that we set our goals to have by 2050 we were going to have net zero

and now and we had Mass Saves who was working with us and they were taking doing doing some subsidize in the environmental justice communities so that people who couldn't afford heat pumps and couldn't afford this were able to come along and utilize this now they're not supposed to do that anymore so mass saves and there are more and more um Fossil Fuel Companies, AI brings on requirements for more fossil fuel. But there used to be a feeling in the federal government that we wanted to limit the fossil fuels. Well, that I shudder to think about what will happen if we find ourselves with the

that particular Medicaid cut. So we have some people on Medicaid by the amount of income that they have. That was something that was done during the Obama era. if we lose that funding we have to decide what we're going to do about that. Are we going to just let those people go to the emergency room? We just bailed out community hospitals because they were in the red Thank you very much. and there's no daycare so where's the money for daycare we those are just they're all like not good solutions but they're problems that we will be facing in some

in the next budget, and some with what do we do to plug the holes now. And money has been coming in. September tax collection came in at $4.5 billion, a 3% more than was collected last year, but $1.4 less than what the benchmark was what we thought it would be. So we're getting money in, we're getting it in various ways, but it's not enough to cover what we might find. And this whole hit to the tax code I understand was totally unexpected, that we cannot do anything about this fiscal 2025. I know that's not good news, but that's where we are at this point.

You know that all of our earmarks, which we are very proud of, the two of us in our positions get do earmarks and we're excited we call we find out what the town wants or we and I have three towns but that and Alice has more than Wellesley as well. And we were very excited and now the governor We can't even override what she's done because she hasn't vetoed it. But all the earmarks are on hold. And she has till November to decide what to do. There are going to be some overrides, but that's for critical things. I know the House is going to start and we'll do it, but that's not for these earmarks. But the things that we were excited that we would get for Wellesley. I don't have any other better news. I wish I did.

Got any bad news?

No. I will say I tend to be an optimist by nature, and so I'm hopeful that this will sort itself out over the course of the next couple of months and we'll have a better handle. I think Senator Cream's point really was. With the uncertainty, it makes it very difficult to make decisions. So I know you may be aware that the governor has filed a bill looking to set aside a significant amount of funds for research. because of some of the cuts that our research institutions are experiencing. However, it's not really clear how many of those cuts that are being talked about are actually going to happen so you don't want to appropriate a large amount like that only to have it happen that Oh no, that money actually came through. So that's sort of the situation we're in.

But again, hopefully that will sort itself out over the next several weeks. and if it sorts itself out in a way that is not good, you know, we run the risk that the governor will start to do what are called 9C cuts. She, there's a and a relatively small part of the budget that she actually has the ability to cut without legislative approval. Local Aid, Chapter 70 is not something that the governor can do without our... She's asking us for more authority, though. We haven't given it. So that's where we are with that. Any questions? So the next item that you had indicated an interest in was the status of Wellesley Special Acts. Let's see.

As I'm sure you know, because you just appointed the same people to the new entity. the act dissolving the Housing Development Corporation were signed into law the early part of last month. And so that has happened. The non-civil service public safety personnel that is passed the House in August and it is in the Senate and Cindy can comment on that. The act allowing the print-free digital legal notices. That has had a favorable report from committee. I believe, though, that in addition to the home rule petition, I actually filed a bill that would have broader implication beyond Wellesley. and there are many home rule petitions dealing with this.

So I think the decision is kind of being made around whether we should just do one bill that allows all communities to do. It wouldn't surprise me if that is what comes out of this. And so I'm hopeful that in the House, it's in what's the last step before it comes to the floor. And so I'm hoping that... that will be resolved soon. The property tax deferrals for seniors, that is scheduled for a hearing on November 7th. and I would anticipate that there would be some action relatively soon. And then, did you want to comment on any of the home rule petitions, Cindy?

Just the one that's in the Senate, I request the Senate Council to review the bill. They told me that the review was in process, and I'm hopeful that that will happen.

and then you were wondering about the status of the individual Medicare marketplace legislation. So that had a hearing in June. David Cornwitz and I met with Chairman Lawn, who chairs the Health Care Finance Committee, which is where the bill sits. I would say that the chairman was very interested in this. The challenge is that this is not the first time I have filed this bill. there is strong opposition from the organization that represents state retirees. and there has not been a lot of organized support. My understanding is that many municipalities think this is a good idea.

but they have not been reaching out to their legislators to convey that message and the MMA has not taken a position on it. They're not opposed to it but they have not been advocating for it and generally speaking something like this that affects the municipalities the first one of the more important factors in the bill moving is the position of the Mass Municipal Association. But having said that, the Health Care Finance Committee is looking at it and I think taking it very seriously but there are thousands of bills and the bills that move are the ones that the majority of the members are hearing from their constituents and I use that term somewhat loosely, but that would include their own municipal officials.

So it needs to have more organized support for it to move.

So I did bring this to MAPC at one point and it's not something that they normally legislate on. It's not their space. It is much more MMA space. So I think we need to write a letter to MMA. you know immediately supporting this but I actually had this on my list of things to bring up and I meant to ask it at the last section but I was so stunned by your great news that I had to take a breath but you know this could give immediate financial relief to municipalities at such a level that would let us cope with what's coming down the pike to us and so I think that I understand there's opposition but the world is changing and so I think we need to do what we can at MMA and their legislative group to really elevate this because we need it and we need it as soon as possible. given everything that's going on.

If I could just add to that. There is an upcoming event that David Kornwitz and I as well as our HR director are attending. where it's municipal roundtable on strategic solutions for healthcare cost management. And so we are hoping to expand this. David Komertz has also addressed the Norfolk managers. and certainly Cohasset was like right on board with us on this and a number of other managers were of interest. One question I had for Alice, is if this was something the town wished to pursue as part of a home rule how do we think that would be taken up?

I think that it has a I would not rule that out, but again, sometimes, most of the time when a home rule petition comes through, they move relatively quickly and there's not much opposition. Sometimes when it is something that might be setting a precedent for the entire state, there is a little more scrutiny given to it. I would say that if a number of towns have home rule petitions that would be helpful. and I think one of the things that it's really important to understand is that this is talking about changing the way in which retirees health care is delivered. And while this may seem very clear cut to us,

I don't know how many of you have had to help your elderly parents navigate their health insurance and make a decision about what seems very black and white to us can be overwhelming and so what you have is a very very large group of people who say this is working for me and I don't see any reason to change and in fact I'm afraid to change and their representatives are then taking that. Now, I believe there is a way to do this that can allay those concerns, but they have to be recognized. To me, this is not the same, and I know that Wellesley does not participate in the GIC. but I recall when we passed legislation that allowed municipalities to participate in the GIC.

There was huge, huge pushback. for this very reason. People were afraid, and particularly people who have health issues, and so therefore they get scared. So to me, the most important, there are two key factors here. One is to get a critical mass of municipalities on board and get the MMA to take a strong position and the second is to recognize the legitimate concerns that the people who currently are covered through the retiree portion of the health care plans, their concerns are addressed.

And I misspoke. Corey, can you come back?

Yeah, I just wanted to remind the board that you actually did send a letter to both the MMA and the MAPC with... the leaders bill as one of the select board's top legislative priorities and we cc'd both leaders offices on that. We actually got a confirmation from Adam Chapdelaine, who's the CEO and executive director, saying he was going to discuss this legislative division. So I will reach back out to Dave Kaufman, their legislative director, and get some follow up for the board.

It's just the stunning news makes you forget what you've done.

My apologies. I drafted it. I'm sorry. Well, the only other thing I'd add is there was a 10% increase to West Suburban Health Group's Medicare. employees. I know I briefed the board on this, that this Thursday, West Suburban's voting the Medicare rates for 2026, which is looking at likely 11 to 12 percent increase this year so it's 22 percent in two years may be you know a mechanism for our retirees who are in very little very small pensions. Wellesley is in a position where we're increasing our COLA base. The Mass Teachers Association's COLA base is at like $14,000, which that impacts all of Wellesley's teachers. the other COLA bases for many of the other county systems is far lower than that. We're at least sort of building up our COLA base to offset these increases for

are retirees because we have David Cornwitz who, you know, we all know how amazing he is in terms of thinking about the retiree, the community, and the healthcare. providers. And so I just throw that out there, too, as an opportunity to, as we continue to think about this, because it's a national crisis on health care costs. And so I think we just need to think about that strategically.

I just think mass municipal is important.

that covers everything that we were asked about if there's anything else we're more than happy to answer any other questions comments questions from the board I can't see Kenny

I assume that means he doesn't have a question just a huge thank you it's really great to see you again thank you so much

Thank you. We're always here to thank you.

Yes.

And we know you're just the messengers. So, yes. Yes.

Thank you all very much. Yes. Members of our staff here this evening as well.

Thank you.

Plus, I love working with Allison. We're a mutual admiration society. Well, we consider ourselves very lucky, so thank you both. And again, never hesitate to reach out about any of this, and we will stay in touch on the MassBay stuff. Thank you.

All right, our next agenda, thank you. Our next agenda item is an update on the fire station master plan. I believe Chief Steve Mortarelli is here. Glenn Remick is here. I have to look over my computer. So Chief, I'll turn it over to you.

Can I just ask, were there some additional documents that we were going to receive? That's what it says in the Friday Night Mail.

The additional documents were the slides that I sent digitally. I actually will print them and we'll bring them down after the meeting.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Right. I'm going to actually turn it over to Glenn to introduce our team he's our project manager for facilities management and permanent building committee so Glenn I'll turn it over to you

Thank you and good evening, everyone. We've got tonight our consultants, Context Architecture. We've got Jeff Shaw, Emily Mowbray, and Salvi Shah. and we've got Chief Martorelli and Chief Soares on his iPhone also. So we thought we would give you kind of a introduction of who context is and their process and then go through where we are in the process. So I will turn it over to Jeff to take you through that.

Very good. Well, thank you for having us here tonight. I appreciate the opportunity to attend virtually. Hopefully everybody can see the screen now that I'm sharing. Okay, great, excellent. And by any means, throughout this short presentation, please, ask questions if you have any. We also can certainly talk after this about additional questions. I'm sure there will be. But we thought, again, like Glenn said, we'd just introduce ourselves, our experience in doing this type of work, fire department feasibility studies or master planning, as well as the specific work we've undertaken for Wellesley. So as members of the working group, Megan, Steve, the Chief.

We have the Assistant Chiefs, Charles Tutor-Dominico and Glenn, Joe McDonough, Eric Aberdeen, and Brian DuPont, all on the working group team. from the town, as well as myself, Emily and Salvi from Context. And we have a full team of consultants that are working on this project. We have Charles Jennings in particular from Manitou working on the response time and operational analysis as well as other consulting engineers from civil structural MEP and code. specifically when it comes to experience working on Public Safety Facilities, our team has really focused on this for many decades. You can see here that we have extensive history working with fire departments throughout the Commonwealth and in particular performing these types of feasibility studies here.

We have a high focus on ensuring that our buildings ultimately, when we're designing buildings, fit into the communities that they are sited within, so should we get the opportunity at some point in the future, that will be integral in ensuring a facility in Wellesley, whether renovations or new facilities, would be designed appropriately for the town. We also focus heavily on the specific requirements for fire stations that starts at the programming phase, which you should have a document in the mail from the program. as it's proceeded, and then that extends to making facilities really focused on being flexible. In particular, we want to ensure that the changing demographics in the fire department are reflected in how we design facilities or accommodating gender neutral facilities. We're also accommodating the changing programming needs.

As we know, the mission of the fire department continues to change day to day, and we want these facilities to last long into the future. These facilities also have to be designed around training opportunities. It's critical that the fire department is able to maintain a high level of readiness, a high level of service to the community by training as much as they can on site. which we can develop within these facilities as well as focusing on health and safety. I'm sure you all are aware of the high rates of cancer in the fire department and ensuring that facilities are designed to to mitigate that risk as much as possible is critical as part of the planning and the design and building of these stations. Decontamination type spaces and segregation through mechanical means or pressurization means is important. A range of

tasks will be undertaken within this study, but our team really focuses on quality assurance, quality control, budget control, and standards. We have a separate team in the office in addition to the three of us working on this project. that focus heavily on ensuring that they're sort of behind the scenes so that our final product really reflects this high level, high standard of service. Throughout this study, we'll focus on various different aspects. One of those and maybe a primary one is a response time and operational analysis. I mentioned Manitou and Charles that is working on this. This is ongoing, but our process is to really understand from looking at the data that the town supplies for call and runtime information, how you are performing currently and assess how that might play out

under various different scenarios, including different locations or future development, and really applying the standards that are out there to ensure that the town continues to meet a high level of service. We will also be eventually looking at different sites potentially for siting new stations, replacement stations, various different scenarios which haven't yet been resolved, but when we do, we will use these types of tools, this selection matrix. I know it's hard to see the words on the page, but essentially this tool is intended to take a range of different sites and return the top scoring sites. So it is a quantitative analysis of various qualities of the different sites. We rank a whole number of issues, weight them, score them, and then ultimately

take a subset of those sites and look at them further.

Jeff, can I ask you a question about that? I see that this is for Scarborough. Are these standard criteria for assessing fire station sites?

That is... particular to the station and the town we're working in. So in fact, one of the things we were working with the working group in Wellesley is to assess which issues are important in Wellesley and how they Rank, specific to this town in Wellesley. And while the issues are generally applicable to most communities, I'd say that my experience has been they move up and down the ranking depending on the particular aspects of what the community is facing. Sometimes response time might be the most important criteria, other times it's It's visibility or it's fit on the site, sometimes budget, which is always a big concern. But they do move. So it's very tailored to the community.

Thank you.

Sure. We then move into a phase of looking at specific sites and trying to test out how the program that we had developed earlier fits on that site, including requirements for allowing apparatus fire department vehicles to maneuver safely and securely through the site and enter the road network. and taking into account zoning, environmental issues and other setbacks that might apply to ensure that whatever sites might be looked at in the future are workable and can be made into the building or the future construction. Many aspects of our team work and touch on and will involve ensuring that the project meets the town's sustainability goals.

So our office focuses on this as part of every project we do, but we know in Wellesley there are specific goals and accomplishments that the town would like to see in all of its public buildings. So reducing operational costs is one aspect of that. Obviously will be entered in the analysis. We'll be performing an energy analysis. How about that? And engaging with the town to ensure that whatever designs or whatever proposals that come out of this master plan process are fully in sync with the town's Sustainability Goals. We have a number of different projects that have been able to meet various different standards like LEED over time. Another critical aspect of this project will be the communication process where we, once there is an actual level of data and information available, we'll be then able to

meet and distribute that to a wider audience. Our process generally follows a pretty specific pattern. We're in the stage right now of gathering the relevant information, identifying the goals for the town, and we've already developed a fairly detailed approach and an engagement I idea of how to engage will then be maintaining that high level of contact throughout the study, reviewing it and adjusting it as needed. This process has served pretty well in many other communities where we've worked with very similar sets of issues, older facilities that needed work or needed space to accomplish the mission. and obviously very expensive construction process that might be need to undertaken. So usually some sort of engagement with the town that involves a discussion about funding, how that can happen, why do we need it?

being able to disseminate that information carefully and specifically to prove the need as well as to understand that this solution, whatever it is, is the most appropriate. So as part of this project, our team was asked to look at a range of different topics. They're all on the left here from developing the program and operational assessment response time, as I had mentioned already. all the way through to the end of producing a final cost estimate for the selected recommendation and then a final master planning report. We are, you know, about a third of the way or maybe a quarter of the way through this process already. And this is just the overall process that we'll go through. Here are some of the activities that have already taken place. came on board in May. We met seven times since June with the working group.

We've already done an extensive documentation of the existing buildings, looking through previous plans, the maintenance records the town has significant amount of information available in their public facilities group which is really awesome. We don't always see that in many other towns so that's excellent to have. We've gone through the stations both with the facilities group and the fire department. received extensive input as I mentioned from both facilities and the fire department both during the review of the existing buildings as well as the programming phase for the fire department. We've received several rounds of data in response to the response time modeling, constructed various models to start looking at this. That's in progress right now. We've discussed the initial programming recommendations and the response time analysis. So as you all know, there's two current stations.

It wasn't always this way in Wellesley, but that's what we have today. And these are the two that we're looking at to assess what you have now. that completed work as I mentioned has looked at these buildings carefully. We've Seeing that they're well maintained, we've seen that there may be a few issues that might need work, but really good job so far to keep them in good health. the biggest issues that we've seen so far is some of those health and safety concerns that we were talking about before because they were designed and built before those concerns were really prevalent and known and so some of the issues are because they're just not enough space to accommodate ideally some of those types. The fire department is doing an excellent job trying to maintain the highest level of health and safety with the facilities that they have, but there's limitations.

Jeff, sorry, it's Marjorie again. Is there an operating assumption on whether the headquarters building, the building stays where it is regardless of whether... the headquarter operations move. Is that being considered or is that an assumption?

I would say globally everything is sort of on the table at this point in terms of the master planning stage. We're really looking at everything from soup to nuts, but specifically, we have discussed with the fire department and the working group the idea that headquarters itself the administrative functions does not necessarily need to be co-located with the first responders in that building depending on various other scenarios, they could potentially be in a different facility or not at station two, but at a different station that has first responders in it. So we don't see that as a is a critical element to pair them in their current location. So that is helping the idea that there's flexibility within the department.

Right. But whether the function remains at Station 2 or not is the assumption that the building will stay? Are you working around Keeping that building or is that also on the table?

Sure. Yeah. And I got you now. Yes, that is. on the table, I would say. Keeping the building is definitely an option. We've looked at, and I'll get to it in a second, but we've looked at different options of what would happen if we moved the building. A lot of these, when I say move the building, but move the people that are there to a different location. A lot of these depend on the response time analysis that we're doing, as well as the operational analysis determining where the resources are most useful in the town to meet the needs that the town has so yes we are looking at that specifically thank you sure On the space needs side of the table, we have carefully gone through this with the fire department to ensure that we would be producing a program that not only meets today's needs, but as flexible for the future includes the growth

that the department and we foresee that is reasonable. We have about 50,000 gross square feet between the two stations. Sorry, we need about 50,000 square feet between the two stations. We have a little under 29,000, so there is a gap. for what's needed. And that gap, as I said, could be filled with a combination of keeping new and adding keeping existing and adding new, renovating, expanding, a whole bunch of different options, which we're not yet at the point of being able to say what they are yet, but those are under study now and would be the next steps. there's a whole laundry list of things that go into building a space needs program, but essentially we're making sure that it meets the current standards, NFPA standards,

we're making sure it meets the expectations of the department to purchase new equipment, new apparatus, being able to ensure that modern apparatus with the length, the height, the width, the weight can all fit into the buildings and be correctly deployed for the future. making sure that buildings are gender neutral and are flexible and have those health and safety aspects like wellness areas for the workers that are in the building, the firefighters and other administrators. As I said, there's a number of things that are currently in progress, including the response time analysis. There's some initial views of that, but these images here really focus on the existing conditions.

the image on the far left is a representation of some of the development that we understand and have some data on being proposed currently and need to take that into account as to how we analyze the deployment as well as the response and then the two graphics center and right are the current response from the current two stations and As we go forward, these get composited. We look at the overall town response and we look at various different models of two or three potential station locations, including new and including existing locations to ensure that we've really looked at every possible configuration to find the best performing configuration for the town taking into effect and count the operational and future development issues.

Eventually we'll look at potential sites to accommodate that needed program and how that might look in the future.

Jeff, could I interrupt you and ask you about the previous slide? One back. One more back on space. So the space needs program where there's a gap of, I don't know, 24,000 square feet or so, or 22,000 square feet. Is that over a period of time? Can you give us a context for what our space needs are today versus what your projection is going out a number of years?

Certainly. So the study is based upon a 30-year staffing projection, 30-year expectation that there will be additional needs in the future. and realistically department from a staffing perspective is not anticipated to grow significantly under a two-station model and this is where the master planning starts to throw a little bit of a a kink in things and start to make things a little bit more complicated depending on the different models that you would look at. But assuming the current model of two station or at least the current engine company and ladder company response method, the numbers. We don't see a lot of staffing increase, which translates to space for people and for equipment. So the real drivers are accommodating what the department currently needs to

House. And I would say that's the vast majority of the gross growth footage imbalance that's there. There's some space that's dedicated, I would say, you know, to looking a little bit further down the road in terms of making sure that there's adequate space in the apparatus bays for flexibly housing different size vehicles so that we're not planning everything on, let's say, a ladder truck at a certain length or an engine at a certain length and all of a sudden you need to replace that with a longer truck and now you're out of space. So there's a percentage there for that. I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what that is, but it's a very small percentage because most of the driver is accommodating sort of what's missing today. In the future as we

as drugs change and as we add a few more people, there's a number of bedrooms that might be needed and a little bit of apparatus space that would be needed and some storage areas that would be needed. it's really the current day that's driving the biggest imbalance.

I think Jeff, did you want to mention the kind of the idea of health and safety? So the decontamination separation which neither station currently has and the I think another big one is the EMS facilities within the station within headquarters and having a requirement for its own space Those were certainly drivers in increasing that total new needed gross square foot.

That's a great point. Thank you, Emily. That's great. The EMS provider is currently housed in a very inadequate little box in the apparatus room. It's better than a box, I suppose, but it's a very small that's located in the apparatus room itself, which keeps them segregated from the apparatus area, but it's not what they should have. And I think most people's workplace shouldn't look like that. We want to make sure that that's done correctly and in the future that has the correct provisions to support any model of providing those services. and then as Emily mentioned the health and safety adds a bit of space for decontamination spaces that include decontamination personal showers for decon as well as equipment decon which

is currently being performed in the station but not in its own space. There are different areas that this happens and in some cases like the personnel showers they have to use the the current dormitory showers for that, which is not best practice. Any other questions before I move on?

I'm concerned that if I understand you correctly, under consideration is the replacement of both stations. and my concern is that unless we can demonstrate a fire safety concern within town that both stations need to be geographically relocated because of response times We're talking to the community about $400 million in building before we really even get to the concept of of two new fire stations. So I'm looking at this slide seeing that there are a few issues with the exterior envelopes, perhaps some new windows on the second and third floor. at Station 2. I think at some point we're going to have to decide that we're going to, within the community, we're going to be saying we're

keeping that station, renovating it, and looking at what the new station has to include to make up for any deficiencies and relocate those functions to the new station. It concerns me that there might be a wish to build two new stations given the location and the general condition of headquarters right now.

I would say that the purpose of the master plan study, it's exactly to drive at questions like that. And our goal is to not pre come into this process predisposed to an ideal solution. It's to really explore all the alternatives, which include reusing the existing buildings and maybe repairs and additions could be made, and also to look at one replacement or maybe both get replaced or you know a whole multitude of scenarios so that we can show the town that all options were considered and realistically the most advantageous option was selected, which would include things exactly like how much money is it going to cost because the town should be choosing the most value oriented solution and not, you know, just the one that looks pretty. So we're exactly right.

We are considering the existing buildings and how those could be reused or currently used better to avoid the requirement of having to build all new buildings. And that's also part of the response time modeling to ensure that we understand how the two stations that are currently on the site perform. As we've done the modeling already, we know that those two the current stations we have are actually in good locations, but there are some areas of town that potentially need some assistance. So our job really is to make sure that we're looking at all of these options and funneling down to the most value the town can get from this process.

And I also think just just to make sure that it's not a you know, it's not necessarily a five year plan. You know, it's more it's a phased plan. It could be up to 10 years. overall as to how this work happens, should an extra station be needed, and when it gets built. So I think again, as Jeff said, it's part of the overall master plan that we need to evaluate every situation and then make sure that we are backed up on the conclusion we come to. So we are not out there trying to say you need two new stations. We're trying to find the best fit for Wellesley.

Yeah, I think it's obvious that you need something because we've got 22,000 square feet that we can't. take care of in our current stations. But what that something is, is yet to be determined.

Go ahead, Beth. So I have two questions. The space chart is fairly stunning. Will you be providing us with where the gaps are? kind of side-by-side what we have. I know there were, in the master plan printout, there were a number of charts. But is there like a clean... you know public space gap administration space gap apparatus bay gap that you could provide to us so we could better visualize where those gaps are in addition to the explanation you gave us.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's not yet been performed specifically for that purpose, but we certainly can do the calculations to confirm it. We don't have the exact square footage of every single space in the existing building but that's not difficult for us to obtain we have the plans so we should be able to do that pretty easily and then compare it to the needed space. The way the space needs program works, we do look to some degree at how the spaces are currently being used, but the program really looks at NFPA standards and other to understand what the best or I should say the proper way that the spaces should be laid out to accommodate the personnel, the equipment, the furnishings, and how those spaces need to operate.

So while there is a relationship in 100%, we can show that relationship, we're not looking at how we can necessarily expand the current apparatus room or the current set of administrative offices to meet the goal. That's a separate phase that will happen afterwards.

and my second question which is related is that one of the things that we prize is benchmarking and I accept that each of our functions we're very proud of how they operate and there are unique delivery mechanisms for I assume for our fire department than other fire departments but I do think as we go through this process it will be helpful for us to have some benchmarks to evaluate this against because we will be asked that question.

Thank you. Also point out just so in the images here that you can see this, especially the one with the fire truck and the exercise equipment on the apparatus bag. which is actually in front of the EMS. So when you look at this image and you compare it to what is a more modern facility or something

the potential for new facilities to potentially be located. We would then perform a site selection analysis as I had shown you some of those matrices that helped that process along. If there was a short list of sites that rose to the top that also met all the criteria for response time and operational analysis and space requirements, we would then perform TestFit scenarios, understanding the different triggers that might be problematic for each site, like planning and zoning issues. And then a concept plan would be developed for each of those sites. Again, we'd be aligning our energy and sustainability with the town's goals. We're performing phasing and cost analysis, which is crucial at this point. If we are going to propose any new facility,

especially if we're going to be proposing any renovations to the current stations we have to understand how it will impact the department's workflow. Can they stay in the building? Do they have to be relocated? How costly is that? Where do they go? and that's where phasing and understanding this cost analysis really can play a major role in determining the best way of manipulating the various options or producing a final recommendation. that aligns with the town's goals, really streamlining the cost as much as possible. And then we will be clearly producing a final report. We'll be reviewing that along the way with the select board. We also expect that before we get to that stage, we'll be checking in with the Select Board a couple more times. As we know, that's a great interest in what the delivery model will look like or what it should look like for the fire department

should it be a two or a three station model. We'll be looking at that as far as the response time, the operational needs, and coming back and having a discussion with the select board about that results. And then, after that stage, again, meeting back with this group, the select board to review those sites that might meet the needs of the suggested station. So the intent is to really walk this through carefully, making sure that the towns on board with all of the steps that were not out ahead of anybody. And the proper discussion and consideration has been given. There's no intent of rushing anything. We talk internally within the working group of making sure we're taking the appropriate amount of time to look at all of these features. Even though we have a schedule, want to move things along, we are not holding everything to that schedule. until we make sure that each step has been carefully considered.

So that's the presentation we wanted to make tonight and I appreciate the questions so far. I'm happy to try to answer any other questions that you might have.

Thank you, Jeff. I just have one small question. I'd be interested to know what's the general lifespan of a fire department building. And if we renovate a building, with the options that you bring forward. What do we expect the renovation to do to that building? Is it a 25-year building? What does that do? And I'm sure that would be part of the report, but I would be interested in seeing that.

Certainly. My experience has been that it's a little bit of a range. So one way to look at it is how much do communities and I'm not speaking specifically for Wellesley but just in general how much money eventually makes its way to replacing fire department public safety facilities and it's pretty pretty infrequent so these facilities really should be designed in the most durable longest lasting most flexible way possible many of our projects have involved stations that are 40, 50, 80, 100 years old. So we are intending to design when we're doing new buildings or even heavily renovated facilities, buildings that can last 80, 100 years. That's really the goal. Now, from a programmatic standpoint, nobody can predict what's going to happen in 80 to 100 years.

So what facilities would be needed at that point, it's hard to say. But that's where the idea of designing it in the most flexible way comes into play. So we may, the town may be in a situation where the building itself is great, but in 80 to 100 years, this space is just not sufficient. It's similar to the process that we're undergoing now for station two, looking at it from a space perspective. And there are things there that the designers at that time didn't incorporate because it just wasn't relevant. It wasn't known at the time. And we have seen probably within the last 10 years stations that are have all been designed in the 80s and the 70s coming back around for renovations and expansions. So it wouldn't surprise me if it, you know, from a programmatic standpoint, it was a 30 to 40 year outlook.

but from a building perspective, you know, bricks and mortar, it was 80 to 100 years.

Thank you very much, Jeff and Salvi and Emily. Chief, would you or Glenn like to add anything?

Sure. So again, Jeff, definitely. covered everything very well, Jop. That was a very insightful presentation. I think so far where we are, we've done a lot of work. There's been a lot of behind the scenes type work, extracting some of the data. that we use in that context will be using to come up with this with this plan. And we're really looking forward to see what the results are and where the data takes us. I think we're definitely on a good path. Contacts, as you can tell, they're very detail oriented. and the working group we've put together, I think we're in touch on a weekly basis. And I think the communication to this is key. So I think I speak for the entire group that we're extremely happy as far as where we are so far in the process. So I want to thank the whole Context team and our working group for that.

Yeah, I'll just echo that. And I'll just add that this is a master plan. And I think we have the right people in the working group and Context is really good at communicating and will keep the select board up to date. and part of the process because this is a master plan for Wellesley and it's not a master plan that Wellesley has to accommodate or try to work into our planning. it's going to work hand in hand with our planning. So the intent is to have a master plan that works with our plans and our future needs and our future financial situation, how that's phased. We'll work into our capital plans and all that kind of thing. So that's it's not separate. from what the work that the Select Board and others do in town in planning for the future.

This is going to be integral to that, and we'll make sure that the end result is something that we all feel comfortable puts the town in the right position to move each phase forward and what those triggers are when they become important to to start, whether that's a renovation or a new building and how we kind of accommodate the the conditions and working environment for the fire departments during those constructions and transitions. I feel really comfortable we have the right team here that will communicate and work with us to give us a very unique plan that really fits into our plans for the future and the fire station's fire department's needs in the future.

Thank you, Glenn. That was a very helpful context. Of course, public safety is one of our highest priorities, but as we are working on our new facilities master plan, we know that this will become part of it and our new capital planning process will incorporate all of those plans into the next 10, 20, 40, 80 years, whatever it may be. So thank you all very much. This was very helpful. We appreciate you keeping us in the loop. and we look forward to seeing you as your next steps ensue.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Okay. Our next agenda item is to discuss and vote a climate leader accelerator grant application for Hardy and Honeywell School Solar. I invite Dr. Martello and Chris Christian. Thank you. Earlier in the evening, I thought we were going to be much more behind than 10 minutes, but sorry.

Thank you. Good evening. It's wonderful to be here tonight to talk to you about these exciting potential projects on the Hardy and Honeywell schools, the rooftop solar, which has been you know part of these part of the design for these schools since their inception and as as I think you all know town staff have been working with select board school committee and municipal light board to map out a path forward for getting rooftop solar on the schools. And I have been focused on identifying external funding sources that can help us defray the costs of these projects. and I'm here tonight to talk to you about two funding sources, one of which requires select board action.

So the two funding sources are, one, the Climate Leader Decarbonization Accelerator Grant, and we are eligible for that because we are certified as a climate leader in the spring. One of the first in the first cohorts to be certified. and so it it's in our best interest to apply for that funding as soon as possible because there's a minimum number of of certified communities right now and that number will only grow as we go into the future This grant will fund up to $1 million. They require that the town pay a minimum of 10% of the project costs, and they will cover the other 90%. And we have a couple of things we need to submit. One is a notice of intent, which is due around November 6. And that requires the select board chair signature.

and we will follow that up with a grant application due February 6th and this is going to the Department of Energy Resources and that grant application also requires the chair of the select board. the second funding source is an IRA what's called direct pay this is like a tax credit that's available to and nonprofit organizations or tax exempt organizations. And that funding provides up to 30% of the project cost. and that we would need to qualify as you know those federal clean energy credits are going away. over time, but if we can install and commission these arrays by the end of 2027, we will be eligible. I've been talking to tax professionals and confirming our timeline, that that is a safe timeline.

I'm also talking with tax professionals to understand the process and to understand the eligible costs. I believe, for example, that the tax credit is going to cover more than the grant will. So that's encouraging. that is obviously both of these things are time sensitive and I think it makes sense to move forward on them so I am happy to, I could stop there. That's sort of the overview of the funding. possibilities and happy to... One thing I did, I did hand out a table and that is not new information. It's really taking... It's streamlining the information that you saw in the municipal light plant documentation. It's just kind of pulling out the costs and incentives that you might be most interested in and trying to kind of condense some of that.

Pat. Marjorie, I have a quick question. Thank you, Mary Beth. Can you explain how the tax credit works? We're obviously tax-exempt, so are we selling a credit that we generate and getting money for that?

No, it doesn't have anything to do with renewable energy credits or anything like that. By the way... Well, I can talk about that, but if we're talking, I'll put that aside. We file, we go through a filing process documenting what we have spent on this process on this project on the projects and then we do a pre-filing in January and a I know it's weird because we're getting a direct payment. were actually getting the funds will come to us rather than getting it deducted from a tax.

It's a direct reimbursement.

Yeah. Correct. Yes. And we actually, Janet Mosley filed for our vehicle, filed for some of our vehicles earlier this year and we're awaiting that direct pay.

So I don't have questions because I had questions that I've asked you know at different stages along the way so I don't have questions tonight but I want to share that I'm very supportive of the project in general. for a number of reasons. We had what I might refer to as a sort of understanding with town meeting that solar panels would be part of the schools. And so we're continuing to explore a path forward. We've been trying to do this for quite some time. the MLP has voted to essentially cover the project costs with WeCare funds which is very much appreciated and there is a grant program that we can leverage and so to make we're leveraging the grant program to make those We Care funds go even further but we need a shovel ready project to do that and we have a shovel ready project to access this grant or we lose that opportunity to leverage the funds. We are in a very good position to win this competitive grant as you said earlier on Mary Beth because

were an early applicant to the program. The pond's only going to get more fish in it as we go along. And so the competitive pool, as you see, is just going to get more competitive. My understanding is we can reapply for a climate leader grant when we're essentially complete with this project. the sooner we get going the sooner we can apply for another grant and I think it's we had some discussions either last year or the year before about the obligation that we have to seek grant funding and to go after it to help alleviate the costs to the taxpayers so this and a number of fronts I think is I'm fully fully supportive and right now it's just a notice of intent so I think there's no risk. It's all upside. I'm very supportive of it.

Mary Beth, I can't thank you enough for the work that you've been doing on this. You'll remember, I can say that as Vice Chair of the School Building Committee, from the earliest stages of the School Building Committee for Hardy and Honeywell, Net Zero Buildings as a goal was a fundamental part of the assumption. And in fact, we had a remarkable Net Zero consultant out of Vermont that was working with us and calculating statistics like energy use intensity or EY was a fundamental part of the decision making that went into these buildings and in their design. We've also expended hundreds of thousands of dollars putting the safety railings that OSHA requires up on those roofs, building roofs that would accommodate solar. and so on, orienting the buildings such that we can maximize the solar opportunity and installing conduits. We're ready to go on this project.

And I think that, as I've said before, as people have heard me say before, it's my opinion that we have a contract with Town Meeting who approved these schools. to install solar. And I think that within the town of Wellesley, these are two of the most critical solar projects in terms of a return on the investment. I think we talk about other smaller solar projects that may have value but not like this. And so I think it's really fundamental that we close the circle on the construction of these buildings and move forward. And you've been a critical part through this work to trying to find funding. In addition, like Colette, I also want to thank the MLP. We need to get these projects done and I appreciate all the work everyone's done to get that done.

Mary Beth, I am always amazed at the amount of work you accomplish and the detail with which you approach it and wanted to thank you as well. Tom and Colette pretty much Teed it up for me everything I was going to say. It's my understanding as well that this was something town meeting expected and wants for the town. And I'm so grateful that you're moving it forward. Like Colette said, there's no risk in filing the NOI, and it only enters to the town's benefit in so many different ways. And we've prepared the buildings, and it's time to move forward with them. So thank you.

So, Mary Beth, I too would like to thank you for all the work you did laying out the costs and the anticipated benefit. and one thing for me that it I guess it brought two things to light the incredible amount of work and the importance of external financing to make a project like this work because I don't think I'd ever seen, it doesn't really pencil out unless you have grant money because the payback is too long. That's what this looks like to me. So without the incredible support of the MLP to make that work and all the work you've done with grants,

I don't know how people do solar projects like this so I want to thank you and I especially want to thank the MLP for their Fortitude on this project because they've been through a number of twists and turns. I'm sure this won't be the last but that it really, it is remarkable the degree to which everyone has stepped up on this. I only have one question I didn't see in the materials which is the roof warranties so we'll own the panels right and and Will on the energy and the cost generated comes off the FMD budget. That's the way I read it. and we own the panels and the roof. Anything that happens to the roof. Is that in here?

And you can say you don't know.

I'm not sure, but I also want to just take the opportunity to recognize the tremendous work that Christiane has done on this and many of the numbers that you saw. So just as assistant director of the MLP. As far as the roof warranty, Chris, do you have any insight on the roof warranties? And I don't know whether that was... You can get back to Megan or someone. I know it always comes up. I didn't see it. What was the question? about the roof warranties.

If I could just say, those roofs were designed and installed to accommodate solar. The warranty is what it is on the roof under the construction contract, but they were designed to accommodate solar. both the thickness, the way the seams are laid, it's no different than the discussion that we heard when we selected the new roof and the installation process for the library. Roof as well. So there should be no concern about shortening the warranty or interfering with the warranty on those roofs.

Yeah, my understanding is as part of the contract with the construction contractor, one of the conditions is that the installation has to take place or in a manner that would not void the roof warranties. and those roof warranties I think are 20 years I want to say I can't remember but I think that's about right 20 years off the top of my head.

Thank you. So move to authorize Marjorie Freiman as chair of the select board to sign the notice of intent for the climate leader accelerator grant application.

Second.

And now since we're all here, we can do an all in favor as opposed to a roll call vote. Thanks, Kenny. Appreciate you hopping right off the train and into town hall. That doesn't happen very often, so Chris, thank you also very much, and thanks to the whole staff at the MLP. Thank you, Mary Beth. All right, our next agenda item is to discuss the FY27 budget guidelines and preparation. And we welcome back our new CFO, Rachel DeRoach. So nice to have you back, Rachel. So we have two issues under this agenda item. The first is to discuss and vote the COLA recommendations to the HR board.

Megan, do you want to tee it up? I do, yes. So I'm going to share a screen in one minute. Rachel, I'll give you a hard copy. So the HR board will be voting their COLA adjustment on Thursday. And we had had a preliminary meeting with them. Dolores had gone through. the cost of living projections based upon CPI, comparable communities, et cetera. So as part of that work, keep in mind there's really two factors there's the guidelines that are established by the select board and then there's the tables that we put forward which raises the min and max under article 5 at town meeting each year Now under those, and that is certainly under the purview of the HR board, but I do think they'll be aligned. Where one of the, or I hope that they'd be aligned.

we are one of the few communities who you know continue to focus on merit pay and COLA others pay higher rates but we are if they're looking at different cost of living increases. We still have now more people on steps under our new classification plan, which we're going to increase folks, because now everyone's on steps. meaning those individuals who are non-exempt employees have previously been capped out at steps. They were at six steps, but they had more space in between. So now we have 12 steps. So literally all of those employees are on steps. So everyone would be receiving a 2.75% step increase this year. And we have merit pay for the exempt employees.

So what I just put in front of you, and I'm going to share screen because it's a visual, is... And I really want to thank... the finance department, in particular, Paul Manganaro, who pulled this together for us in record time. So it's not 100%, but it's a good marker indication on what we can actually afford, which is really what I'm trying to say to the board. just taking a moment. So we've done a couple scenarios based on the smaller departments. As we all know, as we look at the guidelines, it's really the small departments who just cannot absorb really modifications and steps in the small departments are what generally get you, right? That's what's going to put you over. and so in past years we've had approximately 40 to 45 individuals on steps

Now we have brought 17 additional personnel down to the non-exempt layer so we have more people on steps. So it's going to impact more departments. In my example to the board in the Friday Night Mail, I detailed the building department as such. The other thing that becomes a factor here is we have more people that would now be eligible for longevity payments. That's not necessarily factored into this yet. However, we have the calculations for those new employees where it hits a couple of different departments. So maybe I'll turn it over to Rachel to just walk through the tables and I can toggle the amounts. I think this one is a 2.5, Rachel.

Okay, perfect. Thank you, Megan. So what you see here on the screen, so what we did, Paul went through and he pulled each select board department. So if you just want to start with the, or we can, whichever one. We can take a look at the select board department, for example. Actually, let's go to a department that has a step. I'll go to building because I use that in a... Perfect. So then you'll see here, and again, we've modeled out by employee, so you'll see in column Q, and Column R. So we're showing, again, those employees that are at a step on their anniversary date, they're going to be stepping up until that new rate. So we're modeling out. There's so many weeks at the old rate, so many weeks at the new rate. and then in column U, you're going to see what that increase for those individual employees are. So again, you're seeing a considerable increase given that 2.75 between the steps.

and then also I believe we'll also have the department head in there you'll see just a flat online Excuse me, there you go. Line, is that 45? Sorry, I can't quite see that line. You'll see a 2%. I'll highlight it. You'll see a 2.5%. Thanks, Megan. So looking at the building department, if we were to assume a 2.5% COLA increase, building department, their personal service budget would increase by 4.7%. so again we've gone through all of the departments again if you were to look at whoever Maybe ZBA might be a good one. I think there's just one there. And that was one of the employees that got reclassified going from exempt to non-exempt.

So you'll see for ZBA, given that anniversary date going from the old rate to a new rate, and that's yielding a 5.32% increase. so again modeling in a 2.5 COLA Megan if you want to scroll down to the bottom so if the board looking at the town-wide financial plan from last year We were assuming a 3% increase. So if we were to model a 2.5, we're slightly over that. What is that showing? 3.3%.

Can I ask one clarifying question?

Sure.

So this takes into account the COLA and the STEP.

Correct.

It doesn't take into account longevity, and it doesn't take into account overtime. Is that right?

Correct. Correct. It's not taking into account longevity at this time. So what we're going to do, we have the class and comp, that fund of monies that were appropriated. So we will realign the FY26 budgets. using those funds to account for any longevity payments they should be receiving in 26. And then we'll build in for 27. So assuming someone isn't going to a new longevity program and so forth. Thank you. but considering overtime we were discussing this earlier yes these employees are non-exempt and eligible for overtime but I think we want to be a bit conservative just because given the nature of some of These employees within the department, we may not anticipate overtime, but we will build that in. So this model is not including the overtime.

But again, I think we can realign the 26 budget to create a bucket for overtime.

because when we set the guidelines we're talking about what goes into the base budget yes yes so if we modified that so we can't afford 2.5 plain and simple so I've been pushing 2.0, but we modeled 2.25 too, just to give you a sense. and again the other thing that we have done and in past years you might recall we've had separate percentages for the 40 series and we got to come up with a trendier name we're just not there yet you know the exempt and non-exempt but So Rachel and I keep saying the 40 series. The finance and I keep saying 40 series and 50 series because it's just easy to remember. But anyway. Under the 2.25, we have looked at the 2.25. We're still over, and again, that's not looking at... and all of the things we just detailed that we may need to also incorporate into the budget.

So it really does come down when we focus on the 2 percent under that model. is what we can afford. And again, this is, the employee is gonna take home more than a 2% COLA, right, because they're gonna have steps if you're a non-exempt employee, and we're gonna have the merit pay pool in that same range, for Merit Pay. So you really are, year over year, looking at a 4.75 percent increase, which in this economy I do find to be a reasonable expectation from a financial standpoint. you know many of our union employees this will be a good baseline for COLA because you know they have stipends overtime longevity different things factored into their budgets and their year-over-year increase which largely at a 2% would you know shakes out to be in the same

the same types of categories that we'd be employing here. Keep in mind, just as a reminder, our exempt employees tend to be management level, department head, they work far over 35 hours a week, but they do not receive overtime. So we just call that we this is not what we do think. as we're looking at pulling this together, this will be the basis for the individualized guidelines. So if we look at the 2%, and again, we have to go through for all of our employees it just so happens Andrea was under a different line item so I said oh we don't have Andrea in here yet but for our particular office. Andrea actually we're going to HR because they never put her into the class because remember we had her on the general wage schedule. That's why she wasn't showing up here. That's being voted Thursday. but she will be on STEP. That position is a STEP eligible position.

And so as we're looking at the guidelines, similar to how we did last year, you know a department likely climate action which was a good example last year for this as well when we had a three percent year over year those those departments that didn't have anyone on steps. We did lower the personal services to 2%. I would expect us to do that again this year as well. and so this would be the basis for the personal services guidelines so we have to go back and work with Paul. and just look at he's been doing a lot of work on the steps as well as the longevity. He has done an amazing job because keep in mind we have to make everything clean for 26 and there's still some push and pulls that we're working with HR on on a couple positions and then we have new positions not new created positions but people look at modifying job descriptions and such and so that process continues.

So we wanted to just show you the numbers that we are, I'll continue to scroll. Town Clerk is a good example. She has basically everybody on steps outside of her own position, which is a salaried position. NRC has two folks on steps. Planning always has one. ZBA is one. We also have part-time position, so we have to go back and calculate that. but building department was a big one that I just wanted to highlight as well, health department. So we do think many we can meet the 3% guideline. There are clearly some that we won't. We did give you those in hard copy and can walk through. That would be certainly our recommendation on that.

the other thing the board doesn't have to decide tonight but I certainly wanted to just we went through the discussion points I went through the discussion points from last night and just as a reminder from the all board meeting for those who might not want to spend their Monday night watching the discussion. We did ask various departments to let the board know if they were expecting anything outside of our typical salary increases. So here's what we heard last night that we'll have to contemplate in terms of setting the guidelines. There was a lot of discussion on capital items. I'm not going to address that in any way. So DPW, trash contract, they're expecting a 6% increase. General Materials and Services, $50,000 estimate increase. The remainder of their items that they identified all pertain to capital.

Some are the Baylor Replacement Fund, which is a turn back from the reserve fund that they bring in. Sidewalk mobility improvements which are capital. Water and sewer MWA costs are escalating at about 3%. which would be about $200,000 in water increases, $110,000 in sewer. Those are paid by enterprise, so those do not impact the general fund. hopefully some of the PFAS fund that we're establishing we'll have just about a million dollars this year deposit in that DPW Board of Public Works can use towards towards that work and so that will be factored into the FY 27 budget that has to be once we establish that fund just as a reminder at special town meeting funds have to be appropriated by town meeting so we will factor that into their budget.

they also have as part of the PFAS treatment plan they have some major capital projects which are also going to elevate the water rates. including a $10 million attributable to the Morses Pond Plant, and then $1.7 million each for the Wellesley and Longfellow pilots. National Resources Commission specifically addressed some major capital projects. We're part of some of those projects too. Some CPC funded some and most CPC funded for them, we may need some injection of free cash to the War Memorial and the Sprague Tower and we'll take that up. The assessors may need some, so we'll have to flesh this out with them a little bit more. They had indicated they may need some additional temporary inspectors.

just as they do some data collection they often time have hours attributable to that and may increase third-party appraisal costs due to appeals as we know that goes on they have to hire then experts to assist them in the appeals to the appraisals that we receive. Library, similar to last year, had indicated technology at 3% to 5% increase in licensing and contracts, in particular to their cybersecurity. and Staff Reconfiguration, which would be consolidating two part-time assistants into one full-time. This is, I think, probably the third or fourth time that the library has done this over a series of years. They cannot fill the part-time positions. I'm assuming neither one of those positions are benefited. I did say this last night, but working with HR and evaluating what our costs are currently for health insurance.

And this has been something the board's actually talked about last year. we had been carrying for many years $20,000 we need to up that to $28,000 for any new benefits eligible position the schools only for TAs we had a provision that's been a long sought agreement. It was at $7,500 for those. That is, I keep wanting to say $12,000. I believe it's $12,000 that cost has escalated to. That will be in the budget prep manual. So... that's something we have to evaluate. Planning only had capital cost increases to be evaluated. The school department outlined 6.2% projected increase in expenses. that was a loss of $250,000 from a one-time circuit breaker payment that payment came in in this fiscal year.

So that's why they're saying it's a loss because you're always a year in arrears. And so it hit us a little late. the out of district tuition inflation has been set at just over 3% it's like 3.03% that's actually lower than Cindy Marr had initially projected that was some Good news, remember there's been some crazy years where we've had really high increases. So good news, that's very good news at 3.03%. They are in the eastern bus contract. Eastern bus contract ongoing. They're still within the five years. That's an increase of $121,000. And then van transport contract. has to go out to bid. And I know actually Cindy had done some of the longitudinal analysis for transportation at a previous meeting and showed when that first year of the contract hits

it generally does go up about 10% so I think her anticipated escalation of 10% is a true cost. and then there's lunch program lease increases at Regis College. This is FY26 I believe is their first year there and so anticipated costs for 27. Climate Action, it was more they're in the process of looking at job descriptions and reclassification. That's something that will fall under the HR board and we'll just see how that plays out. Casey was very specific the cost for elections it's going to increase because we it just so happens to be here where we have three elections planned that is exclusive of any decisions this board may make on any debt exclusions. Not that we anticipate any, but just in case.

and the Recreation Department got the gold star because they didn't ask for any additional money. I had also reported to the board Police and Fire, I have a couple of refined numbers that I'll just give you. So, as the Board knows, we have, and Rachel and I were talking about this too, We have so many people on SEPs. And so that impact is fairly significant this year. And so it's roughly $119,000. or approximately 1.47% over FY26. That is not inclusive of any bargaining, modifications, cost of living adjustment or any educational, night differential, any of that. So I did ask police to do that same analysis. So the police, we've had a tremendous amount of hiring actually in PD as well, although there, Academy is twice as long.

So you get a little more time before the additional steps hit at police than you do with fire. and so because the Police Academy is a 22 week process. So Lieutenant Cleary has reported to me that it's likely about a 0.5% year-over-year increase for 27. However, 28 will largely be at probably the 1.5% year-over-year increase because we'll have that catch up and everyone will then be on regular steps. They continue to evaluate and await the and the cost implications to cruisers similar to last year, in particular as we focus on hybrid cruisers to meet our climate goals. We just don't have the pricing in, but that was what was really bringing them up. last year in terms of their expenses.

and as the chief had alerted the board at a recent update over the summer, they are working on reclassifying their IT position to the public safety. That's actually gonna be an IT position that would work for both police and fire. that's one of the chiefs initiatives for this year in anticipation of Peter McLaughlin's retirement in a few years although you know I keep telling them they really can't retire but you know Eventually they're going to age out. So we're really trying to set up a good succession plan and so I think with Peter's guidance that'll really, one, it'll be tremendous for the fire department to continue to be on the same pace in terms of their technology with PD. and then the other is the chiefs to admin positions. He's working through that process as they look at the job description and job classification.

He wants to make sure that he creates sort of a hierarchy in those positions which I know he's previously addressed to the board. The only other those were basically the highlights from last night I don't know if the board had any other I tried to download the transcript just to make sure we captured everybody

I thought Dave Cohen had some he was talking about perhaps some job description reviews and things like that did I

He continues to evaluate those. He's sort of systematically going through his positions. you know as many departments do one was a requirement one we've been looking at in the supervisors division for three years we've been evaluating those job descriptions and they're all shaken up where we thought they would, which is slightly a little higher up because of the additional requirements, the additional reporting requirements across the divisions, the additional... responsibilities. It's mostly the reporting requirements, to be honest, but they're evaluating those through HR.

And so I'm just curious why those didn't kind of get identified or processed when we did the class on comp. Is it just there wasn't information at the time?

There was a union in place.

Ah, OK.

Just keep in mind the majority of Department of DPW is 89 union employees.

Thank you. So building on Colette's point, is it fair to assume that non-union employees, we won't be seeing class and comp changes this year because that was addressed last year?

unless they're making a structural change in the department, which can always happen.

So I'd just like to make a comment out of respect for the work that the HR department does. Their calculations on a COLA recommendation are very different than the calculations we make on a budget increase guideline. and they're just complete, they're apples and oranges. And we wouldn't choose or set a different COLA increase for reasons other than we have to live within our means and this is what the town can afford. So we respect highly all the comparable data that they gather and the information they share with us. but there are times when the select board guidelines differ from HR's recommendation and that's just the world of finance and what the town can afford. So I just wanted to say that.

and those comparable communities. Keep in mind, some are in West Suburban with us, some are not. Some are in the GIC, some are self-insured, some are with Maya, and so not everyone is facing, although arguably, I would argue they are, but we have a known quantity from West Suburban Health Group right now of the 14%. and that's hitting our budget at, we were looking at it today, $3 million. So when we really get down to setting the health insurance budget, Rachel and I talked today about we're gonna really look at, we're gonna redo the entire spreadsheet one we have to do that anyway because we need to divide town and schools and you know just for double checking etc. We're going to be conservative but maybe a little less conservative than we've been in terms of the buffer to try and bring that cost down because keep in mind in our initial projections, I mean, we got to close a $1.9 million deficit.

and so some of that can be accomplished by pulling capital projects out, etc. We were looking at if the health insurance had come in at 8%, it was something like $700,000. Rachel and I were like, oh, we've got to close this. our eyes closed and maybe Rachel maybe you can talk about a little bit of the revenues we talked about today some thoughts that you have in terms of how we might be able to address those

Sure. So we were evaluating, as you all know, excise tax. And I think that when Tiana came to the board and was discussing the FY25 close, there was a conversation about the last... and so forth. Thank you. working with the treasurer's office to get a sense of what's been billed this year for excise tax so I can get some eyes on what revenue we've collected but looking at there may be an opportunity to Bump up those projections. We'll be conservative, but it looks like there's an opportunity there. And then we'll work with the assessor's office. I think we were looking at new growth currently. 1.7 might be an opportunity to bump that up potentially to a 1.9 so we're still doing some evaluations I think we would want to

see when the budgets come in end of November and then by that point we'll have another few months to see where revenue's been trending. and then it could be an opportunity

Well, you could be the town hero of the day talking about increased revenue as opposed to everything that's being cut.

Yes, but again, very conservatively, but there could be some room there. So we're going to continue to evaluate over the next month or so.

I would just advocate that we stay very conservative because based on having the legislative update and the uncertainty... in general out there, I don't think we do ourselves a service in planning to present Possible spots of optimism at this point in our financial plan development. Agreed. The other thing I wanted to say is my recollection from when Dolores presented us the Colicomps is that these are not... out of step with what she presented to us for comps because I think she had from 1.5 up to like a little over yeah two and a half ish so I don't feel like Our affordability is out of step with what we're seeing, our peer towns seeing for COLA.

It's about 2.4, Beth, that new average. As Brookline came in at 1.5, it sort of dropped down. And it comes to affordability.

right right but they're they are a similar town for us in a lot of services competitiveness the kind of employees we like to hire so

I wasn't saying that the comparable range wasn't what Dolores said it was. It's just that our guideline might be different for COLA than Dolores recommended.

So I've prepared some remarks and some of my topics are going to cross over with Marjorie, so apologies for that. But I just wanted to share that now that I'm liaison to HR, I think we've been in, sorry, in the HR board, We've been in great communications with the HR board over the past few years with respect to COLA and the merit pay plan and developing a cadence for those communications every year is slightly different. as we refine what I'm going to call the order of operations as a number of steps in the dance that we're doing and it's of getting to budget guidelines which in and of itself is another step in the fairly highly choreographed the steps to close the budget and balance the budget which you're talking about Rachel. And so last year we worked really hard to hear from the HR board with the COLA recommendations, hold the all board, and then refine the guidelines.

you know this year HR gave us an initial range of considerations seeking extra time for a recommendation because they felt it was so early in the process when you're looking at the date for annual time meeting but they did note the economic volatility and the market indicators that they're looking at and they're continuing to move. and so they wanted an additional month of referential data they felt that would be helpful so this year they said this is the range we're looking in and add to that the changes that we've had to roll with in terms of our own timeline to accommodate, you know, the unplanned work, which is must be in DCAM. So these are the important pieces of the work that's going on here. So what we see is an appropriate call in the financial picture that we've just shown, which is actually that was really helpful to toggle that back and forward. I think that's a great visual for HR. I hope they watch this discussion tonight.

I think it's we're looking at it in terms of budgetary capacity and what the HR board sees as an appropriate COLA in terms of their data they're looking at might be a little bit different they might not be the same I understand that has been the case before I think there's not if that happens it's not the first time but given the timing of where we are now and the information we all have at hand I think it's important that we share with the HR board what we're seeing, what we're thinking, and why we're thinking that. So I love that graphic. I think there's two important pieces of work going on here. Actually, I'm just going to say... I think in terms of what this means for guidelines and our goals of being an employer of choice I have been thinking about the significant investment we've been making towards making the town more competitive and attractive, which is something I know is top of mind for HR. Are we an employer of choice? We've added merit pay in the past few years.

We have worked on the class and comp study. We've done the one-time adjustment. and we're working hard to get union staff to the median and we continue to invest in benefits for all of our staff at a really significant cost while we're working hard to mitigate the expense so we're working every year specifically on health care We're working with a well-funded pension in OPEB. But we have to do that responsibly when we have the capacity. So this year, we're bumping up against our capacity. and the constraints and that's where you know if we say we can't afford it I think we have to remember the significant factor is limited capacity if it what's driving that is paying for a benefit for employees. So we're still really investing in employees. So as somebody who plays out of pocket for health care, it's a huge benefit.

and I really hope that staff appreciate that and we shouldn't downplay that but you know I think we have to live within our means and I think I'm very comfortable with what staff are suggesting

I do want to go back to the comment you were making about revenue. As we sit here and we talk about COLA and we're looking at 2% at the lower end of the options that we've had, and I do appreciate and was going to make similar comments to what Colette just did, I think it's important to make sure that we're telling our employees that they're valued. I think we've made significant adjustments in how they are paid, and we're seeing that in the charts and in the numbers in the columns that you were putting up that a 2% COLA does not translate into only a 2% raise. for an awful lot of people. Their numbers are higher and more realistic with inflation and the cost of living today. Megan and I were talking about groceries early today, and so it doesn't take more than a trip to and the grocery store to understand what our employees are dealing with on a daily basis.

But with regard to revenue, I think there's a difference between remaining conservative in our estimates and being realistic in terms of what we're actually seeing in terms of data coming in. We are telling the town we're going to be lean. We're asking departments to be careful about their budget. No new initiatives. If we have numbers that show that we can change our revenue projections, we have an obligation to the town within the budget to reflect that. So I think there are areas where we remain conservative. And as long as I've been on this board, My understanding is that we have always been conservative in the finance department within the select board about how we construct the budget. So it needs to be realistic. and I think we need to take advantage of the numbers that were actually seen as we put this as we bring this budget to a conclusion.

Just as a point of reference, we ultimately used 1.9 last year in terms of new growth. And honestly, the new growth and what Rachel's talking about in terms of excise, that's like... it's hitting like $200,000. Still, we're going to be in a $1.7 million deficit. So that's not going to close the gap. And so. Kenny?

Kenny?

So if you, like I said, there's multiple components here. There's COLA, there's STEP, there's longevity, and then there's overtime. do we know for the people on STEP what their actual percentage raise per like we're talking about components but at the end of the day nobody's looking at their paycheck and saying bucketing it they're saying I got paid this much more Do we know what that number is? Because I think that's a meaningful, it's a very meaningful number. If you hear 2%, then... that's not great compared to last year but if it's actually 5.5% to your point Megan that's a real number So I'd be curious to know what that actual amount is, which I definitely don't expect you to have off the top of your head, but I'd be curious to know that.

Yes, so then, I mean, as the budgets ultimately get built out with whatever COLA gets approved and with their step, you'll be able to see a year over year. So I am even looking at... I believe we do have a column here showing the difference so that you know again we're taking their you know FY 27 their step one where they're starting there and then that's let's say that's their and then a new rate. in Finance, where ultimately they're getting a step increase on their anniversary. Their year-over-year increase is 4.81%. which is $3,558 and some change. So is that what you're referencing to see?

Right, but this, to my earlier point, this doesn't incorporate any longevity. I'd like to see the all- Oh, I see what you're saying. Yes, this is close to that. I'm sure it's probably very close percentage-wise. Yes. I would love to see the final.

Yeah, and one thing on that, what Rachel was saying, so keep in mind, for FY26, we're in the process of still basically implementing the class and comp. and so the longevity actually hits them in 26 right so it's only it's a it's every five years that rate goes up so it's like if you're five years it's 300 if it's 10 years, it's 600, whatever it is. So most of them, what you're set in 26, unless you're going from a new five-year increment, it's very small on longevity but they're going to feel that this year in particular for the 17 people who were brought into that and actually not just them because keep in mind you did the I'm going to call it a longevity. That's not the word, but I can't even remember the term we use, but essentially a recognition for our longer serving employees for FY26. and we modified that and that is in the base.

Now that's in the base. So 26 is a fairly significant increase for many if we looked at a year over year which we can produce from 25 to 26 to 27 I think that will be very reflective of the investments that this board has authorized for the personnel. we can certainly pull that once Paul is I keep you know he's working on these things diligent I'm like oh why are you working on that can you do this and so he he pulled this together so quickly for me and I think it's a very good visual

Are there any other questions before we vote the COLA? Okay, Colette.

So move to recommend to the HR board a 2% cost of living adjustment for all non-union employees.

Second.

all in favor aye thank you very much Rachel thanks Rachel Marjorie one point just so Rachel and I know as we're working the rest of this week you're fine with us building the draft guidelines for you to look at for the individual guidelines based on these percentage yeah okay I just wanted to as a first pass yes let's take a look at it that way yes thank you

Corey, I think I gave you back the two and a quarter and two. Thank you very much. Okay. Great. Our next agenda item is to discuss special town meeting. and the one issue that I asked Megan to make a revision on our agenda is how to fund the visioning study. And I want to address why I believe visioning is so important because we've gotten several questions about it. The planning board wasn't entirely clear on why we want to do this. So these are my reasons and I invite board input and comment on it. A majority of the board strongly supports the visioning session. The town itself needs its own collaborative process where all stakeholders get to define their desired outcome for a project and for the community.

It's critical to foster community understanding, acceptance as we were talking about with our legislative delegation and engagement to give residents a meaningful way in which to contribute to build buy-in and the support we need and we need a methodology to capture and analyze all of that input. Number two, we need a neutral facilitator to lead thoughtful planning oriented discussion and activities to generate creative thinking and consensus building. Number three, we can't simply put people in a room and expect that they can jot down their ideas. DCAM is a very sophisticated developer. and we need an experienced planner to synthesize the wishes of the town, the language and the art of development, the unique situation in which the town finds itself

the land area under consideration, the preservation of the forest and to present a coherent and comprehensive consensus plan that we have heard will inform the RFP. A townwide visioning session will inform the town's communication strategy to keep the public informed at every step of the process. The town has the most proximate interest in the land separate from the objectives of the college or the state, but we also have to understand that that is the larger context in which we're operating. and visioning is based on community values many of which have been expressed but which have not been captured in an organized fashion or in a way that helps guide the ways that the town has an opportunity to provide input for. DCAM process requires us to create a shared understanding

of what we want. That's what they've asked us for. And we have to approach them with a coherent approach Vision for what we want. And visioning as an exercise in order to be productive needs to be carefully planned and organized and structured to best fashion the output in as responsive a format as possible. and finally local and state zoning, permitting and other land use laws do not apply or are overridden by the Affordable Homes Act. So we need someone who understands how you put those two different contingencies together and what a reasonable proposal can be from the town under those conditions. So that's why I believe the visioning is so important. Before we go to the funding mechanism, I'm happy to hear board comments. Kenny?

I have a few comments, but before I make those, I've never done this before, so I was curious as to what we expect to be the deliverable products what's the timing of the deliverable, all that type of thing. What are they going to hand us and how fast are they going to hand it to us?

Well, so my idea, and I'll ask Megan and Corey what they think, but my idea would be some kind of document that shows some consensus of what the town would like to see and DCAM has indicated that they will let that inform their RFP. I don't exactly know the timeline or the precise formula or the format, but maybe Megan has clearer ideas.

Sure, so when Eric Arbeni and I have discussed this with a few consultants, really the goal is sort of many, looking at many things. So it's one, and actually as part of traffic committee since I had the DPW, Director of the Town Engineer, Mobility, et cetera, present police. Actually, Ian was with us, too, so fire today. You know, I also said... And schools, yes, Andy Marr was with us. I said, hey, get ready, you know, similar to how we have done... Our initial response is when we were doing a lot of the 40B applications, we're going to have the land use departments with schools come together to, one, identify where we think the impacts are going to be. and then so that's happening sort of in the immediate term but really what happens is it's an analysis on the economics on where we think the market for various housing will be. We'll also reference, I would say, the Housing Development Corporation's market analysis

as part of that for the various affordability strands that we're we're looking at in town it will be and as part of that analysis it would also look at the 55 plus versus the CCRC versus family housing starter home in addition to that I would say high level environmental as part of that certainly as I've talked to in particular Town Council Evria Freed who's also had lead counsel for Lancaster who's going through this on a bigger scale and because you can override environmental regulation. She's a strong advocate for it. You've really got to get into the RFP in particular too. you know, you want the local wetlands permitting to be a factor in that. So, you know, looking at, okay, if we did put our wetlands permitting in, how does that change your development scale, development potential, how do you meet those hurdles?

So then you would have a charrette. So as part of a charrette, it's not just like, let us see what it's going to be. It's a facilitated discussion in small groups. and there's typically guardrails placed within that. Okay, if you were gonna do the five, only the parking lot, what would you do? If we were gonna expand it, how could you do that? Based upon this economic information and market analysis, what would you do then? and essentially it's you know the focus it's a focus group essentially that comes down to try and build consensus and then it's a comparison of you know where did you have alignment from all these different groups doing separate things. And then the output really is generally a report, and there's visualizations attached to that, which would be somewhat of a schematic plan. So as I had said earlier, we're really hindered by the MassBay parking analysis, which we don't get back until November.

So we can hire someone depending upon when the funding is stat basically to start doing all of the legwork, the analysis to have the what I would call base plan ready and the charrette organized and then that's going to be informed by what happens with the parking. On a side level as the board might recall we just brought on Urban SDK for our traffic management, which does real-time analysis based on cell phones and car data. That was what Lieutenant Lemenager had been speaking about recently. We've already said, start looking at Standish, Putney, Oakland. Give us real-time data that's happening today. we're collecting that data on a regular basis.

actually starting last week I think he started collecting the data through that analysis and so ultimately it would be a report that we would hope to literally be attached to the RFP and so how RFP works and we'll we'll see one shortly for the OPM or we can send that to you but if you look at any of the bids you have to establish how you're going to rank the respondents and it has to be you have to set criteria they're the most highly advantageous response. Advantageous, less advantageous. And so some of our criteria, do you meet inclusionary zoning? Highly advantageous. Do you meet local permitting? highly advantageous. How close are you to the design that's been prepared? How close are you to whatever the use is? Let's say it's 55 plus. Can you meet the 55 plus? I'm sure the State's also going to ask for performers to show, you know, development. Is it a phase development?

Is it one building? Is it 10 buildings? Is it a five-year build-out? Is it a 10-year build-out, etc. ? and so what's our plan you know is it a five-year bill vote that we want do we want it in phases if it was in particular Family Housing, that might be something you want. Can you do this in a phased period of time so that you're not getting a huge absorption rate? depending upon again the type of design the nines is a good example of that that actually was phased it hit in three different phases even though it's one building and so you can start to plan for that and how it would impact the town So I see a vision as the greatest planning tool because it provides the one thing you need in a community, which is dialogue, understanding what the public wants, and consensus. and you have that documented and I think it also brings together all of the boards and committees because it impacts everyone in some way.

because, again, we don't make widgets here. We provide services, and it's going to impact police, fire, DPW, assessors, treasurer. Everyone is impacted by this, so I think we can get excellent feedback on that. I'm highly supportive I don't think it's a tremendous cost impact when we think of everything costs $50,000 you look at you know there's nothing that doesn't cost $50,000 50,000 is what the planning board had. I think we'd probably be better served to do 60 or 70,000. I think the opportunity exists from a couple of mechanisms. We can go to town meeting and use free cash. We could go to advisory and request funds. We could request a portion of funds potentially from the the Affordable Housing Trust because a percentage of this is going to be affordable, not the whole thing, I would say a small percentage of that. We could also, the town has funds received from federal realty which we could use.

Those are immediate. So I do think it's important. I do think we'd have an informative document based on actual data, not site survey. You just don't have the funds or the time to get to that. but I think we could certainly capture what the municipal infrastructure will be. We already started having DPW Engineering start thinking about that. If we did want to widen Oakland Street we can take a small portion of that right from the side of the street on the 45 Oakland Street but we might have to work with Mass Bay, and take some of their land, as I was saying earlier, which could facilitate a much better intersection. Maybe not the whole way, but intersection improvement.

so I think if we laid those out it provides a good document for someone to take and say okay you know these are well thought out things we can think about as we're putting together our plan to address this.

In the scheme of things with the breadth of the impact across town, I don't think it's a lot of money to put into this exercise to get the entire town involved and to enable everybody to have input into the plan. But Kenny said you said you had some questions. Oh, okay

I found the legislative update, particularly the meeting that Senator Cream, Representative Peish had with DCAM to be extremely instructive and helpful and I In my opinion, if there was any doubt that someone had about VisionAid, I think that they erased it or they should have erased it. the fact that the timetable is very consistent with what the town feels it needs to do, that there was incorrect information about triggering the 30-day period, about their wanting to work with us. I mean, it's not just what we think we're hearing. It's now something that DCAM has said in a meeting with members of the legislature. I think they now have committed themselves in a way that it's really difficult to reverse course and I do think we had I'm trying to think of what the charrette was over at the Honeywell Gym.

That was on the school, wasn't it?

Yeah, that was for Honeywell. When we were looking at green building, That's right. Yeah, we did that at Honeywell.

And people feel it was helpful and people feel that they've been heard. And if they're investing time that the town is invested in the time that they put into participating. So I do think it's important. I think you know all of the discussions that we've had about communications and thank you to Corey and Stephanie with all the work that's been done this is when it pays off and we're going to have to really double down on how we're communicating with people and when this opportunity comes up and where we hold this visioning so that it's a large enough space for people so that we can make sure that we have given residents every opportunity to participate and be heard. but I agree I don't think I I don't take any amount of money that we spend lightly but I think 50 to 75 thousand dollars for the town to feel that they've been able to participate and be heard

is incredibly valuable as we move forward with what has been an anxiety producing project.

So I think it's very helpful to have, as I understand visioning, ideas. for people to respond to and trade off discussions to be had in prioritization. I feel like we are one step earlier than that in the community in terms of us hearing from the community directly where they're at, what their priorities are, where their Tradoff's are, what their pain points are, and so I don't see jumping, and I completely agree that the Town departments should ASAP be doing infrastructure, traffic, all of those impacts as information to go into the planning process.

I think we should start listening and probing and discussing with the community and then move into a charrette when we have Fuller appreciation from the different constituents in the community because I think one of the things that we've seen and I had office hours today so I had a real range is depending on where you live and and how often you use the resources in that part of town, your perspective and your set of needs and your priorities are different. and I think we need to recognize that and hear them separately as input into going into a more structured feedback mechanism because my recollection

of a Charette is a lot of the work has been done on alternative models as springboards to react to. And I think we could... misstep by not doing the hypothesis generating with the community as we collect the infrastructure piece. So that's one thought. And my second piece is to I think I'm assuming we're going out to bid and I think we may learn a lot from like a short window of response on how people would approach something like this because their process may be different than a charrette we do for like the school building which I thought was very productive for that particular set of needs

I just feel there are a set of needs pre charade that we're not addressing.

So Beth, in the two meetings that we have had and the meetings at MassBay last week and tomorrow, do you not feel we're hearing some of people's major concerns?

I think we are hearing a lot of major concerns. It's not clear to me if we've heard all of the major concerns. I think we've heard a good portion of them. we haven't spoken back and forth on it and so I don't think we've dialogued on where the trade-offs are, where the pressure points are, the rationale which for me Hearing a little bit deeper and having the dialogue with people helps you get to a solution that is more palatable in tough situations like this. I had a call today and I said to Megan, I almost had whiplash because I had all different perspectives in my last call.

was about had we done the cost rationale on different types of projects and what the trade-offs for the town were in tax impact. and I was like we had not heard that I don't think. We've heard more about environmental traffic so I think as the word gets out and as we reach out, which I agree to Tom's point, we are doing a far more effective job than we've ever done reaching out to constituents. I think you know we could lean into perhaps the town meeting members around town as we have special town meeting I think we may hear different articulations of it that could help us and also different we would have a chance to discuss those trade-offs in a way that I think is different than a charrette does.

but that could be because the Charettes I've been to the model is more fully formed and so we're down to more nuanced choices. We're a little tighter in.

I just want to know, we have 12 weeks to the end of the year. So we can try and refine the timeline. But given special town meeting, the budget process, the preparation for annual town meeting, now certainly we can defer some of the work that we may have for annual town meeting because I think this is a pressing matter. But I think... this wouldn't be a fully baked vision in that we're not going to come up and say here's option one here's option two pick it I think what it would be is really similar to the participation on the housing production plan which was you know I'm using this as an example. I actually don't think this is potentially what would happen. You know, they did a Lego exercise. Okay, you have to build, at the time it was 500 units. Where are you putting them? and people looked across town and that actually shaped where we evaluated where we were going to put it. And so I do think you would leave with

various scenarios that then would be aggregated exactly what Alice and Cindy were talking about into two or three potential development concepts. that I think would then be evaluated. So I think it would be an aggregation of comments that you're going to come with varying perspectives. and each group is going to come up with a different consensus. They're going to then look at here's what we sort of saw across all of the tables, et cetera, and then they'll put together two or three so that you're not coming up with two or three and picking. We're going to have the Charette and then subsequent to that would be a report which would then have design considerations.

I also see this as a way to generate creativity and for people to start making lists of things we would like to see, like the amenities, like work on Oakland Street, like maybe an entrance. on Route 9 instead. So I don't see the creativity being squelched here. I actually see it being opened up.

Right, and that may be my experience piece because the Charette I thought was really instructive in terms of getting a sense of where people were and where the energy was. It didn't feel... that the creativity was there for me. I felt like there'd been so much work leading up to it that we were more in prioritization and nuances. but what Megan just the way I heard it implied that there were two stages to a charrette it's not all one meeting with Legos or dots or whatever

Well, there's one meeting where you're going to get that intel, right? So you do it one time. You bring everyone together. Everyone's in the same room. Everyone's going to, you know, work likely in groups, be a reporting. Here's what we see. Everyone, here's what we have for consensus. Okay, we're going to take those now, consultants, and we're going to, we have, you know, design professionals that will say, here's how this could look based upon what we heard today. Here's one option. Inevitably, you're going to have a number of things that come to the top. I certainly think it could be a very, it'd be interesting to see. It'll be an interesting split whether people want age-restricted housing. I could see a high proportion of people wanting it. We certainly know it's a need. and then we could also say well we also want why would we age restrict it we could have that type of housing but no age restrictions you know, Fieldstone Way. Do you want something like that? Or do you want a mix of multifamily, some townhouses?

You know, it's not an all or nothing proposition necessarily. So I am not going to presuppose what people are going to say. you take that information and then it becomes a visual. It's not a visual that you're going to select. It's really, I think exactly what you're talking about, Beth. We want to hear what you want. you're gonna discuss that with your peers and your neighbors and maybe business owners and students and whoever. The more inclusive the better. and then that's going to be that day. There's not going to be a report that day. It's going to be two or three weeks later where the board is going to receive something and maybe that needs some refinement. but that's how we would expect it to play out. Thank you, Megan. Go ahead, Tom.

You know, I'm reminded I just don't agree, Beth, with a community meeting without structure. if you think back about the HHU process, the Charette at Honeywell was more focused, professionally managed, and more effective than the two community meetings that were held at the middle school that were more along the lines of what you were suggesting. the meeting on 489 in June over at the high school cafeteria wasn't as constructive as the civil discourse discussion that we had. Time and time again, we see that a professionally managed organization

and so on. With this particular project, we're dealing through no one's fault with an enormous amount of misinformation and misunderstanding. and people are very emotional about this project. I understand that those emotions need to be attended to and people need to be heard. But we also need to focus people's anxiety and their concerns in a constructive professional fashion so that we have some output that puts us in a position of being able to work with DCAM and come out with an end result that is as good as we can achieve in this situation.

I just want to say you can run a brainstorming session and be very focused and get very strong output. I just it is possible to do and one option if we want more structured is to use a civil discourse format We don't have time.

It takes months to plan a dialogue. But we can take the information we did collect in the last one. Yes, we can. Hang on just a second, Beth. I want to give Colette a chance.

So I do agree with the visioning. I know we talked about it in our last meeting. I think that we just need to be clear with the the time what the benefit of the visioning study is and how DCAM are going to use it but I was really pleased to hear tonight from Cindy and Alice that DECAM, we're not on this forced timetable. We have time to do this work and they would take this work into consideration. and so I think this is you know if people in the town asked us what do they want us to spend planning money on I bet you this is right at the top. and we have a lot of work to do that we know that we have to spend planning money on but this is a hot topic and so I really do think that residents, time meeting members would want us to do this work and the thing that I think is beneficial in the visioning study

is that it's giving structure and form to people's concerns so that we've heard, I think we've had some really good meetings, three meetings with attendance that was really great. and another one coming tomorrow. I think we're hearing there's consensus in a lot of the feedback. There's always something new that comes up. and there's certainly different perspectives if you're a neighbor versus a user of the resource but it's something that the whole town is focused on. I don't think anybody in town doesn't have an opinion on it if they know about it. and there are certainly different perspectives. I had a number of phone calls over the past week or so with the community of young adults with special needs and can they fit in here? and how can we help our residents that are here that have different needs so you know we want them to be part of a conversation where they can really share what it is they're looking for and really

get that information across in a constructive way to a developer to see if it can be part of that that would be such a great outcome so I'm really supportive of this because I think it gives us Real structure is we're really responding to people. We don't often have a chance to do something like this. I think it would be well received.

So I was cutting in and out well during the legislative update, so forgive me if I didn't hear exactly right. So what I heard was a little bit different. I heard them say... We have time. and I heard them say other things, but when pressed on certain things, I didn't hear a concrete, yes, there's a commitment that you have enough time to run your process and we'll wait. 180. The only thing definitively I heard was it's 180. and not one less and maybe more. So I didn't hear anything definitive out of that conversation. So I think the prudent thing to do is assume the worst and hope for the best in terms of timing.

we could be in a position where we have to react in short order there's no promise from the state that they're going to wait for us to do a study which from what you just explained Megan seems like We start in December. It's a long, that seems really in depth. It's sort of like, I'm not comparing it to the strategic housing plan exactly, but that takes a while and it's sort of an iterative process. and I don't know that we have that much time. I don't know that we don't but I think we need to fast forward this. Sorry, Marjorie.

I was just going to say, you know, I would I'm an optimist too, and I would like to think that DCAM wouldn't tell our state legislators that they will let our visioning inform their RFP if they were going to change their minds.

that just means a lot to them and it means a lot to me I would agree with they will take our opinion and what we want into account I didn't hear them say go run a visioning session produce a report and hand it to us and then we'll consider that like I just didn't hear concrete we will wait for you to do this

I would love to hear.

definitively from them that they will do that. In the meantime, I do think having a session what I should have started this with absolutely we need public engagement on this. I think there's 100% consensus on that. I think I do think sitting in the high school auditorium and putting out signs all over this town and saying we're going to talk about this and we want to hear what you have to say will be very productive. I think you'll hear the emotion in people's voices and how I've heard a handful of people that support this. I've heard the vast majority of people who don't support this. And so I'm not supportive at the moment of spending upwards of $75,000 on doing something that may just get Trumped before we ever have a time to actually react. I am supportive of doing something in the short term, in the immediate term to get the ball rolling. I also think we need a process.

sooner rather than later to say this is how we're going to approach this whole thing. It's not just a visioning whether it's formal or informal. It's an entire process that says this is what we need to accomplish and this is how we're going to get there and whether it's the entire select board or it's a subgroup of the select board whether it's bringing in other community members to be part of a group Thank you for having me. and the state our recommendations of what we would like to see. But I also think it's really important I know this was in the Chamber of Commerce today and said that I have not foregone any possible other action to prevent this. And I think the vast majority of the people I talked to, if they had their choice, would stop this project in its tracks.

And I think spending money on a land user or lawyers to figure out, is there actually a way to to not necessarily stop it or possibly stop it, but is there a way to deal with this issue in a legal fashion that gives us essentially say over what's going to happen in our town? and so I think that would be the best way to spend $75,000 at this point.

As I read the legislation, it says no other state law or municipal law notwithstanding. This is the governor's priority. She wants to create housing. That's what our legislators told us. But, Kenny, why don't you...

I'd like to respond to that. Article 97, the Westfield case, leaves a big opening. Now it does. I spoke to land use experts who litigate this all the time. There's an open question in the Westfield case whether there's two prongs to it. What was the intent and did the town accept it? The acceptance part is clear. The intent part is not clear. It's something that's an open question.

But that was land that the town owned. This is not land that the town owns. It's very different. Article 97 does not apply here as far as my conversations with town council but if this is if this is An option that's presented to us and we are somewhat time bound. Let's go under the assumption that our visioning will inform the RFP. Why shouldn't we do it?

Why shouldn't we do a visioning session?

Yeah, and hire a consultant to do it. I mean, our process is going to have to be in public. This does not qualify for executive session.

Discussing strategy, would it? No.

No, it doesn't fall under negotiations because that's with personnel, and it doesn't fall under real estate because we're not negotiating a transaction. It's not us. It does not fall under executive session.

Marjorie could I just ask as the non-lawyer wouldn't it fall under negotiations of a development agreement and I think you can do that in executive session can't you?

The negotiations are for purchase, lease, or value of land that the board is transacting to acquire. We spoke to town council today, and it's very narrow.

When we did the development agreements in the past, I thought we did some part of that in executive session, but I'd have to go check my notes because I would think you would. determined the terms of your negotiation for coming to a development agreement. in some type of a setting. But not a lawyer, just logically, it doesn't make sense to me.

But let me ask you another question. Even if it did qualify for executive session, why wouldn't we do it in public session? This is the project of greatest interest in the town and greatest concern. Why wouldn't we do it in public? I don't see that it's a benefit to us to talk about the results of a visioning session that we want to present to DCAM behind closed doors.

I would agree with this should be as transparent as possible. But if we're going to negotiate something, I think it would be not in the town's best interest at all for the state to know what our negotiating position is.

But we're not negotiating, Kenny. We're only informing. We don't have any leverage to negotiate.

Well, we do. If they want more density, then they have to negotiate. They don't have the right to more density.

How we've done development agreements in the past are there's a subset of the board that goes and negotiates and then comes back and tells the full board. If you think back to the more recent ones we've done with William Street, there's no executive session attributable to those.

Just getting back to your central question, Kenny, I don't agree with spending the town's money and hiring... lawyers to fight this. I would rather spend the town's money to understand what people want and make it work for us because I think it's been, we have had sort of indication from town council and town council does have land use lawyers that that's not likely to be successful here and so I think that we I think our time and our money is best spent making this the best it can be for us in my mind

Okay, so I think there's some disagreement. I think we have to vote on whether we want to proceed with a visioning exercise for which we need funding and then the mechanism. Megan, do you have a recommendation on the best funding mechanism?

Can I just say, all we're doing by the motion is authorizing obtaining the money for the study. I mean, we're simply trying to deal with the fact that we have a special town meeting coming up and we're trying to figure out how best to fund it.

Right, but how we decide to fund it determines whether we have to go to advisory, whether we have to amend, you know, an article and a motion for town meeting.

Oh, I understand that, and I agree, and I'm supportive of the visioning study, but I think we have a more narrow

except if we don't decide that now we'll have to come back and do it again I think you have to decide whether you want to proceed with any application of funds and then two, the options that are presented are go to town meeting and have that discussion for free cash where town meeting members could say No, right? Or you can go to, and those funds aren't going to become available. for a longer period of time until the dissolution of the special town meeting. So basically mid-November. or we go to advisory for their emergency fund because this is an unanticipated event with sort of time is of the essence for funding. We can go to

Steele, Housing Development, the Affordable Housing Trust for a portion of the fund, or you could use funds that we have on hand from past development agreement payments. Largely, I am thinking of the Federal Realty Fund.

What's the balance available?

It's probably 160,000. I can get you exact numbers. I don't have the number off the top of my head.

Well, my preference would be the soonest possible vehicle. so that we can we need a scope of services from a consultant but the sooner the consultant can get up to speed and our departments can work on the things they can work on and we know we have to wait for the parking study but the sooner we can schedule it and start getting the word out which is really the most important thing.

So the least amount of approval is using the federal realty funds?

So I just have a procedural question. As I hear the sequence of events that we're proposing, we're doing, I assume, the infrastructure and traffic work now. Is that fair?

Yes, we've asked those departments to start working on that.

So we're doing light, water, sewer, traffic, all of those things. They've started, right?

We just had a discussion today. Yeah, we just had a discussion during traffic committee this afternoon.

Perfect. MassBay is doing their traffic study. No results for anyone to review are available until early November. Is that correct? Correct. Town Meeting is the first Monday in November, November 3rd. Correct. It is scheduled to dissolve on the 3rd or the 4th. We hope. right so I don't see radical delay in town meeting I I I don't see if that is a path that the board wants to go down why we can't go out to bid to see what proposals look like you're going to get them back before town meeting. And I don't feel a delay there myself.

We actually don't have to go to bid for designer services such as this. I actually and even if we did I would go to bed I would not we can get scope of services but to go to bed is going to take

. Eight weeks? That would not feel right to me to go out to bid before we had secure funding to enter into a contract, but we don't need to. So I would prefer not to go to town meeting. This is funds that are under the select board's control. It's the select board's decision. I think it's best if we have them available as soon as possible. So my preference would be to take it from the federal realty funds.

and if we do that can we before we move forward get some sort of assurance from DCAM if we do this work it will be worth it it's going to pay off and it's going to you know we'll need to get some sort of timeline from them to say you know we anticipate having a visioning study and having results by this date does that work for you and will it be effective? I would be interested in using the federal funds with that clarification from staff with DKIM.

I will reach back out to the state

I'm just going to say this one thing I think another thing we agree on several things at this board and one of them is that this affects the whole town and this is in the scheme of the impact, not a large amount of money, but it is a meaningful initiative. And I personally believe having town meeting buy-in is an important leadership role that we laying out the plan, letting every town meeting member know how we're doing it, having them buy in is an important step in the process which doesn't in fact delay the process because the building blocks are occurring and won't be done until after town meeting.

but it is tax impact money and the select board has non-tax impact money that we can apply to this use. I'd prefer not to have to use tax impact money if we have the resources to do it ourselves.

191,000.

We've just continued to talk about how important it is for the town to have buy-in on this whole thing and transparent as can be. and this entire process we talked about our state reps came in front of us and said they've given us essentially assurance that they're going to wait until we go through our visioning process So I don't understand why we would have to rush this to by a few weeks if we are actually comfortable that they're going to wait until we're done. and on the tax impact, it's tax dollars. It may not be a tax impact, but it is our taxpayers' money.

Thank you very much. was that they are very excited to hear that Wellesley is willing to invest in doing a visioning process with the residents in the community and that they're willing to hold off until they get the results of that visioning process and they'll include that with the RFP. but they're still gonna move forward with this process unfolding. So it's not gonna be an indefinite hold until we decide how to proceed. I think if we wanna do this, we need to move forward.

but they also are government. So if we can secure funding in, what is it, three weeks? I think that's fleet of foot in government. So it's how many? It's October 7th. So it's... Four weeks. Okay, it's four weeks. We are working now. What you're telling me is we're doing all the prep work now. We're not losing time. So for me, I think this is transparent.

That's not the consultant, Mark. Capital infrastructure, keep in mind, is not part of it. My only question would be, in all seriousness, if you don't do a visioning, that's your prerogative if that's not how you want to proceed but if you don't want to do that How would you want to proceed? What is the alternative? Litigation to not do anything or what? Listening to everyone tell us what they don't want to see there?

At the end of the day, the reason why the vision is so important Thank you very much. but a straight up community meeting at the high school cafeteria is an opportunity for people to emote, to be concerned, to express their anxiety and concern, and for some number of people to be supportive. At the end of that process, they're all looking at us saying, well, what are you going to do?

I don't think that that's... Beth was just saying the difference. I think there's a majority consensus on envisioning. It's just the path of the funding. Is it now through... I understand if I could finish.

And so at the end of that process with the public meeting, the participants are going to turn to us and say, now what are you going to do? And our answer is going to be, well, we wanted to do a visioning. We wanted to move this forward. We had an opportunity to do that. I want to be clear that by recommending federal funds, which I agree with, nobody is, at least in those who apparently agree with that, is suggesting that we're avoiding the scrutiny of town meeting. I have no doubt the town meeting would pass and article seeking funds. It's that it's unnecessary to go that route. And as Marjorie points out, we have the money from federal, which is not tax impact money. And we can show the state that we're moving forward expeditiously.

Can I just clarify if anyone's listening that it's not the federal government, it's federal royalty, just in case people aren't with us on that. So, Tom, I was not implying not doing the visioning. I was implying that we needed a precursor to the visioning, that we needed an... I apologize. I don't understand why we couldn't do civil discourse in a few weeks. I just simply don't understand. If it's not that template, we could certainly set up focus group settings and have those discussions. Absolutely. I do it for a living. We could do it. We could get it done. I was implying procedurally having a precursor to the structured visioning. So just to clarify what my recommendation was.

therefore I don't see any need not to go to town meeting because the timeline works and I believe that the state would see us as moving Forward, engaging our community and doing a thoughtful, thorough process.

Well I think we have majority consensus for going right into the visioning. I don't see any reason why we can't get a lot of the same input that you're talking about in a precursor. and getting as many people in town together once is going to be hard enough to do it twice to do it within the timeframe that we have is next to impossible. And I've worked on civil discourse dialogues for four and a half years. They take at least three months. and a team. It is not that easy. It is not the same as a focus group. It's a structured facilitated dialogue and it won't yield us what we would get in a visioning. So we have majority consensus to do the visioning.

Marjorie, I think we had emails from people. I don't know what happened with Megan. I saw a couple come in at the end of the day. So just I thought we should check and see if there was anyone.

All right, we'll take public comment. We have a few minutes, but then we're going to move to the funding mechanism.

We have sent, I think Leslie Hanrahan wanted to call in. We sent the number to the Zoom, but... I don't know. There was Jennifer. We had encouraged them to speak the citizen speak because it was a question, it wasn't particularly on the visioning, which this aspect was on, and then they determined they would not do that.

We sent her the number twice.

She has the number.

The other person wanted to ask a question and I said, you know, we don't answer questions necessarily during Citizen Speak. She's really better off if she wants to ask a question to call the staff and get the answer for that. But if Leslie, if you're watching, the phone line is open, if anybody else wants to call. will take up to 15 minutes of comment, but we are ready to move forward.

Do we already have an idea of who the consultant would be?

Well, Eric and I had talked to the Berkeley group, Michael Zahner, who's a former planning director for the town, who also knows many of the folks. We had talked to him about leading that. He has then looked to partner with Randy Collins and Beta Group to do some of the visualizations. They're very familiar with the town, obviously. There was additional consultants with regards to, which I don't have on the team name, that they were looking at with regards to environmental assessment, market assessment.

But this would all fall under one umbrella.

It would all fall under one umbrella, which part of that they also did anticipate doing interviews with stakeholders, MassBay. So there is that component to it. I don't have the scope of services yet. I should have that. Monday, but the teams were being pulled together. It was, I'm going to say the, maybe the market, I'm going to say the name wrong, Tamerlan or it was a separate company.

Okay, we'll wait one more minute to see if Leslie wants to call in and then we'll move ahead. Are there any other comments in the meantime?

Do you give me an idea of what the amount is for the motion? I'm hearing 75.

Is that a comfortable number, Megan? 75?

Yes. OK.

Maybe we can still take comments. Can I just ask, so we're getting a scope of services in, is it now? Like are we getting a scope of services in within a week or something?

Yes, if it wasn't for the long holiday weekend, we'd probably have it, but there's folks traveling.

Could we look at the scope of services and then vote it on Thursday?

I just, we're authorizing using money that we have to a certain amount. If the scope of services exceeds that amount, we'd have to reconsider.

Can I ask this motion in its current form needs to be changed?

Yeah, Collette will change it. Meanwhile, Leslie is here. Hi, Leslie. We can't hear you.

Hold on. I was trying to call in using the phone line rather than Zoom. And I had a number, but I needed a meeting number as well, which I did not have. So I apologize. Hi, Leslie. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes.

Yes. Here you go.

You can't hear me. We can hear you. You can hear me, okay.

You're just hearing the delay.

Can you hear me?

Yes. Go ahead, Leslie. You have three minutes, please. Okay. I would like to address the proposed... You can hear me, okay.

You're just getting feedback maybe from the computer or something.

Turn the TV off, Leslie.

I would like to address the proposed visioning exercise. The first place to start is with the Barrett Consulting Group's raw visioning data. During that exercise, I distinctly remember a large map with stickers all over 125 Oakland Street and 40 Oakland Street that indicated that housing should not be built there. many yellow yellow stickies indicated that the forested areas should be off the table when it comes to developing housing and yet here we are with a minimum proposal of 180 units on this 45 acre parcel or second worst option of 36 units per acre minimum if built on the adjacent parking lot. Fieldstone by comparison is three units per acre. Wellesley Green smack dab in the middle of downtown Wellesley is only 20 units per acre.

The town paid $70,000 for that Barrett study, and I feel that we need to revisit the raw data with respect to community input on the environment. at this site as the draft report does not reflect the environmental input that I believe many others gave. This was, after all, in fairness, a housing study. Based on what I recall that raw data says regarding the importance of not building on or near the forest, I hope our town leaders would like to support the sentiments of residents in the neighborhood and across town. this may involve dialing back the message of how best to live with 180 units as a baseline so that the state doesn't make bad decisions for us. The forest should not and should never be a bargaining chip. And I believe that the strategic planning raw data will bear that out.

If it does, town leadership should sit down with the state and stand up for the way the citizens feel. Does it really matter what style the building is or what color the shingles are? when you slap up 180 or more units the forest will be impacted and the neighborhood doubled overnight I don't even have to mention infrastructure It was hard enough for many participants concerned with protecting Centennial in the forest to get our message through to a housing-centric study, but I believe we did. any town-wide visioning process should incorporate the extensive work already done on environmentally sensitive areas and should not automatically endorse 180 units as a minimum on this 45-acre parcel. please do not ignore the extensive environmental impact already given to the town with respect to 40 Oakland Street. It can be found in the raw data of the Barrett Consulting Group and should be used in any visioning effort, and I would really appreciate that.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, Leslie. Yep.

Anybody else?

Okay, Colette, I'll ask you for a motion, please.

Sure. Move to approve expanding up to $75,000 from federal realty funds for a consultant for a town-wide visioning of the Mass Bay land. Okay.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. All opposed?

No.

Okay, Megan, I'd like to ask you to arrange that, to have those funds ready, and when we get the scope of services to share it with the board, please. Our next agenda item is a chair's report, and I'm going to skip a chair's report. We've had four meetings already this week. We have two more tomorrow. and whatever I have to say can wait until next week. So unless there's anything else. Go ahead, Collette.

I just have one comment on liaison updates. if you haven't already sent in your comments on the Townwide Capital Planning Committee please send them in to Corey so that we can keep moving on that and get a revised draft to the board for second consideration. The subcommittee meets once a month, so I really need those comments so I can get something for us to work on.

Yes, and as well, the townwide letter. Please get your comments back to Megan and Corey. I haven't sent that to the...

I was waiting for your comments first on that letter, Marjorie, and then I'll distribute to the board.

Yes.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

You'll have them tomorrow.

We are meeting with the clergy of our local area. Houses of Faith tomorrow. We have met yesterday and today with the administration of Babson College and Wellesley College, and we'll be sharing some more of their updates in the coming weeks. So unless there's anything else, we are adjourned.