Select Board March 10, 2026

Okay, good evening. I'd like to call to order the select board meeting of March 10th, 2026 in the Giuliani room at town hall. Here for the Select Board are Vice Chair Tom Ulfelder, Secretary Colette O'Frank, Kenny Largess, and myself, Marjorie Freiman. We expect that Beth Sullivan Woods will be joining us momentarily. Also here with us are Executive Director Megan Jopp and Assistant Executive Director Corey Testa. I'd like to congratulate Tom and we'll congratulate Beth on your reelection to the board. and to all other board and committee members and town meeting members elected or re-elected last Tuesday. The town benefits greatly from your participation in civic affairs and we thank you for serving. On behalf of the board, I'd also like to thank DPW for all of their long hours and hard work during the recent snow and ice events.

We don't want to jinx ourselves by saying we hope we're done, but we hope we're done. Our next agenda item is Citizen Speak, and I'll turn it over to Corey.

Yes, we've had one person reach out, Mark Maiden.

Mr. Maiden, good evening. You need to push the green button please on the microphone and give us your name and address.

Good evening, this is Mark Maiden for Beechwood Road, a 31 year town resident. As the Select Board works on a building use policy, including the display of art in town buildings, I just wanted to provide some background and context on the display of art at the Wellesley Council on Aging. I am the COA volunteer art coordinator and have been responsible for setting up and running this program for the last three years. This program arose from a grassroots desire by the many talented artists among COA's patrons to be able to share their art while also enhancing the visual environment of the Tolles Parson Center. In the COA's previous location, there was always a display of art. And the many artists in the COA community hoped that there would be enhanced opportunities in the new building. especially as there's large acres of bare wall which just call out for decorating with art. And also the building was furnished with a plentiful built-in Pitcher Wales, and the hanging hardware to go with it.

However, it turned out that the demands of the new facility did not seem to provide the bandwidth for the administration at the time to address this hope, which led to disappointment and some frustration among the patrons. When Deb Greenwood became COA director, which is very supportive of bringing art into the building, and in response to the frustrations of the patrons invited me to set up and administer the art display that was desired. the conditions of the display were very carefully and deliberately crafted to specifically and exclusively cater to Wellesley seniors, 60 plus residents, and or COA patrons, including those who had taken art classes at the Council on Aging. and to be inclusive and non-selective, open to all artists eligible under these criteria. Further, it was made clear absolutely that the display was not to be used as a sales opportunity. I believe that the participation criteria that I set are exactly in line with the intentions of the Select Board and the Council on Aging Board.

The art display has been a great success, I have to say. Much admired and enjoyed by COA patrons, artists, and staff, and a definite enhancement to the Tolstparson Center. Today, over 200 artworks by 30-plus Wellesley residents and COA patrons have been shared. I hope the select board in collaboration with the COA board will carefully consider creating an art policy that will permit our art display to continue as it has been so successfully to date. at a time when the town is embarking on a state-assisted review of art and culture in Wellesley in order to grow and enhance the cultural life of the town We are proud to have been able to create this wonderful display of art made in, by, and for our community. I invite all select board members to visit the Tolles Parsons Center to view the art in person and I'd be more than happy to provide any further information that would be useful. I thank you for your time.

Is there anyone else here who'd like to address the board? Please? Yes, please. They can't hear you on TV if you're not on mic, so make sure the light is green. Yes. Yes. Push the button.

And give us your name and address, please. I see it. My name is Imadiel Ariel. I'm one of the artists who is exhibiting at the Council on Aging. I'm not quite sure what the issue or the problem is today, but I just want to say that I've participated since the very beginning. Mark organized this show for the community, for the artists, for the benefit of everybody and it has created a wonderful atmosphere in the building. I think that's very unique and also allows people who are artists or blooming artists in their older age to be invigorated into experimenting with their art and showing their art and have their art appreciated.

I think Mark has done a wonderful job in terms of rotating the work, working with us, hanging the work, and it's changed the building into such a friendly, warm place. that I would suggest we keep things just as they are. Things are working fine, it's easy for us to do it, it's understandable, it's stress-free, it's beautiful the art is admired and appreciated the whole building so if you have another question if you have a question for me I'll be happy to answer it but

Thank you. Unfortunately during Citizen Speak we can't engage with the public because these are issues that are not on our agenda. So we're here to listen to you. and Colette who is the liaison to the Council on Aging will address this issue later in the meeting. Okay. Thank you. Okay. You're welcome. Anybody else? Please.

Press the button.

It's on.

Okay. And I'm a technology guy. My name is William Stanwood and I've been a resident of Wellesley most of my life and I'm a co-leader of the photography group at the Council on Aging. I have to tell you that I don't live in Wellesley now. I'm moved to Needham. May I still speak? Yes, please. I just wanted to say that as co-leader I can tell you that educationally creating photographs is only half the story of being a photographer. the other half is exhibiting those photos and we have many of the photos are up on the wall at the Council on Aging. and one of the really critical things that hanging the photos does for us as budding artists, if I may, is that we get feedback from patrons, other patrons at the Council on Aging, and that can be a very beneficial educational experience. for the photographers in the photography group.

And I'm sure that the same is true for the patrons who are in the painting classes as well. So I'm hoping that our work can be exhibited on the walls of the Tolles Parsons Center.

Thank you very much for coming. Okay, not seeing anybody else. The next agenda item is the executive director's report.

Thanks Marjorie, just a few updates. So as the board is aware, we will be doing the authorization for borrowing at our next meeting. but they held the bond sale today and we had excellent results. We had nine bids for the borrowing which is approximately a little over $13.8 million. and there was a tight spread and the lowest interest rate was 2.78 which was significantly lower than we had initially projected. So great news on that and we'll be completing that borrowing. Next week. I also did just want to alert folks, so the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities has issued, we sort of got an early version, the draft of the surplus land regulations. That will be on the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities web page on Friday. We will send notice out to everybody.

We wanted to make sure that we had a link for people to follow up with with the Commonwealth. We are not accepting comments on this. You would need to submit comments directly to the Commonwealth on the document. It's a fairly short document. and we'll be distributing that information on Friday. Folks might recall too that the Wellesley Health Department had scheduled their public forum on community health that was canceled as a result of the significant snowstorm we had earlier. and so that's been rescheduled to March 23rd from six to seven at the library. And then lastly, just wanted to remind folks that we have select board office hours on this Friday the 13th between, oh, it's Friday the 13th, between noon and 1.30 with Kenny. Those are both in person and in Zoom, so you can just email Kenny. His email's on the website, kaylorjessatwellesleyma.gov, and set up a time to meet with him.

great thank you very much our next agenda item is to discuss and vote firefighter candidate appointments and we'll invite the chief and the candidates and their guests in

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The Fire Department is requesting confirmation of four firefighter appointments recommended by Fire Chief Steve Mortorelli following a competitive process conducted with the fire department, human resources, and representatives of the firefighters union. So I will turn it over to Chief Mortarelli. Good evening, Chief.

Good evening to you and thank you to the board for having us tonight. This is a special occasion for the fire department as it always is anytime we Welcome potential new candidates to the Wellesley Fire family. As you know, over the past couple of years, we've made a lot of different changes in hopes and the objective to make Wellesley Fire more of a I think after you have an opportunity to meet these four candidates, you will agree that we have actually and Tractor, the best of the best. So with that being said, I'll go through just a brief overview of the process and what it entailed, and I'll introduce the candidates and allow the board for questions and comments.

A group comprised of myself, retired Chief David Soar, and Human Resources Generalist Haley Redish, and various members of the local 1795 Firefighters Union reviewed applications, backgrounds, credentials of potential candidates for the position of Firefighter. The candidates interviewed met one or more of the significant consideration criteria as outlined in the higher end policy. This includes residency, veteran status, EMT license, Massachusetts Firefighter 1-2 certifications. Four candidates were chosen. by us to extend a conditional offer of employment. The first candidate is Parik Leiden. Parik is a veteran of the United States Army and is currently an active member of the Massachusetts Army National Guard. Parik currently holds an EMT basic certification where he practices at Brewster Ambulance. So I will turn this over to the board for questions and comments for Barak.

Would someone like to start? Okay, Park, good evening. Thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you. Make sure that's on. Great. Would you like to introduce those whom you have with you tonight so we can meet your family?

Yes, I actually would. Over on the end there, there's my mother. Oh, there's my father as well. There is my mother, and then there is my girlfriend, Julia.

Well, thank you all for joining us. We know that someone joining the fire service requires compromise and commitment from the family as well, and we thank you. for sharing Park with us. And we're glad that you're interested in settling with Wellesley. What were your responsibilities with the National Guard for the presidential inauguration last year? That caught my eye.

Yes, so we had to pull sort of a security kind of duty for the area of Washington DC during the inauguration. we wore like high vis vests and we like my the group we had there we were guarding like traffic points all throughout the city to make sure nothing went wrong or anyone was like Thank you for that and thank you for your service.

Thank you for your support.

Others? Beth? So I would like to echo Marjorie's thank you for your service. Appreciate it. Deeply value veterans in Wellesley. So we are glad to have you join us.

Glad to be here.

Can you tell me what drew you to the fire department?

So my whole life, I've really wanted to do nothing but help people and serve the community. It's part of why I joined the military. I wanted to serve my country and then join the National Guard after. because I wanted to serve in my state. I wanted to give back to the people that gave so much to me. And I want to continue doing that in the fire service. I don't see any other job where I can do that more than in the fire department. and Wellesley is an amazing town that I could see myself living in and I would like to serve that town as well as I could.

Well, thank you for selecting us.

Thank you for having me.

Other comments, questions, Kenny?

thank you for your service and congratulations thank you very much

I will say thank you also for your service and for thinking of Wellesley and thank you to your family and your girlfriend here for their support and thank you for giving of your son to us for our health and safety. I do want to say looking through your resume and other resumes here tonight there's always interesting things in there and I like that Marjorie touched on them and I love all the other experience you have the plumbing the the boilers that experience I'm sure will come in handy and just welcome to the department. So delighted to have you here tonight.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Tom?

Testa, Sullivan Woods, Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor and the number of degrees and types of certifications that we see. And so you're right, Colette, it is very interesting to see the different backgrounds and different skills that people have who come to the who come to the department. But I'm really struck. I was thinking about this earlier watching the news. It seems as if there's been an increase in the number of deaths because of fires that we've seen just in the past month or so. and it reminds me about the danger that you're all willing to put yourselves in the middle of on a daily basis during your shift and for that I'm certainly very grateful and I know the town of Wellesley is. I don't think people always appreciate the risk that firefighters are under, whether it's from hazardous materials that are in home construction now, whether it's

Medical Emergencies, no matter what it is, you all are there to serve and we're very grateful for it.

following up on what Tom said, appointments to the fire service and to the police department are really important to us. And during the years when we were meeting through Zoom, it was very difficult because we couldn't see you in person and we couldn't meet the candidates and it was not very happy for us. So for us to actually be here and have an opportunity to speak with each of you is very special and I think you can tell that. from our response to you. So thank you very much, Parikh.

Absolutely. Thank you.

So our second candidate is Matthew Montgomery. Mac graduated from Bridgewater State University with a bachelor's degree in finance and is currently a firefighter EMT basic with the Millville Fire Department. Matt is also a graduate of the Mass Fire Academy Recruit Program.

Would someone else like to start?

Go ahead, Colette. I'm just going to kind of follow the order of operations that Marjorie set us up with. I would love to have you introduce yourself a little bit and who's here with you tonight so that we can welcome them.

My name is Matthew Montgomery. I have my family here. I have my mom, my stepdad, my little sister. and my girlfriend right there with her parents and then my uncle is also here.

It's wonderful to see all the support you have.

Thank you and again I'll say thank you to the families for being here. It is one of the most joyous things that we do and I'll leave it to my other members to ask questions.

So, Matt, one of the things I noticed in your resume, which I didn't know before, was a hazmat OLR operational level responder. and I'm interested in one of the more challenging hazmat cases you've responded to and do the stations you've worked at have decontamination facilities at the ready? or is that something that's challenging to handle?

It's definitely challenging to handle. Millville is a very small town. There's only about 3,000 people in it. So we don't have a lot of resources, I would say. We really haven't been on a crazy amount of hazmat calls, usually just oil on the road, things along those lines. So obviously directing it, make sure it doesn't go down the drains here. didn't affect the environment at all.

Well, you're coming at a good time because the fire department is looking to renovate and build a new fire station. And one of the cornerstones of the new fire station will be an appropriate decontamination facility, which we're all very appreciative of. So other questions? Beth?

So thank you to you and your family for picking Wellesley. So I'm going to ask you the same question. What drew you to the fire service?

I know he kind of said it. I'm sure you're going to get the same answer from the two guys behind me. But I really just enjoy helping people. this is a job where people call you when they need help and you can do it for 24 hours a day which is something that's great and doing it for a living I think is going to be amazing.

Thank you. Tom?

Do I see from your resume, if I'm looking at it correctly, that you were actually going to at least part of the time to Bridgewater State and working? at the same time. I have tremendous admiration for people that have enough drive and enough focus who are able to do that. There are so many people who can't Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor finish their education and work at the same time requires an enormous amount of energy, organization, focus, and I really respect that.

I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Thanks for coming to Wellesley. I see you're a finance major. What made you switch?

I kind of noticed I didn't want to sit at a desk the rest of my life. And I was about halfway through, and I was like, I don't want to waste $20,000, so let's... I wish I realized that.

thank you both very much thank you

So our next candidate is Brennan Palomino. Brennan holds a Massachusetts Firefighter 1-2 certification and is currently an EMT basic for Brewster Ambulance. Brennan also works as a call firefighter for the Millis Fire Department.

Thank you, Brendan. Would you like to introduce whom you have with you tonight?

So I have my mom, and then my two brothers are here. My girlfriend, Becca, is here, and my grandparents, my dad. Thank you.

You all have impressive rooting sections, I have to say. Brendan, can you tell us what's challenging about inter-facility? I noticed you did inter-facility transfers and driving emergency vehicles. What is that like? What is challenging about that?

Really, it's like just... kind of because you're going into people's houses you don't know what it's gonna look like and you don't know the conditions of the house what's gonna be there hey that and just making sure they're okay while they're in your care

I just have to tell you too that my grandchildren would be very impressed that you know how to drive a skid steer. There's a set of rhyming construction books where skid steer is a female character and she's always the hero. So when I tell them I met someone who drives a skid steer, they're going to be very excited.

Colette? So I noticed also that you are fluent in English and Spanish and good with I think it's amazing that you have that skill that you can draw on because it might be required in a stressful situation and you've got those two things to pull together so thank you for that. we do have you know multilingual needs all across town and I think it's great to have someone on staff that can you know be there in the moment so appreciate that and Again, thank you to your family, your very extended family that's here for giving you to us for our public safety needs. Thank you.

Collette touched on what I was going to ask about Spanish. But congratulations and thanks for coming to Wellesley.

Beth? So I'm going to echo the thank you for choosing us. I feel that we are very grateful to have actually all four of you. and it's really heartwarming to know that each of you has such robust family support and that's really special, so thank you.

Working with Brewster, I take it that's a separate job than from the Millis Fire Department. Yes. Do you get called very often in Millis as a call firefighter?

Fairly often, and then I do kind of a rotational overnight there.

And how does that work with Brewster if you have a shift?

I'll usually try and switch off my shift on either whichever one so they don't contra or contradict each other.

And I know when you were answering the question earlier about what it's like for inter-facility, one of my boys is an EMT, not working as such now. I know what you're talking about in terms of what you're going into, whether you're going to have a stairway that's three feet wide and a stretcher that's four feet wide. And somebody who needs to be brought down the stairs, it's not an easy job. Welcome. I think you'll find this to be a very different environment than as a call firefighter in Millis, as important as that is for a town like Millis. So we're glad you're here. Thank you.

And last but certainly not least, the next candidate is Ryan Parasac. Ryan holds a Massachusetts Firefighter 1-2 certification. and is an EMT basic where he previously practiced with Brewster Ambulance and is an active member of the Lincoln Call Fire Department. Ryan is also an apprentice plumber at the James Parasite Plumbing and Heating Company.

Hi, Ryan. How are you?

I'm good. How are you?

Fine, thank you. Would you like to introduce your friends and family with you?

Sure. I have my mother, Elaine, my father, Jim, and then my two younger brothers, Connor and Patrick.

Hi, everybody. Thank you for being here. In your resume, you noted training and continuing education classes that you've taken at Brewster and at Lincoln. What have you taken that you think is the most helpful for your career?

With Brewster, I'd say it was continuing my education, furthering my EMT license. Excuse me. With the Lincoln Fire Department, I'd say we've done forcible entry training. We've done... different scenarios with laying hoes and how to attack certain sides of a house fire.

Very interesting.

There's so much you have to learn. Colette? I must apologize to Parik and you, Ryan, because I called out your plumbing experience when we were talking about Parik. so many qualifications here tonight but I think that is really important and it's can often be helpful to the fire department when you're working in a building where you may a detailed knowledge of plumbing and heating and boilers and things like that might come in handy so that experience is really helpful and so thank you for that and again thanks to the family thank you for giving your family member to us for first responder needs

Congratulations. I see that you played football at Walpole High School.

Yes.

I have a soft spot for the football players, even those from Walpole. What did you learn in football and wrestling that you think carries over to work in a fire department?

I'd say in a two-parter question, football, being a part of a team, what that means. You know, always being able to rely on the person next to you. and wrestling, I'd say dealing with stressful situations. Sometimes you're out there alone. It's not necessarily a team sport. You got to kind of figure out your next move, your next step. to get to the other side. So I'd say those.

Beth?

So first I'm going to thank you for choosing us and thank you to your family for supporting that choice. So I'm going to build a little bit on what Kenny said because one of the things about our fire department is it's relatively young. and one of the things that at least I'm proudest of is that the fire department has built really strong team and so I looked at your both of your sports things and thought that is a real asset because our firefighters are really tight and they support one another and they support the community. So I was thrilled to see that and I'm wondering, I skipped someone, but why did you choose fire?

I'd ultimately have to say it's the follow in my father's footsteps. He's a retired lieutenant for Needham Fire. Oh, that wasn't on here. So growing up, I was involved in the firehouse and seeing the camaraderie between firefighters and I always looked up to that. So when I obtained my EMT, the ultimate goal was to become a firefighter.

Terrific, thank you

I'm a little concerned that your off-duty job is going to be as a plumber. We have our work cut out for us negotiating the new contracts and I'm afraid you're going to realize how much money you're making off-duty. It's going to be the problem. But as Elvis has said, both my boys and I played football and wrestled. They're two very important sports. They build a lot of self-reliance. also teamwork, and I have tremendous respect for people who participate in both of those sports, but Lincoln must be quite an experience. Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Testa, Ulfelder, Wellesley, Councilor Ice and snow and ruts on the road. It was a difficult place, but we're glad you're here, all four of you, really, and we thank you.

Thank you.

All right, Chief, any final comments?

Yeah, so I did mention to the candidates when I was done with the introductions that I would give up my seat and they could come sit here. But then I just realized I wouldn't have a microphone. So if the board's OK, I think they're sitting close enough that we could do the vote with them

directly behind us is that okay welcome to sit with us yes you and the assistant chief are welcome to join us in the front seat at the big table We don't often have the chief sit with us, so this is nice for us. Okay, Colette, please, I think we're ready for motion.

So move to appoint Parik Leyden, Matthew Montgomery, Brendan Palimeno, and Ryan Piersiak, effective March 10, 2026, contingent upon the passage of pre-employment background checks and the Massachusetts Physical Abilities Test and subject to successful completion of the firefighting academy and a one year probationary period.

Second.

All in favor? Aye.

Thank you all and congratulations.

I will let you all know too. if our Great Hall, because we'll have to continue the meeting, but the Great Hall is really nice if you wanted to take family pictures upstairs.

All right.

Thank you very much. Congratulations, guys. All set?

Yes.

This has been fabulous.

Congratulations everybody.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. This is wonderful.

Thank you so much. Take a look.

Williams. Thank you again.

All right, continuing on with our meeting, our next agenda item is to discuss and vote a traffic recommendation for PSI 2601 at 26 Washington Street. Under the planning board's rules for review of a municipal systems impact study submitted in support of a project of significant impact, The select board reviews the study for traffic and pedestrian safety to determine adequacy based on established standards and to submit recommendations to the planning board. So I'll turn it over to Megan to introduce the topic, please.

Thanks, Marjorie. So with us tonight is the applicant team, including Seth Anderson. and so I'm gonna turn it over to them to give a brief update on the traffic. In addition, we have Greg Lucas from Ty and Bond who's the town's peer reviewer. There has been and we provided to the board the exchanges between both groups. So I'm going to turn it over to you, Seth. And if you want to just go through where we're at in terms of the traffic analysis and the response to comments, and then we'll turn it over to Greg.

Yeah, sounds good. I'll kick it to Brandon first for an intro to the project team and then I'll give a quick overview of the project itself before we hop into traffic. Great.

Thank you, Seth. Good evening, everyone. My name is Brandon White. I'm the project manager For Kimley Horne, on behalf of First Citizens Bank, client manager, I work with them all over the country. Tonight, we have representative from First Citizens Bank construction project manager, Susan Bishop. as you well aware, Seth, Anderson, and Lisa with Kimley Horn to discuss the traffic. We appreciate your time this evening and look forward to having a healthy conversation.

Great, thanks for the intro Brandon. Let me go ahead and start sharing my screen real quick. So just to give you a quick high level overview of the project, we are looking at the old Taylor Rental Building, which is 26 Washington Street. There's an existing building up front along Washington Street and a rear garage. We're proposing to remove both buildings and build a new bank facility. That is this white outline right here. The existing facility has two entrances, one up on this Northern section and one down on the southern section. We're planning on cutting that down to one entrance in and out of the site and then falling through to the parking area back here.

We're planning on having a one-way circulation around the parking lot and then around the site as well. proposing some plantings. And you can see these black lines as well. These are all retaining walls. So it sort of limits our access and our ability to develop any other access points for the site. trying our best with this tight site and locating the building and the required parking on the site as well. I'll bump up to the civil plans here too. We're proposing a rain guard in the back here and some landscaping up front. You can see we've got some street trees up here, replacing the existing ash trees with some hardier trees that will remain and survive the ash borers.

Moving quickly to the building design, we've got Two architects on this project. One is based out of the US and the other is an international architect who we brought in. Both of them walked around Wellesley and the Boston area for some inspiration and some local guidance on design. One of the key elements of the building design was the bell tower. So a lot of our building and design elements have been drawing off of that. Here's some quick renderings. We're still working through it with the DRB, but you can see we're using the same materials and trying to preserve that high quality material and high quality design with natural stone and copper roof, potentially slate, but

generally trying to give it a local Wellesley flair to this beautiful building. With that, if there are no questions, I'll pass it on to Lisa.

Sounds good. Thank you, Seth. Give me one second while I share my screen. Seth, would you like to? Oh, perfect.

Yeah. Yeah, let's do it now, right?

Go ahead, Beth. Could I ask you a question? The front door is on the side facing paparazzi, correct?

Yes, that is correct.

What is the round? It looks beautiful. Is that also a door in?

Now at this point, so we are in the Lower Falls Village. So part of that is having a pedestrian aspect. So that is like a little, I think Brandon, you call it a loggia or basically a little interactive area. and I'll let Brandon step in since he's the owner.

Well, the landscape art, but a lot of the features for first systems often include kind of an iconic architectural element in a tower element frequently due to the kind of the height restrictions here of 36 feet. The architect wanted to come. Add this round tower feature. It's kind of a lower tower feature that is not quite like the Sprigg Tower, more like the church we actually saw further up Washington Street. is an inspiration when we're kind of walking around town in the greater area. It's meant to be an architectural feature. At this point, it is open air on the ground floor. It is actually a a meeting space on the second floor, kind of a small conference room, kind of just a neat architectural feature at this point.

Thank you.

All right. Give me one second while I go back up.

All right. Hi, everybody. My name is Lisa Vaughn. I am a traffic engineer and with me is one of my partners, Liam. So today we're going to talk about the transpatient analysis. We received two comments from Ty and Bon. Thank you for that. In this presentation, we addressed the comment based on the February 17th comments. We submitted the response to peer review. We received the March 5th comments and we are in the midst of updating our analysis and preparing responses, but we do have some initial responses. But when I run through the presentation, it does address the second peer review comments. So today we're going to be discussing the study area, the process about the existing conditions, really talking about the project characteristics as it relates to traffic.

and then also talk about the conclusions and the proposed mitigation. One thing that we really wanted to concentrate on is based on the zoning bylaws under the traffic, pedestrian and bicycle safety, it is noted that all signalized impacted intersection and those unsignalized impacted intersections having 50 or more peak hour vehicle trips on those minor approaches there should be no denigration in the overall level service below the level service C. So that is something that when we were doing our traffic analysis, that is something that we adhere to. Oops. All right, so for our study purpose, the main thing for the traffic impact study, we really need to understand how is the current transportation system operating along Washington Street at those signalized intersections. We want to make sure that we are estimated those site development

those project related traffic demands, assess those adjacent street and intersections, and then lastly, identify any potential mitigation. So as part of our study process, we collected traffic volumes on a typical weekday in October 2025. We pulled crash data for the most recent five years, 2024 to 2024. We forecast traffic demands of plus seven years, which is based on MassDOT traffic guidelines. We included the traffic flow analysis of How does the intersection operate in existing, future no-build, future build with projects? Also took a look at the site distance analysis and then really understanding what are the needs and the potential medications. So that's the flow of the study process.

All right, so this screen here is the study area. So along the study area, there's one signalized intersection, which is shown at intersection one, which is Washington at Glen Road. and the other intersections such as two, three and four, those are unsignalized intersections, just meaning that it's a one-way stop controlled or two-way stop control. One thing that we wanted to note at intersection 4, which is at River Street, is that there is the restriction of no westbound left turns during 7 to 9 and then 4 to 6. When we did do our traffic counts, it was noted that there were a couple of vehicles that did make the westbound left turn. So that was just something that we need to take account for. All right. All right.

So let's talk about the existing facilities as it relates to pedestrians, bicyclists and transit, because we want to make sure that this area is walkable because Washington Street is really walkable. There's sidewalks on both sides. A lot on the side street, just to the north of the site driveway, there is a mid-block crossing with an RFB. There's curb extensions or curb bump out. We wanted to double check to make sure if there were any sidewalk facility gaps within 600 feet and there was not. Sidewalks are provided on both sides. Additionally, when we're looking at bicycle facilities along Washington Street, there are shared lane markings, though they're not designated. It is a shared lane markings. But then there are five foot on road bike lanes just west of Washington Street near Crescent Street. So along this area, there are sidewalk facilities.

There are designated facilities. just south of the just west of Washington Street.

Give me a second.

All right. So for transit, public transit is provided by the MWRTA. There is the bus route 1 that runs along Washington Street. The bus stop is in Newton, but it is fairly close to the site. It's right by River Street, which is one of our study intersections. However, bus route one is a flagging bus stop. It's not a designated bus stop. You just have to flag it down. Additionally, right across from the site driveway, there's the public trail, which is on the west side of Washington Street. So just across the street. that it is a walkable area, especially because there is the Nibala Crosswalk and then the RFB. All right, so let's talk about the existing conditions when we are evaluating. So along the corridor is Washington Street. two-lane undivided roadway.

The posted speed limit, it is 25 miles per hour, but when we're looking at the 85th percentile speed, it's above that. This roadway, it's a principal arterial, it's under town's jurisdiction, and there are parallel parking spaces in the study area. When we did our traffic counts, we also conducted ATRs just to really understand, hey, what's the traffic flow along the corridor? And then that's how we also understood the 85th percentile. As you can see here this is a combination of northbound and southbound volume. Traffic is heavily congested or it's heavily traveled from morning to night. It is a busy roadway along Washington Street. And about, it's the average weekday volume. It's about 14,000 trips. So that's existing conditions.

So we noted that we downloaded and we researched the last five years of crash data, and that was from the MassDOT crash portal. So there were 55 reported crashes at the four study intersections, specifically at River Street, which is the unsignalized intersection. that intersection it experienced 34 crashes and then 12 of those were in 2024. We do we do go into those specifics of like okay what type of crashes are there what kind of manner of it. So about 56% of it, it was sideswept crashes. 21% they were rear end crashes and 21% is angled crashes. One of the comments that Ty and Bon provided us just in the March 5th, if we can research a little bit more, after I go through the presentation, I will note those additional items that they were talking about.

One thing that we wanted to note was that there were no fatalities reported at the study intersections. There was one minor injury right by the Mass General driveway. The next couple of slides, we just really want to show along the corridor, and we know you're really familiar with it, but just want to share with everybody. Along the left-hand side, it is the Washington Street. You're looking southbound away from River Street. and then on the right side, you're still along Washington Street and you're looking towards Newton. So you're looking towards northbound. This one over here, you are on the left-hand side, you're along River Street and you're looking towards Washington Street and you can see those signage that is currently out there today.

and then on the right hand side, you can also see the existing signage along Washington Street at River Street. And then this one does have a warning sign that lane ends merge left. And of course it also provides the Morris must give four feet to bicyclists when they're passing as well. However, even when we were conducting our site visit and when you look on Google Street View, there are shrubberies that it does hide that warning sign of lean ins merge left. All right, so let's talk about the specific of the project. So this is a proposed bank with office space and it replaces the existing vacant site. so there's office I mean there's bank space on the first floor which is about 7,300 square feet and there is access to an ATM machine

and on top of that, the second floor, it's going to be an office space about 74,000 square feet. Right now, there are two existing site driveways in this current conditions. However, with our project, as Seth was showing you earlier regarding the site plan, we are consolidating our driveway into one. And there's also new sidewalk construction along the frontage of our property as well. This one is showing the site plan. Again, what we want to just really show that there is the driveway consolidation into this one over here. You remove the other one. and it's a full access movement in the sense that you can turn a left in, you can turn a left out, right out, right in.

This is showing the site driveway on the left-hand side when you're looking left towards Columbia Street. And then the right-hand side is that when you're at the site driveway and you're looking right towards River Street. just to give some perspective of how are things looking like Okay, so in one of Ty's and Bonn's comments, in the second review, we prepared the sight distance analysis. So we prepared the stopping sight distance analysis. The PULSA speed limit along Washington, it is 25 miles per hour. However, the 85th percentile speed we're using 30 miles per hour.

And the stopping sight distance, what that is, it is the minimum distance required for a driver traveling at any given speed to see an object to make sure that the vehicle come to a complete stop before they're interfering or colliding with it. and the 85th percentile speed, that's the speed at or below 85% of those motorists along Washington Street are driving. and this reflect how most driver behave with about 15% of drivers typically exceeding this speed. So we're using the 30 miles per hour as a conservative approach, even though the posted speed limit is 25 miles per hour. So we're using 30 miles per hour. So the stopping site distance, that's the absolute minimum safety requirement at intersections and of course at the site driveway.

So the site driveway along Washington Street, where we are consolidating the driveway, it does exceed the requirements based on the operating speed, meaning that the proposed site driveway, it's going to provide safe We did get further comments from Ty and Bon, which we are still navigating through the responses, but Again, after I go through the presentation, we'll talk about the second comments that they provided us. All right. This is the overall estimated trip distribution. And this is really understanding where are trips coming to and from. So about 50% of our trips are coming to and from north of the site. and about 38% is coming to and from the South. About 10% is assuming Glen Road and then 2% is along Ledyard Street.

this one is talking about how many trips is this site going to generate One of the comments that we received from Ty and Bon is just to update our trip gen, especially as we are updating or trying to understand how many trips will this site be generating. So we use this methodology, ITE, and there is a land use code for walk-in bank, which this bank is a walk-in bank. However, there is limited amount of data. So for this analysis, for this updated analysis, we use drive-in bank for A&P Gower and P&P Gower just to be conservative because we were using the walk-in bank because that's what this bank is. So regardless, we updated our analysis to reflect a drive-in bank.

And what you see here is that there are gross trips based on the office building, as I mentioned, second floor. Drive and Bank, the gross trips along a peak hour, it's about 85 peak Trips, and then there are variation pending on entering and exiting. And then you have those PM peak hour, and that's about 171 trips. however when we're looking at that row where pass-by trips those are trips are those vehicles are already on the roadway they are basically passing into our site doing a quick run to the bank and then going back to their original destination. So those trips are already on the roadway.

So ultimately when we're looking at net new trips for this site during the a.m. peak hour, it is anticipated to generate about 64 trips and then in the p.m. generating about 117 trips. and then we just want to caveat that trips were not assigned to and from River Street because left turn movements it is prohibited between the 7 to 9 and the 4 to 6. All right, so let's talk about the capacity analysis key findings. That's really understanding like how is the traffic operating right now? and with the project, without the project. So under all conditions, how it operates today, 2025,

and also in the future conditions with or without the project, the signalized intersection at Glen Road, the overall level service, it operates as C or better. However, there are movements such as Glen Road that operates not at sea, it operates at and like an E or an F. So we do want to acknowledge that. When we're looking at the exiting movements at our site driveway, It is anticipated to operate at LOSF. However, all of the queues within the site we'll be generating is fully accommodated on the site. We just want to harp on that there are specific movements that are and it's going to be operating at an LOSD or worse. regardless of the project. So when we're looking at how does the traffic operate in 2032 without the project and how does it operate with our project,

there are some approaches especially the minor street approaches because it is difficult to turn out a left turn movement But we just want to reiterate that when we're looking at those minor approaches, we're not generating 50 or more additional peak hour trips as it relates to the project. and the next slide, we wanna talk about the conclusions. Again, we talked about how many site, how many new trips will this site be generating? the nearby signalized intersection, overall level service C, the minor approaches at the study intersection. Again, it's gonna be generating fewer than 50 additional peak hour trips as it relates to the project. When we looked at the measure stopping sight distance, it exceeds the minimum required distance, which that is the and one that we want to make sure we check.

And then mostly is that this project does improve and maintain safe pedestrian movement. We are consolidating the driveway along Washington Street. There are a lot of Herbcuts. And with this consolidation, it does help as there's not as many people going in and out at different access point. And you're going to have good visibility of the sidewalk. Landscape and Streetscape Features. Ultimately on the site, we really want to make sure that we are following the manual on uniform traffic control devices like the METC. So just really making sure that we have those stop control Pavement Markings, and then signage along our site driveway. So this presentation, it addresses the second round, I mean the first round of comments and what we

Hood do now, if it's okay, I can talk about our brief responses as we got the second round of comment, if that works. Yes, please. Awesome. Give me one second.

Meck, and while Lisa's pulling that up, other businesses on Washington Street, like office buildings, can they make left turns onto Washington Street coming out of those buildings?

Yes.

Yeah.

Is it reasonable for them to describe to us the bank operations? Because I was under the assumption that it was not a retail bank, that it was a commercial bank. So the trip count seemed really high. The net new trips? Yeah, the net new trips. So I was trying to figure out the net new trips and the number of parking spaces on site and the intended operation of the facility.

what people are going in for. Yes. Lisa, can we ask you about that first? So can you describe the purposes for which people would come into the bank? The trip generation, the net new trip generation to us seemed high compared to what we thought the bank services were going to be.

I think Brandon, I think you were gonna chime in here regarding the operations.

I'm happy to, yes. And Susan's here as well, and she can, it does operate, the bank and this bank in particular branch in particular will operate as a commercial bank. you know it may generally be considered retail but if we had spent a little more time on the floor plans the building is predominantly office and meeting space there are there's not there are teller desks in lobby I believe there's two or three but there's not a teller line this is not really intended to be retail most of the customers coming through are by appointment. So it's a, it's like a business purpose and the entire second floor, which was reflected in the top and the, um, traffic report is, is, is office. It's banking office, their lenders conference space. Break Space. Downstairs is predominantly offices aside from the three teller desks there as well. So the traffic these branches

It's very minimal, quite honestly. I mean, it's all by appointment. They act and serve more as a small office building than a retail bank that you would see on every corner. and in addition to that, the bank is only open Monday through Friday, nine to five. So there's a question there every evening about competing with paparazzi. our peak times are definitely not aligning with theirs which are predominantly I would guess on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Lunch, we function more like an office building. They come in in the morning, they have appointments through the day, and then it's closed at 5. I hope that maybe better explains the program from the business side.

Beth, do you have follow-on questions?

So I was a little confused. I thought I understood what the bank concept was. But I was confused by the number of daily trips compared to the way you described it as coming to work and having appointment. Are you going to have that many appointments every day? Seven or 800?

No, no, not at all. I think Lisa might chime in here, but I think when the initial one was walk-in bank, but we were asked to do drive-in bank as the in our first round of comments. I think, and I'm not the traffic engineer here based on data, but it really functions more of an office building, but there is, you know, it is a commercial piece too on the ground floor, but, that when we were asked to use the drive-in IT code, I think that generated more trips, but I'll probably kind of pause there and let Lisa chime in.

yeah so based on the IT which is the standard practice I'm sorry to use acronyms but it's basically the institute of transportation engineers and that's a trip generation manual where Everybody where all the traffic engineers when we're estimating how many trips it's a standard so it's helpful when we're doing different comparison when we were looking at initially our first round of the traffic study this is a walk-in bank we did use walk-in bank for one of the peak hours but One thing was that it did not estimate hours for a weekday and peak hour. And the data during the peak hour, it was unreliable due to the low number of studies. and the high standard deviation. And that was one of the comments that we provided that we updated based on the peer review comments. So this is based on what Brandon and I think Susan would have chimed

It is a conservative approach that it's saying that it's going to be operating or that there's going to be about 117 additional trips during the peak hour. 64 additional trips during the weekday and peak hour. However, the real function of how this is going to operate will be a little bit different. But in order to do our traffic study we just wanted to use a standard mechanism that people can do a comparison because this is a bank it's not a drive-in bank it's a walk-in bank the walk-in bank it's a little bit different but it is helpful when people are just using like a standard practice hence it's a little bit higher, but the operation of it is going to be a little bit different than a typical like Salem Five Bank or something along those lines.

Yeah, go ahead, Kenny.

So thank you for that explanation. So it sounds like this is an office building that has a small, very small retail banking component to it. and so but it sounds like the entire analysis was predicated on a walk-in bank I don't know but I would think that Office buildings generate a lot less trips. For a building that's open from 9 to 5, it's a little strange to me that we're using 7 to 8 as a peak hour, and especially 6 to 7 at night as peak hours. My guess is this makes it better from a traffic perspective, but I feel like we're looking at something that may not be relevant to what's actually going to happen.

The other question I had was the number of parking spaces. So that area, I think as you've identified in your study, There is very, very limited parking. Parking is part of what causes such traffic congestion down there. it seemed to be a mismatch for me between the number of on-site parking spots and the trip generation and as I noted earlier the trip generation didn't totally make sense to me but can you explain the two it looks like the parking is based on one set of theories and I understand now what the trip generation is based on

Parking's based on zoning.

What?

Parking's gonna be based on zoning.

Zoning, okay, perfect. And my last question about traffic is, so there is a, Particularly on Wednesdays, but many days, there is like a tsunami of children. They come from Schofield kind of down through the parking lot. to get to Mark's Pizza or Dunkin' Donuts. They come from St. John's School. Did you include that level of pedestrian, smaller people swarming as a safety measure?

So when we did our traffic counts, we did count for pedestrians and we did count for bicyclists at the study intersections. And in the traffic report, we do have a figure of how many pedestrians are crossing the street, which I can go to. I can scroll through in one second. It's right on this page here. So this is just showing the AM and PM peak hour of when those pedestrian volumes are crossing the street. And then we do account for that. the different variation of color is just showing that if there's a marked crosswalk or not.

Okay, so I understand now because the peak hour for the children is lunchtime. right that when they get out they go to CVS, Dunkin Donuts and Marks and Peters.

and then when we are doing our traffic study, we're looking at those commuter peak hours. So that four to six or seven to 9 a.m.

So Lisa, I have another question. In your trip generation graphic, you showed that it looks like more trips will be generated going southbound from Newton than northbound from Natick. If people can't turn left out of the bank parking lot to continue going the way they were going originally, how do you envision them getting to where they want to go southbound?

yeah before I answer that question I just want to reiterate for the trip generation there were two different land use codes that we use so the first floor it is the bank the second floor is the small office building so We are accounting for both of those land use. I was concentrating more on the drive-in thing because that was the land use code that was requested us to change. for this analysis we did include the office building and the drive-in bank and I just highlighted here regarding the land use code and the peak hour trips. The question about the distribution where trips are coming to and from. So it is about 50% is coming to and from Newton or from the north. but then ultimately when we're looking at the site driveway, which is right over here, it is about 50% at the end of the day is coming to and from the south

regardless if there's 2% coming from Ledyard or about 10% coming from Glen Road. So When we're looking at our site, we are anticipating that folks are going to take a left turn into the site. and it is a one lane in each direction along Washington Street. So when we're looking at, so this is a distribution, I'm gonna go to the next page. and this is going to be the how many like new trips that's going to be generating so let me highlight this section here give me one second here. So when we're looking at the AM, which is basically without the parentheses, and I'll just change this into a, that was a bad call. Give me one second. I'll just change that to a Scion. These are going to be the morning trips. It's going to be entering.

So it's about 20 trips turning a southbound left and then about 20 trips are going to be doing a northbound right turn. so it's pretty much an even split and very similar during the p.m peak hour so we are saying that folks would need to do a left turn and when myself and other teammates when we were out there, we did see folks along the existing uses along Washington Street. People are turning a lectern into those site driveways. people are exiting out of those side streets. It could be at the Mass General, Lyddiard, like people are still turning out and making those left turn movements.

My question was, how do you envision people who want to go southbound leaving your bank actually getting to go southbound? I'm not even counting the trips. If you're going to restrict any left turns, how are people supposed to get going southbound again?

They're not choosing to restrict. That was a recommendation from the peer review.

Oh, okay. Yeah, we know.

That's a great point. So as part of the peer review, we want to keep this as a full access movement. That needs to stay because it is really critical that we want folks to make sure that this is a full access movement. you can go in and out it is if we did restrict that movement we would then need to figure out where where are folks going to turn keep on going along Washington Street where are they going to turn a left turn When we add on this, there are multiple routes, but then you're going to have more vehicles miles travel along the roadway. You could have more emissions like we want to keep the full access movement here.

Okay, I apologize for that. Are there any other questions at this point? Okay.

The other things that I have, and my computer is a little bit slow, but I have it on in a really Word document, internal working, but What we could do is just talk about some of our initial responses to the peer review comments. The first one is about crash data. as we mentioned from our first iteration to our second one we did provide details and then the second one they asked for can you dig in a little bit more and then since then we we dug in a little bit more So these are some quick stats that we wanted to share with you is that about nine crashes occurred with both vehicles traveling the southbound direction along Washington Street. One crash occurred along with both vehicles traveling the northbound direction along Washington Street. And then when we're looking at River Street, there were two crashes. They were both traveling in the westbound direction.

And then there were another two crashes, both traveling in the eastbound direction. like mainly I think when we're looking at the intersection and what I could do is let me share a Google aerial. Give me one second here.

and I will share my screen. All right, do you see the Google aerial?

No.

Not yet. Now we do.

Now we see a streetscape.

awesome awesome so you're along Washington Street when we're turning around that's heading to Newton and if we keep on going straight we head into that this is the gas station and our site is right over here and then this guy, this is where River Street is located. So right now it is a two lane right now, but then as you pass River Street and you're heading towards our site, it does drop into one lane. and again, as we even noted when we were out there, this signage is warning signs. It is really difficult to see, especially what these beautiful trees that folks may not be able to see it. One of the recommendations for tie and bond provided us and we definitely feels though we can look into this further is definitely making sure that there are signing and pavement markings along the roadway

just to really be clear that maybe this could be like a designated left turn lane and then this could be a continuous through lane and then just really making sure that the signage that we have out there those are apparent for motor vehicles. So that's one of the possibilities as we're looking into the medications to make sure that when we're looking at this at River in Washington. How can we improve the safety of this? And again, we are not assigning any trips along River Street. but we understand that when you're going to a destination, we wanna make sure that it's safe for all users. So that was something that we were thinking of. This could be a possibility.

Okay, the other ones, it's more anecdotes, but we in the capacity analysis, Ty and Vaughn provided us just making sure that our peak hour factors were updated, which we were able to update. Another one was just right now the signal timings at Glen Road in Washington. As we mentioned, the overall level service when you're looking at the signal as a whole, it operates at C or better. but like we were mentioning that there are minor street approaches that operates at a level service F. When we are adjusting the signal timing in the sense that let's give more green time for Glen Road let's remove about five seconds along Washington Street. Glen Road improves to a level service E, the V over C ratio, which is the volume to capacity ratio.

that is less than one because that was one of the the things that we wanted to make sure of. Volume to capacity, what that is, is that it's showing that there's way more volume than that approach can handle. So you want your V over C to be less than one, if possible. So with these signal timing changes, this minor approach along Glen Road, it operates much better. The V over C is less than one. So that was one of the medications as we are taking a look at that. The other major thing that we wanted to talk about is the site distance analysis is that we do meet the stopping site distance. That is met in both directions. We are currently in the midst of evaluating the intersection intersection site distance, just really making sure that there is visibility. But one thing that we wanted to note is that like,

the stopping site distance, that's like the minimum to make sure that we're providing safe travel along the roadway, which we do meet. So when we are providing our responses, we are going to be providing a comment response letter and then attachments of our updated analysis in this next submittal. There were other comments that Ty and Bon did provide, but these are the ones that we felt as though it was the most concerning or the most important ones that we wanted to discuss today.

Do we want Greg Lucas to give us an overview from Ty and Bon's perspective? Yes, please. Hi, Greg. Hi, Greg.

Hello, thank you, members of the board. I know normally Alan Cloutier speaks before you. Alan was otherwise occupied tonight, but just to introduce myself. I'm a senior project manager with High and Bond. I'm actually project manager of our on-call contract, so I supervise all the PSI peer reviews that we do for the town. that are typically led by Alan. So Lisa did a really great job of kind of summarizing where we've gone through this process. And so we had prepared an initial peer review comment letter on February 17th. And then some of the comments in there were related to trip distribution, trip generation. And and some updates were made to that were made to traffic volumes were made to capacity analysis. And then We received responses with a revised study from Kimley Horne. We provided an updated letter on March 5th. And so I want to talk through some of the topics that have come up here.

And so with regards to trip generation, the challenge sometimes is that ITE and its trip generation data is the data that our industry uses, and it doesn't always fit well. because, and you heard it here in the conversation, we talked about a bank and we talked about a bank that's a walk-in bank, a drive-in bank, a commercial bank. And while the ITE data does have specific data for a walk-in bank and a drive-in bank what happened in our initial comments was we realized that the walk-in bank data wasn't really complete and we said okay use the drive-in bank data and so now we understand that we all collectively understand that that is conservative but Our challenge always as traffic engineers is when we have potentially conflicting data and nothing is a perfect fit, we use the more conservative data. So that's what's happened here is that we're using the more conservative data.

so what that means is that the office data is probably pretty well the office use data is probably pretty well estimated and you saw before when we showed the table when Lisa showed the table the difference between the trips generated by the office use which are like 12 and 16 in the two peak hours versus the bank use and the square footage is about the same because it's one floor of bank use and one floor of office use so realistically this study predicts a conservative case the site, based on the expected use described tonight, likely generates fewer trips than that. And so that's something that as a board, you should consider while you're evaluating the traffic for this. I think that The data that's been presented and has been reviewed is the best conservative approach based on the data, based on the tools that are available in our toolbox.

and so the follow-up comments had a few areas that we focused on. One was the crash data at the one intersection and Lisa just talked about you know some of the pavement markings and the signage and what we wanted to understand was the additional data that was presented said well there's some side swipe crashes and it was a lot of you know based on what's typical it was a preponderance of sideswipe crashes so it was okay well let's understand why and let's determine if there's mitigation there that can help that and I think what we know is that this is a congested corridor we know that those areas where it opens up to two lanes it kind of serves as a left turn lane but isn't marked as such the sign is there that says merge but it's hidden in the trees and so all of those factors mean that what's probably happening is that people are driving aggressively. People are jockeying for position.

And it's not surprising when Lisa described the additional data that was reviewed to see that the majority of those sites were crashed in the southbound direction. because that seems like the area where people might be trying to jockey for position and then colliding as they merge back together because the geometry requires them to. the presentation of the summary of capacity analysis that was in our most recent comment letter was just to point out really to confirm that this is a congested corridor and there are operational challenges here. The recommendation to potentially retime the intersection, the signalized intersection, and Lisa had said they looked at that and saw that it can make some improvement in the overall operation because although it does the overall level of services see, the side street approach is F. And it's F in the no bill. It's F without this site.

And that's all of these things that we pointed out in the report are level of service F without the site. So the conclusion really is valid that acknowledging that this is a congested corridor, this site is not likely to have a significant impact on this corridor. But then the other approach, the other thing that you're probably thinking of is, well, this is a congested corridor and so we don't want to add we don't want to make it worse you know and so in the margins of looking at some of the potential for mitigation that might help some of those existing conditions, that's where we're at with our comments, to think about looking into crash data, which it sounds like they're doing, to say what mitigation could be there. The recommendation to restrict left turns was to consider restricting left turns only because what we see is that the operation of that driveway is predicted to operate at level service F. We know that left turn out of the driveway is going to be very challenging.

What we also know through the things that were discussed tonight and considered is that those trips are likely overstated. And so now it's less of a concern because there aren't as many vehicles coming out. that want to turn left and the vehicles that do want to turn left may be more likely to find a gap to make that left turn. and as I know someone asked the question earlier, are other businesses restricted? Do they have left turns restricted coming out on Washington Street? No. And so I think that I think the site can operate with left turns. our comment was just it was something that should be considered but the other part of that and the question already came was well then how do they go in the direction they want to go if they can't turn left if they turn right how do they get back around and so it would be challenging because they're going to have to make a more circuitous route. And if that was something that was implemented,

The study now needs to be revised to look at how those vehicles travel through the study area if they can't make a left turn. Right now though, the study is predicated on allowing that left turn. The only other thing I'll mention and I talked before about trip generation and conservative approach. The other part of that is applying those trips to the peak hour. we as an industry we analyze the commuter peak hour the busiest hour in the morning the busiest hour in the afternoon we take the peak hour of the site during those we take the trip data of the site during those hours and so you're applying bank trips to peaks that are actually outside of the hours this business will operate. So again, it's a very conservative way of looking at it. The reality is, you can see it from the bar chart that was shown before, traffic would be a little bit less when this site is busier.

It's still congested throughout the day, but it's something that overall the study is conservative in the traffic condition that it predicts. and I'm happy to answer any other specific questions from the board on our review and on our opinion of how the site will operate.

Thank you very much, Greg. Kenny?

Thank you all for the very comprehensive presentation. So I want to go back to what I said before, which is It feels like we're analyzing this from the wrong perspective, in my layman's opinion. It feels like this is an office building that happens to have a little bit of banking going on in it. and I wonder if this was called First Citizens Office Park we would have applied the same standard and this becomes relevant because I understand this is a conservative approach but it's so wildly different when you look at the small office building. to the banking piece of it. It's like 12% of the trip generation is we're saying is being generated by the office. whereas 88% or 87% or so is being generated by the bank. And so all we can look at is the data that's in front of us.

So what we're looking at is 834 trips coming in and out of that. So if it's one quarter of that is exiting and going left, you're looking at 250 left turns into traffic. Now, I go by there every day. It's nice to think that people are going to wait for a gap, but the reality is people get frustrated, especially if they're sitting there for five minutes. and they jump out into traffic and they cause a lot of problems. There's also a turkey down there that causes a ton of problems. He doesn't move either. So I find it really hard to analyze this I understand it's probably much better than the data suggests, but it's so wildly different that I'm having a very hard time getting my arms around what we're even looking at. And the second thing is How does this if at all take into account what could be very significant residential development in that area?

and when you forecast that out or when you did this analysis did you forecast what quite likely could be coming in the near future when you do this seven year out forecast?

As part of this fork, I can share my screen again. Give me one second.

I think you're talking about the Hays development behind the site specifically. Is that what you're referencing?

Yes.

Yeah, we don't have any information or we haven't been provided any information from that site. So we haven't incorporated that data. and I'll let Lisa jump into what the future takes into account. But specifically, just to jump in here, we haven't incorporated any sort of development back behind there, since it would be just a guess at this point, hypothetical.

Right now, just going back to the trip generation, this is what you all were referring to the comparison of small office and then drive-in bank and What I just want to talk about was, hey, how did we grow our 2025 to 2032? We did use an annual growth rate of 2%. So we did grow our volume by 2%. and at the time of the study we did contact and we did review the town of Wellesley and the city of Newton because we're so close by to determine if there were any upcoming or planned developments like we just want to make sure that where those projects already presented, approved, and then if they were, we would need to account for that in our analysis. So basically what Seth was saying, that information was not provided and there's not like a master plan, a traffic study at the moment when we were conducting our traffic study.

Marjorie, one thing I think that's worth noting is although even with this, to Kenny's point, ultra-conservative traffic analysis, outside of the consideration for the left-hand turn there's not a lot of mitigation that we're seeking so really in terms of the mitigation in the draft letter that the board has seen that was posted online but and based on time bonds review, I mean, there's a couple onsite items, you know, just making sure that we would put those to site plan. you know, such as two permanent installed bike parking, making sure the landing between the accessibility ramp, so very like technical aspects. But in general, even with what we've all sort of heard is likely an ultra conservative Number.

It's really about pedestrian visibility, noting in particular for folks that are hired, not only the MWRTA, but our Catch Connect services, which is available. which is more of like an on-demand microtransit looking at potentially the signal timing but really that's it that it doesn't require mitigation.

So, Lisa, I think I read this properly, but the private driveways coming out of the office buildings that are further to the west, right, like 34... South? Is that South? Okay. So I'm directionally challenged, but further up the hill. It didn't look like there was a lot of traffic coming out of those office buildings. And but like I think we need to keep a left hand turn there because otherwise you're forcing people to go up River Street or go, they're not going to go through the next light to take a right there so I can't imagine that we would restrict the left turn there myself as someone who travels here I actually want to know when you took the pictures because I've never seen Route 16 look so pristine and car-free.

And my other comment, because we kind of skipped it, is your building is beautiful. I think it is a real upgrade. for Lower Falls. And so thank you for that investment. We kind of skipped by it, but it is a beautiful building.

Thank you Beth. Colette? So I think the question for us is is the traffic peer review appropriately professionally prepared? I think maybe we can add a comment to the letter to say you know in our discussions this is a commercial bank which behaves more akin to an office and these I think we need to highlight that to say that this is ultra conservative

On that point, I had the exact note to add that it is likely that these trips are significantly overstated.

Right. And then I think it's unfair from my own perspective to have one business be restricted to left-hand only. I think if we're going to do something like that, we have to evaluate the whole corridor. and see, okay, if this is a corridor with significant traffic congestion, you know, maybe traffic committee does look at it and says, what do we do about left turns there? Is it an alternative? is actually environmentally more effective to say, here's a circulation route you should use and it reduces emissions and traffic backup and the whole thing. But I think you need to look at that holistically, not in this one building. The last question I have is if we're going to allow the election five seconds on the traffic light at that intersection, what does it do to Washington Street? I'm sure that Glenn Wood would really welcome the extra five seconds but not if it makes Washington Street a disaster so I'm not sure if

Lisa or Greg can tell me the extra five seconds what does it do to Washington Street and if it's reasonable then I think maybe we should try it but maybe that's not we try it and then measure it and see what it does and you know it's nothing set in stone but that's my only comments

Yes, I could add on to that. We don't have the capacity tables just updated yet, but we do have it notes. My partner, Liam, did prepare it. So giving more green time along Glen Road, your northbound and southbound approach, the delay does increase, but it's really insignificant. It's about three seconds during the a.m. peak hour. and then when we're looking at the PM it's about like five seconds. So we're just giving more time to those. Glen Road and that delay does slightly increase, but it is insignificant, about like five seconds. And that will be updated in the report.

Thank you.

that was my same thought when that was discussed was what's the impact on Washington Street and often when we look at these you know they were set at one point in time based on volume at that time and so they sometimes are due you know adjustments and so we'll look at those numbers when they're presented in the summary table and understand you know whether that's a valuable adjustment or whether it's detrimental to Washington Street.

Megan, my other question was about the sign that seems to be obscured by the trees. If that's a road that we can control, can we suggest that there be some tree trimming and or pavement markings with the arrow that shows there's going to be a lane drop?

So after the bridge, we can approve the pavement markings for the left on river. That's within your jurisdiction. The sign is, so we own basically from the middle of the bridge forward. So some of that may be cleared. Some of it is tough because it's shadowed there, but... I mean, I drive down there. There's no denying it. You sort of see it. And to Beth's point earlier, it is obviously in the morning, it's really busy down there, pedestrian. It's like morning, afternoon, sort of early evening. So to me, the slower speeds, that's not a bad thing, you know, because of the amount of, in particular, you know, 4 or 5 o'clock.

The crossing back and forth at the crosswalks is fairly significant with the pedestrian-activated light between the restaurants and the town parking lots and such, so... but otherwise we didn't have a lot of mitigation findings.

I've seen what Greg is talking about. I'm sure Kenny drives that way every day. People do jockey for position. When they go through that light at Concord Street, they want to be in front so that they go first when there's a lane drop. and I'm not surprised that that was the finding that they're more going southbound than northbound. Any other comments? Go ahead Tom.

You know I really haven't had much to say because no matter what, there's going to be a retail function in this location. I use Taylor rental. I'm familiar with that left hand turn. I would not agree to restrict the left hand turn. I think it's the reality of A Suburban, The Busy Suburban Road. And where do you stop prohibiting left-hand turns going all the way up to Central Street? So I just don't think it's illogical. I'm grateful that it's this particular bank, this particular configuration with many fewer trips, I think, than what we were looking at within the data. you really don't want a CVS with a drive-through pharmacy pickup or a Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks, whatever the coffee chain is. I'm not trying to pick on one in particular. . But with the drive-through, that would really create, I think, problems at this location.

So the fact that we have somebody coming in who wants to create an attractive architectural design as an asset in that location, who has thought through a type of commercial enterprise that's not going to have really all that many trips. I think that's just kind of the way it is in that location. It's this or something worse in terms of traffic generation. and I think the other thing is frankly we're Boston drivers. I'm not sure you'd have half of those crashes in any other part of the country. So I think it's a matter, it's on us in terms of how we drive. And I honestly feel that's true, having experienced that at that light.

Okay, any other comments for Megan to include in the new draft of the letter?

No, my comment was more to thank the group for doing a really comprehensive area study of the traffic. It would be great to share this with the other project we have going on given all the comments we got on River Street because I think what they found is what we've been hearing about the River Street intersection. So that would be excellent. But thank you for a really well done report.

Yes, go ahead, yes.

Just one request, and I don't know if we can do this or not, so I'm not going to hang my hat on it, but is it possible to run the numbers, just the trip generation, with what I would view as a more appropriate code? because at some point we're going to look back at this and say, was it right or not, right? And we're going to have this grossly inflated number.

Well, we resolve it because we'll do a post-construction and post-occupancy study. And then that really becomes the baseline.

OK. So it's based on the post-study. Yeah.

And how many people are going to work in the bank? do we know? How many fixed employees are going to work?

We have there's 20 offices and there's the three position teller line And then there's four assistants there. But I mean, we have an option. A lot of the commercial bankers will work from home on certain days. So I don't expect that the branch would be fully occupied with all the staff every day.

but about 30 it sounds like, is that right?

Plus or minus, yeah.

All right, thank you all very much for your time and for your detailed explanations. I think we have our comments for Megan's for the draft for the planning board.

Okay, Collette. Move to approve the traffic peer review prepared by Tye and Bond as professionally conducted and to issue the accompanying recommendation letter as amended to the planning board.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Thank you all again. Appreciate your time.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Have a good evening.

Thank you. You too. Okay, moving on to Annual Town Meeting Preparation, Megan.

So we have provided Article 8 for the board's consideration and vote. As a reminder, this is the first year we're breaking this out into four motions. Excuse me. So we have verified this to the sources and uses. and initially we were potentially going to ask the board to vote a second time depending CPC but we realized CPC I realized, Rachel and I talking about it, we're like, oh, it actually hits in the sources and uses, not in our Article 8, so we're good. So we don't expect to have a secondary vote. there was only one minor, minor change from the last time you voted the budgets appropriately. This number is off just by a little bit because in the sources and uses when we finalized it for the Talmud Financial Plan,

It was, we had the previous amount for free cash for the Baylor at like 11,000, the 212. and Paul caught that because it had to be the 23. So it's off by that delta between the 23,000. It's a little bit more from free cash. So this is what we would ask you to vote.

all right thank you thank you for hanging in with us Rachel sorry to be a little behind schedule does anybody have any questions on the budget okay

Where are you looking? We should change that to Affordable Housing Trust. That's a carryover. We will change that as amended. Yes.

So move to approve Article 8, motions 1, 2, 3, and 4 as amended.

Second.

All in favor? Aye.

Go ahead. Rachel, while you're on, I did just want to give one other update. We had previously discussed potentially doing another Article 7 motion to transfer the funds for the graves officer to the veteran, excuse me, to Celebration. In talking to Rachel, given it's $2,500, we think we can do that as a year-end transfer. As the funds come in, we typically pay those actually in June. Some, in fact, we encumber through July. and so I just wanted to get the board's authorization that we would let the celebrations committee know that they could expend those dollars towards their purpose but that we would clear it up in a year on transfer.

So it won't impact their expenses or their operations for May?

Correct.

Okay. Any questions on that?

No. I think they just wanted the certainty that that transfer would occur.

Right. I don't blame them. You want to pay your bills. Yeah. Okay.

and then the other thing I know, advisory's been working their process over the past two or three weeks voting the motions. So I just wanted to make sure we had presentations on for you all to discuss. If there's anything in particular you want us to amend as part of, we'll start sending you individualized presentations. to capture any of the comments in particular from advisory or if there's key elements from the discussions whether it's They're taking up Article 8. That's what we need to vote it tomorrow. Certainly, we'll follow up on that one on the 24th for presentations. I'll hopefully give you all a draft for our Article 8 presentation for the next meeting. But I just wanted to open that so that Corey, Rachel, and I could take any notes you wanted us to incorporate into any of the presentations.

Thank you. I think most of you know that I drove down to town hall last Wednesday to join the advisory meeting when they were talking about the supplemental appropriation for attorney's fees. and I've discussed that briefly with Tom so Tom may have some comments to add to 7.2. I don't have I mean I'm working on you know article 2 and basically my introduction to you article 8 it doesn't need to be long anymore because it's going to follow sequentially so I'm working on that now Anybody else have any comments on presentations yet? Okay, just keep in touch with Megan when she sends them to you if you do have comments.

Could we receive an updated sheet of the articles with our names next to who's doing what? Oh, sure. Yep. That'd be great.

and I think we're down to 20. Article 30 is not being moved and there's 12 in consent? something like that.

Yeah, it's 11 or 12 in consent. We have a number of articles that had no motion as well. and this was the shortest warrant with only 36 articles in a very long time. So it's even more consolidated.

and just a reminder that the moderator's meeting is Thursday the 19th at 9 o'clock in the Great Hall.

I was just going to say, I think you do this anyway, but if you can also mark what's in consent, no motion, so we have a truly complete picture.

and I'll add the number of motions because that's changed a little bit we are expecting just so the board's aware at our next meeting another winter the final winter supplemental it's 70 degrees out now but you know we're still still in the cleanup mode.

Advisory asked us about that this morning, and I think they're anticipating they may have to vote it right before town meeting.

Marjorie, just so the board is aware, kind of late breaking news, we are going to be meeting on the town's 145th birthday on April 6th. So Tori DeFazio is going to present a resolution for the town's birthday. and we will all need to sign it sometime before town meeting. It's his custom to do it every time town meeting meets on the town's birthday.

When you say we're meeting, we, the board, are meeting on April 6th?

Town meeting is meeting on April 6th.

Okay, great. Thank you very much, and please say thank you to Tori. Okay, thank you, Rachel. We're getting near the end. Hope you can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Thank you.

All right, we have minutes from January 27th.

Corrie had distributed some minor amendments.

I did have one comment on one of the minor amendments. I'm just going to find the line item. It is... on line 106, it's redlined. It was said that Wellesley was honored as the Massachusetts Municipal Association website of the year award for its population category and it's been changed to received. I actually think it was better worded as it was to begin with. I do think it was an honor and I think it's a great morale boost for the staff and I didn't really want to see that being diminished in any way. That's fine. I have no other comments. Okay.

I think the rest were pretty much either adding some clarifying language or grammatical changes.

Okay, Colette.

So moved to approve the minutes of January 27, 2026 as amended.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. And next is to discuss and vote town hall summer hours. Megan, I had one question in your chart of all the other towns, and thank you for doing all that work. are those the other towns summer hours?

Only if they say summer in the far right column.

Okay, so some of them are year-round hours.

If they're not identified as summer, it's for the whole year.

Yeah, the preponderance is annual. No, yeah, perfect. So for the past, I say few years, but now I think we're upwards of 12 years or 13 years or so, the town has instituted summer hours. We've done various times, sort of configurations over the past. but what we've been doing essentially since 2021 is Monday through Thursday 8 to 5 and Friday 8 to 12. The employees at town hall are paid on a 35-hour work week so it's a reduction essentially in lunch hours and an elimination of lunch hour on Friday to achieve those particular times. Effective in 2024, the town moved those from July 4th to Memorial Day. And we did that last year, too. Last year, tax day also fell on August 1st.

August 1st falls on a Saturday so it would be due on August 3rd on a Monday this year so that's not an issue and so we'd be seeking the board's approval of the Monday through Thursday 8 to 5 and the Friday 8 to 12 from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Any comments or questions from the board? I just had a question. What was our experience with staying open to do tax collections?

There were definitely people that came through probably 3 o'clock that particular day.

OK. No further questions.

Motion, please.

So move to approve town hall summer hours. Second. All in favor? Aye.

Okay, next is the chair's report. I have a couple things to report. As Megan said, advisory expects to complete voting on the town meeting motions tomorrow with the possible exception of CPC and the last supplemental for DPW. The Townwide Financial Plan, which was posted online today, thank you everybody very much, contains some new information and Megan has brought us all a hard copy. I wanted to point out one change in particular which relates to the anticipated funding for the design phase of the school air conditioning project. In last year's Townwide Financial Plan, the assumption was that the design would cost approximately $4 million, and consistent with other funding decisions on design,

that funding might be dependent upon the outcome of a voter referendum at next year's town election. the board had discussed wanting to alert town meeting members and residents to the full cost of the project and that that information would be disseminated as part of the debt exclusion preparation. The school committee instead opted to install window air conditioning units, which is a less expansive and expensive project and has less construction and educational time impact. Moreover, the design estimates have been reduced from 4 million to 2 million. The town-wide financial plan now reflects that a referendum is not assumed. The design could be funded by the application of free cash funding inside the levy or a debt exclusion and the REF referendum note in the FMD capital finance chart has been changed.

The board will evaluate the times financial status following the close of FY26 with the end of year numbers, the amount of turn back, the status of reserves, and determine at that time how design would best be funded. Secondly, due to family circumstances, Phil Jamison has had to step down from advisory and Tom and I were informed this morning that Gail Sullivan will be returning to advisory to fill the remaining few months of Phil's term. So on behalf of the board we wanted to wish Phil and his family well and Gail will be at the advisory meeting tomorrow night. School Committee is meeting tonight with its two new members, Bob Sullivan and Costas Panagopoulos. They'll be discussing a new school facilities master plan to follow the now completed 2012 plan.

some of their new policies, a job description change for the three MEDCO coordinators, and an update on the AI steering committee. Another note for the board, PBC will have on its agenda for Thursday night a discussion on school solar panels and whether applying remaining project funding for Honeywell requires another vote at town meeting. Sustainable Wellesley and the Climate Action Committee have both sent in written comments about the subject. Since delaying action beyond the fall town meeting could imperil a million dollars in town funding, and the million dollar grant for which the sustainability director has already applied. Tom will be at that meeting Thursday night. The board received on Friday the set of draft regulations from EOHLC that Megan mentioned and they will be posted for a one month period.

So I imagine that the board will have some conversation about responses we would like to send to the Commonwealth prior to April 13th. And that's all I have.

Yes, please. So I just wanted to give a little update given that we had a lot of interest today both at Citizen Speak and in emails from the Council on Aging on their art display. So to set the stage a little bit on this, we need to step back to June of 24. Just prior to that we were approached by the Board of the Council on Aging to help out with their policy on display of art in their building. The Council on Aging had displayed art for the patrons in the building and had also had displays from outside. bodies, and it was causing some tension between the patrons about what space was shared for the patrons and what space was shared for outside bodies. At that point, the select board on June 11, 2024, discussed the need to develop a policy, a building use policy.

So we voted at that point to, and I'm opening my quotes here, disallow the display of art other than art created during classes at the Council on Aging at the Tolles Person Centre pending development and adoption of a building use policy by the select board. I'm going to close my quotes there. So we had taken up the building use policy at the Policy Subcommittee. The Policy Subcommittee is a meetup of two members, Kenny Largess as the chair and myself as a member. And we're working on developing a policy. The select board had a first read of the building use policy on February 25th, and again I'm going to open my quotes here and say that board members provided initial feedback including seeking feedback from building users, concerns about limitations on art displays and suggestions for the rental of space policy. No formal action was taken with the understanding that these policies would be further developed and brought back for future discussion. I'm going to close quotes there.

I think it's important to understand that the display of art in our government-owned buildings has some complications over, and I'm just gonna summarize very high level here, governments making some space for free speech, and we want to make sure that we work with the building users and that's the Council on Aging is one of them to understand what is it that the Council on Aging would like to achieve in displaying art and what are they trying to do for their patron population and we will try and work to develop a policy that does that. However, in the meantime, it's important to adhere to the policy. I did see in the Swalesley report that there was a featured artist displayed at the Tolles Parsons Center. I reached out to the leadership of the Council on Aging and just refreshed just to ask them were they aware of this these actions that we'd taken and and at that point they weren't very up to speed with that because the leadership of the board has changed.

At that point I just reminded them of the policy. told them we were working on it and to bear that policy in mind for future displays, I did not make a request of the Council on Aging to remove any art display because this board had not talked about it and that's not my role. but it was just really to make sure that the leadership of the Council on Aging were aware of the background, the policy and the work that we were doing on it. I don't know, Kenny, do you want to add anything to that?

nothing other than we've been working on it. Corey, Megan and I met today to talk about it to kind of outline the broader building use policy. It's very complicated because you have multiple buildings and different buildings will have different kind of set of rules. So it's a little bit intricate and we're going to work through that.

But it's not that we're being heavy handed and trying to stop the enjoyment of art. We very much want to support the enjoyment of art. We very much want to support the Council on Aging.

Thank you very much, Colette. And thank you for working on the policies. Look forward to reviewing them when you're ready. Okay, if there's nothing else, our next agenda item is an executive session. And I request a motion to enter into executive session to conduct strategy with respect to bargaining with the Wellesley firefighters. as I declare having such discussions in open session may be detrimental to the town.

move to enter executive session under mass general law chapter 30a subsection 21a exemption number three to conduct strategy with respect to bargaining with the Wellesley Firefighters IAFF Local 1795, as the Chair has declared that having such discussions in open session is detrimental to the town and to invite Megan Jopp, Corey Testa, Dolores Hamilton, and Steve Morderelli to join the meeting. Following the close of executive session, the board will return to open session for the sole purpose of adjourning the meeting.

Second.

Kenney? Aye. Tillett? Aye. Beth? Aye. Tom? Aye. And I vote aye as well.