Fan was there were 2 people in front of you were supposed to. If you Send it to me. Hey, welcome everybody. It is uh 6:34 p.m. on Tuesday, April 22nd. Are we online? Uh, and I’ll call the order this meeting of the Hamilton Select Board. Uh, we do have a quorum, but several are online, so why

don’t we do a roll call starting with you, Mr. Olson. Olson can you hear us? Bill, can you be seen and how about you, Ben? Can you hear us? Joe, we were talking and we could no longer hear you. So Bill Olson here. Yeah. Uh, Ben, welcome.

Then goes it. Lizzie, can you hear us? And you’re on mute. Yeah, we got you now, Joe, we can hear you. Can you hear us? Ben, you’re on mute. Joking you’re amazing, Bill. Yes we can hear you, Bill. We can hear you, not very loud but we can

hear you. All right. Um, this is Ben. now we can hear Ben. You guys speak up. OK All right, how about in the room, Mr. Myers? Tom Meyers here. Uh, Bill Wilson here. Rosie is en route, should be here now aren’t you. We’re roll call. Do you wanna say you’re here. I’m here. OK, just me. We’ll give

you a minute to settle in, um, uh, well, it’s our first, uh, meeting as a, a reorganized board, um, welcome Ben to the team. Uh, I look forward to working with you and not hearing more about your ideas and how we move forward with the, with the community. Uh, first order of business is to

organize the select board. Uh, so we’ll start by nomination and voting for a new select board chair. So do we have any nominations? for chair. Mhm Um, I’ll nominate Mr. Olson, if you’d like to be the chair for the upcoming year. I accept the nomination if I’d seconded. I’ll sucking up. And we’re

having a hard time hearing stuff. Um, Any comments or suggestions. I know Bill, uh, has brought a lot to the table uh on discussions. I find that he, uh, uh, on, comes down the middle of the road and is open to discussion. Uh, we’ve had several topics that have been difficult, and, uh, and Bill

has gone, um, in, in multiple directions, I think, which shows me he’s flexible and listens to people. So, uh, I think Bill would be a good choice, uh, at chair. Yeah, I agree. He’s been a select board member for some time. He’s been in the chair role before. so he knows he knows the water and

the territory, I think, I think he’d be a good. Um, a good person to lead us, so. I support that. Any other comments. And I appreciate the nomination and I, I echo your goals of Building consensus, building conversation and uh doing what’s best for our community. Yeah, we have some

rather large topics, uh, uh, to cover. So uh that open mindedness is, uh, something that, uh, we really all need to have. Any other comments, Banner Rosemary. All right, we’ll take a vote, a roll call, um. Mr. Olson. William Mo and I. Uh, Ben I lose, I. Tom, Tom Myers, I. Rosemary Kennedy

Kennedy, and Bill Wilson and I, so congratulations, uh, Mr. Olson. Thank you. Next order of business is uh nominating. Vice chair. Uh, I’ll make a motion to nominate Bill Wilson as vice chair to continue in the the role as vice chair. Again, I think you’ve been a great leader in that role and uh

filled in for the prior chair, Caroline, when she, when you needed to and and stepped up when you had to, so I think uh you’d be a great fit to continue in that role. I appreciate that. I’m happy to do that. I would also like to

hear from Rosemary, I think she does a lot of good work for the board, uh, always comes prepared, um, if you want to say anything about your own self there, I’d nominate you if, if you wanted to consider that position. I would certainly consider it if you nominated me. So I think we have some options.

I you nominate, uh, Rosemary, uh, uh, and I also the nomination for myself, so, um, let’s, uh, see, uh, any comments or suggestions, further discussion. needs to be a second. Is there a second for Rosemary? No I, I’m, I appreciate what Rosemary does. I think in this case, I, I

would appreciate uh Bill in this role for this next year with some consistency. As we navigate to to important votes that we’ve been uh are too important topic we’ve been talking about the last year, so. Um I like spoil the Rosemary’s doing, but in this case I’m just for killed for uh the vice

chair. Mm Any other comments. I think I’d like to make a comment, you know, um. I think both of you would make fine vice chairs, I think, you know, given Um, what I’ve witnessed and what I’ve brought issues before the before the board. I’ve found while I found both of you to to listen and create

the space I’ve appreciated. You know, your, your tenor, um, you’re evenhandedness, I think with the issues in front of us, you know, should Bill Olson be out of town, um, your ability to create the space for people to carry on an open discussion, follow an open and transparent process. I think it’s going to

be important for Bill Olson as well, but um to have you there in that, in that second seat when filling in and helping set the agenda and run the agenda, um, I feel, feel confident that you’ll do. do a good job when he’s, when he’s not available,

so put my support behind you for that. OK, I appreciate the comments. Uh, so with, um, with that, I guess, oh. Mr. Chairman, Um, but yeah, do we, do we have a second on that nomination? I think I seconded, correct? Yes, Joe. Yeah, OK. Yes. So, um, any

further discussion? I think we’ll do a uh a roll call vote on that. Uh, we’ll start with Bill Wilson. Bill Wilson and I, Rosemary Kennedy Rosie Kennedy. Uh, Tom, Tom Meyer’s eye. Then Bengalooza, and uh we most and I. So I mean I get we’re a small group and I think everybody’s important,

everybody’s equal in this group, so I think this is, uh, you know, these are important roles, but I think in terms of how we measure the group we all manage as equal, so, and we’ll continue to do so regardless of our position. Uh, uh, Joe, we have to do now nominate a secretary. Yep. Yes, somebody

needs to nominate a secretary. I nominated Rosemary for secretary. I have a second. Second Rosemary. Are you willing to be secretary? Sure, that would be fine. Thank you for the nomination. I accept. Are there any other? Comments Go move to a roll call vote with same order, Bill Wilson,

Bill Wilson and I. Rosemary, Rosie Kennedy, I. Tom, Tom Meyer’s eye. Uh, Ben, Ben Galooza, I. And William Olsen I. So as I mentioned to Joe earlier. This week and end of last week that if I was nominated for the chair, I am traveling today. And so, um, I’m gonna stay on the call as

long as I can with the service I have, but I’m gonna defer the leading lead to the bike share, which will be. Which will be Bill Wilson today. All right, so let’s get into it, um. So announcement of board openings. We have several, so I encourage

all to um to participate if uh if you have the time to do so and have the interest and desire. I’ll list the openings, uh, affordable housing trusts, we have one opening. The Conservation mission, there are two openings Council of Agen on Aging, one associate opening. Cultural Council, one opening. The community preservation Committee one opening for a

member of historic District commission, the historic District commission, two openings for 3-year terms, 2 openings for 2-year terms. One must be a resident of the historic district and one must be a resident realtor. They’re also openings in the Human Rights Commission, one at large opening. Hamilton Wyndham Cultural Council, 3 openings.

And I believe that is our, are all the openings uh for boards and committees. All right. At this point in the agenda, are there any board or town manager reports, uh, Bill Olson, any, anything to report on I’m not today. Ben Galooza, welcome. Uh, anything you’d like to say to the group? I just want to say

that it’s a privilege to have the opportunity to participate and I want to thank the community for that came out to, to support me in this position and really looking forward to continuing to listen and, and serve and Yeah, just very grateful to be here. Thank you. Certainly glad to have you.

Rosemary Kennedy. It’s been a busy, um, it’s been a busy couple of weeks, um, I don’t have any um For, uh, or For summaries tonight. Sorry, this is from a resident. I’m just reading. Oh, I thought I thought you had notes. I was gonna say, see always prepared notes and, but I, I am always

prepared, though, aren’t I? Yes, I know I said that I take my job very seriously. That’s what I expected. Um Mr. Meyer Uh, no, no, I’m going to round us off with none as well. I think we have a, uh, a lot on the agenda that will have a lot of robust,

uh, discussion. I know, uh, Superintendent Eric Tracy, uh, is planning on joining us tonight as well, so I would have made some updates on the school and their vote that they had on Thursday, but I’ll leave a lot of that up to him and hopefully have some good interaction, uh, with everybody

in the room. Um, Joe, anything on your end? My town manager report will be out, um, on Friday as usual. Uh, the We did have a meeting with the school district, uh, and, uh, the town of Wyndham, uh, to review the school district agreement that, that has been something that’s been going on for a couple

weeks, a couple months now, Rosie and I were, were both there, um, just moving ahead on on like exchanging ideas and drafting language so that nothing to report yet. Out of that. Just that we continue to work on. Parts of the agreement that are no longer. Relevant, sorry, um. Not really a lot to

report just that we are meeting with the town of Wyndham and the and the district to review the regional agreement. But this is a project that’s been going on for years. So, Finally moving out. So just 32nd sort of the process for that sort of what is it the need does it require public hearings,

require a vote? What’s what’s actually the process? What’s the language is decided upon what’s approximately gets approved. So the process laid out in the agreement is that the two towns, uh, select boards and the school committee have to agree to reopen the agreement. All three boards have done so, uh, over a year ago. Uh, we’ve started meeting

about 4 months ago, 5 months ago, on a number of issues such as the members are elected to the school committee, um, other parts that are not consistent with DESE guidance, um, and We’re trying to draft language around things like our budget process, how often we meet during the budget process and

when we have agreement on those, we’ll put them into writing and then they will be circulated to both boards and to DESEEE, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has to approve the new agreement and then after that, it has to go to a town meeting. So this is not something that will be

finished anytime soon. It will probably be. Fall at the earliest. OK. Rosemary, I know you’ve been to those meetings. Anything you’d add to that or still a work in progress I think Joe outlined, uh, some of it still a work in progress. I’ve also been very involved in the um Gordon Conwell

negotiations, so we’ll have to see which one of you two would like to take those over. Um Caroline appointed me to both of those. And um, so obviously, um, either you or Bill will go to those meetings, I’m sure. Well, I, I mean, as you did last year, if you’re interested, you know, we can, we’ll have

those discussion on, on the liaison assignments, I think under new business. OK, well, thank you all. Um, moving right along, uh, next on the agenda is the consent agenda. I see 3 items, one being approved the Hamilton Waham Garden Club banner, uh, at the COA from Saturday, May 3rd through

Saturday, May 10th, uh, for a plant sale. Uh, the second item is it approved annual amphibious vehicle race at Patton Park on May 15th. And the third item is approval of minutes of March 24, 2025 for the select board. Can I get a motion on approving the consent agenda. I’ll make a motion to

approve the consent. Any other, Or a second? Second by Rosemary. Any other discussion or anything we want removed or discussed in the consent agenda the fact that we always, always talk about banners and signs, but Joe, this is something we’ve approved before. It’s a new one-off request. No, it’s something that comes up annually. Um, it’s uh Hamilton

Wyndham Garden Club hangs a banner in front of the Council on Aging on that banner rack every year around this time to advertise their, their fundraising efforts and and and efforts. So that’s just a normal uh banner, uh, requests. Had it every year. Correct, yes, one of that, yeah, wanted to be

known. So thank you for that. So we had a 1st, a 2nd, uh, no requests to remove anything or further discussion, so I’ll take a roll call vote, starting with you, Mr. Olson. Uh, Willie Olson and I. Ben Benza, I Rosemary. Rosie Kennedy, I, and Mr. Myers, Tom Myers, I So the consent agenda passes 50.

All right, um, Did we miss public comment? You did. You skipped it. Uh, this is a, a point I’ll take public comment. Uh, that’s an opportunity for anybody to approach the mic, um, and, uh, with a 3 minute timer on anything that is not already on the agenda. We will provide opportunity to discuss agenda

items when they arise. OK. Sure. First of all, Edward Flynn to Sis Lane. I live in Wenham. OK. OK. I just want to make sure I heard you guys correctly, so I believe what you said was you’re not going to be finalizing the agreement between um Wenham and Hamilton on the schools until the fall,

so that I will take that as meaning that there will not be it either at either town meeting uh a special town meeting, a a question asking us whether or not we would want to reduce the vote from you’re saying no, is that, no, not that I’m aware of. I would. No. No. The district council has

previously advised the school committee that in order for any item in the agreement to be changed, it has to be negotiated between the towns and the school district, then it has to be approved by DESE, then it has to go to a town meeting vote. There’s not any Time to do that right now the

The suggestion of council district council is also to uh do the all the changes that you want to make in the agreement at one time because it’s the state does have a very rigorous review process. OK, great, thank you very much. uh, when you, if I am allowed to speak again, I’m not sure what your

rules are, it will be probably later I think at some point you’re gonna be talking about um uh the consolidation of the schools it it would I, would, would there be another chance to speak at that? OK, thank you. are coming. Hi there, Michelle Horgan, 141 School Street. How are you? Um, I was just

wondering as the governing board of our town, is it possible for you guys to have a forum or some type of communication that you could share with the community what possibly could happen. To the Winthrop school if the schools are consolidated. Pending upcoming, if it happens, um, at

the upcoming school committees. I think there’s a lot of, um, confusion about The protocol calls and, and how we have to vote as a town and get 2/3 to do anything with that property. So, and I know you, everyone is stretched thin, um, but I really think it would be helpful if there was clear

communication on what’s happening because what I’ve heard, You know, people are saying there’s already a 40B going in there. There’s surveying happening on the property. So I just think there’s, you know, if we could just have some type of communication just to let everybody know what the facts are. All right. Yeah, I think

that’s fair. I wouldn’t go through what that looks like, maybe reach out to you to see what’s on your mind as well, but I think that clarity is important because a lot of people are filling in blanks and making assumptions. Correct. Great, thank you so much. Right, right, but I think just Bill

Wilson, I can start. I think the first thing is what the facts are nothing, zero has been decided on that property. Nothing. So we have, we’re, we’re at we’re at ground zero, so nothing’s been decided. So yes, it’ll be a lot of discussion. Public public comment, a vote, uh, lots of

things would happen if, if, if we even got to that point but right now just to be make it clear for the community that we have decided 0 on that property right now. Joe, I don’t know if you wanna add anything to that comment just to make sure we make it ultimately clear nothing has been there’s nobody

surveying it for 40B so nobody’s surveying it as far as I know. I mean, I don’t know what the school district is doing with the property. It’s not our, it’s not town property currently. Oh, it is, but we don’t have control of it currently. Um, but the town has nothing going on out there.

And also like to point out that you know, the process with the consultants that we’re trying to uh work with the town to help come up with a possible 3A. Proposal, the advisory committee for that process had advised that the Winthrop school will be taken out of the study area and it was so even

what’s gone before, what’s been drafted and being presented to the planning board doesn’t contemplate the, uh, the, the Winthrop school site at all in that, in that plan. So they’re literally literally is no plan at all for the Winthrop school at this current point. And at this point, Given the votes and

the way they’ve gone, we’re not moving forward with anything until uh until something else happens, so. That is straight up the truth. There’s nothing else to it. Yes, sir. Good evening. My name is Walter Lazinski. I live on 10 honeysuckle Road, near Hamilton. I moved here in 1969. We probably moved here for a different reason than most

people do, and you’re going to laugh. We moved here because we couldn’t afford a house in Salem, Beverly PBD at Danvers, but we found one in Hamilton. During that time 56 years. I’ve been to at least 50 town meetings. There’s one common thing that’s happened over those years. We have a group of

one article voters. There are 7 other departments in this, uh, town. These people get up and leave, and they’re only interested in their one item. Nothing has ever been done. To try to talk to them to stay. No board what is ever talked to them about it. I think this board should try to open a

report with these people who are only thinking on one item all the time. Nothing is a coincidence, the older I get. You just something you don’t know about. Jeez, there wasn’t an override for the schools this year. I wonder why. There’s a pattern, OK? And I’m interested in the new school or

repair school, but there were a lot of people who are really against this. And Standing outside. Of the auditorium this last meeting. I thought Geez, somebody’s really acting up in the woman wasn’t acting up, as you know, she was quite upset. And all the years that I’ve been here, I’ve never seen

people get upset like that. So we have a serious problem. Let’s try to talk. Because there are more departments. I believe it is that, OK? Thanks, Walter. Thank you, Walter. And uh other comments. I’m, this is bad. I just want to say I appreciate Walter’s point of view and I’ve heard what you

have to say. And, and I generally agree with it, you know, that we need to listen more and do more, more outreach as well, uh, and create additional venues as well for, for people to To gain information as well as, you know, potentially to your point with Walter around encouraging

people to stay. You know, for the whole town meeting because these issues affect all of us, um. So I support your sentiment and generally agree with it. Um, around improving communication and Like I would, I would agree, you know, maybe it’s in the, in the way we order things where we can maintain it’s hard to

keep somebody in a room. There was overwhelming support for our general operating budget, which were those 7 other 7 other departments, as well as the schools, uh, uh, at that day at the meeting, um, so I do see full support by the community for the operating budgets and the capital budgets

that we put out there. Then we get into some difficulties on, you know, single topics, uh, and I think that’s the gist of what Walter’s talking about, whatever the single topic is typically people come load the room, and then, then leave and we, we had half the audience for all the zoning, uh,

amendments that we had, so. Hard to manage that, but you know we can talk about strategy down the road, but I appreciate your comments, Walter. OK, let’s move on. Um, we’ll get into the agenda, um, uh, the first item is approve appointment of Joni Millanson to the Hamilton Wenham Cultural

Council is online. Uh, I see Joie’s online. I did read through your information,,, 20 year residence, road rose your children here raised your children here, uh, looking to get involved in the community. Uh, so I do appreciate that. Is there, uh, any discussion on appointing Joni or Joni, would

you like to say anything To the board. Johnny, you’re, you’re muted. You need to take. I you Yes, sir, sorry about that. Uh, very much, I very much appreciate the opportunity, uh, to serve on the board. I have wanted to get more involved and things going on, uh, in the community and so I really do uh

appreciate the opportunity. I look forward to working with all of you. Thank you, Joanie. Can I get a motion to approve the appointment of Melanin, so moved. We have a 1st, we have a 2nd. Any further discussion? We’ll take a, a roll call starting with you, uh, Mr. Olson. We most and I, Ben.

And Galooza, I, Rosemary. Rosie Kennedy I Mr. Myers, Tom Myers. Uh, and Bill Wilson and I, so it’s unanimous. Welcome Joy. Welcome. All right, 2nd, next item up is recap of annual town meeting. Uh, we’ve started to discuss a little bit. I had mentioned, uh, you know, first of all, thank you to everybody

involved, uh, Tom Clark, uh, all the volunteers, uh, everybody that worked at it, the planning part of it, Joe, and your team, um, it was a historic, uh, Showing, I think there was the, uh, I think the family room was packed. Everything seemed to work well. A few little glitches with, uh,

the voting stuff, uh, machines or, but everything worked, you know, when we needed it to, uh, I think there was robust good discussions, as I mentioned earlier, I think, you know, a lot of people showed up and, you know, wholeheartedly supported our operating budgets, our capital budgets looking for, you know, roads and sidewalks, improvements and facility

improvements, uh, and some trucks and the police cruisers and radio. all those items, 800,000 in our capital budget. The Enterprise water budget, uh, was, uh, you know, approved overwhelmingly. So I think that the cost to run the day to day business, uh, we’re well supported and everybody was

there and we had uh some high level of voting, so, uh, uh, kudos to everybody, the Finals, a lot of good work there, um, a good presentation on the impact of our finances, the tax rates, and, and what we have to look forward to as far as expenses

go down the road. the planning board, a lot of good hard work was done, uh, preparing all those zoning articles. Yes, we lost a lot of the crew there, but there was still some good discussions, uh, and some good votes and next steps if they didn’t pass on on what’s to come, so overall, I think it

was a great, uh, uh, town meeting with a good turnout, followed by a good turnout as well at the ballot. Kudos to the planning efforts and the execution and the attendants that showed up. Yeah, anybody else have any thoughts or comments on, I would second that. I thought, I mean, I was

really impressed with the turnout and how many folks we were able to get um get a town meeting. Um, I was also really impressed with the just respectful dialogue that I felt everyone had. I felt that there was a, you know, some controversial issues and, you know, people felt passionate on

one side or the other, um, but it was for the most part very respectful dialogue, and I think people were able to share their opinions, uh, back and forth, and I was, I was really impressed with that. Um, you know, I do think there’s always room for improvement on, on town meeting and how we can

make sure that everyone gets involved. I know that there were, you know, folks that had young children, there are folks probably with, you know, mobility issues that might not be able to attend. There’s always issues, you know, where maybe we can’t get the, you know, a full representative of,

of our town. I mean, even though we got, you know, over 1000 or close to 1000 folks. I mean, we have 5700 voters in this town, so it’s always good to try and increase that turnout as much as we can, so the more we can do to increase, you know, the avail for everyone within this community,

I think it’s going to be helpful us things we think about down the road. If we ever get 5700 people to tell me, and I don’t know where we hold it. A big tent. Yeah, exactly. Any other comments, uh, Rosemary Ben or Bill? still with us.

I’m still. This is Ben. I’d just like to make a comment. I think, you know, echoing a bit about what Tom’s saying in the areas I’ll go through all the nice things I think we did, did a great job and everyone, um, participated in all the right ways. I do believe that for, you know, the families and for

just general comfort, um, there, there is room for improvement there specifically around kind of the, and I know it’s a lot, it’s hard to administer, but the AV and the tech and finding additional ways for people to be able to participate in maybe even be breaking down into smaller rooms as opposed to um

the cafeterias, it was, when you’re in the cafeteria section, uh, it was very challenging um for the families in there to be able to hear and, you know, fully participate as well as then be able to also stick around, um, by the time it they kind of got through the towards the last uh last 3 or last

quarter of the meeting, people had to start rolling off, um, which is a challenge. You know, for people juggling schedules and families and I would like to see us improve there for town meetings, specifically on, on the audio visual uh participation and finding other paths for that, if we don’t

have the IT and tech support to do the infrastructure in those spaces that are made available that can hold large crowds, I think we should strongly consider other virtual options. I know we’ve moved to in person for better. com m un ic ation um, there’s a lot of benefits that come with that, and I

think we should strongly consider though if we can’t have the in-person AV tech up to a high standard, we should consider virtual or other solutions I’m open to, um, whatever we can do, that’s, that’s budget friendly, um, easy to set up, so we can increase participation, uh, and

get a more, you know, I think. Uh, rounded participation for the for the majority of the town meeting and for for all the items and articles and departments, so it’s a thought and would love to have more discussion, more ideas about it, um, because I know it was challenging for the families in

particular. Yeah, if I could just offer real quick, I mean, Ben, I, I’m, I’m open to any other uh suggestions we can have that uh we’re allowed to do to make a town meeting run more smoothly. I just, I’ve had a number of people suggest to

me, uh. Prior to and since time meeting, uh, just as Ben just did about uh a a remote participation of Tain. Unfortunately, in the state of Massachusetts, open town meeting is not allowed to be remote. Uh, if you had a uh representative town meeting as some communities do where you

elect the town meeting members they can be remote because the town can then ensure that every single elected member has access to the meeting via some electronic device in an open town meeting we have no way to do that. And so as long as there is the possibility that we would be disadvantaging one

group of people or another, we can’t do a remote town meeting, so, um, not without changing your form of government. So, uh, Open, as I said, open to all other ideas and suggestions, but we just have to be cognizant of the fact that state law does not allow open town meeting to be held in a

hybrid or remote fashion. Yeah, I unfortunately that feedback, Joe, not that we would do this necessarily, but what if we wanted to change our form of government, if that was a discussion. Is that a, that’s a long and involved process and Yeah, you need, yeah, we, we can, we can review that if the

town wants to try to move to a representative town meeting. I’ve got to check the, I, I don’t know if we have enough population. I think you have to have at least 12,000 residents to be, uh, a, a representative town meeting. So I don’t think we have enough population. Yeah, and I’m not suggesting

suggesting we do that. I’m just, you know, I want everyone to understand, uh, the differences. Hi, that’s her 270 Asbury Street. I am often up here bringing things to people’s attention, but what I wanted to do right now is to thank Joe for having remote parking for at the town meeting and um

having the babysitting off site and uh that might be the school district, um, having the extra space for the families in the cafeteria. And one of my favorite things, Kain was um the the scrolling um page. that we could see that our clicker was active. So I thought that was a great new addition, and I

just wanted to um say thank you because I really felt like that helped also keep the energy down because people knew that their votes were counting. So thank you. Yes, Karen deserves a call out. Thank you for all of it. Stephen McWherter, 18 Cunningham Drive, just on this topic, uh, question. Um Can for

the town meeting, we’d be at a remote location like Winthrop School. I know you had a shuttle there. Is that possible? Um, beef up the technology if you, if you need help doing that, you know, it’s something we could maybe look into um certainly if we get more than 1000 people, we’re gonna have

to look for something because if we, uh, we were pretty much busting at the seams in our current location with that larger town meeting. Um, I, I just, I will caution us we don’t have There are only a few rooms that are, are wired to be

able to do what we’re doing here, um, and I don’t know that there’s a space at the, at the Winthrop school or any place outside of the library or. our town hall when it reopens, that we can do this kind of um Meeting where. Michael, I’ll ask some folks player. Um, and real quick, I’m gonna just ask

folks that, please make sure you’re on mute. If you can’t remute, I’m going to have to remove you from the meetings are starting to turn. got Uh-huh, it’s a same. Kelly Rollers. Edward Flynn toys Lane in Wennam, Mister Vice Chair, just as a point of order, I see one of the problems with

Representative because I actually a big fan of town meeting and, and I think everyone should go as well like the gentleman spoke. The problem with representative for towns like ours is, I don’t know what like where I live in Wenham, we get about 400 or 500 people vote, so you’d end up

getting in your town whatever it is you normally get, and let’s say it’s 700, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know what it is. And they’re gonna be the same people. collecting the representatives to represent the entire town. So the problem is the the number of people being represented through a

representative uh way of doing it is far less than having, does that make sense to you? It does. Yeah, thank you. And this is the oldest form of government. I think we, uh, we have, but I, but I enjoy it. It’s just comes up with challenges as well, but everyone, every way will.

Any other Rosemary, this is Bill. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I once again I want to applaud. You know, with Joe and Corinne doing in the background, I think, um, they make a lot of decisions and do a lot of organize without us, I think moving forward, I might sit

down with you this, this in the next couple of weeks and do maybe think about a steering committee. I see our meetings getting more. And more, uh, sort of inclusive everybody coming to vote, so I think we need to think about how to, we talk about improvement, but let’s put everything down on a,

on a whiteboard and maybe do a little steering committee to see what ideas we can come up with. So I’ll work with you on that, but I think, yeah, you and Kain do a great job with the town departments making it run smoothly, but maybe we can

help you out and come up with some new ideas. Great. Look forward to it. Personally, the biggest challenge I had was, uh, visibility to the content, you know, it’s tough to sit there with everything behind us. I don’t know if there’s ever a way where we, I’d rather everyone else see it, but uh it

struggles from the, the seat we sit in, yeah, we talked about putting the screen on the floor in front of us, Bill, and I, I definitely, that’s gonna be one of the things on my, so we can see things in front of us. So, well, good recap. If there’s no

other, I think this is a great transition into, uh, you know, our next topic, um, uh, which is special. meeting, I see uh Superintendent Eric Tracy is in the room. If you want to come join us, uh, for this discussion. We did receive a letter, you know, from the schools. They had a vote on

Thursday where they’ve asked both communities, both towns in the district, uh, to revisit, uh, and have a special town meeting, uh, to vote again on the consolidated school. So I don’t know if you want to kind of kick that off. We’ll have a discussion on, on that. Sure, thank you very much part of the

process. Goes all the way back to February 26th in 2025 when the MSBA board voted to bring us into Project scope and Budget, which is the start of 120 day window for districts, school districts to gain, uh, financing and financing approvals. So the process that We started on that date was

actually really quickly done through the town meeting on April 5th and then the ballot vote immediately following, as we know the town meeting votes did not pass. They did not receive the requisite 2/3 votes, uh, the ballots did receive majorities. Uh, the school committee after some discussion on their last meeting, uh, decided to request inclusion on

the warrant for the same items in Hamilton for the school 10 $42 million for the school department, uh, for the, uh, Hamilton Wyndham Elementary School and then also the 50-year lease that was, uh, initially on there in the same context. So right now we’re still in the 120 day window,

the MSBA we’ve been working with them to keep them apprised of what’s been happening. We have a letter going out tomorrow just to kind of give them a recap of the past couple of weeks and then, um, I believe you already received a letter from the chair from regarding the request to be for

those items to be put on the warrant, so we have until oddly the same day that this special town meeting is in Hamilton June 26th is day 120. Um, nobody planned that that I can tell, but it just happened to fall that way, so. Um, that’s really the window we’re in, we, we could request an extension.

There are oftentimes extensions given depending on the circumstances of when and where your town meetings and ballot elections occur. Um, but right now we’re within that window, so the school department, uh, voted to bring it forward again. OK, um, so we just had a discussion about special town meeting. We talked about the, uh, the record turnout, uh,

good discussions, uh, it was respectful, I think, um, now the asked to put it on a future warrant on a future special town meeting within the 120 days. I understand that process, but what, what would the, what is the district going to do, you know, differently? Are they open-ended questions. To get a

different result or what is the plan between now and then, um, that would change the result in a vote. I think it’s more really getting out there and continuing the conversation with some of the groups that are within the community, um, Talking to one segment, there was some. Some connection to

the 3A issue which has happened all along and helping people to understand the differences between the two. I think Joe was talking about it when I came in, part of the, you know, what happens with the Winthrop site and there’s there’s some fairly um interesting information out there regarding

what the Winthrop site will be if, if the Winthrop school closes down, so I think really just getting out there and helping people to understand some of the things that have already been discussed both at the select board meetings and, and, and, um. At the school committee meetings related to

the, to the project and the realities of what would happen with pieces of land, you know, in this case, the Winthrop school if we were to move forward, what would happen with that property? So that would be what do you think specifically you would do to sort of get out there in the community, you

think like community events, you’re thinking like some sort of flyers or emails or whatever, and I just asked because, you know, similar to what you just said, I mean, I’ve seen people that have had, you know, thoughts on this project, you know, and they might have been questions that were answered as

part of the school building committee’s work and they might be asking like, oh, why don’t they look at iron rail as an option. Why don’t they look at this? Why don’t they look at that? And a lot of that you can, you know, point to the website

of the FAQs or some of the work that the school building committee’s done, but I think there’s folks out there that might not have or have seen that information, so yeah, I agree there’s opportunity to get out there and do even do some neighborhood meetings, um, which was started up a little

bit and maybe probably too late to get the right information out there. Uh, we still have a lot of the ability to communicate with the video sets that we have and you know the email. The weekly newsletters, but I think it’s more of also getting our committee members involved in the discussion more

publicly. Um, so that people that they know can help them learn to understand that process as well, so it’s it’s, it’s still an educational process, I think, in that. In the whole along the whole line, but it’s important for all of us to be out there and answering those questions that

for the, for the people that, you know, may be sitting at home saying, geez, I heard this, this, this is probably true when it may or may not be. I think it’s addressing it straight on might be a better issue. I think I know the answer to this, but just to make sure, I believe there’s a

way for everyone to subscribe to your weekly email. I know I get them because I have children in the school system, but not everyone does, but does everyone have access able to do that if you go to the, yeah, if you go to the HW schools. ne t

website and you can sign up for my weekly, the superintendent’s weekly. Uh, you don’t have to be a member of the school committee. We have hundreds of people who are not members of the uh school department or school families that are uh currently receiving them, so please sign up HWschools.net and uh just search the superintendent’s Weeklies and

right on that same page, you can sign up to have your email address added and we send them out every Friday between 4 and 4:30. Hey Eric, this is, this is Bill. And one of the things from the meeting too is people who spoke against the consolidation against a project and talked more about

renovation. So I think we need to. Have more discussion about why renovation does not work, uh, in your mind and just me because I think there was, that was mostly, it wasn’t, it wasn’t a note on that money in the school. It was no don’t renovate, and it was no don’t do something new renovate.

So it’d be good to hear some robust discussion about why renovation doesn’t work in your, in your school committee and your minds that makes sense? Got it. Yeah, the, the rep, the renovation piece is, is an important piece of the puzzle. I think that people may not have understood. We don’t, when

you renovate your building is essentially stay the same you’re. layout in your rooms, uh, you don’t gain anything from it, which is one of the reasons we’re moving forward with this project is we need more spaces for our kids and our specialized program. In the past 15 years, we’ve expanded our specialized programs dramatically. Um, we’re even

splitting our castle program now into 2 spaces having to move um adults out of rooms so that we can split these um Uh, programs for children based on what the laws say. The laws don’t allow kids within a 48 month range to be in the same

program, so a 2nd grader and a 5th grader can’t be in the same program, uh, which causes us to really take up more of the uh space that that a regular classroom may be in. Um, schools weren’t designed for, for what we’re dealing with today. And that’s, that’s been a clear message where, um, any

of those uh specialized rooms places for kids to receive, uh, ed services, uh, specific to disabilities or even 504 services we just don’t have those smaller spaces we have to, we end up using a classroom with, you know, programs with 4 or 5 kids that may need a higher and special needs.

So you’re saying you couldn’t a renovation, you said you were the preserved space and room size stays the same. You couldn’t go to the exterior walls and create that open space within the 4, a straight up renovation would, would not really change the, the outlook. You’d have to do our, our

renovation edition probably to, to gain space in within a particular building. So if you took the Cutler school several of the options were renovation and additions, um, that would have, you know, helped. to be in that process, so Eric, just so I understand you’re saying that you couldn’t get the

cutler school to the walls and reconfigure the space and do a small edition that that would not be possible, that that’s what you’re saying. Do I understand that, I didn’t say that. I just said that a straight up renovation is generally the way it’s been described by our architects is

they leave the walls in place and they just kind of clean everything up, HVAC. sprinkler systems a fire. Yeah, the outside walls intact, but that’s where if you go into the cutler, our classrooms go to the outside walls. So you’d have to, you’d have to add something onto the building.

You have to add something on to more than just the cutler if you kept all the schools. We just need, we need space. We’re at that point right now where we were spreading out to programs, specialized programs and trying to even bring some back in, you know, we, we’ve always had this conversation

going on how do we bring kids in? From out of district placements, where can we put those programs if we were able to build it. One of the ones was our language-based programs, and that language-based program now we brought it back in. It’s been successful enough that now it needs two spaces, so you’re

doing language. Language based, not, yeah, not, not um, not foreign languages. You. OK. So, thank you. I’m, I’m listening. OK. So the, the, the idea is that if you’re looking at just a straight up renovation, which is why the school building committee stayed away from it. We’re looking for more space,

you know, we’re looking for more space even right now, and as we talk about some of these expansions in town with apartment buildings, you know, if we see new kids come in, um, over the next, say, 2 years that you get 50 new kids, it’s all it’s going to do is increase our classroom sizes

and really not. You know, there’s no place to there’s no extra place to put kids we’re not housing extra rooms that are free right now without displacing other programs or trying to fit things into places where they don’t belong, like on stages and in closets and corridors and hallways.

And in a renovation, where do you put the kids when you’re renovating? Yeah, when you, when you do any type of renovation in the building, you would end up having some type of modular set up. They run about. $200,000 apiece, uh, so each modular is usually a classroom, sometimes they’re

set up for 2, so those are, uh, places where you would end up putting. We don’t have buildings in town where we can temporarily move our elementary school kids, uh, while the building’s being renovated, they have done. In some schools, uh, in, in the Peabody public schools many years ago.

They did the high school in 6 phases, and that’s, you know, it’s pretty messy. You’re, you’re still dealing with everything on the site in the site. These smaller schools, I think it would be harder to do that without using some level of um portable classroom on the site so that you could shift kids

out of a space, renovate it, move them back in, shift other kids out of the space. You need some way to to move kids out of spaces while they’re being fixed. Could you, could you talk a little bit about the middle school, high school, and like I know I’ve seen options thrown around about maybe using

that as a place to to move children during a renovation. Is that, uh, a viable option? Well, if you go to the middle school right now, they’re using every single classroom, you know, same, same with the high school. um, there was some, some communication. that we received from someone said, why

don’t you just move all the 5th graders up to the middle school, um, first of all, I’ll be probably quite an uproar within the community to do that. I’ve I’ve seen it done in a community I used to live in and it was uh it was a wild and

crazy time, but I think the uh The realities of that are really taking 10025 kids and trying to put them into separate spaces in the, in the middle school would be difficult. We don’t have that many open spaces. So then you’re looking at, OK, what do you collapse? Where you put

things down there so levels, different levels of things would end up, you know, you end up losing leveling and things like that, so it’s just, it’d be it’d be a difficult issue to move 120 or 130 5th graders to the middle school. Eric, this is, this is Ben Galooza online here, um. If so. That was one

of the other select board members was Tony. It seemed like the tenor of the town and sort of where people arrived. This is a broad statement was that the schools like that we have to do something about it, you know, it wasn’t that people were not necessarily opposed to consolidation or doing anything,

um, but that’s something had to be done, um, that renovations, you know, seem like an attractive option. Uh, to accomplish the same result. There’s nuance and intricacy to it that makes it more complicated, but could you speak about if If the school committee and the towns and in

both towns did head down that path. Um, what would the timeline of that process look like just in broad strokes. I don’t need a detailed answer, but if we wanted to pursue that avenue. What would that look like before this even starting, you know, analysis and design, and then, you know, if you have

to decant user groups and move them back in, all those things like what would that timeline look like before the children are kind of butts and seats in a in a new refurbished school. So we assuming MSBA process? Well, if there’s two different timelines, maybe it’s helpful to talk about both, but we

don’t. Need to go into too much depth, whatever you think is most appropriate. Yeah, you’re still, you’re still going to need a process with to hire a designer and a project manager, um, because of the scale of capital involved, but the, the MSBA uh pro program, if we said, OK, we don’t want to move

forward right now. We, we want to step back from the process, uh, similar to what Ipswich did. Then in April when the windows open up again, we would continue to submit statement of interest to the state, um, specific to uh one of the elementary schools again, like the Cutler or the Winthrop, and

I hope to get accepted. If you got accepted in 12 or 3 years, you’re still in a 4-year window between um getting accepted, getting the process moving forward with hiring OPM, hiring an architect, uh, doing the initial feasibility. study and schematic design process takes about 88 to 10 months, and then

you’re looking at another 2.5 year window to actually build and and or renovate depending on how, what scale you did. It could be. 2.5 could be less depending on the scale of renovation or addition that you chose to do, so it’s hard to nail down a timeline, but it generally runs if you run

through MSBA it’s usually a five-year window from start to finish. Uh, if you do it on your own, it may be a shorter timeline if you can get um the right people on board right away and manage the process similarly and. I would guess you could probably do it maybe in a slightly shorter timeline,

but because some of the MSBA timelines are built in to give people opportunity to, you know, to submit paperwork. We submit thousands and thousands of pages of paperwork to the MSBA so you might be able to do it shorter. I just don’t know exactly how much shorter it would be. And is that with 3

elements, Eric, if you, if we, if it, if a school voted voted for the renovation, when would When kids have been butts and seats, #1. Number 2 is if we, if the town decides renovation is what they want to do. How do you guys decide which school to

renovate first? How do you, how do you have, how do you have that inequality discussion? Where does that start? Have you ever seen that happen before in towns and how do you, how do you debate that one? Yeah, I think you, you look at it from the same perspective we looked at the 3 elementary schools, it

was clear to the MSBA and several people that we brought in that the Cutler school was in much more in need of repairs and renovations and upgrades and the Winthrop school kind of would be second in line in the Bucher school would be last and uh through that process that that came. To be pretty clear

given the just the ADA upgrades in the Cutler school and some of the things that would need to be done right away, so you’re still looking at a fairly substantial timeline. And in the original project if it got voted in, when would, when would it be done? If the, if we, if we voted everything

in on April 5th and the ballot passed the design work would start in the summer of 2026 and the opening of the building would have been the fall of 2028. Uh, now each, each, each month you’re going to move beyond that, uh, ever so slightly until you figure out either you want to drop out of

the process and start over, or if you continue through the process. Bill, you’re, I was going to say just clarify, if you go through a process again individually, or could they all go as a grouping to the MSPA and say we have 3 elementary schools and submit a request and a grouping versus

individually. Yes, my conversations with the MSBA is they, they’ll only do them one at a time because of the number of schools in the state that are requesting assistance from the MSBA program, um, and we’re seeing higher and higher costs, so they’re, they’re looking at it from the perspective of the

schools fails. Uh, in a town to move forward with the renovation. They’re gonna take that money and put it towards somewhere that may be moving forward and as we know, the pot of money is pretty, pretty stagnant compared to the growth that we’re seeing in the construction industry and on

top of the economic uncertainty of tariffs as well, so I think the the MSBA will will probably start to stay within that 120 day timeline and say, OK, if you can’t get it done by then, we’re not sure that we want to continue, but you, you can always reply and you’d apply, you can apply, you could put

all 5 schools in if you wanted to at one time. They’re just 5 separate applications, so they, they go in at the same time in the same window, usually, uh, late March to early April, they open up the window and then they notify districts in the fall, if they’re accepted in the program or not. So with the

condition of all three schools, and we talked a little, we talked a lot about consolidation, you know, um, we, if I think a lot of the discussion comes around the cost, right? And, and the 2000 per average household in Hamilton on the first year in the tax and the schedule, I

think there was a good job with the tax calculator online and such. Is there any, you know, one of the things I’d like, is there a way to, you know, so voters are, it’s transparent that regardless of the path, whether it’s renovating all three schools, whether it’s 2 new schools or 1 consolidated

school, the cost that’s coming into this community, uh, could be equal to or greater than if done separately. Is there any way to kind of show that? I think there was opportunity for a lot of people to speak at town meeting. A lot of opportunity for social media discussions and a lot of

numbers are flying around and people don’t know what to believe, and it’s all speculative in some way. So how do we hone in to make a, uh, informed decision to say here’s the type of capital outlay, you know, we need, whether it be for a consolidated school or to do all three separately so we

can compare over the next 20 years the impact to our taxes. Yeah, it’s it’s the answer is it’s hard to say because of the, it depends on the path you choose. If you’re just going to do a straight renovation. Um, and involve the MSPA, MSBA in the process, that’s a little different than doing an

addition renovation, you know, that that price starts to change fairly dramatically when you add an addition because now you’re going into the ground and you’re not, you’re not staying within the framework of the building. Um, it’s also dependent on what’s already existing in your school, so some of our schools have sprinkler systems. The Cotler

does not have a sprinkler system in any place other than the new wing on the right where the gym is, and that’s, that’s part of the, you know, so that’s an expense and then HVAC becomes another expense, asbestos, asbestos removal, so it’s, it’s different in each of the buildings depending on how

they may already meet the code. And that’s, you know, that, that also includes reimbursements for certain room size, the MSBA has a fairly standard size of 950 square feet per classroom. Some of our classrooms would meet that not all do. If you’re going to the Winthrop school, they’re,

they’re different sizes. Um, I don’t know why, but they, they, they’re all slightly different. Um, and it’s, it’s that, that’s where you can run into some of the problems because that’s the expectation of the MSBA to meet their reimbursements to, to meet, you know, when you, when you say reimbursement. I think

everybody realizes now that you’re not being reimbursed for the entire project. Only things that the MSBA determine are acceptable for reimbursement, and that one of those things is classrooms, number of classrooms, and classroom sizes. Got you. Now, I got one more question here. It’s just, I agree with the process, I think it’s worth opening this thing

up to take advantage of $50 million. And because all four votes passed by over 50%, I think we should revisit it, but I want to give you the opportunity to convince the community on why we should vote again, because I think it’s important that you understands that. A lot of things we took 2

or 3 times the vote to get approved. The consensus is hard, but it’s, it’s worth. We’re doing it again because like I said, over 50% in each, in each vote we had on all 4 votes. I just wanna have you defend that position just so a lot of

people are gonna say, why are we doing this again? Yeah, that was the tenor of the discussion from the school committee side. I mean, they made ultimately voted to make that decision to move it forward, and it was really around um the, the $50 million having the opportunity to have that offset, but also

because of the the way the votes fell where um the 2 ballot votes passed and puts them in a situation where I think Wenham was off by 1% of the of the uh minimum required 1 or 2%. So I think they felt like that was close enough to

be able to do some more leg work and, and get that, the word out there so that people have a better understanding of the project. And I think it’s important that to note that our, our both the Finals really did a great job laying out the financial impacts with all the information from Um, soup to

knots, and they, they put in hours and hours of work to really come down to the showing that the finances work and make sense over time. Um, and I think there’s also other projects in line, each, each of the communities, including the, the school district have a number of projects coming down

the pipe. We were working on the roof at the high school right now, um, you know, we just moved stabilization money last week to begin that process, so we don’t have to immediately go back to the town and say, oh, we need money. We’re using capital stabilization money to begin that process, but at some

point we’ll come back to the towns for for something like the roof at the high school or. in 2 years, the roof of the middle school, that roof is 26 years old, um, we’re still, we’re still looking at big projects within each of the communities, whether they’re based in water or facilities or,

you know, infrastructure. I think those are all important things to keep in mind. So we were looking at it from the perspective of Over time trying to manage along with the community uh issues that are definitely coming at us, including, um, some, some big events, and that’s, that’s just

Really good finance as we look at it across the board, but I think it’s also the $50 million really plays, um, in the conversation with this with the school committee people and there was some trepidation, I think in the conversation for those who listened to it, it was, it was, you know, a

difficult decision for several of them to come to, but um they felt like they could, they would be willing to do the work to move this forward. I, I have one more question. I don’t know if it’s for, for Joe or maybe Eric, you want to weigh in as

well, but we’ve gotten a lot of emails over the last couple of weeks around, you know, for and against, you know, doing a revote, and I know that the MSBA guidance says like 120 days from February that it’s allowed to come back, but do we have any opinion from like town council or anything about

whether we can, you know, legally bring a vote back? Does it need to be a change in scope? Does it have to be the same vote? Um, is there a timeline or anything like that that we should be aware of from like a legal framework. The, the only

timeline is the 120. that the MSBA bring the vote back if you choose. It’s up to the board to decide if you think that’s something that you want to do, but legally you can bring the vote back. Right. We had the same opinion from from our attorneys as well legally we could bring the boat back in

the order of the boat didn’t matter. You could do the ballot first and then the town meeting, so. Essentially, that’s how that works in, in the opposite direction. Thank you. Do we have any, uh, to my understanding when I’m already voted on this, any feedback? Have you spoke to their town

administrator on discussions that the the select board didn’t specifically vote on the request from the school committee because they took a vote before the school committee acted on Thursday night, but my understanding from the town administrator is that the Wenham slow board endorsed. Sorry, um, this, the one I’m select where I they’ve

voted unanimously that they were in support of bringing it back to town meeting again. Um, But they had not had the formal request from the school committee at that point, right? They didn’t receive the request from the chair. At that time the meeting I think was the Monday before the school school

committee. But they voted anyway. Yeah. So do they still need to make a formal vote after the or is that, does that, I mean, Sounds like they voted, they, they set the warrant for, for their town meeting on June 9th, so it’s up to them to add

it to the warrant, so. I would say at some point they’re going to revote it in because they know they need to revoke the final warrant, so I would guess that that would occur in the same way. They, they, they, their conversation centered around just kind of leaving the opportunity available if the

school committee approached the, the select board and As we all know, those that letter from Dana came after the fact, so. Can you talk about Bucher a little bit? Like what, what type of costs do we we expect coming at that school. You mentioned the middle school roof, the high school roof.

We’ve talked about the consolidation of the two schools. What about the bureaucrat facility? So Bucher right now is we’re, we’re doing a, we have a company looking at the the route, the flat parts of the roof doesn’t look like there are flat parts of the roof, but there are those are

kind of end of life too, not as big as a project as as our other buildings because most of the rest of the roof is good, um, but that’s one of the areas um if you’re looking at it, you’re asking from the perspective of if we moved kids around. I mean, that, that would just even going forward

consolidation happened, like what type of costs are expected to bring that school up to, uh, learning capabilities you’re really, you’re really in a better, much better place with the Bucher school. I mean, you’re still gonna have to look at security, and that’s one of the things. I mean, as we move

forward with this and things either go for or don’t. I need to look at security in all the buildings, and that’s going to be You know, important for each of our elementary schools that we’ve discussed all along and that’s part of uh maybe the first things we would do. We have put money into that

building over the last few years purposefully to because it was in better shape than the other ones, you know, we brought, we redid the gym, uh, years ago, we did boilers, um, high efficiency boiler replacements. Uh, we’re looking at, uh, rewiring, redoing actually the communication system in there, so in case of an emergency, but, um, Right

now that building is is usable. You got some, you have some life in that within that building. Probably ventilator units will go, will be the first major item, um, one of the things that we’ve learned, uh, from Vicky Masoni and and the people that she works with through our energy people.

um, all of our, our, our elementary schools have rooftop units or classroom units. They are all really at end of life, so those would probably be the priority to get in there and, and do that work and that work also opens up the possibility of asbestos or other materials that may be in these buildings.

And they were, they were clearly asbestos we’ve been taking asbestos out of the Buker for years. We finished the last classrooms last summer, but there’s still, uh, the possibility within the cellars and the piping and possibly in the attics. And Joe, Joe and Joe and Bill, I need to jump

off, but um I’m not, I’m not gonna be able to vote further tonight, but um just as a note, I, I’ll be in favor of putting this on the warrant again, so any questions for me before I jump off? Nope. You guys have anything else, Rosemary, Tom,

Ben? Yeah, um, how, how much have we spent so far on the OPM architecture, engineering team on the consolidation project and when it, if we went with the renovation approach, would it be a similar cost? I guess we kind of follow-up question. So currently the the uh Costa was approved at town meeting

was a total of $1.25 million which we will expend, um, just about all of it at our We have a meeting on the 28th of the select the school board, uh, building committee to to finalize payments. Um, we did receive, uh, just about, just slightly over half a million dollars of that back from the

MSBA. Uh, generally, if you go back through the process the second time, they don’t, um, they don’t. Match, they don’t you know. Give a kickback on the feasibility process a second time. Um, so that becomes one of the issues we have to think about if we decide to not go forward and

determine, you know, what’s next step. So right now we’re we’re just about, we’ve just about expanded that that amount that was set aside for feasibility and schematic design. That’s probably a reasonable assumption if, if the renovation path were explored further that it would cost us something similar as far as soft costs go, and that

we would not receive reimbursement for the soft costs from the MSBA. Correct, yeah, yeah. um this might be a question, Joe, for you or are there other folks on the So like what I’m not sure, um, but if we, if we don’t go through that MSBA process, like just bear with me, I wanna repeat

back what I think I’ve heard so far, um, is that if we do go through that MSBA process. I was just trying to add up the months and the years that you were speaking about Eric, that that’s gonna be kind of a 6 to 7 or maybe even 8 year process

if we were to start it again with the MSBA, um, and that we would probably not be eligible. for soft cost reimbursement, and we are probably unsure as well about if we have to sequence these projects, um, because we’re probably only gonna get one approved at a time if it’s per project.

You know, that we could be looking at 10 to 12 years before. All of these buildings are actually renovated or we have to go it alone. And this is where kind of my question for Our group, like Bar and Joe helped me out here like. What would be the

earliest that we would have if we wanted to do fund the soft costs and go down this path and then assuming we could truncate timetables if we’re not beholden to an MSBA process, right? I guess I’m just trying to figure out what, how long

does this take if we want to go it alone. And so Eric, if I got any of those timings off, but like I really wanna understand that, um, she’s I think it’s a crucial piece of information, um, for all of us to be considering, um, so.

Maybe quickly if I got any of that wrong, like on the timelines, please correct me and then maybe over to you, Joe on if we were to fund it ourselves, how long would it take for us to get those funds together. So the, the timeline you’re, you’re basically what I was describing is what you said, it

depends, it still depends. If you, uh, get involved in the process and you say we successfully went through this process and built a school, um, but was still applying for an SOI statement of interest to the MSBA for say the Winthrop school again through that MSBA process. It’s about a 5-year

window from the start of feasibility to the end of the process and close out. Um, including any punch list items or anything like that. If you do it, uh, privately, it’s still gonna be an extensive project because the state laws, the bidding laws will still require you to have specific

levels of design work. Um, we’re going through that right now with the high school boiler project. We’ve had to hire designers to come in and redesign the boiler, the boiler room set up and piping because of the. Boilers from 30 years ago are 3 times larger than the boilers that we would get now,

higher efficiency, so no matter what, the way the mass bid laws work, you can’t just go out and um raise, you know,,, $50 million and and renovate a school, you have each of those portions would have to be bid out either through a straight contractor, um, or through subcontractors, individually,

so somebody’s gonna have to do that bid work, get all those bids backs ready, and they usually use engine. ing firms to do all that it’s so it’s a it’s still a fairly lengthy process. I think the build process in general. is always going to be in that two year window, um, just because of the

logistics of building on any site with kids on it. As far as far as the the part of the process that would require, you know, raising the funds without MSBA you could probably do it a little quicker, but you know, I caution you. You’d still need

to pass a town meeting in both towns and a vote in both towns, uh, and for a set of money every time that you wanted to do a project, so, um, and at some point, You know, we’d have to be keeping an eye on how much the the projects were

growing and, and cost because Tons still only have so much. And would accept that, so. Yeah. Well, that’s a, like this timeline wise, Joe, it’s like, it would take us a year to get the funds together just to even kick off our own OPM, our own architecture engineering team, is that correct? Yes. OK.

Eric, let me just say this back to you then, like it, it’s 5 years from acceptance into the like feasibility process. So once our SOI is accepted, it’s a five-year from start to finish for anything that does get accepted with MSBA. And but there’s probably a year of runway at least getting to that

point. That’s kind of like how I was getting to the 6 to 7 year math on this. Did I misunderstand that or you’re right, you’re right that year year runways is really depending on what you’re going to do, what level of design work, what level you’re going to bring in separate engineers

to take a look at different aspects of your project. So I think a year is a good, a good timeline to do that basic and design. Yeah. Thanks. I don’t have any more questions for now. Thank you. So time as well as $50 million. Perfect. Yeah, I

think the, the, the, the bigger reality is we just talked about the the multiple projects coming down the pipe. At what point? Do you, you, as a citizen, say I’m not, I don’t want to do this anymore, you know, and I think that’s a realistic conversation to have with everybody. And so if you

do one school. What’s, what’s the possibility that you may never get to do the other schools. That’s, that’s, you know, in the conversations a high probability given the amount of money that’s on the table, I think, you know, if we did this 8 years ago or 9 years ago, we’d be You know, we build,

I think the Smith School and in Damvers was built just for, just before COVID or right around COVID for $48 million you know, fairly sizable elementary school, I think it’s 450 kids in there, so that school today would be, you know, over 100, so I think that’s part of, part of the the the

equation over time we have no idea what’s going on with cost escalation. Everybody says, oh, apply 3%, but then wait a minute, you’re also going to apply the possibility of a 25 or 40% tariff on. Things like steel, you know, can you guarantee that steel is gonna be able to be purchased in the

United States. I don’t know. I mean, that’s the conversation that’s happening in the construction world now. I think everybody’s concerned about that in, in long-term projects. I keep, I keep going too. We can’t avoid, you know, infrastructure costs for our schools and what is greater, Consolidating two schools, you know, and impacting, you know,

700 plus children, uh, in a community way or is it more expensive to upgrade and maintain, you know, 3 separate schools over the next 1015, 20 years. Yeah, and also it depends on what you commit to doing. It really does. But if you wanted to commit to impacting every elementary

grade. Student, you’d have to do all three schools. Is it safe to say the cost of upgrading and maintaining 3 is greater than the consolidation of two schools. That’s I mean we’re seeing that with energy costs right now. Our energy costs, we just got our, our, um, next three year energy is up

40% for for our energy costs, which is something that, you know, not everybody’s going to anticipate 3 years down the road. What’s it going to be? Is it going to be 40% higher than that? So those are the kind of the the unknowns that make

everyone nervous in the, in the big span of a 5 or a 7-year project. OK. Any other board questions before we, uh, take some comments from the No. Well, thank you. We’ll just take some questions now, Deb. Comments, questions? have suffered 46 Maple Street. I just have to take a breath like. So Let’s

just come back to where we are today. So I have a comment and then I have another statement from the community. I just feel like in that statement that we just had from Eric, I feel like we’re relitigating stuff that we’ve been hearing about for the last 18 months and frankly it’s on the shoulders of the

school committee that we are in a situation where we are where we’re having to delay doing something right for the kids because there has been pushback from the community that has been consistent and, and resilient. There have been polls, there were petitions, there was uh cry, crying out to

do the right thing, give us a vote a year ago. And they said no. And one of the school committee people said the biggest lose-lose situation is to go through with the vote now. This was, I think, in June when they accepted the consolidation.

The lose lose is to, is to take this and then have it be turned down and delay the project. Can we pause? And everyone thought, no, we can re-educate the community. Did y’all hear that? That that’s what this is about is a re-education. That’s the strategy to do another vote is to re-educate, to tell you the

exact same things that we’ve been hearing. There’s nothing new. We have all the questions that y’all asked that those have been known about the renovation, the resistance to it, the problems with it, and the reality is that the people voted on April 5th and they did not meet the 2/3 supermajority.

And so to consider that we should just revote. That’s just like bad parenting, right? Like we all know the boundary setting and parenting is really important. If you don’t set healthy boundaries and the kids do things wrong, they keep doing it because they think it’s OK. And that’s what

happened with the middle school project, right? Like it just kept coming back and back and back, and they wore us down and they did it. So what does that mean? That the yes vote is OK and that’s acceptable in the community, but a no vote just means keep trying. Your vote doesn’t matter. Where’s the

equity in the vote? Where every vote matters. Where’s the equity for all the citizens who dragged themselves to that town meeting and and voted. OK? And the fact that there is a small majority of 14 people. That is not significant. And I think it’s reckless. For this committee To think that you

have the power to take away everyone’s vote. And say, let’s do it again, and let’s just re-educate. Let’s have another forum. Let’s have another committee. Let’s have more advertising dollars that we’re all paying for, by the way, OK? It’s just not right, OK, and I’m sorry for the people that

didn’t get what they wanted. I’m really sorry. I get it. I, that was the way I felt with the turf field. That’s the way I felt with the pool. But guess what? Those didn’t get revoted. Those votes stood. OK, and when the people came back a year later on the turf and said, hey, here’s new information about

the environmental impact. What was said even by the attorney, hey, the vote happened. It stands. Why is this different? I just don’t understand it, and I’m sorry. I’ve been standing there listening to this. OK, so So I, I’m not standing up here for applause. I’m standing up here because we have to do the

right thing for every single person in this community. And this was a record turnout at town meeting. It was a record turnout at the polls. And for us to just have the audacity to think that we know better, that you all know better just because you’re select board people. You all know better

than everyone else who’s here on a on a what never night is Tuesday night, and those people came to all those meetings, those people have been faithfully coming to planning boards, school committee, finance committee, your guys’ meetings, you know us, right? And we represent hundreds of people that can’t come. But they feel the exact same way.

So I ask you to really think about your power and are you, are you wielding your sword appropriately? Or is it just your personal opinion because nothing that Mr. Tracy said, and I like Mr. Tracy, God bless you. I know you’re in a hard place, OK? But we have told you from the beginning that this

was going to be a big sell. It was a tough sell, and it was a gamble, and the head of the school committee said, I’m going to take the gamble because I think we could re-educate the community. And it didn’t work, and that’s a quote. I’m not kidding. That is a quote. And another school

committee members said, thanks for all coming up and then like gathering and organizing, but no one else is showing up and I think they’re the majority. I’m going to vote for them. So guess what? If you don’t show up, don’t worry because they’re going to vote for you, right? OK. So on the second note, so

thank you for bearing with me. I have a statement that’s a community written statement, and it’s signed by the community, and I have been asked to read it. And so I’m going to read it to you and it’s signed by over 270 people. 2 signatures face to face, not chain email. wet signatures

that the community wrote, the community foot around and gathered signatures, and I have copies for each of you. And this is the statement. Dear Hamilton select board, we are writing to express a growing concern that the will of the voters is not being respected when outcomes do not align with the preferences of those in leadership roles.

Dissenting votes appeared to be treated as temporary obstacles rather than respected decisions. This concern is based on the Miles River Middle School project when multiple special town meetings were called until the desired outcome was achieved. Such actions erode public trust in their leaders and faith in the rule of law in the democratic process, our elected

officials are chosen to represent the people, not to override them. At the April 2025 annual town meeting the consolidated Elementary school project failed to achieve the required 2/3 supermajority. Receiving only 57.7% support despite record setting turnout, off-site childcare, town sponsored shuttle buses, a family room for childcare and numerous advocacy emails from the superintendent.

The subsequent ballot vote showed an even narrower margin, 50.3% in favor, passing by 14 votes with 44 not voting, and I know people who voted yes that didn’t understand the question and are not in favor. Which by default could be argued these apps, these abstains could be argued to be a no.

This downward trend in support from 57.7% to 50.3% is not indicative of growing momentum, but rather of a divided and increasingly hesitant community. We, the undersigned one, urged the select board to honor the outcome of the annual town meeting and not move forward with an additional town meeting aimed at re-voting for the approval of this large scale

consolidation project. 2, we implore the select board to not alter the regional agreement to lower the threshold of approval, taking on debt must require a supermajority of residents. 3, we ask you to require the school committee to explore more fiscally responsible community-aligned alternatives such as phased renovations, expansion of existing schools

or modest new builds, all of which remain eligible for reimbursement and better reflect the feedback of our residents. Thank you for your service and for considering this request with the seriousness it deserves and by 270 residents. And I’m guessing that you’re asking for this to be placed in the record. Thank you. Jack Davis, 57 Louis

Street. Well think the uh select board and also uh Doctor Tracy for the Uh, good faith efforts they’ve made in this long process. And from my point of view, A reasonable people in this town can come to different conclusions on this difficult matter. Having said that, I’d like to just, uh, uh, outline,

I think what I believe are 4 reasons why this matter should not be placed again on the warrant for the Special meeting on The 26th Uh, one is of a procedural nature. First of all, I think we all realize that this town is under the gun to

deliver some plan responding to the 3A mandate. That has to be done and that deadline is looming fast, and I think even the discussion tonight as well at town meeting would show that Uh, if school consolidation is placed again on a special town meeting. Which may be likely to have less turnout than the

first town meeting. Which issue is going to suck up all of the air time out of that meeting and deflect, I think from important discussion that should be focused on the long range implications of 3A, so that, that’s the one point. The second procedural point that I’d like to make in this, uh,

Uh, supports, uh, Deb Stafford’s comment. It’s, it’s an issue of precedent setting and fair play. Usually, I think in, in the American tradition and matters of elections and ballot taking. Unless there are irregularities in the ballots unless ballots have been miscounted. Unless there’s been fraud or corruption in the process of balloting. Uh, the

people who, uh, may not get the desired result they want from that ballot question here generally don’t have the right or the expectation to say, well, let’s do it again. And I think that most of us would believe that our town moderator ran a very fair meeting. And that uh Doctor Tracy had ample time

together with the finance committee to state His case, as he has stated again here and as would, as he would stay again on, on June the twenty-sixth. Was there any fraud? Was there any corruption? Was there open and honest discussion. Yes, there was. So the point being that unless there are necessary

and sufficient reasons. To repeat a fairly taken ballot, the There, there’s no reason to do it. And also raises a question of precedent setting and uh. And in fairness here, if the select board decides to say, well, we’re gonna let you people uh have a revolt. Well, why not the people who think

that there might be too much PAS in the turf fields. Why don’t we revote that earlier town meeting that approved that, OK, without our consent here because we have new information, and I think we haven’t heard any new compelling information concerning the uh school consolidation and with all due

respect, we realize there’s a timeline we, we, we understand that and that this is a a hard case. So it detracts from uh the Duke consideration of 3A. There’s a question of fair uh fairness here and what type of precedent the select board will be setting here for other people who feel that their

warrant article should be revoted as well. Third point here again Miss Stafford pointed out this. In a way, the most accurate measure of Hamilton voter opinion. That we now have in terms of hard data was not available. On June 5th of the town meeting. That data came at the town ballot when

over twice as many people, OK, voted, and the vote was 10 about 1000 were opposed 1,0013. We’re for it. Now that’s not even a 51% majority. That’s 50.3%. So the majority did not, did not even reach 51%. And so the data shows that this town is deeply divided about the original proposal. And uh the

expectation that you’re gonna get a 2/3 vote here based on the facts, uh, may be unrealistic. And my 4th and last point. is that I believe that at the town meeting, Uh, some important background information that was available to the school committee was not made available to the public.

And I wish to draw attention to the uh study, which was commissioned by the school committee. And for which $8000 of taxpayer money was uh presumably spent, but this was a professional poll done by signal polling of Arlington, Virginia, very well respected polling organization conducted between May 30th and June 2nd, 2024, and it actually presented

several different scenarios of which the Big consolidation project was only one option. There was another option saying that well, how about simply redo or reconstruct Cutler here and leave the rest. Uh, as is, OK? And so it turns out and this, this report, by the way, and I have copies of this

available to any interesting people. In fact, you don’t know about this poll. was discussed at the June 5th, 2024 school board meeting. OK. But for whatever reason, the results were not generally reported to the public because all of the Uh, data was negative because no proposal. Uh, that was put

before the people who are being polled achieved a majority vote. And as a matter of fact, The proposal that had the least support, and that was the most expensive, namely school consolidation, OK, was the one that the committee recommended. Whereas the the proposal, uh, that cost the least and

actually had more support was not reported out of that committee. So in terms of transparency. And a well informed electric electric. I would like to know why you wrap it up, please. OK, uh, that’s, but I would like to hear from a Dr. Fraser of the school committee. Why he he was

invited, why this, why this information was not shared with the public. Thank you very much. 3 minutes. And I thought uh I thought the pole was shared. I agree with the poll in his readout, but I thought that was shared all that did they poll

data that was. Available. I saw it, but I, I, I assume it was on the website. Hm Rick Mitchell, 36 Rock Maple Ave, um, I have to, um, have a number of comments, uh, one is I have to. Look at the comments about democracy and respecting the

will of the voters. Well, it was just stated 58% of the people voted at town meeting for school consolidation. Well, that’s respecting democracy because that’s how democracy works in this town and across the United States. Was it 51% who voted for it? No, but it was 14 more than needed.

It’s called 50% plus 1. That’s democracy. That’s what our country was founded on. There are 5700 voters in this town. 900 showed up at time meeting. That’s less than 20%. So there’s a great silent majority out there that didn’t speak that formed no opinion, or at least didn’t express any opinion. Second point. This reconsideration is somehow

disrespectful. Well, I guess you haven’t been around town very long because Reconsideration is the norm. Reconsideration, as was pointed out with the middle school. It took a number of votes. It’s OK, uh, let’s not interrupt. Let’s see if we can actually be civil to one another. So the same

thing happened with the passage of the senior housing bylaw. It came back 3 times before a town meeting approved it. It happened with a number. of it happened with the public safety building. It came back twice. So this is not some unusual occurrence. This is about being thoughtful, being considerate.

That’s my comment about democracy. For me, this whole reconsideration is about money. This is about losing the potential of $50 million from the state to consolidate our defunct and functionally uh defunct elementary schools. They don’t work. They’re 60 years old. They need to be replaced. So you all say, and I agree. $2000 for the average

homeowner is a lot of money. I’m not wild about that. I don’t want to pay that, but my parents, my grandparents, they paid for my education. My responsibility is to pay it forward. I had no kids in the school system because I had no children and I’ve lived in this town for 33 years, and I paid

my taxes to educate. My neighbor’s children, so equity is important education is important. If we don’t do this consolidation. Nothing’s going to happen. You know why? Because you’re not gonna want to pay the 50 $70 million for each of the schools to renovate. And as we heard, if we decided

to do that, it’s going to be about a 21 year process. Let’s think about the cost escalation that’s going to occur over 21 years doing it one by one. You think your taxes are high now with the consolidation there. Going through the roof with the alternative. I don’t want to do that. Doing nothing is going to

cost a lot of money. Look at Ipswich, 7 years ago, they have a Winthrop. They have a Doinion. They wanted to consolidate their school. They had a great town debate and battle just like we are now. They could have built a consolidated school for about 800 students for $60 million. They couldn’t

get a decision. They waited 7 years. They’re now in the MSB process. The estimate when they get through the process 5 years from now, is they’re looking at 160 to $180 million for a consolidated school and that’s where we will end up if we don’t go for the consolidated school because I can guarantee

the same people in this room who don’t want a consolidated school when we come back on our own. And we were asked for 50 $70 million for one school they’re gonna go to wrap this up. I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s also getting a bit personal, and I’m just feeling like We need to kind of close

this down. OK, I have one more point, Bill, and that’s to the vote. So I very much appreciate if you could support uh what Wenham has done there with their select board what the school community has done and allow us to come back and have another consideration. It’s democracy. So now, I, I get it,

let’s, um, I get it, I get it. And I would ask this, please. Do not bring 3A up. At the June 26th meeting. They should be separate. Far distance from one another. This is a $50 million issue. It should take precedence, and I would urge that it be done earlier. Wenham is having a special town

meeting on the 9th of June, which they will be talking about this and voting at their town meeting. The 26th, you get into school vacations and people start disappearing, so I would suggest and ask that it be earlier. So, and I would ask that you get rid of 3A. I know 3A was going to be the.

June 26th decision. 3A can wait. This is far more important for us to consider first. 3A can come at the fall town meeting. There’s still legal cases going on and we’re still waiting to get some definitive answers and we’re waiting to find out what the Attorney general is going to do to us if we don’t adopt

it. So that’s my request, thank you. I do, uh, I do want to keep this to 3 minutes for comments from the public going forward. I mean, I don’t know if you want to put this on. track just because Hey Bill, it’s Ben here as well. I just,

um, I can’t hear the people in the room, only the people at the microphone, um, I would request that anyone making comments or asking questions, please try to Uh, not make it personal and please try to not group everyone together because there’s a very broad spectrum of people in this town, you

know, who have varying degrees of passion around these issues, and those voices are all important, and we want to hear from everyone. And so it’s just, I think as part of our open meetings and part of our guidelines, let’s please try not to make it personal and please try not to group people

together. Well said. Yeah Hi. Hi. Uh, thanks for letting me speak. Uh, Cheryl Thompson McKenna, 30 tallyho Drive in Hamilton. And, um, I want to make some comments. You all got a letter, a copy of a letter for me that I sent over the weekend and I wanted to enter my letter to to the attention

to the school committee, all the, all the members of the school committee and ICC the boards in Hamilton and Wynham and I wanted to share that letter with um my fellow taxpayers here tonight. After watching the school committee meeting April 17th. I emailed a letter to each member of the

school committee and copy both the Hamilton and Wenham select boards, and I’d like to share my and you know, because I wanted to share my comments, uh, to the school board with you. The outcome of that meeting left many of us grossly disappointed and angered. It’s easy to fall back on revisiting

and defending the years invested in creating the plan implementation as you did. The intellectual discussions and colossal millions of dollars potentially in play, packed with genuine intentions. And fall deeply in love with the big school initiative and a multi-million dollar MSBA grant application. Yet at this moment, you have failed and it’s hard

for all those who put in that work. Lobbying the Hamilton and Wenham select boards to ask the taxpayers to vote again to win the desired outcome for the Hamilton Wenham Regional School District Committee and the Cutlert Initiative advocates is not leading. Leading is converting a negative outcome into a way forward. With new thinking, compromise, and a new

renewed energy under the same laws. One of the school committee members on that, uh, April 17th meeting. I believe it was Jen Carr. She said she received double digit emails from proconsolidation residents after the initiative was rejected on the 5th. But few emails from no consolidation residence, and I cannot believe that I actually heard her say

that because why would no consolidation residents need to email the school committee in advance. Asking you not to nullify our vote. How would the opposing taxpayers know that a call to action is necessary after voting no. Think about that. Think about that. The silence from people like me over the years I’ve gone to meetings. I’ve watched Zoom,

I’ve gone to um the utility meetings. I’ve gone to everything. And the silence from no consolidation supporters is deafening and not heard by the school committee because many fear social ostracizing. But speak bravely with their vote. A voting process, you, you, the school committee, I said you in the letter, and your peer Hamilton

and went aboard say is so very important to cast. As a committee, you ignore 12 months of feedback, your own poll, and now a town meeting vote with a record-breaking attendance. What about the thousands of Hamilton taxpayers who opposed this initiative and have silently participated like myself by learning and paying attention to the initiative.

And casting a vote, a town, a town meeting. You should understand there are many of us. Now they, now that doesn’t matter. The vote doesn’t matter. Say it loud. It does not matter. And I, I asked them if they believe that. Do they really believe that our votes do not matter. They made it clear that

they will not honor the results of the town meeting and most definite betrayal of taxpayer trust. I and many ask you to please think again about the everyone you serve on the school committee and seek as supporters ahead. I ask that there’s no revote. At the Hamilton or the Wenham.

Special town meetings. Thanks so much for letting me speak. Uh, bath her 270 Asbury Street speaking as a private citizen. First, I want to say, um, just know for those of you who haven’t been around very long, somebody you’re opposing now will be on the same side of you an issue in the future. So Rick Mitchell,

you and I agree I’m postponing 3A. I disagree on school consolidation, but I wanted to point that out. Um, I also want to point out because the non-pro consolidation people don’t have the same method of being able to get The word out. We don’t have the same level playing ground as a

superintendent does. And even if we sign up for that, we’re going to get a certain message, and it’s, there’s not an opportunity unless we figure it out. So if anybody wants is not connected in and would like to be part of an a standing up against this revote idea. Find me or find somebody else

because we need to obviously, create that ourselves. Um, I also, hold on. So for those of you who aren’t aware, we just, the school committee just approved a $450,000 feasibility study for the roof. I’m just sharing that because you’re in the room and you might not know that that happened, that we

need a feasibility study for $450,000 for a high school roof that when we just spent 1.25 million on this school. Um, there’s a program called Model Schools. You may not be aware of it. Saves money and time, and Um, that is a way we could make it go faster and actually save money, something to look

at. If you’re not looking for the answer, you will not find it. If you don’t want, if you don’t want renovation, you will not find it, OK? You have to want to find a solution. And I don’t think we want to find a solution. I think every time I

heard Uh, Superintendent Tracy, who I like, um, say something, it was always the roadblock, roadblock, roadblock instead of let’s put on our thinking caps and brainstorm. OK. I just want to say I’m shocked. We are having the wrong conversation. This is the wrong conversation. Would we have this conversation

if the vote passed, 2 votes failed. I don’t care if it’s 50% or 2/3. That’s the rules of the game. So, to failed, 2 passed. In the olden days, from a past town clerk, you would never count the ballot vote. OK? So just so you know that, I don’t know when that changed. I’m shocked we’re having this

conversation because if, if I, OK, so if I came to you and the vote passed, would you spend 1 2nd considering a revote. I think no one here would expect The select board to consider a revote if it passed. We would have taken it and said, we

played a fair game. End of story. The fact that it is not the same rules. On a revote is terrible. I mean, I’m embarrassed. Um, we had doubled the turf fields attendance and 3 to 4 times our regular town meeting attendance. We took extraordinary effort. Um, I don’t know about you, but I’m

not a builder or an architect, but I would never build anything where the water is sitting on the ground. I think it’s a horrible spot. I mean, I’m not even talking about consolidation or not consolidation. I think it is irresponsible. I’ve heard there’s problems with the septic at the middle school because of water issues and

Miles River. There’s water on that property, and it’s horrible. Um, OK. So I just want to say that um I’m very concerned about the opposition and re-voting, and when the end will be and the divisiveness and the cost to the community. I personally was doxed. OK? For those of you who don’t know

that, that means, in my case, an aerial photo of my house was put on Facebook. There was another person in Wenham who was doxed. His address was put on Facebook. It is. You can bring a lawsuit against someone for posting publicly available information. They Do not have the right to put my photo on

there. I asked very kindly. I, a lot of people reported it. Finally, the person told me she was doing me a favor and in goodwill she was taking it down. Both of these people who docs people, ex-school committee members. I’m embarrassed for the school committee. They need to do better. It’s my family,

my kids and myself could be in jeopardy. Physically in jeopardy. Because I said something that was true. You know what it was? I posted a select board meeting with time stamps and said, watch it for yourself. Draw your own conclusions. And I got doxed. I’m sorry you went through that.

That’s wrong. It’s completely wrong, and I appreciate that, Bill. So, I’m just like, at what cost? It’s not just a financial cost. There’s a cost to the community. And I see there’s not a lot of signs out anymore. I feel like, let’s move forward. And heal, and I think we saw that the um The

citizens petition uh had some momentum and was passed in Hamilton and I think there’s a lot of people in here who will work very hard to get a renovated school in place. So thank you for your time. Yeah, we got a list of who wants to speak and unli 53 minutes. We’re not hearing a lot of new

information here. I want everybody to have a chance to speak. You had 4 people in line. 5. So we’ll. All right. So, so 5 and a limited 3 minutes of work and that, that’ll be it. And then we’ll, then we’ll have so just for the record, Bill

Olson’s back in the room. Some affecting one of those. He was on a flight. He was on a flight. OK, um, my name’s Ted Olber. I live at 10 Gale Avenue and I’ve had the privilege of being in Hamilton for about 63 years and went to Cutler School and went

to Winthrop School. Um, different time, but, uh, the schools Back then, which I don’t know why it changed, you know, Cutler school used to just be pre-K or kindergarten to 3rd grade. And then you went to Winthrop for there was a 3rd grade overlap, but 3rd through 5th, and then you went to the

junior high. And um, you know, it made it great because each school had its own. Um You know, age group and you didn’t have to mix the older with the younger. I don’t know why that changed, but you know, I think the point I’m making is it’s,

we have the schools available. To do the space, um, and I think we should be looking at renovation. I’ve been involved in renovations at other schools, and it’s not just one option. There’s so many options when you renovate. You can take walls down, you can reconfigure the interior and you can make

classrooms bigger, smaller, so there’s lots of, lots of things that you can do in a renovation that, you know, could fit the needs of the school. And you know, I think um I’m all for fixing up the schools, um, and without laying any blame. I, I,

I think the committees and the people in the town, we ought to question ourselves why we always let the schools get in such disrepair so that everybody says they’re all falling down. You know, why aren’t we spending money each year or, you know, and if we are, we’re obviously not

spending enough, so I think This committee, you know, should undertake or whatever committee it is to how do we keep our schools up to, uh, high standards, you know, year in and year out. And yeah, it might cost some money, but it may not cost this huge amount that we’re having to pay when

they all need to be torn down in theory, um, so I think. You know, on the vote, you know, I was here for the middle school vote and We voted no on the middle school, at least 3 times and it kept coming back and um it was a clear no vote for that,

and then it got brought on like a Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. when everyone’s at work, they called another vote and we, you know, people didn’t show up and they got their little small group that, you know, was able to get it passed, and that’s just dead wrong. When you, when you vote, you know, you vote once on

something, and that’s it, and um, you know, all the politicking ahead of time should be done. I think there’s been a lot of this. Um, I think I came to the meetings over a year ago and Um, you know, said at that time, you know, why haven’t you come to the town before you’re spending all of

our money, the 1.5 million, why didn’t you come to the town and find out whether the citizens wanted to renovate or consolidate into a bigger school. That’s a simple questionnaire or a vote that could be taken once you know the town people’s will, then you can move ahead and spend

the money appropriately, not sit there and because we told about a year ago we said you’re gonna do all this and it’s gonna get voted down and we’ve wasted all that. Money and time. So, you know, I, you know, I think it’s something that you should consider, you know, go back, find out what the people

want, but this what they did vote is they don’t want a a big large school at, I don’t mean to cut you off, but you gotta back it up. You wanna wrap it up. Tosh Blake, Sagamore Street. Uh, first, I’d like to, uh, also second Beth Hen and

agreeing with uh Mr. Mitchell about postponing the 3A vote, I think there would be way too early to, to vote for it in June and there’s all this stuff up in the air. It’s inside there. Um, I, that’s the time, uh, the vote came up I spoke,

um, one thing I noticed is there were a few educators who spoke of needing more space, more room, especially for special ed students and stuff. And I was thinking about since the, the schools need more room, it’s kind of odd that we’re, you know, like I said it was a real estate question we’re

giving up or trying to give up one site for a school, Winthrop, which is a fairly large site. And as we know, the town population could expand given things that may happen with 3A or just other, you know, housing expansion, whatever. So we may need, actually need a space for expanding schools on

both sides, and I think it’s pretty short-sighted to just say we’re gonna consolidate on one site, which you can’t really expand lattery because you you’re gonna have a parking space and all that on that one site, unless you want to build a skyscraper. So the renovation plus expansion option, I think

should be kept open and we should postpone putting this on a warrant to try to revote for in addition to the reasons other people said here, it’s just kind of not a fairness thing. But Just for the sake of prudence for the future, we may want to actually keep both of those sites open for education

for schools, because we may have a lot more schoolchildren in the future, possibly, and that’s the plan for the state for our our town to expand its population, so it’s odd that the school committee has not, uh, I don’t think to my knowledge, discussed that aspect of maybe Mr. Tracy could

address this. What happens if this the the school age population expands and we run out of space so. I think just, just for a space consideration expand uh renovation plus expansion might be the smart, smartest thing to consider and discuss before voting. So I’d say we postpone the vote for

that. And another thing Mr. Tracy brought up, which is interesting and maybe he could, maybe there’s not enough time here this forum, but in the future, uh, community education forum to do is he mentioned special ed students, I think they are being brought in from outside the community or you’ve

mentioned something like that, correct me if I’m wrong. I go to displacements. These are residents from here. OK, so now they’re coming from outside. OK, good. I was just wondering about that cause I always thought we might have been manufacturing problem. OK, so, yeah, we want, of course, educate our students here of all abilities, but probably the

smartest thing is to expand where we have because there’s plenty of open space and plenty of footprint with both Cutler and Winthrop. I know it could be onerous to have renovations going on when there are children in school, but it can be done. And I think that’s something that this committee

may in fact vote for. I know people are also considerable budgets and things like that, but if it’s cheaper and, and keeps the small schools, you know, relatively small, that people want. That might be something that the school, uh, building committee could get passed in the future.

It doesn’t look like you have the numbers to pass this, uh, consolidated thing, any any time now in the near future, even if you take 2 or 3 more votes, it doesn’t look likely, so I would say maybe postpone it and try to discuss this further. Thank you. I’m Linda Preston, 288 Highland Street.

And I would first of all ask that the selectmen who had to leave the meeting. Um Take time to listen to our comments. I feel that’s very important that all of you being informed and hear what has been spoken tonight. So I make, I make that request of him, please. And I’m saying some of what’s already

been said tonight. But, um, some of us have been to select board meetings and other town committee meetings, uh, over many past months. And During that time, some citizens have asked what if? What if the town meeting vote on April. 5th, does not get 2/3 required vote. Necessary to approve a new

consolidated school. And this was asked as it’s already been stated many times we have the history of the middle school, where the vote was not accepted round one not accepted round 2, and ultimately on the 3rd vote on a weekday morning, the middle school was passed through. Against the initial

vote by the citizens of our town and against our will. The question is now here we are again. And at those meetings over the past several months, we were told, oh no, that’s not gonna happen that way again, and I, that’s a, that’s the essence of what we were told. Um, and Superintendent Tracy

said at meetings that the decision was up to the people of Hamilton to vote and you can attest to saying that, um, well, our citizens did come, and we did speak, and we said no on April 5. And yet, if you stayed to the very end before that

town meeting was adjourned. The chair of the select board said aloud so we could hear it way up back. She brought up the idea of a revote that very day with the intention of not accepting the vote potentially as was given that very day.

And in due respect, I have to say, what part of no. OK Doesn’t our town understand we voted no. We spoke. And then why did we go to the ballot box on April 10th to vote for finding a school in two towns that both rejected the school. Is that logical? So

again, I come back to, to democracy, namely to keeping the vote either way it went and accepting it, which I would have done, which many would have done. But to go back for a revote and to not accept a no for an answer is not true democracy, and I hope you understand that. If this is the

process of democracy, it is tragic indeed. And I’m thinking to myself, what kind of a model are we setting for teaching our children. We’re talking about give you a few seconds to wrap it up is this. And so I, as I close, I ask you passionately

from my heart to do what’s right and to vote no for a revote. Rather than accept Pressure to change a vote that’s already come through. And to consider other options mentioned tonight and more. Put them all on the table. For both our children and this all the citizens of our community.

Thank you. Edward Edward Flynn toys Lane in Wenham and uh select word I’d asked to do me a favor, these two young women, let me go in front of them and I want to make sure they both have a chance to speak. Um, one of the things that I’ve been

doing for about the last 6 or 8 months because I went to a Hamilton, I’m sorry, Wenham, uh, select board meeting and we’re talking about 3A and I said, well, how much is it going to cost? And everyone kind of looked at me like, what do you

mean? How much is it gonna cost? Well, how much is it gonna cost? And they said, well, we have a study on our website from KNG, which is a gold standard company that did a study. And so I took it upon myself, um, I’ve been accused of my hobby

of numbers crunching. In fact, my hobby is fishing, but I, and I detest number crunching, but I was happy to do it because if no one else wanted to, I guess, but And I also attended the uh planning board for Wenham a couple of nights ago, and I

will tell you they are Wenam is 365 units in Hamilton 731. The women and planning board is and I’m not I don’t, I don’t speak for them, but my impression was leaving that meeting they fully expect to have 365 units built in the town. So you should

expect to have 731 built in your town and that we’ve gone past the part now where this is a zoning exercise I think everyone knows that it’s not and that the state is serious as a heart attack, so the bottom line is this we have 1,096 units, uh, that’s gonna be built in the two towns.

I heard Doctor Tracy, uh, the superintendent discussion. This is directly tied into the school. So I heard direct Superintendent Tracy say that if we get high density housing apartments, we could have 50 additional students. Well, I will tell you it comes up to 992 students according to the

study, 992, not 50. So as you think about what you want to do going forward. I’m telling you this is much bigger. The state doesn’t care what you have to say. I’m sure you’re aware of all the towns who have tried to become compliant and they kick

it back and say, yeah, that’s not enough, you have to build more. The certified certification for compliance lasts 10 years. At the end of 10 years, they’re gonna they they they have the option of coming back and asking you to build additional units. So as you’re planning a school, a substantive change in the school system. and the

buildings that we have, I just to do it now just seems imprudent. I, I think he really rolling the dice here. Thank you. Thanks. Good evening. Can you guys hear me OK? Excellent. Thank you. My name is Catherine Faci. I live at 43 Homestead, and I really appreciate having a chance to speak this evening.

Um, I want to talk to the middle school vote as I was a I was a direct bene beneficiary of that vote, and I really appreciate that the town did work so hard. I was the first class through that, um, I can tell you the feeling of giving

kids a brand new school was, I’ve never felt commitment like that from my town. My mom fought for that school tooth and nail as I’m sure everyone here knows I’m fighting tooth and nail for these schools for my two girls, um, I’ve really appreciated the openness and transparency of the process

thus far, I have a 3 year old. and a one year old, and I feel fully informed on the project and I know that’s partially because I did grow up here. I, you know, even with my 10 years spent in Boston, I’ve been a resident of this town for over

20 years, um, I’ve seen it change. I know it’s scary when things are happening and you know, some people may think the character of this town can somehow be lost, but that’s very far from the case. This is a very dynamic and robust town, these two communities. that come together in this school

district. I just. don’t think a change such as a school consolidation could hurt that. I think if anything, it would bring the children together more and I’m, I really look forward and hope that’s the case. Um, I think again, it’s been brought up, but there’s a long history of the legislative

process being a very open and dynamic process where, you know, things get brought back, things get talked about, so I don’t find it unreasonable. To ask that you bring this back at a special town meeting. I think I also would advocate for a combined town meeting with Wenham and working, talking to

the school committee about that. Um, I think that getting these two towns together in the same room to discuss an issue that impacts both of us would be really productive and really helpful. Um, I think that Um I just think we could really benefit from all getting in the same room. Um, I know it’s been

done before, um, I believe it was last done in 2004, so there is precedent for it. Um, and I think it’s just something that really could be looked into. I do believe, um, the school committee has helped fund that in the past. I know it’s a,

it’s a big expense. It’s a big ask, but I think this is a really big and important decision. Um, you know, I, again, going back to the process, I’ve appreciated seeing all the renovation processes that were looked at, um, you know, I do know that the model schools were looked

at and we don’t have sufficient space to build the model schools because of the wetlands and the, um, just the way I’m going like this because Cutler, where I went to school, I love color. I am so sad to see it go, except for the fact that it is

the same school I went to like 30 years ago. Um. But the way Cutler goes up, um, you know, it, it can’t be built there. It can’t be built on the wetlands, so. Um, I apologize. I, um. I, again, I just wanted to ask that, you know, we take this 50

million, we bring it back to the towns, um, at a special town meeting and also explore um the The idea of a joint town meeting with one. Also, I will just echo everyone else. I think 3A, um, we got to focus on the issues that relate to our our town, our constituents. We don’t need to be bringing

the 1000 people, this gentleman referenced in, um, right now, and I think that we can talk about that maybe in the fall. I don’t know the exact timing, but I think we need to take a long hard look at the schools and make this decision independent of everything else. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Ashley Glady Chase, 254 Bridge Street, um, to the gentleman who spoke earlier, I hear you on the folks who come and leave. I have attended town meeting every year since I moved to New England 10 years ago in Marblehead, and here I’ve attended every special town meeting except for one, and I

stayed till the end. I do think it’s a respect thing to stay through and vote on everything. So I just wanted you to know that. Um So I just want to say I do have a 4.5 year old. He’s going to start kindergarten next year. I think it’s really

easy to pigeonhole somebody as you’re just voting on this because you have a kid who’s going to be affected by it. I’m actually fiercely advocating for this because I’m worried about my taxes. I really, really believe that the renovation plan in the long run is going to cost us more, and I

am severely worried about that. I work in education, how we deliver programs and the way we address needs has fundamental. changed in recent decades. I’ve I’ve said from the very beginning, I’ve gotten out of my introverted bubble to put myself out there on Facebook. I don’t like it. My legs are

still shaking. Thank you. But I keep coming back because I want people to have real facts and have their eyes wide open to what we’re actually talking about. I want to highlight, if we were to do a renovation within the existing footprint, right? That’s what some people are advocating for. What are

spaces Actually look like and how undersized they are for our needs is real. So I want to name a few of those. Our gem is 50% the size of the standard, 3000 square feet versus the standard of 6000. The music room is 30% smaller than it’s supposed to be. The media center is 46% below the

standard. It’s 1,297 square feet versus the standard of over 2000. Our special education classroom is undersized, and it’s supposed to be the same size as the general ed classroom, as it is comparable to that. The kitchen is half the appropriate size, 800 square feet versus 1600 square feet. One of our kindergarten rooms is almost,

hold on, 25% below standard and doesn’t even have a toilet room. When we’re talking about this, including a modular wing that was designed to be temporary as many experts have told us, we don’t have the space to expand. We have to do a renovation in addition. And when we’re doing a renovation in addition, we

know those estimates. They are costly, and we don’t know what the reimbursement rate will be. I know that, but over 3 different projects, that is going to add up. The initial estimate for the Renault ad for Cutler alone was around 100 million, and I think the last number they had was somewhere

around 114 million. So I’m very concerned. All of the space constraints I just labeled doesn’t even take into account that we don’t have intervention spaces, breakout rooms, offices. I think we even mentioned on an open house that there wasn’t even a space for faculty to eat lunch. That is a dignity issue.

We cannot do it within the existing footprint and do it well. We would be pouring millions of dollars into an old building that still will not meet the needs of our students. I do not think that is a fiscally responsible approach. That is what I am concerned about. Thank you for

reconsidering this as the school committee has put it forward to you. I think $50 million on the table is a huge amount of money for us to not see the legal process through to do a revote. Thank you. Good evening, Katherine Spano 277 Lindon Street. I just want to echo, um, what some of my

predecessors have said, I support, uh, the school committee and the select board should you choose in bringing this forward for an additional vote at a special town meeting. Um, I was not educated about the process previously, despite having a child at Cutler currently, um, I was, uh, you

know, I saw the sign, save small schools that sounded good. To me, it was really only when I took the time to dig into the facts that I became convinced that this is the best plan for our community. I am deeply concerned about my taxes. I’m also concerned about my kids. I’m also concerned about the

broader children in our community who are not able to be served by buildings that were built in 1952 and 1961, I believe. Um, I understand all of the concerns about democracy and, you know, everyone has spoken and it didn’t pass. and all of that, um, but I would very much support the select

board in moving forward, and I would just like to add that I think, um, although it passed by a slim majority in Hamilton at the election. Um, I think that the elected officials that the town voted for, um, and the results of that portion of the election speak to the broader support of this project.

Um, I’d like to thank everyone who’s been involved in this, and I know there’s been a lot of time spent on the issue. And thank you all very much. Jeff, I, I think we, uh, cut the line off about 10 people go like a couple of minutes, a minute

each or so just to Sure. Uh, so I’ll try not to rehash everything that was already said. Um, again, I’m, I’m not for consolidation, and I think that Eric and others know that, um, nothing’s changed and we already voted, uh, and, and that’s holding the time and the money over our heads that are

anti-consolidation is unfair because they knew 9 months ago it was going to fail by their own polls. It’s unfair to hold that over our heads. Um, in the, in the walkthroughs, I asked specifically, is there anything structural structurally wrong with these buildings. The answer was no. by Art Tracy. None. There’s no structural buildings. Everything that has

to be done can be done with renovations or modifications. And I’m more on the bed. I, I don’t believe the numbers, but I’m willing to bet if you said, we’ll spend the same 140 for 3 schools. People would say, yeah, we, let’s keep our small, small schools. Especially I, I, I didn’t even think about the

whole 3A thing down the road. If we have more kids, now you have space to expand even more. OK? Um, the state, last time they raided the, the buildings, I realized it was 10 years ago was the last, last time, they’re gonna do another one

this year. But Cutler and, and, and Winthrop was 1 and 2 out of a scale of 4 to 5, I think. So yes, they need work, but they’re not horrendous. Um We have a lot of work to do, uh, do a lot of work to do across all of our district buildings.

Let’s not burn the bank on this one. Um, we don’t know, I mean, we could speculate on the cost of renovations. We don’t have any hard numbers yet. We can also speculate on tariffs. We don’t know what’s going to happen there yet. Um, I think that’s all I all I have. I do have concerns sometimes when

there’s uh um indications made for proconsolidation and not have enough room because they’re, they’re working out of closets. I was at the, the walkthrough and I asked where that closet was. Nobody ever told me. I don’t believe there’s really a closet being used. It could be a utility

room that is coined as a closet, that’s much larger, I don’t know, but they keep on using that as a, as a soft spot. And lastly, the, the enrollment is down like 30% over the past 20 years. So how you can’t reconfigure the buildings to make it work is beyond me. Do little, do a little work and

figure out how to make it work. Don’t spend all our money on this one project and we’re screwed out of the high school and middle school, and Bucher. And go, we’re beyond our 5. What do we, uh, what are we gonna choose to do here? I just

want to say my name is Susan McLaughlin. I’m from 34 Park Street. I emailed each one of you on the slip board. Would you please add that letter to the record. Yep, that’s it. Uh, just to that, the, um, pes somewhere around 70, but there were a couple more after after count today, 70 or so emails

from people on both sides of this issue. They’re all recorded all the select boards been copied on them. They’re all here. They’ll all be entered in part of the record. There’s a. It’s about, about even it’s a little more to one side or the other. I won’t say which side, but it’s. Over 70

That So Eric, anything to add on model schools that was brought up several times in the discussion. I In model school program, I don’t know exactly when it started, but several of the the original, the original program was uh Choice program, where the MSBA gave you choices of models that were already

designed and you basically said, OK, I’ll take that one. And that’s what you build. They stopped that process because it wasn’t meeting the needs of uh changing districts, so they’ve shifted it into a new program now where you can go to, I’ll just use Danvers as an example. You could say, OK, Danvers is

an approved model school, the Smith School, which they built in, I think, 2020. Um, you could pay the architects for that plan and put it on the property that you have. So that’s what the model school is. They have to be approved, pre-approved by the MSBA. So they give you a list to say oh

you’re going to build an elementary school roughly the size. Here’s a list to choose from, and then you negotiate with the, the original designer of the project and then deal with all the other things like land and, and um, you know, your OPM and all that on your own, so it’s, it’s a it’s

different, it’s changed in the, in the years. I know, I, I’m only aware of Tewksbury High School was a model school. They just in the original program where they had just 4 choices, so now the choices are selected by the MSBA in advanced, and then they’re, you know, I think, I think Ipswich is talking

about this, um, as well for their, for their, um, new school. OK, I appreciate it. Right, I appreciate all the feedback. I know that took a long time and um I know I probably allowed more than I should have, but I thought it was important, uh, so I appreciate everybody’s comments.

Yep, you’re welcome. So, uh, Rosemary, you want to say some things? Yeah, I received, um, a letter today. Um, I was asked to read it tonight from a senior citizen in Hamilton who is never somebody who would speak out and she asked me to read this for her. Um, it’s from Mimi Fanning, and she’s a,

she’s a prior town clerk and her letter, short letter reads as such to the select board. I cannot sit back, sit back any longer. I must state my concerns. I have received. calls and spoken to a few of the seniors. They now feel why vote if it will be brought up again and again until they get

it right. This does not mean we do not want the best for our children. Education is very important, but let us go back and see if there might be a less expensive solution. There are still a few of us that were born and brought up here and

would like to be able to stay. Please give this more thought. Thank you, Teresa, Mimi Fanning. And So they’re just procedurally, Joe, I’m sorry, Rode, I thought you were done, sorry. OK. I just have two other things that I wanted to mention. So in terms of all the letters we received, I was very

impressed with the number of signatures on the petition, and I also have been keeping track and um noted that there was as of this evening, 67 letters from people who are um anti bringing this back for a vote, and I felt that their reasoning was very compelling, very much in line with what people had to

say here tonight, and then there’s one other thing that I wanted to bring up in Amherst in 2023, so after the pandemic and the height of inflation, Amherst was accepted in the MSBA program. And they have just broken ground for um. An elementary school, they’re combining an elementary school

and it costs $98 million and the MSBA is kicking in 50 million. Um, the school’s 107,000 square feet and there are 585 kids, so my point is, If a new school for 585585 kids at 107,000 square feet can cost a town um in a combined process $50 million. I mean, I don’t see how, uh, A concerted

renovation with some um. Careful planning, financial planning has to break the bank, so. For you OK, so with everything we have in front of us, all the, the, the thoughtful discussions that we had. Does this board feel like they are prepared to have enough information to make, to

vote on this? Is there any asks or reasons we may want to learn more or understand better a game plan on what the school might bring that would change procedurally from Joe and and and Bill what procedurally what we’re, what we’re technically voting on tonight and then what further votes we need to have

to put it back on the warrant. Well, I mean, you haven’t opened the warrant for the, you haven’t opened the warrant for the special time being and I think that happens at the next meeting. So procedurally, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t have to do anything tonight, but you could, um, it’s up to the will

of the board if you wanted to take a vote based on what you heard tonight, um, and tell yourselves that you want to include this on the warrant when you open the warrant, or you can wait until the meeting that you opened the warrant. Yeah. So my opinion, to the boards that we, we, we cast a

vote tonight just so we could see where we stand. Um I think at all like to vote to my, my opinion is that, you know, Is that I appreciate the passion of nice discussion. Um, I heard a lot of stuff about unfairness, um, and I guess what I’d say is

that we live in a world of a majority and majority of people in our town have voted. For this project. For the board or the school board for the select board over the last month. Everything is passed by a very strong majority. We’re the only one of the few towns in and cities in Massachusetts where

you actually need more than 51% and we’re school district, we, we created that we created that for ourselves and, and, and it’s right, wrong or difference and create ourselves, so, uh, my opinion is, you know, in terms of being fair, I think it’s fair to our community too. Mm Oh 51% because that’s what

it takes the most talents. So I think with a different dialogue and different discussion and also understanding that renovations don’t really work, but understanding why it doesn’t work out. I do think, in my opinion, we should, in not saying they’re gonna, I’m voting for or against it, but I

do think it’s, it’s. Before we give $150 million back, it’s worth waiting until June, not that far away. It doesn’t cost the town that much money. Um, and, uh. And I vote to put it back on the warrant, so that’s my opinion. And like I said, I appreciate everybody’s passion and discussion. I’ve listened

to everybody, so for the person who says, I should listen to everybody’s comments. I’ve read all the letters. I’ve heard everything and I’m once again, I’m not voting for or against tonight. I’m just voting to put it back on the warrant. That’s a motion then. That’s a Yeah Seriously. I’ll just, I’ll just

it’s like, it’s like people want to speak before we go to a vote. Yeah, Bill, I’m just going to make a quick comment before we can move to a vote. But no, I, I, I agree and I appreciate all the comments here tonight. I appreciate all the emails from, from, you know, from folks that are supportive

of the school and the folks that are, uh, not supportive of the, the new school. I read all of the emails, um, and I I think it’s important to think about, you know, this is not an easy position for any select board member to be in right

here because we have a number of people that feel very deeply on a particular issue, and they’re deeply divided on this, and we do have a regional agreement that requires 2/3 vote for, you know, these types of uh these types of debt exclusions, and it is very challenging to get that type of

2/3 vote, but we also have to understand that we do have from 4 different votes across Hamilton and one of them, at least a slight majority, um, favoring this. And no matter what decision we make here, this is like whether we vote to not put it on there or we vote to put it on there, you know,

there are going to be people upset with that decision. Um, so that’s that. So that’s the good, you know, the constituent piece of it, you know, I did ask Joe about the legality piece of it, and I know people feel disenfranchised about that and I respect that opinion from folks, and I want to make sure

that, you know, if we do put this back, back on, that this isn’t a, you know, something that we’re not doing as uh some sort of skirting around the law. It’s actually something that has been, you know, so often brought forward that the mass school building committee has guidance on it that they

actually say this is a common. Um, process when you’re going through these types of votes where they actually have multiple other districts that have gone through this. So The last piece, um, I would speak to is just around um sort of One of our roles as a select board is doing what we think is

in the best interests of the town, in addition to, you know, listening to the constituents in addition to all of the other things that we do. And, you know, having been involved in this process for a number of years now, looking at all the data, looking at all the different options, what, you

know, what the costs are, what the logistics are, I think, you know, we have to do what’s what we think is in the best interests of the town, and I think by bringing this to another vote to see if the town would support this is supportive of that. You’re not a. I understand that, but I

think in my opinion, I think it makes us Let’s be respectful of the person speaking. Um, so in my opinion, I think that’s my opinion, you know, I think that we, you know, owe it to what’s the best of the town to bring this to another vote to see if

we can reach that threshold. to the people. Yeah Yeah, well, um, since we’re giving our opinions, I’m going to give my opinion that I think it’s extremely disrespectful and irresponsible of the select board to put this back on the warrant, um. It undermines the faith, the faith in our local government and the

democratic process. The people have spoken. I don’t care if it was 57% or 57.5%. We have an obligation to fulfill the rules and law that that we have been uh Promise that we have promised to abide by, and I think there’s no other way. In fact, one of the letters that we got today, there was a woman

who said, um, in the last couple of days, who was for bringing it back. She said, well, let’s just put it on back on and see if we can do better. I think that’s the wrong approach. I think that citizens deserve to have their vote respected and, and as some of the other folks in here said

tonight, if it was a yes vote, it would not come back. And I feel very strongly. So if I was to vote, not that anybody’s asked my opinion yet, but if I was to vote, I would strongly vote against bringing it back and voting for a way to forward

that brings in our community and we figure out a way to renovate our schools that is not going to break the financial backs of people like Mimi Fannie who can’t stay in this town. Hm I I’m struggling. Um, I have two hats, you know. Clearly the town voted, uh, clearly we have a, a list of

signatures, a lot of effort has gone in this, um, and we had a vote. We also have a precedence in this town where things have come back for votes, whether it was a year or 3 months town hall came back. Town Hall came back in a different, uh, in a

different form each time. Can everybody please allow this the board to have a conversation. Yeah, I think everybody’s been given plenty of opportunity this evening to speak and not be interrupted. I think the the board deserves the same respect. So where the other hat I wear is fiscal, and I know we talked

about breaking the back and we talk about, you know, uh, taxes and the affordability of it all. We’ve talked about a lot of things, but I, I focus in, you know, with my day job of the, the fiscal responsibility. And I honestly believe that avoidance or delay will cost this town a lot more, uh, and

that’s where I struggle. I think if we try to attack this one school at a time, you know, with the escalators and costs and, and what we need to do. compliance and ADA and uh all the other issues that schools have. The schools are an essential, um, service of this community, and I think they

haven’t been well cared for and I think there’s a, a heck of a lot of money we’re gonna need to spend on them, and I think the, the fastest way to hit the most number of children, uh, school building, uh, group and, and the districts and the two

Fincoms and the boards of all kind of come together who everyone voted for and said this is the most fiscally responsible and far reaching, uh, program. to put on the table. So we went through town meeting, we went through an election, and yes, a majority of folks have come back and all

4 and had said, have said, you know, we’re interested and we want to learn more, you know, can we get to a 2/3 vote. This is where I struggle. You know, my effort here isn’t to get to 2/3 is, is like, are there unanswered questions still out there, you know, that the school are going to bring

forward. I don’t know if the school has a game plan that says between now and a potential, you know, stumble. Our meeting in June, those questions can be answered, whether it’s, you know, you know, the whole theory of 3A and this was a conspiracy from the beginning, or, you know, is

it more expensive to, uh, build and maintain 3 schools versus 2, and is the area suitable for traffic for septic, for water, um, model schools is that a solution? Have we vetted this out from a renovation, you know, from the four walls to give the, you know, fair space in the middle, you know, and not just

keep the size of the rooms, you know, is there something we will learn? between now and June that might change the minds of the voters that, that transparency is warranted and needed, you know, for everybody to make an informed decision because I don’t want to go down a path, and then every year in

the next 10 years, we’re going to go up, you know, even more, so I, I struggle. But the will of the voter did happen on April 5th. So I don’t know. I mean, I, I’m not one to kick the can down the road either. So if we take this to a vote,

I’m gonna make, I’m gonna make a, uh, a vote either way, but I’m struggling with this one. Because fiscally, I think, you know, the right solution has come forward, you know, but I don’t think, you know, too, we have a policy and a rural in town that says 2/3 vote. That hasn’t been met. So I don’t

know, um, I don’t know what I mean, that’s that’s the issue goes only on this row, right? 2/3 votes are very big. It’s not a lot of things going around the town that are that are 2/3. But we had, we had 7 votes in the last month they were pro-consolidation. Both selectors voted

pro-consolidation. School board was broken so the agent Reopen it because we had 7 votes that clearly were a majority to, to keep the, keep the issue open and keep the discussion going a little bit longer. So how do we do that? Or is that just kicking the can if we try to keep this. No, I’m saying sorry

I’m saying that we’re not can we just put it back on the June warrant. This thing done by June. If it passed, it passed. If it doesn’t, then, then we move on. Now it’s not always, but, but I think a lot of people thought it was a 51%.

I thought it was 51% because that’s what our town council told us two weeks before the vote. So there was some miscommunication even on my end. And some of the parents couldn’t come. They said one parent out of 2 because it was during the middle of the, of the, of kid activity day.

So it’s, it’s the other big difference about talk about fairness. The other variable here is, you know, state funding, right? You know, do we just say, OK,, $50 million you know, off the table and we start over say no he said no. We haven’t noticed it was and there is, there is

reimbursement for renovation. Yes, there is. a 7 year down the road times 3 schools. So we’re talking about somewhere between a 7 and a 21 year project to get equality for all students in our district and have rooms that are too small and buildings that are too small. Actually, the, yeah, but

once again we’re not, we’re not voting on renovation or non-renovation right now. We don’t even have a renovation, but we don’t have a pro renovation school board. So we don’t have somebody who we don’t have somebody who wants you to we don’t have somebody who to embark on that effort

right now. So that’s what I’m saying it’s worth, while we have a So in town at 51% we put this to go one more time and if it doesn’t pass, we got a lot of work to do before we figure out what the next steps are. But I’m not going to to kick

that can down the road until the, we already have the vote on the books. We already have the money from the state. We already have the date by the state. Everything’s a line, and we are already, and we voted 7 votes in the last month to keep this discussion open. So I don’t know, I think we should

probably vote amongst the board and once we’re not voting on anything other than just to put and so what what happens to a litmus test to open the warrant next week, so, so what happens if this vote passes, then we, do we do 2 out of 3? I mean, honestly, honestly. Rose Rosemary, I hear you, but, but

this town has so many, I’ve been on the board for over 10 years. I, I, I’ll, I’ll send you a list of everything we’ve. on more than once of the negative. We, we thought the both the negative turn positive, so I, I, the argument doesn’t stick with me that once we vote, I mean, your kid fails, you

tell him not to try again. I mean, I, I don’t understand this bad parenting. It’s.. It’s just none of that hold any water with me. I, I, I think that we have a great opportunity here and we have a community that is strongly behind it by 51%. And just because we’ve had 6 because um

miscommunication we should allow that to that’s my opinion you’re not taking any more comments, but I, unless it’s something new with this is the second chance because we told them last year. So the revote was on April 5th. That was the revote. Hey, Ben, uh, did you have anything you’d want to add

or thoughts on tonight’s discussion and next steps. Yeah, I think um. You know, the, the points around the the form of the school committee, um, you know, that they have, you know, been voted into office. They’ve Worked with the school district, um, to put forward a consolidation plan. Uh, I’m

struggling to see the path. You know, in practice of how we go from where we are right now, um, the costs ahead of us. I don’t, I don’t have a clearly articulated path from where we are to how do we, how would we entertain the renovation expansion solutions. Um I it’s, it’s just very not clear to me

of how and when that would materialize, um, like based on all the information that I do have, it does seem to me that uh That the um renovation options are gonna be pretty expensive, they’re gonna be nearly as expensive as the consolidation option when we start to scale those out,

please. Um, Ben, I, I have to I’m trying to speak here, Rosemary. I think I’ve been pretty patient listening to everyone this evening. Um, so I’m getting a lot, is there a problem? I my, or can you not hear me or you’re loud and clear. OK, so. On please be respectful. I’m trying to

really listen to everyone I’ve been listening to everyone for, for many months. I’ve had a lot of these French front porch conversations as well, and when we start looking at What, what happens next? Um, is it we have a high cost now, and we have action now or we have a high cost later with an

indeterminate path. But it’s very unclear to me how we would move forward as an entire community between both towns, the school committee, the school district, and both select boards. On a timeline that can have a real positive impact for the kids. That’s what I’m struggling with, you

know, I’m, I don’t have much more to say about it. I just want people to know how I’m thinking about it, and I think either way. It’s going to be expensive and it’s gonna be. Now or later. But I’ve not heard anything today that tells me how we would move. Forward in practical terms with the

renovation path. I think a lot of people know me and know that I wanted to keep these existing buildings. Um, I thought that’s the, the right thing to do, but I just don’t see a practical path forward based on the makeup of what we have in front

of us. So yield my time, I guess, or whatever the proper terms are, I’m done for now. Thanks. So I’ll just make the comment that it’s some of the school forums that I attended, Ben was actually quite vocal and felt uh because this is his business construction and Ben, I’m, I’m surprised and quite

frankly perplexed because you challenged the architects, um, estimates of $115,000 for a renovation and addition, so I don’t know. I, I, I don’t understand your, your comments that it’s going to cost us almost the same amount, so maybe you could, um, at some point educate me as to why you

feel that all of a sudden it is going to be just as expensive. Over the course of 21 years, potentially, right, sort of the, the process that we have to go through by law in order to do the renovations unless we try to. Some some way circumvent

those types of activities. I guess I would just say that um the Peabody school system has had a total of 7 MSBA program, um, grants in the 1st 7 different schools in the past 10 years, so I’m not sure this um very long process is going

to be as long as we are led to believe. So. Is that something that we can Direct the school committee to assess like how, how, how would that unfold, I guess is the question. How would we go from where we are right now to taking action, you know, within, within a matter of weeks. To move The

renovation options forward as a community. I don’t, I’m just like not hearing an articulated path for. schools, yeah, and then that’s my opinion too, is that, is that the renovation work is is a years-long discussion. The question for us to and Carroros is to re-vote in June is, is not gonna affect

that. It’s like, it’s like, why not take it as a win? And keep the dialogue going because we need to keep the dialogue going regardless. Because we’ve, we’ve heard everybody in the community 100% say we need to do something to the schools. So let’s keep the dialogue going, but like I agree with you, like,

why, why you put it off to June because we don’t even have another plan right now. So until we have another plan, why, why take this one and throw it away when we have such overwhelming support to keep the discussion open. But in the same, uh, discussion, what, what, what, what can the

district bring forward that is different from what was brought forward in April. Can, can anybody reach out to people couldn’t come to the vote, Bill. A lot of people, I, I’ve heard from hundreds of people couldn’t come to the vote. because they thought because they thought it was 51% and and

they sent their, they sent their spouse to be the 51%, and now it’s 67%. So, so there’s, there’s other things just besides what else they can bring forward. It’s, we only got 1000 people out of 5400 people, I mean, there’s still, it’s still a pretty small percentage of people.. 2000, so

I mean that’s, you know, so there’s other things that can come. for that can help, but once again, it’s not costing the town time or money. It’s keeping the discussion open and it’s important that we keep the discussion on because we know we do something. schools. But my fear is the concern of, you

know, the whole the weekday in the morning type of discussion is a Thursday in the afternoon gonna bring 1000 or 500 and, and we’re just beating down the number of people. Like, how do we assure we had as many people at this, this vote, if not more,

if that’s the goal bill, that’s what you just said, you know, how do we assure that versus fewer people coming in the in as we get closer to the summer and it’s on a weekday. How do we assure a similar population but greater because if you, if

what you just said was true, then Yeah, that’d be great. You know, I wish everybody showed up, you know, or there was, you know, mail-in voting or something, that would be the will of the community. We’re not going to get that. So then to me, it’s like, but I guess, I guess, I guess, Bill, my

point is that it’s not our, our my discussion that I is not to be. To vote for it or against it, my, my, my discussion is to put it back on the warrant. So I think it’s up to the school and up to the community to decide how they want. What they

want to do to bring, to bring up, to bring new discussion, new facet, but, but like I said, the two things that were new to me was everybody at the meeting’s spoken against it talked about renovation. And now we’re hearing the school saying renovation doesn’t work and we have a school community

that’s not pro renovation, so I’m trying to figure out that’s a new sub, right? So if our community hears that renovation doesn’t work and we don’t have a pro renovation school board, so it’s not gonna move forward. It’s not something we talked about at town meeting, not something it wasn’t even

mentioned. But aren’t those discussions we should have with the townsfolk and I, I mean, it, it, it would seem to make sense that we would have a community-wide discussion. I mean, I consider this a community-wide discussion. Anybody was welcome to come and and discuss their opinions, um,

and to say something is not going to work is just because you haven’t explored the possibility. But I think this is, I think this is some good discussion. I think maybe we can continue that discussion and even, um, but I think we should have a motion on the floor, so I’m gonna make a

motion that the select board include the school consolidation project as a warn article on the special town meeting in June. Is there a second? I second that. OK, so for discussion purposes here, we’ve got two options. We can vote this through right now, or when we open the warrant, you

know, if we have any open questions, you know, we can get them answered. I don’t know that we do. I’m just saying that would be the, uh, the alternative path and then vote on it during the, when we open the warrant. Is there a preference? Yes, I, I have a preference. I would rather vote

on this when we open the warrant, um, as opposed to voting on it in total and in full at this moment in time, I would like to hear directly from the school committee as well. Um, I’ve just There it’s clear to me, like, we kind of

like I think um Mr. Wilson, you, uh sorry, Bill Olsen, you, you articulated it well around What’s our path forward, you know, for, for the next year, um, if we wanted to pursue the renovations, you know, who, who pays for that, or is this all then then on hold for an entire year, cause it sounds like

that’s. What we’re really choosing is kind of like putting this entire effort on hold for at least a year. But I, I, I, I don’t disagree. That’s not the question. I think we’re not here. I mean, we’re never going to resolve a renovation option between now and June. The question in my mind, is

there any new information or open questions from town meeting that the school district can deliver, you know, to us through a series of meetings or discussions between now and then and on the floor during a meeting like that that’s well attended, that might change the mind of a voter. Are there unanswered questions that we didn’t

discuss on the consolidation, that’s really all we can impact right now, that vote. I don’t think we’ll solve if we try to go wide and talk renovations and get costs out. I, I just think nothing gets done as on a vote, everything, I think the only thing on the table, correct me if I’m wrong, is, do

we have enough information now. A vote was made, I think, on the information we have. What’s coming to us between now and June and along the way, that might change people’s mind. I’ve heard things like, you know, the cost to maintain 3 versus 2. I’ve heard things of operating expenses. along, you

know, down the road, other synergies, other cost savings. I’ve heard the 3A conspiracy I’ve heard, um, you know, You know, the cost of just 2 new schools at a time, or the consolidation, but I don’t, honestly right now, I don’t feel like. Even extending, I’m going to get any more

information from the district. So unless I have like kind of a detailed roadmap plan of here’s what we’re going to do between now and then that will influence somebody’s vote. So, uh, I don’t know, but I don’t know, but I don’t know that’s, I don’t know if that’s what you should be voting on, Bill.

I mean, you’re voting on whether or not you think you can be convinced. Right, I don’t know that’s that’s what all these right, I think what we should go is whether we think the town has the right to keep the discussion open, right? And so I think you’re two step, I mean my opinion you’re two steps

ahead of where we need to be. I mean, like I said, I, I heard everybody who’s spoken about this consolidation is spoken against it, not because they don’t want to spend money on the schools, but because I think we can renovate. And the school has not publicly given a good other than just they

didn’t talk about it, the school did not talk about it all the time mean about the negative side of renovating. So if that’s where, if that’s a decision that were being put up against between voting for consolidation or no order to renovate. I think that yes, the school needs to put some

dialogue out there about why they feel renovation doesn’t work for their, for the plan for our kids’ future in this town. But I don’t, I, I don’t know that we’re voting tonight on whether we think the school can convince us. I think we’re worried about whether we keep the dialogue open. I’m, I’m

looking at it from a different angle. No, I think it’s the same angle. I think real, but we’re saying the same thing, but I’m just asking for that roadmap to get there. Like what, otherwise we just leave the meeting, we come back in 2 weeks and in 2 weeks, in 2 weeks, and then all of a sudden

we’re voting and what did we get and what did we learn? I’d like to know what, what, what now, you know, what we’re gonna uh talk about between now and June. And I, I, and it seems vague to me. I mean, I, I, that, yeah, I want to keep the

dialogue open. I want to talk about it, I, but I don’t feel like I, I don’t know what I’m going to get learned between now and then. You, you just suggested what we’re going to learn is, you know, why renovation can’t happen, right? I mean, is that Eric, is that what? I know you mentioned it

already and um but I just still don’t feel like I have an answer of what, what is the, what is the tactical plan by the district to come back and say these are the things we heard, and here’s our response to them, and this is why it’s important for everyone to know and it’s transparent, so they

make an informed decision and that decision might be different with this new information. I know everyone’s, I mean, that’s kind of where I’m at. I’m just Cause right now I’m with you. I’m like, I, I gotta know what we’re gonna learn between now and then I think you answered your own

question where the school committee again will watch this meeting and go through all the information and then try to dig into where people are at. I think that’s really the only option that’s the only option that’s on the table is the consolidation. That’s just how the MSBA program works. You go

from, you know, we went from 14 options down to 1, chose that one to move forward. We’d probably be having, you know, a different conversation a year from now if we said, you know, OK, let’s not move forward. Let’s, let’s stop right here, um, that puts us in a situation if we want to keep working with

the MSBA to apply again in April of 26th, which is when they opened their window and then get a decision in the fall of 26 on whether or not we’re in if we if we’re in, then we start the process again. If not, we would go back the following

April 27 and file another SOI so just, it’s just a matter of when you get pulled back in and Then you go back in with his eyes wide open. Yeah, so I think to Bill’s point too, you know, I’m not looking for, you know, OK, what’s the game plan

on a future SOI? It’s like, if the school committee can watch this meeting and, and maybe there was a one a meeting or, or listen to the feedback by, by the community, you know, You know, what’s the plan to come back, you know, with what information to, uh, that you feel is maybe missed at this

point. I, I guess if we knew that, Bill Olson, you know, that’s what I would want to see and look at to say, OK, yeah, I hear there’s content. There’s a discussion, you know, let’s continue the discussion. And I agreed. I thought Joe Craig, I thought. Well, we had requested that which is a sort of a

litmus test vote. I mean, people spoke tonight. It’d be good to see what the board sits, but we still have to, we still have to revote our next meeting anyways to open the warrant and put it back on the warrant, right? This boat would not be binding for the warrant. The vote would just be a litmus

test vote. Is that correct? Yeah, I don’t I mean. You, you were in as a board are in control of the warrant until you close the warrant, you haven’t even opened it yet, so uh the vote tonight is just uh informing yourselves of which direction you’re heading in. Once you open the vote, I want

you to open the warrant at the next meeting. Somebody can make a motion at the next meeting, honestly, you know. If they’re members of the board that are. Unsure about how they want to vote tonight they. And ask the table to Yeah, I, I know we can

do that. Ben’s new right now right now we have motion on the floor and it’s been seconded, so can be tabled by a vote of one member, so by request of one member. I mean, I think it’s important for the community to know where we stand right now. It’s been robust discussion and it’s a

good checking point, so it does, it’s not binding, it’s just so miss us. So I would say that either. Then you should probably take a roll call vote on the motion that’s been made and seconded or table it. Those are your options. I’ll table it motion the table. I guess I would ask that, you know, if

the district can come back with something when we open the warrant to vote on. I absolutely am interested in furthering the discussion, but clearly the will of this meeting, spoke to me. If the school committee is is watching this, I would also like for them to be present to be able

to speak with Eric Tracy, if that’s possible, Ben, Ben, uh, we had some applause in this room here, so could you repeat, we weren’t able, not able to hear you. Sorry, I can’t hear the applause. um. My request would be that in addition to Eric Tracy, if the school committee can also be present,

you know, to kind of try to, try to represent, um, as well like kind of like a journey that that they’ve been on, you know, as a committee that has kind of led to these, these decisions. I think that that that understanding of that roadmap that’s behind us now, um, it’s going to be important.

So if they’re listening and they’re able to attend the meeting where we open the warrant and vote on. I’d like to hear from them. May I ask a couple quick questions? Eric, when’s your next school comedian? Uh, May 1st. OK. Um, It’s before our next meeting on May 5th, I believe, um.

Yeah, Ben, what you’re asking is if, if the, if more than uh a a quorum of the committee were to attend this and we’d have to post it as a joint meeting. Are you asking for a joint meeting or you just asking for members of the school committee less than a quorum to join the superintendent. They Probably

less than a quorum sounds reasonable given the, the timings of all this. I just think it’s important. It would be helpful rather, um, for the committees and the select board to be hearing the same thing at the same time, um, so that we can Have more transparency between the two committees and

the importance of a decision like this as it as it moves towards whatever resolution, so it doesn’t seem like we’re passing the football back and forth. Yeah Thanks. And is the idea it was brought up, I love it, but it’s a crazy to have a

If this were to go to another vote to have a, a regional vote I don’t know that that’s allowed. I mean, I don’t know. She the speaker said that it was done before. I, I, I’d want to research it, but my understanding is that The only

thing I’ve ever heard before is that OK, so, so we have, we have, we have annual, uh, two town meetings uh among the boards of slackmen and the, and Fincoms but not a town meeting, not, not, not the, uh, the, the town meeting has to be held within the community, within the, the actual physical

boundaries of the community, so it would be impossible under state law for the Hamilton Select Board for the Hamilton town meeting to meet in Wenham and vice versa so you couldn’t have a joint meeting. Because one side wouldn’t be able to vote. How about at the train station. I don’t want to do

more outdoor town meetings. I’ve done enough of those. Oh, that’s right. Well, you know, I get the logistics. And to be clear, I, I honestly think that the, the school did come with a good You know, proposal that is fiscally responsible for the largest number of students. I honestly believe that going in

another way is going to cost this town a lot more money. Um, I do, that’s why I want to keep the, the dialogue going and talk more, but I’m not by any means saying that I’m against the consolidation. Virginia’s raised your hand. Yeah Um, Virginia Cook has raised their hand. Yeah, can we take

somebody online. Thanks. We have a lot of people online but haven’t heard the board is recognizing you want to unmute. like you, can you hear me? I’m just trying to remind people that there was a joint meeting of both towns to vote on, um, overrides for the school and we had to meet at the school, um,

gymnasium, and it was like 1200 people there and we had to, um, We both towns failed it and so they, the decision of the um state for the district because it had never happened before is we had to meet and keep voting on it until we agreed, so the

school board had to come up with a uh um number that was lessening it then what get turned down and, um, then it had to be voted on again, and I think it took 3 votes by the time they reduced enough, they got it passed. So, um, I do one.

We, we have had, uh, both towns meet together, including the select board. That’s all. OK. FYI, thank you. OK, um, so I think we’ve got an ask, um, the, the school committee meets on the first, so I encourage all to attend that meeting as well

and then we’ll come back around and figure out if we do a joint meeting or representation, I think is important, uh, at our next meeting and we need a number before the first because you wouldn’t have enough time to advertise a joint meeting if they don’t vote until the night of firsts, so we won’t have a

just if Eric. and Dana or some representation from the committee as well as yourself would be, would be appreciated. Um, so I don’t, I, I think we probably should just also table the review of a timeline of a town meeting since, you know, we will do the opening piece at our next meeting, uh, then

let’s review the calendar then if that’s OK with the board, um, and I recommend we move on to, uh, the calendar for the select board meetings, uh, going forward. So it’d be June to December it was in your packets, uh, it’s largely just the, the regular Monday so we didn’t have. have to move much because

of the way holidays fell this year. Let me see if I can find my, So typically we’re what, 1st and 2nd, uh, 1st and 3rd Mondays 1st and 3rd Mondays of every month, uh, the only one I see that’s different is Tuesday the 23rd of September because

that Monday is, I believe one of the Jewish holidays, um, so I believe that’s the only day that isn’t a Monday in this group of 8 months, so I think with with Zoom, people are allowed to zoom. I think that adds flexibility. I think July 7th could be a challenge as a holiday week, uh, potentially,

At least it’s after the holiday. Yeah, it’s after, so I, I think we’re good probably keeping this cadence and set of meetings and, you know, if, uh, you know, people have known dates, just let us know and if people can zoom in, that works as well. So everyone good with that. All right. Thank you.

So nothing to vote on there, new business. I know we’ve got a communication, uh, from Gordon Conwell, from the president, I don’t know if there’s anything we want to get into there. I think it was a follow up on some butter meetings. I don’t know if you were have any feedback or it was just for

informational purposes for the board. No, we don’t know. Just an FYI. OK, so continued discussions on that. It sounds like there was a good meeting though, generally speaking. Well, we weren’t invited. Oh, I thought you were there. We have been to meetings with the virus.. Um-hum. And they’ve been very

informative, yes. So I said, so that, that’ll be on new business, I suggest, you know, out of meeting soon. We talk about liaison assignments, I, I’d love us to dust off code of conduct and how we, uh, uh, present ourselves during meetings. There are times, if I look back at our meetings, you

know, you know, we shouldn’t be real proud of some of, uh, all of our behavior, so I’d like to dust that off and go over that. And um I don’t know if there’s any other new business people would like I just want to start instituting Bill for welcome to

Zoom callers and the remote callers, but uh. moving forward, you need to, if you’re not identified by your first and last name on your Zoom call ID we’re not gonna let you attend the meeting. It’s just hard to. He to call people I knew were there some phone numbers, so people need to have.

People need to have a uh. A little lesson on how to put their name on their Zoom. You can reach out, but I’m moving forward, yeah, your Zoom need to be identified by your first and last name. Sorry Not her. Yeah, I, I don’t know if we have a

policy on that, but I guess it probably does make sense or maybe that’s new business too, uh, but, um, do people have to identify themselves probably if they’re sitting in their room. I don’t know everybody’s name here. The junior cooks in 318 Forest Street, it’s worth a discussion, I think down the

road and, uh, see what we do. But yeah, I agree. I tend to think that, uh, maybe if they’re going to speak, they would say. Oh yes, of course, absolutely. Bill, Bill, one question, um, I don’t want to have their camera on. I’ll give you that choice. Did you put your camera on or identify

yourself by first and last name. So let’s put that, but we’ll talk about that in the next meeting. Is your camera on? Um, Bill, but I, no, but I’m identified by my first and last name, sir. Oh I don’t wanna prolong the meeting any longer, but uh the under the updates for special town meeting, there

was a bullet regarding review timeline for June 26th special town meeting. Did we want to talk about that? Yeah, I think we, we figured we’d table that to when we open the warrant and go through the calendar then because we’re not even sure what what will be on it if it’s 3A or school or a meeting,

right? Or I think that’s what we had tabled, right? I’m happy to go over it if you want to, you know, because I don’t know as I look at the, I don’t know what to. It’s in our packet. Yeah. and, and we had gone over it prior. I don’t think it’s

changed at all. Yeah, but I think the Part of that topic was going to be talking about potentially moving that date, um, because of the fact that it’s the end of June and we might get low turnout, uh, on June 26th special town meeting, so I know part of that discussion was looking at the

timeline. So I just don’t, I mean, I’m happy with tabling it, but I just don’t know that’s a fair point. I mean that’s going to impact, you know, our process for setting up a town meeting. Yeah, what I was referring to was that the time frames that we had laid out in the middle, I don’t even know

what the sandwich is going to be yet, so, but an end date if indeed that’s the topic that goes, yeah, is the 26th still the right date if Wenham’s on the 9th, Corin kill leave. She just left. OK, so you, you just missed her, um, Corinne, you

know, so I had spoken with the town clerk about dates that if you, if the select board had decided to move the meeting to something earlier in June, um, she had given us a number of dates that she is not available. Um, it would make it difficult

for the town clerk to manage a town meeting, uh, the only other big consideration. for you is that, um, with a special time meeting, the warrant has to be posted 2 weeks in advance of the town meeting. So, um, that just shrinks all the other prep calendar since we have items that need public hearings

and things, um, we have to be cognizant of that, this was a single source meeting and that was the only topic and you create a condensed calendar that has it earlier than the end of June where. Yes. Vacations become a challenge. So I have that ready for the meeting as well. I will have I

will have a proposal for a different date or two or. I, I would add, um, that there’s also a challenge with um older folks coming to a night meeting and I think, so I think they’re equally as prejudiced as somebody who may have had a vacation, so I think we need to consider all constituents and

the hardships that they may incur. I mean, if this is a rinse and repeat, sorry, is, should it be the same time on a Saturday. Yeah. I think, I think that was that time and slot generated a large turnout, so I, to be equal and fair, I

would say we don’t change it to so I’ll look at, I’ll look at the 21st. I’m not sure if we have time to do one on the 14th, but I’ll run it. I’ll run it through the calendar. I just want to make sure we’re ready to talk about those things in

the event we need to talk about those things. Deb suffered, I have a simple solution just if we’re going to punt on 3A and we don’t revote, we don’t have to have another town meeting, just an option. Um, Before we end, I just want to reiterate

that we got into the weeds a little bit on the school and focused on, you know, renovations or not renovations or consolidation or not consolidation, we kind of focused in on like the logistics of how do we do that? And I think everyone had the same information on April 5th

that they’re going to have for whenever it was to be revoted. There’s no new information. There’s just maybe new marketing materials because the reality is the vote has happened, so I just want to make sure that the, the topic that you guys are considering is not, well, should we just

repackage consolidation. It’s, do we honor the vote? Did the vote matter? And, and is there equity in every vote? Is there justice in how the vote was handled because clearly if it was a yes, we would not be having this discussion. So I just want to bring it back to that, just bring it back to

that discussion because then maybe you don’t have to have another town meeting and the cost of a town meeting. Thank you. I’m ready for a motion. I’ll entertain it. OK, so I make a motion we adjourn roll call, Tom. I mean, sorry, Bill. Uh, Billy, William Molson and I, thank you, uh, doing a great

job tonight, Bill. Yeah, Ben. Bengals eye. Tom, Tom Meyer’s