Select Board June 16, 2026

It's just awkward when you can't see Marjorie or others talking.

No, Megan was, I mean, Beth was like, Corey, turn on your microphone. And I was turning on my laptop microphone, like, whoops. It's a long day.

Okay.

Oh, time. Okay. It does. Good evening. I'd like to call the Wellesley Select Board meeting of June 16th, 2026 to order. We are in the Great Hall and here with me in the Great Hall are Vice Chair Tom Ulfelder, Beth Sullivan Woods, and Kenny Largess. Joining us remotely is Secretary Colette O'Frank. Also remote is our Executive Director, Megan Jopp, and here with us in the Great Hall is Assistant Executive Director, Corey Testa. And Corey has the list of citizens who have requested time to speak.

The first one is on Zoom, Kate Ferrella.

Kate, before you start, sorry, just a minute. I just want to remind people who are watching it at home, we typically allow 15 minutes. for Citizen Speak, and ask that speakers keep their comments to three minutes. These are generally not issues on the agenda. So we typically don't enter into dialogue, but we're glad you're here. And go ahead, please.

Good evening. My name is Kate Ferrella, and I live at 193 Bristol Road. I am the parent of three children currently attending Bates Elementary School, a kindergartner, a third grader, and a fifth grader. I also grew up in Wellesley. I attended Upham Elementary School, the Wellesley Middle School, and the Wellesley High School. So these schools in this community mean a great deal to me. I attended Wellesley Public Schools myself and now my own children sit in these classrooms. I'm here tonight because I am increasingly concerned about the lack of air conditioning in the majority of our elementary schools. My children's experience at Bates during these warmer months has become one of discomfort and frankly dread. My fifth grader has told me that she struggles to focus in class because of the heat. My third graders teacher recently shared that even with five fans running and the shades drawn, the children are lethargic and are asking not to go outside to play.

Last week, a young student fainted during a school concert. This was a stark reminder that these conditions are not simply inconvenient. They raise real concerns about student health and safety. As parents, we send our children to school expecting they will be able to learn, focus, and thrive. and said many are spending some of the hottest days of the year simply trying to get through the day. They come home exhausted, uncomfortable and frustrated. Teachers are doing everything they can, but fans and closed blinds are not a long-term solution. What concerns me most is that this issue affects not only comfort but learning. At a time of year when students should be finishing strong, celebrating accomplishments, and enjoying their final weeks with classmates and teachers, many are simply trying to endure the heat. Because of that, I am asking the select board to take immediate action to accelerate this project. Specifically, I ask that you call for a special town meeting as soon as possible to help expedite the air conditioning project for our elementary schools.

I also ask that you dedicate available free cash toward both the design and construction phases of this project so that progress can move forward without unnecessary delay. Most importantly, I ask that every effort be made to complete construction during the summer of 2027 so that the students can begin the 2027-2028 school year in classrooms that are safe, healthy, and conducive to learning. Our children's health, safety, and education should not be something we gamble with. The teachers, staff, and students in these buildings have been incredibly resilient, but resilience should not be mistaken for an acceptable long-term solution. Thank you. Thank you.

Suzanne Longley.

Hi, my name is Suzanne Longley. My address is 4 Winwood Road in Wellesley. I've been a Wellesley resident for four years. I have three boys. My oldest is in kindergarten at Bates and I have been a primary care NP for 15 years. As a medical professional, I'm very concerned about the serious urgent health and safety risks in our four schools without air conditioning. I have expertise treating and managing all of these patient populations, as well as expertise treating heat-related illness and complications. Our youngest children are the highest risk group alongside older adults, pregnant women, and children with high risk medical conditions such as allergic asthma. but all individuals in these schools suffer, which comprises half of our current school system.

Last week, we reached heat indexes or feels like temperatures of 96 on multiple school days. The National Weather Service classifies environmental attempts into four categories, and these fall into the extreme caution group. Heat-related fatalities have occurred at heat indexes below 80 degrees, which we well exceeded in classrooms, recording up to an alarming 100 degrees. The children still participated in PE classes undergoing additional physical exertion, which further raises internal body temps. This is compounded by elevated humidity levels, which classrooms documented 60 to 75% humidity levels. And this altogether comprises the body's ability to cool down. One of the elementary school teachers paints a very poignant picture of wilted flowers where all of the students lie around during hot days.

Like so many other children, my son felt sick for most of the days with difficulty concentrating and learning. He was sweaty and flushed when I picked him up and remained overheated for over an hour. after coming home exhibiting emotional and behavioral dysregulation. This week with much lower temps, he still said the classroom was hot and felt a little sick. These are classic examples of heat exhaustion, but additional symptoms can include vomiting, muscular cramps, and syncope among many others. It's important to note that the cognitive impacts begin climbing over 70 degrees where blood flow to the brain is reduced and this decreases higher level executive functioning for memory and learning. Heat stroke is obviously the most serious complication, which is a life-threatening medical emergency. To conclude, this is an urgent crisis.

The project can and should be expedited, beginning with the select board calling for a special town meeting immediately. and the early phases of the project should begin this summer and be fully in place before the high temps spike again next May and June. In my professional opinion, if you do wait, you risk a serious medical event or Fatality in our community. I thank you all for your attention tonight. Thank you very much.

Stephanie Tremonti.

Hi, yes, I'm Stephanie Tremonti and I'm at 14 Richland Road in Wellesley. I have lived in the community for about seven years now. I'm a parent of a child at Bates Elementary School as well. She's currently a kindergartner and I have another child that will be incoming in the next few years. I know recently, specifically in the last week or so with the extreme heat temperatures, you've heard a lot about parents reaching out on Facebook and emails regarding the poor conditions within some of our elementary schools with no air conditioning. As mentioned, one of the degrees, the temperatures in the rooms at Bates Elementary specifically was 93 degrees with a humidity level of 49, which translates to a 96 degree feels like temperature. These heat levels raise serious health and safety concerns for our children, not only from a health perspective, but also from a learning standpoint.

Children within our community have had to see pediatricians for about prolonged headaches and many of our children have had to take times away from learning at school to find ways to cool off. My own child has come home with extremely flushed cheeks and exhaustion and behavioral temperament issues as well. I know the school AC project was initially brought forward in 2018 as an urgent priority and has a projected timeline to be implemented by end of summer 2028. However, I ask that the town seek to fast track this timeline. It's an urgent matter that this project be made a high priority and be seen to completion as soon as possible. I do not want our young children to suffer in school anymore with these extreme heat conditions, and I ask that the Select Board call for a special town meeting as soon as possible regarding this topic. Thank you to the Select Board and to others listening regarding this health risk and safety crisis.

Thank you very much.

Kelly Norris if you could just press the button so it's green, thank you.

Good evening, I'm Kelly Norris, 11 Tanglewood Road. I'm a Bates parent and a town meeting member in Precinct C. The first time I spoke on the importance of the school air conditioning projects and the urgency of protecting the health and safety of Wellesley's children was two years and three months ago. I had a photo back there that I was going to hold up that was referenced, which is the temperature and humidity reading that was in my son's classroom at Bates. It's 93 degrees, 49% humidity. Higgins, according to the National Weather Service Heat Index, this was a heat index of 105 degrees. 105 degrees falls into the quote, extreme caution or danger band on the chart. The health risks described quote, Sunstroke and heat exhaustion are highly likely.

Heat stroke is also probable. Heat stroke is the most serious heat-related illness. It can cause permanent disability or death without emergency treatment. Warning signs for heat stroke include dizziness, headaches, nausea, confusion, hotter red skin, et cetera. My email and text inbox are full and maybe some of yours are too of parents who described headaches, fainting, nausea, vomiting, Dizziness, Hot Skin, and Listlessness of their children in Wellesley schools last week. Kids sitting in the dark on the floor watching Wild Kratts in school, quote, to get through it. There's no learning.

The town has known this was an urgent health and safety problem since at least 2018 when the superintendent asked for the first feasibility study to solve the critical problem. Half of Wellesley schools have these conditions. As noted in school committee presentations, there are heat days more than one month per school year, and the number of days grows every year. A heat day is defined as a day outside the Mass Department of Health range noted as healthy, safe, and conducive to learning. Lastly, every single conversation I have with a parent on this topic, they end up asking me at some point, and someone asked me this about an hour and a half ago on the playground, how could anyone in the town be against this project moving forward? Why could anyone in the town be against this project moving forward? I have no good answer to these questions.

I ask select board to expedite this project in the fastest possible timeframe. This is a health and safety emergency and it needs to be solved now. Thank you.

Thank you, Kelly.

Marissa Galatopoulos and Rose Neighbors. They're going to speak together.

Hi, my name is Rose Neighbors. I live at 9 Avon Road, and I'm 13 years old.

Rose, can you just bring the mic a little closer here?

And in seventh grade at Wellesley Middle School.

My name is Marissa Galatopoulos. I live at Three Willow Park and I'm also in seventh grade. Today we want to address one of the most important issues at Wellesley Middle School. As the weather gets warmer and the school gets hotter, there's nothing to cool us down and no air conditioning.

As you may know, when it's very hot your skin and shorts stick to the chair. Well, the middle school is so hot they don't even stick. You just glide around on your seat in a pool of sweat like a piece of butter on a warm pan.

It's not only hot in the later spring and summer, but also when the school starts in September.

Students can't learn anything because they're so exhausted from the heat.

And teachers can't teach because of their blistering classrooms.

Having no air conditioning doesn't only affect our focus but it takes away from our learning time.

According to our teacher, it's the high temperature combined with the humidity that makes learning during these hot conditions oppressive.

Another teacher says that the room temperature gets up to around 90 degrees in her room, even with multiple large fans, which is only on the second floor and as we all know, heat rises, meaning the third floor is much hotter.

These are some of the many reasons why Wellesley Middle School desperately needs air conditioning.

For the hot days that no one can bear. Thank you.

Thank you both very much.

That's everybody that signed up.

Okay, many people know, we don't typically respond to Citizen Speak, but I just want to say one thing. Many people know, but maybe everybody doesn't know, that to go to town meeting you need a departmental proponent and the select board has no authority over the school department. So I would repeat your comments. I know you've been writing to the school department, but it's their project and it might be properly brought to them to request any further action. It's already a project on the capital plan and any further movement on it would have to come from the school department.

Marjorie, I'd like to ask that we send to the school committee that we had very compelling speakers and that they tune in and watch this portion of the meeting so that the moms don't have to take another night off to go speak.

Tom and I met with the school committee chair and vice chair this morning and alerted them that we would have speakers tonight at Citizen Speak about this issue and that they should tune in. And they're not meeting tonight, they're meeting on Thursday. Okay, we're going to move on to our next agenda item, which is the Executive Director's Report. Megan?

Thanks, Marjorie. I just have a few things. One, I wanted to thank Beth and our veterans and the fire department for hosting Flag Day on Sunday, where They retired a number of American flags, as well as Jamie Manzolini, our RDF superintendent, who has found a new strategy. So that has saved us some time in terms of our ceremonial flag burning ceremonies. I also wanted to alert folks that select board member Kenny Largess will be holding office hours tomorrow, June 17th, between noon and 1.30. Folks can sign up for that. by emailing Kenny K. Largess at WellesleyMA.gov. He is meeting with folks either in person or via Zoom and you can request a 15-minute appointment.

also we have on the town's website information we continue to look for next year for elementary school crossing guards and the hours are posted for that it's it's a great early morning and and afternoon activity about 30 minutes each day. And, you know, great way to continue to see your neighbors and community if people are interested in that. The other thing I just wanted to highlight is the Fire Station Master Plan was presented to the Select Board on June 2nd. There's a webpage that's been set up on the Town's homepage under Hot Topics. identified as WFD, Wellesley Fire Department Master Plan. The report is on there with the appendices and that has tons of information in terms of the recommendation. We will be holding a public meeting on Thursday, June 25th in the Great Hall.

at 6 30 to give a shortened presentation to what was given to the select board on June 2nd and to take questions and answer questions some some may be able to be answered at the meeting others may be we may have to get back to folks but I just wanted to announce that and then the last thing I did just want to highlight that due to the elevated I can't think of the word, status right now that the mandatory outdoor watering restrictions are in place. We're in a stage two drought. and on the town's website, both the public works website as well as the town's homepage, we go into what watering is allowed, which is essentially hand watering only as permitted. for lawns, gardens, flowers, etc. Only before 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m. Outdoor watering during all other hours is prohibited.

All outdoor irrigation using sprinklers or automatic irrigation systems is also prohibited. So just wanted to highlight that. And that's all I have, Marjorie.

Thank you very much, Megan.

Marjorie, I just have one item on the civil discourse. So to supplement the board's packet this week in which Lisa Olney and the Civil Discourse Initiative included a debrief memorandum on their town talk dialogue in April. I was asked to debrief the board and the public on kind of the takeaways from that dialogue. So the Civil Discourse Initiative's April 2026 Town Talk Dialogue brought together 34 elected and appointed volunteers representing 16 town boards, committees, and commissions. with the intent to strengthen relationships, share experiences, and identify opportunities for improved collaboration. Participants consistently emphasized the value of building stronger connections across boards, reducing organizational silos, and creating more opportunities for in-person interaction and communication.

Key recommendations that came from that dialogue include establishing regular cross-board networking and dialogue opportunities, creating an internal directory of board and committee members, developing mentorship programs for new volunteers and expanding training and skill building resources as well as improving the sharing of information across town boards. participants highlighted the importance of active listening, curiosity, respect for differing perspectives and greater collaboration to advance community goals. feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive with nearly all participants reporting a stronger understanding of other boards challenges and perspective perspectives, increased connections with fellow volunteers, and support for facilitated dialogue as a tool for fostering common purpose. The Civil Discourse Initiative recommends continuing and expanding these efforts as a means of strengthening volunteer engagement and recruitment.

to that end the planning team has been meeting since the town talk to debrief and we are strongly considering making this an annual offering for board committee and commission members both to kind of train newly elected boards and committee members, but also to reestablish and form stronger connections among existing members. So more to come on that.

Thank you very much, Corey. It was indeed a very productive evening, and I'm glad to hear that participants requested more of it. I think especially after Springtown meeting, it's a nice opportunity for new board members. Our next agenda item is the consent agenda. We have three items on the consent agenda tonight. The first is to vote two year-end transfers The first is a request for a $2,500 transfer from the graves officer stipend account. to the celebrations committee budget to align the budget with actual expenditures. The second transfer is also of $2,500 from the fire department budget which is expected to close the fiscal year with a sizable turn back. Thank you, Chief. To the advisory committee budget, because due to the May 2026 special town meeting, Smith.

Advisory produced an additional report this year which exceeded their budget. These transfers will ensure that those accounts do not close the fiscal year with a deficit. The second item is to vote committee, commission, board and staff appointments. And the third is to vote an expenditure from the Special Education Stabilization Fund in the amount of $782.41 to cover bills from New England Medical Billing, which seeks reimbursement for the school department's Medicaid expenses. Unless there are any comments, I'll ask Colette for a motion, please.

So moved to approve the consent agenda as amended.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Do you have to do a roll call because I'm remote? Okay.

Okay, Colette. My apologies. That's okay. Colette?

Aye.

Beth?

Aye.

Tom?

Aye. Kenny?

Aye. And I vote aye as well. Thank you, Colette, for the reminder. Okay. Our next agenda item is a joint meeting with the Board of Public Works to appoint a member to the vacant Board of Public Works position. And Colette will let you introduce it.

So the Board of Public Works has an open position due to the resignation of a member. and the Board of Public Works has conducted interviews to fill that position. The Board of Public Works is here tonight to make a recommendation for that and we'll be convening a joint meeting to make that recommendation. The recommendation is supported by a memo from the Chair of the Board of Public Works, Jeff Wexler. The Board of Public Works heard from Jeff Wexler in his interviews with applicants the Board of Public Works unanimously voted to bring forward a recommendation of Ned Hall to fill that position and so we will move we will convene a joint meeting to do that If you want me to make the motion for the joint meeting, no, Margie, I'm happy to do that.

Yes, please, let's do that.

Okay, so move to convene a joint meeting between the Select Board and the Board of Public Works to name Marjorie Freiman as Chair and Jeff Wexler as Secretary.

Second.

Tom?

Aye. Kenny? Aye.

Beth?

Aye.

Colette? Aye. And I vote aye as well.

Do we need to ask Scott, Michael, and Jeff to vote on that too?

Yes, please. Open your meeting.

Yeah, so this is Jeff Wexler, Chair of the Board of Works. It is Tuesday, June 16th, 2026 at 6.55 PM. And I am calling to order this meeting of the Board of Public Works in order to join in the joint meeting with the select board. And I would make a

Jeff, we just lost you.

Oh, I'm sorry. I can see you. Am I there? Yes.

Great. We heard you. I'm going to make a, and then you went quiet.

Yeah. Am I back?

Yes.

I got the dreaded unstable connection. Sorry about that. So I make a motion that we do join the joint meeting that has just been opened by the select board and that we join that meeting. Do I have a second? I'll second that. Okay. And I vote yes. Michael? Yes. And Scott? You're muted, I think, Scott. Actually, it doesn't say you're mute, but I can hear you. We can't hear you. Okay, Scott is, for those that can't see, Scott has given a thumbs up as he sorts out his sound. So I believe we are now in a joint meeting.

Jeff, would you like to add anything to Colette's introduction?

Yeah, I would just like to say, if anyone watched our meeting when we made the recommendation, this will be slightly repetitive, but I'd just like to say we had three wonderful candidates. that stepped forward to volunteer to essentially fill what will be an interim seat until the election in March. We're very sad to lose Scott. He's been a wonderful member of our board and we thank him endlessly for all of his service to the town. but we have a task to fill this seat and we had three wonderful applicants. Two of them that are not selected, I still highly recommend that they find other ways to help the town. One of them is known to us. It's Don Shepherd and obviously his ability to do economic related research and analyze the impact of things on the town. I just I appreciate Don putting himself forward.

and I really think that there's just continue to be opportunities for us to harness some of his knowledge as we make decisions as a town. as we've seen over the previous years. Another individual, Marco Gatti, he's newer to town and he has yet to become involved in and the town government as we all have, but he is really, really talented. We appreciate him stepping forward and I encourage him to get involved and remain involved in the future and hopefully we can find opportunities. But the candidate that emerged as we sent forward in our memo is Edward Hall, goes by Ned. and he really meets a lot of the needs that we established. And so not only does he have some experience currently sitting in one of the appointed seats on the light plant board, But so he's got an engineering background.

He was a registered engineer previously credentialed as a PE so that and Scott is an engineer by background as well. So we thought that that was a nice It's a nice skill set to have. Before that, before Scott, we had Dave Donahue was an engineer. by training on our board. And so it's always nice to have people with an engineering background given the infrastructure work that we do. He has extensive financial and budget experience. He has extensive familiarity with the operations of the town at this point. and he has some unique knowledge of public works operations. He's actually been involved in things like building water infrastructure for for utilities, which is not something you think about, but like large utility infrastructure projects need to run water and they need to build roads to access them. And so he's been involved in projects like that. He's used to enterprise fund management through his work with the MLP, and he has some familiarity with board staff and the members of the team.

that are seeking help from us as board members. So he really stood out as somebody that brings a lot of advantages. And so while we thank the other who hope that they find other opportunities to serve the town, We really feel fortunate to have Ned step forward and to take on the hole that's left with Scott leaving. So Scott, we'll miss you. And we hope to welcome you back to town sometime in the future, but we're also very thankful to Ned and he is our recommendation to fill this position.

Well, it's wonderful to hear that you had several people interested and also gratifying to know that you are able to satisfy the criteria that were important on this board with one of the applicants. Scott, I'd like to add all of our thanks to you. We are going to miss you. You have unique expertise and very passionate for your work, and we all wish you the best.

Thank you very much. It's been a privilege to work with everybody in the town. It's been a very meaningful experience and I've been happy to serve. Thank you.

Anybody else?

So I would like to echo the thanks, Scott. It's been wonderful to get to know you a little bit, work with you, and you've made a wonderful contribution. and I am very supportive of Ned. I think he's been a tremendous asset on the MLP and his skill set. The timing is really good given what the Board of Public Works is looking at in terms of facilities improvements. I do have one question. It's a strategic question. So as I look at the bylaws, the Board of Public Works composition is those members that are seated on the board of, sorry, the MLP's board is those members seated on the Board of Public Works plus two selectmen appointments. So Ned is our appointment. So he'll be moving over to a temporary slot for a short duration. And I believe he has a longer duration

currently remaining on his term of the Municipal Light Plant Board. So I'm assuming he agreed to Rezine his longer term on the Municipal Light Plant to fill the short term term that comes with assignment to the Board of Public Works. Is that correct?

I was going to say Collette, I think, can answer that.

so that is the concept but the board of public sorry the board the municipal light board is going to be taking up that discussion in their next meeting so that the board can make a decision on their next steps because you know Ned being appointed to the board of public works does create an opening in the appointed position that this from the select board to the municipal light board but the the board the municipal light board is going to take that up in their meeting in July So action steps are not defined yet. In the last openings they had, they appointed a subcommittee to interview and nominate for the board to consider, but the board has not defined those steps yet, so that will be done in July.

And Beth, more specifically, just one little narrow piece of what you said. The assumption for all of us, I think, and certainly for me, has been that he will be vacating that seat even though at I'll call it the risk of knowing that there's always a possibility he's not reelected come March. And there may have been more time on that. But I think everybody's been operating under the assumption that he's resigning that seat. upon the July 1 appointment that this would entail. And that would therefore open up the seat for the standard process that would go for the select board to make the appointment.

Right, because I think that would be a requirement. And I want to be clear, I'm very supportive of this appointment. We don't have a mechanism other than ensuring that that is understood by NET.

Yeah, certainly every indication in every conversation is that that is how he understands it.

So the representation is that that's his plan and everybody else's plan. It is an unusual situation, but it sounds like the Municipal Light Board will address it and determine their action steps at their next meeting. So with that, Colette, could we please have a motion?

Sure. And I'd just add, I mean, the reason why it's not all set in stone is because there's a number of dominoes here that need to take place. you know member resignation board of public works does their process makes a recommendation to their board comes to our board then we make a vote and so until all those steps are taken then you can't you know define and set the next steps Anyway, given that, move to appoint Edward Hall to the Board of Public Works effective July 1, 2026 until the 2027 town election.

Second.

Michael?

I second.

and your vote, please.

Oh, yes.

Yes. Scott.

Yes.

Jeff.

Yes.

Colette. Aye. Beth. Yes. Tom.

Aye.

Kenny? Yes. And I vote aye as well. Thank you all very much. And please add our thanks to Ned for being willing to serve in this position. And again, Scott, we wish you all the best. and we hope you rejoin Wellesley community again soon. Okay.

Do we need to vote on dissolution? Yes.

We do.

Move to dissolve the joint meeting.

Second.

Tom?

Aye.

Kenny? Aye. Beth? Michael? Scott? I see Michael nodding. Jeff?

Yes.

Colette? Aye. And I vote aye as well. Thank you all very much for joining us.

Can I officially, yeah, let's close out our Board of Public Works meeting. And Scott, this may be your last official vote as the Board of Public Works is to close this meeting, so I just want to honor that. So, but thank you everybody. And do I have a motion to close this?

I move that we close the meeting.

There you go, Scott. Thank you. Do I have a second? I second it great and so I vote yes and Michael yes and Scott yes thank you everyone thanks very much have a good night thank you

All right, so Colette, you will let us know when Board of Public Works has met and made a decision.

Yes, we'll do.

Great, thank you. Our next agenda item is a public safety update from the police chief and the fire chief. It looks like police chief is going first this evening. So we welcome Police Chief Scott Whittemore. Hi, Chief.

Good evening. Chief Mortorelli voted me to go first, so here I am.

Chief, can you just press the button on the middle? I'm sorry.

They're all on. Oh, that one's off. OK. First of all, good evening, everyone. This is just our quarterly update on things that are going on within the department. I apologize it's in June. Our normal update would have been in April and May. We had a tremendous amount of incidents ongoing as did the town with special town meeting. So here we are in June. Just to start, this is recapping basically things from the end of January of this year. So one of our major operations was a visit by Hillary Clinton to Wellesley College for two days, which we supported through the Public Safety Department of Wellesley College. So that involved several of our officers for two days there. In addition, in late February and early March, we held a department-wide training at Upham School on active shooter and active emergency for our officers as part of that training. We invited Babson College, the police department there, the Wellesley College Public Safety Department, and MassBay Community College to train with us.

Babson College opted not to. They've been running their own program that we've been participating with them over there at, and the concepts are pretty much the same. but we were able to work with Wellesley College in MassBay and it basically involved the first 10 minutes of an active critical event what our officers would be doing and what their roles were and those are pretty much the most, the entire incident is critical, but those are very critical moments for us to stop an active threat. The ability to use Upham School was incredible, especially in the middle of winter. With snow on the ground, we were still able to train effectively. and that program was put together by Sergeant Mark DiNicenzo, Officer Derek Popovsky, and Officer Steven Gaffney, as well as Officer Matt Wall, one of our high school SROs. who attended multiple trainings before that to bring our people up to speed and just ensure that with the type of department that we have where we're a younger department that everyone knows their role no matter whether you're the first person there or the last person there.

and it was incredibly, I've been to a lot of active shooter trainings over the years. I've seen the program evolve as I've been on since all this started. and it was one of the best trainings I went to and it didn't matter what your rank was or what your position was, everyone went to the training and everyone took the training. and we've been very fortunate to be able to work with Dr. Lucier and Upham School on a number of other trainings inside this spring. Everything from interior drone operations and searches to Less Than Lethal and some de-escalation training that we just went through. We may have done a little bit of damage to one of the walls, but Dr. Lucier says we're okay with that. But it's just a tremendous facility, and we've actually hosted some classes there as well for some other agencies, and it's worked out really well. along that same theme, Deputy Chief Renzella continues to coordinate our external training for active shooter, which is for our houses of worship, our schools in the community and as of late summer camps.

So Deputy Chief Renzella and his staff basically do the training for the staff on what to do should an event happen. He scales it up if they want it scaled up or he scales it down if they want a basic level training. And some of our houses of worship are definitely on the higher end. of that training. They've had it many times, and they want the latest and greatest, and they want it dynamic. And other houses of worship that we just recently undertook wanted a very basic class, and Jeff's very good at modeling the class for what our customers want. Hunt. So he's been very successful along with his entire staff on that. The Boston Marathon came through town once again and along with Chief Mortorelli. It's a lot of planning that begins usually in September and A lot of fine-tuning of things and making sure that things go very smoothly. I think some of you attended our briefing early on marathon Monday morning. Once again, really an incident-free year for us. A few medicals here and there, but nothing significant.

and that's a testament to Deputy Chief Renzella, Lieutenant Scott Shostad, Lieutenant Michael Meninger who all work on that plan consistently and ensure that it is smooth. still fine-tuning our road reopening operation along with the BAA. Every year it gets a little bit better and the BAA has been very good about working very closely with our with our staff to ensure that the road doesn't remain closed for longer than it has to. Obviously with the root being vital to the town. As the board's also aware, through some of our previous updates, right after the marathon, we had a horrific double homicide that we worked with the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office on to investigate. Obviously the suspect's been charged and is currently incarcerated and we expect an indictment from Norfolk Superior Court very shortly.

Aside from the investigatory duties that you would expect the department to do during a situation like that, which our detectives and officers, again, as the board I think is already aware, spent a considerable amount of time doing. We also found ourselves in the position of supporting the community in several different ways throughout the tragedy. One was we attended all the debriefing sessions whether they were Sunday right after at one of the local schools or throughout the week and we provided multiple comfort care dogs in addition to our own comfort care dogs to the schools, at least two schools throughout the community. And there were some other events that occurred that we brought the dogs to as well. And then we provided a lot of logistical and sort of, I guess,

support to a vigil that occurred shortly after the event to ensure that it ran very smoothly, and then subsequently a very large funeral, which was on Washington Street in the middle of Wellesley's wonderful weekend. We provided as much support as we possibly could. We had to shorten our own open house on the same day because we wanted to make sure that we had the staffing for it. But that was one of the things we did. And we ended up taking the family to Cambridge What I think was a dignified manner appropriate for the situation. So I know many people in the department, the entire department participated in some form during those incidents. In addition to that, the department and, quite frankly, the town supported the officers and investigators who were involved in that incident, especially

the first 24 hours the officers were involved were up for 36 plus hours in some cases and so in the the wake of that incident we brought in peer support through some of our partners including the Brookline police who were just We have a very close relationship with them. We're very fortunate. And they have some of the best, in my opinion, in Metro Boston to support our officers, investigators, and subsequently some professional counseling in some instances where the officers needed it. We did try to support our own people as well. And I would be remiss if I did not thank the entire town of Wellesley. Excuse me. the community was there for us as well. And that was, very evident through the numerous sandwiches and food and dinners that arrived but also people just stopping us on the street which is very very nice

and moving on to another incident that occurred that week, we had a fatal traffic crash on Washington Street in the Lower Falls. In the middle of all of this, it turned out to be a medical emergency, not specifically a traffic crash, One of the local women's junior club provided lunch for us that day and our staff who were at the station, we had 11 investigators working the scene aside from the traffic chaos that occurs whenever we have to shut down Washington Street. but they bagged up all the lunches and sent them down to us. And I can tell you that it was pouring rain and that went a long way with the people working the street that day. So we're very, very thankful to the community for that. Moving on, Wellesley Wonderful Weekend also went off without incident. We did have a shortened open house, as I mentioned, due to the funeral, but our officers, that's an event that, that whole weekend, every officer in the department works, and from the Wonder Run to the Car Show in the square early on Sunday morning.

The parade, obviously, the major events, and the fireworks were entirely incident-free. And as I mentioned, everyone works on those days, and we managed to get through it without any sort of incidents. On a happier note, the town was awarded a grant for $840,000 under the local bottleneck reduction program for the Linden Street corridor. This was a project, this was a grant awarded by MassDOT that initially was thought up by the traffic committee, but then Lieutenant LaManager took it a step further and filled out all the grant paperwork which is extensive and it'll essentially provide for the modernization of all the traffic systems on Linden Street basically from Kingsbury to Crest Road and All the traffic lights will talk to each other. They'll be able to predict some of the traffic patterns, and it is the first step in modernizing all of our traffic lights throughout town.

the biggest thing for me is it's all very interoperable with future projects that may occur say in Wellesley Square or other areas of town where eventually the the traffic lights will all be communicating with each other and predicting their the traffic patterns to improve flow and as anyone who's traveled Linden Street especially in the days before Thanksgiving it can be challenging with the bridges to get a good flow there and there's really no place to put the car so the manager did a lot of work and these grants are very competitive there's a lot of excuse me a lot of really um there's a lot of great projects out there through the various municipalities so for for us to get that amount of money was a huge win, obviously, for the department and Lieutenant LaManager. Also recently, the department coordinated and sponsored a training for police and many of our town government employees and department heads.

It's basically, it was a guide to interacting with federal law enforcement, which has been on the forefront, obviously, in the last year. and what our limitations were and what some of the pitfalls are, but also how to read some of the various paperwork that maybe federal law enforcement agents may and it was more just as a very good instructional course on what to do, what to say and How to interact, basically. So I had attended this training. I was invited to it at Babson College. They also had the training. And Deputy Chief Renzel and I went. We thought it was worthwhile for our people. And we invited everyone in the town government as well. We ended up having the school department join us in the library. and it was put on by District Attorney Jerry Leone. He was the District Attorney of Middlesex for many, many years and he's now in a private law firm and he put it on.

So it was geared I think for, for our level of municipal government and we actually had town council, our own town council attend the training as well. I thought it was very successful. I know our people felt a lot more comfortable moving forward and I think it was just a good heads up training for everyone. Sergeant Will Griffin retired under a medical disability just recently a few weeks ago on May 29th. That was from an injury that he received in 2018 and then subsequently re-aggravated or re-injured it in 2024. So he's been out of work since 2024. With Sergeant Griffin's retirement, we currently have three openings on the department. And we just closed out our entrance exam for the position of police officer. So with those three openings, we actually had 130 applicants take our test, which is up from 98 in 2024.

I think largely that is in part to our aggressive recruitment campaign that's headed up by Officer Ali Lucenta. We target college fairs and community colleges specifically to get the word out. And this year, Ali, our Office of Lucenta, had requested that we We always have a test in June, but with our new testing company, you can take the test online instead of an in-person only test. So we actually opened it around the time the the opening period, the entrance period, around college job fairs so she could directly appoint these potential candidates to our to our test online. So I think it was tremendous. We've already started reviewing all the resumes and exam scores. There's a lot of good applicants out there. We anticipate August for the start of our interview process and the start of our hiring process, only because there aren't any academies until the middle of winter.

So we have some time, but we are going to move quickly on that. I anticipate a fourth. opening in December with a retirement of a very long-standing member, although that's still up in the air a little bit. So we probably will end up hiring four to be fully staffed this year. and Lieutenant Cleary actually is responsible for much of our testing and onboarding process. And she just does a fantastic job. And this specifically gearing our test for job fairs worked out very, very well. As I mentioned, with Sergeant Griffin's retirement, we now have an open sergeant's position. We'll be holding interviews next week for that position within our own ranks. And I anticipate being before you sometime in July with a potential candidate. The candidates that we currently have took a test about a year and a half ago, and they've already gone through the assessment center, so it'll be just an interview process with my command staff and a resume review.

So and again, like I said, I expect to be here in July and with a candidate. So we just ordered our fourth fully electric police cruiser. another Chevy Blazer which is a specific police package vehicle so to speak and we have two others right now two other Chevy Blazers and a Ford Mustang the Blazers have worked out really really well so in conjunction with our Ford Hybrid Explorers, we're moving forward. And most of our fleet is either battery or hybrid at this point. So Officer Tim Gover and Detective Peter McLaughlin have taken the lead on this. and they've actually continued to find rebates both working with the DPW fleet manager Brian and Mary Beth Martello to get some money back to defray some of these costs. Obviously the electric cars are a lot more expensive, but they've been very aggressive.

And I know they just got $7,500 in the previous year as a rebate for a program that Timmy did basically, Officer Grover did all the paperwork himself. So it worked out really well for us. Lieutenant Marie Cleary, as I've mentioned, she was recently honored by the Massachusetts Association for Women in Law Enforcement with a Spirit Award. And she completed her sixth year as the president of MOLLE and then stepped down. So she was honored at an award ceremony that I went to where they talked about her many achievements throughout her six years as president. She still continues in a role there, but just not as the president. And six years is a long time. We are continuing to work with HR and the fire department to hire a public safety IT manager. We had interviews today actually. It's been a challenging process to find the right candidate, but today's interviews did go well and HR has been extraordinarily supportive. and turning candidates around or turning resumes around, which has been very helpful. We hope to have some offers out this week. We'll see how that goes.

and along that same front, we welcomed Heather DeLuca to our professional staff. She's an experienced municipal employee from another town who joined our staff to fill Ginger Evans's vacant position. So she's been with us for the last month and she's being trained by Brittany Sullivan, who's our office manager on the professional side. And again, she's working out extraordinarily well. So we're lucky to get an experienced person who understands municipal government. We also welcomed Haley McLaurin as our ninth dispatcher in the Public Safety Emergency Communications Center. Haley is also experienced from a department. She worked as a dispatcher in the South Shore. She came up here and We are now fully staffed in our emergency communications center, something that hasn't happened in a long time. And we will look to fill our 10th position, which is our admin position, as soon as Haley completes her training with us. Smith, and others.

As I speak to you tonight here, there's obviously a World Cup match. Wellesley currently has three officers down there supporting that in professional roles. Officer Tim Gover is in the communications center running a lot of the communications for that event. Officer Mike Pino is assigned to a SWAT team, currently providing security, and Officer Steven Gaffney is on the bike patrol, the tactical bike patrol, so he's out in the parking lots right now. and I was just actually getting some updates. They're quite busy, a lot going on there. It's a nice night, but the town is supporting that and we continue to support that throughout all the matches. So our officers will be down there. and then looking forward to the next few months. As I mentioned, our focus will be on promoting internally, hiring and filling our ranks to make sure that we're fully staffed. and we're going to develop another major training program for the fall for our officers along the active shooter, active emergency situation.

just so that's that's one thing that we all want to be on the same same page with so probably use up on school again and we continue to develop our internal staff to so we have a is often called the deep bench of qualified supervisors that are ready to take over or ready to move up as openings start. We don't ever want to find a position where someone is indispensable not that we don't have indispensable people but we always want to have people trained and ready to go with the experience to move up should there be an opening an unexpected opening or vacancy and just develop their careers so that that continues to be the deputy chief and myself are one of our major priorities for the future to make sure that our culture and the continuity of the department continues so and that is all I have I did okay right Corey I was in the time I had a schedule. OK. All right. All right. Very good. Certainly willing to take any questions if you have any.

Chief, thank you very much. Everything you just went through is in addition to day-to-day police work. And we say this all the time that people look at Wellesley and think, it may be a quiet town but your department is always very busy and a lot of innovative work and trainings and I'm glad to hear that the community recognized that your department had had a tough week and supports you in everything you're doing. I think you know you have the board's full support as well. And I'd like to open it to other members of the board for comments and questions. Go ahead Beth.

So first I would like to thank WPD for all of the support of the merchant events because we had Wellesley in Bloom, we had all the stuff during Wellesley Wonderful Weekend, and then we've had a number of community kind of building events and the police as have the fire have been just absolutely sensational in addition to all of the veteran events because it's been kind of veteran season. I did want to remark for the community that there was an excellent article about the animal control officer Jenny Smith in the Wellesley Western Magazine that just arrived, so people should look for that. and I think that one of the burning questions out there is have you seen Bob the turkey?

No, actually, we haven't seen Bob the turkey, but this is not unusual for Bob. So last year, Bob disappeared for a little while. He was up on Route 9 at Oakland Street. I actually went after my cruiser at one point while we were at a crash. and then he disappeared again and then he was back at St. John's but we have not seen him on the last few months but I don't know if Bob's raising a family or has a second job but he always seems to return.

and then on the substantive level, the Linden Street corridor grant. Does that include the work that we're planning on Weston Road for traffic management? Because I know we had applied for the Bottleneck Grant, and not received it, but then we were going to reapply. So the Linden Street corridor, is that going to wrap around and catch that corner?

I think Weston Linden is a separate project, but those lights will be integrated once that final design is finalized. And that's one of the things that I found very compelling is that this system is interoperable with all the future upgrades, no matter where they are, whether it's the square, Linden at Weston, and it'll eventually talk to each other all the way down, the traffic lights, excuse me, will talk to each other all the way down Wash to Route 9.

Great, thank you.

Collette. Thanks, Marjorie. I just wanted to say thank you to the chief for preparing in such detail for this presentation. We are updated on a very timely manner of anything that happens with the police department. So we are, I think, kept in very good constant communication. but I think it's very important for the public and over the past couple of years we've really been refining the way that we oversee the First Responders, and includes these quarterly updates so that the public can get a good insight into what's happening at these departments. And Cody had sent a message to time meeting members Alerting them that this was one of the regular updates upcoming at this meeting, which is something that we talked about and finalized and they debriefed from annual time meeting this year. So I just want to say thank you. It's obvious that you spent a lot of time

and thought about what to update us publicly here on and how to do that so that there's a good sense of understanding about what's happening in the department. Much appreciated. Thank you.

It's also really gratifying to see that so much of your work is community partnership. You know, it's not just writing tickets or arresting people. It's working with and supporting everybody in the community with everything that's going on. people coming in from out of town, out of towners, people going through town and we're very lucky to have you in leadership and thank you very much for everything you shared with us and everything you do every day. Go ahead, Tom.

You know, I want to follow up on what Marjorie said. I think people do misunderstand the community in terms of its police force and really the fire department and the outreach that both departments do. It is easy to see what the work that the police do in a very reactive community where there are higher crime rates, higher calls, higher emergencies for the police department. but one of the remarkable things I find about the Wellesley police is that you take advantage of the ability to reach out to the community because you're not responding solely within police work and within a reactive posture. Whether it's the school resource officers, whether it's your role on the freedom team, no matter what it is, I think the Wellesley police are remarkable in the relationship that you have with the community

across all age groups, which is what I think is so important when I think of the reports that we've had from the school resource officers, the relationships that you develop with the students. the ability for the students to trust you and have that role model in terms of authority and law enforcement going forward, whether it's adults whether it's the kind of response that you received and experienced after the tragedies that we've had in Wellesley, these are all a real testament to the fact that you haven't just been dormant when you're not responding to emergencies, but you've really been proactive in terms of developing the relationships with the community. And I think it is what makes you special. and what makes I think the Wellesley Police much appreciated.

Thank you. We're very fortunate to have the support of not only yourselves, but obviously the community. And that was very evident in April and May, which I was very thankful for. And I know the officers were extraordinarily thankful for. So thank you.

Thank you very much, Chief. Chief Morterelli, good evening.

Good evening. Thank you for having me tonight. So to begin, I have a few internal updates within the department. Before I get to that, I just want to thank each take this opportunity because sometimes you know things you get busy things happen in a hurry so I want to take this moment to thank all the members of the department all the officers all the firefighters our mechanic our admin everybody it's a team every day we work together We've implemented a lot of change over the last 24 months and I know in the fire service, really in anything, change is sometimes difficult to get acclimated to. We try to do it in a thoughtful manner. we try to take input and I think everyone has adapted nicely and they've really cooperated and they've taken ownership so I just wanted to thank our members for that.

We recently, as you know, have appointed four new members, one of which Matt Montgomery has already attended the Mass Fire Academy through his former department. And we have three others that will be attending the Mass Fire Academy starting this August, August 24th, I believe is their start date. Brendan Palomino and Ryan Pearsack, they already have their Firefighter 1-2 certification, so we've been able to put them on a shift, which has been great, and they will join Padraig Lydon in August. We have, again, I think this is the third or fourth update. We've had no planned retirements. I thought we might have a couple, and those senior members have indicated they plan on staying. which is great because any time we can take the experience, we will certainly take it with our young department. We did, however, placed Joan Cullinan on disability retirement under the cancer presumption law effective June 1st after 17 years of service. So I want to thank

Joan for her service and wish her and her family happiness and health through her retirement. We were finally able to put Engine 1 in service. Over the last couple of months and the good news with that is that means we have completed our purchasing of apparatus until 2031. So we'll have a nice little break. We do have one on order right now that will probably be expected in Unfortunately, probably not until about a year and a half. But as far as ordering new apparatus, we are good there. A couple of notes regarding public outreach. We had a successful open house in May. We participated in the parade that Sunday. We also attended the Memorial Day ceremony in this This past Sunday, as Megan pointed out, we had a couple of members, Ryan Pearsack and Chris Lindsey, participated in the Flag Day ceremony.

And Beth, thank you for those pictures. I distributed those to the members. We're looking forward to July jubilation next month. We're planning to provide the dunk tank where residents and children have an opportunity to dunk a firefighter. And we're also going to, Metro Fire was able to lend us the smoke trailer. which is always fun for the kids. We get to educate them on the effects and spread of fire and smoke. This next one was great. So Mount St. Vincent at 125 Oakland Street. Walsh, Deputy Chief McMakin from Fire Prevention, and Lieutenant Paul Delaney, who heads up our SAFE program. joined forces and conducted a fire drill there on May 15th and after the drill they hosted a fire safety education and they had over a hundred participants come and it was great feedback. The seniors were extremely engaged, a lot of questions and it was great.

So we look forward to continuing that service throughout the town. In addition to that, you're going to hear me say Lieutenant Delaney several times. He's the common denominator with our SAFE program. I wouldn't be able to thank Paul enough. He's the cornerstone. Everybody in town knows Paul. he does such a great job. But the community hero program with Paul and his team, they take all the kindergartners and first graders from all the elementary schools in town and they do a fire safety presentation geared towards children, stop, drop and roll and things of that nature. And over 200 students and I think Paul said they completed just about every school. I think they have one more to go. Paul also has his camp coming up this July for 20 middle school kids fire safety camp that we host at fire headquarters.

In the first week of September, Lieutenant Delaney will also be joining forces with the Board of Health, and they're gonna be conducting a fire extinguisher safety class. And then of course in October, is the kickoff of Fire Safety Month, where we'll be doing some work with the COA. As Chief Whittemore pointed out, we have another successful marathon in the books. Chief Whittemore and I, we request every year that the marathon find a different route, but it always finds its way back to Wellesley one way or another. but no all kidding aside you know it's it's you know there's obviously a ton of preparation that goes into it and I want to thank our fire prevention division Deputy Chief McMakin Lieutenant Mazzarelli, as well as with Deputy Chief Claflin and all the other members that participated. Couldn't do it without them. And of course, Chief Whittemore and his team is, you know, so detail oriented. organized, and I couldn't imagine a better police department in the Commonwealth.

It's always a pleasure to work with them. So I wanted to touch base a little bit on training. I had a question on town meeting and unfortunately town meeting it's not really a great for a Q&A due to time constraints and everything else. But I thought it was a great question. I wanted to take a minute to address it and expand on it. The question was geared towards training or how do we adapt towards training with different types of hazards and technologies. And I think the question was actually more geared towards, specifically towards lithium ion batteries, but I wanted to expand on that. Over the past 24 months, we've turned our training division on its head in a good way. Deputy Chief Ken Demurchin, who's our training officer, has put a ton of time in revamping all of our skills. And the reason why we had to do that is historically coming up through the department, we had a lot of older, senior, experienced members that had a lot of tacit knowledge, institutional knowledge.

And every day you take two, three, four hours, whatever it was, you pick a topic, whether it be pumps, ladders, you know, Extrication, and you learn, right? The senior members, the lieutenants, they would go through not just stuff that you see on a video or you read in a book, but something that, you know, through experience, so really tricks of the trade, kind of what goes... beyond what they teach you, say, in the academy or through a book or something like that. And of course, over the years, you know the challenges that we've had where we've had so much turnover. And I was actually thinking about today when I was jotting down some notes. Back when I was going through the Chief Fire Officer program, I actually wrote a thesis when we were asked in the program we needed to present on what we see as challenges in the future. And I actually wrote a thesis on this very topic about what are we going to do when all of our senior members retire.

in my wildest dreams I didn't think they were going to retire at once like they did and nor did I think I was going to be the chief when they did but so be it but what we've done is we've we utilize external sources right so we partner with experts, subject matter experts, and whatever it is, right? So it could be driver training, it could be pumps, it could be aerials, it could be extrication. and we're either bringing these trainings to the department or we're teaming up with a community and we're doing a joint training. and this has been extremely beneficial to us because we're utilizing some of the people that do it every day. And these are people that have been on the fire service for 30, 40 years even. So when you wanna talk about tricks of the trade,

It's great not just to learn, but it's also great for our officers and the members that are becoming our senior members because it gives them some ownership, some confidence to see what it's like outside of the Wellesley Fire Department. and we've had just, you know, deputy to merchant just in the past, I think since we've seen each other last, we've had a training on, a driver training on apparatus, a driver training on our UTV. we've done auto extrication where we partnered with the Lexington Fire Department. Chief Sensible has become a good friend of mine and he introduced us to a junkyard in Lexington and it was one of we did it over two days and it was it was unbelievable. I mean we we'd be lucky we would beg roadside rescue to bring cars down every you know if you get a couple a year you're lucky and you know we went down there we had as many cars we want they were tipping them upside down they were putting them on top of each other so the members really had a lot of fun We also had aerial training. We've had pump training.

Just last week, over two days, we did a live burn at the Waltham Fire Department. So these are the types of trainings. that we do, you actually gain real life experience. So to have such a young department, you can't put a price tag on it. And we've gotten some really good positive feedback. So I just wanted to share that with the board as well as the residents. Last time we spoke about being proactive in wellness. And I think the last time we spoke, I was in the beginning stages of interviewing a company that would come in to perform ultrasounds and TC scans. So I'm happy to announce that we actually have that scheduled for a week in November. where we are going to offer our members as well as possibly some other town employees and other departments within Metro Fire the opportunity to have a low dose CT scan and an ultrasound. And this is something obviously

We all know the issues with cancer in the fire service, so we're hoping if this is something that we can do on a regular basis, we can be proactive about it and obviously catch something before it gets worse. we do have a training on that scan where they're going to come out and actually go over with each member what it entails so they can have all the details and we're going to be doing that the first week of July so that's something different it's new but it's something that we hope we can do on a regular basis We've had our second LEPC meeting. That's up in full swing. I want to thank Assistant Chief Dijon Domenico and Lenny Izzo, the co-chairs. We have our third meeting will be scheduled this fall where we're going to complete our hazardous material plan as well as begin the conversation to host our first tabletop exercise. And negotiations are in full swing. A lot of cleanup through past contracts over time.

what we found was when we had so much turnover with the chief the assistant chief our admin right and when you're looking at an older contract you have to kind of connect the dots in a lot of different areas. So what we're trying to do is we wanna make a roadmap for generations to come. So if we have turnover, you can look at the contract, you can look at some of our policies and there's not a gap So that's what we're really working on is cleaning up some of that language. As far as projects, I know usually I spend half the time talking about all the different projects because we've had so many of them. I'm happy to say that we've completed all of them. We have some work that will go into the next fiscal year. working with the police department communications of course that will always be an ongoing project but for within the department itself we've completed a lot of projects we do have one small project that will begin

in the next month or two at station one to replace some speakers and wiring. But for the most part, we are good on that front. We did write a couple of grants and we were awarded grants, one for Lieutenant Delaney's SAFE program, and I was happy I was a bit surprised not surprised but you never know how Grant's gonna go in this in this climate but we were able to write a grant for A Plymouth Vent System. So a Plymouth Vent System is something that we have throughout our department. Basically what it does, it takes the contaminants from the diesel exhaust fluid and it brings them up and out of the station. but we didn't have one in the mechanic bay. And the mechanic bay arguably has some of the most fumes within the entire station because you're constantly bringing apparatus and the fleet in and out of there. So we were able to write the grant. We got awarded. And working with Joe McDonough and his team at FMD who have helped us with the ordering process and the install process.

So we expect to have that in within the next couple of weeks. So that worked out well. So what's new? Well, we all know that the master plan is something that we've been working on. It was presented to the board on June 2nd. And again, I want to thank you for the opportunity to present that to you. We're looking forward to working with the board as well as the town residents to receive their input. As Megan mentioned before, we have a public engagement coming up next Thursday. So we're looking forward to that to hopefully we can answer some questions. and Beth, last time we met, you had asked for some statistical data as far as calls. So from the last time we met until I ran this report yesterday morning, we had 1,955 calls and a little bit over half of those, 1,069 were medical related and the remaining 886 were fire related. So through everything, it's been a pretty busy time, but it's been a great time.

So I'll leave that for any questions.

Wow. Yeah, you've said you've been doing a lot in 24 months. So much has happened in 24 months. I mean, the systems, the training, the onboarding, the retiring, it's really quite remarkable, Chief. As we said with the police department, we are so fortunate to have such a proactive and future Thinking, Chief, who's looking not only what the fire service is today, but what your firefighters are going to need the next five years, 10 years, 15 years. and the master plan is only is one part of that but everything else you're doing that you've just shared with us is really putting the fire department at a next level and it's quite impressive, I have to say, over the past 24 months. It's hard to believe it's only been that long. I'm sure you look at your list and just, wow, you know, done a lot. So thank you.

And I'll open it up for other comments and questions. Colette?

I'll echo what Marjorie just said about the amazing level of work that's been done over the past 24 months to modernise and revitalise and really change the departments. Really, truly amazing. I just wanted to commend you in particular for the work that you've been doing to network regionally and take advantage of the supports that we can get from our partners in the region and I think that's really and it takes a lot of time to build those relationships but they really pay off and even more importantly the close relationship that we have between the fire department and the police department constantly working together and supporting each other. I just want to say how much I appreciate that and same goes for and what I said to the chief. I really appreciate the detail that you have gone into in the update so that we have a chance to show the public a little bit of an insight into what the department's doing. So much appreciated.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Beth. So first, thank you for the follow-up. Those numbers are awesome, almost daunting, I would say. but I do think they put some texture on what people should be thinking when they see the trucks coming and going. So I had two questions for you, actually probably one. yesterday's Globe had an article about fire engine pricing and what's going on in Rhode Island and I know We exchanged a quick email, but the truck that's on order, is it eligible to participate in that potential class action suit?

Yeah, so what Beth is referring to, there's a class action suit against the REV group. What happened was there were basically three manufacturers that bought up the entire industry. And by doing so, they've obviously created a monopoly and they control the supply. And what's happening is it's twofold. you know a couple of years ago you could buy a pumper for around five hundred thousand dollars give or take depending upon the size of it now a pumper is over a million and you could get it in probably under a year and now it takes three years. So obviously this has been going on especially throughout the country and in some of the bigger departments, they may have 20 engines on order and they can't get them. So what happens is they're forced to use engines that are 20, 30 years old and obviously we know what happens with that. Senator Warren has been a big advocate for this against these groups. And there is a class action lawsuit.

I sat through a tutorial last week and I'm still it's the beginning stages but I do think we're going to be eligible to join the class action lawsuit because anybody that purchased and engine or an apparatus after 2016 would qualify. So we're in the process of getting the paperwork together and the next step will will obviously be you know do we qualify for this can we add on but it sounds like that we can um but yeah that uh it's unfortunate but it's something that hopefully will work itself out um you know again we we ordered uh actually three engines during this time because we had the quint we had engine one we had engine two and uh in 2031 we'll be we'll be looking to order a tower so this is something that it affects, you know, Wellesley just like it affects anybody else.

Well, thank you on behalf of the town for looking into that because as the person who's presented I think the last three fire apparatus It's been amazing to think about that the Quint was our most expensive vehicle. It was around a million dollars, but now the pumper truck was a million dollars. Reading the article kind of snapped into focus what has been going on. And the last thing I would say is I would really like to build on what I had mentioned to Chief Whittemore, which is the effort and energy you put into supporting the community events and the citizens at activities when there's not a crisis I think is so important because mostly when they encounter through these 1800 or 1900 calls, they're in crisis and I think having that face and knowledge about the individuals that are supporting them is so valuable and I think both of you

and your departments do it so well and that's what makes Wellesley so special I think in terms of public safety, both the quality support and the humanity and kind of personal nature with which you approach.

Thank you.

Tom.

Chief, I want to really thank you in advance for the partnership that's going to be required going forward with the community about the fire station master plan. I think that there's a lot about the work that's been done and the work that's ahead to inform the public and the community in general about what it is that none of us really know about the operation of a firehouse in a safe and healthy fashion today. and I know you're thinking about this and about what the presentation looks like, but when people hear about the issues of decontamination, I don't think that everyone really understands, including us until we're exposed to it, the issues of cancer, the issues of the tremendous increase in hazardous materials

that people in designing a kitchen don't think anything about, about what the studs are coated with, about what the countertop, and so on, produces when it burns and the toxicity. So I think you'll help all Voss in trying to explain that there's much more than how an engine goes in and out of the fire station, where people hang their equipment, where they sleep. and I think it also helps to remind people that as part of exiting civil service, both the police and fire departments made a real commitment to a diverse workforce. and I think as an example of that is the requirement for gender neutral accommodations that we're able to provide Walker space and bathroom space and sleeping quarters that are fair and equitable for both our male and female first responders.

But I think we've got a lot of work ahead to try to work with the community to helped them understand why there are certain requirements that are beyond convenience and I think you went a long way. You had an excellent answer to the question about the use of sirens and air horns and I think that was because so many of us have an image of Chicago Fire and 9-1-1. I could tell you as a trial attorney the questions that we would get about DNA Things that people were seeing on TV and doing criminal prosecutions, it's remarkable the influence that that has on people and the way they're thinking. So I look forward to working with you in the weeks and months ahead as we try to move forward to a productive end result on the Fire Station Master Plan.

Thank you. I look forward to working with the entire board as well as the residents. I'm really looking forward to next week for the public engagement opportunities so that we can educate the residents answer their questions. And like Tom said, there's probably a lot of stuff that residents don't know. And we're just looking forward to be able to have the opportunity to share that with them.

So I'd like to reiterate for people who are interested in hearing about the master plan, what Megan said at the beginning of the meeting, that all of the documents, all of the supporting appendices as well as the master plan are all online and people would be well served by looking at the master plan and understanding some of the genesis of the conclusions so that when they come to the meeting they have a little sense of what you'll be presenting and can ask follow-up questions. And thank you for scheduling that meeting so soon.

Beth. So Marjorie, for that meeting, is it planned to be recorded? Yes, televised and recorded. And is there a schedule of the meetings that we're planning and so is this like one the one briefing or there's several I think it would help the community and this is independent of the fire discussion with the chief but I think it would help the community and I know it would help as a board member what our path and our kind of vetting discussion refinement process is.

We'll have a better sense of that in a couple of weeks after the presentation at the open public meeting. they will be working on a schedule because they'll be working towards feasibility and site selection so the team will have to set some dates and they'll let us know as soon as those are set.

Marjorie, just to add to that, we just want to be clear after this meeting, given the summer schedule, it'd be our intention to really schedule those for September, given folks will be leaving. So we don't want We want folks to rest assured that they're not going to be missing out on critical meetings this summer.

We understand the importance of holding those meetings when a critical mass of people are in town. and available to either watch the meeting or attend the meeting. So they probably won't start up in serious form until after Labor Day. But we will have a schedule and we'll share it when we do. Anything else? All right, thank you very much Chief. Appreciate everything you're doing.

Thank you.

All right, our next agenda item is a joint meeting with the Community Preservation Committee to discuss next steps on the North 40 conservation restriction. I'll turn it over to Colette to introduce where we are.

Sure. As people may remember, the town purchased land at the North 40 in partnership with the CPC and as part of that process, the town is responsible for completing a conservation restriction because of the funding from the CPC for open space. That timeline is available. The town has a website. Megan, if you can remind me where that is, how people can access that easily. But the town has a website. with a lot of information for the North 40, including a history and timeline. And Megan, is that easily accessible?

It is currently under Hot Topics. It's WFD Master Plan, Wellesley Fire Department Master Plan.

No, for the other components of the North 40.

So that's, it links to the North 40. You can also drop down under community and you'll find it there.

Okay. And so there's a dedicated web page for all things North Forty related. And the conservation restriction on the North Forty was taken up by the select board quite some time ago. it was put off during the COVID emergency and at that point the CPC took some time to look at whether they could engage a consultant to help them with valuation of the land to help in their proposal of a conservation restriction that took some years and then that work came back to the Select Board. In 2024, the Select Board had a meeting in October where we and so on. Page on the North 40.

Following that, the CPC had to work to bring forward to us a legal document, a draft of the conservation restriction, some agreed upon uses on that land and a proposal of what land they felt would be their proposal for the conservation restriction. and at that point the Select Board wanted to take that up and have discussions about our next steps on the North 40. We had a discussion in our retreat in January 2025 about what should our strategy be? What should we be thinking of for the North 40? There was certainly, when we bought the land, the land was... envisioned it to be 50% open space but there were certainly other uses considered whether that was municipal uses for schools using uses for housing, uses for open fields and recreation. There were lots of uses that were considered and those are all in the history document.

So we had a lot of discussion on the select board about whether we should have a complex strategy for the North 40 before we entered into the conservation restriction. and there were some issues that we were thinking about in terms of a small piece of land that was being considered for affordable housing. We also at that point discussed whether or not we would like to think about engaging in maybe land swaps with the NRC. Are there pieces of that land that were more valuable to the NRC? Maybe there's other land in town that would be more valuable to the select board. So our board authorized me at that time to engage in discussions with NRC leadership. to see if that was of interest to the NRC, which I did at that point. The NRC took some time to think about that and thought about whether or not they could come up with a position statement. Their position statement on the North Foray and there's lots of different feelings on the North Party at the NRC.

The NRC ultimately wasn't able to come up with a position statement but they thought about that for some time. Around about the same time we were finishing our strategic housing plan which we felt we needed to do some public engagement on and at that point we really wanted to complete our strategic housing plan before we finalised the conservation restriction on the North 40. So we put the North 40 conservation restriction in a holding pattern while we did that. That work is now complete. We took the North 40 conservation restriction off of our holding pattern, if you like, in our most recent retreat. and I met with leadership of the CPC over the past week or so to say you know this is back on our work plan we'd like to you know finish off our discussions on the conservation restriction and what we'd like to do now is

refresh everyone's memory we have a new member of the board here it's been some time since we talked about this publicly so we can refresh our memory of where we are with this what the proposal is from the CPC and just as a reminder the open space is just over 46 acres sorry the whole space is just over 46 acres the open space which is to be Preserved overall is half of that, so just over 23 acres. The CPA portion, according to the funding that was received from the CPA in proportion to the total funding, their proportion to be conserved under conservation restriction is just over 13 acres and in our packet we had information which shows

more than that and so I think we have a few things to do in our discussion is to start to think about what the CPC has identified as their recommendation for the conservation restriction and what do we feel about that Where would we land? What are our questions? And how are we going to make up that 13.12 acres that the CPA funds really require us to conserve under a conservation restriction? The other thing I think we need to discuss is timeline for public engagement. We did, the last time this came up, we had some questions about would we have public engagement before we finalize the conservation restriction. and we said at that time we would so I think we need to discuss what our timeline for public engagement is and I think the other thing that has fallen into place here is

we did have some municipal uses that we were considering and that is the fire station and the fire station master plan has now been completed which really gives us a bit more of a concept of what could municipal use B look like on that parcel. And so there are some things that are coming to fruition or completion at this point that I think makes it a good time to take this up again. and have discussions at the select board so I guess with that if there's anything else you want to add to that Megan or Marjorie but I think that's where we are.

Thank you Colette for that extensive introduction. Just for the public, we do not need to convene a joint meeting because there will not be a vote tonight. but we wanted to welcome CPC Chair Steven Murphy and members Michael Mastroianni and Alan Port to the meeting. Thank you all for joining us. So would you like to add anything to the introduction?

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. This is working, I guess. Colette did a very, very Good job in kind of summarizing the lengthy history of how we have gotten to where we are this evening. and I very much appreciate her engagement and commitment in this project in this process and you know we have as a result of the recent discussions, kind of clarity, at least using this map here as to where the CR would be. By the formula, it would need to be 13.12 acres. Using the lines here, we can come up to 12.61 acres.

There's two portions, one centering on the vernal pool and the other is above the aqueduct for the kind of the trail system.

So Stephen, would you mind pointing us to the map, the lines that you're referring to?

Okay, with respect to Marjorie, could we put them up on the screen?

I'm working on it.

Okay, great.

I think it's page 45 in our packet.

Corey, I have it here. I can put it up.

All right, great.

It's the one with the purple lines, correct?

I think that's the one Steven has, yes. Thank you, Megan.

Purple's an orange.

Purple's an orange. Yep.

Megan, interesting hockey uniform. There we go.

Thank you, Megan. Okay, go ahead, Steven.

All right, in the Vernal Pool area, essentially the line we're focusing on is the one that says 450 feet. Yes, that one there. and it goes around and loops down out to Western Road.

So that's the fourth concentric circle from the middle.

Got it? Yes.

Okay.

And the other would be down by the aqueduct, that shaded foot, at the 200 foot. Line. Okay. It's the third from the top of that segment.

Okay, great. So 7.56 acres and 5.05 acres is 12.61 acres.

Yeah. The Delta is half an acre. I don't know if we would adjust the lines by two feet or something. whatever the math is, which is kind of beyond my capability this evening since I haven't had math since my senior year of high school.

And the vernal pool lines are to protect not only the vernal pool but also the tree stand there, is that right?

Yes, and kind of the habitat area.

Right.

that was very central to the conversations and discussion at the NRC.

as well. I remember the last time CPC was talking about this, you were talking about use restrictions. Have you discussed those and determined what those might be?

Also in the packet is a draft conservation restriction document that was prepped by town council and sort of, let me refer back to where in my email from a year and a half ago. essentially there's a section um let me okay I see public access Trail, page four, permitted access and uses.

Oh, good, okay.

For trails? Yes. Okay, and... That was the kind of the core. Granted, I don't recall which is boilerplate or not, but certainly outdoor passive recreation. These sections are permanent reuses. Some are, yeah. pre-existing from the council's draft and added and

So for the public, the permitted acts and uses include vegetation management, non-native nuisance invasive species removal. Improvement of the natural habitat and ecosystem, maintaining and constructing trails, signs, Outdoor Passive Recreation, as Steven just said, and Educational Activities. Okay, great. Thank you. And Special Area Use. for lighting and water fountains and an exercise station. Okay, great. So those are all finished as far as CPC is concerned.

Great.

Beth, you had a question? So I had a question about those sections. And it wasn't clear to me if they allowed for the construction of boardwalks or walkways or Bridges or any of that, it looked like they were excluded. So you don't have to take a look at it now, but if you could, just see if the kinds of construction and projects that have been performed down there would still be allowed. That would be great.

I'm just looking at it and in section b5c I think we're pointing out that does as drafted currently drafted by council that would being asked for, with written prior approval, the grantee, I guess, the holder of the CR, constructing, ball bridging, whatever. If you're interested, I'd be interested in changing that. I mean, whether or not it's of right or rather than getting it from the grantee, but rather certain through, I guess the NRC, the select board, whatever the ordinary town processes might be. That's something we can ask for guidance.

the reason I was asking is because as I recall the discussions we've had one of the I believe it was I think he's on here, Alan Port made clear that you were looking for land that would provide utility and that you would be able to engage with the public and kind of make it productive space for the community. And it seems to me that somebody should take a critical eye at what's allowed and what's not allowed so that what we have kind of historically allowed would be grandfathered or permitted and if there have been things that are in the mind's eye of the NRC or CPC that would make sense that we would proactively allow those behaviors.

I appreciate that.

And then I had a second question, which the last time you were before us, we talked about the thing I discovered after there was Algonquin gas work near my house, animal corridors. and it looks to me the way that you've shrunk your space request along Turner Road may inhibit the support of the natural environment there because you've created a kind of a large disconnect between the vernal pool and the Morrison's Pond area. that's something I don't have the expertise in any way shape or form but I know there is since I lived through it disruption that happens when you do that so I would just ask you to maybe consult with experts about this and see if the idea of preserving the upland as well as the vernal pool is inhibited. by the contour pic around the Vernal Pool.

Megan, would you mind taking the map down because I think Colette wants to respond to that. I do believe that was taken into consideration and Colette would like to respond to that. Go ahead, Colette.

Sure. I think what might be helpful at this point is the select board has not given feedback on the draft conservation restriction document, which has agreed upon uses in it. So that was a piece of information we were waiting for. and if you'll notice in the packet we have an email an extensive email from Stephen which is dated in January and at that point we were waiting to hear back from the NRC on you know what their position statement was before we took it back up again but this board hasn't given any feedback and I think it's important that we look through the legal documents, the attachments on that. send any questions and comments that we have in on that to town council so that we can get them answered and then have any questions and comments that we want to engage in a further conversation with the CPC on to say Okay, your agreed-upon uses either include this or don't include that. Can you consider this change? Whatever our feedback is, that's number one. And number two, the...

The request that came through went through, and I think we remember, there are at least three distinct iterations of the conservation restriction. The first iteration that was proposed, which had kind of a square around the Bernal Pole, and the NRC had some really thoughtful and very extensive discussions about okay what is it that we feel is the most valuable to us and that's that's when the sort of then it initially became kind of circular around the vernal pole and then there was even more thoughtful I would say discussions about well actually circular isn't helpful we need to sort of Oblong shape, egg shape type of thing that we have, and because there are these features in here that we think are important and the stand of trees is one of them, and therefore the

the concentric lines started to expand out beyond the vernal pool into other assets that the NRC in particular their representative at the time who was B. Bismolinovich and Brandon added a lot to the conversation at the CPC at that time. So I think our things, from my perspective, our work at this point, our homework is Okay, how do we get to the 13 acres? I think Stephen has identified what the CPC has said is their preferences between these two purple areas. is the 450-foot ring outside the Vernon pool, and the 200-foot line outside the Conchitua aqueduct. That's what they are proposing. And then I think we need to decide, do we agree with that?

and how do we top it up to the 13 just over 13 acres is it do we do what Stephen says and just sort of edge them up we could have Mike Thompson in GIS help us get that to the magic number and that would be the sort of to round out the area but then I think the next important piece is that we have to give feedback we have to look through the documents and give feedback on the legal documents to town council see if there's any further tweaking on the on that document because that's going to require a little bit of back and forth between us and CPC and the third piece is how and when are we doing public engagement I would suspect it's going to be in a very similar Pathway, as what we discussed earlier tonight, which is we're having a meeting now before school breaks when everyone's here and can watch this. I would suggest that we would have a public engagement in September once we know what back to school night and all those things are.

so that we can get public engagement on this is what CPC's recommended, this is what the Select Board is landing on, public feedback on that before we make a vote on the the conservation restriction and public feedback on hey you know this is our I think we can engage in the administrative work over the summer so we can look at contracts We can give feedback to the CPC over the summer. I don't know what the CPC's meeting schedule is. It may just take one, maybe two meetings for the CPC to discuss any feedback we have on that. That's up to Stephen. But that's where I think we are today. I don't think we're at the point of opening up again. Should we be conserving other areas? This is the CPC's recommendation to us. Go ahead, Kenny.

So I'm new to this issue as well, and I'm trying to get up to speed. So I'm coming at this from probably a much higher level than everybody else in this room. When I look at this, it would seem to me that we're locking down whatever X percent of the land before we have a sense of what we want to do with the rest of the land. And so if we were to accept this and put this into place, I would like to know how much that limits our use and in which way does that limit our use of the remainder of the land if if you do this configuration if you use some other configuration I think a comprehensive discussion about What we intend to do is necessary before we vote on cutting off a certain piece of it. When I look at this, I know this isn't exactly

you know the purple isn't exactly what you'd be cutting off but you're creating a corridor that I don't know if that stops it from use for any other purpose so I just think we should look at this much more Holistically before we agree to anything. And I do appreciate that this is the proposal. It's not anything other than that. This is more of a general comment.

So Kenny, a few years ago, I convened a meeting of all boards and committees, stakeholders in the North 40. to see what uses could be suggested. And generally, they echoed those uses that rose to the top in the purchase process. Open Space, Housing, maybe a school. Dr. Lucier said at the time he didn't think it was appropriate for a school. But we also acknowledge that because CPC contributed a fair amount of the money to the purchase, that they were entitled to have a conservation restriction on a commensurate amount of property. And we decided that we thought we needed to do that first. according to their preference and their request and for us to discuss it as opposed to setting it all up with municipal uses or other uses and kind of leaving the rest to CPC.

We decided to do it in the other direction. Steven?

I wasn't going to say anything.

Oh, okay. I thought you were going to say something. So we deliberately decided to approach it this way. Colette?

Yeah, and I just wanted to add, so we've had, and Kenny, I'm happy to sit down and kind of go through this with you. I'm liaison to the CPC, and I spent a lot of time with CPC on this recently. there's any any member of the board's a good resource to go through in more detail I think what might be helpful to include is the topographical map and so maybe staff can send that to to Kenny there's some of this land is usable and some of it is heavily restricted so the southern six which is the 6.36 acres in the orange in our packet is restricted by the purchase and sale. It's very limited what can happen there. No lights can be there. You could have active or passive recreation there, but no lights, no street access, things like that.

there's 5.66 acres which is an old dump site which is the agreed upon use limitation which is severely limited and then there's topographical things to take into consideration which I think leaves and a limited amount of area here that we could reasonably do work with. The land that's often referred to as a community gardens is part of that land and then there's also land on the Septona roadside and that was part of the CPC's discussions when Jay McHale was the NRC representative to the CPC. He was very focused on ensuring that there was flexibility for the town to use the land for the purposes for which it bought the land. So there's a 50% open space requirement. But there is, and Marjorie talked about, an extensive process where we had identified what other uses we may want to do there. And that was a big part of those discussions with the

within the CPC about ensuring flexibility was left. But there's a lot to catch up on. I appreciate that. I hope that's helpful.

Just to follow up. So I wasn't suggesting that we take the land, carve it up, and then what's ever left goes to the CPC. I was just saying we should look at this at a more comprehensive level and understand If this is what we do, well, this is what we're giving up and maybe it's nothing because the topography doesn't allow you to do anything. All I'm suggesting is we should have that conversation so we know what the knock-on effect of any decision is and make the best decision based on that.

Collette, I think when we discuss it as a board, the topographical map will be very helpful. The AUL is outlined here, but restricted uses or other topographical issues that could restrict use would be very helpful.

and the other thing is we've gone back and forth about whether we should have a strategic plan for the whole parcel and and the last discussion we had on this the the consensus at the board was it's not feasible to have a strategic plan for the whole parcel because sometimes uses unfold over time and we drew parallels to Simon's Park that land was donated and the uses were identified over decades and they were appropriate uses. It was a library, a school, a park, things like that. The other thing is we're overdue to file the conservation restriction with the state at this point it's really something that has to be done in a fairly timely manner and there's nothing the municipal uses that we have identified that we know about you know we're I think we've got a good handle on them. So now it's time to think about that in this context. And we know what something amicable use could look like with the fire station. And it's in the portion of the property along Western Road.

So anyway.

I just want to say I agree with Kenny and I think that's been the stumbling block in doing what we need to do which is do the CR for CPC that we haven't kind of nailed down our vision and what kind of space would be appropriate for that. And I'm gonna say, I looked, Fire Station was not on the list when the thinking was done. about what the land would be used for. And I think that's because we weren't thinking. We needed a fire station at the time. So we had school and we had a lot of other things on the list. What we did know was this is one of the few large spaces left in the town. for municipal uses as they come, and that we owe the CPC the conservation restriction. They stepped up, they made the contribution, they helped us buy this magnificent piece of land.

I'm going to say, looking at this map, I don't even know if the recommendation about a fire station, if that were to be the right use Fitz on the land the way this is. So I would need to see at least what worked and what didn't work. And I think it has actually been 10 years since we've brainstormed Go ahead, Megan.

Well, just because a municipal use wasn't contemplated, a specific use wasn't contemplated, doesn't mean we can't contemplate it now. Okay. Megan?

Oh, I was just going to say, as part of the fire station master plan, this question came up at the June 2nd meeting. So we did evaluate based upon in particular the the map with the purple to show the concentric circles that in either location fronting western road the conservation restriction would not be impacted by the fire station location so that was a consideration

So what would take all the space, right? So then there'd be no real development space left. No, it doesn't take it all.

Two acres. Right. Right. So while we have CPC here, why don't we ask them questions or discuss things for which their presence is helpful, because we're going to have to have an offline discussion. among ourselves about the legal documents and the other issues that Colette suggested. So while the three of them are here, are there other comments or questions that they could help us with? or other comments that we couldn't offer right now.

Beth? It's not clear to me from Colette's comment, do you want feedback on the

the contract of what's allowed and what's not allowed? I think we need to discuss that as a board and then we'll send a collated set to town council. Colette, does that work?

Yeah, I think what would be helpful now is for the board to look at that legal contract and send their comments just like we do to any document into staff to go to town council to get responses. and so you know this is our first discussion this is essentially our first presentation of that document but I think we need to go through it through that process before we can you know everyone's comments need to come together before we can then discuss it further

Okay. I thought tonight's meeting was actually to talk to each other about this, so that's not our plan.

I haven't had a chance to go through the contract with a fine tooth comb to my own satisfaction yet. If there are questions or comments for CPC members, you can make those. But as a board, we have to discuss it among ourselves.

So this composition of the CPC has been updated since the last discussion. Has CPC discussed this as a committee to bring this recommendation to us or not?

We made these recommendations I think shortly before the date of my email of January of 2025. We have essentially waited to hear. And I'm going to say while there were some conversations about conversations, conversations themselves began within the last couple weeks. We as a committee, we are in that interim period. four of, excuse me, five of our members, half of our committee are designated from other committees. As of this point in time, we know and have been informed of the NRC designee

Tonight in your consent agenda, you appointed the Historical Commission. So soon, very soon, we will get formal information of that. I do not know what the status is of the planning board reorganization and who they are designating, similarly to the housing Authority. There I have certain guesses, but I do not have that formal information. So that's where we are sitting here tonight, okay. I do expect that we, We'll have meetings over the summer, at least one. And if we have... a project proposed for a special town meeting. We will have a couple. So that's where we are.

There was sporadically during the last year at CPC meetings, mentions of where things are on this project, whatever, as stepping back for a moment kind of the way things are phrasing. The conservation restriction is a statutory requirement and needs to be proportionate to the funding percentage from the CPA. ordinarily in most other projects in other communities, those lines are settled upon before the property is purchased.

there were special circumstances with respect to Wellesley but you know when we bought it in 2015 but you know

Steve, just to clarify because I absolutely believe the restrictions should be done and it's been far too long. What I was asking is that if we consider this to be the CPC recommendation. And we're giving you some things. It's been over 18 months since your board has deliberated on this recommendation. and you have a lot of new members. So I was wondering if it's appropriate for us to consider this authorized by the CPC or if this is something that the CPC is taking input tonight and is gonna come back with the kind of like CPC's happy here recommendation. That was all I was asking for clarification. I have no dispute with the fact that you are

It was a unanimous vote of the CPC. Since that time we've only had two changes in members. Okay, so there's at least seven votes in favor of what you have carried over from 18 months ago.

Okay, I think the question's been answered. Alan, did you have something to say?

Yeah, I just wanted to say that Colette's and Stephen's summary was really perfect. I mean, you covered all the bases. you basically stated where we are and I appreciate the thoroughness that both of you went through there's no but here I mean it's I'm pleased with the information that we've given you and, you know, in a nutshell, we're waiting for the Select Board to respond. That's what we're doing. We've been in that holding pattern for the last 18 months.

Collette? Yeah, I just want to point out one thing. In our packet, what we say in our packet is given the significant amount of time since the board's last discussion of the CR, The meeting is intended primarily as a recap of prior discussions to review the CPC's recommendation and an opportunity for the Board to provide feedback on a potential path forward. and then it talks about what we'll do a public engagement but this is what we're talking about tonight and I would say that we actually had when I was made liaison to the CPC in the not too distant past. And so when I was liaison, I joined the CPC for one discussion on this matter it may have been I can't remember when that was but it wasn't so long ago and so anyway I have nothing more else to add to that.

So Colette let's you and I talk tomorrow or when it's convenient and get together and set a date by which we'd like the board to send in questions to Megan that can be forwarded to town council. so that we can get them to CPC perhaps in time for them to consider at their next meeting and if they are amenable to holding another meeting if they need it then maybe we both committees boards meet again to discuss where we are in our mutual responses to what we hear from them and from town council.

that sounds good and Stephen if you can let me know if you have anticipated dates for meetings just let me know and we'll try and work toward that

Thank you very much Colette, I shall try, and thank you very much for everyone here. I particularly appreciated it, Colette, of your engagement and commitment. to the Center. We very much appreciate it. Thank you.

So Steven, does that sound like a good plan to get our comments?

It sounds like a good plan. And then to you, okay.

Okay. Very good. With public engagement when everybody is back in town, as we were saying about the fire department.

True, true. In the interim, there's an awful lot of Zoom.

Yeah, there's back work we can do before everybody comes back. Okay, great. Thank you all very much for joining us.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, our next agenda item is to discuss the appointment to the Climate Action Committee. Kenny?

Pull up notes here. So in terms of process, the Climate Action Committee discussed the appointment process at our meeting on May 1st and voted to delegate the interviews to Lisa, Olney, and myself. We reached out to five people who submitted volunteer forms and or contacted Lisa directly and two of those people indicated they couldn't their schedule wouldn't allow it so there were three candidates Lisa and I interviewed all three of them all three of them were very qualified and capable

volunteer forms were then circulated and all the materials to the climate action members in advance of our June 5th meeting. so that everybody had visibility and transparency into who we were looking at. At that meeting, we presented our recommendation to reappoint Mary Gard and appoint Valerie Dorian as the new members or one new and one reappointment. And the full Climate Action Committee voted unanimously to advance this request to the select board. Mary's been on the board for three years and she's currently the vice chair. She has extensive expertise with energy coaching and building decarbonization, which is obviously very important since over 60%. of Greenhouse Gas Emissions come from buildings in the town. She is also an informal liaison to Sustainable Wellesley and the gas transition allies.

Valerie has lived in the town for 11 years. She's a senior executive at a nonprofit. And she brings significant experience when it comes to strategy, marketing, communication. and Joint Partnership Development, which we think are skills that would be very valuable to the committee, including with respect to potential leadership positions in the future. So that's how we came to the recommendations. Any questions?

No, sounds like a great process. Go ahead Beth.

They sound fabulous. I was only confused, why aren't they on our regular list that we voted?

because they had to finalize their vote and Lisa wanted to get the materials, the formal materials ready for us. That's the only reason.

Ready for motion?

Yes, please.

Move to approve the appointment of Mary Gard and Valerie Dorian to the Climate Action Committee for a term of three years beginning July 1, 2026 and ending on June 30, 2029.

Second.

Collette? Aye. Beth?

Aye. Kenny?

Aye.

Tom?

Aye.

And I vote aye as well. And Kenny, thank you for your work with Lisa and thank Lisa and thank our Mary who's continuing and Valerie who's joining. Sounds like a great team. Okay, Megan, you're next. Our next agenda item is to discuss and vote the affordable rents for the nines, 2026, 2027.

Thanks, Marjorie. We had anticipated that John Costello from Maloney Properties, who handles this work for the nines would be here, but he is unable to attend. So the Maloney Properties has submitted the rent increases. So in prior years, just as a reminder, the affordable housing rents have escalated in our metropolitan statistical area by approximately 10% really over the past several years. And at the time, the Nines, along with other affordable properties such as 978, Worcester Street and Waterstone at the time raised their rents incrementally. They didn't raise them all the way up. So this year for new tenants, they would like to raise them, as we've done in past years, new tenants would come in at the maximum rent that they could charge, which was submitted as the net

Raitt. So at the nine, sometimes utilities are included into the total rent package. Other times there's a utility allowance. that that is extricated from sort of the gross rents. And then it would leave you the net rent plus a utility allowance. So in this instance, there's a utility allowance. the proposal is uh this year the metropolitan statistical area raised approximately 3.6 percent so this is the the smallest decrease that i've seen my recollection really in the past probably 10 years that we that we've seen which is which is great news for the universally. But so here they would be proposing for 2026 net rents. So that would be inclusive of the, excuse me, that would not be inclusive of the, the UA is the utility allowance.

Those rents would be for a studio $2,245, for a one-bedroom $2,556, for a two-bedroom $2,822, and for a three bedroom 3,041. I had just put the maximum rents for 25 below. Cori, if you stop sharing, I have one table I just put together for the board to show because we for those. Let me just put it up real quick.

Meaghan, can I ask you a question right before you put that up? Sure. So when we calculate the permissible rent under the AMI, it's the net rent, right? So the net rent is what's considered for the affordable rates and the utility allowance is permissible to add on top of that.

So, no, so actually the gross rent is calculated by determining 30% of the, if you were a household, depending upon the Bedroom Count, that has variable household maximum sizes. But it would then be the household's gross salary divided by 12, to a monthly rate. And you cannot expend more than 30% of your monthly rate towards your your rent which would be in some some cases inclusive of utilities if it's inclusive of utilities that would be the total gross rent if it If there's a utility allowance, you need to deduct that utility allowance and then the net rent would be that so that the rent and utility allowance does not exceed that 30% of your monthly gross income.

So it's the gross that has to be under 30%. That's correct. Okay. Yes.

Yeah, so I just, because we had some variability over the past three years or so in terms of rents for those individuals that have basically stayed on at the nines, they were recommending a five percent increase and so you'll see we we've had you know some if you're if you're not a new tenant and you are lower and that's ratcheted up over the years that's why we might have four sort of one bedroom rates because it may depend upon where when you signed a lease with the Dynes that we would recommend a 5%. So it was a 5% last year for existing tenants and then any new tenant met the maximum. and it would be that proposal this year as well. And so I just calculated out for the board to see that the 5% they're approaching the maximum rents that would be allowed under the proposal. But there's still a bit of discrepancy between those.

And so just to show you what the 5% would be. We did send notice to the nines so that tenants were alerted to the meeting tonight, which we do on an annual basis or any of our properties that the board must vote the increases. By law, they are allowed to have the maximum, which is the previous table. This is just an easier one to read here. in terms of the gross rents. This would be the rents that they would be doing with the subtraction of the utility allowance. But we've negotiated with them over the years. So this proposal would be to go for new tenants,

to this net rent and 5% for existing tenants, which would bring the rents in this range for existing tenants.

Okay, thank you. Are there any questions from the board?

Beth? So 5% is for new tenants, right? And the 3.5 is for existing tenants? Is that right?

No. So the 3.6 is the HUD average for FY26 rental rates increases. And so that's added to the 25 rates for existing tenants. the 5% excuse me for new tenants that would be the new rate because that's the maximum that could be Sott. The existing tenants in years where we've had, you know, eight to 10% increases, we've worked with the Nines, and they've offered 5% increases, except for new tenants, we always went to sort of the maximum. And so here we're recommending a 5% increase for existing tenants. and it would be the maximum for new tenants as we've done in years past.

So there's three different percentages. There's new tenants, existing tenants, and affordable rates.

Well, there's, so these are all qualifying affordable rates. So there's always, we don't have any control over the market rates, but the, yeah, any new tenant that qualifies for 80% of the area median income would be the new table. and then all the existing tenants who depending upon when you started you have one rent and last year we raised it five percent this year we'd be proposing to raise it five percent as well

Okay, so I apologize. This is not penetrating well. It says the proposed gross rent increase for new tenants in 2025 increases 3.6%. So that, to me, is people that were new last year. This year, they're going up 3.6. Is that what new?

No, it's any new lease effective under the new HUD rates would be that new table.

So the 3.6 is nothing, right?

That's just what the national average increase was and the potential impact. And that was the impact of the Boston metropolitan statistical area, which sets the town's 80% area median income.

Okay, so I'm going to switch because everybody gets 5%. It doesn't say the HUD average is 3.6. It doesn't say nationally. It just says proposed gross.

That's our AMI. That's what it is for the town of Wellesley.

Okay, the utility allowance. So the utilities in Wellesley are going up meaningfully this year, at least that's what the Board of Public Works has told us. How is the utility allowance increase set? Is it reflective of the increase or do these tenants pay the actual utility costs? How does that work? I understand the gross can't be more than 30%. If their utilities are higher than the allowance, what happens? So let's say I'm in a studio. My gross rent is going to be $2,400 and my utility bill is $170. What happens?

That's the maximum that they can charge. and that's based upon that's based upon the utilities comparative analysis from the housing authority. So that's how the Commonwealth sets the utility allowances. It's a formulaic process. and our rates are generally lower than other municipalities in our surrounding area that then from other housing authority. So they look at Dedham Housing Authority, Needham Housing Authority, Wellesley Housing Authority when they set the utility allowances. Ours match the Wellesley Housing Authority utility allowances. and generally in our utilities expenses tend to be lower than other municipalities based in particular on electric rates.

So Megan, if there was a gap, would the building owner pay the gap? Is that how that works?

Yeah, the maximum expense is set. This, keep in mind, is very limited in terms of utilities. This is essentially the electric and... Hold on, I can tell you one second. My apologies. because I had the discussion last year. I was just looking at it. It's electric water and sewer, essentially.

Okay, thank you.

It's very formulaic, Beth. There's very little that we can do to manipulate or impact the utility allowance number.

No, I wasn't looking to change it. I was just curious where utility rates are going up kind of disproportionately. What happened if the utility bill was higher than was in the allowance. Because I know the Light Plant and the Board of Public Works are they've tightened up their billing systems. So I was just curious what happened. You don't have to answer that right now.

I'll certainly get back to you with the formal answer on that.

Okay. Colette?

You're muted. Megan, can you just talk a little bit about how you work with the management of the nines on the compliance reports?

Yeah, so you have to verify for renters each year. that they continue to comply with the affordability restrictions. You are able to go, if you were like right at the 80%, there is over a period of time, you can increase sort of slightly above that in terms of your income. but can never exceed like 140 percent but each year they have to be certified and submit compliance both to the commonwealth as well for each individual Tennant, they submit compliance to the Town of Wellesley as well as the Commonwealth for each individual.

Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, Colette, I think we're ready for motion.

Move to accept the compliance report and to approve the proposed rent increases as detailed in the submittal from Maloney Properties.

Second.

Tom?

Aye.

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

moved to approve a 5% rent increase for existing affordable unit tenants and set the 2026 gross rents as follows. Studio, $2,400. One bed, $2,742. Two bed, $3,085. Three bed, $3,427. Second.

Tom?

Aye.

Beth?

Aye.

Colette? Aye. Kenny? Aye. And I vote aye as well. Okay. Thank you very much, Megan. Our next agenda item is administrative matters, the first of which is to discuss and vote the minutes from June 2nd and June 8th. Corey made ministerial edits as were sent to him, but did not feel the need to reprint hard copies for tonight. Are there any other questions on the minutes?

I just had one question, Marjorie. On the minutes of June 2 in lines 191 to 194, I just wanted to review that because I thought it was okay as written and I just wanted to clarify Oh, okay.

I need to look at the...

It's basically a comment on the response time analysis. It was added to say that the Mr. Schott analysis, the eastern portion...

I have it up on the screen now if you want to take a look.

Oh. Yeah. Corey, can you make it a little bigger? I just think that... I think that seemed a little excessive to me.

Corey, can you read the new- I agree with you, Colette. The new wording?

So I added, according to Mr. Shaw's analysis, eastern portions of town consistently see response times that exceed, in parentheses, over four minutes, the NFPA's benchmark, although Mr. Shaw noted that the fire department still meets or exceeds the standard town

I thought that consistently, I didn't think that we were in a position where we were consistently exceeding the four minutes. I thought it was okay as it was drafted. So I don't know. That's my comment. I would get rid of that amendment unless somebody feels strongly about it.

works for me I agree with you yes I agree okay yeah just on just on that point just for clarity things so the the town 90 percent of the time meets which is above that that sentence 90% of the time meets the four minute standard but obviously based on variable conditions that 10% is the delta and oftentimes it's in the far extreme corners of the town.

Right. And there's two corners. But anyway. OK, so move to approve the minutes of June 2, 2026 and June 8, 2026 as amended.

Second.

Tom?

Aye. Kenny? Aye. Beth? Aye. Colette? Aye. And I vote aye as well. Okay, thank you very much, Corey, for those. Okay, the next... agenda item is the chair's report and a slightly unusual chair's report item I wanted to discuss with the board the proposed change to the bylaw review committee charge. The committee met on Thursday and discussed whether three town meeting members was a sufficient number of potential volunteers to be doing Fairly extensive work, and whether the work of the committee might be assisted by adding a fourth town meeting member.

So that's the first question, whether the board is amenable to that change in the charge. The second suggestion to make sure that there was substantial support for any bylaw change that we would be bringing to the board was to require a two-thirds vote for any motion to make any change to bylaws before we brought it to the to the board. And the third change was that the town staff, moderator, town clerk, executive director, and assistant executive director would not vote on bylaw changes but would participate in the appointment of committee members and the votes for committee officers. So those are the proposed changes.

We identified a fourth town meeting member whom we would like to appoint but did not do so yet pending board's agreement to do so.

So I think it is an excellent idea to add an additional town meeting member. Particularly, it looks like the recommendation is to add someone who's not a lawyer. and I think one of the values of our bylaws is that they're written, I'm looking around, you're all lawyers, I think it's an advantage to have the town bylaws written in a way that every resident can consume them and that having that kind of lens on the committee is really helpful. So I am in favor of that. I struggle with why the ex officio should be voting at all. And I think that that was the construct that we,

Deliberated on that the ex officio were there to give kind of higher level insight about what they had been seeing from their two broader perches about the bylaws. I don't really understand why the vote would be necessary. So I'm comfortable with the decision we made initially. It's not a mountain I'm falling on.

Well, the only thing they would vote on is committee officers. That's it. They wouldn't vote on bylaws and they wouldn't. We reached consensus. We didn't take a vote on the appointment of the members because it was unanimous. So we didn't take a vote. And they wouldn't participate in any vote except for officers because they're active members of the committee and we thought that was appropriate.

Right. As I say, it's not a mountain I would die on. I just think the two ex officio are really set up to even handedly support all town meeting members. and I think it puts them in a really awkward position to be voting on supporting some town meeting members and not on others when the core function of their jobs is to treat all town meeting members even-handedly. So I would think in deference to their roles that they're elected to do, I would not have them vote one town meeting member over another. So I'm not, I don't, That's not the way it's worded.

It's not the way it's worded. It says... It shall participate in both the appointment of committee members and the votes for committee officers. It's specifically written that way.

For committee officers.

That's it.

For me, it's not a necessary change. I hadn't noticed when we went through this and I apologize for that. I don't understand why the committee is appointing the town meeting members and why they're not bringing forward a recommendation to this board and I was struggling with what other committee that supports our work that we don't appoint based on a recommendation and we've done all this work on the process for appointing people to a committee. I think the people that I read about are stellar. I would support every single one of them. I just think procedurally this board much like we did for the capital planning committee and pretty much every other committee we've done this board should vote those members

We had this conversation when we drafted the charge of when we amended the charge and when we voted on the charge that we saw this as a slightly different committee. and it was agreed upon at that time. We had a conversation, I believe Colette remembers as well. Colette? That's fine.

I just, I didn't, I had not recalled it and I didn't, I just, it seems peculiar so perhaps moving forward we could update that. I have, every single one you're recommending seems stellar.

Collette, I think it was your comment at the time.

Yeah, I think we did discuss this, I think, a couple of times when we approved the General By-law Review Committee. I did see this committee as slightly different. I could have gone either way, but we talked about it, and I think... I felt that it was important that the town clerk and the moderator had some significant impact if you like to those discussions. I think in the wording I think maybe you can make it a little bit tiny bit clearer what the ex officio staff's role is in terms of participating versus voting. But I'm fine with what your proposals are. I support all the proposals, so I'm happy with that.

Okay, very good.

Tom?

Doesn't adding a fourth town meeting member create an even number of voting members?

That's where two-thirds comes in.

You see, I strongly object to a supermajority. We've had discussions before about a majority versus supermajority. I think it's opening the door to the wrong conversation. and I would keep it as a simple majority and three town meeting members for that reason. I think thinking about the three town meeting members that you have, I think they're very qualified, very good people. I don't really see what a fourth town meeting member adds in this context where any of these recommendations has to be approved by town meeting anyway.

So having served on a board of six, because library trustees, libraries come in groups of three, when you have six people, a majority is in fact two-thirds because four is it's four out of six so it's still maybe saying two-thirds is confusing because it's actually By having six people, it would be a majority vote that would move it forward. Actually, the recommendation would not include a layperson. like a non-lawyer type and I think that's a mistake, honestly.

I was just going to say, that's semantics. Supermajority is still a supermajority.

The other thing we were thinking about was maybe not having the full membership at a vote. Let's say we had four people. Then we would need three people to have a quorum and a vote. So we were a little concerned about making sure that there was substantial agreement to bring something to the board.

I also think that there was a lot of discussion about how this is, for lack of a better term, a housekeeping committee. and that in the first year of the work a lot of the work we're going to be doing is a deep dive into the bylaws in terms of organizing, in terms of cross-referencing, in terms of cleaning up. a lot of work which is not for lack of a better term controversial or which require close votes or votes that may need you know long debate so I think the the feeling was having an additional town meeting member especially a town meeting member to Beth's point that provides a and a number of other people who have an alternative perspective that seemed to win the day in that first meeting with the By-law Review Committee, especially because we're going to be doing a lot of this

reviewing each bylaw in its entirety as opposed to, we're not debating the merit of the bylaw, we're looking at the bylaw in the picture of the town and the bylaws as a whole.

so I think that was the feeling when we met last week it also will give you the flexibility to have pairs work on different projects and otherwise you're going to have odd man out a lot which I don't think is a great thing for bylaw review committee

and we did discuss dividing up the workload according to areas of town bylaws where participants work the most frequently. It makes the most sense.

Colette, did you want to add something? yeah I did I have to say Tom I did think about what you were saying because I know we have had those conversations but I thought in this case for a number of reasons I was okay with the two-thirds because it was six people but also because if we're bringing bylaw amendments to town meeting if it's not got strong support on the originating body I think it doesn't bode well even if it is I think it might be worthwhile with this committee as with any other committee give it a couple of years and let them do the work and see how it shakes out I know for sure we'll be making tweaks to Little bits of here and there on the Capcom. Right at the moment we've identified some I think it's good to give it a go for the people who are really closest to it, let them run for a little bit and then let's review it in a couple of years.

Is that something that you could come to accept?

I come to accept a lot of things. I still feel that the original configuration was well considered, was well thought out. I certainly would not stand in the way of the committee making the decision about how it wants to operate.

How about we do this? How about we set a schedule, whether it's semiannually or quarterly, to report to the board aside from bringing bylaws? and let you know how things are going. And if we, as Colette said, if we need to tweak at any time, we'll revisit the charge.

Marjorie, could I ask you a question about the terms? Because it says that your term is as long as your town meeting term. So how do the terms line up for the four people you're looking at?

Well, more than one is going to have the same year, but they all don't have the same year.

Okay. So you have a rotation? Yes.

Okay.

Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. Colette just turned her video off.

There you are.

Okay. Thank you all very much.

Do you want me to make a motion on anything? Are we voting on that tonight or not?

I don't think so. I don't think so. But I wanted to ask you, would you like to give an update on the Capcom meeting from today?

I would love to because it was great. So let me just find... Okay, so we had our meeting immediately prior to this. So just as a refresher, at this select boards meeting of June 2nd, the citizen appointee was voted and appointed. And immediately following that meeting, I worked with principal staff on the committee, which is Rachel. on multiple administrative matters to set up the committee to do its work. And I just kind of want to run through what those were because it just seems like I have a lot more appreciation for the work that Megan and her team do after doing this with Rachel. and I want to thank Rachel for everything we worked on really pretty furiously these past two weeks we had to find a time that worked for all voting members and ex-officio staff ideally before the end of school and it's the cast of thousands on this committee so that was no mean feat We worked with Stephanie Hawkinson, public information officer, and GIS manager Mike Thompson to get committee websites set up, which will serve as a go-to resource for

committee members and the public. So that is up and running. It'll be populated in the next week or so. Brian DuPont and his team. and Rachel set up training for me and a few other members and how to use SharePoint so that we can efficiently share multiple documents within the committee and just with me as a select board member so that we don't violate open meeting law. So that was helpful to have that training. We also worked with IT staff to set up a dedicated committee email account so that the public can write to us, the committee, and the email is Capcom, C-A-P-C-O-M at WellesleyMA.gov. We worked with the town clerk to make sure that all members are sworn in and that the compliance with open meeting law and ethics We work with James Joyce to make sure that the meeting was televised live and he is sending recordings and

The scripts to Rachel so that we can have minutes done by Clerk AI. with Rachel and Town Council and Joe McDonagh to prepare initial kick-off presentations. And those presentations will be posted on the website. Most of those presentations were circulated to this board, but Joe really worked all out to get a great presentation which was finalised on Monday to the committee members and that will be posted on the website. Town Council also has a great presentation which will go on the website. So again I list them all because it just it takes a village and I wanted to thank everyone who was involved and a special thank you to Joe who's been a critical partner all the way along in policy development but he also took on a great deal of the work in preparing the detailed presentation for the this kickoff meeting in a really quick timeframe. And the meeting was structured to do several things.

It was to introduce members of the committee to each other, but importantly to residents and to share with residents who we are, why we're there and what the background that we have that's helpful in the capital planning work that we're doing. We elected officers. The chair is set by the policy as a member of the select board and I was appointed as chair of this committee. but the committee voted Nicky Offenloch as the vice chair and Tom Ulfelder as the secretary. I certainly I felt it was going to be really important to have a close working relationship with school committee as we prepare for these meetings so the chair and the vice chair can work with principal staff in setting the meeting times, the agendas. making sure we have enough meeting materials for members to be prepared and making sure that staff have enough time to get ready for these meetings and so it's very important that we both work together on that. We refreshed

the years long planning and development of the committee, why it exists, what its missions and goals are, and what the town bylaws are regarding capital expenditure and board responsibilities. And town council gave the presentation on the town bylaws. Rachel gave a great presentation on the high level overview of the financial considerations and the capital work before us, including options the board is considering for Financial Policies, and in the future, you know, we've talked at a couple of our meetings and we certainly said at one of our retreats that we were going to be reviewing our policies with respect to capital. to help manage the capital expenditures and those impacts on residents. And we've also talked about, you know, where are our reserves in comparison with our peers, not just locally, but across the country? What more information should we be looking for from our ratings agencies? to help us understand are we in a good place with our reserves? Do we need to think about that more?

And should we establish a reserve to help us shave the peak on capital borrowing? So Rachel will give a high-level overview on that. I will say that it's worth I'm going to just go to my notes from today's meeting there was a great discussion I think it's worthwhile board members watching the meeting and the public watching the meeting there was a great discussion and Q&A on after town council's presentation on the bylaws and really understanding is there anything changing to the current process current bylaws no there's not but how does a proponent make a proposal on a large capital project? How does that go through this committee and how does that work? So some clarifying questions on you know if you're thinking about a master plan do you have to go through this committee and the answer is yes so that the committee can evaluate you know how that

and so on, capital expenditure might fall into the programme, what are the bandwidth of the boards and the staff, does it make sense to go through with that master plan at this time, understanding that there is an alternative path for Capital Projects should the board of the proponent want to take a capital project to town meeting independently. So there were some good discussions about that. There was also some great discussion and Tom Gohmert asked some really important questions at the very end about is this committee reactionary or proactive? Are we reacting to the capital projects that are here? Are we being more proactive in terms of saying, we feel that the town can bear this much in terms of taxable burden, therefore that's the amount that we can bear and that's the amount that we can plan to rather than saying here's the capital projects that come to us what do we do with these capital projects

The other discussion that Tom raised was in the in his experience in the public world or the private enterprise world of capital there's a pro forma budget that you might have for a project and that the If the project meets the budget you can go forward and if it doesn't meet the budget it doesn't go forward because it's outside the performer budget. whereas in the environment that we're in where the proponent brings something forward then the proponent can bring forward the project that they wanted to town meeting. And it may be in excess of what may be considered a pro forma budget amount. But if they want to defend that town meeting and defend that to the voters, they can do so. And so he had a lot of really good questions about Is that what we should be doing? And how does this committee add value here? And I think we talked about this is the public process. This is the way we're structured.

This committee is certainly going to be charged with asking some really challenging questions to see with any capital project that's brought forward. How could we bring it in a more fiscally responsible way? What are operational opportunities we have to do instead of a capital project, for example? What things can we do with this project? so that should a proponent want to bring a slightly different version of it to town meeting, at least the town meeting members and the public have the committee's considerations and discussion on those points. and we did talk about how important it's going to be for our board the select board to really talk about and think about our capital policies and you know we have some guidelines for Capital Financing. We have a band that we feel is appropriate to use of our operating budget space, if you like, for capital funding.

We haven't really had this discussion yet, but is there a level at which we will set that we feel it's appropriate to borrow to? There are certainly some state laws that limit our borrowing. It's discussed in the the comprehensive financial report. It's in our capital financing policy. We haven't reached the cap yet, but I'm not sure that you would ever want to reach the cap for a number of reasons, but is there a level of Borrowing that we think we feel is appropriate. Those are discussions that the Select Board is probably going to have to engage in. And we also talked about how important it is to keep working on our communications, to share with time meeting members and residents the full picture of the capital program asks in the future so that as one as every project comes along on its own stage you're making a decision understanding more about the whole picture of capital projects that are coming to us. So it was a great meeting. It was...

I think we started the meeting at 4 o'clock we finished on time so it's not a super lengthy meeting so it's a reasonable amount of time but I would recommend that you in particular watch the end of the discussion anything else Megan I mean you were there anything else you want to add to that that that was a great summary yeah

Thank you very much, Colette.

Beth? So, Colette, I saw a meaningful chunk of the meeting. I got interrupted a couple times. I thought it was an outstanding meeting. I thought you had terrific conversation. I have two questions. Given the discourse in the community right now, and one is, is the committee set up to take a request from the parents about how to accelerate the AC project? and the second is, is the committee set up if the schools bring a request to accelerate AC? Is that something that's within the purview of Capcom or no?

So given that this is our initial year and we are basically taking this year to work through the capital requests and bring forward to the Select Board a recommendation for the Townwide Capital Plan, a 10-year Townwide Capital Plan for our inclusion in the Townwide Financial Plan at an annual town meeting in 2027. that is not something that we could turn around I don't think that that's appropriate for this committee to do I mean we didn't discuss it but if I don't know I guess I'd take board feedback on it this board is This committee is there to assist the Select Board in its deliberations, but I'd actually welcome Marjorie to jump in here, but the project proponent for the air conditioning, as we discussed earlier, is the school committee. So it's the school committee needs to make decisions about whether or not they're going to do anything to the project to accelerate it.

But I'd actually but I turn that question over a little bit to Marjorie at this point.

Well my understanding when Capcom was set up was that air conditioning as an already pending project would not be subject to the Capcom Deliberations as you're looking to set up capital plans going forward. And this was already in the pipeline. And I would reiterate that we need to see what the schools would want to do. Thank you. Meaghan.

Just to add to that, so and I will get a more refined answer from Joe McDonough on this but but keep in mind a town meeting so we have slated for special town meeting in November the appropriation for design so um the project is not designed yet so we would So an earlier town meeting, although that would potentially appropriate funding. It doesn't necessarily change the timing of projects because keep in mind, we appropriate funding effective July 1, but when those projects are executed is variable throughout and the fiscal year. So this project still necessitates design and the procurement processes both for design and for construction. and so my understanding in prior conversations with the facilities management department is this is the fast track. I'll certainly work on a

or Joe can work on that to educate the school committee as they have these discussions with their constituencies. I do think there are significant hurdles that would preclude a faster action on that particular project.

No, I understand that. I was just asking procedurally because I think there are a lot of questions and where Capcom just launched and they did have really substantive meaningful conversations about a plan and a look forward. I just wanted to put out there how we see the process and the process is still to go through the school committee door as the proponent and they manage it. And Capcom is kind of moving forward on projects that aren't

And my understanding is if there's any proposal for a project that differs in any way from the one that's already pending, it would have had to be presented to PBC and advisory. substantially in advance of a town meeting. You know, calling a town meeting is very different than the 120 days required to present any new project or change in project, I think, to PBC and advisory. Right, Megan?

that's correct the bylaw is very clear in terms of the 120 days yeah and I'll just make one final comment on this that the um maybe you missed that part of the meeting but in one of Joe's slides it says there's two projects that are basically there's elements of those projects that are moving forward that we are not commenting on and it's Morse's Pond and air conditioning so I actually I kind of have a hard stop so I might have to leave the meeting at this point and I apologize for that thank you Colette yes oh go ahead Kenny

I'll just make one comment. There's a lot of really smart people in this town, and I feel like we should all put our minds together and figure out a way to get air conditioning in those schools by the beginning of fall 2027. My other thing was a question for Colette, but she's not here anymore, so.

Hold that thought.

It was fairly immaterial.

Tom, did you want to say something? Oh, you were pointing to Kenny. Okay, okay. The other aspect of my chair's report is on 40 Oakland Street. and as most people know last week the select board in the town filed a complaint against the Commonwealth specifically DCAM and HLC and MassBay, raising legal issues concerning the status of 40 Oakland Street as surplus property and the aggregation of total land area density to just a small portion of the parcel. The town had requested repeatedly that several conditions be included as binding provisions in the Commonwealth's RFP. Up to and including the week prior to following the lawsuit, and we never received a response or a call to schedule a meeting. It's also important to note that the letters from HLC stated that they were quote, open to requiring certain things of the developer and doing other things themselves.

but state officials have declined all along to commit to those conditions in writing. Appending a municipality's list of requested conditions to an RFP is vastly different than requiring compliance with them by bidders. Given that the Commonwealth intends to release the RFP next month, the Board determined that last week was the appropriate time to file the complaint. The press release issued the day the lawsuit was filed made clear that the town wished to continue discussions with the Commonwealth. and we have not heard anything since last week. So further updates will be provided as the situation develops. But on another note, I received a telephone call over the weekend from another town board chair who asked me about a conversation that the board had had and a vote that had been taken.

I informed him that that conversation and vote had been held in executive session and there was no proper channel through which he should know about it. He insisted that it was discussed in a public meeting and I responded that in fact it had not. This is at least the second example of information regarding the MassBay project that has been shared outside of executive session. It's an open meeting law violation and a betrayal of confidence that should be expected from all members of the board. It's deeply disappointing to me that it has occurred more than once, not to mention twice, and drastically affects the ability of board members to trust one another. So I just want it out there that it had come back to me and it's very upsetting and really affects the ability of board members to work with one another. And on that note, that's all I have. So we're adjourned. and we are not meeting next week.

We have our annual retreat scheduled for June 30th and we will update on any further information on 40 Oakland as the situation develops. Okay, thank you and good night.