All right, good evening. Today is Monday, August 5th. It is 7:03. I’m gonna call this meeting of the Hamilton Select Board to order, uh, since we do have a member on the, on Zoom, we’ll do a roll call. Why don’t we start with you, Tom? Tom Myers. Rosie Kennedy here, Bill Wilson here. Bill Olson, are

you there? Bill Olson here. That’s you. OK, so we do have a quorum, Caroline, uh, is on vacation, may dial in but hopefully she enjoys her time. OK, so we’ll start out with announcements of some board openings. We have 12 of them, so there’s a lot of opportunity for those who want to get involved, uh, starting with

Conservation Commission. We have two openings. Council of Aging to associate openings, the cultural council, one opening, the finance and advisory Committee, one associate opening, the Hamilton Development Corporation, one opening for a three-year term, the historic District commission, there are two openings for 3-year terms. And two openings for 2-year terms, uh, one must be a resident of

the historic district and one must be a resident realtor. Uh, the Human Rights Commission also has one at-large opening. So I think that’s, uh, that’s it. For announcements, um, this is the part of our agenda we’ll we’ll go into public comment. First of all, I appreciate everybody coming out, uh,

taking the opportunity, so we generally ask you to come up to the podium, state your name and your address, um, uh, we’ll give you 3 minutes to discuss a topic that is not on our agenda, so hopefully everyone got a chance, uh, to look at the agenda items. Once we get into those items, we’ll have some

back and forth, uh, if it’s on the, uh, on the, uh, agenda. So anybody wish to speak? OK OK, see you all right, great. I just, um, I have two questions and some thank yous. Um, so my first question is about utile and how much we’re planning to

pay Utah. Um, It started back at town meeting with an article on the warrant that we were going to fund. A town center comprehensive plan for $125,000. 3 weeks later, um, it ended up on the Facebook page, I assumed Joe posted that the town had overwhelmingly authorized utile.

To do form-based code and Have us, have Hamilton comply with Section 3A. There was then on May 6th, the board of Selectmen meeting and after that, Joe approached U Tyle, and said, Gonna need you to to have a greater presence in town, and Uta said, sure, but we want $15,000 more. So Joe took some

from his budget and he went to the Hamilton Development Corporation and asked them for half of the 15,000 which they approved. So now we’re up to 140,000. There was a meeting um last week, maybe on the 25th of July, um, and it didn’t quite go according to plan. It ended a little bit early.

Things didn’t go exactly the way they were supposed to go, so I don’t know, well Utah ask for more money? Will we be able to pay them less, um, that’s just a question that’s hanging out there and I’d like to know the answer. Just, just for the minutes, could you just state your name and I’m sorry Lisa

Terranova 54, uh, Woodland Mead. Thank you. Second point, um, there was a workshop goal setting meeting on the twenty-ninth for the border of Slackman. And for um for the town manager and what’s coming up and inevitably the discussion went to 3A because that’s what we’re facing. Um, and at a certain point,

Caroline and Joe had a back and forth going, um, and it was, it was very interesting because Joe mentioned and Caroline mentioned, um, we have to watch what’s going on in Wham because one is going to be putting a lot of, of units, 150 yards from the train station and wanting to use Hamilton.

Roads obviously were so connected. And Joe kind of made a joke and he said that he told Steve Pulli, who is the town administrator, that if one of them goes ahead with that plan, he’s going to sue them. And Joe laughed and it’s kind of funny, but it’s kind of not. And then Caroline, um, made a comment.

And I’m not going to use the same language that she used. It was kind of strong. I can’t do that cause my kids are watching at home. Um, But she said, I think we have to really watch Venom because they’re preparing to have their units 150 yards from the train station, and if that goes through, you didn’t.

I’ll use a different word, screw over veum. You screwed over Hamilton. And I just want, I wish she were here tonight because I really just want to thank her because she is the first. Elected town official or town official at all in either one of our towns, Hamilton or Wenham, who has acknowledged

that 3A is a tsunami coming at us. There was more discussion through the rest of the meeting that talked about, you know, our infrastructure, our, our sewer water, police protection, all the rest of it. And, and what that’s going to do to the town. And again, she used very strong language. I urge

Hamilton Wenham, uh, Hamilton Wham Cam, Bill Melville, please don’t take it down, please let it stay. Please don’t edit it. I, I hope everyone in Hamilton and Wenham discussion starts around 33 minutes in. We’ll take a look at that. Um, and my question to the board, especially to Caroline because

she is the um chair of the board and the board has a fiduciary duty to every member of Hamilton. We need to stay solvent. We need to stay safe. I don’t know how that’s going to happen with 3A coming at us. So my question to Caroline is now what do we do about that?

When will she be reaching out to her counterparts in Wenham so that the discussion can start. I’m thrilled to have her acknowledge. How rough this is gonna be. And I would love to hear her next idea and next steps. About how we protect Hamilton and Wenham from 3A because we can’t survive it and

that’s what a lot of us in town have been talking about. If you take a look at the Utah meeting of a couple of weeks ago, those were all new faces. Those aren’t the same people that come here and talk. Those are all new faces. So I want to

thank Caroline. My last point, I want to thank Bill and Rosemary. Bill Wilson, Rosemary Kennedy, um, I know it’s not an easy job. It’s a lot of hours. I watched the entire 2.5 hour workshop meeting and I applaud you because the entire discussion, you asked the relative, the relevant questions consistently bringing

3A back to the ground, bringing the discussion back to what 3A is not what we wish it might be, not, not saying it, it’s, it’s just a zoning mandate. Nobody’s going to build, not the wishful thinking part, but the nuts and bolts of what we’re facing with 3A with all 177 MBTA communities are facing and I

and a lot of people that you don’t see here. Thank you very, very much. Thank you. You’re welcome and we are You know, today we are we’re gonna review the amicus brief because you know the whole select board voted unanimously to support Milton and really what you’ll hear in that discussion is, you

know, what is the impact, you know, to Hamilton, if something like that were to pass in Milton and be forced down our throat. So all of us are very much aware, you know, of the impact and the problems that we face and we’ll drill a little deep into that in a little bit.

So thank you for your comments. All right, um, any, um, select board member reports. Sure. Are you good? Um, I’m sorry, did you want to go first? No, you go ahead. OK, so, um, conservation commission had a very um interesting meeting on. was July, I’m sorry, I don’t remember the date, it was a

couple of weeks ago. Um, And it it was a very good meeting the chair really held a task the Bridge Street project, you know that. Area where there are big cement blocks and all kinds of problems up there, um. But um we, we talked he talked in

detail about all the lots and the owners of those lots and what they’re doing to control erosion, uh erosion, and, um, he insisted that there be a sediment control expert to prevent further runoff to the wetlands, um. He also had been giving those property owners a buy for the last several months,

and as of the date after that meeting, he was going to start finding them daily, which is probably the strongest enforcement that I’ve seen in Hamilton in a while, so I was very happy to hear that, um. And um so we’ll see what happens from that, but it was,

it was a very um very strong meaning. So Um, other than that, I don’t think I have anything else right now. Uh, a few quick ones, um, it was brought up. We did have a goal setting meeting for the town manager as well as with the select board. We did

talk a lot, uh, it’s still, you know, that’s our first meeting. It went a little longer than we thought, which is a good thing we talked about a lot of topics and we’ll, uh, reconvene on that as well, but at a high level, we did talk MBTA communities, uh, we talked about the school consolidation

uh and the use of Winthrop area, uh, town center visioning, uh, workshop and the form. Code that was brought up earlier as well. Uh, we talked a bit about town hall reservations and the gap that we have in funding. Uh, we’ll talk a little bit more about that later today. We talked about water challenges

that we have in town and how we’ll, uh, we’ll face those uh going forward. We talked about Gordon Cornwell, uh, and really also that one page statement you’ve all seen before that was the foundation of a meeting which kind of brought out the top big three, issues going on in the town, MBTA 38 and one of

them. Uh, we talked about keeping that as a live document. And continually to update that, uh, and roll it forward. Uh, so we’ll work on a frequency to, to make sure we communicate, uh, things that impact the community. Um, so there was that the CPC, uh, if you all recall, Jay Butler came in on

our last meeting, uh, he did a great presentation, uh, and he was involved with our discussion about, uh, town hall funding. Uh, he since had a meeting, brought it back to CPC, I think Joe and team submitted uh a funding request to the CPC. Uh, we’ll talk about that a little bit later, uh, but they

have a scheduled meeting, uh, on August 8th, which they’ll review it again and potentially vote, uh, an approval to support, uh, and provide some additional funding. Um, planning board, um, I, I got to give them kudos and I’ll tell you I was a little bit of a critic out of the gate, um, on

the master plan for those who don’t know, we’ve been working on a master plan for the community for the past better part of two years we’ve been through 2 consultants and frankly, the product we got back from, uh, wasn’t ideal, so a lot of work was done by the steering committee, um, and

then when the planning board got their hands on it, you know, they initiated another deep dive which I thought was going to take a long time, but I will tell you since that meeting. I got a copy of it. I read it. It reads better. It uh it captured

uh things I think clear and concise, and it did not lose any of the input that the community had given uh in the initial plan. So, uh they potentially meet, I think, uh, tomorrow, uh, which they’ll review it and potentially adopt it, so a lot of good work on that. So my apologies for being

a critic out of the gate and my, uh, kudos and thanks to them for uh working as diligent as they did on it. OK, um, anybody, uh, Bill, anything online or I don’t know if Caroline joined. OK, Bill, I mean with my remote connection, I will give an

update next time I’m live, but uh I don’t wanna. Disturbed the uh connection and the uh momentum here, so keep going. All right, sounds good. I appreciate it. All right, we’ll move on to our consent agenda. We have one set of minutes dated July 15th, um, uh, to

approve. I get a motion to approve the minutes. I move we approve the minutes from July 15th to 2024. Second, check that. All right, so all in favor with the roll call, I guess. Tom Myers, yes. Rosie Kennedy, I Bill Wilson I. William Mal and I. OK, those are approved 40. Now we’ll move

on to our agenda items starting uh with one of those open, uh, um. appointment. So, so we have uh an application to appoint Denise Kelly to the conservation mission, uh, if we have some discussion on that, um, well, why don’t I take a motion, uh, to appoint, uh, Denise Kelly to the

Conservation Commission, and we can talk about it. Denise Kelly to the Conservation Commission. OK, so I did review in your packet, uh, there was a background, the whole, uh, conservation commission enthusiastically, uh, approved it and would like her to join, so, uh, any other further discussion, or I don’t know if

Denise is here and wants to say anything, but is Denise here tonight? OK. online? I do not see her online. OK, Denise. We appreciate it and uh if there’s no further discussion, um. When we do a roll call vote. Tom Myers, yes. Rosie Kennedy, Bill Wilson, yes. Williams OK, that passes 40. Welcome to the team.

All right, next up on our agenda is to we’ve done a lot of, uh, had a lot of discussions on uh uh Goodhue and Wallingford Road, so we do have a CTPS report back, uh, that where the community transportation group did review existing, uh, conditions. They did a study on it. They even

have a recommendation, but I think, I don’t know, Joe, do we have someone here to speak through all the data that we have on that? Rak Basu from Boston Region MPO and CTPS is on. Here he is on our screen behind us and uh he can answer

any questions. You have etc. um, can you, could you briefly go over for the board, what, uh, the recommendations from your final report are, uh, at a high level just so people understand. Um, yeah, I’d be happy to need to pull up the report that I, I hope that has been shared with everyone and for background

context, um, the study was led by two planners at the Boston Region MPO. I am the manager of the multimodal planning and design team, so I may not be able to uh answer any questions that are too deep in the technical details, but I’m happy to take those questions down and have um the the folks

who led the study reply to you over email. OK Did you, uh, I know you had, did you wanna, well, I mean there was a lot of data. I don’t know if that’s out in a handout or anything. We’ve had several discussions on it. Um, I think a lot of the

data is, you know, we’ve seen before, um, I think really what I’d like to focus on is more, you know, the recommendation, uh, of what and to see if uh we think that will solve the needs of the neighborhood and if there’s anything else we didn’t

look at or how it gets enforced, things of that nature, uh, that we want to talk about as a board. I um have a few comments, um, first of all, um, I think the, um, recommendation to change the um Intersection on Highland and Goodhue is something that’s a wonderful idea. I know there’s probably

not a whole lot of money in the budget right at this moment to do that, but I think that would be. A game changer in terms of safety. I was quite surprised at how many um Um, vehicles travel down, um, Waldingfield Road now I think it was 1790 vehicles. Holy mackerel, that’s amazing to me, and I think

they’re maybe about 500 or so that go down Goodhue, which is a huge number of vehicles. So two things that I, so, so I like that idea. I like enhancing stop signs, maybe some stop strips across the the road would be a good. Idea for people who aren’t paying attention as they speed down

Goodhue and down Waldenfield as well. There were two things I think realistically a sidewalk. I mean, there isn’t, there isn’t any space for a sidewalk. I think that’s I, I probably would not even encourage the town to do a study on that because their chest isn’t any

space the road at best is 18 ft wide. And then my other comment is I know that the study group was only there for one day, but there are a boatload of trucks, really big trucks that travel down, um, both Goodhue and Waldingfield, and I’m wondering

if it would be a a reasonable thing to have Hamilton and uh Ipswich combined to think about banning trucks from those very narrow, very rural roads. I think I said this last time that there are pedestrians, there are horses, there are bicyclists when I was driving down uh Waldingfield tonight

there was a car coming in the other direction and there was a couple walking their dog and we had to pull over. We could not make it past that pedestrian in those pedestrians in the car, so. Um, and then the third thing is, how about enforcement, traffic enforcement, that would be the first thing and and

instead of warnings, fine people because there are speed limit signs on those roads. Yes, enhance the speed limit signs, but I think it’s time to actually do some enforcement and that’s um all I had to say. So you started out with the intersection change. Was that where they were talking about making a tea versus is that a

costly fix or so, uh, Tim Olson should be online. Tim, could you talk, uh, answer that question as far as uh the cost of that intersection. Um, yeah, Tim Olson, DPW director, I think, uh, I haven’t done a specific cost on it, but something like in that magnitude, uh, probably you’re

looking at between 100, 150,000 to do depending on The what we plan to do there, uh, we can do something kind of short term, um, using some barricades, almost like a pilot type program, uh, but something that we can get done pretty quick in-house, um, something more significant and permanent would

obviously be a planning. Um, just to make sure the distances are correct, um, and things are, uh, you know, say for the, for the travelers and the, the motorists, I guess. No. So, uh, Bill Wills, this is uh Bill Wilson, um, one of the things we talked about early on was, was creating a and not that it

might solve everything, but creating a one way street between, you know, in one way in the direction from Hamilton to Ipswich, right? So. He, he kind of solved the two-way traffic you, you, you cut traffic in half by 50%. Um, it doesn’t create, I mean, I, I live near there, so. I, I, I

travel that road very often. I, I think a one way, and I, I’m not, I’m not sure why that that did not get more attention and and more sort of recommendation by the. By the study because I think a one way would sort of solve a lot of the problems

with, with low cost impact and I. High results. So I’m not sure why we’re not talking about the one-way solution more. Any any feedback? What was that discussed during the study, um. I forget the name who’s on, could you answer the question about the, the idea about a one way. I know that we discussed

it with the planning team and then it wasn’t one of the final, uh, recommendations, so we’re curious about that. Yes, uh, we did discuss that, so, um, I’m going to post the link to the study report in the chat, and I know that, uh, oh well, there

isn’t a chat option, but um both the study report as well as the presentation should be available with Joe and those are uh open access, so please feel free to take a look. We did explore the possibility of uh reimagining Goode Street as a one-way street, um, that did not work out, um, and in the

way that we were just. Looking at the location and the context. Instead we uh think that redesigning the geometry as we had proposed might make more sense. In addition to that, I, I think. Well, there are 2 reasons why the proposed redesign might work better. One would be, um, of course, to cut

down the number of vehicles that are using good street as a cut through, but also to narrow the intersection approaches and reduce speeding, both of which we were, we were able to observe through the data that we collected. Yeah, but, but why, but why reducing the traffic by 50%. would not be a

viable. I, I’m still confused by that. We’re, if you went one way, you would you would reduce traffic by 50%. Force people back up to Highland Street with very little cost impact and very little time impact. I don’t understand why that’s not a viable. I’m, I’m, I’m, I, I, I literally live in that

neighborhood. I traveled that road every day. And I’m 100% OK with it being a one-way street, and I’m not sure why that’s, I, I’m just still confused by why that’s not a viable solution, and why we’re not not considering that as a, as a at least one of the options. I would be happy to take that

question back, uh to the team that that led the work and I’ll try to get back to you on that. I will say that we did not um conduct any scenario analysis as part of the study. So that could be something to consider where we um. Think of the street as a one-way street and

then look at how that affects uh the traffic patterns on the surrounding streets and what that means for uh the impact on the surrounding streets, but that is not something that was done as part of the study. So Bill, um, just Remind me, was it a one way on Goodhue? That was the plan. And do you know

what traffic in that direction would it eliminate? The volume was at the, the more volume of cars or was it the less volume of cars? I’m just kind of curious. I’m trying to find it. I can’t they have about 500 vehicles a day driving down good here, so it’s definitely a good uh cut through, and then

there are about 1790 on Walding Field. So it looks like, um, go ahead, Bill, so basically if you if you’re traveling from Hamilton to Ipswich. And you went down that road, you would take a right hand turn. You know, down that down that road and and they hit Wingfield take a right hand turn to go into

Ipswicher. But if you’re coming the other way, you would just continue in Waldenfield all the way to island, take a left at a stop sign. So it’s, it’s this, this, the, the traffic patterns already exist, but you, you would avoid is the is the two-way traffic on an 18 ft wide street and that weird

intersection at at. You know, at, at Goodhue in Highland, that’s just a very weird angle, if you, there nobody there would be nobody taking a left-hand turn, which is a very dangerous so you wouldn’t have to you would if you went one way, you would not have to rework intersection. We just

have to put two. You, you have to literally put a one-way sign, which would cost about, you know, less than 1000 bucks and you, you solve the problem. So I’m just trying to I’m just trying to balance the the cost and the, and the, and the effect of traffic and and speed limit it doesn’t solve the

speed limit, right? Speed limit is, you know, whether you’re one way or two way, people are gonna drive what they’re gonna drive, but, but if you eliminate half the traffic, eliminate that left hand turn, eliminate reworking intersection. It, it just seemed like you solved a lot of problems without, without a big cost effect. I wonder what

residents think about that, OK, yeah, well, I mean because well, I mean because you do know initially residents did come and that was one of the asks one way. Ns together If you want to come to the. And I did some looking at. Um Thanks, Nancy. Which I didn’t mention last time you let me speak.

Thank you. I worry about you getting your mail every day now. No, I just. S So you I, I believe some materials are being shared, so while that’s being done, I, I, I think I would echo Bill in. reiterating that. Converting good here to a one-way street would not solve the speeding concerns and the

proposed redesign that we’ve suggested would address both issues, one being speeding and the other being uh good history being used as a cut through. Yeah, we’re definitely all in favor of the, the speed limit changed to 25, which has to go through the planning board, correct. Is it OK if I speak?

Yes, I’m Nancy Baker. I’m on Good Hugh Street and I took some time to look at the Aura project, which I didn’t mention last time, and that kind of gives us sort of a forward looking idea of what good Hugh and Waldingfield will look like in 2028 and I think it’s kind of telling. Um, the second page

of the data that I’ve provided you 2021 shows, and I, what I did was this. I saw where the NPO Study combined. The peak numbers, and I did the same thing. I combined the peak numbers on the aura traffic study for the peak hours. And what you’re seeing at Waling Field in Goodhue for 2021.

There were 94 vehicles and that Highland and Goodhue there were 96 vehicles making those movements during peak hours combined. In 2024, if you look at it, the numbers that were done by MPO shows 191, almost double. And at Highland and Goodhue 173. So you can see the effect that COVID had on

traffic in 2021 and the, the difference. But then when you jump to 2028, it becomes a little more speculative because um Aura is added into and R is a project if you’re not familiar with it in Ipswich. It’s about 120,000 to 125,000 square foot development that is

going to be a campus for a company that Now is in Andover. They employ about 200 people and their business is related to eye care pharmaceuticals, and they have companies all around the world and they have, um, acquired or have. Authority to move to that property through Ipswich. So they are

saying that they’re going to add 30 to 40 to 50 people coming in. And in 2028, if they’re fully fully built out, you’re gonna have 321 vehicles at Walding Field and Goodhue. That’s a 68% increase over 2024 and at Highland and Goodhue 304 vehicles, which is 76% increase.

So in the future, it’s only going to get much worse. So I think that a one way does make sense. And since they did not do a conflict study, they only did a traffic count. of peaks, I think that that might give you the information you would need to understand whether or not the conflicts are so

significant in that area that it warrants a one way. In your observations, have you noticed large trucks to Rosemary’s Point. Oh, it’s terrible today even just crossing the street, my mailbox is across the street. Almost every day and this isn’t peak hour. I wait 2 or 3 cars

and I have to be very careful crossing the street. It sounds silly because there’s only 4. Homes that are occupied on that street and 6 homes total and we’re dealing with this kind of crazy volumes of traffic and trucks. I know there are a lot of trucks are terrible. I, I

noticed them a lot on commercial trucks, not a pickup truck, right, because they’re big 18 wheelers that can barely fit down the road and they go flying down the road as well. It’s, it’s just, yeah, thanks to ways we have all this cut through traffic coming through, I would say that I think part

of the reason that trucks use the road is a cut. is because of its current configuration and that it, it’s a current a fair, fairly straight shot either off of Highland or back onto Highland coming southbound. By teeing up that intersection, a lot of that truck traffic is gonna stop because they’re gonna have to either slow down

to make a right, hard right or hard left turn. Either way, they may as well just go up to Waldenfield Road the road they need. It’s not gonna save them any time. By having to hit the T intersection, so. I think you reduce the incentive to use Goodhue unless you’re on Goodhue if you tee up that

intersection and that it might be a little bit more costly, but it actually gets to the heart of what’s causing the conflict as well, because a lot, a lot of that truck traffic is no traffic that will go away. So Joe, Joe, the, the, the, you know, the quick sort of trial

or or beta test is jersey barriers at the at the quick intersection. Make it be a tea, so you take it right and then make it a one way. And, and we see how it goes, but I mean that’s that’s a low cost solution to cut, cut traffic in

half immediately by making it one way, but Jersey berries at the quick, quick right hand turn, make it a T and see if there’s a, there’s an impact, but I don’t, I’m not in favor of spending $100,000 before before before before before we even though before we even though it’s, yeah, no before we

even though it’s, yeah, no I agree I agree what you’re saying though is you think the tea will, uh, you know, reduce truck traffic on its own right. Um, just having a discussion, um. What about if one way during certain hours, is that something that would work in

that area or is it a or is it a or is it a 24/7 to either all or nothing. I, I think one way is either all, it’s hard to do one way during certain hours. Folks, if you want to get in line behind the and then we have somebody online that has racist. Do we have, while

people are getting up, do we have a lot of uh asks within the community to make streets one way. I mean, we’ve done it once since, well, actually all we did was we didn’t actually do that, that ended one street Sharon, Sharon Road was the only thing we’ve done since I’ve been here for 6 years, I

had a homeowner It’s not pretty, but it’s we could probably do something to try to make it prettier, but um it’s definitely worked and done what you’re supposed to do. All right, let’s, uh, my name is Steve Chamberlain, number 64, um, and with respect to the one way, uh, a couple of things to

consider. One, yes, so, uh, I, I appreciate, uh, and I read the report, I thought it was a great report, but uh they didn’t really talk about volume, OK, and to me volume is one of the big. Issues, uh, and in particular with the one way, uh, there’s the geometry of the road between my house and which

is smack dab in the middle of the road all the way down to Waldingfield, the street grows goes through some very deep cuts. And, uh, I think this all started because as a dog walker. It’s just impossible. You’re going down that cut and two cars come either way and if one or both of them are a truck,

there’s no way to escape. Everything comes to a halt and so, uh, one way, uh, would certainly, uh, impact that would, you wouldn’t have, uh, it, it essentially doubles the width of the road for a pedestrian with a dog, as far as I’m concerned, so. Got you. Hi, how are you? Triprayard. I am, I’m a resident of

Waldingfield Road, actually between Goodhue and Highland, so. Does this project tape is Wingfield in scope at all here? So while the field was studied as part of it and that part of the report was shared with Ipswich as well. Anything, any changes that happen on that side have to be, uh, made in

Ipswich. We, we don’t obviously control what happens on the Ipswich side of the line. OK, so I think. 3 points here and I think Rosemary made some good points about Waldingfield. So Waldingfield,, 1700 vehicles versus Good Hewitt 530. So it’s like 3 times the volume, first of all, um. You know, when you

look at the number of turns, I looked at the report, the number of turns between Wingfield and Highland is. About 500 versus 174 between Goodhue and Highland. So about 3 times. And then when you look at the number of speeders, and I can I can tell you, I, I live right on Walding Field. I see

it every day. People fly down, especially that straightaway right at Goodhue between Good Hue and Highland, um, lots of speeders. We definitely need more, if anything comes out of this meeting, we need more signage, right? So, absolutely, that’s a cheap fix. In enforcement for sure, um, but you know, it’s a great road.

It’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a scenic road, we walk, we walk our dog. It’s dangerous. It’s very dangerous. Um, I’m worried about my kids walking my dog, like up on that curve like to the right of good hugh there. It’s super dangerous when people come around that corner.

So, um, I would say I’m not I’m not in favor of the one way of Goodhue going from Wingfield to Highland, because that just doubles the traffic going down Walden Field. OK, so it goes from 1700 cars. So what’s that 2300 cars, right? So that affects me and my neighbors on Waldingfield, so I’m definitely

not in favor of that. Uh, it doesn’t it. It, it doesn’t double it. Those are the same cars already on Weldonfield, so you got to be careful with the stats. Those cars are already on Walden field. They’re just not taking a left on good the go and the going straight all the way to Highland so I would

be careful with the stats until we actually have it out, but I don’t think it doubles the card. The cards are already on and feel, yeah, so, so anyway, I mean, so I think this is this is a great solution. I would advocate for the same kind of tea solution at the end of what

when where Waldingfield meets. Highland, Because if anybody knows that intersection, it’s a double blind intersection. You look left, it’s a dip, you look right, it’s a dip, and it’s they’re, they’re almost accidents there all the time. It’s crazy. Um you mean good and and the wing fields where Wingfield meets Highland. It’s, it’s probably worse than good.

We’re talking good though, right? Yeah, we, we can’t do anything about the Waldenfield side that’s in Ipswich, so no, no, I’m talking about the Walding Field in Highlands. That’s, that’s Hamilton. That’s Hamilton. So before I would say if we’re going to do something one place, you might as well do

something. On the other intersection as well. I mean, if you’re there, you might as well do it. Um, I just want welding field and scope in this project. That’s Joe, is that correct? I, I have to double check that. I I have to be on our jurisdiction. Yeah, I, I have to, I’m gonna have to look

at it is Hamilton. Your your comment is we should have the T intersection at Walding Field in Highland. There is limited. That’s not Ipswich. That’s No, that’s right, it’s not, that’s, that’s that’s Hamilton’s Hamilton Island, yeah, Waldingfield and Highland, yeah, right near the bridge, yeah, bridge to the right, exactly, yeah, I mean that’s, that’s a

bad intersection just as bad as Good Hue and Highland. So I would just, I. That’s got to be in scope in this project. Hey, you still on? Do you have an opinion on that end? I wasn’t thinking that end either, but, you know, I don’t guarantee it

yeah, I mean it is a, it’s a current T intersection. I’m not sure what the sidelines are. I’m not talking about one and, and, and we’re not talking about one A and Wings it’s an apex, so it’s, I’m talking about, do you guys know what I’m talking about? Highland

Street and Wappingfield is Hamilton. And isn’t it a tea already? There’s not a T there, no. What is it? Yes, there is. It’s a T intersection at the end of Walden Field in Highland I don’t know what the terminology is, but some type of barrier in the middle of the street so people don’t cut in.

Oh yeah, that’s we’re just saying instead of a lie what’s the it’s a funnel mouth on the other end so it’s talking about. So what that is that picture right there is What should be at the corner of Waldenfield and Highland. Oh, so you want, so you wanna, um, you want you’re looking at a splitter

island, yeah, Splitter Island, yeah, that’s what we need. Put some plants in it. Yeah Yeah Yeah, well, so let’s, let’s let’s have that intersection Good Hug and Waldenfield is in Ipswich. I, we, that recommendation has gone to Ipswich they’d have to, they’d have to do that part of it.

OK and Highland, right, so he’s asking for that intersection. Yeah, for that improvement at Waldingfield and Highland. Sorry, we didn’t, it’s good, it’s good that we get all get on the same page for sure, but I, I would just, I, I think we should just keep B and field and scope in the, in the

project. And then not to like. Take up too much time or confuse anything, but I do like the one way idea. And this, I, but I think Waldingfield should be a one-way as well. If we make Wingfield the one way and Goodhue one way, then it cuts the traffic in half. And it

widens the road, and you could have a one-way and like a plenty of room for walkers, horses, bikes. All the stuff that people enjoy on the road. You know, that’s, that’s a great idea. I don’t, I, I think to be a lot of angry motorists, but um it’s a long way around.

It’s a, it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s I think that’s a long shot, but it would solve the problem, um, that’s a long shot, but short term signage. And then if, you know, if we can just keep this end of Waldingfield and and scope, that’d be great.

OK, thanks. I, I, I mean, I like the short term stuff. I like the more posting, um, I don’t know about you mentioned strips. I don’t know if people think those rubber mats are ugly for I go over a lot of them when I’m on scenic roads in other communities that certainly slows me down, but um, I think

the short term and the, and the teas, even on both in the island, um, I’m not sold on the one way, but I’m not sold against it either. If people feel like, um, but Bill Wilson question for you because this, this sort of rephrase oh. Great comments, good discussion. This is great. Um, the speed limit,

remind me what the speed limit is posted at and what options we have to change it. It’s not posted doesn’t default to 50 or something like something like 40, but uh, we could. Again, it’s a scenic road, so it has to go through the planning board, but we could propose a drop to 25 and and get that

changed and then we should post speed limit signs on it and share the road signs and all that so, so we have the ability within Hamilton to make it a 25 mile an hour road, is that correct? Yes, if it gets if it gets approved by I think that’s

important. Yeah, I I if I may China in here, so go to Street uh does not have a posted speed limit, uh, but for a local residential street like Goode, we typically expect the speed limit to be around 25 MPH and when we went out and collected

data, we found that the average speed limit is around 26 MPH, so, so that does resonate with our expectations. We have 2 other members, uh, 2 other residents online that would like to speak and yeah, we have 2 more here, so let’s go to the Jack Whittier the raised hands, Jack. Hey. Thanks for, for

letting me in. I, I’ve enjoyed the conversation. I’m Jack Whittier. I live at 35 Wingfield Road, so I’m at the corner of Goodhue and Waldenfield. I’m familiar with all the issues we’ve been talking about. I’ve worked with most of the people who have spoken before me, um. I am strongly in favor of keeping Waldingfield in this discussion,

particularly in Waldenfield at Highland, whether it’s a traffic island or a jersey barrier that what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to deter traffic, when we get the traffic safety concerns, we get the speeding concern, but what we’re really trying to do is deter traffic, and we’re trying

to forge someplace else and by Jersey barrier at the end, a good hue forces the traffic down to Wingfield, so they take the right turn there. Walney feels a cut through. We know that. It’s got 3 x times. More traffic than good here, but if we can deter people from taking that right turn from um

Highland on the Wingfield, I’d be super happy about that, trying to keep more traffic off of Wingfield. Um, Nancy referred to the, the aura study, um, what the town of Ipswich failed to do and not regarding or specifically but it’s this greatest states bylaw thing. They didn’t do a traffic impact study for the expansion of um

New England Bolabbs, we’re seeing some of that right now. And New England Bolabbs is now permitted for another 135,000 ft expansion and there’s no traffic impact study for that either, so we’re going to see a lot more traffic impact on Wingfield. We see a lot of biolab folks coming through

already. We’ll, well, if, um, very specific to aura, you should know we’re in court on that. I’m the lead plaintiff. I know the issues very well, um, and we, we expect the the the court decision on on standing in November, so that’s not done

deal by any means. We intend to fight it as long as we can. So keep that in mind in the background. Um, but it comes back to this issue of, of safety and, and I, I, I, I mean, Steve mentioned it, um, Mike might make it. Getting out on

the road is just, it’s an embarrassment right now. It’s, I have to cross the road to get my mail. I walk my dogs on the street. I ride my bike on the street. It’s not a safe place right now, and, and the trucks are, are, are difficult, so are

the speeders. Um, uh, Trip talked about the, the in front of our house, you know, they go really fast there, so whatever, uh we, we put a lot of stuff out there and And I really supportive of a solution here. I know um I’ve talked with Mike a bit, the, the, these short

term solutions of getting the Jersey Barry up as soon as we can. I put the Jersey barrier at the corner of Waldingfield in Highland, as well as at, at um as good here in Highland and just see what happens. It seems like a pretty quick short term

solution, get some data out of that. Um, so, so Joe, Joe and Tim, just good, good, good discussion. So do we control any part of Waldenfield and Hamilton? I’m, I’m confused by that. I thought we had zero control of Waldenfield’s, there’s a little part of it that’s in Hamilton. Yeah, just

it’s pretty much the intersection of island uh Highland and Waldingfield and up uh up just the ways up Wingfield a bit. OK, all right, that’s good to know. Thank you. So is it makes sense, you know, I heard somebody say, well, let’s just get some short term stuff out there and see what

happens and we can continue to have discussions, but move with all the short term recommendations, move with both intersections having a tea, whether it’s barriers, you know, something cost efficient though in islands, you know, to deter it, slow it down, whatever it can do, um. Post the, um, yeah,

we’ll need to send it to planning board for that. We need to send a plan of work, but for the for the speed limit, um, and for Jersey barriers and such it’s it’s a scenic road, so they’re gonna, they’re comment on that. I mean the appearance, I mean, it’s the same road carriers there it’s

gonna look a little less colic, I think we throw in the short term, uh, no commercial trucks. With Oh yes, automatic? Um, well, We’ll have to check with the state. I, I, we might have more ability to do that on, um, to limit the size of trucks. I don’t think you can say no

commercial trucks, but you can limit the size of the truck on Goodhue. It’ll be tonnage in length, but it’ll it’ll be. More difficult to do that in Waldenfield. Wingfield, I mean, obviously Goodhue is a very minor street. Wingfield was built to be a, a larger road to handle traffic back and forth

it’s 18 ft wide, I think when the state rebuilt the bridge, they were definitely saying that they wanted that that road to remain open in that way. So. I, I just, my, my sense is that it’d be more difficult to restrict traffic on that road, then we’ll see what our ability

we can we’ll ask, we absolutely will ask. I just don’t want to get people’s hopes up. Yeah, no, no, that, that one is a few things that we need additional approvals for um. I’m not there on the one ways yet, but I’m not, again, I would, you know,

take heed from those who live there, uh, I think of a total block would be a lot. People that go way around, but maybe one of them and a cut, you know, stop to cut through, you know. You know, could work, but maybe that’s more comes into, let’s

see what happens with flow and speed with all the other improvements and then address it, uh, we’re more online that wanted to speak, so. Yeah Thank you. I’m Beth Howell. I’m at 33 Waldingfield Road and I’ll be quick because I’m gonna echo a lot of what other people have said. Um, I appreciate very

much that we’re talking about this. Uh, I live on the section, the Hamilton section of, of Wilding Field, so it’s between Highland and Goodhue. So I just want to, uh, voice my support for I love hearing the, um, Just that there’s a a thought of limiting commercial vehicles, even if it’s tough. I think

that would make a big difference, um, certainly anything that can restrict speed. We see people flying down, um, down the road, it’s, it’s scary. I’m concerned about my family and other people’s families who, who use the road. Um, the other thing that I wanted to mention is Um, I absolutely appreciate that my neighbors on Goodhue want to

restrict, um, speed in traffic, and I just wanna echo that, um, anything that Um, In that exacerbates the problem on Wingfield. I’m quite concerned about. So I think that’s it. Thank you very much. I do think that would. The Go ahead, sir, yes. Hi Mike McGinn, 112 Goode Street, um, first I’d like to

thank the folks from the state for doing a really great job. You validated our concerns and something we as a group of neighbors have been talking about for a long time. Uh, it is scary to live on Goodhue Street when you have a dog and you walk it every morning, um, I’d like to try to condense

this into 4 doable things that you guys can approve tonight and vote on tonight. First, the 25 mile per hour speed limit. You’ve already talked about that. Let’s do that. Second, let’s have some enforcement. It doesn’t work to have a speed. Limit without enforcement, so get a squad car down there.

Um, second, consider truck restrictions. You guys have been talking about it, but uh Rosie here has said 18 wheelers don’t belong on Goodhue Street, especially when two of them are meeting in that cut that was mentioned earlier, is an embankment at a good 104 where you literally cannot get off

the road. So let’s consider some kind of truck restriction. And finally, Let’s do that intersection. Let’s put the jersey barriers up. Let’s get some paint and draw the lines and let’s see what happens now as for the good Hugh Waldingfield intersection. By the way, that change in the intersection on the western side of Goode Street is a

disincentive for truck traffic, and that’s what’s mentioned in the report and it’s one of the primary reasons they say we don’t need to have one way because trucks aren’t going to make that squiggly turn. The other problem if you look at a one-way street, is that you’re gonna have to involve Ipswich

at the other end of the road. Now I don’t mean to cast aspersions, but getting something done in the cooperation and consensus and involvement of the folks in Ipswich is not a positive thing. I don’t think they’re gonna jump for this solution, putting a pedestrian strip or whatever it’s called, uh, it’s Mostly

It’s something that that is actually quite unusable and unwieldy in that part of the road. It’s way too narrow to have a pedestrian strip, so getting the cooperation of Ipswich for anything on that end of Goode Street I would advise you to be very wary of. Well, we can ask. Thank you.

Thank you. We have, uh, Bruce Howell on the. So OK, Bruce. Can you hear me? We can. OK, good. Uh, hi, uh, Bruce, how I live in 33 Waldingfield Road. My beautiful wife just spoke very recent. Very recently there, um, just a couple of things, um, you know, this, I

don’t know, I heard somebody say something about the road that Waldingfield is wider than Goodhue, which is certainly true. Um, and Waldingfield is designed to handle traffic, uh, or I don’t know who said that, um. You know, Wingfield is pretty narrow in and of itself. We live in a world today where Everybody or a lot of people

drive trucks and SUVs. I don’t know when Waldenfield was designed. I don’t know when it was when the last time it was widened, um, there are two cars coming down Wingfield Road. You have to really, um, slow down if there is a, if there is an 18 wheeler, I don’t. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s very, very, very

narrow. And during the winter it gets. So much worse. I mean, after a snowstorm, I, I don’t, I don’t even know if 18 wheelers go up and down the road after, uh, during the winter because it’s, it’s, it’s nearly, it’s almost um not negotiable. Um, The, the, the, um. Waldingfield it goes from,

uh, it’s in Hamilton from Highland up to Goodhue, is that correct? Well he Does anyone know that? What was the Basically from the intersection of um Highland to the inter intersecting with Goodhue is all, is basically all of Wingfield is in Hamilton. No, not all of it is in Ipswich.

I’m, I’m not sure exactly where the line is, but I, um, the intersection of Goodhue and Walding Field. is in Ipswich and there’s a part of that’s yeah, so I, I don’t know exactly where the line is there, you folks that live there probably now. Yeah, you know, I just wanted to share my concern

about the, the narrowness of the road and what happens during the winter and the fact that um, You know, as Jack said, um, Jack is my neighbor, um, the, the aura development, the uh, the, the development at um New England Bolabbs, the amount of traffic, this road was just wasn’t designed to handle it.

And, and, and I don’t know when somebody is going to recognize the fact that Something needs to be done to the road to handle this new traffic. That’s all I have to say. Thank you very much. Thanks for, thanks for listening. Thank you. Alright, uh. Great discussion.

I think where we’re ending up is agreeing with the short term solutions and implement them as quickly as we can, um, Adding and seeing what we can do, you know, wouldn’t be short term, but next phase on, uh, restricting commercial vehicles, uh, as well as the Jersey barriers and the islands on the

two ends. Um so if that’s what. And the enforcement, which is, which is easier once we have the speed limit posted the signs, it’s hard to write somebody’s speeding ticket if you don’t have a speed limit and I think in reality, once the speed limit comes down and there there’s some enforcement there, it’ll decrease the

incentive for people to Go down that cut through. Um You have a So I’ll entertain emotion to that effect if unless there’s some further discussion. Bill, thanks for coming down. If there’s something more you wanna add, having a lot of experience in that area. I think uh I think it’s a

two-step thing, right? So I think we got to do some short term stuff now. Before we invest more money to make sure it’s gonna work, so. This is a great discussion, but I’m just not sure what the first, I mean, what do we have a list of what

we’re thinking first term and sort of let’s just, let’s just be more. Precise with that, but yeah, it’s, it’s laid out in the packet and I think what we’ll add to it is enforcement, uh, in Jersey barriers and islands on the the two intersections. I don’t know, we didn’t talk about the share of

the road, uh, lane. I don’t know if anybody has an opinion on that, but couldn’t hurt to have a sign up. I think because they’re there are a lot of other disciplines that that use that road. So all the signage represented in the, even if we didn’t talk about it, we’ll just include that. So, so I’ll

entertain a motion for that. And I moved that way approved the short term solutions that Bill has just enumerated. I can’t repeat them Is that right? Do we have a second. So we do not need a roll call call it’s unanimous 40. And I think we’ll come back around and, and maybe

in a period of time, a month or two, whatever, and I’d love to see, I know we have some equipment in town, right, Joe, that we could measure traffic to see if we’ve impacted some of these numbers and the police can run some of that, um, some

of that stuff. Ruak, thank you for your for your help this evening. Yeah, absolutely, just on a parting note, I, I want to share with everyone that it was a pleasure to work with uh Joe and Tim on this project and um he really cares about your

issues and, and he made the effort to reach out to us and ask us to study that uh area, we will, uh, I, I’m going to take the question about uh good here being considered as a one-way back to my team and I’ll get back to Joe on that.

Thank you again. Have a great evening. With what you just voted. Include the Jersey. Yes, yes. Thank you. Good discussion thank you all for speaking. OK, let’s move on. We have a review for proposed changes to the EV charging fee structure, um, from our energy manager, Vicky little from our energy manager,

Vicky little from our energy manager, Vicky little piece right she hear that she’s not from our energy manager, Vicky little piece right she hear that she’s not able but did the memo should be, uh, sufficient for you guys if you have any questions pretty self-explanatory I miss that’s

that. There’s a lot of data in there. I’m trying I’m trying I’m trying I’m trying I’m trying trying to get Rosemary. Hi guys, ready, um, we’re gonna move on, uh, if you saw in your packet, there was a memo, uh, to Joe, uh, regarding, um, you know, changing some rates, uh, for the EV charging stations to

keep up with basically market rates, um, so we’re not, you know, losing money on those charges? Uh, Vicky is not here with us tonight, so if there’s any specific questions or you want a minute to look at it or have a discussion, um, I guess I’ll I’ll entertain a motion, uh, to approve the rates and

then we’ll move into discussion. Anybody? I’ve read it. I want to make a motion to, uh, uh, to vote on, um, yeah, go ahead. I move that we approve the motion I don’t approved the new EV rates at pattern and the um. Public, it’s at the town hall. 2. Any discussion. You know, I’ve always got something to

say, so. How long um those EV charging stations, especially the one at Patton has been there less than a year. And my concern is that it’s, it’s a money loser. From, from the start and it’s, it’s pretty amazing to me that neither of those are even break even and so. I’m, I’m concerned and

maybe it won’t happen, but I am concerned that if we, I mean those are pretty hefty rates, um, are people still going to use them, and will we break even and or make some money off of those, so where are those projections come from and how reliable are those financial projections. But of course,

Vicky’s not here to to to discuss it. I mean, we’ve got to keep up with rates, right, regardless, I mean, I think, I think if we didn’t, we would get even more usage maybe to your point, but I mean I’ll let your home electric bills are going through the roof, right?

Or at least mine is, um, and that will drive people instead of putting in a plug in their own home to make sure they, uh, you know, use the, the ones that are available either at the middle school or the two we’re discussing here today, I

would just, um, I, I would just want to make sure that, um, you know, we’re Charging a market rate plus whatever our cost to support might be, if any, um, and that, you know, we’re not losing money on those items. Did that speak to money loss in in in there? Did you didn’t

even break even. But the problem is if we’re paying rates somewhere, right, we’re just, we’re gonna lose more money, you know, the more the less we charge him because I assume we’re passing, we’re paying a rate to what we pay for the electricity at those stations and also on our annual

maintenance costs are for the contracts to, to maintain the, uh, and the rates today consistent with the rates that we pay or the rates we pay going up? I think the reason that Vicky’s recommending increases because yeah, I think we got to stay and watch. That that otherwise our, our loss

grows. I it’s a, it’s a significant increase, and I’m, I just. I just hope that surrounding areas have similar rates, so we wouldn’t lose, um. The limited business that we have now. Yeah, I don’t know the the. rates in other local. Or if people have them in their own home now, but. I just would

be, you know, I do think we have to keep up with what we’re we’re charging. Yeah, no, I don’t, don’t disagree at all, but just the reality that we’ve not been keeping up as uh. Now are the ones at the middle school active that the schools put in and do we know their rates? Would this be consistent?

um. Well, Vicky’s advised them as well as us, so the memo so the memo I’m sure she’s recommended to them as well to increase the rates uh the same way, um. But you can see based on the at the bottom of the memo, she says that assuming

the same station usage in FY 25, the new rates would generate enough money to cover the anticipated costs based on our annual O&M cost so. Right So I, I think we got to keep up with that and I think it’s something we should look at on an annual

basis or 6 months or something to see if the Rosemary’s concerned, you know, they fall off the map and, you know, understand, you know, if they’re even, if we’re just losing money on them, I, I don’t think that’ll be the case. I do just, I think people are used to paying these rates now.

But I don’t have an electric car. I should ask my sister. She’s a there’s a Tesla, so I, but I don’t know if these. Would be chargeable for Tesla, but anyhow. Any other thoughts on the table? Or any anybody think it’s not the right thing to do? Well, if we’re losing money, it’s definitely the

right thing to do. So we had a we had a um. The first and then a 2nd, I think, right. Motion by Rosie 2 by Tom. What’s that motion by Rosie, 2 by Tom. OK, Tom, thanks, uh, all in favor of changing the fee structure on the stations in town, say, a

pass is 40. OK OK, uh, review of the amicus brief draft, um, that came in. Appreciate all the work done on that also, uh, Marnie from the, uh, planning board sent some good input as well as Rosie, so we’ll talk about that as well, so. So yours. Hi, thank you. uh, thanks. Good evening. Thank you

for having me. My name is Jonathan Mary. I’m an attorney at KP Law, uh, a good portion of my practice for the past, say, 3 years or so has been MBTA zoning, Section 3A of the Zoning Act, uh, and helping different communities, uh, who are MBTA communities come up with plans, strategies, bylaws

to address that. Uh, and so this board’s request, I drafted, um, along with Tom McEnany and Amy Questsel in our office, an amicus brief. In support of the town of Milton, as you know, the Attorney General has sued the town of Milton for noncompliance with 3A. Uh, that case is currently in the

briefing stage, so the AG has filed her brief, the town of Milton’s is due on August 19th, and we anticipate oral arguments in October, uh, and so just. By way of very brief background and maybe for people who don’t know, the general rule with amicus briefs is that you need permission of the

court to file them, but in high profile important cases like this one, the court will on its own initiative put out an announcement, an invitation to anyone who would like to file a brief, who may have an interest in the case to do so and so that’s what, uh, the SJC has done in this case. Uh, the

caveat being that they usually ask for specific topics and the SJC did that in this case. And so the three topics that they wanted to hear from, uh, interested parties was whether and to what extent towns have to comply with 3A, whether, uh, and to what extent the Attorney General has independent

enforcement authority, and whether and to what extent towns have to comply with the guidelines promulgated by now EOHLC. And so I, I believe you all got a copy of my draft. You’ll notice that that’s kind of the structure that we took in addressing those. questions. Uh, we also tried to, um, incorporate some comments that

the town had previously submitted to DH CD, uh, about. Complying with 3A and, and so those are incorporated in there, um, so just for logistic reasons or uh logistic procedure, the town of Milton has to file their brief August 19th, the AG has a chance to reply again due September 9th,

so we have a little bit of time to, you know, fine tune, you know, uh, edit this and, and, you know, make some final adjustments, but I, um, I’m happy to answer any questions you have. Uh, we’ll look forward to your feedback and happy to make any edits you’d like. So when briefs are filed

and if other communities. Do as well. Is there a place we can go and read those or is that something after the 19th or after they’re hurt in October that we get inside into, so they’re um they’re posted on the SJC’s, uh, case docket website and I’m happy to forward that website, um, just

now, the only brief that’s available is the Attorney General’s brief, because that’s the only one that’s been filed, um, I’ll, uh, because it’s in this brief, I’ll just let you know that, uh, KP law also represents the town of Middleborough, and I’ve written them a brief that’s. Pretty similar to this, you know, argument wise, uh, their select

board also wanted to file an amicus brief in support of Milton. Um, I’m not aware of any other communities, but, you know, there’s plenty of other communities that might be thinking about it or um, you know, doing that on their own. Couple of questions. Um, I know that the amicus brief in the,

the SJC asked for these specific topics. Can we go beyond these specific topics, or is there a way that we can address sort of the uniqueness of Hamilton and sort of some of the, you know, situations we find ourselves in here in the city might impact our infrastructure, our water, all

of that. Is there an opportunity to add that in there so we can sort of make ours unique to Hamilton. Yeah, there’s certainly an opportunity to add those in. I think it’s important just from, um, an advocacy or persuasive aspect when we, when we file a brief on behalf of the town

that we want to focus on what they, the specific questions that they’re looking for, but that’s not to say. That we certainly can add in specific concerns that you all have, um, for example, as they apply to the guidelines, um, because that would be like an appropriate place to to talk

about that, but I, I, I would recommend that the main focus be towards those three questions with, you know, and how we support that could be with uh more local concerns. Thank you. uh, and then the other question is as far as the the amicus briefs and sort of speaking to those three

positions has any entity filed sort of in the other position of sort of supporting the Attorney General’s s. Um, do we know of anything that’s been filed or people or agencies that are leading in that direction to file in support of the AG. So as of about 30 minutes ago when I looked,

nothing else was filed. There certainly could be people who are drafting those, um. I, I would imagine that EOHLC might file their own brief. That’s just speculation, uh, but there might be other organizations, trade groups who might, you know, file on the AG side of this, so we, we, we kind of

just have to wait until, wait and see. Thanks. So I, um, you, I don’t know if you got it yet, but I did, um, add some comments that I think are that are specific to Hamilton and they do talk about the financial impacts the infrastructure impacts, um. Considering the 731 apartments or. Dwelling units that we need

to um, have, um. And I, I wonder now you said that you support in in your brief, which is great. I, I think you did a really good job, but really, you really hit on on all the issues and it’s very um dispassionate, but very, very well, well written, um brief, um. Are you going to

incorporate by reference all the arguments that Milton makes or uh do you know your your language was stopped short of that, I think. I, I would probably recommend against an incorporation by reference just for this reason is I haven’t seen what their brief is going to be, you know, I don’t know

what particular arguments, and we have to remember the underlying case is one of kind of local Milton procedure and you know they had a refer. and they have their own bylaws and so I would, uh, and part of the reason why the brief stopped short of making that wholesale in corporation is they have

unique factors that aren’t applicable to, to, to this board or this town and and I would hesitate to kind of just kind of wholesale, add them in, and that’s why I think, you know, we do have an opportunity to, to insert local concerns and I apologize. I just haven’t seen your comments yet at 5:14.

Um, I didn’t think I’d seen them yet either. So, so I’m, I’m more than happy. I know I got, um, or the town manager forwarded me comments from the planning board chair. If she got hers in way early like one o’clock, so, so I was in the

office still. I wasn’t, uh, so I, I saw those, um, but yeah, no, I think we still have an opportunity, we still have plenty of time to incorporate those. I probably just wouldn’t recommend a blanket. Incorporation by reference, I think it’s probably a bit more persuasive to address the local concerns in particular things

that that And then just my other question is um how big a town, what’s the population in uh Middleborough that you’re also representing? Oh, that’s a very good question, I think. I don’t know. Can I Google it for you? I’ll bet Jeff will beat you. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a population

question. I have to prep on that now. Uh, let’s see, it looks like just over 25,000 compared to us. Um, so yeah, they’re, they’re a, they’re a they have a commuter rail they share with Lakeville. So it, it’s, it’s somewhat similar, um, in the sense that you all share, you know, a commuter rail close

to Wynham and um and, and I did note that in my comments that we are a small town. We don’t have the capabilities to grow our infrastructure and everything that’s related to that with this, with this mandate, but anyhow, so those. Those are my comments and I’d appreciate any feedback you

would have when you get a chance to look at them. Did with Middleborough, did they, uh, collaborate with their neighboring shared. Town, unlike we’re, you know, we haven’t really done with one of to is that powerful to do, um, so I don’t know if Middleborough has specifically collaborated. They’re working with their regional planning,

um, association on their bylaw, um. I, I have helped or been involved in other MBTA bylaws in towns that they do, you know, either communicate with their neighboring town or at least run them by. So it’s been a, it’s been a common strategy. Is that, is that spa? Yeah, Cerpa for Middleborough. Um, so from,

from my perspective, I, I, I know you all have comments. I’m sure there might be other comments after tonight’s discussion. I know also the planning board, uh, chair, at least I got her comments. So I’m happy to look at whatever comments you send I can incorporate, um, the best I can,

those local concerns into a second version of the draft and then, um, I don’t know when your next meeting is, but maybe 17th August 17th, so August 19th, Monday, August August 19th. And so maybe I can uh try to get you a second version. For August 19th and then, um, I would probably recommend

waiting until Milton and probably even the AG file their reply brief, just in case there’s something in there that we want to specifically address. Um, when was the AG reply again? I’m sorry, September 9th. And so the rule is we have to file our, uh, brief 3 weeks before the oral argument. We don’t

have that oral argument date yet, but it’s scheduled for the month of October, so probably at the latest um. End of September, this needs to be electronically filed with the SJC. So where does it, it goes from there, so does it go to a clerk who reviews it to see if it’s redundant or should be

reviewed by judges or you know, to be completely I don’t know how that works internally when I, before I started at KP I collected at the Land Court and so when we got briefs like that, either the clerk or the judge would kind of review them and then there would be a conference of judges that would

discuss it. I imagine in this kind of high profile case, um, they’re gonna read the briefs, um, and they might not mention them at the oral argument, but they always acknowledge. Them in their decision and in those backroom discussions, um, Uh, you’ll definitely have the the local issues or the concerns raised, uh, talked about, um.

I’m me personally, I’m curious to see what the court has to say and what questions they ask, but. Well, I think that’s uh we’ve got a good start, um, from all the, so we incorporate, um, you know, review what Rosie has done and, and Marie and then, and let’s shoot for another draft, you know, it’s

the 19th you said or 17th. The meetings on the 19th, uh, I’ll be away effective Thursday until the day before that meeting, but um if you can, but I will be checking email, so if the board wants to send any additional comments that to me I will forward them on to Jonathan and, and, uh, Tom

immediately and then if you guys. could have a draft ready for the meeting on the 19th maybe. Uh, you could send it to us the Thursday before so that the board have a chance to look at it in advance of the meeting and, uh, barring something

coming out from either the AG or or Milton that makes us want to make a later change we should mostly be ready for you guys to do what you have to do in September. And, and if, if you all like the final drafts, the 19th, we can, you know, monitor the briefs if there’s something really explosive in

those briefs, I’ll send an email and say, you guys might want to consider X, Y, Z, but you know, if it’s kind of status quo or what we expect. I can let you know as well perfect sounds good. Thank you. Anybody wanna share any comments or anything? Disagree with or agree with. You’re welcome. Sandy Fisher,

Greenbrook Road, um, it seems to me, and, um, I’m, first of all, I just wondered if it’s possible to get a copy of the amicus brief draft. I’d love to look at it. It was in the packet, so it should be available online if you if you go to the Times website and download the packet, it’s in

the middle of the packet. I’m sorry I missed that. I’m not there yet All right, I looked for it and I couldn’t find it. I thought I could be. I had asked Laurie to post it, so I think it’s there. Yeah, it’s, it’s on there. OK, it’s on the

website, it’s on the uh, uh, if you go to the town of Hamilton select board website for today’s meeting, there’s the agenda and the packet. It’s in the packet. Somehow I, I didn’t see that. I was trying to find it. OK, sorry, I would like to comment on that at some point, but I’m not really prepared to

comment specifically about the amicus brief because I don’t know what it says. Um, so feel free when you get it to send some notes to Joe. OK, that’d be great and we can incorporate that into our next discussion. That would be great. I’d like to do that. Um, it seems to me,

um, regardless of what the. The 3 questions are that they want addressed in amicus brief, um, It seems to me the bottom line in all of this is that Milton voted against the state and the state didn’t like that and they’re selling, uh, they, they’re suing. Milton. Um, that’s really disturbing,

actually, and I’m actually hearing from people in other towns when I asked them, you know, what if they thought about 3A, they said we have to do it because we’re gonna get sued if we don’t. And I think that’s not a way to proceed. I think people need to have facts about like Rosie was mentioning

infrastructure and all of those things that could go on and on. I have a background in water resources, so very familiar with that, especially where, um, We’re talking about, uh, regionalizing and all of that. Well, if all of the eastern Massachusetts towns and cities are being required to put additional housing in.

That’s additional water that’s going to be needed by everyone. So going knocking on next door to a town and saying can we share your water is not gonna work because they’re gonna have their own problems. So I just want to thank you so much for all the work that you’ve been doing and really appreciate it,

and so thanks. OK, you’re welcome. Did we need to vote on anything there or just uh moves through the process, correct you don’t I had it there in case you wanted to take a vote you want, if you want to take a vote to endorse this process but that’s I think we have done that so we’re just

incorporating additional information. Uh, Stephen McWhorter, 18 Cunningham Drive. Uh, I just want to state this is uh very encouraging. So thank you, um. And um, I’ve spoken with a majority of uh the town people in the town here, uh, they want to keep Hamilton Hamilton. Um, everyone is concerned about 3A, but more

so even the infrastructure and the water like. Rosie was saying, um, I did have a conversation with our water director in the last week and. Just for the record state that. You know, this town is at its max as far as capacity for producing water, uh, goes without saying, but um the

biggest concern from the citizens is that, um, they were wondering what the boards were doing so. At least when I have conversations with other residents I have some positive things to say. Other than. Can’t tell you cause I haven’t heard anything, so, um, but, uh, keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank you. So I’d just

like to make 11 comment I received, um. Um, a message from a resident who was Pretty distressed about this 3A and was very worried about the, the fact that Milton is being sued and was very worried about Hamilton being sued and. My, my comments to her were that uh it’s. We understand the

situation. We understand the risks involved by not complying, but we also understand the risks to our town if we just comply with something that we believe is is unfair and so we are very cognizant of both sides of the argument, and we are really trying to um evaluate it. In a way that’s

best ultimately for Hamilton, and I think by requesting this amicus brief from um KP Law is, is a good step, and I think when you read it, you’ll be very encouraged because I am very, uh, I personally read it with great interest, and I was very impressed they they hit a lot of very important local

issues, so, um, there’s a, there’s a lot to this, and I don’t. I think that any town, especially as town of specials, specials, Hamilton should just say, oh, we have to comply. We have to do what’s right for the town and if that means we have

to fight if then. I’m willing to do it and I think my board members, um, my colleagues are it looks like a lot of residents are willing to fight this too. So let’s just see what happens. I said, Jonathan, thank you for that. Thanks, thanks. OK, Tom, you might want to stick around for the next

one too. No, what is, what is our next one? OK, so as we mentioned in the onset, um, uh. When the bids came in for town hall, there was a gap in funding, uh some an increase with a $2 million deficit. Um, so this will require a special town meeting, so some scenarios

of funding options have been provided and uh I think we’re gonna open and talk about uh a special town meeting as a venue to accomplish this. So, um, your direction after the last meeting we uh confirmed that we could use the library, I’m not the library, I’m sorry, we’re in the library. We could use

the high school, um, auditorium for a meeting on Monday night, the 23rd, which would have normally been a select board meeting, um, so and if you have some reason to want to change that the following two Mondays are also available. Uh, the preferred the request of the preferred date, um, from the

town clerk is for that Monday, the 23rd, it works good for her schedule with early voting and things like that. Um, you have in your packets a memo from me outlining uh. The possibility of dates and what the um. Needed um. Warrant questions would be where. To council is

here to discuss with you the options, but we can open the warrant tonight. We can, um, You can choose to vote on those and you can close the warrant the same night. There’s no penalty for that. I have provided to you today, it took me a while to get it finished, um, a draft schedule, um.

For meetings leading up to the special time meeting that’s the blue and white page that’s on your desk and if you want a vote to approve that they may be subject to a few changes, but I checked with most of the boards that would need to weigh in on this. The funding has been sent to the funding

request of discussion has been sent to Fincom and Fincom has, uh, taken it up. They haven’t come back with a uh a recommendation yet they’ll have another meeting. They have 2 more meetings coming up. One I believe on the 14th and one on the 28th and John McGrath is here as well to answer any

questions you have about that. And moderator, Mr. Bowler is here as well. So is the first order of business to kind of pick a date. Uh, I pick a date and open the warrant, I guess, yeah, certainly, yes, uh, good evening, uh, Tom McEnany from KP Law, um, yeah, so first

thing you wanna do is open the war, the warrant and we need to decide obviously which warren articles are going to go on the warrant will be at least one, I think to increase funding for the project that perhaps I think from what I heard earlier this evening there could be a 2nd article to increase funding

from the CPA so it’d be a separate funding article. Um, and, uh, one of the things that I had spoken to Joe about as well is that, uh, in the, as you may recall, there have been a couple different CPA articles that have been approved for funding the project. I think the total appropriation to date

from the CPA is $4.5 million all of those included a contingency in there that the funds would be expended or construction would commence prior to November, I think it was 15th of 2024, so, Um, my Suggestion would be that in one of the articles at least. I don’t know that it necessarily

has to be a separate article, but I think we want to incorporate some language into one of the Warren articles too, uh, extend that date out in order to so that we don’t run into any issues, although there’s an argument that it really wouldn’t apply because ultimately you’d have to go

back to the CPC and the CPC would have to take an affirmative vote to have the funds returned, but rather I think it would be be. Uh, better to kind of keep it clean and included in one of the articles. So I’ll entertain emotion to a warrant. I move, we open the warrant for a

special town meeting in September. Second All in favor. OK, we’re open, so I know we said September I think, um. You gave 3 dates, I think that when we last met, we talked about September 23rd. I think the the next two Mondays probably brings us into October if my math is correct, um, could be

then does anybody have a, do we want to stick with the 23rd and nail a date now, uh, or does that date not work for anybody and prefer one of the other Mondays. If um if the school thinks the school thinks that’s the best date for them, the

23rd. They said, they said it’s available for us that we can use it then I think the clerk office clerk would highly recommend the best date for the court, what are the other articles that we might have on them? I think this is it we’re trying to have it just be, we’re trying to have it just be

the have we skipped a fallow meeting in the last 5 years. Not to my knowledge. But we, but so this year we wouldn’t have had one unless if the bids came in as planned. We would have skipped the phone the first time in 10 years. We Bill,

you were trying to get it all out there. We’re trying. What happens then, and then we think a weekday is the right. I mean we did it last year, right? We did it last year we went pretty smoothly and particularly because we’re trying to keep the warrant very small here.

It’s not, it’s a one, it’s it’s really it’s a one issue time being right now and um if you close the ward tonight. Remain that way, so the amount of business that we have to to conduct. Isn’t Like you need 4 or 5 hours to talk about it

we’re gonna. Make a 20 or 25 minute presentation, take some questions, have a little debate and then vote. I would think the whole thing would wrap up in about an hour, hour and a half. I think it’s two warrants, right, depending on funding choices if the CPC is involved, that’s one and how whatever we,

we talked last time about a couple of options with fre using free cash, changing our cash reserve from 5% to 3%, which would for a little bit which would free up some money. OA money is out there and then bonding, which, you know, I want to keep that as minimal as possible. So the, the finance

director is here as well. She had in discussions both with you at your last meeting and with the FinC since then has gone away. from we are not making any recommendations for changing, uh, free cash policies. We she has provided them with 4 different options that would require a mix of, uh,

free cash, ARPA, ARPA does not need a time meeting vote, but with free cash vote would need a time meeting vote and, um, the use of CPC or general fund borrowing at this point it’s it’s not set in stone, but one of those two if you do. General fund bonding and CPC bonding, then you’d need two separate

questions, but we’re, we’re hoping that we’re only gonna go with funding from one source and then free cash and that should close the gap. So Joe’s we do it September. 23rd This is the first available date. What decisions do we need to make and what milestones.

So the CPC will meet on the 8th to determine uh uh project uh eligibility and then funding and they’ll make that vote and then the FinC will meet, as I said, on the 14th and again on the 28th to talk about the different options if CPC is a

part of that or not based on their vote in the 8th and make a recommendation, um, to us to consider, uh, which, which options put forward so so we would have to reopen the. to discuss that or not you’re you’re, you’re closing the warrant with 2 to 3 questions and just saying these will be

the questions and then. We, we always have the ability to to edit the language in the question. We don’t have to finalize our recommendation. Um, On what day? The 9th of September 9th September 9th. In one day. OK. So, um, just for your regularly scheduled meeting. Right, yeah. Right, so

they warrent if, if September 23rd is the date of the special town meeting by statute, the warrant needs to be posted at least 14 days prior to the meeting, so. For the 23rd, that would be the 9th would have to be posted. So barring any, uh,

I, I like the 23rd is agreed to the 23rd. Well, the thing I, I shared the draft calendar with uh John and asked him if it was doable and John said it Yeah, I, we, we can do the 23rd, um. What we’ll end up doing is probably discussing it twice.

But we basically have to have a warrant article that we’re going to discuss, so we need you guys to finalize the warrant. And then we’ll go from there. We we’ve already actually started writing or recommendations, materials or gathering our materials, so we’re prepared to go in whatever direction. Um, we haven’t taken a vote though, so

I mean, I’m expecting the CPC. will vote To bond it. And then the town would. Free up $500,000 of free cash. What that does is it takes an existing revenue stream from the CPC. Um, it doesn’t increase, um. Additional burden on the taxpayers. It’s existing burden, so anyway, we have our, we have our head wrapped around

what we’re trying to do and we’ll vote on it on the twenty-eighth. Awesome, yeah, and the CPC meets on, uh, this Thursday, and I think they’re gonna review and probably uh vote as well. But I think Tom just if I can make one comment, um. The CPC has already put up $4.975 million. So if you go

back to 2015. What the Fincom would do would be giving the town a recap of the entire project. Including The decarbonization project, which is currently in flux. So that’s what will be appearing in the book recommendations is a sort of a recap, very transparent view of the entire project, um,

Just for the taxpayers to consider. So that’s, that’s where we’re headed. I think that makes sense recap total cost all in right? We’ve, we’ve already got approved acts and since then, you know, here’s our total, total not now, if you will, right? That’s your recommendation and, and would

it be advised that, you know, if you’re gonna. If we as a select board are going to finalize on the 19th, we should make that a joint meeting with the Fincom or? I, I don’t think it’s necessary, but two weeks from now. Just so I can understand the the flow, we’re gonna recommend to the Thinkcom

or the think to recommend to us. That’s what I’m trying to figure out like who’s recommending the final, but basically the way it works is a warren article is put forward. And the Fincom Responds to that Warren article. So we’re just going to follow the normal. Process Of a warrant article coming before the town.

Nothing unusual about it. So we would get all this input from everybody by the 19th and then we’ll review the language and then we would finalize it and I’ll bring you the options for the funding options based on the CPC’s vote, based on the very sort of standard process, so two weeks from now we think

we’re gonna have a clear pathway that we can. Senator Fincom for their opinion and move forward with with some maybe some minor tweaks, yep, OK, that’s great, great news which we can make without opening the warrant, right, right. So for the 19th meeting, Joe, you’d like a draft special

time warrant from us. That’s not a problem. So how many warrants would that be on that draft? How many articles 22 I think it sounds like there’ll be one funding article from the Townside money and then another funny article for CPC correct? and then you’ll include. The extension for CPC expenditure.

And in the CPC article also include language to extend, uh, to amend the prior votes that were taken, um, where the deadline was established to, um, that the funds the contingency was included at the, uh, construction had to commence on her before the, I think it was the 15th of November, so I’ll

include a, uh, some language to amend that to extend that out. Excellent, um, dare I ask if there is any other business that you would want on that day. That you just we weren’t gonna have nothing, nothing to there’s nothing that we know of at this point that there’s no.

Uh, you know, unpaid bills or nothing even as small as that, nothing that we know of that needs to be addressed. OK, so from today on the 5th, I think we just all agreed on September 23rd is the date. What time would that start? Um, figured to start the meeting at 7 o’clock because people will

need to get home from work and then get there and get registered consistent with what we that’s what we did last year, OK, um, and then we’ve got this schedule follow the schedule of dates and uh and tasks. So there’s really nothing to vote on now, right? Or do we I would just ask you to close the

warrant and, and confirm that the 23rd is the date. OK, so I will entertain a motion to confirm our date of September 23rd starting at 7 p.m. uh, and a motion to close the warrant. 2. All in favor passes 40. Thank you. OK, thank you. It’s pretty straightforward unless I’m missing something, right?

Yeah. OK, Wendy, I believe we have some financial policies to keep it easy for you. Thank you, sir. You OK? She heard herself. She’s got a back issues I’m sorry. Might have some Advil in here allergic, but thank you. OK. Uh, Wendy Markeritz, finance director. So in a prior

meeting I brought to your attention, um. The, uh, just, just giving you a summary overview of three policies that we wanted to adopt. And the reason for adopting these policies is, uh, it was suggested by Hamilton’s auditors so that we can, um, continue to promote fiscal responsibility, financial management and internal

controls. The three policies were grant management policy, procurement conflict of interest policy and a comprehensive public records and technology policy. So, um, we took the same information to the Fincom and on July 24th Fincom reviewed, discussed and approved, said policies. And uh at this time I’m looking for a um approval from, from the

select board. If you want me to read the summary of you have up on the wall, maybe just, uh, if, if we can, I think you know I’ve gone through the three of them, the grant management, procurement conflict, uh, and public records, uh, I think they all make sense. They’re, they’re sound, something we

should and, and need to have. Uh, with these called out in last year’s audit or no, I, what, what happened is I talked to the auditor and I said, you know, being proactive, just want to make sure, ask them because they had mentioned that we are, we haven’t been approving enough policies so.

They asked, I asked them which ones would be imperative, uh, you know, that was the recommendations and they did make some, um, changes and adjustments to a couple for, um, for the sake of legal compliance, so I, you know, implemented that into the policies. So they have looked

at him, the Fincoms looked at him and so Fincom made some minor um formatting adjustments as well, took those, um, consideration, put those in. on the screen on the summary while we look at that, I will entertain a motion to approve these 3 finance policies and then we can have further

discussion if warranted. Make a motion to prove uh The 3 income financial policies in front of, I mean sorry, the 3 financial policies in front of us. 2. Any further discussion? Yes Let’s go, um, OK, I was going to say I, I think these policies are all very good, very sound. I just have one comment um on

page 34 at the top of the page, uh, under number one. Uh, let’s see, let’s see. Uh Let’s see, per employees such as 34 policy? I’m on 114 OK um OK, I’m sorry, 121 of the PDF. And it’s page 30. 4 of the policies. Um. So, so number one at the very top

of the page, employees, officials, and others who regularly participate in contract activities on behalf of the town must disclose relevant financial interests. I would just like to amend that slightly. Because a conflict of interest is not just a financial interest. If you go back to page 33 or 1 in the policy which becomes 120 in the

PDF, um, if you look, pardon me, I don’t have my mouse with me, so, OK, so conflict, uh, it’s section B conflicts of interest for crying out loud. I’m sorry. Conflicts of. Interest in procurement, um. So according to federal Office of Management. Um, budgets, Omni Circular, conflict of interest arises

when blah blah blah, an employee. Um, An employee or and which employs or is about to employ any of the parties indicated herein has a financial or other interests in a tangible personal benefit, so it, it, it could be uh. It doesn’t have to be, um, it doesn’t have to be strictly

financial, um, it could be and it states, so continuing on with section B, the 3rd paragraph down further it states um. Officers, employees, and agents of the non-federal entity must neither solicit it nor accept gratuities, favors, or anything of monetary value um from contractors or parties to subcontracts, so my only comment is that. They shouldn’t,

they need to not only disclose relevant financial interests, but other prohibited interests. So like favors, uh, things like that, that’s that’s the only added that I could see, otherwise I think the policies are, are, are really good. OK, so. Can you state exactly what you want to I’m sorry. OK, so going back to um. 121, which is.

Page 121 of the PDF which is page 33 3 33, it’s, it’s on page, it’s on page 34 and it’s the very first sentence, employees, officials and others who regularly participate in contract activities on behalf of the town must disclose relevant financial interests as required and so I would just

like to add the word relevant financial and other prohibited. Interests other than that, I, I, I think it’s really good. So that would be my um. Come in for an edit. So would it be fair to say any financial or non-financial interest, would that cover everything or how you said it’s fine too, but I

agree with what you said, um. Do they do employees go through like we do through a COI training annually and all that she just mentioned is in there we have conflict that we have annual conflict of interest requirements that we have to meet with say just like the

boards do, um, we have to follow. We have every year we have to renew the training and every, every other year we have to renew the training and every year we have to certify that we’re aware of the training goes through it in their capacity as an employee. This is specifically for procurement

agents who are negotiating on behalf of. Yeah, police officials and others who regularly participate in contract activities in the so that would be basically be, um, department heads and, uh, town council. That’s basically who you know does all of our procurement and they’re already under that, that’s right. So, however, even the auditors feel

like just covering everything doesn’t have to be financial, it could be anything, I think that’s very of stuff yep, that’s a great recommendation. I’d be happy to put it in there. Any others on the docket to look at after these 3, or, you know, I have a schedule. I did not bring it with me.

Sorry, but there is a schedule, so we, we’ve, um. Get the The schedule of when each, uh, policy has been adopted and what’s left and uh then we can talk about, uh, cyclical type of review, maybe every 3rd year or so. Like it. And do we have a schedule for auditors this year?

Yes, they’re coming the day after Labor Day. All right, so we’re hoping it’s just a successful time, time-wise as it was last year. Last year was outstanding. OK, um, so we had, I had a motion. I had a second all in favor of adopting these three financial policies as amended as I make a motion to

amend. Oh Sentence paragraph 1 on page 33 to include 334 to finance as well as other prohibitive. What was the word you use for, I think I used and other prohibited interest interests as required interests as required It’s a motion I made to modify, so I guess all in favor. All passes, good job.

Thank you very much. Now that was to make the amendment. Now, now you need to approve more but it was as amended, he made a motion. He made a different motion and now you can improve all of them because it’s been mess up I’ll entertain a motion to approve him. Well, you already have that all in favor

of the amended motion. I Keep me honest to the motion, you got to prove the motion. So efficient breakfast for next year. Bill’s got it next year. Yeah Alrighty. Discuss facility use policy, so that’s something we’ve had a discussion, um, a month or so back, you know, it

kind of got tabled, um, and now we’re we’re bringing it back for uh some further discussion of any changes or what we want this to look like, um, so, um, who wants to begin our discussion. Well, it’s no one does. Um, it’s the, it’s the same, um, policy that we had at the at the um outset there’s

been no editing or further evaluation of it right, OK, because it was tabled, right, that’s what you have in the pack in here was in there, so that’s yeah, yeah, no, we haven’t, it’s not your fault, that’s for sure feedback so that we can make amendments and then bring it back to you for finalization future meeting.

Let me just get it, get it up on my screen. You got a lot of pages. Here we go. So this is Councilor Agen agreement, would this be for let’s define this scope or with this cover, does it cover like buildings and, uh, areas that might be restricted otherwise and not parks and, and the homestead and this

would just, I mean, we’ve had some conversation about uh. amending to include other meetings as of right now, I think. You may want to just take the one room that you actually have that you could potentially make available to people and, and have the possible that would be the COA

and that would be the COA right now we don’t have any other rooms that we could make available anyway, um. And if we get one and like for instance, when it. I’m gonna be an optimist and assume that the town meetings gonna approve the additional funding. We’ll do the town hall project and then

new memorial room may be a room that people will want that may be a room that the select board will want to make available, we can come back at that point and have a different policy because it’s a different room, it’s a different space. It will serve different purposes, um, so we’ll handle them as we get

them. So is there, I don’t see, is there a fee rate structure policy? I didn’t want to come up with that, right? If you, if you want one, it’s uh I don’t think. We I don’t think we necessarily we got a couple of the idea is that it’s a public

space if. Members of the public want to use it? Does the town want to make them available? Um, There has been without a policy in the past there has been some minor use of some of these spaces with no fee in the past, um. We get very few requests on

it. That’s kind of one of the things that brought this up. I haven’t I I haven’t read the new. Policy, but two questions I had. That’s the one Does the counseling agent have any say or is it up to the select board. The slide board’s in charge of office at least but you’re,

you’re in charge of all policies for facilities down. The town manager’s office and the department has in charge of implementing those. So, uh, You, you can send it to the consulate agent and get their feedback if you like, um but it’s up to the slide board, yeah, but I like where you’re

going because it is a building with a specific use, um, and it would be good to understand for those who use it. I don’t know if we get any grants or funding from others to help do that, and as such it’s set up and designed and bringing others in

would. Yeah, you know, be a problem for them or they’d be no happy to use it, we like it, you know, I would seeing that it is specific use and not something general like Tom Hall might be, um. Or Patton Homestead, I mean, there’s there’s a a. Broader availability I think at Patton

Homestead, I, I feel, um, I’m the chair of the Council on Aging, and I, I, I feel that it’s a protected space, you know, there, there isn’t a whole lot of money that goes to the council on Aging. There isn’t a whole lot of um. Um, equipment in, in the council on Aging. There’s not a whole lot

of furniture and so. I, I think that one of the concerns I have here is the first sentence makes it sort of a a free for all, and then of course later on it says well somebody can decide that maybe that’s not appropriate, so. I think it’s a little contradictory, I think, I think the broad statement of

the policy is pretty broad, and I’m wondering if we would wanna, um, whittle that down a bit and as far as the use of cultural intellectual charitable, it is wide range. I mean, you said there has been some use has it been mostly like a nonprofit, like maybe the Boy Scouts, I mean you’ve mentioned it is all

largely to this point been things like the Hamilton Wynham Garden Club, you know, for. For a plant sale or something for the outside of the library had used it at one point for a book sale, um. So it’s all been stuff like that, like town-based organizations that have, you know, that do things

on behalf of the town, so they’re not part of the town government per se, but that’s their’re involved in town life. And that’s where We don’t have anything that covers anything beyond that. And we should actually have a policy to cover that too, but it’s been so sparse that it hadn’t really

come up before and I do think the outside around any building should be included in that as well, but, um, you know, I’m sure there’s access to the building. Where You know, letting our assets be used by our. Citizens, right, so I think that’s and they have a policy is good, but I want the

policy to be clear and not be ambiguous, so do we think it’s clear enough? And do we, and it is limited to citizens of that’s one as we talked about do we write in there Jo’s limited to citizens of Hamilton. So and I’m, I’m a little sorry that Tom ran out before we got

to talk about this item. I, I had some conversation with him, with town council previously, and one of his, one of his statements to me was that if you allow quote unquote public use. You, you know, any member of the public would have a right to share in that use um or the town? he said any member

of the public. Now he did say that you could try to put some requirements into a policy that would restrict it to, for instance, town residents, but. If the if the building gets any funding or has had any funding from a state or federal agency, then somebody would have grounds to potentially challenge that limitation.

So it was a kind of a, you know, you could put it in there and like see what happens. But you might wind up trying to defend yourself in court on it. So So that could potentially be a problem is what you’re saying I think it’s. I mean, not to

combine the two, but our flag policy does that, yeah. Right, yeah Right, it’s up to us on anything outside of. And policy could say that that, you know, it has to come before the select board to be used. That’s my that’s my personal opinion,

but. to that as a as a as a as a board, but. Right, but Joe just, I, I agree with you, the judge has said if we open it to the public, it has to be the broad public that’s that’s council’s advice and, and he said that we could add language

to try to restrict it, but that it might get challenged. And we, and if it gets challenged, we might be in a dubious space on that, but, but if we get this challenged essentially our options are we could fight it, right? Or or right? Or or which

I Well, I, I think that if you say a case by case basis, then that’s viewpoint discrimination and that’s also. Do we ever have residences rent the COA? You said a few handful or is it more not they didn’t they didn’t rent, they just used it for, you know, we, they were

allowed to use it. I remember I remember the garden can we, can we make it a, can we make it available to the public but only for nonresidents. I, I can ask counselor. I don’t know. Could be charged for non-resident or nonresident. It’s a good thought. I think there ought to be a fee for

everybody, so I mean so I mean so I mean if you had so I mean if you had so I mean if you had I mean if you had talked about the COA so you could have a fee and then a different rate for residents because we do that for the patent patent so we do

that at the pool so you could say, and that would be, that might be a way to, to, um, provide some provide some parameters because you think a nominal fee to, you know, cover cleaning, janitorial, I mean, we pay for this, right, after a certain time anyway, and then, you know, then any excess would

go to the. COA, you know, for which I think it’s fine too right raises money for that. I, I just, I have to say I, I feel like I said I feel protective of the COA and and I worry about it as this policy states, being a free for all, um.

So how do we restrict that like just say for instance the idea he just came up with about known for profits? I mean, I think of the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, the Garden Club might is probably things like that, which is what I would typically. Have seen there as I drive by. I don’t know about

other stuffsama dance recitals who um in in there. So dance presentation that was done as a program for the seniors and there’s a program for the seniors. We didn’t separate entity, the free use of the thing to do, that’s so yeah, and, and I think the issue is opening up our finite.

Spaces, um, more than the financial issue to me. It’s who do we want to use our space and how can we protect it as a town asset, so those, those are the questions. Yeah, it’s not a money maker, but I do look at it as a as a public space.

I mean, it’s owned and paid for by the citizens, you know, it’s not like a park or a roadway where anybody can go and nobody’s asking, right? That happens. But if you have an area with a specific use, if you have an area, you know that. is restricted in use whether it’s you can’t be past this

hour or that, then that’s where we put the guard rails on it a little bit, and that’s where I think we need to a little bit to say, you know, what language could keep us out of somebody saying, well, if you let that happen, then you have to let

this happen and I think you mean we’re starting to get. Some things that we can, I can bring back to him to, to refine this. I, I. The addition of fees resident and non-resident fees, uh, I can. But I thought we had said that we wanted to

keep it residents. we can do that too I mean you guys have to make I think no, I think just residents. I mean, you know, the only gray area is one of them, right? We do a lot of things regionalized and they have their own COA and and I’m

not, I’m I’m not it’s better to have, you know, one instead of double and I’d love to see them combine, I love linen. I have nothing to say about not nothing bad at all. Um, I just want to make sure that if somebody comes along and says, well, Wenham’s not Hamilton, you let them use it for their,

I don’t know there, blah blah blah. I think our policy should be specific enough to to protect our interests, um. It’s a, it’s a small little space, you know, there’s a potential for people wandering through the CLA through the through the kitchen, which is not allowed. There’s not a lock on the door.

I mean upstairs we’re all town offices are, so I, I think we need to be a little careful. Can you get Teresa’s thoughts on this too. And I appreciate your thoughts um yeah. So Theresa’s I was just concerned with like whatever we do the, the building is protected and

the the the the the the furniture and you know the and that that’s that’s the only concern is equipment there’s a brand new, um, table tennis, um, table that the uh Friends of the COA just purchased and like you wouldn’t want. A groups come in there and then Beat it up Well, just feeling like it’s,

it’s a free for all. So I, I think that’s what I mean when I say there’s there’s little bits of furniture, everything there has been paid for lovingly with the friends of COA or been donated and so. And and I mean and the policy doesn’t include some, some information about, you know, having having to show,

you know, insurance. As a possibility to like make sure that whoever rents it like gets out of a one day policy to insure the building so that. They’re not So if they create damage, the town’s not paying for it. That’s a possibility. Yep, I like that. Let’s see it.

So we kind of set a few different things here. I think we’re everywhere from. No use to protect the facility and the asset we’ve talked a little bit about. I brought up not for profits, I think of the Boy Scouts plant sales, Girl Scouts, things of that nature. Then we talked about citizens. I think

we’re moving non-citizens out off the table unless somebody wants to bring back. What’s that? Not residents, right, um, so do we look at this? Do we focus in on. Even a just official town business and. Uh And residents or not, I’m, I’m happy to do something. I do. I don’t wanna take it away. It is

an asset to the town. I think the seniors like it, you know, and they as well, like, you know, maybe it’s something only during days and maybe that keeps it a little tamer, um, like a plant cell, maybe it’s focused mostly outside, but I think this I think this policy anticipates only outside of

programmed council on aging. I was we’re not the building’s there for the seniors and so we’re gonna, we’re not going to, you know, interfere with that operation that would only be for things outside of what’s being programmed there, so. But seniors could come and enjoy some of the program, you know,

and stuff like that, um. Maybe we could think about some for instances that would help us to run through a particular scenarios, say, so the policy says nobody can rent it for birthday parties or baby showers or wedding showers, right? did I, did I remember that correctly? Yeah, it’s

something in there. So what, what could we? you know, let’s give so for instance, what kind of a thing and what are the potential pitfalls of that. What, what are we thinking because this has us a list of these sort of generic instances to use it. So not just not just

say what it can’t be used for, but say the things that you, it could be used, it might actually be easier to say it might actually be easier to just say that you know, the, the, the room is available for the for use by residents and community organizations of the town of Hamilton for the

following purposes. And just list those. So if I could get you all to. Give me ideas of things that you’d like to see it available for that would by by inclusion of that, you would exclude all others. Yeah, so we’re not making it an absolute that this policy is. Or COA, but the idea is that we’re

gonna have a. New Town Hall meeting room shortly, so I think we draft we have to draft something separate for that, yeah, because that’s right and that room is gonna be far larger and a lot different patent has a policy. Patent already has a policy, so. OK, that’s worked mostly pretty

well, so. pool pool say something might help us with our, with our dilemma here. I was actually going to echo you Jeff Austin, 50 Sharon Road. I was gonna echo what you asked. Is this just unique to COA, COA Council agent COA. So you’re gonna have a unique policy for each town land use or meeting

space use. So I think right now we already have policies for use of the park if you want to if a if a citizen wants to use Patton Park to do uh Little League tournament or something they have to go to direct director, fill out the form, to

follow all those those that policy’s been in place for a long time. We had offered the select board had already adopted a policy and forms for the operation of patent homestead for the public benefit, particularly the outside grounds at this point because town hall is now occupying the. Interior. And this is the, the next room

that’s kind of been shot a little bit, um, it’s different from the other, so you’d know, you’d need a unique policy, and I think when the time meeting room, the memorial room at the Newtown Hall, and I’m being optimistic and saying when, but, um, when the new memorial room gets uh. Updated and, and.

Refurbished and reopens, you’d need a separate policy for that as well because it’s again, it’s a different space has it’s a much larger space it would attract. The interest of different people or organizations, so we need to have a different policy to address that you need that makes sense. Would the town have any, uh, uniqueness or

base policy across all of them. I guess what I’m looking at there is what happens if a, if a space gets utilized, uh, and they violate some, some sort of expectation you had damaged property, whatever it is, or inappropriate use of what do you do with that entity that

rented the that space at that point. So I mean they’re going to get policy for that. So currently most of the other spaces require some kind of insurance, um, coverage and we’re looking to do that with this as well. And, um, You know Somebody has to fill out the application and and sign on as

being the responsible party. So that would be the entity you would hold responsible if something went against the policy or against or or some kind of damage was caused. That’s who you the town would have to go after. Yeah, I think, I think it underline there are underlying, you know, I think

the fee of insurance, I think one of the things where maybe you’re gonna go to, which I think we need as well as like, how do we make sure what takes place in our facilities or land or anywhere represents the brands or this, I know this is hard legally, but the brand or you know, what Hamilton

supports, you know, maybe it’s we support a lot of different things, but there’s probably a lot of wide range things they don’t want those divisive. Things to happen. How do we keep it in a good lane where we’re not surprised like our discussion and, and, and what does that mean? I say appropriate is kind of an open

ended appropriate is in the eye of the beholder, so that’s why I said if we can start to drill down to what do you want to see there and we can include those uses as allowable uses and And just say the allowable uh the types of uses that are allowed

are A B C D through X or Z if you need to, but. By stating what it is you will allow. You don’t allow everything else. I mean, it sort of already has that if you look at page 2 of the policy last paragraph when it says what the decision

makers can consider as far as proposed use. It looks at, you know, ones that promote activities of the center, the council, the commute promotes or encourages the local event or activity, you know, sort of lists a lot of things that the decision makers would consider as part of their their decision,

their, you know, these proposed uses, so do we just Take those as like these are the, you know, potential uses that you could use and maybe, maybe narrow them a little bit more, or, or give them a little bit more detail on what exactly we mean by those. And then just say here are the proposed uses that

you can use this facility for. Right, those are all the the decision making things they’re they’re pretty vague, I mean, something that’s consistent with the. Family friendly values of Hamilton or you know, you. I mean, it’s and it’s not likely to happen, but you don’t want um. A rowdy crowd that’s going to. has a lot of

disturbance or by their presence cause a lot of disturbance and how do you, and then, and then who’s gonna decide that, right? Who’s the decision maker and that’s subjective, so the. There’s a lot of subjectivity in that’s where we’re keeping this to the COA, which I don’t think it

expands into that, but I’m not saying it couldn’t, you know, unless we define the types of use and I keep going back to, you know, community boards and committees and not for profits, but I don’t know if not for profits makes sense or not, but I think of. You know, Boy Scouts community, you know you

know that foster uh I don’t know the Community involvement Hamilton is such a family oriented community, so like I agree Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, um, oh, I, I don’t know. Things to do with the school if they need a space to do something. Um, Civic groups, uh. I’m trying to think of things that

aren’t already incorporated in the COA, but if there was a, a class for, for teaching something that was going to or an educational seminar that was going to be there for maybe 3 consecutive Wednesdays or something like that. How do you, how do you define what that what that is what that opens it

up. So Um, Is there a presence in another town, well, I was gonna say like maybe there’s some, there’s some language I think I even mentioned that to you earlier so when I asked Tom for a draft, usually what he does is grab stuff that they’ve

done for other towns and you try to fashion it to us so like this is a basic draft, uh, policy that founded on something that’s been done in other communities and that it’s up to us to make the alterations that we have there’s there’s a whole lot of mishmash looked I looked at a

couple other towns, and I mean, I think this is probably a little bit more detailed. That I saw from other towns, I think other towns sort of went more broadly that like they pretty much allow a lot of use except if it promotes violence or like kind of like he’s like really like, you know, um, you know,

sort of a couple of little categories where they wouldn’t like, you know, promoted violence or like a hostility or, you know, some sort of like controversial whatever, um, but they pretty much allowed a lot of usages, um, I didn’t see any any of that sort of like narrowed it down into specific

use cases, but I think we could probably if we came up with that. is not You know, It’s still inclusive, right, and not you know as you spoke to kind of viewpoint, you know, discrimination before, not, you know, aligning with a certain viewpoint but sort of broad categories of particular usages

like we have in that paragraph on page two. I think we could probably, you know. Find categories that promote, you know. What the COA stands for and you know, kind of like activities that will correlate with the COA, um, and it sort of limit the the uses there, um.

Gentle uses, yeah, and, and yeah, that’s, that’s good. I like that that doesn’t cause a whole lot of controversy that doesn’t cause violence, it doesn’t cause disruption within the community. Yeah, and I think Rosie brought up a good point as far as like the kitchen there, I think that we

would want to specifically include the use of the kitchen. This isn’t going to be something that somebody can come in and use the space, but then also have access to the kitchen. We have a serve safe license there, the, the owner of that license, the person is the names on the license is

responsible for anything that comes out of that, we wouldn’t want to extend liability to him or her for, you know, contamination so we would like essentially would lock that room. Well off from I don’t know if there’s a door in there. I think there’s a door there may not be a lock on it, but we

can, we can, we can, we can adjust, we can adjust that we can address that. So I, I like your ideas, Tom. I like your, uh, I like your thoughts, so make it gentle, make it commensurate with the. With a senior center, you know, I think the seniors feel in general that. The senior center

is being um. Taken away from them one little bit at a time and it may just be temporary because we understand that the town hall needs a renovation and there are a lot of officers that have moved in there, but it’s certainly has limited the space available for the COA for, for the senior center and.

Um, I would hope that whatever we do there doesn’t um. Does it impact the senior center negatively. I’m thinking there’s a, there’s a very comfortable couch in there uh upholstered couch and a couple of upholstered chairs and all I could think of is some sort of rowdy crowd in there. I don’t

know who it is, but in general a rowdy crowd and things get spilled all over the couch that that sort of thing. I just. You know, so. Gentle groups, gentle groups that are. A community friendly, not divisive type of thing. Yeah, and people can get very emotional, yeah, that’s that’s right, community

oriented. Uh, not, not divisive, not violent, not. Causing a huge ruckus in the town. Let’s. You know, we have other facilities we have the patent homestead if people want to do something a little more lively. Right, there are options. Um, so I don’t know if that’s enough to get you started. I do think a fee structure would

it’s enough for me to take a a structure and the insurance is already in there, um. And then like who approves it and and when. Yeah, that’s, that’s the thing too, I mean Tresa is going through some health issues right now. I’m not sure that we should put this burden onto her I’m open to

suggestions on who you want it to be you wanted to put it on my office. Could we have a committee of, of the select board if people were willing to be that. The Decision makers. Well, I mean, it would, it could be no more than 2 cause then you and postings and everything else, so, um. I mean,

we could establish, you know, so like I’ll, um. We could do a rotating thing say if we had a member of the select board, a member of the Council on Aging Theresa and myself. That’s 4 people, men. A fairly easy to. Do we need that many? Yeah, I mean, I think you and a member

of the council of agents, which could be you or it could be anyone else, right? So I mean that would tie us all in and bring back your reports and things like that. You know, as we get, as we start to use it and see activity, you know,

maybe we, we look at it, you know, I’d love to learn what type of groups are using it? Does it increase usage? Does it just support what it already was being used for, and are there any issues that are arising from it so you can tell Very protective of the COA and

I, I, I, I’d be happy to, uh. Work with whomever to just kind of come up with a draft policy for our future meeting, uh, where we look at those additive things, kind of that gentle use or community friendly, not divisive I kind of like that and then. Um, Resident only

right or or town. Uh, can, uh, what do we say in town boards, committees type of thing. I do think we have other options too, um. But I think as as we look at um as as um. I was saying if we look at other communities and what do they do, and I

think the problem becomes. So difficult for some towns. I can’t remember a while back, I think last time I was on the board calling some towns, some surrounding towns, and they and and some towns said no, we don’t rent out our properties because I was trying to come up with a policy. I think it was

when I was doing the liquor policy. I wrote the liquor policy for the Patent homestead, and I called other towns. That’s what it was and some towns said to me, we don’t rent out our town facilities. So anyhow, so it’s, it’s interesting, and it’ll be interesting to research it

again. I mean I look at the homestead as more as a venue where we, we need to like to keep it sustainable financially. We’re going to rent it out, not like, you know, the COA type of thing. That’s nice to have for. The residents. I like that, yeah, um, OK, let’s let’s see

what that looks like um back to a future. I can guarantee you I’m gonna be gone from Thursday until the next meeting, so I won’t be ready for the 19th there’s no rush we can talk about Rosie when I get back, Rosie, I can give you I would

say in the meantime we don’t just like tell Theresa and don’t just if someone’s used it, don’t just assume it’s OK. I’ve already delivered that message. I I you know, it was an an error it was an error, it was not, it’s. But this is, this is a good conversation and and I

feel very um optimistic that we will. Lovingly provide our senior center for some activities. We’re lovingly group. Um, OK, is that good, everybody? Anything else? Um, I just had a question. We have, um, and I meant to put it into my report, but I had a resident say to me that there was, there

were some, um. There were some um. Pieces of equipment that the family wanted to donate to the COA and my question is, well, we’re gonna be discussing this probably at our COA um meeting on, on Wednesday, but um if these are just donations of equipment that the COA might sell or give away to to other

residents. What do we need to do in terms of town, the town. And the and the and the money go to the COA is a subsidiary of the town of Hamilton, so anything that gets donated to the COA is technically donated to the town of Hamilton and

then the town of Hamilton has to follow state law and how it gets rid of things that are that it it owns, um. I will say that in the past the previous COA director accepted lots of donations of things and we that stayed up in that attic at the

2nd floor for years and it was a huge undertaking to clean it out. Yeah Yeah, right, right, except the tea cups that was a good thing. If the town wants to um some kind of process and protocol for accepting gifts for a particular purpose that could then be turned around and monetized to the benefit of the

COA or something, we, we should do that I would love to see the COA board, uh, you know, make a recommendation to us on, on that because then we could bring it to the select board and have you adopt it, but you know, I do, I do. Urge caution

because as I said, it can get out of hand really quickly, um, and then we’ve just got a whole bunch of chunk that we have to get rid of um decide what we thought was reasonable to accept the board or, OK, um, and we could also do it through

the friends of the COA now you have a group that’s happy and working with you and the and the you just connect people with people in need and avoid the whole town accepting a gift. Is there a way to do that whether it’s post, sure we could do that. Like you guys have a list of maybe members

who need things, you know, and then we kind of share that with the community and that’s and then you don’t even get involved the person donators that’s that’s possibly something that could be added to the COA website, you know, to the newslet, you know, people in the community who

want to donate their time, you know, that’s, that’s a good idea too there’s always. you know on the Hamilton, I think it’s, but, um, so that’s good, yeah, so that new business, I like that. So is there, you know, that I wasn’t gonna end it a minute ago but new business, so that’s a good one

like I don’t know if there’s ways to connect residents. You know, we have some sites on social media, but specifically with COA, I like that like as families are, you know, have items or assets that are no longer needed. It’d be good to get them in the hands of people in need and rather than just

storing them on the 2nd floor which is which is all. Offices now, OK, so that’s good so we’ll we’ll, we’ll talk about that at our meeting on Wednesday. Any other new business? Gentlemen, I have something it may not be something that the board needs to take a vote on or anything. I just wanted to bring it up.

Um, I had received, uh, late in the week last week, Thursday, probably an email from Eric Tracy, the, um, obviously we all know that the fields project is ongoing and there there is no place for um. High school teams to play and practice this year. Um, he was asking if the town would

consider, um, the possibility of allowing the flatter part of the field at the back of the patent homestead property be used for football practices Monday through Thursday from. I think it’s 3:30 or 5:15 or something like that, so, um, it’s early in the day it’s, uh, right after school. 350 maybe

it’s 3:15 to 5:30 or 3 3:15 to 5. It wasn’t a long period of the day. I did check with, um, I did check with the patent director um Holly, she said that it would not interfere with her programming. I did check with Parks and Rec director and um DPW, their concern was more just the

condition of the field, uh, both its current condition in that it’s not really that flat and they’d they’d hate to. See somebody get injured by. And so urged me to talk and make sure that the school really investigates the area before formalizing it and I’d want to have some kind of agreement in

place that any damage that was uh done would be repaired by the school district and I, I know Eric would be OK with that. I’m not worried. I’m, I’m not worried about him agreeing to that stipulation. I just wanted to make sure that I, you know,

I’m just throwing this at you right now so you don’t have to answer right now you can get back to me in the next couple days with any thoughts or concerns you have that I can make sure we try to address. I’m not sure that it will go through, as I said, the, the

field isn’t in great shape for that kind of thing. So I, I think that. We’ll talk about it with Eric. I’ll have him walk it with DPW and stuff and we’ll, if they want to pursue that. You know, I just need to know what your other concerns might

be and we’ll make sure that we get the town’s position protected in it. I’m I I have another comment, no driving on that field. We wouldn’t, we wouldn’t have any driving on it. Um, we require them to park in the gravel parking lot and walk down the field specifically stated because People are known

to take liberties and it’s a long walk. I mean, I would probably say that, but. But I think the reality is, yeah. No, it, it we, we talked loosely about it if it was going to happen, we’d require them to put port potties out there and pay for them. We’d require them to because I don’t want, you

know, we, we know boys that after football practice, you know, they’re gonna do what they do, so we want to make sure that they’re not doing it in an open field that there’s a portage on. There’s facilities there for him and we want to make sure that they park in a in a designated space that they

respect the, the, the property and uh address any damage that may may get done. The grass when the use is over but um it’s not an done deal we want to bring it up. I want to offer the board opportunities to give me other ideas that we want to

make sure I can include my discussion with Eric. I think it’s a great idea. It’s a community asset. I, I, why not? Why not? So the football season is what to what? Uh, they’ll start practices here at the end of uh August and November of Thanksgiving, yeah, yeah. But I want it in writing that Arrow

promises me he won’t let anybody drive on that, it’s a great that they will repair the, the fields this year. OK. See, hold on, no, I’m just, just trying to use, you’re not gonna finish using the fields until November. If we get into now we have rain and snow and stuff they’re not going to be able to

repair the fields in that environment. They may have to wait till the spring, but it’ll be done before the end of the school year wait till it’s a growing season, but before the end of school year it’d be done before the end of the school year and I don’t know if they’re gonna come and then say

another sport thereafter. I think the, the athletic fields are targeted, drop dead to be completed July 2025. The winter is light, it could move up. Um, so I think. I love it. I mean, I, I think I think mentioned the protections, is it good for you condition wise? Leave as you as it was type of thing,

bring it back envelope and uh we’re good to go. And if they violate it, they’ll be in detention and we and the town employees want to scrimmage. No. Not even two hand touched. Nope, nope, nope. All right, what do you two think you’re quiet about this plenty of thoughts

about it. They like the scrimmage box. Yeah Yeah, no, I’m in whole agreement and I think it’s a good use of the field, I think as long as it’s, you know, they do a walk through to make sure that it’s a a viable playing field and that we have agreements in place to protect our liability

and our asset. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So we’ve got a little bit of new business. We’ve got rollover business with some stuff that we’ve already talked about we’re gonna, um, you know, talk a little bit about COA and even if it goes up outside of that, like, is there a way to

connect surplus stuff with people. There are, there are social media ways, but, um, and then, um. To bill I have stuff that you guys uh uh you’ll come back with something that you’ll work with the schools on. I have for you guys to sign. Um, we’ve already signed you’ve already signed everything we’ve

already signed you’ve already signed everything in there that’s we’ve already signed you’ve already signed everything in there that’s had asked me to put together a list of things that have been tabled the last couple of weeks. The big one was the facility use policy. There’s a couple of

small things. I did put together a list and then I left it at my office, so I, but I, I do have the list. There’s only 2 or 3 other items all much more minor than the facility use thing. I’ll get them to you. All right, I’ll entertain the final motion. Make a motion

that we adjourn. All in favor.