would have been We go to Acami echo coming I will call the. Uh oh. Echo Echo cho. John, can you get that? is yours on OK. you. I think so up until now I know. Is that better? Yeah, that’s me. It was me, sorry. Alright, I will call the Monday, October 6, 2025. Psych board meeting to order. Bill Wilson arrived just in time. I am. And uh we do not have, I don’t think uh Tom has joined us yet. If he does, he’ll be remote and we’ll do a roll call. at that point All right, we’ll, uh, first discuss board and committee openings, affordable housing Trust has one opening Conservation Commission has two openings Community for Preservation Committee has one opening for a member of historic District commission. The finance advisory committee has 2 openings. The historic District commission has 2 openings for 3-year terms, 2 openings for a 2-year terms. One must be a resident of the historic district, and one must be a resident realtor, and lastly, the HRC, the Human Rights Commission, is two at large openings. Um, we will now open up uh, for public comment. um, for maximum of 30 minutes. I no speaker will be allowed to speak for more than 3 minutes. If you want to speak, please come out to the podium and introduce your name and your address. No one’s in the room here, Joe, so you can look online. No it’s online. OK. It’s All right We’ll be swiftly to We don’t have on here, um we usually have, uh, reports, but I don’t see it on here. Yeah, we, um. So, we’ll come back to that. Um so the first thing we wanna do is close the warrant for December 9, 2025. Special time meeting. Um, we have 4 items we have identified. that we, we had one and now we have 4. We keep it open longer, we might have a dozen, but we have 4 items on the one obviously is the reason for the meeting the Browns Hill overlay district zoning. Uh, number 2 is we’re taking the opportunity to take care of some small bills, I’m assuming. It’s one bill from 11 bill from Cape. One bill? Uh, we have also found that um in negotiations to monetize our cell phone tower, we need to have some flexibility and in extending their lease to 30-year terms. So even though we’re not talking about what we’re gonna do it to sell it or not, we want to at least have the option to do it. So we’re gonna talk about and we don’t, we don’t have that language yet, Joe. And then the last one was a CP um, Community Preservation Fund, um, for potential town hall requests. There’s no current, but we asked, uh, Joe and Tim to put together a contingency plan to make sure we have no hiccups in finishing town hall this spring, so they’ve have a placeholder in this, uh, CPC for funding for that. I believe Tim goes before the CPC this week, it does. We have a meeting on Thursday. So, Tim’s going to come to it, well, we’ll go through that. say $250,000 prescription, yep. So Joe, what else do we need to do in terms of discussion points before we vote to make a motion, vote to close it. All right, you’re good. So the Language hall come later unless you want to take something off and discuss, but the language should all come with so the town understands that we’re not voting on the languages voting on the topic. Yeah, voting the topic is the town council will draft the language for warrants. OK, and then if we did need to um temporarily reopen it to adjust anything, um, you can do that at one meeting. You’ve done it in the past. What’s the last possible date for that moment. I think we said a month what I was gonna say, but I was, I think we did a month before, but we would definitely need to make sure everything is at the end of October. So basically in two weeks though, yeah, 11 more meeting one more meeting. So if we have to make any adjustments, we’ve got 2 weeks to do it. All right. Thanks OK, I have a motion to close a warrant for December 9, 2025. I move that we, uh, close the warrant for December 9, 2025 with the following four topics as listed. of 2, do any further? questions, comments? Yeah, just uh what’s the uh contingency if uh we cannot come to um an agreement regarding the proposed overlay district and the development agreement. What, what would we do in that case? Would we just cancel the special town meeting or? You could, you could, you two options, you could cancel the whole time meeting or you could open the warrant and remove the Brown Soloreli District from the warrant and go forward with the other three items, so it’d be up to you. I think, um, definitely two of those could probably wait easily till the annual town meeting and then I don’t want to speak for the community preservation Committee, but those are the, the other two could easily wait till the annual time, meaning. And, OK, and when would we need to, to do that by? in terms of if we needed to reopen the warrant to remove the brown tail overlay and the first in November. because by by the second meeting we’ll be printing warrants and, you know. posting them and everything else, so. OK, so we could potentially still hold it for the items that are on. OK. Any other questions OK All those in favor, say I I, I opposed and we do not have Tom. So we are 40 Um, we’re going to take one item out of order, actually a few items out of order just because of the people in the room. We’re going to respect their time as well as ours, but we have Bill Bowler. Thank you for coming today. So we have on the end of the agenda we had set date for April. That’s when you want to move up, set the date for April 26th annual town meeting. April, yeah, the April, the date would actually be, I think April 4th under the way the time bylaw is set up that Saturday, the first Saturday in uh April. I think it’s April 4th, that, uh, is Holy Saturday this year and so it was raised that the town, the town’s may want to consider moving that out. Uh, we discussed it at the five chairs meeting with the school district and the um the town of Wyndham representatives that were there, the chair, uh, Mr. Tymond from the Oneham select board said that he thought, uh, you know, you guys take a vote and then they’d respond, but he didn’t see why a week later would be a big deal. But part of the reason that both of us have to do it is because it affects the town elections as well because under our bylaw the election has to happen the Thursday following the ATM. So it would move everything, um. so. so go, um, Bill Bolton. Well, I certainly have no objection. It probably would make sense to move it. Um, you get better attendance and anything that increases the attendances. a good thing OK So everything else works for that date. Yeah, well, we haven’t done the calendar yet because we’re back into the day, we back into the calendar from what the date is. So I was preparing to do a calendar based on April 4th when the issue was raised by the town clerk, so I held off. So are we voting tonight or are we just discussing it tonight? I have to vote on anything? I, I think if you voted your preference for a date, we could send that message to Wenham and see if they, they comply and then if, if they have some, if something comes up and they want to discuss it more, we can always been any school vacation discussions with just one quick question, school vacation is the the week after the 11th, so the 13th through the 17th? No, no, no, the one after the 20th through the 24th, OK. And I’m I’m sorry, I was trying to pull up my packet. um, when is the date? when are we’re gonna move it one week from the 4th to the 11th. So at the back of your I should have just pointed out that the back of the packet there is, um, day is what day. Right. Now he’s trying to pull it up, so that’s why they’re here, yeah. So, it, it’s normally, it, it would have been the 4th under bylaw. We’re asking you to look at the, uh, the following week, the 11th. When is Patriots’ Day? I don’t know. It’s a Monday though, so I don’t really. I just want to know if it’s like the 13th or is it the 20th? I don’t know, you’re running the marathon that’s a week. We’ll come cheer you. That’s a week and a lot of people might go away because it’s a 3 day weekend. So I don’t want to also put it on a weekend that people might be, it’s out of town if we’re trying to get people to come, that makes sense. Let me just look real quick. Uh, uh, April 20th. April 20th. That works. Would it makes sense because it’s usually the Monday at the start of the vacation all right yeah. So I’ll entertain a motion to clarify this is just for the, just so everybody’s clear this is moving town meeting date. Would it move the election date a week as well, OK. OK, just, and what would the election date be again? It would be that Thursday, so Thursday on Thursdays 12:30, 60 I put my calendar right now. Yeah, I know. April 16 Your taxes are due on the 15th. The 15th, right, every year. my last day. So I’ll attempt a motion to A Set our April 26th annual town meeting for April 4th, 2026. No, no, April 11th from April 4th, from April 4th to April 11th. Second and the we can measure the same motion and move our election and move, uh, the election accordingly to the following Thursday, April 16th. Is that good y’all? Yep. Any further questions, comments? OK, all those in favor say aye, aye. OK. All right We return to our regularly scheduled program. Um, no, no, we’re not. We’re gonna actually put the Gordon Conwell in front of the Joe, we will get to the town manager goals, 2026, 202 that worried about it, but we’re gonna first, we’re going to talk about an important topic, obviously is the is the status of the Gordon Conwell Development Agreement that we’ve worked hard on, so I’ll give a brief summary of where I think we’re at. I’m going to let Rosie also give a brief summary of where we’re at. We can discuss the board or let um Marilyn come up. and uh give his sort of summary from where they’re at on their side, and we can talk about where our open items are and what happened is I think is that we’re we have two issues, 2.5. I don’t think that the last one is a big deal it’s more of a date issue, but we have two issues that, uh, we’re not quite on the same page as a seminary. We think everything else I think is in a good state. So instead of Rosie and I making a determination, we thought it made sense to bring it to the board and have a public meeting and discuss it with the rest of the board to make a decision that made sense. and our legal counsel also advised that this at this point in time, kind of come out into an open meeting forum is that correct? Yes, yeah, it can’t go, it can’t be behind closed doors at this point in time, it has to be published. So that was their advice as well, was to kind of bring it here, but, um, correct me if I’m wrong, from up until this point in time, uh, we’ve had a kind of couple of members from the planning board. Bill Olson your yourself and, and Rosemary Kennedy. uh running the negotiations on behalf of the, as long as long as there wasn’t a quorum of any board, you didn’t have to do it public. This isn’t this isn’t like negotiating through a legal issue or through contract, um, collective bargaining, so it, it would have had to be public if the whole board was involved. Now that we’re involved and now we’re making it public. That’s kind of the first one, right? Yeah, so this, so I thought it was good to like kind of bring everybody up to speed on the roadmap, where we’ve been, where we are now, and this is our first time in the public with the, you know, which was in the packet. So Joe, did we issue the draft 2 weeks ago on, so it’s a little bit different. Yeah, I sort I was trying to check the two, so the version that came over, we got it from John Whitton based on Rosie and Bill’s feedback, um, last week. Um, it was issued to you and that was shared with Morwin and the seminarian and was also shared with the abutters because they’ve been very interested parties right along, so um we, but we didn’t get it till last night, so I’d be more than happy if, if, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna allow 10 minutes of public comment. on this at the end if people have questions, but but I’d be more than happy to talk about anything on the agreement with anybody here. I’m just going to focus on the, on the items that don’t have finality yet, and then we can come back to anything else we want to talk about. So there are 3 items. I like I said, I’m going to talk, keep my opinion roll, let Rosie go, and then we can talk as a board or let Merriwin speak before we have a debate. Um, the first item is access to the property, public access to the property. And so as long as the semary has been there, people remember it did never sort of said no treasures. They’ve let it open to the public. The public’s had access to that property for. you know, as long as they’ve been there, right? They’ve never sort of, so as a town, we’re interested in maintaining public access to the property. Um, and we’ve tried to write that into the agreement. Um, the challenge that we’ve had with that is that there are no trails. I have a trail on my property. A lot of people have trails on our property. There’s easements and there’s definitions how to define public access. There are no trails. There is no easement right now, and there is no proposed easement. so it becomes a very blank a statement of of it’s opened the entire property’s open to everybody, which is hard because insurance, there’s risks, there’s what happens 2030 years from now, right? So we had sort of through through some language in there that said um we have actually the property town until upon showing a good cause. um, to sort of give us protection but also give the seminary some flexibility in the future. Um, there’s some debate on that that language really, you know, what that creates in terms of a legal problems down the road. So we’ll hear the debate on on sort of, you know, I think we’re good with adding it. I think the seminary thinks it’s, it doesn’t help, help protect them and it maybe creates future issues, right? So we’re going to talk about sort of how we can, you know, as, as Mariwin says they have no intention of eliminating public actual property now, but they don’t know, they can’t foresee the future 20 or 30 years from now about what would happen to the property or what risks or what security issues they might have or things like that. So they want to have some flexibility to sort of protect their asset. um. so we can talk about through that one. And then the second item was the heritage landscape, so we all were given a map. so maybe you can pull up um, that defined what we’ve eloquently called the heritage landscape of the area on site that we find is sort of sacred landscape in terms of the history of the property, the history of the buildings on the property, the access to the highest point, um, in Essex, the highest point in Essex County. So, um, so we define this as a heritage landscape, which is the light. and zoom out, Joe, maybe give more. Scroll down. You should be able to see it. Or, well, it’s that green HL right there. Yeah, just to orient ourselves though. I’m trying to kind of. It’s the light green here. They’ll, obviously, the brown is the top of the hill. The sorry about that. I’m trying to get it so that sharing, I don’t know why it’s not. Give me a second, please. Oh, I see what you’re trying to show you Where. Where is my? There it is. There we go. be up there. OK. Sure. The brown upper campus UC upper campus. Well, the, uh, current dormitories which will consider the lower campuses in the purple, Bridge Street is on the right-hand side. The lots that developed the housing and it’s sort of in that little missing notch on the upper, on the upper side, so the, the HL borders the sort of the neighbors on the on the. east side on the west on the west side. But, um, so that 14.77 acres. The intention is, is that if that property ever gets sold it would still be have a conservation commission, a conservation, um, restriction over that property and not be able to be developed. While the seminary owns it, they have Dober rights. They can do whatever they need to do in terms of what their school would need in terms of educational. you know, structures or development, right? But if it ever got sold, it’s part of the middle campus it would have a concert which what we’re asking for conservation restrictions. So what we, the debate on that is, is that the planning board has developed a overlay bylaw, and we developed the development agreement which would be sort of working in concert and sort of the, the idea was that really the development of the property should be part of the, part of the whatever is agreed to as part of the planning board and not necessarily needs to be in the development agreements. We need to understand what, what’s in there, what’s in the planning board’s version, what needs to be in our version, and what, and what, obviously it’s in the town of its interest to have open space, but we got to make sure that that it works with everything else that we’re doing. And the third item I’m not familiar with, but, uh, shows about the date. So can you, um before I turn over, Rosie, can you just walk us through what the date. So, um, she was So, it’s sets, um, I’m actually, I’m not 100% sure either because I don’t know whether March 1st deadline comes from. I’m meeting in, I guess it’s to, just to make sure that the town acts on this by March 1st of 2026, but we’re trying to act on it by December 9th, so I, I wouldn’t think that would be an issue. We should ask it’s ask it’s a, it’s just a, and it’s not, it’s not the state of start, it’s the date of the sunset. So if you, if you don’t move, if the town doesn’t move on, then, then both either party can separate we can let it doesn’t, doesn’t automatically get identified who identified it as an issue. Oh, you did. OK. So I’ll let you go then. Go ahead. OK Um, so I’ll start with that. Just that um what uh so regarding that, um. issue number 3 what happens to the development and agreement if the PNS is executed prior to that date. then the PNS is valid, but the development agreement becomes null, right? What I mean, I’m, I’m, yeah, I don’t want to be too so the development agreement would be active after December 9th if it passed. If it passes, right, but if it doesn’t pass, then they can’t sell the prop, then they wouldn’t be able to sell the property. Well, they would be able to sell the property, um. depending on what legal issues came up with, with the selling of the property. Um. it seems to me an arbitrary date and to make sure that there are no um hanging chads in this that date should be pushed out because that day, uh comes pretty close to the town meeting and there might not be time for the AG’s office to approve the um bylaw. So what day are you recommending? Um, I’m not sure why that’s even in there. I think I would like Merwin to explain to us why there needs to be a sunset clause at all. Why, why are we doing, why are we doing that? OK. All right. That makes sense. Yeah. Um, so, that’s the question. OK. And did you want me to speak to the other? Yeah, yeah, well, whatever, you can speak to whoever you want to speak to, but those are the things I wanted to speak to you about I will these issues, yes, OK. So regarding the um right to passage or the uh the license of people to traverse the the property, um, there’s an arbitrary clause that they can um curtail or stop um residents from traversing the property. just when they say so it doesn’t have any any boundaries. Um, the town has 2 acres of property up there, one of the most scenic areas in um in Essex County and so there should be some sort of a standard as to why they would close the campus to residents traversing through. There have always been trails there and so it seems it’s not binding them. It it’s, it’s not binding them as an easement. It’s just you can’t arbitrarily prohibit residents from traversing onto town-owned property. you would need to give us a reason and maybe that reason would be very valid, but to just say it takes all takes all, uh, surety out of it that residents can traverse the property. You’re just saying they should have access to the town 2 acres or the entire property? Well, they would have to have access to the property to reach the 2 acres, so that’s part of the whole deal, um, and also the Heritage landscape. It, it becomes, um, it becomes, well, if we decide that that the town has not shown us. what we need to have shown from residents. Maybe they leave trash around, um, is that good cause? Maybe there’s a way to resolve the issue by the town putting trash cans there, um, Rosemary, you’re talking about the air and the white, correct? Just to clarify. Brown’s Hill? Yes, the 65,100 so 1.49 acres. There are people who are watching it, OK, I, I was, do you know what, I remember looking at deeds, a few several years ago, maybe 5 years ago, and it was 2 acres, so, um, that’s interesting that it’s 1.49 acres now because an earlier deed says it’s 2 acres. Is, is, do, does a planning board, this map came since we just got this map, I believe today. So we haven’t actually vetted it for everybody, but this is what we got today. So we need to vet this, but. Um But, um, but that’s, but that’s roughly where you’re talking about the, the area that’s sort of surrounded, yes, so just people know here what you’re when you say that 2 acres of town owns, people who may not realize it’s the top of the hill. Yeah, exactly, which, go ahead. OK, so it does have, does have a beautiful view and so it would it would lend some surety that residents are going to be able to continue to traverse the property and if Gordon Conwell is saying that we’ve always allowed it, then then why not just put those few words and that will give the town confidence that residents will still be able to traverse the property. um so that’s, oh, and also chapter 21, section 17C would protect them as landowners from any issues with the property. I think landowners always can rely on that statute to to protect them. Yeah, yeah, um. Could I, could I add something? Please. So, the, you know, the other thing to keep in mind is the development agreement runs with the land. So even if the seminary cells, a portion of the land or sells all of the rest of the land to somebody else. The development agreement would remain in effect, and we have no idea in the future what a future owner would think about public access. Uh, I, that’s the top of the hill to the town property or anywhere else, so it’s, it makes sense to want to have protection for the town to be able to traverse the land at least up to the to the part of the property that we own, um, and, and, and there are protections that there are protections. So it’s not just about this MRA, it’s really just about whoever might own the property in the future as well. and remember that this development agreement is always um able to be amended at any point in the future. So that’s, that’s one thing and then, and then the other thing is talking about the heritage landscape. um it’s confusing that an agreement to a prior agreement, verbal agreement, of course. um, to have a deed restriction is on the property for at least 2, for at least 30 years or however long is allowed under the law, um, is does not any longer seem to be in play, and that’s an important issue um I think it, it shows goodwill to the townsfolk that Gordon Conwell does plan to not overdevelop the site #2, it allows people to enjoy that beautiful landscape. It’s um something, it was an important part of the conversation in the 2014, um, what was the name of that document for 2014, the reconnaissance project, right, that people residents really value that site and secondly, and when the cleaning board was negotiating the original Browns Hill overlay that was an important part of the negotiation for the planning board for the abutters, and all four and also for general residents in town and so again this would certainly um show a lot of goodwill. It would show the residents that this this overlay district will be a good thing for the town and it would be a selling point at town meeting. So those were the three things that I thought. were important to discuss today. OK. So for Bill and for Ben, would you like to discuss amongst us, or you would like to have Marilyn come up and sort of talk about those items first. How do you want? or with sort of getting your arms around the issues. Either order is fine with me. I think I’d rather hear from, from him first if, uh, and then we can discuss. OK. Sounds everything open. And I got some questions from Marilyn. So I don’t you come up and I’ll ask you some questions and then I’ll let you talk about. Let me ask you a couple of questions first if that’s OK. Sure, fire away. So I always think about, right, think about balancing a lot of things, right? Balancing what’s in the best interests of the town but also what’s going to get this thing voted for because I think there’s a lot of good for the town to protect the land, and I know we’re giving up some stuff that’s part of negotiations to get, but, but the town has to agree that it’s, that’s a good thing because they gotta, we gotta get 67%, right? So there’s certain things which I think you, you guys have given that that our good sacrifices, a lot of things you’re going to gain in terms of you know, future potential on the property. In terms of a worst case I’m just trying to understand, so the heritage, in terms of the heritage landscape, um as I understand now more clearly than it did a couple of weeks ago, and I, and the map is helpful. Are we agreeing in a development agreement that if you never sell the property, you still have Dover rights over that property. In, in the, the draft that we not the most immediate draft, right, because there’s that language at the bottom of the draft for discussion, but for as long as the seminary owns it, yeah, the seminary needs the ability and particularly there are really two ends to it. The retreat house is now one of the primary business buildings for the seminary. We use that now for all of our administrative offices, uh, we, we just spent a great deal of money renovating and we’d invite anybody can come up to see that if the select board members want to do that, uh, it has been redesigned now to, to accommodate all of the administrative offices. So it’s a central, one of the most important buildings for us. We just need flexibility that if we need to expand it and and do something with that, that we’d be able to. We have no intention of building on the green part, uh, not, I’m not saying green on the, uh, the, the plan there, but you know, the lawn that runs up, uh, alongside, uh, when you get the top there, you see to the left of the HL and to the right to the left of 643, and the number 643. That’s a flat area that historically it’s been the tennis courts. It hasn’t been used for a little bit, uh, but we would like the ability to put the tennis courts back in there to use that space. And then above it, uh, as you get toward Care Hall, you can see the building there in the in the sort of orange area. There’s a, a grilling area that that the students use quite often uh with there used to be a swimming whirlpool there. They filled that in and they, and they’ve created kind of a patio outdoor area for people. It’s in the heritage landscape, uh, that, that’s not some, that’s something that we need to be able to improve, to provide recreation for students, etc. So those are the two things that we’re concerned about. We, we don’t want to build onto the, to the up upside uphill side of the road, uh, so you know that that’s not what we’re looking for. But in terms of being able to uh improve the parking or put in, you know, any kind of an addition wing to the retreat house We just need that. And, you know, that’s, that’s why we need to do rights for that. Now, do, are we in that’s why, that’s why I’m clear. I was under the impression that if they don’t sell the property, they have door rights over the heritage landscape and the middle campus and the upper campus. What’s the rights I about that development. Yeah, correct. So I I don’t think that’s an issue. Do you feel like that’s an issue the way it’s written? That was my understanding of what the proposal meant was, if I’ve misunderstood and we retain Dover rights, which is, yeah, that is what we understood until this most recent version was was distributed, but if that’s, if then it’s a non-issue was my understanding. That’s why I wanted to get over here to answer that question. My understanding is that, yeah, if you don’t sell the property, then you’ve maintained over rights. We still want a new developer to come in and, and build on that heritage landscape. Right, no, and, and the planning board has been zealous in protecting the property, and we’ve made that concession. In fact, the NZ as well, uh, those are entirely unbuildable, so all of that green, which consists of um over 40 acres now under the new overlay district will be unbuildable, uh, and so, and we’re working with the planning board, they’ve been willing to, you know, to, to make adjustments for things like entrances and driveways and sidewalks, that sort of thing, but there won’t be any, uh, you know, any buildings, um, uh, on there. We’ve talked to them about the possibility of if we need to put a guard shack down toward the entrance on Essex Street that that would be allowed and, and, and they’ve, as I understand it, they’re open to that kind of a thing. Uh but yeah, that all that green is gonna stay green and, and we’ve been, uh, we’ve been willing to make that concession. Yeah, so. Well, that’s wetlands. You can’t build there anyhow, but that’s his point. He’s saying he’s saying that people know, but for the people who don’t know it’s wetlands. They understand that that area, that he’s just making the point that for those who don’t know how the property is laid out, they can’t develop in those areas anyways, right? It’s not all wet and it’s not all wetlands. So for example, there’s a road that goes right through it there to get down to lower campus. Uh, so yes, there’s quite a bit of wetlands there, but the, the main entrance to the seminary runs right up through the NZ area. So, you know, we’re, it’s not entirely well it’s even potential that there’d be an A&R plan to uh uh lot out front on Essex Street that were waving between those two white, if you see the whites, there’s a house that’s already been built there, uh, but we’re, you know, we’re giving up that possibility of putting an ANR lot there. So you’re fine with the heritage landscape If, if it, if you find her in concept if it sells that it would go, it would last with the, with the sell, sell the property. They would not develop on that on that site unless it was a religious institution, right, overprotected, otherwise they would not be able to build there. Yeah. We’re fine with that. OK, that’s helpful. And then, um the public access, all right? I know we’ve you know, we’re not at this point requesting in an easement, but we’re just requesting as the language, and I just wanted to hear sort of where you, where you recommend the language to be that gives us protection of access to the property but it gives you future ability to for security reasons or future whatever issues you have on campus and how to protect yourself. So I just look into the area you what you recommend to compromise that. Yeah, so I, I do think it’s helpful to put it in the context of the whole agreement because we haven’t really recited those things, uh, when you, you know, in these kinds of negotiations, when you get down to the last little piece, we can also lose sight, you know, the number one thing is that this is now going to free up all six apartment buildings to be taxable. They’re going to go on the tax rolls, which they haven’t been for over 6 decades, uh, and the funds are substantial, you know, we’re estimating it’ll be northward of half a million dollars, which would service a significant amount of debt, uh, that the that the town might need to take on and it’s free money because the town isn’t getting anything for it right now. So that, that’s the, you know, the first thing and I think that’s important to keep in mind. We’re also waving our 40B rights over the entire parcel under the settlement this development agreement, uh, as, as you can imagine, that’s significant because of the leverage that 40B provides. Beyond that, as, as the board knows, we are giving up 25% of the units to be affordable That’s going to cost the seminary a million dollars in the sale of the property, but we feel like that’s the right thing to do for the town in order that once he hit that number, the town, as we all know, we’re going to be applying to get all 200 unit 9 units applied to the housing inventory. If that happens, my understanding is that 40B is no longer a threat to the town, so that’s of extraordinary value to the town, uh, and I think it’s really important for us to keep that in mind as well, uh, we’ve agree d now to pay $100,000 at the passage. Another $300,000 when the um the sale goes through for the apartment buildings and then another $700,000 in two tranches of future developments when the value to the town is realized and the seminary rather is realized. um, as you see from the zoning, the town is going to get over 40 acres of uh of protected land, um, and so when we come down to this last issue of Access. I’ve sort of been trying to think I’ve spent a lot of time and I’ve talked to town council about it, we’ve talked about it at length a number of times trying to figure out how it can happen It’s just that hard and that it it is, it’s a fundamentally hard question for us, and I’m not sure there’s any way around it. And, and, and this is a reason, I give you the reasons. First, it is important to note we have provided access to the town and residents for 55 years. There is no intention of changing that. Uh, we’re delighted to have it. We’ve had a disc golf course, uh built there and we have plenty of people that come down this tends to be someone playing disc golf, uh, every day on that place. Uh, we’ve got people who walk their dogs, we’ve got people from the horses. We haven’t had any problems with, with allowing people to do that. There’s no intention to change it. The town never asked us to do it. It’s never been something that’s been demanded of us. Uh, it’s part of who we are as a seminary. These days, the next big issue is security concerns. This is, it’s no longer a sort of a theoretical concern. Educational institutions are under attack. uh, we, we read about the shootings and the bomb threats and the rest, that is a substantial concern for the seminary. What constitutes a threat that would give us the right to turn it, you know, shut it down. Uh, you know, we don’t know, but we to give up that ability to monitor and maintain our our control over the access is just key from a security perspective. We’ve had threats in the past and so we have to be aware of that. We need the third thing, we need to control the property for our mission, so you know, in educational institutions, as we can tell, read the news every day, take, take positions that get people upset. The summary might some faculty member might write an article that gets one person or one side of an issue upset. What people do these days is they not only do they protest, but they just, if they had free access to the property, they could just come in, uh, and it doesn’t matter what the issue is or what side of it is both sides, uh provide people who aren’t always rational in the way they handle things. So we have, we need that kind of control over that. You know, nobody in this room would allow what what’s being asked here over their own property. Uh, the seminary’s gonna be there. This isn’t a deal where we’re leaving the property and we’re creating a zoning bylaw with the project that’s already been fully permitted and designed and everybody knows what’s going to be there. It’s not. We’re selling the 6 apartment buildings and we’re gonna stay on the rest of the property and so we just need to be able to maintain that control and I think, I think the people in Hamilton, they’ll appreciate that, they’ll appreciate all the other things that that the town is getting through this development agreement. Um, we, we want, you know, we want to be able to maintain the value of the property. We need to know future developments, I mean what Joe indicated, it cuts both ways. You know, we, we’re concerned about the marketability to, to a part of the property if there is this open-ended access that we, that we have no control over. There might be someone who needs to buy the property for private kind of, you know, business that that there might be some uh reasons why they need to keep it confidential, etc. and control their environment. It creates problems with insurability, uh, in terms of getting insurance to cover this kind of a right. uh financing issues, uh, we’ve talked about it with our current lender, and it would be a concern to them. They have a right, you know, they’ve got, of course, leverage over the whole property and any future financing, not only for us, for anybody else that would raise a concern. liability, uh, you know, I’m, I’m a trial attorney, so, uh, I look for exclusions and uh an exceptions and the recreational statute is not a panacea. It doesn’t cover everything. Uh, it, it doesn’t, it covers only recreational use, so there are plenty of cases involving churches and educational institutions that go into the question of whether the person was actually using it for recreational purposes. Someone cutting through might not be considered using it for recreational purposes, and therefore the statute wouldn’t apply, and then it doesn’t cover wilful, wanton, or reckless conduct. Now you could say, well then don’t be wilful reckless and wanton in your conduct, but again, I tried cases, then it becomes a tribal issue of fact was the seminary when they left a ditch there that they put up enough signs, etc. so it creates that right there, creates it, it’s not a cover all for everything. It might cover some things but not everything. You still have a standard of care that’s due to, due to anybody under that statute. The issue with good cause, you would think, and I think it would be, it’s sort of the layers of yellow, that seems pretty reasonable, just that you’ve got to show good cause but again, that’s, that’s something that’s litigable. You that’s something that you can claim isn’t good cause. Anybody who’s an employer who fires someone for good cause. That doesn’t get you out of a potential lawsuit. Seminary doesn’t want to be involved in a lawsuit having to justify that something constituted a significant threat or even the example that was provided just a few moments ago about, well, if there was trash there, then the town puts trash bins there for it Now we’re having a debate about whether refuse and trash on our property, our property is enough for us to say we need to to keep people out or or somehow reduce it uh the use of the property, then a next thing is the seminary occasionally has use for, you know, we have commencement there or we’ve got donor events, etc. and it may be that we need to restrict access for a period of time, uh, and, and trying to create exceptions that work for that would be difficult if not impossible. Um, we just, we can’t put ourselves in a position we’d be facing tens of thousands of dollars in litigation costs over whether we had good cause or whether someone was protected under the recreational statute. um, then, you know, to go with the, the, what the chair just said. The seminary property is just not the kind of property that you can have rights of access on there isn’t, you know, it’s not that there’s an easement or a a rather a pathway around the side or discreet area that, you know, it would be usable by the public. It’s just not that kind of thing. It’s, it’s a, it’s a 100 acres of land which is privately held, privately used, and so it doesn’t lend itself to this kind of open access, um, and then just let me briefly talk about the access to the top. That’s, that’s the water tower. I don’t think the town folks from DPW want anybody running around on the water tower. In any event, but even if they did, the point is the town has an easement to gain access to that to maintain the water tower, uh, but it’s not an open ended easement for everybody else, so I don’t want the town or anybody listening here to think that there’s no access to the town’s property. This this complete access that was deeded that way. It was an agreement back, it’s about 100 years old and the town has the access to do what it needs up on on the water tower, uh, so again, we’re, we, we’re open to continuing it, uh, we think it’s, it’s just a reasonable way of doing it. We have no intention of stopping it, but for all those reasons, just giving up that control is just, uh, at the end of the day, it really isn’t you’re asking us to wave Dover Amendment rights because access to property is a fundamental to how you use it, so I would hope that understanding all these other fantastic benefits to the town, which the select board has negotiated hard on behalf of the town just will completely outweigh any kind of benefit that might be to getting that access. On the other hand, the prejudice to the seminary, the difficulty to the seminary of of giving up that kind of control is, is just so, so much that it’s, you know, it’s really insurmountable. Hm Well, how do you, how do you anticipate that residents should they want to access the town property at the top of the hill. because there is a beautiful view. How, how would you anticipate residents would be able to get to that. Come on. Come on in, drive up there. 55 years, it’s been there, it’s available for them. Come on in. There’s a great moon tonight. If anybody wants to go up there and look at the moon. drive up if they’re they’re welcome to do so right now, absolutely. So, so, uh, I guess in, in my mind you’re the, the seminary is um an understandable security risks. I don’t, I don’t disagree with that, um, but you have assured us you have no intention of closing things off, but you’ve just given us a whole uh litany of um causes that would enable you to close it off. So how do we find a happy medium where you’re assuring us that this is going to continue but maybe not Well, it’s, it’s again, it’s good faith on the part of the seminary and on the town. This is, we’re putting it in writing. We could have just said we’re not putting in a ring at all, but we’re trying to accommodate and we have accommodated and we have been, you know, we’ve, we’ve been asked for the planning board and, and, and, and, and we see you out of the select board, what really do we need and what really matters to us, and I’m telling you right now that this really matters to us. We’ll give up a million dollars so you can have 25% affordability. We’ll give up 40B and not be able to, to, to design anything in a 40B. The just so you know, once the apartments sell, the only use that we’re going to have as a matter of right is to reuse the existing buildings. We have no other that property has no right to build anything without going through the planning board and its special permit process which, as everyone knows, is really rigorous. So the town is going to exert tremendous control over any future development through the special permit process. that’s unless through your Dover rights, you ought to build something. I’m sorry, I missed that That does not include your Dover rights, though you will still have carte blanche to do. pretty much whatever you would like to do with the property. So, so I think um we should not forget that. Yeah, but it’s no different than it is now. Well, exactly. That’s, that’s what I’m saying. But, um, Merwin is saying that everything will have to be special permit and that’s not if if it gets older. If it gets sold, right, but what we’re, but that affects the value of their property, of course it does. My point is you’re um you’re sort of lumping that all in with all these benefits, uh, to the town, and I think that people who are watching and who watches tomorrow should understand that that doesn’t affect the current use of the property. The the the Dover Amendment rights continue. That’s right. But, but it does affect the current use of the property that’s as a matter of right because the planning board decided that it’s not going to be an overlay district, so an overlay district would take this new district and place it over the existing zoning. The planning board has decided not to do that and rather replace it. What’s allowed right now is single family residences and we’ve had plans that show 50 houses up there. That goes away with this plan, with this new district. We’re not going to be able to do that. We lose the right, so that as of right disappears and its place is we can reuse existing buildings, but then everything else you’ve got to go through uh through the uh the planning boards for special permit for non-Dover purposes. That’s right. That’s exactly correct. And, and also, and just one other quick, quick comment that um while there’s certainly some benefit to the town. I, I don’t think anybody would um speak against that, um, let’s be clear that there’s an enormous financial benefit to um the seminary, um, that is being bestowed by the town so that you can sell these 6 apartment buildings and they will be um amenable to any kind of alterations that the new buyer deems necessary. so there, there’s a huge benefit to the seminary. Well, this is, this is a very important thing for the seminary, absolutely, yeah, we’re, we’re, we’re very happy that when these things are able to be sold, absolutely. It’s the new, the new owners can’t do anything that they want to it. Uh, they’re the, the zoning bylaw doesn’t permit them to do anything that they want. And, and it’s and one of the things we’re doing is we’re restricting it to 209 units, so they won’t be expanded at all. I think it also allows continued operation if they couldn’t afford all that and get that money, then maybe that. becomes something different and we don’t have all this open space and have this the last 50 years that’s, that’s their issue. That, that’s right. Um. But it does allow continued operation. I think that’s your path forward. So it’s a win-win. But, but once again, we forget, right? They built 9 houses that have become a nightmare for this town. They’re not gonna, that’s the whole reason we’re doing this. We don’t have to go build 50 houses and create 50 nightmares for this town, right? It’s part of this protection we’re trying to get. So we’re trying to listen to the town as well and so yes, it’s a give and take so I get the give and take. So I, and I had one more question I’ll let, but back to my original question, I think, appreciate the the lengthy response because you did get there. But I, you know, once you get, yeah, my property, I have easements on it, so it’s easy for me to have people because it’s very defined easements. I get the difficulty you have, but I also want to offer something that Tom Mead is going to help you get this passed. And so if there’s some creative way to create some sort of area on this campus either in the heritage landscape or something that we can, we can create some sort of space and access road or something. I, I still think that’s worth some sort of investigations that we have that that story to tell because I think it is important that that if we’re going to do this heritage landscape and we still don’t have access to it, I, I just, I don’t know the right answer. I understand your challenge, and I’m amount to is really the one thing you said it makes sense, but I would like to be able to, I know our our top once again. we have to get 67%. A lot of the reasons we want to get a lot, you want to get it. If we don’t tell the right story at town meeting and get the consensus, uh, it’s not going to pass. So I think we need to think about what that is. If it’s not everywhere all the time, I get it, but it’s just something we can come up with that’s creative. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, I think the safety liability, you made a lot of great points. I don’t know many private properties of that size that allow, you know, just open access, got blunt like it is, um, so if there was a way, like to your point, if there was a head trail or something that you could control, access, and where it is, and even put, you know, like, um, if there’s events in the schools or in the event of whatever the situation might be, that could be locked down due to the safety of, you know, the property and the people that work there, maybe that’s a closet there, but to to Bill’s point, I think, how do you, can you control it? Can you say, here’s a, here’s a head trail, and this is allowed access versus anywhere you want to go. Yeah, the trail signs all kinds of, you know, this, this is private property, be respectful. I mean there’s things that people do with these easements, but I don’t have the answer right now. I know we don’t have a lot of time to get to an answer, but this is, this is the one thing we don’t solve before Tom Be and there’s some, some risk to it, but I would like to figure out a way, maybe the next month to solve it, but go ahead, though. No, I, I, I understand your point 100%. Um I would struggle with that too, and I, and I, it sounds like it’s your number one issue. So I don’t know, but, uh, but also to your point, we’ve got, you know, it may go down in flames if 2/3 don’t say yes, so is there a way to come up with some type of defined accessibility in certain areas, even, you know, Brown’s Hill, Heritage area. Is there a way to do that? And then that would help your bankers, your financers, and, and the safety of your employees. I mean our only our, our recourse to it is that a lot of times when people come for us, and when I was on the planning board, right, and people came for special permit, you would sort of negotiate that into the special permit like, hey, trails, you know, we did one over at what Patton, a patent, we did a trail sort of around Pat Patton and also at Canter at Canter Canter was that, is that a special permit or zoning? Is it, is it not supposed to be in this I don’t know who I know that Canbrook Canterbrook, it was, it was Canterbrook, it was negotiated into the special permit and Patton Holmes said we own the property, so we created it. can be, I don’t know if it can be written in somewhere. There’s a future development of the permit. We agree on some sort of walking trail because that’s what we did there. it wasn’t sort of everywhere all the time. It’s your protection. So I don’t know if there’s a creative way to do that, but That Is it? it Well, that’s not yet?. Yeah, that’s not yet that’s that’s not that’s yet that’s. That’s microphone. I’ve done it before. Save your save your comments and because I want to go through the board for say your comments and yeah, no, I get it, but, but yeah, please, uh, we want to hear you speak but just uh save it for a second. Go ahead, Bill. Oh, if you were. Well, I don’t know if we’re going on all three or that was, I had some others, but if, if it’s on topic, let’s just keep them all together. No, no. OK. Um the heritage landscape, do we have an issue here or not? I’m, I’m confused a little bit. It sounds like we don’t, I guess we don’t. OK, I don’t think we do either. Uh, and then the sunset agreement and the March 1st, did we get a sitter on the significance of having that date and why just so that there is a sunset, right? I mean, it’s, it’s predicated on the passage and and the approval by the AG. So I, I think Ms. Kennedy’s right. I think at this point probably March might not be enough time to get through AG approval, so, you know, I think we’re just we’re just saying at some point either party might have to say, all right, this isn’t happening, so you just don’t have it open-ended. So that’s why we just want to date. There’s no magic to the march 1st. So is a date or even upon AG approval or well, the thing is if it by a certain point versus I mean, and it’s, it’s just, it’s for either party that they can rescind it, not that they have to. So, you know, if we’ve got, could I suggest at least 6 months from the date of the time meeting because it could take it could take at least 6 months for the Attorney General to act, uh, depending on what else is going on in the state, so, OK, well. you know, we can, June 9th or whatever that. Yeah, that’s fine Better? It’s better. OK, Ben, I’m good, thanks. Hey, Ben, you got the floor. Um, so thanks, it’s clear you all have done a lot of work to get us here, you know, I’m not familiar with all the numbers behind it in terms of the valuation of the million dollars and kind of, uh, could you walk us through the dispersement, sorry if you guys covered this in the last meeting as well, but in terms of how the, how the payments are coming into town um it’s right on. It’s on page, um. Yeah, we did. I think you were out. So we get a 100 grand’s on page 3, yeah, so upon passing, so that’s basically as of this upcoming meeting on December 9th, if it passes 100,000, it goes into our purse and then and we’re taking the risk on that if there’s anything afterwards that we’re paying it anyway. And then there’s a 300,000, which is actually an increase we’d offer 250, um, but then it got typed in as 300, so. I guess we lost a 500 typo. It’s expensive typo. That looks like Aaron, your favor. There’s been more expensive types. That’s all right. Um, and then generally I guess like Bill and Rosemary, you’ve been involved in these negotiations. Is this a fair deal from where you sit in terms of valuation of the property and what we could. do for the town I mean, it’s different thoughts behind it, right? So one is like mitigation costs. I mean, trust guys we’ll go over reimburse costs and mitigation costs. It’s not just like we’re not, we’re not a landowner, we don’t get a percentage of the sale, but we have to sort of get, you know, infrastructure infrastructure, so this is, you know, based on and the based on the fact they gave up a million dollars of the value of the apartments in order to go 40B and then this 1.1 million they’re making basically $2.1 million dollar investment in town based on the salad, and this is just the lower campus, right? So OK. And how was the million? 25 for 40B. That’s I mean they had offers on the property, but he can talk to us. Some other offers that were not 4. No, it’s, it’s the deal we have. So we, it’s been reduced. by a million dollars. If, if it went 25%, which it has. Well, we had originally requested that this money be be paid um for this development, and there would be subsequent requests for subsequent sales, but this is what the seminary thinks is fair and um so we’re not we’re not um complaining about that. However, it doesn’t preclude there being mitigation costs for future developments unrelated to this one That, that would come from whoever the future buyer is, depending what they propose that’s why when they go through the special per process, that, that’s one that’s the good news doesn’t require me. You could say, hey, if you wanna do it, you gotta pay for these things part of the special permit. And so the special permit granting authority is the planning board, but it’s not the zoning board. Not the zoning board, correct, right. Um, so you’ve done a lot of engagement with select board planning board, um, how has the engagement been going with the abutters, um, and sort of what’s the process been there? Yeah, we’ve, we’ve had a number of meetings over the, over the last several years, uh, including meetings with the consultant at the select board and the seminary engaged, uh, and we’ve, we’ve,, you know, it’s, it’s sort of been fits and starts in terms of how the uh the process has gone, um, we’ve, we’ve spoken with them of the president has met with a number of people in their homes. Uh, he’s got an open line. He’s invited anyone to call him up. And so I think we’ve got, we’ve got some abutters here who can speak better for themselves. Uh, there are certainly some abutters who they don’t, they don’t like the pro the project which is understandable, um, but, but, you know, we, we try to focus on the fact that there are 290 units have been there for 40 years, so there’s no, no change to the neighborhood, uh, we’ve been, we’ve used them. There hasn’t ever been a problem, uh, and so that’s just gonna, you know, it’s just gonna be now private people that own it so hopefully that won’t be an issue. And again it’s the point is for us to stay there and not change things for the abutters, so we have no intention of changing things for the abutters. So it’s like anything some people are in favor and some people are less so. Were there any requests of them like that they made of you specifically of the college and seminary. Uh, well, I don’t want to sue for any particular people, but people have, you know, they’ve expressed what they would like to, to see happen. Yeah Did they request any sort of any particular measures or community benefits or, or things like that that they would like to see if you said, if they said, well, if you could assure in some fashion that X, Y, and Z is taken care of before you sell it or as part of that sale. Did they ask for anything, I guess, like that wasn’t that a combination was made. I’m trying to just look for how are the abutters being affected, what’s being done on their behalf because it’s sort of it’s one thing for us to say we think this is a net benefit for the town and whole, um, but it’s another thing as far as kind of like those immediately adjacent folks and I’m hoping we’ll hear from some of them tonight as well. Yeah, we’ve done, uh, we’ve done a almost a million dollars worth of work on the wastewater treatment plant, including putting some buffering trees and planting them to create more of a buffer zone, uh, I’m not sure that’s, that’s satisfied everyone on the street, but we hope that it’s uh it’s been a good faith, you know, more than a gesture, but an actual action that we’ve taken, uh, and so, you know, we’ve, we’ve, uh, I think the plane board has reduced the number of uses, and I, I, the plain board members here can speak more to that, but I think that the uses have been reduced. The the the intensity of the future development development possibilities have been reduced. The planning board’s been very concerned about the abutters and uh so, you know, the heritage landscape is a major concession for uh for a butters and uh and so, yeah, it’s um, what you see there is a product of hearing a lot of different input from a lot of different uh people, including, including the butters, uh, and, and the voters have been welcome to to provide us with any of their concerns as as the project has gone forward. Um, is there you know, there was sort of like this concept of getting too 2/3 vote from the town. It’s one thing for us to bring it to a town meeting, um. the only, it’s, so we’re going to hear from some abutters. There’s also this, this issue of public access and trying to figure out. what shape that can take I guess there’s kind of like you guys, how are you going to do the math to see that we get, get to a 2/3 vote. We bring this before the town, I guess. Yeah, I, I would, well, I’d urge the select board because you guys have the the hands on the purse strings, right? Uh, that is, that’s a, there’s some major pieces here that benefit the town as a whole. I’m a taxpayer. I live two miles away from the place, uh, and my taxes keep going up and the specter of the, the school building, you know, we’ve seen what the town res responses to that. So you’ve got a lot of people didn’t vote in favor of the school system, uh, improvement because of the financial nature of it is, it was too much money for a lot of people. Uh, this is the complete opposite as a select board, you’re saying to the town, hey, this is a way that we get 209 units onto the tax rolls. I, I, I haven’t had a chance to completely confirm this, but my guess is that this set of apartments will immediately become the single largest taxpayer in town, uh, and it’s, it’s significant kinds of money, so I, I anticipate the slug board’s going to be backing some debt from the future for the school system, and to be able to have this kind of money in the pocket to to service debt in the future, I think it’s going to be a great benefit. So I would hope that the select board focus on that, you know, the whole thing down at 133 uh Chewbacco Essex Street with the 40B that goes away if we get 209 units, you know, the, the, the, the, the housing inventory issued, you’re up above 10%. That’s my understanding. So that’s all for a town that’s concerned about 40B, a town that’s concerned about money. This is a great thing. This is, you’re not going to the town asking for money for for once you’re going into the town saying as a select board, this is a project which is going to improve our bottom mind substantially. We’re not getting anything for it right now. We haven’t for 55 years, uh, and, and here’s, here’s real money that that we’re going to be picking up. Here’s the advantage of the 40B waiver, uh, and then, you know, some preservation of of the of the campus. So I think there’s a really good story. It’s not a story, it’s the reality of it to a town that’s in has financial issues. Uh my taxes, you know, I’ve lived there for 61 years and and they’ve never gone down. So I’ll be really happy to see this kind of buffering that can happen here. you know, just kind of along with the wonderful financial advantage to the town. There’ll be a lot of costs associated with that also, so I, I don’t think we should just make it seem like this is going to be a, a windfall for the town we’re we’re looking at this, this issue, um, as a, as a balanced asset sort of, but the problem with that is that that that’s been used we’ve had, we’ve had those apartments filled throughout the years and you’ve got no revenue from them. So it’s money you’re not getting right now, and it will, it’ll start coming in the moment that we sell. So it’s, it’s close to a windfall. Well, we, we’ll still have the costs associated with the 209 apartments in terms of fire, police, schools, so you know, um. we appreciate, um, the seminary’s position, but I think we also need to be realistic about it being um a windfall for both parties really if you’re going to use the term toward the town and we’ll use that term toward Gordon Conwell, and we need to be the town needs to be careful about balancing, um, all of the issues, so I, I, I think we need to remember that as well. Anything else? Um. OK Um with the boards in the morning first? Yeah, Marie, sorry, yes, please. Yes, Marty well Marie Marty speaking with Marty the boards at 10 minutes of public comment. I don’t know how helpful I can be on this, but right now there’s the um language of good cause So to attempt to address Merwin’s concerns, he enumerated all sorts of cause. We could take out the word good and put in cause and then somehow limit um any potential litigant on the issue of cause to the town itself. And so the town would be very unlikely to initiate frivolous litigation if the seminary actually put forth the type of cause that Merwin was repeating So I, I think that if there is no uh tying of this public access to cause then that promise of public access is illusory. It’s unenforceable. It’s meaningless. Uh, when the development agreement was executed in the Overlay district uh was approved by the Attorney General. The seminary, and I’m not suggesting that they would do this, but under the development agreement they could send a notice to the town and public access would be terminated. So, so without some type of uh validating device to, to that promise. uh, it, it really remains illusory, so I, I would caution against just writing that off. And then with respect to the heritage landscape. Obviously the seminary retains its Dover Amendment rights. It’s specifically set forth in the Overlay district that it does so, so I would suggest that that there be a conservation restriction on that heritage landscape. And the reason for that is twofold because one, I do think it’s important to have public access. through some type of trail system. Uh, it could follow the buffer area or, or whatever, it could be done, but uh if the seminary were to sell the property, that conservation restriction uh keeps that uh very, very beautiful part of the campus intact. and that that is important to the planning board. We identified the heritage landscape probably within the first couple of months of considering the overlay district, and I think the overlay district cannot impose a conservation restriction. I mean, we, we can’t do that. I mean there are open space requirements for developers uh who were to try and do something in other parts of the campus, but not in the heritage landscapes. So I think it’s important to have that and, and, in conjunction with that, you, you have to recognize that that heritage landscape is except for those tennis court areas, is, is comprised of steep slopes. So when Amil and I first looked at it, we were like, why are you putting a conservation restriction on the middle campus. Why are you, why are you tying your hands behind your back for the flat part of the campus where it would be easy to to develop and leaving the heritage landscape, um, outside of that, uh, conservation restriction, but it’s probably not evident from that map, but they’re, they’re really quite steep slopes around the retreat house so it’s not, it’s not suitable for any type of development, um, at all, so I’m happy to answer any of your other questions. I know we’re going to have a, a very we try to define through special permit like trails. Like how does that work? Well, There are no trails here couldn’t do it on the heritage landscape. We couldn’t tell the seminary they had to put trails there. Uh, basically, a lot of what’s in the um the uh overlay district now is derived in part from either the senior housing bylaw or the open space and farmland preservation development bylaw and those bylaws talk about the preservation of trails, but I remember when I toured the campus. I, I walked up this tree-lined corridor to the top of the hill where I discovered I was really out of breath, um, so, uh, that there is, it might not be a formal trail, but there’s that tree-lined um alley almost that leads to the top of the hill that could be easily demarcated as a as a path, and I’m sure it’s used by the students now. and I will also note that, you know that the and I and I appreciate Merwin’s remarks, but my understanding is some of the students are going to be taking advantage of the Affordable units, um. uh when the apartments are are converted so it isn’t as if um it’s just going to be um other people, you know, from outside town or town, but it will be the students themselves who might take advantage of those 209. well, the 25% of the 209 units that are affordable. So. I’m happy as far as the demographic, hey, Barney, sorry, Ben up here. I’m sorry. As far as like changing the demographics, is that why the demographics don’t shift as much is because some of the students might be continuing to I think so. I mean, Marwin can answer that, but I think there still will be some students on the campus, certainly not as many as there used to be because of the whole um way that educational system works these days with, uh, after COVID, but there will be some students, graduate students probably married couples would take advantage of the apartments, right? Yeah, right. Um, could you speak to, I know that it was mentioned earlier around the limit of uses, the use types. Could you speak a little bit about that in terms of if there were future development, what are the, the limits of use types that it’s. we in AMO can speak to this because he’s done a lot of work on this. We, we started out with an analysis of the Abramson and Associates report, and I don’t know how familiar you are with that report, but there were some pretty uh aggressive uh development proposals in that report and and at one time there was a lot of thought that there could be a biotech like New England biolabs there could be something like that on, on the, on the campus and given the changes in the economy and given that the wastewater treatment system on the on the campus wouldn’t really be able to accommodate any of that type of aggressive form of development. We have scaled back the uses, um, we are, we do contemplate some commercial uses, but tomorrow the planning board is going to dig deep into this and not all planning board members are enamored with extens ive commercial uses, but, uh, we, we do contemplate some nonresidential uses, but we really envision, uh, maybe 55 plus housing. or congregate care housing like the residents at Riverbend. So those types of uh development would be the least uh uh, disruptive, I think, to the neighbors they would produce less traffic, um, there may be a uses for offices or medical uh medical offices, that type of thing, but I actually as a practical matter, don’t see, see the campus as an ideal location for offices. There’s office space available in downtime. You just need to drive through town and you see the signs, and if you have any kind of extensive offices, they’re there, um, other places closer to 128 or the Cummings Center that that probably would service needs better than trying to retrofit buildings that were designed for, uh, kind of a different purpose and a different time. So what, what our, that’s more our focus and we have public hearingsal uses at most, but more geared towards like kind of commercial residential, um, very limited commercial, I mean you know, there, there’s a potential, uh, maybe for, for something in Pilgrim Hall, you never know. I mean, that’s very there’s close proximity to the apartments, so a little cafe or a um maybe a farm farm stand kind of thing, an extension of um Meadowbrook Farm in the summer, it’s something more limited, um, and, and we’re sensitive to, to the, to the abutters and if they, if they, you know, have access to the brown till Overlay District and it’s been on the planning boards, uh, web page for a long time. I mean, we’ve emphasized buffers, landscaping, the whole nine yards, so we’re trying to balance a lot of needs, but we also recognize the town does need revenue We do need housing on the SHI so we’re juggling a lot of, a lot, a lot of things here to try and get that happy medium, but the bottom line is we should not go to town meeting unless we’re sanguine that that this zoning uh overlay district will pass for the simple reason that if it fails, we can’t bring it back to town meeting for two years. So that’s a, that’s a, that’s something to really consider and especially the seminary should consider that because the story that we tell has to be a compelling one Anything else You have two folks on the public. Unfortunately, no one used the 30 minutes upfront, but we’re down to 10 minutes for this topic. So I have 2 people online, is there anybody in the, uh, one in the room 2. right, so 2 minutes each makes sense. We’ll leave 2 minutes for anybody else who wants to join. We’ll start in the room, they’ll go online, uh, just introduce yourself. you can start to call. I’m Nancy Dashkin. I live at 215 Woodbury Street. I’ve lived there longer than anyone else on the street right now, and I can talk fast because I grew up outside of New York City. Um, I’ve listened intently. I’ve read all your documents, and there’s just a couple of things I want to bring up. First, I sent a letter to Selectboard today. It followed Jacob Fiammara’s letter, which identified significant issues that need to be addressed that now vague wording seems to just say, OK, we’ll deal with that sort of thing later. One of them being the wastewater treatment situation and the recognition, and this leads me to my other point, that once we have the apartments, which I understand will be sold and there’ll be 209 and they’ll be residents living there. That is going to change the demographics. I’ve lived there a long time. I know that those seminary housing is often not full because seminary students often go back to their homes in the summer, or they take classes online or they, they rent elsewhere. So while I don’t have data and we’ve tried to get it, I don’t think the 209 units have been fully occupied a lot and certainly not recently. And having lived there since 19 88 I will tell you that there are times when, you know, the traffic was a little more or less, OK? There’s very little access to that area. And when you have 209 units, the roads in and out of the seminary are going to be busy, and right now they’re not real roads. So when you talk about getting up to see the beautiful views, and I walk often. I’ve been up there. You can walk on the roads to get up there, but there are roads, but they’re internal campus roads. When you have public housing there, the people live in, they’re going to expect that the roads are going to be like the rest of the roads in Hamilton. Is there going to be sidewalks? Are there going to be sidewalks? Are there going to be adequate access in and out for these people that are now going to be renting there. I think that’s a major issue, and the last one, I’ll talk a little faster. The wastewater treatment that I live right across the street from is not adequate. They’ve been working on it all summer and I’ve talked with Mr. Sunquist, and I know that they’re trying to make it better, but when you add more people that is not going to be adequate. and everyone says, oh, well, it will be because the new developers will have to, you know, recognize it’ll have to be tested, but then you’re going to be pushing something into the future that needs to be dealt with before you approve any kind of overlay. It’s major Thank you Thank you Hi, Deb Safford. I just, I think those are great points and they should be answered about access and sidewalks and stuff, but at one point, I think commercial was sought originally when they were going to sell it and it didn’t work. I don’t think there was anyone that bit at the apple. So I just want to address that as a comment, which is why I think we’re back where we are. Um, I have a question. If the deal falls through, what happens? Because they have the right, I think, to put in single family homes, which would then preclude public access for sure, right? I mean, so I just wonder if we push back too hard and it falls through, it’s just a question. I don’t know the answer. Are we better or worse off if the deal falls through? What happens with that? Um, the students at the seminary are the diversity in our community, and I just want to just acknowledge that because I feel like there’s a lot of animus towards the seminary, and I just having had kids in the school system, all the diversity that we all seek to find in our communities comes from the seminary, and I think that that’s been a net asset. I know that it’s been a problem with the payment, them not paying their way and that creates a lot of anger, um. and resentment, but I think that they do provide this, the diversity and in private schools, you know, the, the diversity students aren’t, they don’t pay fair wage either, so it’s kind of one of those things that happened sadly, but I think that Netnet they’ve provided a lot of value to the students in our community. Um, and I think getting tax revenue for those units makes a ton of sense. I think the, the, um, impact to 40B being um out of kind of that um dangerous spot where we can have hostile takeovers, like we have at Essex by the Tobacco. I think that’s, that’s a real risk, and I think the community should acknowledge that that’s a risk and I think finally getting paid for all those units is a huge benefit to our town, and I don’t want to underestimate it, not to take away from the concern about traffic and sidewalks. I think those are a really important points and septic and all that, but I think that, you know, I, I, I do wonder what happens if this doesn’t go through, and I think that should be a challenge as we’re balancing these things that we’re asking and pushing and pushing and squeezing and changing all these things just to make sure that we’re doing an appropriate trade off, not trying to get too greedy, and then we end up with something that’s actually worse for our community. Thank you. Chris May 1st Oh yeah, go ahead. Chris Payne? Hello. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Awesome. Um, I’m Chris Payne. I live at 205 Woodbury, um, and I just wanted to uh echo some of uh Nancy’s concerns. Um, we also live directly across from the wastewater plant, and at times it doesn’t smell great, uh, obviously. what’s happening in there, um, but I would like to know sort of what they’ve actually done to decrease the smell, the trees and the paint are great signs of good faith, I’d be good to know like what mechanically they’re actually doing to fix it. Um, and then to her point, also, I think like we need an accurate understanding of what the footprint of people on the campus actually is currently in sort of has been over the last 5 to 10 years. and so that we can get an accurate representation of what 5 years from now might look like, um, as far as traffic, as far as uh acts on our school, like, I guess, we’d be getting tax revenue from these apartments, but we don’t know sort of how many more kids, how many more, um, people might be living there that aren’t currently living there. So I’d, I, it’s a, it’s a double-edged sword. It would be nice to get the tax revenue, and I would love to see more diversity in Hamilton, um, but you, you know, you don’t, you don’t really know, uh, we, we don’t know how many more kids because we don’t know how many people are actually living in those apartments right now. So, um, the, the only traffic survey that I saw done was based off of the current units and the current future and the future units, not the current residents and the future residents. So there’s a big difference between empty apartments and full apartments. Um, and that’s those are the two things that that concern me the most. The historical landscape is it’s great. I’d love to see it. continue, but that’s like the most inner part of the campus. Um, it doesn’t affect the butters too much, um. maybe a selling point to the rest of the town. Things I mentioned are the things that I care about, and I’m literally staring at the wastewater treatment plant right now. Thank you Thank you. And then, uh, go ahead, put you on. Yeah, John Sharp. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. OK, uh, a couple things. Um, one of the things that has bothered me on and off about this whole process and it’s been a process, is the fact that in Berwin kind of was hammering home on this tonight. It’s all about the money. I mean, everything gets kind of gets glossed over the town is gonna make so much money, tax money, and that just seems to be that’s gonna be the driving point for the meeting on December 9th is money, money, money, and unfortunately, yeah, that, that’s fine for somebody who lives. God knows where in Hamilton, but for Butters, yeah, the money’s nice, but there are other things, um, so that’s one. I would hate to see us basically go into the town meeting with the idea that the overall concept here is money. OK, that’s one. The other is, and it’s bothered me a little bit too, is I know Jake and Rudy and John Despic and others have sent emails and Jake is sent detailed emails, dissecting various documents, various versions of the development agreement and we’ve never seen a response from anyone, whether it’s either in writing or at the select board itself, those things just go into a black hole. So when we talk about the abutters having some type of valid stake in this process. I just don’t see it. Um, we, we try, uh, I, and I give Jake and Rudy and John and others, Nancy has done a bang up job as well. There’s just no response uh to any of this, and that bothers me because then it tells me that you can basically say that the rebutters have a stake, but you don’t show the action that you really take it seriously. So that’s a problem. I think for all the abutters. is there’s just no response from anyone. Now, Marnie is, I, I’ve been a ton of the planning board meetings and Marty and the planning board have done an exceptional job in terms of listening to some of our concerns and and inherently understanding from just the planning board’s perspective. what it means to the impact for the abutters, and they’ve tried to work through that regardless of, you know, um, our input or, or the like, they’ve really done that, but I haven’t seen it anywhere else. Um, so I’m just wondering, I mean, are we gonna get responses to the latest emails, um, Jake was very point by point by point, um is, are there gonna be responses to these emails? Yeah. Thank you, John. Um, yeah, I mean, good, good points. I mean, I think that with public, I mean, I’ll give my opinion, right, a public meeting law, we take the emails we get and we, and then we worked them into the agreement. Now we try to work everything in, but if there’s so, I apologize you didn’t get specific responses, but we typically try not to respond because of Oakme law. We have to do it in a, in a public setting and not just individually one on one, but what I would suggest uh, what’s the first uh speaker listed 4 or 5 items that they don’t, they don’t think got incorporated into the development agreement. We could talk about those things, but I think for next, I don’t think we’re going to vote tonight, obviously, but maybe for next week if someone can come with a butter and speak in the beginning of the meeting, uh, maybe we can address some of the things that you think we still have not included in the development because we tried to incorporate everything that we can that we’ve gotten from lots of different people into the development agreement. So without singling people out, we’ve taken bits and pieces from everybody. The, the three that I’m hearing are, you know, the traffic, the wastewater treatment plant, and then, um, that public access, you know, that those are the three elements where it’s. just to summarize, right? Um, so we don’t have to wait two weeks, but in terms of being able to continue to make progress, those are the three things that seem to stand out as Butters where there is the most concern is the traffic, wastewater treatment plants like capacity and capability to treat the sewage and what happens if there’s a, there’s an issue, and then, you know, access to the, the public land on the site. Those are three things I’m hearing that. on those resolution on traffic studies were the work on the, uh, the septic area. Was that on current occupancy or it was a good point or was it at full capacity? and are the roads, you know, they are someone called them in-campus roads, so that’s what they are. I mean, are they gonna be brought up to a standard. Is that been looked at? So there’s, you know, sidewalks, for instance, that was mentioned, proper drainage and width and they’ll be roads that are plowed and taken care of by the town, I would assume. No, no, no, we’re not accepting any, we’re not doubt the rule remain private roads, so we won’t, there’s nothing to address the, the public safety driving down those roads, policing them, accidents. So I think Rosie referenced earlier that there’s the, that we’ve been pushing to try to open up those roads and make them wider, make them accommodate better traffic, maybe take the one way off of, uh, Bridge Street and make it a two-way, things like that to try to find ways to disperse the traffic. But how do you do that on a private road? You, you, I mean, is that an address, I guess that’s what I’m asking. I don’t know that that has been addressed as far as answering questions about the treatment plant. There’s been a lot, I, all I know is that there’s a lot of work that’s been going on. We could invite somebody from the seminary to come to the next meeting and answer that question and the question about access to the, to the, uh, student housing more specifically because, you know, those are valid concerns that aren’t really addressed in either the zoning or the development agreement, um, specifically, so But, but there would be in, in reality, um, so I think um a couple of things. The first one is the wastewater treatment plant is managed um and um permits are given through GEP, so that’s not something that the town would, would, um, individually manage I mean they would have to, we would have to um correlate with our um our storm, I, I, I don’t know what the term is. The public health to the board of health all the time but it’s the because it’s the truth. I know, but Nancy made a good point though, like, like we should address the, the first two things that I’m looking at Section D where it talks about, you know, going through the apartments. We know that’s going to impact traffic. We know that’s gonna impact sewer section, so that should be addressed now, not when it’s at our, at our doorstep. We have tried to get data and we have never been able to. So, can we get that data, you know, for our next discussion relative to the studies and impact but what he said a million dollars has gone into the plan. Is that is that tree and landscaping or is that capacity and, and I hear the valve concern we should talk to him, but the problem is, is that number one, the treatment plant is, is. needs to work and be the cap, the capacity of the unit of the apartment units in the seminary right now. Like that’s a current thing. We don’t have to wait for any development agreement. It needs to be, it’s going We all know that. I mean, you don’t know, it’s not going to go up. It’s it’s based on the number of bedrooms. The state will have a standard just the way we would if we, if we were doing it, if this was a, a local simple septic Title 5 septic permit, the Board of Health and the septic inspector would design based on the number of bedrooms in the house. So it’s, it’s already up to code, they will look It should be. And it takes it out of it’s not, that the state doesn’t allow the town to address that at all. The state requires its own permitting process for anything, uh, any plant that large. We’re not even allowed to be involved. So our local Board of Health can’t get involved. We can ask for information from the seminary, but there, it’s a private entity, they don’t have to provide. We’d ask for it. We can ask for it again. We can ask them if they would send somebody to the next meeting to try to answer that question, but we don’t need to wait for the development agreement to get it to be compliant. It should be compliant now. And, and that’s not part of the development agreement, right? It’s not because they don’t govern that because there’s nothing we govern. There’s nothing we can control. And that’s where I think we’ve, we’ve talked about that before, and I appreciate that it’s very frustrating But we’re talking about, you know, I think those are more important than what they’re more important, but we don’t, but we don’t have the jurisdiction to dictate. Right, right, right. What we can do is we can advocate, right? And that’s to to listen and to advocate and how we say, OK, we. Yeah, I would want to, I would think we should be able to understand right now. I mean, they, they said there’s a smell issue So that. Yeah, and there has been for years, right? But that’s I’ve been there since 1988. Right, right. And it comes and it goes. But. No, that’s, I’m sorry, there’s people who can’t hear you, so with the mic and the mic so I’m gonna let you speak, but we just, we’re just going to finish up here and then we’ll get some input, but you know, just, just a question I have, if these are ongoing issues, um, has anybody contacted DEP to to answer your questions because really it’s not under our jurisdiction, and I know you’re frustrated, but it’s just not something that we have the legal authority to deal with. You mean you’re going to stay at the town doesn’t have the right to go and ask the, the state for the information. I’m not asking you to adjudicate anything, just ask for the information, or you want a citizen of your town to have to figure out who do I call a DEP and all this kind of stuff. Can I have the health department we can get the information. Yeah, well, that’s, and let’s get it electronically, OK, please. There’s a lot of there’s a whole list of you, look, there’s, there’s, there’s statutes, there’s guidelines that they have to have a whole bunch of documentation in order to have built in the first place, which is probably all outdated and then to maintain it and to upgrade it and the like. So let’s get all that documentation I’m just surprised that DEP wouldn’t give that to you private citizens. Oh, you tell me who do I call? DEP and. That’s a, that’s a, why, why don’t, why don’t why don’t, why can’t I ask my town, the health department to do that. Then that’s putting us in the position of dealing with abutters and the seminaries that’s what we’re Well, but, but for that issue, we, we don’t have, we, we don’t have the jurisdiction it’s not a question of jurisdiction, a town, you have the right to know what’s happening in your town Nobody has really ever brought us a formal complaint. You have complained, but you have not asked us until right this moment to help you with this. I have raised this issue at other public meetings here. You, you have not asked us for help until now, and I would defer to town manager. I’m not, I’m not sure where we where we stand in that are we, uh, an, an intermedi ary I, I don’t know. I don’t know. These, so the reason I’m, I kind of just was summarizing a lot of the, the comments that that we’re hearing from the people in the room today, the people online today is that these are open issues in the minds of the people in our community that we need to be able to cause it’s, you know, one of the people who said it’s like it’s not just about money, it’s sort of there, there are impacts to abutters, you know, and if this is a good deal for the town, it should be a good deal for the abutters as well, and I think that everyone’s been working really hard and I think what Rosemary’s saying as well around working within our jurisdiction to try to continue to fight for the things that we have more influence and control over, and then, you know, kind of like now today, we’re switching gears a little bit on these other three items, in particular, there’s some we have more influence and control over than the wastewater treatment plant in particular where what we can do is try to or interested to try to help, what we can do is try to advocate, and we’re asking the seminary as well to say, well, what what’s been going on? you know, do you guys have an operating permit? Are you in good standing with the DEP? Do you have documentation that shows all of that. These are the types of things that will trip us up, you know, when we try to bring it before the town and if the feeling is that we want to get it approved because these issues are solvable. Let’s get that information, right? Let’s not have these last little few hanging chads be the things that that trip us up. And I’m going to, I, I’m wondering if you have talked to the seminary directly about your concerns I have, and you have not gotten the response that I do not expect to get documentation from the seminary as to what, what, why should I, why should I get from the state. The state has the information. Um, I, I would think that the seminary would perhaps have their cer certificate of their their permit. Well, I’m sure they have a copy of it. They, in fact, that by law they’re required to have a copy of it, but they aren’t required to give it to me an electronic copy of it. I’m sure they’re not going to give me an electronic copy. Why shouldn’t I be able to get it from my state? And why shouldn’t it be obligated through from, through my town. My town representatives they don’t, they’re not required to provide those like I said, we can ask for them, but we provided to us. The state doesn’t provide I would think that the town of Hamilton is going to get more response than a single citizen from the town. We will ask, we will ask. We don’t think it’s an unreasonable request. We will ask, but we do not govern them nor we can’t control what happens if they won’t give it to you, what do you think? How do you think they’re going to give it to me? Well, we’re not saying they’re not going to give it. It’s just, it, it, it’s. it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, uh, you know, I am on the side of residents, OK? And so I’m, I’m, I’m not trying to fight with you. I’m just trying to find a way what uh so I’m asking, have you called GEP and if you have, what have they told you? Have you asked the seminary and what have they told you? I do understand this has been a frustrating problem. So just asking the questions, I’m, I’m just trying to gather information. I have not made the inquiry because I look at the list of names. How do I know which one to even start? Now I can start making, you know, phone calls and staying online and the like, but I don’t understand why my health department, I assumed that represented my health target those who are that long list of names to like who would be the right person to call. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we’re working on an agreement where there’s a current developer who’s gonna fill up 209 apartments like I don’t want to wait it’s fair for us to ask those questions. I’m saying I’m supporting what you’re saying, like, we know that that’s the first two things that will happen, right? So, is septic, sewer, roads, adequate to support that at full capacity. We should know that right now. But you’re asking people to vote without that for our next meeting we’re we’re agreeing with we’re we’re you we’re we’re we’re we’re agreeing with you, with you, the, the right thing, but people, the concept is the right that the 209 years have been there for 55 years, we’re getting money on them now. I get it most likely things that’s the concept, right? So we had to make sure, right, it should be compliant because it should have been designed for it so we could validate that and I’m sure the new owners are not going to buy a piece of property worth millions of dollars unless they validated that. So I’m assuming the new owners have done their due diligence too, but that’s, but there should be an easy answer. And then the second thing is, once again, the same thing with the roads, right? The roads are gonna be private roads. They’re not building any new infrastructure, not building any new units. The roads have been there, so for them to improve their roads to have market ability is something that they’re going to choose to do as, as the landowners as a special permit, if somebody wants to do a new development. That’s when we get the opportunity to say traffic study, new road, new sidewalks, but until it happens, it’s existing conditions that existed for 55 years. So once again, I struggle with that too, like we can’t demand that they, they do new things. It’s not, it’s, it’s because I don’t it’s, I don’t know what to do with that one either, but we can talk about it. So, I have a question for, for Marnie. Marnie, um, presuming that the potential developers are able to buy this and rent the 209 units, um, they do have to go through some sort of at least a site plan review, don’t they? So that the police and the fire can can understand the width of the roads and things, things like that so that there’s safe passage. I mean, isn’t, wouldn’t that be part of the approval process. and just in my ear that you wouldn’t be a certificate of occupancy for those units if the septic system weren’t adequate to uh deliver the, the services and that will also include, you know, the existing services in the other buildings on the campus. Right. So, I actually think it’s a really good idea if someone from the town does contact the DEP and get the skinny on what’s happening there. and, and I agree with you that if someone from the town calls the DEP, they’re much more likely to get, I would think so. Um, then, then an individual citizen. Because it, it, this you’re tract right. This really does play into town meeting because although we like to go to town meeting and say, this is just a boat on an overlay district. That’s not to say that people would go up into the mine, I’m going to be going off topic and talking about the, the smell and the traffic and the warmer things that are we like to think as tangential to the, to the other lake district and the future development of the site, but it is what’s happening now that is also So, so, just to I’m interest to those questions. It’s important to have a hand. Right. And not just brush them off because, for example, I, I know, I’ve told you this. There’s nothing that the planning board can do in the other district to address that subject because our jurisdiction is to write a zoning Bible. There’s nothing in zoning other than cycling It says that a zoning alignance can say your septic system has the that in the other and went like this, that or the other. That, that’s the, that is the DED that’s the Board of Health So it, it would never appear in anybody. If you look at our zoning bi one. Right. I’ll be other, um, overlay districts, senior housing by what they, they don’t mention any type of, uh septic system other than to say you have to have adequate util. And that’s you would look to see if they’re at. That’s the Board of Health, yeah, but we don’t, you know, have a metric or anything in the bi one that’s. No, I, I, I understand that. Um, if I, um, this whole idea of the demographics, um, the demographics when you this, when it’s privatized, it’ll be significantly different than the current. I hate to do this, but we had public comment. You just came up to address the septic issue. We’re going to have public, we’re not going to vote tonight. We’re gonna have public comment next week. I invite everybody, please use the 1st 30 minutes of the meeting to do public comment because I do want to hear what you say, but I, I just can’t. Yeah, we missed that opportunity today. So nobody spoke. So please have the butters come by at 30 minutes up front. Use that all that 30 minutes. That’s what it’s reserved for to hear you guys speak. So, and I always said, I said the emails you send, go to the attorneys, they go to the people who work this thing so we can incorporate them. Yes, I probably don’t respond to every email because just I get into get into open meeting violations. I just don’t want to ever get an OE violation, so we don’t respond to things because I don’t want it to become a debate on email. Yeah. So, in, in terms of the road access, I, I understand that with y lan review, there will be some discussion about road adequacy for the proposed the access is sufficient. Right. Safe, right, exactly. So, so that will be addressed in the site plan review. So, I mean we can’t you know, at this juncture get to the broader issue, let’s say, the intersection of whip area that’s. No, no, no. Sorry, my people online that came here, but if we’re going to continue this conversation, you should go to the mic, but the people online who probably can’t hear you there. Yeah. So OK. Now, so, so Ben, yeah, you summarize some things. I, I think there’s more things there, so I think it’s um, I mean, wastewater. um Traffic. Roads Demographic Traffic study, but the road conditions and then also the traffic study. And then basically making sure the residents, the other thing, make sure the residents feel like they’re, they’re, so we have to figure out a better way to, you know, we don’t maybe do every email return. Maybe we can do one, you know, maybe next week we can just go through the emails just so people know that they’ve been hurt and how we’ve addressed it. So some, not everything’s going to be incorporated, right? We understand it’s a balance, right, um, and then money, what else? I think Marin did a pretty good job addressing 10 items and maybe only half of them related to money, other half, so I think it’s important that, that maybe seminary will help create some marketing material that really list the benefits that’s to the town and help us so it’s not just about money, because I think that there’s a lot of benefit because once again we had 9 units go up on Bridge Street, which became a nightmare for this town, and we’re working really hard to not have that happen again, which is what this is about and to create a tax base, so we don’t have finances in the future, so there’s a lot of side benefits of diversity and having good neighbors and having a seminary stay here, not having to, to not have the funds to stay here and having to go somewhere else. So um I think we need to do, and I, and I agree it’s our job as ambassadors to talk about this stuff right now we’re trying to be tough and negotiate, but I think a certain point it isn’t our best to fit to have the town vote for it, which is what we want, right? Um, so I’ll talk and then we’ll go around the room again, but, um, my opinion is that when obviously you’re not ready to vote tonight, I would like to vote next time even if it’s an initial vote to see where we stand because we really only have 2 more meetings. We have next week and then Tuesday. So I’d like to be able to vote next week on a development agreement with the following week being if we need to make some amendments to it. What we’re voting on is not the final development agreement. It’s what we put in front of town it’s for town to vote. Now you vote on the development agreement. The zoning gets put in front of, but I, but I mean, we, um, you, you’re, your development agreement will be, but it’ll be, it’ll be, yes, it’ll it’ll it’ll affect the tummy, right? So, but, um yeah, I’d like to vote in 2, in 2 weeks, even if it’s, even if it doesn’t pass. at least this tells us where we stand as a, as a group, right? Um, and then, um, so that’s my opinion We agree or? No, I agree. I, I don’t think it will pass with all these open questions right now. So we’ve got to work together. If that’s the goal and the will of the board as well to move something forward. We got a lot of open questions and people will get up at the mic and throw enough gray into this and probably rightfully so, cause there’s a lot of stuff I think should have been answered like this tonight, that weren’t, um. that will, will, this will not pass. OK. And then, um, I was going to invite Mary if you wanted to have, you’re here. You’re from the public. You don’t have to speak and you come back in two weeks, but if you’d like to say anything else, I’ll give you the mic again. Otherwise, you can pass till next week. wait till next week. OK. Thank you. Do, two weeks. Two weeks. Yeah. I just want to make sure we kind of like October 20th. Bring what we want, and I think, you know, Ben, you recapped it nicely so that we can answer those questions or have know what we know and maybe we asked Joe to reach out. You know I like we talked about for some, some septic related issues and other things. And it sounds like the seminary has done a you know, has made a significant effort to try to engage with the community on this. However, it’s it’s sort of like we need like some, some aspects of that, you know, are there, are there abutters who are kind of like who, who feel like there are concerns have been addressed and that they’re in favor of the project. If there are letters of recommendation from people who are most affected by the project, you know, I think that that would be helpful as well, but that’s something that you’re able to bring to the table because it. the people who live right next door, you know, I know it could be a good thing for the town and and Hull, but let’s. see what else there is there. Um. and if anybody who’s here tonight wants to stick around for an extra 5 or 10 minutes and um in terms of the residents here, and we want to chat. I’m willing to stick around for them. a little bit before wrapping up. Can’t be more than 2. Nobody else can be the rest of the board people can’t, but I want two people here to have that conversation. I just want to hide too, like the, yeah, the heritage landscape does have abutters on the backside, so is on the innermost part of the campus, there are butters on the backside that will benefit from that, so, um, but just one, just wanted to, there’s two butters. But there’s, but there are butters, yes, but there are butters there. I just wanted to make that clear. All right, Joe, is there anything else we need to discuss on this today? No. I’m Bill, when, when you, when you, when Joe’s finished, I just have one. I just have one quick comment. So we have heard, um, the residents, not just tonight and not just you folks talk about the wastewater treatment plant and I’m, I’m wondering um, where the seminary stands, uh, stands on disseminating information to the abutters because they’re saying to us that they have no idea, so they’re coming to us, but you hold the permit and so I’m wondering if you could bring that information so that the abutters would have it. I mean, I agree. You said you spoke today, Maryn, about how you’ve done improvements to it. So there’s a reason why you’ve done improvements. It must be a story about what was wrong, why you improved it. It would be good to have that for next week. You could come now speak, but if you want to do some research first and come fully prepared. I’d rather you have all the answers when you come. Next meeting, not, not, not next week, but next meeting. The 20th, isn’t it? The 20th? Yeah. October 20. Why don’t I come? I’ll go up to say that I’ll come back. Just want, I just want to make, I mean, you hear, you’ve heard the, you’ve heard the comments and yeah, yeah, let me come back fully prepared. How’s that? Yeah, I’ll we’ll try to answer these questions. I, I think we’ll have answers. OK, alright, thank you Uh yes, please. I want to get everything out there so make sure you don’t ask a question. Doctor Syquist emailed me this summer, and he told me that, you know, they were making improvements to the sewer treatment plant, and I emailed them back and I said, oh, well, I, you know, there’s been a lot of noise over there, so on and so forth. And then I said, but why are you really doing this? Is it to get this readied for the sale, you know, I, I mean, I’m not stupid. I would think that what you’re doing, I was pretty forthright with what I said, you know, don’t, don’t fool me. You’re getting this ready because there needs to be improvements. And he emailed me back and said, oh no. it’s just for the abutters. to, you know ease their concerns. You know, I’m sure some of the cosmetic treatments are for that, but we’ve been through this with not only the sewer treatment plant, but with other issues in years past, and I’m sure they’re making the improvements to try to get, I mean it makes sense, right, but it makes 09 bedrooms,, but I just want to say, yeah, I did get it. I got one email and it was just to me and I emailed him back. Thank you. All right, thanks. I’d like to address this with, let’s then we’ve got. and yeah, one more and then we’ll, then we’ll move on to the next topic and we’re going to talk about it next week too, not next week, next meeting, sorry, I’ll bring He’s coming really wants to be here next week. He’s a holiday and the day after is my birthday, so I’m not gonna be here Yeah, I, I, I saw the communication that Nancy’s talking about. Uh, some of the improvements are made as part of the preparation for the sale, but some of them are made for the abutters. So it’s the sale doesn’t require trees and painting and all that kind of stuff. So I’ll bring all the information as to what the money was spent on and the, the state’s certifications and, uh, Rosie’s absolutely right. This is, it’s all state regulated. So all right, now this is a good discuss ion I appreciate everybody’s patience and input and a little bit off scripts for letting us go. We think a little off script, but I think it was helpful, right? Because we sometimes you got to go off script. That’s right. Get to the other side. All right, so we’re going to move on to our regularly scheduled program. Thank you all for coming. We’ll so we have, we met on August 13th. I mean August 13th at the COA to go over two things we did, going over Joe’s review and the Pro review and we did town manager goals. Um, I’ve come back as part of and sort of tried to consolidate the town manager goals. I didn’t like this up with you, but, but you’re gonna finish the review process and consolidate the review comments because I’m like we actually have to put that into the public record. So I was, I was gonna take care of goals. You were going to take care of the review. So, so we just need to get that into the, um, public do we need to do with that. the review around when we reviewed it at the library. I mean, what do you, what do you, what does he have to do to finalize the review, the board hasn’t confirmed that that it’s finalized and then, then you do that so that you release it back on the release it back to me it’s finalized and we could make it available if people want to next meetings, agenda to just sort of vote on it to say this is the final review. Let’s take a look at it part of that consent agenda next time. Yeah, something like that. OK. So what I did is I took everybody’s notes and I sent it down to Joe, you can pull it up on the screen if you want to. I teach you the PDF, but we said we’re, we said we’re gonna identify top, the top 10 list. Yeah. OK? So I came up with creatively 13 items because 3 of them are really going to be done in the next 6 months. because they’re really old items they’re just not quite done yet, so I have sort of 3 in process and then then I have 10 that aren’t sort of, and I, we these are things that we all talked about, but the way I formatted it, right? so. so I gave everybody a copy of it. There’s extra copies here from everybody wants one from the. got it crappy right here What do you want? and you’ll put this on the website. this week. Yeah. All right, so, um, I’ll walk through it and then we can, um, and I’m not gonna walk through everything, but we talked about it in groupies of things. So the three things that we have from the previous year that’s in process is the Gordononal site, which we spent you know, a lot of time on. So the goal is that by December 9th we have a plan in place and not by then, then we move on or we can continue to work on it and maybe try and do it on the in the April meeting, but, um, but that’s sort of why that’s in process. The #2 thing is the MBTA, the 3A and really that’s still opens because we have to finalize it. So Joe, there’s things we need to do right to finalize we’ve sent everything in to state. We’re just waiting for the state to back and then we just want to make sure we educate everybody, right? These are, this is what’s passed and we made you educate towns and boards and our employees to make sure they understand how to, how to manage it, mitigate it, enforce it, all that stuff, right? So that’s on there and then the third one is the uh 3B is uh. is um Uh-huh. It’s three days. All right. It’s supposed to be town hall, um, which is really the move and, you know, finishing the project on time, on budget, um the move plan, ribbon cutting opening plan, communication, all that stuff, and then the last one was the defined Systems protocols, new initiatives that we should reset and modernize as we move as part of the move in. um, and one of the things we talked about obviously was digitation did position of records, right, which is not going to happen now because they’ve got you know, they’ve got other things to do, but Joe is gonna take that on as a. as sort of a longer term project on how to figure out how to digitize what we have, but the 10 that we came up with, and I don’t know that I put them in. the right order and we can talk about that if we need to have the BN in order. I just at the time we talked about was obviously water. the number one cell phone, cell tower is #2. counsel and agent was number 3 External community outreach, communication number 4, Patton Holstead was number 5. Traffic sidewalk safety was number 6. Patton Park was number 7 The school agreement and the school budgeting was number 8. Regionalization was 9, and the 10 was sort of third party town services which at this point we identified as tra cycling and compost and ambulance. and negotiate future contracts with the ability to maybe do it in-house. So those are the 10 things I came up with, and I will turn over to you guys, see if you want to talk about any of these individually and we can go through the detail and then I put in on the third page was the other art to identified but didn’t necessarily make the top 10. Oh you, oh, I’m sorry Which was, yeah, if you go to the 3rd page show, master plan. uh. Come on, Joe Um master planning basically implementation and in then she did all this stuff and master plan. the properties, proactive communication about future properties that are, you know, that are might become on our radar, larger properties staff planning policies, grants, commercial growth, affordable housing. select board communication, and capital committee. So these things he works on necessarily, but they’re not necessarily part of the, the top 10. They’re just sort of ongoing things Some of them are harder to like, some of them are ongoing no matter what we do every year, he’s working on the, the stuff but it’s, um, so it wasn’t really sort of a top 10 for 25, 26, it’s sort of an ongoing activity but I basically use the same format we used for the past. uh goal setting. I just added our notes to it. So I think that, uh, I like the 10. I, I don’t know if regionalization’s the right name for number 9 or. is that we have other IMAs that I guess aren’t really regionalization, but and things of that nature You know what I mean? Is that the right word, would you say? Realization, shared services, I mean, it, yeah, I mean I mean it’s not always, it doesn’t, you know, to to share services with another municipality isn’t necessarily have to be a, a neighboring municipality. You can always, you know, share. certain, certain types of things you can share. Um, now, it speaks to all of that in the bullets, but I, I just don’t think the title captures it accurately. That’s all, but it’s, it’s just the title. But I think, yeah, I think you capulated in master of a I’m not sure if that should have rolled up into there. Like, how do we implement it? um, and, and really start putting the document to use. Enjoy I try to do is, um, is you’re not responsible for things, but I put the, I use the word like we talked about initiate like at least organize the discussion because you can’t resolve this stuff. You can just initiate it, so that was the sort of the word I used to define things that you. initially resolved, but you can make sure we shepherd us all in the right direction. Schedule meetings, bring the documents together, bring the people together. OK. I think let’s share the with the master plan, but I also kind of think about it with the Capitol Committee items are sort of our long term roadmap sort of stuff like what is the next, you know, 1020 years look like? How are we reporting out on sort of what our long-term financial plan is, um, so I sort of linked those two items in my head. uh Which two sorry? Master plan and and the capital committee almost with the, you know, item number 4 on communication and community outreach. Um. I mean, I mean master planned properties commercial growth and capital can be all sort of the same thing, so we could lump them together. Could, yeah, could we just call a financial management. You know, as the head of long term it’s like, you know, stay within operating budgets, you know, capital planning, build a 5 year strap plan, you know, and bring, you know, we talk about prioritization projects and I think yeah, exactly that, right? You know, we’ve got, we’ve got water in schools in the top 10, but it’s also, you know, then how do they, they tie back into these these other long range efforts, and I think for me and the feedback we hear on a lot of these. large items, let’s call it, that affect a broad range of the community. People kind of want that ability to kind of foresee it, you know, coming down the road and I had somebody at my office hours today kind of bringing that up again, you know, so it’s, it’s a consistent theme over the past 6 months. wanting that visibility, so I like the idea, Bill Wilson kind of like dolls and tying this kind of together into something bucket, I think you talk about, do you want to bring those in the top 10? I mean it sort of, or, or, or maybe there’s something in there that just gets re-categorized gets subsumed to financial management could even be part of generalization. I mean, that might be a means to manage the funding, you know what I mean, and then we can expand on a few more bullets or or bring, bring into that, you know, the Capitol Committee of five - y ear strap strap plan and, um, sources uses the funds, prioritization. or I would just maybe, uh, it just maybe change that to that and then we could pull I’ll take a stab at it if you want to pull that into it. OK. Yeah, we can do that. Are you still on the Keppra? No. OK. I, my two Yeah, he was for. Yeah, OK. Um OK So, I think that everything is put in in the top 10 are are pretty, pretty good. Um, I would just um have a comment about communication with select board. I think sometimes and, and Joe, I don’t really know how to, how to solve this, this issue, but I think sometimes things come to us that you’ve been working on for a while, but it’s totally new to us, and I’m wondering if as you’re working on something, um, I mean you certainly put out the biweekly um information sheet, but for us maybe, maybe you could put a little more depth into something that you’re, you’re working on and send that to us. Is, is that possible or is that, I can. I mean, sometimes I just, I just feel Everything, Everything’s possible. It’s just that, it’s just that nobody can reply to it, and that becomes difficult when every email he sends out do not rely at all. Well, right, but you know, but if we maintain that sort of the guideline, I’m fine with it. It just, it becomes some tough sometimes. He’s like, oh, I have a question on this boom. And I would just send that right toe, which is fine, yeah. Because that’s been beaten into me. Do not Aute request as long, as long as we talk. Yeah, um, sometimes that, that’s helpful to, to understand what’s what’s going on, more in depth, so I feel like um at least for for myself, maybe others feel this way, but to have more of a participatory participatory, uh, conversation about it instead of just asking rudimentary questions. No, I guess it’s fair, fair request. Yeah I mean, there’s, as you, as we, you know, when, when we met, we kind of went through it, but it was a long meeting so we never kind of went back through it again. But then when you started to go back through and you realize like we have a lot of things we’re trying to. to do, right? So we have 10 things on the top 10, maybe something that can be combined and then we have another whole page of things that are in the background Joe’s working on. So I just also want to set him up for success. That’s right. As well too, so I just want to give, you know, obviously everything’s important to us and we’re trying to do a good job balancing, but I also want to make sure that we press so I mean maybe we’ll vote on it next week and next meeting, keep doing the same mistake. Next meeting and maybe you guys can think about prioritizing it in a different order, but if if if we think priorte is, is makes is important. I don’t necessarily know it’s important to prioritize. I think we have 10 items on the list, but if we want to prioritize it, we can maybe think about that for next meeting, but um, and then we’ll try and combine the, uh the, um, sort of the long term master plan financial plan strategy into one topic with some measurable things for for Joe to work on. So, maybe the communication number 4, we could just put communication with selector as I add that to it because I, I separated them, but this could be communication in general and not just, not just public communication. OK. All right, I’ll work on that. Joe, you cannot please comment on until now, you just got it today, but, um, I think keeping cover you. I take into account your notes that you sent me. and I’ll let the, we got a few minutes here, so any public comment you can please come up on this item I just quick question on the properties proactive communication with owners and developers to understand future plans on page 3 reviews larger properties in town which we know might be sold or developed in the next 5 years, brick and farms, I think that’s being developed. or just a part of it. Winthrop, I mean, that should be off the block at this point because it’s still going to be a school. Tobacco Woods is under negotiation with Essex Greenbelt, Walton Lampson I think was just sold in the seminary is what we’re talking about. So I’m just wondering about the list of those, whether it should just not be there and just proactive just sort of generic. It was just it was just examples examples because of course you know that’s like a red flag, right, when we see some of them, it’s like we just want to take that school off the block at this point. We’ve been talking about, so yeah. But for the future, for the 5 years, like I think if we could take Winthrop, at least off that list, that would just abate any agitation over not accepting the results. of a very contentious election. Thank you. Since that’s already been sold, but. Yeah. Good, good thought process, yeah. I think the whole gist of it, uh the idea is to stay ahead of stuff so that we know what’s ahead of us. Right, so yeah. Yeah. And that OK. And anything else on that topic? OK. No, I’m just a little unclear, like, cause the, the e-mail I sent out on the 13th, it was you know, that, and we talked in detail about his review. I mean, is there something else I should do to that document? No, I think it was just that we reviewed it at that meeting and we’re, we’re gonna, we’re we’re gonna make any comments to it or changes to it, and then just and then just memorialize it for the file. So if you think we’re no changes to it, then we’ll just memorialize the the final version. That version was sent out before the meeting. So just looking at your notes, but it was kind of presented to him as his review. I mean, unless you have something you feel, I think we had already gone through all that work of aggregating it, put it together. It was our, our review of him if he, if he, and then usually like a document like that just gets signed or there’s an opportunity for, for the employee’s comments on the bottom if they’ve disagree or feel something wasn’t accurately, you know, represented, so Joe wanted this bill’s 99% sure they’re where you have no more changes. Why are you in the next week, give him comments if you want to add anything to it to review, and then we’ll, then we’ll memorialize it. Yeah, I’m happy to just re push it out there too and maybe even add a signature line in the comment section and give you the opportunity to add. Why don’t do that, that’d be great. OK. Yeah. Let me do that. I think that’s probably the best thing to do. Yeah. Good. Uh, uh, approve amended fiscal year 22027 budget goal. There’s two items left and they’re both really the same thing, so I, uh, I don’t know why I put them on there twice. My, my apologies. Um, fiscal 27 budget goals guidance. We had, uh talked about it a little bit at the last meeting. I asked for a couple of changes. And they’re in your packet. I, I made the changes. Let me see if I can, uh, find those here. Oh, excuse me No, the thing with the, the, the the the, man goals and evaluation we did have in this contract, you know, the opportunity to extend a year. I don’t know if we want to have that discussion or if Joe, you want to have that discussion with us. I just don’t, I don’t want to like just go, you know, squeeze, you know, run by it. No, that’s a good point. So, Joe, when that discussion would be held out? Because it’s be held on what on one right or Mike, my, my first year of my contract was his password and, uh, going into the 2nd year. Um, so a little bit of because you made the end date for the contract, the uh uh December. So, you know, you’ve got some flexibility between now and December to, you know, if you choose to have a discussion about extending pills, you know, the agreement, the contract had two options at the select board can exercise, uh, the first one now and another one next year. Yeah. So, between now and December, you can have put that on the agenda, discuss it, take a vote at a public meeting, that would be a, uh. what type of meeting would that be you, you do that in public. I mean, it’s logical to do it after a a review. That’s what I’m saying from the time. Yep. So, I’ll put that on, uh. We can put that on there. I’ll, I’ll pull out the contract, dust it off, and we can speak to it. OK. You know, when we put it on the agenda. if that helps This is the, uh, so this highlighted are, are things that we, uh, addressed based on your comments from the last meeting, but this was the um budget goals for FY 26, the select, uh, the FICO, um, has them, they, uh, it actually originally had a meeting scheduled for last week. They wound up, uh, postponing it, but John said that he’s put out, um, a request for comment from his board and they haven’t offered any, uh, any changes, so, um, they he doesn’t anticipate them having an issue with just making a vote on this um. based on your vote, so and part of the reason this is important now is that we do have a meeting that we pushed off with uh the call-in center which helps us with the GFOA format budget. That meeting is scheduled for this Thursday. So we’d like to be able to present the goals to them, um, at that was part of that meeting so that they can incorporate them into the GFOA planning. The only thing we asked for was the last one, Joe, that we wanted to change the word improve. to he didn’t want to act like it was optimized, optimize optimize. Is that the only one I, I may have missed that one. I’m sorry. Like that. But we can make that motion. So, so are we OK with approving this before I think I approves it. OK, yeah. So I would accept the motion to approve our Let me make sure I read it properly here. Our fiscal year, sorry, I’m, I’m going to say, you would say some move, but to approve our fiscal year 2027 budget goals with one change to the to the. last goal changing the word from improved to optimize. Is that the only note you had on that? Yeah, and except the, um, highlighters. Except the highlighted changes. So moved. Or, or did you, did you run it? No no, no, I was I don’t want you to do it. If I had notes from the other meeting other than optimize. So move that second. looking for something, so it’s so yet. Yeah, no, I’m good. And that was the only change, yeah, yeah, right. Any other questions or comments on it? All in favor say aye. Aye. OK. Well done. That’s a good document. Yeah, it really is. Yeah. Thank you. All right. And we’ve got make sure we went out of order here, but I think we did check everything off. All right, so, new businesses we have you know, more robust discussion. between now and next meeting on make sure we get all the data for the items that we identified as well as anything else that Aubara felt we haven’t addressed in the current negotiations. and then we’ll become prepared next week to to, to, to the next meeting to vote up or down on it just to see where you stand with the following meeting to uh. to hopefully get it voted on be a month before. um. the town meeting Yeah. In the interest of making sure that we’re better communicating, um, the board has, uh, got to have a public hearing, uh, for an ascertainment hearing for the renewal of the Verizon, um. cable license. Uh, we advertiseed already for that to happen on the 20th. It’ll be advertised again in, in the paper again this week and the attorney Bill August that works on those matters for us will be present, um, in, in quite surprising to us that he had sent in in anticipation of this he had sent a red lined version of the contract things that they, that he was going to suggest changes on behalf of HW Camp and Verizon’s already sent it back and basically accepted every single one of his changes, so very shortly after we do the ascertainment hearing, probably by the 2nd meeting in November, we’ll be having a second meeting with you folks to hopefully accept that finalized contract document. So we’ll be getting a new Verizon license, uh, hopefully done with it be the quickest one we’ve done since I’ve been here and this will be the what’s the 4th time we’ve done one of these now. It’s with, with Bill, August, so, um Awesome. So that’ll be on, that’ll be part of the uh agenda for the next meeting as well. Anything else on the cell tower, the new cell tower proposed cell tower. It was very well covered in the HW news, uh, last Friday, last Friday we have the, uh, they, they’re looking at, um, having something to the planning board by the end of this month, and they confirmed that in an email last week, so, um. we, we, we gotta wait and see what their application says and I have the planning board follow its process, but and then there are there are the offer when you got back to them and said the offer. needed to get to wait for a vote on Tom floor they pull back or did they say they would sign a contingent agreement based on a passing time meeting. Nobody’s offered to sign a contingent agreement, but both are interested and are awaiting the result of the town meeting vote. Great, good. Anything else A lot going on. Did I hear anything I’d like to make a motion that we adjourn for the evening. Wait a second. second. All in favor. Say aye, aye.