Through the uh and someone would keep on, on, on. Open sunshine. of the one I’m select board at, uh, 6:30 on February 24th, 2026, we previously opened, uh, the meeting, went into executive session, have concluded executive session and now return to open session present. um, at the meeting this evening, our Peter Clay, Deirdre Perrotti, Gary Cheesman, and Ben Tyman. Our first agenda item is public input It’s for public comment on matters falling within the jurisdiction of the select board and not, um, on the current agenda as a specific agenda item. of a comment on specific agenda items. um, will be deferred until those agenda items are reached. If anyone wishes to make a public comment, uh, there’s a 2 minute per person guideline for speaking. um, a person may speak one time and we a lot 10 minutes for public input. Is there anybody online, um, given that there’s no one, in the public here in person, who would like to make public input, comment. There’s not OK, thank you. That moves us to town administrator’s update and town announcement, Steve. So, um, on next Monday the 2nd, it’s a pretty pretty big day. There’s gonna be an ice company coming from. Japan, the name of the company is uh Mayashita. Is that right? Mayashida, yes. Ice ice, ice and cold storage. good. Are we good, Bill? The door open 00, um. Yeah, there’s no one here Thank you um so they’re going to be coming at one p.m. next, next week, they is, you know, maybe folks don’t know, but when I’m used to be in the ice business and Queen Victoria, Queen Victoria used to use the ice in Wenham, so this company wants to come over and see where, where the ice was drawn from. So we’re going to bring him over to Wenham Lake. at one o’clock and, uh, HW News will be there. It has the museum when a museum involved, they’re gonna have some special, uh, displays put out typically they’re closed on Monday, but they’re gonna open. for these folks, and they’re gonna have some, uh, historic, uh, displays that are pertinent to their interests. and it really should be, uh, pretty interesting. We’re gonna take a ride over there and show him the lake. They were hoping that the snow would be gone by now, and we thought it might be, but then, uh, no way, you know, cause it looks like things are maybe turning for a little bit, but then. we all know what happens. Snow in the forecast for Wednesday. The ice being there will be appropriate though, right? Yeah. So, uh, and then, so with that, the storm, so rich Souza DPW director took a couple measurements, uh, and so on. disturbed areas around town and average them together, and he got 19 inches. or so that’s a lot of of heavy snow. I mean that stuff was very sticky, as it was difficult to manage. I thought they did a good job, um, DPW was out, like you were just saying about 22 hours from about 10 in the morning until 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock that night, and then we’re back at it at 6:30. this morning, um doing, getting, getting cleanup underway and get folks. I went down and, uh, noticed that they were going all the way down Topsfield Road. on the with the snowblower. Yeah. Yeah Um, you know, fire and police both reported the same thing. It was basically call after call. all day. Uh, police had 4 cruisers on the road all day yesterday. Fire had, um, was fully staffed and starting Sunday night right through, uh, last night and this morning. Uh, we’re pretty much around the clock back to back, sometimes 23 calls on the log at any given time. So it was very busy with people calling with the power outages and various needs for assistance. So, you know, um. kudos to to those folks who are being out there and keeping everybody safe. Um, 01 update. I, uh, the update I wrote, I believe it was last night on the website that I wrote. I had a brain fart. I wrote Pingree, there was a fire at Pingree, but it was Penguin Hall. So that was my, it was my mistake. It was, it was Penguin Hall and the utility room, but I think it just in my head I was right there and I said angry with a P. Oh, you, you’d learned enough I think by text earlier that it was Penguin Hall, so And and then, you know, just, uh, uh, just, just a, a reminder to folks that you know we had some individuals come in, uh, with their power out with concern for the length of time that the power was out and we were looking for you know, possible come help them find accommodations for the night. However, we did get notice probably about an hour ago that the power had come back on. and that that we’ve seen some significant increase in uh the return of power to many of the homes and one of them that have been out. So just if you, if you still don’t have power, that national grid said to make sure you give them a call to make sure that they know that you’re without power uh, because, you know, they log all the power outages and there’s different grids and power lines that feed the different sections of town and some only feed a short, short amount of houses, so you definitely wanna let them know. So my wife got a text saying, saying, oh, it’ll be up at 8:30 tonight. and then it was up at 2:30 in the afternoon, and they were getting and that’s, that’s kind of what sparked the update because these folks that we’re talking to and their neighbors. had gotten an update that was supposed to be by 6 o’clock tonight and then it got pushed back for 24 hours till 6 o’clock tomorrow. and then that power ended up coming on around 5:30, right? 5:30. So anyway, and I guess there was a pretty major, uh, whatever they patched in or whatever they corrected, restored a lot of power. to um to a majority of one, and that’s all I have tonight. So I had a question about, um um, Miyashita Ice in cold storage. I was, um, trying to see if they had a website or something. I didn’t, nothing came up in Googling. Do, do we have like any sort of background information on. the company and if so, maybe you could circulate it at some point. Yeah, absolutely. There was, um, a website. It’s in Japanese that, but you know you can’t translate it wasn’t like totally clean, but um, they’ve been around for quite some time, I wanna say like decades, but I can certainly, um, distribute some information. Thank you. Um, I don’t have any, uh comments. Gerry. Yeah, I think just, uh, well done to a rich Susan and the crew. doing the snow plowing and also thank uh people that volunteer and get out there and uh I saw several instances driving around and people uh cleaning out the uh fire hydrants, a very important job, as well as just helping neighbors. Nice to be here in Wynham Theater. No, just likewise echo the thanks to Rich Souza and the DPW to National Grid and to our public safety teams for being out there and working so diligently through the storm, keeping everyone safe. well appreciated Thanks. Anything else, Peter Great. All right, um that moves us to the consent agenda. There are 3 items on the consent agenda. um, the approval of two sets of open session minutes, December 16, 2025 and January 20th, 2026. 1 day liquor license for First Church, um, on March 1st, 2026. and the appointment of Dennis Cronin into the Hamilton of Joint Recreation Committee through June 30th, 2028. Um, unless someone wants to pull any of those out for individual discussion I’d entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda. Move to approve items A through C in the consent agenda as printed in tonight’s agenda. I will take a roll call, Gary. Deirdre, Peter, and Brennes, yes, thank you that. um, we’ll skip over A for now, uh, the joint meeting. Um, what time is that supposed to start at 7. OK, so we’re. well. well ahead of that All right, that moves us to item B. Update from the Gordon College Working Group. I don’t know whether Peter or Steve wants to. um that’s fine, uh, though if we run out of things to talk about before 7, we might need to, uh, just to. OK move things along. So we’ll move to C discussion of potential vote to select the final date, time, and location for the annual town meeting. Alright, so we were, we did end up hearing back from Gordon College. We have it’s Tuesday. Joe the 9th. Uh, Thursday the 9th Thursday. So, we have, it’s, these Thursday the 9th, which is obviously a weekday, would have to be in the evening. until the night We have, uh, Saturday the 11th, which is Saturday, which is a weekend. and that we could have it the traditional time of one o’clock. but it would have to be a buker and the only other availability and then then Thursday would be at, uh, Gordon’s. and then we could, uh, Gordon also has availability on the 4th. Those are really their only two availability days. I had to move. a significant amount of programming to free up. the Thursday night because it’s in the middle of the athletics. Uh, it was the one night that had some flexibility and the ability to move it to other nights. um. so they were kind enough to do that, and make it available. They would love to host us but you know, so right now the, the board really just has to make a decision whether you know, they wanna cause it would certainly be a departure from Wyndham’s tradition of doing it on the same day Hamilton does it and be on a Saturday in the afternoon. and um you know, we did talk about the 4th but that for the uh religious reasons was deemed to be. um not good However, there is still an option. and you know, the 11th, I don’t believe is gonna work because we now know that there will be an override. for the schools on the warrant and um you know probably don’t want to have a repeat of what happened. last year when we ran out of capacity at the Buker school, had to cancel it and go to a uh um, a backup date so. sounds like Thursday the 9th makes sense. Did you say that the 4th would be at Buker or it could be it. No, the 4th could be at Gordon. OK, but it’s the day before Easter, which was kind of our original concern. right Um, so Peter, you’ve, you’ve expressed a preference for the 9th, um. Deirdre Gerry, what are your thoughts on that date? Sounds like the 9th makes the most sense. Hamilton’s sticking to, uh, what schedule? Do we know? Yeah, I mean, they’re hard on the 11th Ave. Well they had the facility though, so. I think the 9th and 11th are close enough together that it doesn’t really impact. the elections So, uh, I’ll go with the knights. and Diane, I was gonna ask you for your input in, but it sounds like uh the 9th would be fine from the town clerk’s perspective. I believe Roger I I believe Roger I. OK. Moderator can also um be there. It just changes a few dates as far as voter registration, but Thank you The only reason I don’t like the 9th is is a personal scheduling conflict that I have. I won’t be able to attend on the 9th, um, because I have a pre-booked, um, flight with one of my children, uh, to the Midwest for an accepted students day on the 10th, which starts like at 90 in the morning or something, so. um, I’ll tell you after, I’ll tell you outside of open session. um, but, uh, can’t really rearrange it, but I think for all the reasons that people have stated, it makes sense to have it, uh, at the best available date at the Bennett Center and so, um, I’m all for it even though I will uh humbly ask, uh, Gary as vice chair to, uh, chair the, uh, the select board. meeting that is part of, um our meeting. Will do. So what, uh, do we have a time? Yeah, that’s the question. I mean, I think all the afternoon into the evening. is available as they can the 6, 6:30 early too late It’s a balance. Yeah. I would say 6. Try to capture some light and. All right, so there’s a consensus, um. on that date and it looks like you ’ d like us to vote on that. All right, so I entertain emotion. um, that the when Emmanuel Town meeting be scheduled for 6 p.m. on Thursday. April 9th at the Bennett Center at Gordon College. So moved uh, roll call Peter Deirdre, Gary, and Bennis, yes. Um, do we need to um, settle on a backup. data or location or we could do that later. Yeah, I mean, but we could, we could leave the 11th. I feel like it’s a snow day and it just gets snowed out or something. we could we leave the we 11th as a backup day. The way this winter’s been. Gordon’s out as a backup pretty much. So I mean, we could leave the 11th as our backup. Sure, but you know, it would have to be at the Buker, but Right, I know, I mean, for the, for the special town meeting last year, we, we established a backup and voted on it and it was good that we did because we needed it. um, so we should probably vote on that too, just so we can advertise the fact that April 11th at 6 p.m. or noon, I think noon or 11 p.m. 1 p.m. Yeah, on Saturday. scary seconds, roll call Gary Deirdre, Peter, and Benn’s, yes thank you. All right, that brings us to item D. Continued discussion and review of warren article items unless this is something we ought to do with the thincom present. Um No, we can start I don’t think we’re going to. Oh, maybe we’ll get it done. OK. Um, yeah, so, can you pull up the warrant. I’m really looking for feedback. I don’t know if anyone a chance to fan through it over the weekend, but, um ordering of the articles. So I put it in what I believe to be the most traditional. order that when typically puts its articles by subject, usually starting with the budget. first and then working through. its financial articles and then moving into. um. zoning and kind of general bylaw and uh then last is really just, um whether it’s town meeting signaling of town meeting or. sense sense of the meeting type boats. Can we talk about this Yeah, I do want to talk about that. yeah. and Joe just reminded me we just found out today that um. uh back in I think it was 2021, the select board made a climate resolution. um, and it was supposed to go to town meeting evidently, but it didn’t. so we have to bring that back and that resolution again with the goal being med zero by 2040 that. It would have been the same resolution you take for the green communities that you have to take. um to be a climate leader. so that resolution is the same we had already done like Hamilton, for example, is doing the leader thing. They don’t have to make the vote because they made it back in 2021. I think both boards basically did the green communities thing at roughly the same time. uh, but they brought theirs to town meeting. We didn’t. uh, probably just with the turnover and everything. and so in order to be um uh, eligible for a climate leader, you have to make this resolution. It’s not binding, and it’s a sense of the meeting type vote. but the, um, state wants to see that you’ve taken. taken it. So it’s a vote to confirm basically what the look forward neutral by 2040 and I think a few other things, but again, it’s not legally binding the town, you know. really just I think it’s for the state to take some um assurance that the town’s in favor, you know, is more than just the five board members, it’s, you know, the town meeting is. also showed its support for moving in that direction. And then I don’t know if any comments on the on the order. or if you, if you like that, and then if nothing, we’ll move to uh Step through them one at a time. So, um Hamilton also presenting article One is the two budgets together. So yeah, so this, yes, so they are doing. Article One, and this is the way I looked back. There’s there’s other ways to do it and Lauren had. you know. Lauren had an idea, but I’m, I’m to do it all in one article and you can call them out specifically in the motion and have different columns, but looking back at Wenham’s past and the fact that Hamilton’s doing it this way is is we’ve always done it with two separate articles. So I think we probably should stay that path but with that, so you have the first one, the annual operating budget. So what would be in that would be you know, what, what I’m assuming is gonna be the outcome tonight, although it’s not finalized right now is that, um. town will not be seeking uh an override, again, it’s all one budget, but the town side will be able to stay within Proposition 2.5. uh, the schools was going to be looking for about $485,000. So, but what will be reflected in Article One, the annual operating budget will be um, just the um parent just the expenses that are able to be fit in proposition 2.5, so essentially a balanced budget that we know we can fund. and then Article 2 would be, you know, it says Townsend school because we don’t know yet, but um, I don’t believe it to be the town, so we’ll be operational there for schools, and then they’ll have that $482,000 and then it will be able to spell out exactly what is in that $482,000. And that, that’s where that’s where I, I believe is, is probably the best way to go right, right now that if you see if you scroll down a little bit more. It’s like 3 different ways to write that one article, so that can still remain to be seen. um. Yeah, I think that uh probably the best way to protect the municipal budget is let the town vote on a balanced budget first and then. go for the override on 2nd boat. You know, it doesn’t stop folks from Amen Amen and and pulling it in. but it’s just there’s nearly no way around that, no matter what way you do it. Yeah Just keeping it you know, I feel like keeping it familiar for the folks who remember the last overrides, you know, I mean, which is a lot that generally I think I find a lot of a meeting attendees have been going to town meeting for a long time, so it might be more comfortable for them to understand what’s going on by keeping it separate like that instead of trying to put into one article. and making some votes contingent on. overrides and some not then uh and go up where are we here? Yeah, what’s, what was the, or were just on. Yeah I keep going, go right up to the. player game. Now go down to page 7 So the, uh, debt exclusion for the, uh, that’s for the roof, right? Right there. So then next would be the debt exclusion for the high school roof. So it’s still the final numbers and all that stuff are I’m working with them, um, school district. I believe it’s about a $10 million project at the MSBA will be in it for like 4 million. Given that the uh override may have some debate perhaps the the high school roof ought to be pushed down a little bit in the uh sequence so that people have a break. between uh and they don’t mix up the override and the exclusion. if they can move it down. Yes, you know, maybe you just go on to their our usual free cash. and such, and then they come back to the uh high school roof. That makes sense to me because that, you know, this the high school roof has to get fixed. So I’d hate to have it get tied up in the debate over overrides and stuff, so move to end the finance articles right before the consent agenda. Does that sound all right? Frankly, it might also maybe it would lessen the chance of a grand exodus of voters after the school override because parents might some parents who might be inclined to leave, which we never. encourage or support. um like. decide to stay to vote for the roof later on. to vote on the roof whichever way they’re gonna vote This is our capital improvement. and then, um the next one is what we are actually. we talked about this a couple meetings ago, the creation of a building stabilization fund. I think I’m also, well, I am going to request. but again. send it on the outcome of the discussion with the finance committee. is a creation of also a vehicle stabilization fund. as a way to I think everybody was on the same page when we met last that we do. need a new ambulance, you know, again, maybe not this year or next year, but probably in the next 3 years. And, you know, given that the free cash is available. now. and we don’t know what the future holds. Does it make sense to put, you know, a couple $100,000 into a vehicle stabilization fund with the intent of um. you know, buying an ambulance and it does you know, it also gives us a way to, you know, maybe. if the money is available, but and part of it is from when the new finance director is here. I want, you know, to do a more deep dive into the financials of the ambulance and see exactly you know, how much money we actually make or if we do make money, you know, I think the expectation is that we do make some money, but you know how much is it and then set up a, you know, a, a reoccurring uh contribution into maybe this fund so that you know, in another 5 years or so. or 10 years when the ambulance is at the end of life, you know, we’ve used some, the small portion of the ambulance funds to save over time so that we can then. replace the ambulance and it is, you know, a big scramble to bring to to raise this. 20 to $300,000 cause I think these large. balances of free cash, you know, it’s shown that it’s declined over 3 years we’re doing similarly, um, we’re, you know, doing things we’ve done in the last few years to bring it down. We’re doing it again this year. So, you know, I think the balance is going over, you know, maybe not next year, although maybe next year. we’re gonna be, you know, kind of in that sweet spot where we just have enough to you know, maintain a small balance, not of appropriations, um, and hit our capital needs and then any incidental costs like last year’s bills for the closing of the cares, you know, there’s always that 500 $75,000 free cash and need to kind of correct uh the, you know, like next year is gonna be um. the school, uh, the, the snow deficit, or the snow and ice deficit that we have to, we’ll have to raise, so just, you know, I just, while the money’s there, we might want to put it aside if we know I think everyone seemed to be on the same page about needing an ambulance and it is towards the end of its life. We could use that for uh major DPW trucks and fur trucks as well, because, so I remember the last time we bought the pumper truck, you know, that took out the capital budget for that year pretty much. So we need to maybe get a little pot of money ahead of time to cushion those blows that only come every 10 years or so. The next would be fun on the stabilization. I don’t believe we’re gonna be doing that, uh, um, an additional, uh, additional, uh, fund this year. and. but it’s there, you know, depending on the outcome of tonight’s discussion. So this is we’ve been carrying a negative balance in our cares Act account since 2021. Basically, it was um we charged we charged unreimbursable expenses to the CARES account. uh, and it was. they were reversed and which created the negative balance. and they should have gone to the general fund, so we did not have those expenditures there we’ve gotten credit for more free cash. than we should have over the last. you know, about $47,000 of our free cash balance, not, not compounding, but that the static $47,000 each year. is attributable to the negative balance we’ve been carrying, so we need to clear that so we’re taking that’s $47,000 from free cash. hiring that the negative balance in the CARS account so that we can, uh kind of finalize that and put it to bed. And this is the operative housing exemption. So this is, um, basically for a co ops, who is it’s the maples, I believe. is a co op, which is, it’s not a condo, and they’re not single families. but it’s another structured ownership type. and they don’t qualify the way the ownership is. I guess written or or deed that they don’t qualify for. and general residential exemptions like blind veterans, elderly. The town has been granting them. but we, there is a local option that needs to be adopted for permission to do it. So it’s basically this is just kind of like bookkeeping something we’ve always done. I don’t think that there was, uh, we didn’t, weren’t aware at the time that. you needed, there was a local option out there, but there is, so we’re just kind of. practic yeah. and prior your bills, that is. standard cemetery trust funds standard. Bill lot standard You got the library union we’re actively bargaining right now. That should be done in the next month or so. monthish, hopefully. Um these are the standard water department. I don’t. Eric doesn’t think he’s gonna have uh. the, the capital expenditure. um, but I’m leaving him in there until he knows for sure. Roadwork chapter 90. Again, this is to allow us to spend the money we receive from the state for our roads and bridges, maintenance of our roads and bridge bridges. CPA reserves, this will be obviously the community Preservation Act and with the recommendations from the community reservation Committee. This is the iron Grill Renewable Energy and Lease, so this is the solar. array that we’re proposing to go down at the, uh, the back land behind the DBW site along the wetlands. Adoption of specialized energy stretch code. That one, I think is gonna need some, uh, public education because it certainly technically complex, but also I think there’s some debate on two sides there. Yeah I agree and so the the commentary that’s reflected here is more. you know, I tried to, to tone it down a bit and be a little bit more neutral, but. uh, we’re we’re meeting with Lucy McGovern, Sue Petrolia, sorry to tomorrow at 9 or 8:30. to go over, I asked them to put together some, uh, pamphlets to hand out at town meeting. and they’re great, they’re very detailed, but they’re very pro. which is fine but I just, you know, I think we wanna work to integrate some. ponds as well, right? It’s not all, it’s not all a whim. just so the folks are, are are educated Maybe I’ll, maybe I’ll try to work to integrate that into the commentary or maybe I just back off and be just very. matter of fact with the what the code is and not really so much of. potential impacts, either good or bad. What’s that So oops OK All right, uh, the next one X X one’s probably, you might want to stop here. This is, um, How many more are there after, uh, board memberships Does the taking enough where we should, we can just pause and do the our meeting with the FICO and then. Oh. again Sorry about that. I, there were two of us this time, so I didn’t feel like it was personal. That’s And I saw Bob on the zoom. I don’t know if Finn’s going to be in person about. sucking. Paris, I think That’s not a bad place to be staying. Yeah. send a letter I commiseration, exactly. zoom in at whatever time it is in Paris. if you want to. to order Uh, call the FICO meeting to order. 705 Members present for the yeah, you should roll call because you have someone on Zoom. Jared Ward David Doggett Sarah Bishop Hi Miss Bob. Can he speak? We might need to add Bob as a panelist, yeah. you hear us, Bob I’m here now. Here we go. Great. All right, so we’re now in joint session, um, Steve, do you wanna put things off Yep, so the What’s Oh I think that one says budget free cash. capital over right. All right, so what I’m, what I’m hoping to accomplish tonight is to. work with the two boards to come up with essentially the the final budget which I think we’re. we’re pretty much there. There was a couple holds here, so in a minute I’ll kind of pick up where Jeff left off with the FinO when they went through all, all these line items. but you know, so we can, we can finalize that uh, finalize our capital expenditures. and finalize um. a free cash appropriation, so we have, right, we have kind of have like this balance of free cash that there’s been some discussion as to what the best use of it is, where it should go. So. I had some ideas that I got kind of inspired by the. conversations I’ve had with, you know Pierre and at the different board meetings, but, you know, obviously happy to have a discussion. We can hopefully come up with a plan together, and then once those are finalized. be able to go back and put them on to the, you know, the finance committees, um. report that goes at the beginning. and then it will also drive all the budget related articles and commentary, all those will kind of be finalized, so it’s really that’s really those those are three big pieces that are holding up the finalizing of the of the one. so. starting with there was there were uh two holes in a in a. would maybe like more information of the holds were on the Hamilton Wyndham Regional Schools and the uh Essex Tech. So luckily we Essex Tech realized actually a $5000 reduction from what we were budgeting in it, so that was who to decrease the, um, obviously the delta between the proposition 2.15. uh, levy limit and what we’re, we’re looking at. and the Hamilton Wyndham Regional School District ended up doing a 4th reduction with their final budget vote. uh on their school committee meeting, I believe it was last Thursday, but the Thursday before that. So if you go to the reductions page. So you know, they’ve had, you can see how the history of of reductions they made um. $53,000. on their fourth reduction bringing their total uh override request to. just under $450,000. as you see here, I guess we can just go into the budget numbers is that the way here, the, the way it’s proposed is we were negative means we’re under the levy limit, so no override for the town and the way we got there is, you know, we’ve discussed in the Finon. that probably, you know, given a free generation is probably a little high for Wenham. is that, you know, we would look at instead of doing a 1%, uh, across the board, uh, expense reduction. We’re going to do a 2% across the board expense reduction. So that’s that $65,000 you see there. and we also had to create a, uh, 6000. 333. I’m actually not sure why I did 333, but $6000. uh library salary reserve because we are an open right now at the library union We’re expecting to have that finalized. by by Tom meeting, but certainly hopefully by the end of next month. expectation is that $6000 should cover the first year’s cost of, of the uh new contract. We reduced general insurance by about $18,000 and we removed the Pleasant Bond gatekeepers, so Pleasant Bond will no longer have um usually they have two parking lot attendants that would work there and check stickers and stuff like that, but it’s just so. um, underutilized and it’s been trending down. We did uh pretty deep dive into it. 2 or 3 years ago where we, uh, handed out, uh, clickers and had a log of, of daily usage and how many cars are in the parking lot, how many residents used it and um. you know, I just don’t think that the the end it doesn’t justify. the expenditures So in the budget you see reflected here includes uh a fully funded police department. We were tossing around the idea of uh unfunding one position to get above, uh, to get out of the override. um, and offsetting it with overtime. and it also includes both fires in both fire request of additional firefighter and additional overtime funding. so that, oh, and the other big driver here that really helped us get down below was um our health insurance came in at, I think it was about 13.7%. which is, you know, oh. kind of weird good news cause you never think 13% is good, but. we were budgeting for 60 % so that was a pretty large savings, I think close to $40,000. So in all that that is sort of how the budget is presented. There was some talk about maybe. you know, I feel like there there was there was discussion about whether to move forward and override if we couldn’t get to a level services budget. Um, but I think given you know, what we see now, and I think a 2% uh expense reduction is is certainly palatable, uh, that. it’s probably the direction to go is to to avoid the override for the time for the town side. I’d be open to any feedback anybody else has, has, excuse me. So this $1 on the levy limit then. What’s that that this puts us $1 under the levy limit, or yeah, $4,101. Steve, are you open to a question? Uh nope, sorry, Bob, too late. I’m just kidding. Yeah, OK. Could you, uh, share, uh, some insight because I’m concerned that uh first of all, that we need an overall uh, override and one of the key items in terms of my thinking there is the statement you passed on to me that for next year, the uh and beyond the uh regional school believes that they increase would be 4% plus whatever our allocation increase would be because we have more students than they’re growing faster than Hamilton. This means uh look at the numbers that it’s like 4 + 1.5%. so if we could stay under uh 5%. The model runs suggests that we could actually avoid an override. and I’m just wondering if you want to comment on the feedback from the school district because if they do the same thing that they’ve done this year, next year. it’s not gonna work. So, uh, is that something you can comment on? Yeah, I mean, all we can really do is take them at face value if they believe they can come in at 4%. You know, I’m not sure you know, I can say otherwise, um. you know, and I think that that 4% is probably. gonna be 5.5%. because of the assessment shift where, you know, in the first year trend towards Wenham and it’s we’re gonna see a similar picture next year, so I, I would, I would say, you know, 5, 5.5% at minimum, uh, should be run in the mall. Yeah, we ran the model at 5.6. You and I worked on. and uh you know, my concern about using free cash to avoid the override and see what happens next year is that. you know, we do have these expenditures that things like the DPW building coming up, uh, the ambulance, which I’m going to talk about in a little bit that are, you know, needs for the town. and uh the the fire, the firehouse, you know, what, what’s, what’s what the future holds for that, that, you know, if we do take this one time money and use it. in the hopes that we can avoid an override this year and, you know, with some what ifs going into next year that that money, you know, would be, will be gone and then, you know, in either case we’re gonna be looking looking to raise that money anyways. The items you’ve mentioned uh, the DPWR in the model we ran. What’s not there is the new stabilization funds that are being proposed for vehicles and buildings. So, you know, so that’s something, you know, that. if those are needed, then, you know, that impacts how we look at uh uh the thing. The other item is on the revenue side, we are going to have a, a $690,000. That’s uh back taxes and that’s gonna replenish uh free cash significantly once this fiscal year is over. Yeah, that’s right. Next year we will have. right, a significant bump in free cash with, with that revenues. um, but again, it is, it is just one time. but I do think that it’s gonna take some consideration on how we use it. you know, just, yeah, as I’m talking it through, I guess you could in theory, put that towards the ambulance and building stabilization if the thought is that we can pay off the pay down the school’s assessment to the point where the no override is needed in you know, the level of confidence is that we will be able to avoid one next year. by conservative preference though is to. stay, keep it safe until we have, you know, kind of have the money in our pocket and we, we get a clearer picture. Well, we’ve also got Penguin Hall coming up in the future, so an upside, uh, I think one of the things that we need to look at, uh, before we make a final decision is our revenue forecast because uh we’re getting free cash from two places. One is that we on the non-school. uh, expenditures are actual to budget comes in at at uh a little over 3%. Uh, so we’re getting about $400,000 there. Uh, on the revenue side, it’s a little bit unclear exactly how the calculation is working because we’re appears to have cut the revenue from sorry, I’ve got a cold. I apologize. Uh, we appear to have cut the revenue assumption, which is based on the expense number um so I think, you know, we need to go through those line items and see where we’re actually getting free cash and whether we’re going to look at getting that in the future, because I don’t think we should be including uh the uh Hamilton reimbursement for library in the other than at the expense level that it’s being proposed because if you actually increase the Hamilton revenue, you have a negative impact on us because it means our expenses have gone up and we’re still paying about 1/3 of them. and we probably should exclude uh revenue and we are matching revenue and expense for water at this point, so but I think uh we need to look at the other sources because uh in 25, uh, our actual over budget, if you exclude uh the uh those two items, it was like about 40%. So you know, we’ve got a huge uh overage on selected items and we got out items that probably should be budgeted at their expense level. So you know, in part, part of that equation is what the state will allow us, you know, to adjust, it’s certainly. a negotiation and I believe we’ve been moving closer to actuals over time in the last few years, but you get it’s, you know, the state doesn’t like to see large. changes in any given year, and they do look at total local receipts, which the way we budget with these reimbursements and the shared services and the uh the water coming in is, it is. although you know, it should be taken out, but it is part of our total picture, and they look at it as a total percent year over year. So that’s kind of hurting us, getting close to the actuals because I believe we’re probably we’re within like 10% if you take everything as as a whole. you’re, we’re actually about just about 10%, 90% of our actuals So, you know, that puts us in a position with the state that, you know, it’s going to take some convincing. to massage it up, not saying we can’t do it and we won’t do it, but we have been doing it the last few years and will continue to move them up, uh, you know, but I agree we have to continue to, to watch our revenue sources. Well, the, uh, we, have we tried to explain to them that are being reimbursed for expenses, uh. is if we actually collect more there, we’re actually hurting ourselves. I mean, do they understand that and that’s about half of our uh uh non-tax revenue, no non real estate tax revenue. I mean, I know the discussion has taken place. I don’t know how much time was spent, like kind of explaining. the mechanics of, you know, if it goes up, how it will hurt us. It’s more, you know, they kind of have their box that they like every community to live in. and they look at it from kind of from that standpoint. That’s quite kind of why you can work on them each each year. I think, you know, this, this year we might be a little. a little behind to undertake um. you know. the changing of this assumptions and assuming that the state is going to be OK with it because I’m not sure we really have the time to, to go back to them and get their, get their opinion within the next week, within the next week. Um, on the select board side, any thoughts about the issue, Bob raises regarding. and that Steve commented on regarding potential use of free cash. to. either shrink or eliminate the school override them out I don’t think it’s a good idea Gary No, I think the costs are what they are. I think we need to go to the public and present what the actual costs are and to artificially get below an override by using free cash that we don’t know the exact nature of next year. would be, uh, you know risky, you know, if we need an override, you know, let the public decide on it and see that we’re gonna need an override because, you know, the historical trend is that uh schools may waver, but, you know, they’re going to come in over. the levy limit most of the time, so. we’re looking at overrides in the future, so I don’t want to set up the use of free cash out of the municipal side for the school run. Let’s go with what it is. Deirdre I agree. A Um. I don’t know if um, Barbara, you chair is Bob chairing this? Is he the vice chair I, I’m talking., OK. Yeah, I don’t know if you guys wanna, you know, weigh in on, on. that subject or any other subjects, uh, relating to this. particular item I, I agree we should, uh what are. strive to uh balance the budget on the municipal side and then if the, if the school has an override, it has an override. and we’ll deal with it, uh, in the ordinary course. I agree So and in general, the boards are I, sorry, um, uh, or OK with this if this I guess this. this framework here or these reductions from the town, right? So I’m trying to find, trying to kind of narrow down and we have that. that all the all tab there was was the entire budget. That entire budget is reflective of these reductions here from the first pass of the budget. Um. is the Fincom has gone through every line item here. And you know, I don’t think, I don’t think you made a a formal vote, but basically, you know, it’s like, yeah, we’re OK with that. on all online items except the Hamilton Wyndham Regional School. and the Essex Tech. and we held the health insurance because we knew we, it was like the appending reduction. which there was, and that’s reflective. 13.76 is reflective of that 13.76.6% increase that we’re now budgeting for. It’s a verbal confirmation that’s likely, but it’s not in writing yet. Uh, we were originally budging, like I said, for the 16%. but in general is everybody on board with that. Yes. good budget a lot of work to get it to this point. Yeah, Jeff’s been helping in the background, but yeah, thank you. Can I just back up for a second though. What is the unpaid taxes that Bob was referring to? Yeah, so that’s Do you, do you have the address in front of you? 797 and 115 Larro. um, that big estate. um, that was remortgaged and, and and one of the parcels was sold. um, both of those transactions generated. delinquent tax money to the tune of around that amount, and I think Bob may know, but I think there were a couple of other. properties that were also, you know, maybe high five figure delinquencies that. have come in are expected to come in Yeah, I, the only, I only have information on that one. And it was, we got about $70,030,000. 35 for $40,000 of it was attributable to FY 26, so that will be reflective in this year’s closing, but the rest were in um, last year we were for were for last year’s money, so that will be that $690,000 will be a direct increase to whatever I free cash balance would have been. It will be $690,000 higher. so that will be, you know, obviously a large sum of money that will have to be discussed on how. how it gets, you know, spent whether you know I’ve heard. ideas of trying to, you know, give it back to the residents, a tax rate offset. I mean, I’ll, all valid points. see all the dess state. It’s certain but not received yet. No, it’s received. It is received. OK. It’s. I’m with Belinda today. We got, we have the money. I think um Belinda deserves the, the gratitude of sorts from town. It’s a very nice job kind of glossing on that. Yeah, I will say, you know, to, to, to echo that as she has certainly taken it upon herself. She really hasn’t been here that long, um. if you think about it, and she’s with the town of Wyndham hadn’t done any sort of like a tax taking, um, in a long, long time, and she had quite the log of delinquent taxes and has, you know, gone through it all. and, you know, now it’s starting to show and she’s starting to, to bring back some of the, some of the funds. So definitely kudos to Belinda, it’s excellent. Right. All right, it sounds like we’re ready to move on to the next thing. OK, so the next one is capital on that same, that same spreadsheet. All right, so last time we were in this room, we reviewed a capital plan that is was very similar to this, but there’s a few changes which I will highlight. The cemetery software management software was requested by the CPC, um, to the CPC, and they, they declined. um, to fund it in part that there was some uncertainty even at, you know, when KP Law gave an opinion as to you know, if it was an appropriate use of community Preservation Act funds, uh, given you know, Azai historic nature of a cemetery, although some of the graves are certainly historic, but it didn’t really fall squarely into the category, so they decided to, um, not, not fund it, so the request is moving over here. That’s the only request that we, we, uh, we requested of the CPC that’s moving over here. They didn’t fund everything we’re in the full amounts, but that’s the only one that we’re moving over because we did have some mapping done. and it’s really gonna be critical for the operation over there with the plots and where they are. Uh, it’s all integrated to GIS in there, their geo reference locations and um, be able to store all like pictures and uh historic information and documents that are associated with, with the historic, um graves and, and things like that. So we’d like to, we would like to get that going, um. the rest is we increased or I increased the Shelby Silver Chevy Silverado for the fire department. to $86,000 which you will see it uh before it was matching the DPW Silverado at 69, both with a plow of the difference being is they needed to outfit and I wasn’t aware of this, but they needed to outfitted with their lights, uh, radio communications and also some equipment that mounts, uh, to the back of it. And, uh, based on the conversation with the two boards, uh, I see both were. on board with uh bringing in the victim interview. uh, an interrogation room improvement program for the police. So that has been added in for $21,000. We also removed $50,000 and you’ll see when we go into free cash. um, instead of funding it, instead of funding, it seems like there was general consensus that everybody was on board with the building stabilization fund. Excuse me, we were going to fund it with $50,000 here but, um we’re just gonna use a separate free, we’re gonna use a separate stabilization. building stabilization article to fund it with that same $50,000 possibly more, depending on how the conversation goes. Uh, so, you know, with that, I’ll take any comments, feedback, requests for changes, clarification. We’ll start with the Finance Committee of comments. We’ve already looked at this list and I’m comfortable with it. No problem Our biggest point of conversation was around the downtown stabilization program, essentially just what it would do to actually increase revenues, um, but otherwise, you know, that’s more of just a. no, um, versus a real conversation on my side. Would you say Steve, were you saying that anything is there anything that’s changed since we met last week? Yeah, I just went. OK, that’s what I thought you were. OK, I just wanted to make sure that’s OK. OK. Um, selectboard, any comments? So what uh amount is uncommitted in the free cash, 1.798. Right. But 1.769. million. All right, looks like we have consensus on the capital expenditures that are proposed, so that would move us to Fresh Free cash OK. We should know from the Yes, uh, noting for the minutes that select board member Karen Anger, um, has arrived at the meeting at 7:31. Alright, so as we just said, our, our certified free cash. this year is the 1.769. We have a couple uses, you know, right off, right off the top. that um we really need to do. So that’s the we’re proposing to offset the 111F disability that we have going on, um, since it is a is a finite. um issue in the, the expectation is it’s going to fall off in a year or two. So we’ll plan to carry that through free cash appropriations through next year and potentially the year after, but hopefully that will be. the end of that Obviously we have our capital program that’s matches what you saw before, uh, in the the prior tab. we talked about the COVID cares uh uh reconciliation deficit. uh, prior year bills. I’m still holding at $15,000 where. likely gonna be significantly below that, probably around $7000 mark, but we’re still um, kind of shaking the bushes in the apartments and trying to make sure there’s nothing nothing on anybody’s desk or anything that that needs to get paid. um, and then one so then for, for discussion points. is, you know, we, we talked, we talked a little bit about the building, state building maintenance stabilization fund, the original capital plan had it at $50,000. You know, I’m, I’m proposing $150,000 and um, and similarly contribution of vehicle and equipment stabilization fund that would be, you know, $200,000 and the reason the reason for those dollar amounts really isn’t very scientific other than when we looked at our total spend that you see above you minus the $85,000 for the trash contract. We had about $350,000. left in free cash to get down to the 2% net net of operating, but 2% of operating budget, so basically left unappropriated at after town meeting. So I kind of just divvied that up and put, you know, 150 in the building maintenance stabilization fund because it is needed and then. you know, we got a quote for a new ambulance of just shy of $250,000 so the $200,000 would get us a long way. towards that and the other thought was that instead of doing the uh stabilization fund. to fund the trash contract with $85,000 given the 2/3 vote threshold and it would be easier and certainly uh cleaner to include it in one free cash article. um, to all to just pull it out of free cash instead of tapping the stabilization this year. Um, those were my thoughts. and, you know, and we can kinda work through this together. Not sure where you minds are. I know there was some ideas about trying to offset the tax rate. Not sure, you know, in, in a. in an override year uh, that could be motion that could be, you know, amended to move it into the school’s budget, uh, something like that, but just something to think about. I any comments Start with the finance committee again. I would, yeah, so basically what it comes down to is we had about, we, we talked about our draft, our, our draft, but our draft. finance policy of of where we what the amount of free cash we’re gonna leave over after town meeting unspent will be about 1 to 2%. We talked about targeting 2% this year. so that you know, you can see there that that basically we’ve spent that remaining free cash of $541 a boat. that 2% If you take out what we know we need to spend this year. It leaves you with about 350 to $400,000. in free cash that is sitting there above the 2% threshold. So the discussion really is focused around. really just what, what do you wanna spend that on my proposal is to do 150 building maintenance, 200 vehicle equipment. and instead of using um stabilization for the trash contract, which was the original plan use free cash for the trash contract. Um, both in a sense reserves, it’s just one as a lower threshold of vote. OK, but the comment in red um how does that jive with your proposal? So the call which one? It might make sense enough sense to leave enough free cash to cover overrides. Yeah, so I mean from, you know, I’m not saying we, we would do this, but if you know, I’m not saying I, I, uh, you know, recommend it, but if the school was to come for an override and it failed. and then you came back again, the likelihood is, you know, I’m, I’m expecting kind of like last year we’ll have, you know, 21, well, maybe might pass the first time, but if it doesn’t pass the first time, you’re gonna have a second attempt and it doesn’t pass a second time, you’re probably gonna have a 3rd. And at what point, you know, do the cuts, you know, become real, or does the town want to try bailing? you know, the school out one time. essentially spending our rainy day, you know, emergency fund down to 0. to balance the school budget to get us through one more year. Um, I just, just I thought we just agreed that that was not what we wanted to do. That’s why I’m confused. No, no, it’s not what we’re doing. It’s all we’re doing, like the 2% there is for an emergency. like, so you’re leaving 2% in your pocket for an emergency through the whole next year. That’s the most liquid. most accessible funds. I’m not saying that’s what we’re doing, it’s just a card you could play if you’re in August. trying to fund a school budget I I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I’m just, I’m just thinking out loud that it would be. you would have it I don’t want to give anybody an idea. It’s the where the point I’m trying to get to, which is I I understand and I appreciate that’s, it’s good to have a contingency. That’s what a contingency’s for, but I don’t want to give anybody an idea that I don’t think either either we tell them it’s available. Do you want it and have them vote on it or, or we just say it’s a general contingency that we want to maintain. Sorry, the entire budget, sorry, were you? Sorry, um, all of this assumes we do not draw anything from civilization. because essentially we put a lot of money away last year. kind of for this budget and essentially now like you know under stabilization it’s very hard to access except for a kind of particular reasons. So like one thing. I’d be more interested in seeing is some of these items, you know, be the civilization and whatnot. kind of move from the 2/3 into the 50% kind of buckets, if there’s a way how to do that. artful way, and then try and reduce the taxes. Excuse me. Excuse me, was it when you left? Uh, the idea would essentially try and move some money from the stabilizations under 2/3 into these like lower. threshold civilizations that are ear mark ed items Yeah, I mean, you could do that And then, if you did do that you would still would, would have be having the discussion still about what to do with that. Yeah. that free cash And maybe one more question is, so I, I think I asked this during a last FinO meeting, but we’ve had another storm since then. Do we have a sense of how far over we’re going to be on snow and ice. in terms of how much we need to keep just the fun for next year. This storm put us over. We’re probably gonna be about $30,000 over the dust settles. Um, you know, and that’s where, you know, there’s already snow again on the horizon, nothing major, but certainly it sounds like plausible events in the future, we’re not $200,000 over OK, any other um questions or comments from members of the Finance Committee? uh, the, uh free cash balance would be 5.2% next year if we didn’t have the 150 and the 200 included So just point out that that 9, that 690 is going to ripple in and it’s gonna push uh free cash quite a bit up next year. And it’s, you know, B 52 if we don’t fund the 350 for the Special stabilization funds. it’d be that lower. if we do so we’re gonna have a lot of cash sitting around and I, I guess people might ask what we’re going to do with it, you know. Yeah, well, that would be a, I mean that could end up being a, a happy conversation to have next year, including me, you know, who knows, maybe the possibility of, of rebates. on the tax rate as well, um. especially since some of that might be, it could be. said that it’s tied to delinquent taxes that you know, the rest of the town had to sort of pick up the slack on those many years that those properties didn’t pay the taxes. um Alright, any other, um, comments or questions from members of the Finance Committee? I see on, um, open up to the select board for any comments or questions regarding free cash. First the question, is the, uh, designated stabilization fund will be just a majority vote to utilize. Yeah Any other comments, questions? Um, are there any members of the public, Joe, who have their hand up? OK. And don’t see me in the audience, so I think sounds like there is a, um, consensus consensus among both boards, um. that were fine with your draft, um. ledger, free cash ledger here, Steve. Should we have a vote Yeah you want to vote on the numbers presented in the spreadsheet. Just for free cash? Oh, well. For everything. Well, 4 tabs OK. And we, and the all tab is something that we’ve covered by going through the other three. I mean I don’t know if a boat is, cause it will come back to you next week. and you’ll be making recommendations on the final budget articles, so I’m not sure yet to go through and take a vote on each one. cause this will be what feeds the budget articles, and then you’ll go, we’ll go through the warrant together. and we’ll make recommendations, answer questions and all that. This is kind of what drives the commentary and percentage changes and things like that. So select we’re fine with not taking a vote on these tonight? Yes. OK. Um, finance committee Yes. OK All right, that I think concludes this set of agenda items. that’s all I was hoping to get done. Great. So I think that allows you folks to adjourn if you wish. I just have a, a general question slightly financially related but unrelated to the this at hand which is taking advantage of the forum um uh, with respect to the health insurance in the future, my understanding is there’s basically two options. There’s the GI and there’s Maya. and I’m just trying to understand and it, you know, with the, with the miracles of AI, you go on there, there’s all kinds of things that you can, uh, uh, that pop up as to which one of these options in the future is the best for municipal employees and I, I just wanted to know if, if does the select board in plan to in the future, um, in the near future conduct a review of these two options and. determined definitively you know, from a financial standpoint which one we ought to be looking at in the future. And if, and is there any other options that, you know, are on the table that I’m not aware of. by, by statute, we have to provide the insurance and there are only two options and um I would like to know where that debate stands at the select board level. Um, I don’t, I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t make that comparison, but Steve, I, I. seem to have some recollection that maybe that’s we looked at it. we discussed it a couple of meetings back. The general consensus of the board is that they want to look at that, just that. OK, good. And to be, and to be wary of, you know, the AI generated savings. You know, it, it might be right, but I haven’t, or it might not be, but it might not be. I haven’t, you know, I can’t, I know there was a memo going around from, um, one of the select board members in Hamilton. I can’t remember his name. but you know, he was throwing some pretty wild savings out there, and it was clearly generated by AI and I’m just, I can’t speak to the truth of it, but we, we’re definitely, and I will 111 piece to keep in mind too is we have started this conversation with our Maya rep um, to move down this road so he’d understands what we’re doing and he’s on board, so he’s going to help us and we’ll also be talking to representatives, the GIC and also, um, uh, our attorneys. but you know, one thing that he highlighted in, you know, KPR’s, you know, aware of and agrees is that. the GIC is running a $300 million deficit. this year um, you know, that is not reflective in their rates. though what appears to be a good deal. at some point they’re gonna have to clear that deficit and it will be reflected in the rates, either that or the state’s gonna have to bail them out. So, you know, Jesus, there’s things we got to look at before we make the move is all. Uh, yeah, that’s great. I’m just asking that the select board be proactive about, you know, looking at the options and saying, we need to keep X because we’ve looked at it and here’s why, or we should do why, and here’s why, pardon the uh metaphor. I agreed. Yeah, OK. And I, and, um, to the extent that there’s a, uh, subcommittee that needs to be formed to, to look at those options. I’d be happy to assist. Um, again, I’m trying to educate myself as well, so, and it does, so great. And we do it. 4 months Great. Well, thanks for raising that Jared, um. so I think the finance committee can adjourn if it wants. Move to adjourn. 3rd Bob OK, great. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. All right, so, we’ll continue on with, um, the suck board meeting and if we could return the item D where we left off. on, um, warrant. articles and then once we complete D, we’ll we’ll back up the agen up the agenda to item B, which will. essentially be our final item. I think we left off Board memberships. I think the other direction you want to go. Um, so, that one, yeah. It’s video on page 16. All right, so Steve to pick it back it looks like basically I believe you got to do both I guess it depends on how far you wanna go, but if you want it to extend to elected boards. then you have to do 2 to see if the tower will vote to authorize to submit special legislation. So you need a special act. um but that and you, but you can build up. the bylaw without a special act. that prevents uh basically basically can only serve on one appointed board. and if you’re an elected official, you can’t serve on an appointed board. but you could still serve on two elected boards. but then you could do this, I think you could do both. with especially with the special act, and then that would be. oh and, uh, that would be all that would be. if you’re on one board, you can’t be on another one. What do you mean 22 articles? or 2 I don’t know if they can, but it may be, it may be, I may be in two articles. This is Lauren presented at this this way under one article, so maybe that we can do both. um. but you know, yeah, the extent it has to be two articles. It’s probably not a big deal. either. This #2 applied to uh regional school district positions. or is that a whole separate consideration, but my understanding is that, well, it, it, it is separate, but you, I think if you’re on the school committee. This is my understand with Lauren and I can confirm if you’re on the school committee. then you can’t run for an elected opinion, elected. because you’re elected on the same. ballot. of so you can’t, it’s, and I know it’s, it’s for the school district, but you, but you can’t be on the school committee and another board. either elected or appointed. Yeah, right. But you could be vice versa, but you can’t because the school committee is, is, um. is under the agreement So like if you know, the. like then you could be on a, you could be on an elected board. in Wenham and technically you could be on the school committee cause there’s no restriction on the school committee, but the Wenham Act won’t allow it. That’s how it prevents that So that way Hamilton can have. members on both committees on the Hamilton side. Right, so the way it’s broken up here is, is in those two pieces, the one is appointed, 2 is elected. right? That’s um and I know when we met last time, we started to delineate the boards that we’ve, that I think there was a consensus on which boards. would not be subject to this, so I think we identified perhaps the Conservation commission, maybe the Board of Health. There was a list that we went through. I think we sort of called them the technical boards or something. that some of us thought maybe should be exempt. Well, I think number one 2, point number 2 under 1 goes, I think, further than where we were. or certainly where I was proposing to go. I mean that’s that’s sort of a blanket where I was trying to go was specific to the policy boards that are. you know, deciding I don’t know, sort of weighty issues like select board plan and overlapping issues. select board planning board ZBA a board of assessors Probably assessors. Fincom, of course paragraph 1.1 also needs the wording because you’re revoking the current bylaw under which the the uh BICO is appointed so that not only is he introducing a new one here, but she also need to uh ate the, the prior one. But my concern has always been the um the situation where you would have a person both on the school committee and on a municipal committee wherein they would, you know, could be in a position to vote on the same matter twice. So I’m not, you know I think to a certain extent too, you gotta, you know, count on one the citizenry. electing people that are gonna go one way that they want and 2, that the current select board and future select boards need to be able to have some flexibility. as to who they appoint, and I’m not sure you want to. you know, go to the absolute #2 there where it says no. appointed members, you know, that’s definitely too far. I agree. And whatever we do it, it, there can’t be any ambiguity about. exactly which words are encompassed, so like that has to be. it has to just specify exactly which boards are covered. I mean that’s sort of what I was expecting and the, the sample from Stoneham is the one that I was looking at and proposing this, and they actually did name the specific boards. So this, this went like. a little bit further I think than where we were intending to go. Um but we just have something that says you can’t serve, so you don’t, you want like planning, planning board. planning board, select board for for elected. we have left after uh go to health and assessors are appointed now. but, uh, we only have planning and select board, right, for elected Water commission is elected Di anybody else selected? Library We talked, we talked last time and maybe that that somebody needs to review the tape or look at the minutes, but we, I, I’m pretty sure that we decided last time that the water commission, as one example, would not be. that we didn’t want that covered by this At least that was my memory Um, and but but we could talk about it again tonight. I think. So as far as the as far as elected boards are there? elected boards that we would not want subject to the dual membership rule like water commission. Would we care if somebody was on the water commission, but also on the planning board, for example. Well, that gets down to, uh uh what you’re counting on the public to do. So I mean, we’ve really eliminated most of the elected boards over the last decade or so. And so, you know, the citizenry only has a couple left to make selections to. So I’m not sure you know, the, uh what #2, section 1, they proposed wording. says, you know, that again just says. as I read it, you can only have one seat anywhere. Right. And so it’s instead of worrying about what what’s on here, why don’t we just talk about Which boards? What, what exactly you want to have happen, so like let’s start with the elected boards. They’re planning library, water, and select. so I don’t write, probably no one has any issue with library and water. We’re just talking about. So it’s really just planning and select you can’t serve simultaneously on the planning or select board. Why? Well, that’s what they’re I think. That’s the principle of the whole thing, so that you’re not basically voting on similar or the same items from two different seats and or advancing policy agendas from two very powerful boards. I don’t see a problem with that Well, I do, which is why I proposed this. I know. Hm. I’m, I’m actually with Peter on this. The fact that we have such limited folks in town running for specific boards. I feel like a lot of this stems from when Peter was, was serving on both the planning board and the select board and gave every other day to uh aboard in a a great capacity and I feel like just because there’s maybe one member on the select board that didn’t appreciate that. We’re now putting it in an article, and I, I don’t necessarily approve that. OK, so first of all, this has nothing to do with Peter. It’s about conflict of interest. I’ve seen this happen in other towns when I’m not going to out them here. but I have seen conflicts occur and it’s about the principle of conflict of interests. It’s not about Peter. but it was just the planning board and just the select board and it came up right after. Peter was on there if you’re trying to imply that that’s where I’m coming from. I’m actually inside my head and that’s not what it’s about, OK? It’s about conflict of interest. There aren’t that many elected boards left, as was just pointed out, I do think library is a fairly separate topic with not I can’t think of any intersections with other boards. Water, I’m not totally certain. I’ve never listened to a water board meeting. I think there could be overlap with planning. I, but I don’t know for sure. I served on the water commission 20 years ago and um to use a, a poorly selected, uh, description. It’s very dry. Um. and pretty technical, and I don’t think there’s usually any overlap with their decisions and planning board, for example. Yeah, certainly the water is um let’s say technical fixing prices, which you might have a little bit, but no, I think we’re safe on the waterboard And are we sure that there are only 4 elected boards right now are the 4 that we mentioned. just mentioned housing authority is another one. Yeah, housing. Right. And, um, I know I should know this, but the sessors have moved or are moving to a point that this, this year is the first appointment. So the so the housing authority would be 1/5 1 to. and the housing is already a kind of a unicorn board too, because it has the mandatory state representative too, right? in there. So it’s an odd one. Yeah, and the tenant. That’s kind of an odd one too. Yeah. Govern. Yeah. So, Deirdre, I just want to go back to the issue of conflict of interest. I there’s not a flat out conflict of interest There may be issues to come up where there is a conflict of interest, and I think um one or the other or should abstain could abstain, but, you know, I think having people on those boards, which are making significant decisions for the town. I think they should be separate people and not the same person carrying that much weight on the two very impactful boards of the town. OK, we agree to disagree. We agree to disagree. I don’t think there’s 3% conflict of interest, but there may be a 10% or 15%. I mean, most and somebody and when that happens, that’s when the person should abstain. should, and I think most people conduct themselves reasonably, but I’ve also seen cases where I don’t think they do. And this is, you know, like most laws meant to be protective. That’s the whole point. Unfortunately, I feel like that’s personal. and I feel like that’s we’re putting an artist. Can you show that what a person has outside of what’s happened in the past year, a person who’s been on boats to select board and the planning board in the past 20 years. at the same time So no, if, if this is, if it comes down to one incident. or one instance where one person has done a job and when there were votes that needed to be abstained. It was done in the, in that professional manner. And so this just sounds to me that it’s a little bit more personal and we’re asking the town members to sit in an auditorium to go through this when it doesn’t necessarily serve the all of the folks that are in that room. And if it sounds like, and I don’t want to put my my carpet before the horse, but you’re going into it with a 3 to 2. So you can keep implying that it’s personal, but I’m saying that it is not. So do you want to believe that? That’s your choice. The bylaws already have a restriction for the finance committee. The idea of this is to extend that same restriction because I believe that in principle some of the other boards should also be separate in the same manner that the finance committee is. and I do think CBA, I believe, also is another one where. they’re ruling on people’s property and so forth that they should not be sitting on other boards that may also do the same thing. So I think um I think probably why for now we stick to the elected boards and then we’ll move on in the discussion to appointed boards. My own feeling is that it’s a that it’s a close call. I, I, I don’t wanna. um, discourage volunteerism in the town, but I. also believe that as a best practice and as a matter of sound controls that. that having a rule in place that members can’t be, uh, a member a person can’t be a member of both the planning board on the select board. is a good idea and I’ll give you a couple of examples to completely hypothetical examples. I haven’t come up in this town I think in my own experience as an attorney doing permitting work and you know, in Massachusetts, I’ve seen it in some other towns. And it could be something that could come up in the next few years in our town, which would be large development projects where if you had a member who was going to be like the champion. for the developer or the champion for like an opposing a butters group and that person was on both the select board and the planning board. That person could have, you know, undue influence in either trying to spearhead a bunch of approvals that might be required by both boards or trying to torpedo a project, um, and having kind of double the, the impact and ability to do so by, you know, taking that point of view on two different boards. So, in my, in my mind and and also in, in light of the fact that this rule exists for the FICO right now. Um I would, I I support Deirdre’s proposal, um, with respect to the select board and the planning board, but I, you know, it’s not an easy decision for, for me, and I understand that people have policy differences that are in good faith and that you could come out either way. So I guess, Gary, that leaves you as kind of the uh the decider. So, uh, I would say perhaps, uh, you know, my main concern was the uh having a foot in both the uh school district and the uh town at the same time So I would be in support of that thing and perhaps a middle road here would be cutting across a pointed and elected lines. I think the real concern is ZBA planning selector and FICO. that if we just look at those 4 and say those are the ones that are really. have a uh policy impact especially if we have major things coming up that perhaps those of the four that we should look at, but I’m, uh, you know, on the side, but too, you know. considering the override and the uh the budget just barely coming in the levy. you know. The sport has worked very well together. and I think we should keep it on a professional level and say perhaps that um uh if it’s a 22 whatever that maybe this is a subject that is not ripe for this town meeting. So I know that that’s disappointing to uh Deidre but, uh, you know I can see, I, I would go for ZBA planning selectboard FICO. Those 4 being at school committee at school, yeah. Those are, I think those, those are the five targets that you need to have separation because you know currently there is an example, but certainly if you look at the past decade or two, we’ve had and it’s worked out positive in that sense, but we’ve had members of the community that have been sitting on 2 or 3 boards and have been chairs on multiple boards at the same time, and at sometimes could be open to saying, you know, personal agendas were being driven rather than yeah. Yeah, and I do think those are the most important boards and if if it applied to these, does that then get at the school committee if So I can, I mean, I can go back to Lauren so that they’re not on the school committee plus one of the four that we. the sense I’m getting Pencom, ZBA, planning, select board and School Committee. If we were to put an article on there, the they you would want, you could only be on one of those boards at any one time. right? That’s as simple as that Right and and the and the way you explain it, if, if this were to go forward, um, the way you explained it, Steve, with respect to the school committee would be it’s not a, it’s not a rule of ineligibility that the school committee would be imposing. It would be the town of Wenham poses itself a members. if there’s a member of the school committee that’s fine, but they would be ineligible for any of the four boards that we’re talking about select board, Planning Board, ZBA. and FICO um But it’s also the idea was also that if you’re on these, sorry, I’m pointing to your notebook. I see your list there. If you’re on one of those 4 boards, that’s all you serve on, just like the bylaw states now for the Finance Committee. Unless you’re seconded to a committee such as the master plan by the body that you’re a part of. That’s how the, the finance committee is structured, the bylaw. So. I just want to ask the question. Um, is so if you’re, if you’re on, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter if the ZBA. you can’t be appointed to the CPC That’s what I’m proposing is that you, these boards your soul. I would narrow it down to, you know. if you’re on if you’re on one of these 4 then you definitely should not be on any of the other three. in the school Yeah, then it gets, I think, a lot more murky where you know, and someone from ZBA be on the cemetery commission. Well, I don’t think, you know. there’s so many combinations there. So. I think it’s, it’s very hard to limit it so I just picked out, you know. what I see is the 4 big ones ZBA planning, select board, and FICO and I see that, you know, major projects as he came up, which may be in our future here that certainly wouldn’t be on the same person you wouldn’t want on the ZBA and the planning board. You probably wouldn’t want the person, the planning board that’s proposing the, uh. subdivision also having me on the slack board so. I think I’m not sure we can find consensus here, but uh I wouldn’t want it to limit it down to the real policy ones and as I said from the beginning, you know, I think my concern was the position of being both in the regional school district and in the municipal structure at the same time just given the history is inevitable conflict there, so, so I would uh I think you know if it’s part two that would take special legislation to separate town and school if you’re going to include elected, any elected restrictions, whether it’s planning, select board to take the school committee out of it. You need special legislation because election can’t be, I guess, governed or restricted by bylaw um, but you can with the appointed. Right I agree it does get pretty murky because of some of the boards have, you know, representatives on other boards that are very soon would be I think it would be difficult to fill out if you went on, went past just like here’s these five boards can only be on any one at any given time. That would be the simplest way Sorry. So I, I agree with Gary’s formulation Um. Are there any members of the Oh, go ahead, Gary So for the discussion from Peter, you know, because I think, you know, we’ve talked this around some. Why don’t we, why don’t we see if there are any members of the public that this is important public issues. So, um, even though the, if we go forward, it’ll be voted on obviously by town meeting voters, um, up or down, so are there any members of the public who wish to be heard on this? No one on Zoom. OK. Anybody in the audience OK Diane Um, there’s no mic, but I’ll talk to um, so I sent my thoughts already to all the. Yes, thank you. They just grab a microphone. Yeah I get that. Madonna mic. Um. I do, I do feel as if it’s very restrictive, more restrictive than state law. I don’t. think, um, so that, that’s a little bit. makes me pause a little bit Um, I also think that we don’t have a lot of people interested in jumping into the realm so I don’t want to limit those people as well. I also don’t think historically it has been an issue that we’ve had, um, people are two of these multiple boards if you’re limiting it now to 5. right? for so many elected and so many appointed. um, that I don’t know how serious that need is. I didn’t think about large building projects. but I would hope that anyone who is serving in either or all of those capacities would understand the their boundaries and no one to recuse themselves or not, so. those that’s really all I think I had to say. OK thank you All right. OK. Do you want to make a motion or what’s your pleasure? Deirdre? Oh, well, we need to. Well, I think see what it looks like? Yeah, I think we’d have to try to, it’s not, I mean, this isn’t where we were trying to get to. I think we have to. But are we gonna, why should we vote on the concept because if there isn’t support for sort of compromise concept that Gary’s laid out, which I support. then. doing, I guess like or do we rewrite it and then see where people stand. I guess it’s the other way to go. Yeah, I rewrite Gary’s point of view to compromise? Yes. OK. All right, so let’s do that. So we’ll have that written up and then revisit. the revised proposed article that. when it’s ready All right, next So, this is, um obviously the Route 1A traffic signal project. So there are several temporary construction easements that will need. to be taken to complete the project. The process goes, um, we reach out and we will. currently if they haven’t been sent already, they’ll be sent, sent very shortly. Letters to the impacted folks. We’ll meet with them, you know, talk to them, tell them what’s going on. Um, then we go to town meeting here. um, for the authorization, um, for the easement acquisition. and the town will conduct appraisals so that it it can compensate the individual’s fair and full cash value of their temporary easement. Again, it is temporary um and will be put back into the condition that it was originally. but it is needed, um, because the construction will need to disrupt the land outside of the public way. OK. OK, I’m talking too much today, but I think this one begs, yeah, visual at town meeting. Um. You know, it’s just where are these slices gonna be and also just the points that you made. that. the people be fully compensated It’ll be put back the way it is, especially, you know you’re gonna get the question about the stonewall and this and the uh memorial wall too, so I think we can prevent going down that. question path that uh would make it a lot easier to get this through because also the ramifications of a no vote of you know, this is a 10 year old project. and uh have it fall apart right at the end because people don’t really understand what’s at stake. I didn’t think it was initiated in 2007. Yeah. Well, as I said the other day, the, uh, we saw a newspaper article from 1966 where Chief Heridan said we really need to do something about Arbor 66 Auburn Main Street. So it’s only 60 years, you know, two generations who we’re almost there. Yeah All right Next All right, so this one Joe, you wanna I mean, so basically the historic district had asked last year and they weren’t read any other story district commission asked the select board last year to put a demolition delay bylaw on the town meeting. They really weren’t. ready with what they actually wanted out of the bylaw. however, they’ve spent some more time in joking probably add some more color to it, and they believe they’re ready now um so you didn’t want to give the lunch Yeah, uh, essentially this is, um, for any building in the town, not just in the historic district, if you’re in the historic district, you’re already kind of given a demo dela just you’re getting protection under um chapter 40C MGL law. This would be a 9 month, um, delay on any demolition of, you know, within town, um, any building 80 years or older. um, so this would trigger, you know, an application and then it would go before um the historic commission. Um, this isn’t, you know, this is just aiming to delay um demolition, you know, perhaps, uh, encourage reuse of uh historic buildings, um, you know, I I’ve been back and forth to KP Law. They’ve um red lined it as well and met with the building inspector. um. and you know, the chair of the historical commission sent in, I don’t know if it’s in the packet, but I letter of recommendation or, or a recommendation, yeah. That’s uh that’s where we stand right now, um, and this is I wanna say this goes back even further and Steve said maybe 5 to 10 years ago, it did go to tell me at one point that the bypass, yeah, um, but they’ve been trying to every year get this back on the warrant, so. this is uh where we’re at right now. is that the 80 year old rules that sort of typical for these? demolition delays, you know, you’ve seen 100 years, uh, 80 years, the 9 month, um, a lot of towns actually have it 6 months, some have it more than 9, but, you know, they thought 9 was uh a good amount, um, I think town of Mendon for one one example, they have a 9 month delay, um. I’m not seeing that number of months in the text. Should I I may have not included it because they were still going back and forth. and Robin was concerned that it was a weird time frame. in the, I’m sorry, the 80 years or the. No, the, the number of months, the length of the delay. Because it was really, consistent with surrounding towns. Yeah, 9 months she’s like people, right, I think I mentioned that less than the 9 months is kind of unusual. Like usually it’s 12 months, but. Yeah. Or maybe 6. 12 months is more than the usual. There is 9 months, but it’s not as common. Like I know it’s amended is one example. But we’ll have the final bylaw next week. Hm. or we’ll distribute this week, but for the board to vote to include. or not include this, and then we’ll close the warrant so we can still have one more chance to remove anything. Um-hum. Next week. Uh, it was just everything will be drafted. you know. in in final form when it, when it comes back to you on Tuesday. Yeah. And then if you want to strike it, we’ll just delete it and move on. So 80 years old, so it’s anything that was built. prior to um, 1946 Yes. So this year, but next year, it moves up, so it’s uh so so it’s uh any any post World War II, which is. a lot of different, it’s a lot of properties. that were. built in the 50s, 40s, and 50s. That would be covered by this, but. Um But the 80 years is something that the HDC deliberated on and Correct. Decided that they thought that was. So many iterations of this, yeah. Yeah, it seems too young. Yeah, well But we’re gonna get another crack at. this because it’s gonna have the number of months for of the actual delay, which certainly should be in the final versions people know. what the delay is whether it’s 9 or 12, well the actual bylaw too with it that you guys will be There’s the 80 match up with uh the uh historical preservation rules. as you know, what, what sort of building qualifies as a historical structure in Massachusetts. Um, I’d have to check that. That’s a good question. Because, I mean, if we’re close, like to simplify things, right? I have multiple numbers sitting out there. What do you pick just the like a static date. No, I, you know, I, I, I’m thinking not specific year, but if there’s an already rules in place as to what is determined to be historic in Massachusetts and why don’t we use that number rather than inventing our own. That’s what I’m saying. Right Yeah, that’s a good point Yeah, I’ll look that up here. Get the Anything else Um Uh, the next one is, um about town meetings in Hamilton Yeah, so, the, the question here is, I mean, I think the board wants this article to give us some flexibility in future years. but the question is, do you want it to be restricted to only the town of Hamilton, other towns or any town. So we could be be give permission to have it in. just him like we could have it in Wyndham or Hamilton or, you know, you could say. you have some flexibility in how you wanna. take the resins probably might be a little bit more comfortable knowing it’s just Hamilton and it’s not gonna be down in Quincy or. So 32 inches of snow. It’s not just the fact that it’s Hamilton, but that it’s a shared resource. I mean, I think the idea was like to include the school. I agree. Yeah, that’s awesome. Which is a shared. resource but also so we could have meetings at the library, although we wouldn’t have a town meeting and we have met there, but technically. Right I never know which whether it sits in Hamilton or Wenham. They get’s split in the middle or something. The library is, is Hamilton. Yeah. But I think so it seems to make sense to me that um saying town of Hamilton, but the way it would be explained. and maybe this is gonna be in the commentary is that the objective is really to allow us to have a town meeting at the high school if we needed it, needed to, which people would, I think. understand and be fine with. But if the language is Hamilton, it would give us a library as well, or, you know, maybe some other hypothetical. location in Hamilton um Is there anything larger? Is Pingre Auditorium bigger than uh regional auditorium I don’t know that answer. No, I don’t know. I don’t think so. The last time I was, my, my daughter went there but years ago I don’t think that they had anything that large for like a. gym. um Could we, uh, I know we’re gonna get another crack at it, but in the title, which is an article authorizing the town of Wenham to hold. maybe might be more palatable, I think if it says an article authorizing the town of Wenham the option of holding. because even though it’s just authorization, it makes it almost makes it sound like, yep, we’re gonna go to we’re off to Hamilton for all our meetings. Um. All right, next animal control bylaw. Yeah. So, this one, I’m still waiting on the article text. uh. Diane, you want to fill us in on this So the state has a new um, animal control law called Ali’s Law. You might have seen it in the paper, Bruce Tarr was big on that. Um, and part of that law is to make personal kennels, any kennel, anybody that has a certain amount of dogs. um. get certified by the Animal control officer as well as check in with the state every year. Sounds great. The only changes in one of our bylaw says a kennel. starts at 4 dogs but state law is making a kennel. 5 dogs So just to make sure that we’re in following the rules, it makes it much clearer, especially because people with 4 dogs 5 dogs have to report to the state. So we can’t really charge a kennel for 4 dogs. So it’s a minor wording thing I guess. Great thank you um, just so we don’t lose the point on the um. demolition delay biological I know you, you already started to look at it, but just when we revisit that next time, maybe we can get. Yes. An answer to Gary’s question on the 80 years and what, what macres of the state says about. when a property is considered historic. Um, all right, so now is there anything else? Oh, good. That’s, yeah, good. Excellent. Uh demolition delay applies to municipal buildings. Yes, yes, it’d be all buildings. Oh, all structures. That was the other than the moving of the dead student article does the article. Or seem appropriate to you? We talked about moving the roof. I’m not sure if there’s a certain spot we want to move it to, but. just find a place in good landing place Maybe after stabilization funds or something. Yeah, he said at the end of it was going to put it on articles. Oh, OK, good. All right, good. I’m assuming the negative So we usually do I guess, so it’ll be usually do prior years bills. in the cemetery lots or that’s all in the consent usually, right? So I’ll put it right before the consent article. So we’ll article cares negative balance, then the cooperative housing exemption, then the school roof, then the consent agenda, and then we’ll get into like the other. types of business. OK great, um, Joe, I’m assuming nobody has their hand up virtually for. All right, that moves us back up to item B update from the Gordon College Working Group, um, Peter and Karen, you’re both members of that working group. I don’t know if I wanna one or both of you wanna comment. and Joe were there and Michelle Steve start. Sure. Uh, we did meet with Gordon College. They had um more people I can’t remember they had a they had a good turnout as well. So we had two pretty good groups, and we had a nice lunch. and, um, you know, we talked about expanding the relationship with the town and in the college, um, you know, we talked about the differences in um beliefs and ideals, but, you know, I’m kind of you know, explained where the select board is coming from, you know, in the past and present. of, you know, your board of 5000 residents who have different interests. and, uh, ideas and that you need to balance the interests of all of them. So, you know, and the, and the, you know, in the event that we you know, we can’t partner with them on certain things or we decide not to for whatever reason that, you know, not to you know, take it personal that, you know, and they, they agreed, they understood and they wanted us to know that regardless of anybody’s beliefs, everybody is always, um, welcome on their campus. and they’re very excited about exploring and opening different opportunities as they uh, as they come up, we talked about trying to meet on a quarterly basis to keep the dialogue going. You know, they’re very excited about their um. new, uh musical auditorium that they’re looking to get built there through uh a donation, so they believe that there’s going to be some partnering opportunities there. for the town to utilize that space, which, um, maybe a town meeting in perfect acoustics. We, uh yeah, so I mean, we really just, you know, they both sides expressed interest. I mean, I don’t think any computer, you know, anybody jump in, Karen um. you know, no solid ideas yet on how we’re gonna do it except for, you know, looking for places to park. One of the ideas was there’s a lot of stuff going on at at Gordon. um, so they have seminars um, they have guests speakers and they only put it on their website. and probably most of our town residents don’t go to their website. So one of the things we talked about was how do we get develop a connection between the Hamilton Wadham News and Gordon College and there are multiple ways they can do that. whether they, you know, just talk, hey, you know. if you look at Hamilton One News, here are things that are happening in the town uh, maybe they have to buy an ad. Who knows? But, um, there are a lot of good things that I think so. the benefit of that is um for for Gordon obviously it raises their visibility in a positive way. Um, secondly, it allows our residents and Hamilton residents. to basically open the door on a whole bunch of things. that are that that could be really great to go attend. so. that was like the that was to me the first thing out of the box was to try and get that going. Sounds like a a good idea, although I have to say that um I’m not sure what I think that and the editor of the Hamilton News was a Gordon graduate. Um, actually, so, wouldn’t Gordon just and they just reach out to the Hamiltonham News and say, here are our you know, calendar items this year. Could you put it in the paper? marketers. OK Seems pretty elementary, but um, yeah. I didn’t know that. Yeah, well, you come from that background, so it’s good that if you planted that seed that, but it’s probably little to nothing that we as a town need to do to have them make a simple connection. of like, here are our calendar of events. Could you put it in the newspaper? I think it, it’s, you know. they get better visibility. Right. Um, and our residents hopefully, uh, get to go do things that are that are very, very interesting. because they do have interesting things going on they purchase ads that would benefit the paper also, so that would be terrific Steve and I talked about that and it’s like we’re not going to. That’s not for us to say no. Just saying would be we’ll figure it out. Right. Karen We also pulled away from the conversation stating that there has been a strain on the relationship, whether it’s, um, actually there or, or if it’s just a prolonged gossip that has, has kept going, um, and it was an acknowledgement on both sides that even though some of the fundamentals are there, one of the best things, as Peter mentioned, for them to do is is really to re-engage and how do we do that, and whether it’s through ads or whether I’m providing directly to the HW News, the seminars and the activities, but also how do you take another step forward and have a more open and collaborative relationship. It doesn’t necessarily need to be on a music level or a seminar level, where do they, they have students there that could truly be um, mentors to other people within town, uh, whether it be internships, which we talked about potentially having them here, opening up to different businesses, how do we really move forward. So Gordon might not necessarily always have that, that stigma that people in town might be pulling along with them. And, and for a variety of reasons, if, if there are, um, people who don’t want to engage them, that’s fine, but maybe we can try to turn the corner on other aspects of it, and you’re not going to always like everything about your neighbors, but, but they’re here. So let’s work with them and let’s find a way to to better move forward. And it was a great, I mean, honestly, it was a really nice conversation very comfortable. Um, so I think the decision to um no longer have the uh graduations at Gordon was that 2012? I think, yeah, so it was among the conversations. Mhm. yeah that would be, um, 13 years ago, 14 years ago. um so because all my kids graduated, um, at Gordon. Mhm. And it’s so much better than in high school. I can’t even tell you. It’s, there’s like no comparison. but I’m not saying we should try and push that now, but um. um, at some point. Yeah, the school committee. call really I think, but and there was acknowledgment that whatever boards they had there and whatever boards we had here are long since passed. or have turned over, not passed. And so let’s start anew. in a way that that is beneficial and also an understanding of, of what had happened without, um, and what is happening. Um. We don’t want to put that aside as well, so Um, Deirdre, did you want to say something? I mean, I wasn’t involved in town at the point in time when that vote took place, not to hold graduation there, but I think, you know, there it is problematic for a number of people in town. um, to participate at Gordon College and their policies, a lot of people disagree with And so, you know, I’m fine with you can I just finished them. I’m not saying that that that we should go back. I would never do that. I’m just saying there is a component of our population for whom the policies that are still in place at Gordon College are problematic, and that’s, and we discussed that talked about that. It was open and it was on the table and they were open to understanding. They, they were unaware of some of the positions that the town had taken. And, and, and rightfully so, they they were honest to say they didn’t know even the graduation had taken place and what had happened, um, and so there are people there who were truly unaware of maybe some of the decisions that have been made in the past. OK Yeah, certainly looking forward to that we’re gonna need to engage the both the town and college, you know. 3 of the big possibilities going forward. are right in that neighborhood. Penguin Hall, Ultimate destination iron rail and uh Boulder Lane. So if you’re talking roads or infrastructure or whatever, the conversation has to be between the two parties. Yeah, good point So it feels they’re good people. and the uh air What’s he, what’s his position? He’s the head. He’s the, um, Dean, yeah. Or the, the president, I think, yeah, but he’s new. Right. In fact, most of those people are known. Um-hum. Um has there been a new, the next date scheduled or is it like a concrete next step. We said quarterly, so within the next 8 weeks, probably. Uh, yes So Gary given that you just mentioned Penguin Hall. uh, Boulder Lane. um Iron rail and iron rails. Should we talk about um the thing you were talking about with me before the meeting. Only if it’s on the agenda. Only if it’s on the agenda, so next time. OK. Um, all right, any other comments, questions about, um. the Gordon College working group All right, well, I appreciate both of you volunteering and being a part of that, and staff, uh, as well. um, that brings us to old business. We have no old business. and adjournment Move to adjourn 8:30, did we, um, go over this? We did. OK, sorry Go ahead Uh, yes. Just so we know where we’re going to be. So, so we might have a, we might have a short. Zoom meeting yet there, uh, well, it’s tomorrow is. Yeah, so probably Friday anyone have availability. I can do, we can do it through email too. And that’s with respect to the finance director, like a 10. What date Probably Friday You can do it any time I. basically just to get a vote on what we reviewed. in executive session anytime here. Mhm. I can do it any time before. 20 p.m. on Friday myself. I can do 9, between 9 and 11. I like before 2. Hard for me to say. I’ll be at work, so, well, I think we looks like we have 4 people that could do it in the morning, probably. could be. so Yeah, anyhow, right? You have enough, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then our so what time? Uh did we say 9? And then there’s our next regularly scheduled select board meeting March 10th. I thought it was the 3rd, cause you needed. Next week. Oh, I’m sorry. OK. 3. And then we actually, that’s a good point, we should, um, also then discuss our meeting now that we know what town meeting is going to be discuss our meeting schedule. On the 3rd, do we need an executive session to formalize this agreement? Nope, that’ll be done on, uh Friday. Friday, Friday night. OK. Yeah. So, 6:30? on the 3 Uh, yes And we, um we voted Karen to, to, um, do the town meeting on the 9th of April. Thursday. That’s fine. I knew that that’s fine. Do you want to put in the, in the minutes that I also approve that. Um, no. Just procedurally doesn’t, I think it’s proper. um, and what time on the 9th? 6 p.m. Your at 1 Right. All right. And then, um, when’s our next March meeting gonna be after the 3rd. So, let’s see, we’ll work back or when. April 9th Saint Patrick’s Day at, uh, the Post. Since we can start having meetings in Hamilton soon. So that makes um a lot more options up that way, huh? April 6th, the warn’t here’s a warrant hearing. election on the 16th and Thursday. So April 6th, Monday Yeah, Monday, April 6th is a warrant hearing that’s. hosted by the FICO, but really that’s a a very joint meeting. So we have no meetings between March 3rd and April 6th. I was backwards I was backwards. Um I was backwards, so then that gives us. we could do if we’re meeting on March. 3rd we can meet on the 10th. Oops. and the 7, 17th on the 31st. Right. That sounds all right 17 and the 31st at 6:30? Uh yes Uh, isn’t generally the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of the month. Yeah, that is the 1st and 3rd. Yeah, well, we’re meeting the first Tuesday and then like working backwards with town meeting kind of throws a wrench in that because we’ll be a town meeting on the 9th Uh, we could meet on, um and then with the warren hearings on the 6th. and the week before that, the 1st is Wednesday, so the. the last Tuesday in March the 31st, so it’s kind of just like splitting. every, uh, keeping the every other week schedule and aligning it with uh the warren hearing and the town meeting. that works, and then we can get back on the on the 1st and 3rd I believe for 2 more meetings OK are you ready now? Yes. All right, move to adjourn 8:42 p.m. I’ll take a role called Karen, Peter, Deirdre, Gary, and Benz,