Select Board October 20, 2026

Good evening. I'd like to call to order the select board meeting of October 20th, 2026 in The Great Hall at Town Hall. Here from the Select Board of Vice Chair, Tom Ulfelder, Secretary Colette O'Frank, Kenny Largess and I'm Marjorie Freiman. Also with us are Executive Director Megan Jopp and Assistant Executive Director Corey Testa Corey, do we have anyone for Citizen Speak? Okay. Thank you. All right. We'll turn it over to Megan please for the executive director's update.

So just a few updates. Flu clinics We'll be commencing in the next coming weeks. So, the Health Department has flu clinics scheduled for this week, October 22nd at the Warren Building from 1030 to 12. There's a registration link online And then the next one will be Wednesday, November 4th at the Council on Aging from 10 to 12. In addition, the Health Department is running two other events One is the disposal of medication at the police department. Somehow I just lost the date on that, I'll come back to that in a second. and they also wanted to surround, we've gotten a number of calls on this recently over the coming weeks. I think as people are going through their house doing some cleanup what to do with medication and so we did just want to remind people that you can always drop off at the information desk at Newton Wellesley Hospital medication.

So, we just wanted to remind folks of that In addition, we wanted to remind folks on the disposal of sharps. So needles, syringes, EpiPens you can put them in a secure closed Hard Container, and dropped those off at the Sharps Collection Box at the Warren Building. We've also recently just gotten a couple calls on that. This is also the week of hydrant flushing, so you'll see DPW out there. And if you see them we want you to be aware that your water could be brown and so we tell you not do your laundry that day. but to you know turn your water on let it run for a while till it runs clear and we do this every year to remove sediment buildup in the pipes, but it also allows us to test for fire safety purposes that the hydrants are working. The water while you're doing this is safe to drink, but it is going to be discolored. So just a reminder for folks on that. for early voting.

It is this week eight to four in the Giuliani room, this Saturday October 24th from nine to five here at town hall and then the following week, October 26th through Friday, October 30th from eight to four. So we'd also encourage people to do the early voting and then I wanted to just get you back that date. on the drug take-back day, because it is at the police department on this Saturday October 24th from 10 to 2. So you can bring any unused prescription medication to the police Department from ten to two when they'll accept them and then On any other day, you can drop them off at Newton Motley Hospital at the information desk. and that's it Marjorie.

Oh, actually one other thing so just more of an update to the board but our applications for the Boston marathon have closed so we have received with non-profits and potential war memorial runners about 35 applications So we'll be bringing more information to the board on that at a later date.

Terrific, thank you very much. I guess it worked out to have the application submitted earlier so that people know and can make their plans and adjust their fundraising accordingly.

and we're hoping on the current calendar to bring the information for a vote on November 3rd meeting, I believe. and we'll also at that time look at the number of war memorial scholarship we'd want to issue. And also if there's any changes in the scholarship amount, now is the time that we could address that as well.

Okay, thank you very much Megan. The next agenda item is the Consent Agenda. We have two items on the consent agenda The first is to vote a takeout common Vittler license for Lalico at 268 Washington Street, which is installing a hot water station and microwave so customers can prepare pre-packaged food to go. The Health Department is finalizing plans with the owners and staff has completed their required CORI forms. This vote will be to approve the license conditioned upon final sign-offs from the health department and the second is to accept a generous and very nice anonymous gift of $5,000 to cover the purchase of holiday lights for the downtown.

I move to approve the consent agenda.

Second All in favor? Aye The next agenda item is to discuss and vote affordable rents at Wellesley Place 978 Worcester Street

So MCO Housing was unable to attend tonight, but the board has the materials. This is typically an annual request to set the rent based upon 80% of the area median income and so this property tends to be lagging behind a little bit. They have not updated the rents, they had not updated their rents for several years and then we updated them incrementally, so they're asking for any new tenants to be at the maximum allowed and as typical a 5% increase for the existing residents. So the maximum allowable rents would be for a one bedroom $2,742 and for a two-bedroom $3,084 inclusive of tenant paid utilities. The maximum rents that would be charged for the new tenants when you sort of back out the utilities would be the 2705 and 3032.

Let me scroll down. The 5% rent would be for a one bedroom, $2,163 and for one bedroom, $2,163. And for a two-bedroom, $2284.

Any questions or comments from the board?

I just have one question. For the motion, the language is the rents without utilities so I'm just confirming that's what the motion should be?

Yes, without the utilities, correct.

I didn't have questions. I thought the packet was very adequate, it's great. The packet information was all that I needed. So move to approve the proposed rent increases for new tenants at Wellesley Place to $2,705 for a one-bedroom unit and $3,032 for the two-bed room unit. and for existing tenants, $2,163 for a one-bedroom unit and $2284 for a two bedroom unit. Second. All in favor? Aye.

All right, our next agenda item is to welcome Fire Chief Steve Martorelli who will provide an update on the fire department master plan and responses to citizen correspondence. Hi chief, thank you for coming.

Good evening, thanks for having me. So we wanted to just kind of follow up on what we've been discussing since the last time we've met. We've received some new, obviously a lot of emails, some new concerns questions things that nature Before we got into that, I just wanted to quickly touch on what Marjorie touched on at the Charette about some misleading information that had been circulating around and just wanted to touch up on that obviously. There are a lot of people that have a lot different questions, there's a lot unknowns and we want to make sure that accurate information is being circulated around. So for anybody that has questions, especially specifically about it could be really anything. It could be about the master plan, it could about the political piece of it, it can be about future of the North 40, you could be able to fire department operations

If you email the link that's on the website, it goes to the entire group and then we can decipher who is best to answer that. and I know Collette's been doing a really good job with Stephanie and the whole team about getting answers and putting them up on the web page. So we have the webpage fairly well updated, so we have a whole slew of information there for people to get some answers. As far as the information that was circulating around for the past month or so, I know there was a card that was sent out to members in the immediate area of the North 40. and there were a few bullet points.

I asked Corey to turn it down a little bit because I can barely see you, Steve. It's so bright in our eyes. So now no one can see anyone. Thank you. That is better, it's not quite so bright and glaring.

It's really... And less light on most of those. Sorry Steve.

While Corey's figuring that out I'll just quickly go down the four bullet points that were put on the card and then just give what our response would be for that. So, the first bullet point was traffic and access, the proposed egress onto Weston Road a narrow two-way corridor which would impact rush hour and school dismissal traffic compromising safety drivers bikers and pedestrians nobody is going to argue that western road is extremely narrow we all understand that The fact is, we use it all day every day. We have to remember that we currently have a station that's located on Weston Road it's about four football fields south of what the proposed would be. And whether we're at that location or the existing location, or any other location for that matter, we're gonna continue to use Western Road exactly the way that we use it now So we do not foresee it being any different than what it is.

Like I said, we agree that it's narrow and it can be challenging at times but it is the main corridor for us to travel north in District 1 And I don't see that changing really anytime soon

Can I ask for one clarification on that, Steve? Because this question does keep coming up. That the difference would be there would be slightly more trips if the location was the North 40 there would be slightly more trips coming southbound from the fire station because you would be located on Western Road, so you'd always start on Western road. So the traffic going north wouldn't necessarily change. The traffic going south would change, but the number of trips a day is you know I think averages six to nine maybe you can just touch on that specific aspect just a little bit

And that's right. I was mostly referring to the area up by the Honeywell School, that that will not change. There are a couple different factors that could change now whether it's better or worse will remain to be seen. I would like to think it's going to be better with some of the measures we put into place but what Clet just said is absolutely right. If we are located on the North 40, that means any call to say Wellesley College or anywhere in Grove Street, anywhere in that area obviously it would be different than what we do now. Now, we pull out directly on a central street and then we head that way. If we were located on the North 40, we would obviously pull out and we would have a short stretch of southbound traffic and so you know what does that mean well as people point out and we all know there is certainly a lot of traffic at times of the day heading southbound and it sometimes backs up from the central street light all the way to the woodlands Now, we can't get too deep into it because it obviously hasn't been designed.

This will all be worked out in feasibility if we get to that stage but just from what we've seen with different stations and similar areas and conversations we've had What I'm envisioning would be, obviously we would have a light in front of the station. and that would be synced up with the light, potentially a new intersection at Linden Street as well as the light on Central Street. So just picture if we receive a call and there's traffic backed all the way up let's say to to the Woodlands. Well, there would be lines that would be directly in front of the fire station driveway which you see in other towns it's very common do not pull up that sort of thing but what would most likely happen is you would activate the light just like we do right now and that is going to, that would essentially sync up with those lights. They would turn green

any traffic that would be south of the station while we're getting ready to respond, that would alleviate that traffic. We would pull out, the light cycle would change. We'd have a free road to travel southbound on and then the traffic that was now north of the Station they will be free to now all move up over the bridge. Again, not designed yet but that's pretty much how we're envisioning it so we would like to think there'll be measures in place to hopefully improve the traffic and not make it worse

Chief, isn't that effectively how emergency vehicles work? I mean we have a fire station on Route 9. There's traffic on Route nine too but when the light is activated the traffic stops and you can exit the station

Yeah, we use that pretty much 100% of the time at Route 9. And that's exactly right. So it controls... We can control the traffic and you know, it works in its... you push I don't know the exact it's somewhere around the neighborhood of probably 30 seconds just enough for us to get out once we're out and we're on our way it cycles back and then the traffic moves forward but we've had great success with it at the Route 9 station.

Go ahead, Beth. So thank you for that explanation. One of the things I hear very consistently is concern because the road is narrow and single lane with a granite curb, that there's no place for a car to pull over if you're headed southbound and they're in front of you. that there's no place for them to go and logically if you're headed northbound, there are a lot of side streets to pull over. So I think the analogy of we're on Western Road already doesn't make sense because people know if they're headed north and you're behind them going north, there are a lot of side streets to pull off on. where if you're headed south, there's no place to get off until you get to Central Street unless you're gonna cut across Western Road. So I think

I think that's where there is dissonance in understanding with our lived experience in town, the traffic lights can solve it. So it sounds good, but I think it's difficult to imagine that a traffic flow is gonna solve the absence of a place to turn off. And I do think that's what people are struggling with, with the southbound traffic.

I really don't think it's an issue. And the reason I don't, because even though we're located obviously south of that right now, south of the bridge, it's very common for us to receive a call we're not always in the station, right? We're out quite a bit whether it's inspecting on calls doing public service whatever the case is. So we respond quite often from the road as a matter of fact one of the videos that we were, and this was just by luck. We were out simulating a call so people could see what it looks like. And while we were up in the I think it was 315 Watson Road, a call came in so we circled back and you got to see it. And in that video, you could actually see the bridge had cars on either side and we fit through. Now is it easy? No, I mean of course not. It's a narrow road. It is not easy going north or south but I can tell you this it is a heck of a lot easier doing it on Western Road than it is on Central Street but I do understand your point and I understand that people probably have a difficult time imagining that.

But there is a video posted, the quality may not be great, but you're welcome to look at it maybe we can... I know we are in the process of maybe doing different types of videos even using drones and to things of that effect, to make it easier for people to see. But I do encourage you look at it because we do do it all the time

So I actually received a question about the video this week, and it said 9 o'clock in the morning. And so the question that I received was it says at school drop off but the 9 a.m hour didn't make sense for people as a drop-off time for school and I don't I am fortunately out of the elementary school drop off category, but I think that 9 AM on seemed to create another question mark about whether that really captured the extent of the true traffic at school drop off. And I'll leave that to you to figure out, because I admittedly say Travel Western Road.

I can't remember offhand exactly what time it was, but we were trying to do it at the busiest time. We were trying when there was a drop-off and like I said if we missed it, I'm not sure because it was a while ago now We'd be happy to do it again just so people can see. But as everyone knows, there's not a lot of rhyme or reason to when it's going to be busy on Western Road and when it is not. I also think it's important for people to remember on average, let's just say it is six or seven calls. It could be less, it could be more in the given day. They're not all in the middle of rush hour at five o'clock in the afternoon. they're at two in the morning, they're four in the mornin', they're midnight, there are 10 at night, there at seven. I mean, they were all over the place so you may get no calls at rush hour. You may get four calls at Rush Hour. There's no rhyme or reason to it I think everyone is just automatically thinking the worst possible case, which I understand. But I think the best piece of information to leave with everybody We are located on Western Road and we do it all the time.

I'm not going to sit here and say it's easy, but we do

I just want to kind of, just for my own clarification, draw a parallel. If you're leaving the current station and going north on Route 9 and Rush Hour. That's presumably equally as challenging as coming out of a location in the North 40 and traveling south over the bridge in Rush Hour It's an existing condition, having those vehicles drive through that narrow stretch in busy periods but there is enough room for the cars to move to the side and the truck to pass through. Is that a fair summary?

It is, it is. Like I say my biggest fear I think just from doing it for so long I think it's the most difficult there are a lot of difficult roads and no doubt about it I personally think, and if you ask any of the District 1 firefighters they'll tell you the same thing. Central Street is very difficult especially when Well, there's so many things going on. Forget about the pedestrian traffic and the students and everything else but if one person is trying to parallel park which happens a lot it makes it extremely difficult because now there's really nowhere to go and you're at the mercy of waiting for people to move out of the way. So we try to avoid Central Street as much as possible, and unfortunately, as you know, we are located on Central Street so it's not always the easiest thing to do. Thank you.

Can I ask a question Marjorie? Yes, go ahead. Steve do you keep track of where every call goes and which station responds to it. So would be really helpful to me, and I think a lot of people would be helpful to them too, to quantify exactly what we're talking about. Because like you said, all those trips north are already going that way on that road. the trip south is where there's a difference between today and if the station went there, right? So if you were able to say how many trips are taken during weekdays between pick a time 8 and 6 p.m on weekdays what is that number going south what is the incrementally greater number that would be going south during those, that timeframe than it is today?

because I think if that number is 50% of the calls, then that's one thing. But if it's three calls a week? That's very different.

It was, so I actually figured because our software doesn't pinpoint it tells you obviously where the call is. but it doesn't tell you, you can't print a report letting you know exactly which route you took to get there. So what I did when we were trying to figure out how many calls are going north just so people understood how often we use Western Road traveling North obviously I was able to find that information and then the opposite was going south. So again, it varied. I'd say it was probably a little bit and again it depends by the day but overall I capture the data for we did it for a month on end. It was probably a little bit more going south than north not by a lot, but on average probably by a little bit. So let's just say for argument sake we do six calls a day it would be anywhere between two to three we would be going north and then the reverse obviously was south

Do you have data on how many of those are during, like how many if it's call it seven a day Five weekdays, so it's 35 calls. Call it 36. So 18 are going south, 18 are north. How many of those are during the rush hour? Do you have that type of information?

No, but I can certainly figure that out. We can do that based on whatever you would like to see if you want to do it over a week over a month, we can do that. Again it has to manually be done but it's easy enough to do you just have to come through the calls and then pinpoint where the address is and then go in your head think about how would you logically get there

This is also where the traffic counts are important in feasibility because the flow of traffic north and south differs depending on the time of day.

That's right.

Because people use Weston Road as a commuting road to get to other suburbs, So at certain times of the day, it's worse going north and certain times it's worth going south. The traffic study is really critical

It is, and I'm sure they have a lot better tools than manually counting. But that's obviously the purpose of feasibility. But just for the topic of conversation so we have an idea like I said, I'd be happy to work out those numbers.

That's a good question. Any other questions right now? Okay, Chief, go ahead.

The second bullet point, land use. Construction would eliminate community garden plots and adjacent land. We don't know that to be true because we don't where the building would go. That hasn't been proposed yet there's one of two parcels and if it was on the Howe Street side we don't know how much of the gardens, if any all would be taken so that's unknown at this time. environmental and water safety concerns regarding potential toxic runoff into surrounding land in drinking water sources. during routine washing of the fire trucks and firefighting equipment. So with that one, all of us here as community leaders I think if anyone had a concern starting with me this whole thing would be a non-starter. First off, we don't wash our apparatus outside we wash them inside, we do that for a reason.

There's a closed loop system in place that has an oil separator that separates any of the basically any what's left of carcinogens or whatever you wanna call them to separate them out. We have that cleaned out, FMD handles that. what I would like to say is that you can imagine we have one building that's 100 years old, another building that 40 years old. So by the time this building is built five six eight years from now whatever it is the technology that's going to be used is going to light years ahead of where we are right now. that coupled with the fact that this is obviously going to be highly regulated, there are gonna be systems in place. I mean, this has to go through a huge process so I am extremely confident to say that that is just it's not true.

I don't think that's a concern that people need to have and then just the first piece of that by washing over apparatus, it seemed like that was the main concern again we do that inside and it's inside for a reason and just one additional point on that because some of the emails we're receiving, it seems like that sparked a lot of concern. So I wanted to touch on a little bit about what we mean when I say decontamination and Separation an awful lot. So what that means, because I think people are starting to draw the conclusion that we're returning from calls with barrels of hazardous waste and we're looking to dump it somewhere. So when we talk about decontamination, we're really talking about the basic calls, right? Every call we go on you can potentially be exposed to something. Now of course you have more serious calls like fires, whether it'd be a car fire or a dumpster fire or trash fire structure fire where are going to get more serious

byproducts on you because there are a lot of synthetics and plastics, and they burn. There's a lot chemicals, right? So that's some of your more severe stuff. but that's few and far between, right? We do between 4600-4700 calls a year. They're not all fires, right. The majority of our calls are it could be car accidents, it can be medical call so I want to bring it back to the stuff that we're concerned about and it's your everyday run of a mill, just even call it a car accident. We could be out in a boat, we could track through a puddle of diesel, we can walk through gasoline We could nail down on a medical call into a pool of urine while you're taking vitals. You can get blood on your shirt, you can get it in your skin, vomit, you name it right? These are the calls we go to every day and when we talk about separation we don't have, neither station is designed so that we have separation. So when we come back from a call and we have whatever

contaminated or dirty stuff, whether it's us or our gear or our uniforms or whatever. We don't have a means to clean ourselves off. We do not have a mean to clean our gear off or our uniform off without cross-contaminating the rest of the building. So when we talk about decontamination, it's not always the worst possible situation. We're just talking about everyday calls that were exposed to stuff. Now, a modern day fire station obviously separates the two. And I've been touring fire stations and doing a lot of research into them and they all look a little different but they're pretty much the exact same design. Where you pull in from the street on the apparatus floor is considered the hot zone, that's where everything is dirty when you went between the hot zone and warm zone is where you would essentially decontaminate, whether you needed to take a shower or whether you need it just to take off your shoe. Whatever it was right?

You do that there so by the time you get into the living quarters which is the cold zone you're clean, right? Your gear is clean. Your uniforms are clean. That's what we're missing right now. So that's the piece of it I want people to start thinking about because when that happens over six calls, 12 calls, 100 calls You know, it's not the end of the world. But we're talking about 40 years and 100 years respectfully, right? Of firefighters coming in with some type of contaminant on them and Facilities does a great job. They come in twice a year, and they do deep cleans, and clean the carpets and floors and everything else. And if you walk through our fire stations anywhere between 8 AM and 10 AM, you're going to see 14 firefighters scrubbing and mopping and whatever else trying to get the building clean. But over time, the building gets tired no matter how much scrubbing you do, you just can't get it clean.

And in the issue again it's not with the maintenance of the building, it's with a design. So over a long period of time that decontamination because of the lack of separation causes a problem and that's what we're talking about. So I don't want people to think we're coming back from every single call dripping in ooze, and we don't know what to do with it. It's just your minor run of the mill call.

Can I ask a follow-up question on that, Steve? Just for clarification because we've gotten a lot of questions and I'm sure you've seen them. Themes perhaps was this was a surprise the contaminants were then you know subjecting the firefighters to an elevated risk of cancer, and there's an elevated-risk of cancer anyway in the fire profession. And this was a surprise I think when the board member said it was a prize to her and the public gets a surprise to them but I think this is something that is a known quantity within the fire profession, in the fire industry and at the state level. There are some presumptions that I think it would be helpful to talk a little bit about that. I know you're working on a report to us on interim measures, which I don't really want to bring up now but I think I wanted to just maybe talk about some level setting and what the presumptions are at the state level in terms of cancer risk for the firefighters.

In Massachusetts, there is a law of cancer presumption. So if a firefighter contracts it's a very in-depth list so that covers a lot of different types of cancers if a firefighter contracts some type of cancer, it's presumed it happened on the job. So there are a lot of different obviously factors of how that can happen and it's not pinpointed to one particular. It's just pretty much over time being exposed to so many different contaminants, which in things we learn all the time. We learned just over the past few years that our gear has PFAS in it. That wasn't known 10 years ago. So where we're thinking we put it on clean gear, you wash it you get it all set, you put it on. Well in hindsight or it wasn't clean right? or things like what we just talked about, years and years of lack of separation in cross contaminating throughout the building. That can be a factor. And then of course going out on calls

We're much better now because we have the technology and the education to know when you're out on a particular type of call that you put on your full PPE to protect yourself. Even when I came on the job, it really wasn't that long ago when you left a fire and it was time to overhaul, which overhaul means you're pulling down pieces of the ceiling walls whatever the case to make sure you had put out the fire you extinguish it fully. We would do that without our SCBA on because we know the fire was out obviously now we know that that's actually where most of the contaminates and the hazards are. So over time, again when you're breathing that stuff in, you bringing it back with you it can cause levels of cancer. So I know we've talked about the numbers before and the numbers are all over the place that firefighters have have a 14% to 15% chance of dying of cancer than a non-firefighter.

So these are the types of things that we see, so obviously the fire service is extremely reactive and since this information started coming out probably around eight or 10 years ago, you notice. You could start in Boston drive down Route 9 or drive down the Mass Pike every community around us has either built a new fire station or fire stations, they're in the process of designing them. and Natick just built one, Weston's in the process of their design phase. Lexington has one they're gonna be starting another one. Milton has one, they're going to start another one, Needham did two. I mean you can go again right down the list there's a reason for that and as these different standards pieces of information and research come out, you have to adapt. And our station although it's 40 years old I mean, I still remember when it was built so it doesn't seem like it was that long ago but it was build in a different time

and the design back then is completely different than what the design would be today. And that's why the master plan recommended We need to renovate that building because there's nothing else we can do with it in its existing frame and we need to build a new headquarters. So that's really what we're dealing with. When it comes to the presumption law, Colette, you know, Thank you. The last bullet point, scope and site alternatives. Full review of all site options including renovation of the current Route 9 station or utilizing town-owned land adjacent to the police department. So we already did this and I know, and we've been getting a lot of emails about this.

And I don't want people to think this was just brushed over in the master plan it wasn't. This plan as you know took a year to compile and they looked at all these different options. Route 9, it is not big enough to be able to handle the operational needs of the fire department and to serve as the fire headquarters anymore. And we looked at every possible option, but at the end of the day it's landlocked. We wanted it to work because it's a fantastic location which is why we are going to keep it, but it can't be a fire headquarters. It's just not big enough and you can't make it big enough. So we did look at that. and as to the piece for next to the police station, well that's still being evaluated. Obviously in the master plan it wasn't the top site but I don't think that it's necessarily ruled out. But again it wasn't the number one recommended site for a reason.

So one of the things that I hear a lot about is the frustration, not that we didn't do a thorough job thinking through the needs of the fire department, but that we ruled out some opportunities to make say that the main fire station work because we decided that we didn't want to buy land or that was less practical. and I think that's where some of the pushback that we're getting is not seeing the option of what if. we acquired land and what would that look like if we pushed the station one way or we negotiated with the MLP another way.

I just think it feels like a less rigorous diligence because of the assumption that we would be better served using land, the town owned rather than buying land. I think that's where some of the tensions coming from about the credibility that it doesn't fit. I don't know if you guys have been hearing that, but that's more what I've been hearing. That we'd like the choice to say we don't want to invest to make it fit. I think that's where some of the tension is. would it fit if we invested in buying land? I can't honestly say, I know. But I think that's where some of the question marks and in people's heads that it seems like The land we owned and our capacity to move within the land we own didn't work, but did

pursue with the same diligence what happens if you acquire. What would that look like? And then say, okay it costs X versus it costs Y and therefore we want to make a choice.

So for the nuts and bolts behind all of that, context would be able to give you an explanation. But I do know it was looked into and I'm certainly not speaking for them, but obviously anytime you were to acquire land that's going to be a step in the wrong direction because they are trying be cost effective? I don't think that was the driving factor. I think that one factor, but I think the bigger piece of it was that it's not as simple as just acquiring land especially in that location so The only land you could really acquire there would be the cat hospital and or the gas station. The issue being is that the railroad tracks run directly behind there. So, that is a road. A lot of people don't realize that but that as a road because that's how DPW and people that come to the station they have to travel that way

there is not very much room or land to be able to do that, and you can't expand that anywhere. So my point is it's not a great setup for starters. if you did, let's just say hypothetically, you made the decision to purchase that land. It's not as easy as just purchasing it because now you're dealing with a state in reconfiguring that entire intersection Again, I don't think that's gonna be a very easy task to do because now you have the DOT involved and whatever else is going to be involved in there. So again not speaking for context but my guess was that we're just going to a path that wasn't going to be feasible and that's why they stopped pursuing it. I don't know if Megan, you probably have more knowledge on that than I would.

The only other thing I would add is, so one of the things based upon the curvature of the street for Route 9 that is a high crash impact zone. So the wall that separates the fire department and the cat hospital is hit regularly, as well as the fire station itself has hit regularly. So to acquire land to expand there is challenging just based upon the accident history in the area. And as Steve was saying, due to the substation location you can't add to the other side of the hospital. of the fire station because it would preclude the circulation to the road and to access the MLP or DPW. The other question, we do require two. So I apologize if I had to step out. We've required two fire districts so I think there's also been confusion that you can just add on and do it all on Route 9, which you cannot do.

We can't meet the travel times on both locations. the other thing about acquisition in particular for station one is in that vicinity, in a small area of where it can be located and continue to meet the time requirements to hit the Manor Ave over Brook as well as the southern section, the Livingston Roads etc. is fairly limited, but the lots there also are small. Initially when context is looking you're also looking for what parcels can you acquire that are between one and a half to two acres? there's not many. There's commercial properties, which is the parking lot. What's the cost of that and what's the decimation to the district in doing that? We looked at Tailby lot, the cover literature of the road doesn't work along with the topography. You could do retention. and fix that, but you can't really fix the sight lines there.

Then when you start looking within that aggregate how many residential properties are we gonna take? and so even looking at two to 20 Linden Street, that's 10 families we'd have to relocate that are rental properties. On average, when you're doing a taking, you have to pay fair market value. We try to negotiate with people so it's also typically 1.3%. So it's 30% typical based upon our more recent Land Acquisitions at Hardy School and at the Creeville property next to Tolles Parsons Center, it was a 30% additional cost. Given the wide range of capital projects and existing costs, if the board directs us to look at acquiring property we can do that.

In the scheme of our existing capital projects, I would think it's a mistake. But we are happy to do it.

So I wasn't saying one was better than the other. I just think one of the things that we hear a lot about is the frustration about not understanding how that decision got made. Because if you could make the main station work, the presumption is that the station, I'm gonna call it Central Street Western Road Station wouldn't need so much land because we're moving a lot of facilities from the main station to this, what we call it, the new Central Street zone because to accommodate a new main station where if the main station was on Route 9, there might be less land impact on the western side of town in terms of locations.

the maybe all very sound and well grounded but I think in the community that they'll leap to narrowing the sites without talking through how How the ruling out happened in more detail creates a bit of a black box.

There are eight long appendices to the master plan, and if people read through them they'll see a lot of the reasoning for the decisions that were made The fact of the matter is you still have a small radius on the west side of town that works and you could very well end up with this station on Weston Road. I'm not hearing what you're hearing, I'm hearing more about traffic and concerns about cost, because we're all hearing about taxes going up. But I would refer people to the master plan. This was a very in-depth process that took as Chief said over a year and other people can speak up, but that doesn't seem to me to be the major concern I'm hearing.

I have heard very specifically a question about I have heard that. Morton Park isn't number three, it's the third place evaluated and I think part of the driving reason for that was cost and practicality and I've certainly answered it the way that Megan and Steve have answered it but I've also answered and tried to answer the fact that so the headquarters activities are moving from Route 9 to Western Road, Central Street area is I mean maybe you can talk about what the number of people that means and the space that that means because it's I think there's a misconception that it means there's going to be a flood of activity there when it's not really a bunch. But I saw that Kenny had...

Well, I think it goes with your question. If we were to put one on if the headquarters was revamped in a way that makes it stay the headquarters and you still have to have a station on the west side of town, does that change I understand it'll probably change the size, but does it affect traffic in any way?

No. It wouldn't be considered... it really wouldn't make much impact, I don't believe. And I think that's kind of going back to Beth's point. If you were able to keep the existing fire headquarters, it's really not gonna make the station on that end of town much smaller. The only thing you would lose was maybe the administrative side of the building, meaning the Chief, the Assistant Chief in Fire Prevention and the Administrative Assistant. So we're not talking a lot of space. The reason why that building needs to be so big isn't just because of... And when I say it's so big compared to what we have right now I mean we have essentially a two bay station that's 100 years old. Right now, we're so undersized that building is more for storage and for our equipment and to sustain our operation than anything else.

It really doesn't have a lot to do with the people, it's our equipment we keep some of our percentage of our fleet is kept outside all year round which is it's a recipe for disaster We don't have anywhere to put our administrative files that are supposed to be locked in a separate room, right? duct taped into boxes and jammed into the basement, which means so they're next to utilities and things of that nature. So everything we have is makeshift and both buildings because we've evolved so much that even if we were able to do that, the size of that building would not be much smaller than what they proposed is. and I do want to clarify because this has, I think people are confused by this. So obviously right now we have the two stations. We have fire headquarters located on Route 9 and Route 16, and then we have a substation which is Station 1, which is located on the corner of Weston Road in Central, okay?

With this proposed, what this would do is it would keep the building at Route 9. It would put a very small addition onto it. I think was like a seven or 800 square foot, very small edition and that would be the substation okay? we would be then somewhere in district one, we will be constructing a new building that would be considered now the new fire headquarters. when we do that, we would be closing the existing station one because we received a lot of questions. I don't understand why you need to have two fire stations in close proximity which you're right, we don't. That building would either be so well whether that's sold or it's repurposed for a different type of town use, but we would no longer have that building. So we would stay with this two station model and the things that we know is that we need to have a two-station model.

One of the driving factors behind the master plan was because I wasn't sure if we needed a three station model in, if not now Dewey in the next five years, the next 10 years and 15 years because the whole purpose of this plan was to plan for the future. It was to play him for the next generation. we're lucky in the fact that it came back and said that our current model works, but it works because of our response times. This is all good information. But you have to keep in mind, it works because of our response times. Meaning our stations have to stay somewhat in close proximity to where they are right now, which is the difficult piece of it. We know that the Route 9 station is a perfect location Station 1 up in the square, we know that's a good location. The issue being there is not enough land to construct a new building that would fit our needs. Here's where it gets challenging.

You only have a small footprint to build that station, okay? So I mean, we all know what's available for land. There is not a lot of land. So, I mean I personally was not surprised when the North 40 was chosen and I figured to me okay so this is gonna be a project of a new building in a renovation it's going to be expensive. If they can do it on town-owned land and not have to spend an additional 10 or 15 million dollars to acquire land, it's probably gonna make sense to do so, right? Taking all the other piece... out of it about where it is and all of that. But because it's town-owned land, again we weren't very surprised if that was a location in because it was in such close proximity to where we are, where we know it has that formula for spawns times that works. So I think that's what people... needed a little clarification because one of the concerns, and I have a couple of other bullet points.

If we build in the North 40 isn't that going to be too far away from Cliff Road? No, because we're gonna keep that other station. So all of those are... We shouldn't notice any type of effect in response times. The response times should remain where they are under this current proposal.

So Marjorie, I'd just like to clarify. I haven't heard anybody question whether we need two stations. I think people understand that... I'm just saying, I have not heard any concerns about consolidating to one. I think people understand two. other one wasn't on the western side. But I think for the most part, the community understands the two station model and are encouraged and relieved that it's functioning so well in terms of response time.

But what they don't seem to understand is what the Chief just said, is that moving the administrative part of the operation to the west side of town is not what makes the building materially larger. It's the operations, it's the decontamination and appropriate housing for the equipment which you would need anyway because you can't do it all on Route 9 That's correct. So it doesn't make a difference, really. I mean the administrative staff is not what adds to the square footage need on the west side.

No, the building will be a little bit bigger obviously because like I said you have offices and things of that nature but it's not anything substantial that we would be looking for a smaller parcel. And again, and I know in the master plan when they put it into the matrix, right? It's coming out as approximately two acres. We don't know that is gonna be two acres, right. I mean, it could be less, it can be more but that what's going to come out in design. I do know from talking to other chiefs who went through the same process that during the master plan phase of it, which was basically the 5,000 foot view. Everything was a little bit bigger by the time I got to design everything got dwindled down. And I know one of the concerns that Clet and I were talking about, where are the number of showers? Do we need the number showers? I want to make it clear that the building has not been designed. This is just this is the program that they use and it develops essentially a cookie cutter space needs analysis of what it would look like, but it is not by any stretch finalized. So we don't know things of that nature about showers in a number of bathrooms

anything like that we don't know yet because it hasn't been designed just on that point there were a couple of emails I had a few other questions I want to quickly go through so again I just talked about the Cliff Road situation knowing that there's two stations at the response time will not be affected We have one email stating that this resident lives on, or I believe off of Western Road. GPS is taking cars through back roads off of Weston Road. We do not plan change in So we do not plan on changing response rooms. I mean, I get it if you live in a neighborhood where I live Waze has been a killer for me because people when they want to avoid Route 27 they cut down my street whether you have a fire station built in close proximity or not, that's gonna happen. It happens today it's probably going to happen forever but from the fire department standpoint we will not be changing our response routes.

Not to the fact that it's going to affect neighborhoods like that, right? The only thing I was thinking driving here as I was stuck in the traffic at Central Street if we did ever build a station on the other side, say closer to the police station. Maybe something like that if we were traveling to... If we had a call in Manor Ave and we need to get to Weston Road during this time of day maybe in that situation, yeah we take Linden Street. But it's gonna be something very obvious. We're not going to be... I don't want and I know we said this last time if the building is built across from Howe Street I don't want the residents on Howe Street thinking every time we go up, we're going to drive right down Howe street. We are not going to that the response patterns in in the way that we respond to calls, that is not going to change. We have no plans on that changing unless there was a reason to do so. Again, I touched on the station one would indeed be closed. There will not be two stations in the same district.

We had some different suggestions. Why can't the new building instead of being built on the North 40 Why can't it be built across from the Toyota dealership on Route 9? Why cannot it be build on the RDF? or at the Boston Sports Institute, again all for the same reason. Well Toyota that's actually a different district so you certainly wouldn't have two stations in the same district but the RDF or BSI and we looked at land actually next to BSI it's too far north it would put the two stations in close proximity on Route 9 and it would pull us too far north, which would most likely affect the response times of now their residents down south. And that was something we looked at and that actually when you look at the footprint, Route 9 is too far north from that. So we did look at that it just we didn't think that it would work to maintain the standards for response times. Can't Route 9 just be redeveloped to be the one station?

Like we said, you need to have a two-station model. and the 24, for the people that live on Western Road they were concerned about 24-7 siren use. We do not use the sirens 24- 7 we use the with due regard. So we use them when we have to, when we're traveling down Central Street and there are people in the way that don't see us they're walking with headphones whatever the case is right? We use that as a warning, we're coming prepare yourself, find a way to get out of our way so we can come through. And then the ear horn is that's a last ditch effort. That's if there's a child riding a bicycle and they do not see you and you know they don't see you something like that but we do not use the sirens 24 7. I don't want people in that area to think that if we pull out at 2 a.m and there's not a car on the road are we going to be you know sirens and air ones the whole way that's not how it works. In the last one and this is a big one.

People just don't want the North 40 or some people, right? Don't want to North 40 developed on. And from by reading the emails I think that they think it's a fire station or it's nothing. And I know that was part of the reason for the charrette, right? the land was deemed usable for municipal use, right? We don't know what's going to happen there yet. But I think that people think that if it's either going to be a fire station or it's going can you know if we can block this maybe we'll be able to keep and I don't know that that's the case. That's obviously not my decision to make but i just want them to know that, that is you know I want you to know, that those are some of the concerns at the green space as if you didn't already but the green is a concern to people, especially the people in that neighborhood that use the gardens on a daily basis. And that really seems to be one of the bigger concerns is we support you, we support your project but we just don't want it right here.

and I think that's fair to say. I think everybody in this room understands that.

Thank you, Chief. Any last questions? Thank you. This has been very helpful. You went into detail on a lot of questions and comments that people have been making, and I hope people find it useful. It was very helpful

So Marjorie, I actually had the memo that you sent us. I found very instructive and very reassuring about the steps that are being taken to keep our firefighters and staff safe You don't have to do it now, but could you give us a sense of the timeline of when those were implemented and whether you feel like we are ahead, behind kind of comparable to our area communities on those metrics and how far

I wonder that hasn't been, that's a draft memo and it's not being shared with the public so I'm not really sure it's appropriate to discuss right now.

I would just like to finish my thought and could you give us a sense for how far they move us along in terms of decontamination. Obviously it's imperfect and incomplete, but how the improvement we've made As I said, it doesn't have to be now. And I know it's a work in progress.

I think it should not be now, I think that it should be another time. Okay, Chief. Thank you very much. So we will be updating facts and FAQs that can incorporate some of the information you've shared with us tonight so people should continue to look at the page for the Fire Department Master Plan, and that's where all the information will be.

If I could just talk about that a little bit. We did spend a lot of time after the first public engagement sessions distilling the questions we had and putting together the FAQs, We are still working to distill the ongoing feedback that we've had. And the reason it takes time is that there's a lot of emails, I'd say there's a lot of use of AI, so the email doesn't tend to have one question. There's often multiple parts of questions. A lot of the questions have already been answered on the FAQs and so we're trying to tease out what has been answered, what hasn't been answered. What needs to be clarified more? And if the FAQs aren't reaching people is there a better way to reach people and so it's not an instantaneous reaction because I for one want to make sure that what we put out there is thoughtful and vetted, and not just by me but the whole project team.

So the FAQs will be updated periodically. We're working on it, but that's the method how we can reach. I think there's a limited number of hours in the day and a limited staff hours that we have so we cannot respond individually to emails. And I think people sometimes request that and expect that, but I think in public engagement What we're doing is the FAQs for everyone, because for every person that writes and maybe 10 people have the question.

I don't know who's in charge of the communication, but could we when the FAQs are updated send to the list of people that are registered just a notification that there is additional information available online because I don't think people are thinking to keep checking the FAQs. to see if there's new information or not.

Well, the link is going to go out to every household in Wellesley in the select board's W edition before special town meetings so everybody will have that link as well.

and I just, I encourage the residents to see when you have questions or concerns continue with the emails because I think we are doing a good job We're communicating on a daily basis and we're trying to get the information out there. It's just a matter of, like Clyde just said, how we get it out there and what's the best way to do it. If people think that this is helpful I'm obviously happy to come and do this every so often. But also people are encouraged to send emails, especially because the team it's a very diverse team in the fact that We could get answers from context if it's something we don't understand or if it is something obviously political, or if its something relating to fire department operations that I can handle. So I think no matter...I don't think there's a question we won't be able to find an answer to unless of course it's something that needs to be determined during the feasibility phase of the project.

Okay Chief, thank you very much.

Thank you for having me.

Appreciate it. The next agenda item is special town meeting preparation, and we'll discuss a few issues related to the articles and motions. Kenney's going to bring us an update from the bylaw review committee. We'll take a quick look at the motions that were distributed and I'll give you a little bit information about an upcoming board discussion on articles 14 and 15. So first we'll turn to Kenny.

Thanks, Marjorie. So this has been a roller coaster but I think we're at the top of the rollercoaster at the moment so just by way of background advisory discussed this what the select board proposed at the meeting a week or so ago. And they were not in favor of this for two specific reasons that were stylistic, one was The use of the passive voice versus the active voice in certain instances, and the use of word shall instead of must. We heard that feedback and I spoke to the advisory member who was, I would say, the most vocal about it. And had the best you know the most background in these type of things who the other advisory members clearly were listening to and

based on that conversation made some changes to the bylaws that you see here. And what we did was change every use of the active, Passive Voice to the Active Voice. I also talked to him about the shall versus must. And that was a very interesting academic discussion and where we came out was, he would support the bylaw as we amended it. As you'll see it. So in his view, the word must is the more appropriate because there's some scholars that say this is the better way to do it and under the federal rules, that's the approach that should be taken. Under Massachusetts drafting standards

the words shall is the appropriate and SJC has confirmed that. There's also other scholars who think that shall is more appropriate, Tom Harrington said, I think it's something like 99% of the municipalities in Massachusetts use the word shall. you also had an issue with if you use the word must in some places and shall in others, the presumption is that you mean something different when you use two. and it would be difficult to do this piecemeal so we're trying to think of another approach to maybe defining what shall means in like an introductory section going forward but we're not there yet. So long-winded way of saying, I think advisory is going to support what we're doing right now. Well, the process has been a little bit rocky.

It's sort of what we expected and the reason that we presented it this way which is to introduce it to town meeting through advisory and try to iron out some of the wrinkles before you know, you get to town meeting and I feel like we've done that in large part. And hopefully we got town meetings support but I think advisory is going to support this. The idea is we will vote now and this'll go back to advisory tomorrow night

Great Kenny, any questions? No questions about comment. I mean, I sent questions to Corey to send you today. This is very academic to me and from the country that likes to use words like whilst, I don't get what's wrong with shall but I'm glad that you resolved it what you said about Massachusetts law and drafting and standards, that makes total sense to me. I didn't have a strong feeling one way or the other but I think the whole bylaw review committee is pretty much lawyers. Town meeting seems to be half-lawyers, so I'm sure you're going to have a lot more feedback on this, but I'm very supportive of what you're putting forward.

I will say, I view the switch from the passive in certain instances to the active as beneficial. I think it reads better and that was a good comment by advisor.

I would just like to say thank you because It's definitely a deep dive into the weeds and thank you for going there because it's way beyond my capacity to understand the difference.

I appreciate that you reached a compromise and we have a lot more bylaws that say shall, so if we don't have to change them all. That would be easier. So thank you very much, Kenny.

Are we going to vote on this revised language? Yes. So move to approve the revised language for Article 2 public of Public Bodies, of the town's bylaws as presented.

Which is Article 7 of special time meeting. Yes thank you.

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Thank you very much Kenny. Are there any comments on the current list of motions that was distributed to the board? Those are the latest versions we have. Okay. Moving on to Articles 14 and 15, Article 14.2 and Article 15.1 and 15.2 request appropriations that had not been included in the Townwide Financial Plan accepted by town meeting, at annual town meeting. Nor contemplated within the town's financial planning. Because they request appropriations and to be prepared to respond to any questions at town meeting, on the board's discussion, we will both discuss and vote them next week. We don't typically vote on citizens' petitions

Meaghan did some research, and in the last 140 years there have been no successful citizen petitions that have requested an appropriation outside of the budget. but in this case because this one does request it we have to discuss it as the town's fiduciaries and take a vote. So, we'll do that next week.

Marjorie what about 16?

Oh yes, I guess we should work on 16. That also requests an appropriation of $100,000.

Yeah, we've had some initial discussion on that.

Is that what we're going to do going forward?

I think we have to.

So, we'll do that next week as well. Thank you Kenny, appreciate that.

I just want to make sure we're all on the same page, though. The reason is simply because there's a request for an appropriation and as fiduciaries that's the reason why we're discussing. We're not changing the general approach to citizens' petitions.

Exactly.

OK. Marjorie, could I ask you for our discussion about 1415 and 16? Could we have an updated list of anticipated impacts on projects and free cash balance, as well as understanding the impact of a free cash finance versus an inside-the-levy or some combination therein and a debt exclusion finance?

Well, we can have an updated list of all the projects that are proposed or anticipated. I'm not sure we're going to go into modeling... We are not gonna go into modelling all the different ways a request could be funded and your other point about the impact on free cash. And you said something else, we'll have all the projects.

Yeah, I was referring to the fact that I think what I've heard in terms of an impact if 14 and 15—I don't think we've discussed any impact from 16 goes forward. I've heard one project that would be deferred, and that's the war memorial. I haven't heard of any other project impact so I was just asking for more. Clarity about what we foresee as the capital project spending impact.

It's not only delay of projects, it's reprioritization and how those will be funded. if free cash is used for this project.

I think that would be actually really helpful, I was preparing for Capcom today and I realized we've got to make some headway on some of these things so that we know the impacts of them for Capcom doing its work. Not only if it's free cash, or inside the Levee Borrowing. There are other things that were scheduled for inside the levy borrowing and we're kind of maxing out on that, so things will have to move around you know, also with the timing of feasibility study for the fire station master plan we are going to have to make a decision on that fairly soon because That's one of the major points of deliberation for the Townwide Capital Plan. We need to start thinking about what are our next steps? What are we doing and when, and how much?

But the answer is yes, we will have material for the board to review. Rachel is out this week so we're going to do it next week but we will information for people to look at. The next agenda item is administrative matters, the first of which is to discuss and vote the townwide W letter from the select board. Thank you Megan. Megan gave us a legible Full-size copy of the letter, and we also had a red line copy earlier today. Are there outstanding comments that people would like to make?

I made all my comments. I just wanted to get a little bit of a handle on red lines that I haven't seen yet.

The ones that Megan made?

Yeah, if there were red lines made today is there any way to identify what was made?

So the only difference from what was sent earlier today, I added the actual numbers to the free cash appropriation and stabilization fund under the financial update. I also added

So there's been a whole lot struck from the financial policies update?

Yeah, that was not me.

I don't know why we're striking that.

So I believe that might have been me. I felt that we should have aligned and voted on them before communicating them out to the public, so I thought it was important state that we were working on them with the components of what we were looking at and the reason we were and so I was trying to leave in a signal that there will be more clarification and more policies and guidelines. as we approach annual town meeting. But that at this point, defining them is kind of getting ahead of the board's deliberation and voting on them.

Well, it calls them proposed policies and it details the kinds of issues that we're looking at. I mean, we post draft policies all the time I think it's important and it's very helpful for people to understand what we're looking at and what we envision the changes helping us with.

Right, I mean because what we're trying to signal here is that's what I was saying in our last meeting is the overwhelming feedback I'm getting from residents is outrage at the forthcoming increase in taxes. We have to tell people that we're taking it seriously, and we're working on it. And we were looking at things like our potential debt management strategies and how we can use our reserves to smooth things in the future. I don't support taking that out, I think it's a very important part of what we have to communicate

So Colette, I felt like we kept that messaging in. That there were three important components. We listed what they were. It's all struck. And we stated the... Not the paragraph I have, but

I think the public should know more detail on what we're thinking about. We're in the budget season, we have some controversy over our allocation of funds from certain categories and I think the public has a right, and we have a duty to provide information about how we're planning for the future given the response to the capital expenditures that we've been talking about.

I personally support. a little more detail, but I don't think naming the policies helps necessarily because I think a lot of people are gonna pick this up and say capital finance and debt management. Okay, I get debt management General Purpose and Unrestricted Reserve Policy. I think most people who don't follow this aren't going to understand that, and the Capital Stabilization Fund. So I support more detail But I would take out the actual named policies.

I can work on that, but I would like to keep what we're trying to achieve with them. I agree. Would that be okay? Yep.

We'll leave the descriptions, but take out looking at the other changes. Under School Air Conditioning Project. One, two, three, four. I can't count exactly how many lines. So let me go back to this one. where it says to facilitate an accelerated design of the air conditioning project at Bates and Fisk, to have construction estimates available. What we want is to have

to have bids in hand. We don't want to have estimates, we want to see construction funds at annual town meeting and the hope of, the objective is to, that sentence is fine. To install air conditioning in Bates & Fisk and I really think it's important to say the appropriation is of an as yet undetermined amount because the numbers we are working from, we have heard multiple times, is from an early stage feasibility and nothing further. And PBC has stated unequivocally to advisory that these are not numbers PBC can rely on, and if PBC can't rely on them, we can't as final numbers. So that's very important.

I had a question whether Weston Road, Linden Street should be added back in and I think that's good. Oh, the other thing that was taken out The funding proposal is different than the original townwide financial schedule contemplated or accepted by Town Meeting last year. which was to fund the construction of all four air conditioning projects, through a debt exclusion and requiring a town-wide vote. So this vote is contingent upon funding an annual town meeting other than through a dead exclusion. And as you said before whether it's

all free cash or a combination of free cash inside the levy has impacts on the rest of the budget for next year. But I think that's all. Okay, Colette could we please have a motion?

So moved to approve the select board edition of the W and to authorize Ms. Freiman to make any final edits

Second.

All in favor? Aye. Okay, we have many sets of minutes but the minutes that Corey distributed are the ones that had substantive changes so we can take a minute and look over those.

The rest, I think- So we just have three we're looking at right now, September 23rd. Yes exactly. They all board on October 6th, okay.

September 23rd, September 29th and October 6th. So we'll start with the 23rd That's just one tiny little change on the first page Corey, I do think on line 150 the meeting was June 25th and Colette reminded me that it was a public engagement session which is why we don't have an agenda as a board meeting but I do believe it was on the 25th.

What minutes are you looking at?

Oh, I'm sorry. I took the wrong one. September 29th, line 150.

Okay, hold on. I'm way behind you. All right. So I think you're saying it's a, let me just double check that date as I thought I checked when we did the minutes. So it was June, it was the 25th. Sorry, it should be the 20th.

Okay, but that's really the only change. Okay all right now let's go back to September 23rd Those are fine with me. and October 6th. I'm really glad you didn't bring us 18 sets of minutes, Corey. Took me long enough to go through them the first time.

So I do have one of the edits that I don't think I agree with, and it's on line 174 through 175. I think that we had talked about in the meeting, with STEPS isn't intended to compare what they call it in other communities, and that we don't understand them. We don't have a full picture of the... the total compensation structure in other communities, so it's like an apples and oranges comparison. So I would rather not make that amendment because I think it's only half of the story.

I think the point was made that they figure compensation much differently than we do.

Yeah, yeah. So I would propose just not taking that amendment

So Colette, I'm fine if that's accurate. Did you...I had the impression when Dolores presented the comps to us that those were full shifts in compensation as opposed to the way we look at it, which is Cola and Merritt. That they put it all in and what she gave us was actual changes year over year. But I could have misunderstood what she was telling us.

I don't believe that's the case, because that was exactly part of the discussion.

I didn't have clarity. I could've misunderstood her but I thought we were comparing our staff generally going up in the around four plus percent versus COLA alone. So we can take it out because I'm not clear which way she interpreted that.

Yeah, I think we talked about this at the meeting Then the other amendment on line 216, the way it was written is actually that's what I said. That's what it's intended to be so the appropriate reserve target for Wellesley will factor in its strong residential tax base and pension and OPEB funding position balanced against the operating budget constraints Those edits don't make sense to me, so I'd strike those edits.

Will factor in is different than is a factor? Yeah. Okay.

I believe those were all the substantive suggestions.

These are long minutes who reviewed these?

I hunkered down with a big cup of coffee.

Anybody else? So are we ready for these?

Yes, please.

Marjorie, can we push off the October 6th vote? I want to look at the discussion on the use of free cash again because I do think it would be helpful there's a section starting line 343 where it talks about a member asked that the financial analysis exclude Schofield in the middle school and some others. And I think it would be helpful to add to the minutes what those percentages actually showed, which was discussed. I think for this particular topic it would be helpful to highlight that the different levels, if you take out Schofield in the middle school and some of the other scenarios that I brought up shows a cash reserve level at a significantly higher rate.

So I was drafting it. And the reason I didn't put that in is, I think there was discomfort not just from the CFO but I think from some board members about toggling it that way because I think, I'm speaking for myself here. I think it shows a very uncertain future that we... I'm not sure I want to project that I'm happy, I'm okay with deferring this so we can think about it more. So you've brought up your comment and we can what we think about that?

We could put it in, but it's not a definitive answer on what the ultimate levels will be because there is more that's not reflected in here. I'm fine putting them off

I understand that and I'm sympathetic to that, but I think you could apply the same logic to discussion 18.5 million from free cash because that wasn't actually proposed by anybody, but we have a lengthy discussion about it so I'd just like to put it off to read this a little further.

Fine, yep. And I think it's helpful that you raise your concern because then we can think about it as well because it is hard to do it in the moment. I certainly find it hard to So moved to approve the minutes of September 29, 2026 and September 23, 2028 as amended. Second. All in favor? Aye.

Okay, for the chair's report Tom and I met with advisory folks this morning and understand there will be a minority advisory committee opinion on school air conditioning that will likely appear at the very end of the advisory committee report. The committee will be discussing and voting on Article 3.1 tomorrow School Committee tonight is discussing school improvement plans, budget guidelines Stem and Capcom related issues, specifically the project proposal forms I believe tonight.

Not tonight. The project proposal form has been put off until the 27th.

That happened since this morning.

Well, I talked to Nikki yesterday so maybe there was a change but maybe that's fluid.

Okay well it's either tonight or next meeting. The union negotiations are ongoing.

So a minority report, is that like an addendum? Like an NRC report or is it at the back of the...

I don't remember the last time there was a minority report from advisory. I don t know exactly how they're going to handle it, but Mark said at the end appended to the end of the advisory report. That's all he said.

And for articles

it was a close vote. It was seven to eight unfavorable and one or more members who voted in the minority felt they wanted to express some opinions

Thank you.

The moderator is very optimistic and hopes to address all motions that are going forward in Articles 1-13 and 16 on the first night. and would likely adjourn, if we get that far. And would likely to take up Article 14 and 15 on the second night on the theory that like he wanted to have the same folks in the audience hear the two budget presentations He wants the same people there to hear Articles 14 and 15. And the order of Articles 3.1 and 8 will be reversed because 3. 1 is contingent upon the passing of Article 8 And last thing is that WEF is again holding its spelling bee at the high school on November 18th and has asked town boards and committees if they would like to sponsor a team to compete. The entrance fee is $500.

If board members would like to form a team or contribute in some other way to WEF, please let me know by the end of the week and that's it for the chair's report. Our next agenda item is executive session. I request a motion to enter into executive session with respect to negotiations with the Wellesley Superior Officers Association Walsh, Dispatch Unit, AFSCME Council 93, Local 49 Custodian Union and to review executive session minutes.

Okay, let me just find my motion. Sorry. So move to enter executive session under Mass General Law Chapter 30A subsection 21 A3, to construct strategy with respect to negotiations the Wellesley Superior Officers Association, Dispatch Union AFSCME Council 93 Local 49 The Custodians' Union and under Mass General Law Chapter 30A subsection 21a7 to comply with or act under the authority of General Law chapter 30A, 22f and g to review and consider the release of executive session minutes from September 25, 2025 October 16, 2025, October 28, 2025 A&B

November 25, 2025 December 11, 2025 January 6, 2026 January 27, 2028 February 24, 2026 A and B March 10, 2027 March 24,2026 A & B April 7, 2028 6A&B April 14, 2036 A&B April 27, 2026 May 5, 2028 June 2, 2036 June 8, 2027 and the board will exit executive session for the sole purpose of adjourning the meeting.

Second.

Beth?

Aye. Tom? Aye. Colette? Aye Kenny? Aye And I vote aye as well thank you everyone and good night we will be back downstairs in Giuliani maybe or upstairs here at the Great Hall early voting will be up here again next week Tuesday October 27th thank you have a good night