##VIDEO ID:MdkZDg9S6SM## e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e all right in five Four 3 2 1 all right welcome to the September 16th 2024 select board meeting uh this is Select board chair vath haavi I will be confirming that all members and persons anticipate on the agenda are present and can hear me Members when I call your name please respond in the affirmative Dan zero here Andrew lamb here Mark gold here Josh LaVine here staff when I call your name please respond in the affirmative Lynn Simmons here Mike barbier here this open meeting of the Long Meadow select board is convened in person and via Zoom webinar as posted on the agenda and Town's website identifying how the public may join there is no chat or Q&A function all of the materials for this meeting are available on the agenda posted on Long meow ma.gov the public is encouraged to follow along using the posted agenda unless I note otherwise this meeting will feature resident comment for residents attending the meeting in person please raise your hand when we get to the comment section of the meeting and I will call on you to approach the microphone for residents participating in the zoom in the meeting via Zoom webinar format please please use the raise hand icon at the bottom of the screen the meeting moderator will promote you to panelist unmute you and give you permission to speak if you join the webinar by phone dial star9 to raise your hand and star 6 to mute unmute residents who wish to speak will identify their names and addresses only each individual is is afforded 3 minutes for comments please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking if anyone in attendance is recording this meeting please announce yourself now no one on Zoom okay great uh we will now begin with the Pledge of Allegiance Al to the flag of the United States of America the for it stands one nation God indivisible jice [Music] all right uh we will begin here with select board announcements the fall special town meeting is set for Tuesday November 12th at 7:00 p.m. at the Long Meadow high school gymnasium citizen petition articles are due in the select board's office no later than noon on Friday September 27th in order for a petition to be guaranteed placement on the special town meeting warrant 100 Nam signature addresses of registered Town voters are required and must be certified by the town clerk you can find forms instructions and additional information at Long Meadow ma.gov toown meeting the complete streets Advisory Group has launched a survey to help inform their work on the updated prioritization plan all community members who walk Bike Run Drive or use public transportation are encouraged to take this short 8 question survey which will close on September 18th the results will help prioritize areas for improvement to learn more about the complete streets work and to take the survey please visit longmedow ma.gov Civic alerts the um local cultural Council Grant applications are now available the deadline to submit an application is October 16th 2024 to learn more about the process through the Massachusetts cultural Council um and to complete an online application please visit Long Meadow ma.gov Civic alerts okay we will now move into resident comments is anyone here uh present for Resident Comet we'll start with you right here yeah in the front and so you can move up to the microphone um say your name address and then you'll have three minutes to make a res resident comment Donna Fisher 33 Duxbury Lane how many Long Meadow Legacy trees that's defined as tree trees that are over 75 years of age is the long meadow middle school planning committee considering cutting down in their site I would like an answer at some point you know during their research Mariah Day project manager for Davey Tree presented The Long Meadow select board with treea and figures on 7523 she said one tree produces 26 pounds of oxygen per year urban forestry also helps to absorb storm water runoff and reduce flooding and soil erosion trees reduce soil air pollution and absorb carbon dioxide which reduces the heat effect the heating effect in populated areas and slow climate change they can also reduce noise pollution by up to 50% and feed the human soul long meow is a member for 21 years and has been a tree city award winner given by the Arbor Day Foundation no proposed design nor thoughtful Landscaping can replace place are precious trees and green land taken up by a significant twostory brick and water building structure surrounded by large tarred Pavements for parking lots and roadways throughout the property for removal of trees the Mass General Law chapter 87 Section 5 of the 193rd General Court of Commonwealth of Massachusetts requires a hearing and describes the process by which these trees are to be posted and how notice of these trees hearings are given or are the Long Meadow Town zoning regulations just for common residents that don't apply to town committees and Boards we're starting to think that removing the existing schools and keeping them there right where they are as neighborhood schools might be the best option we are pro-education so how many long metal trees is the long metal Middle School building committee cutting down now thank you thank you ma'am anyone else speaker my name is minu terani five Lexington Road long I need to use my teaching voice Long Middle I'm a professor and I'm part of the sustainability energy Committee of our town and also I was part of the long-term strategic planning with my students we did a major research about our town and 90 something slides which I have send it to you know the relevant people and they present it to town one of the major cause of emission in Massachusetts and long midow is private cars and uh the new new research that just came from Colorado and Pen 50 years from now the cognitive capabilities of population will be down 50% because of CO2 emission and considering that 30% % of our population in Long medal they are below the age of 18 and what we have seen as far as the private cars and standing in line I talked to Dr oay yesterday what we're going to do about all these cars I talked to our Senator Jake iier that uh and he said according to the state law if you're one less than one mile away you don't have to take the bus but there are tons of law cases that uh the towns can overrule uh um overrule the state laws but the things that we have been talking about absolutely renovation of these two high uh middle schools but combining them together we we're dealing with a lot of future issues and one of them definitely CO2 emission and this younger generation that will be subjected to it and um as a professor I look at all these kids as the future students in the university and that really worries me um because and the other thing is putting so many people under one building um in my University we have a fantastic what we call accessibility Center the students with challenges they registered we used to have 200 students register now we have 3,000 students register because the environment has changed the depression the anxiety and if something like Co happens with 700 students under one umbrella how we how we deal with it so those are some of the issues of the future as far as the health and the welfare of the students and the health and the welfare of the people living around those areas those are something that I think definitely needs our attention great thank you so much [Music] hi there I know most of youor just name an address start sorry about that Betsy Port 212 Farmington Road um I'm here to talk about trees Donna her uh statement actually dovetails perfectly into what I'm going to say um Long Meadow loves their trees and we have been a tree City for at least since 1997 um we have worked hard for our trees to remain healthy and every year we celebrate Arbor Day festivities at in the public schools we have at least 12,000 on the street trees and several thousand more in Parkland I am here to Echo what the tree wardens of our present and past have said we need to make tree safety a priority in our town about a month ago a Micro Burst hit us in Long Meadow and there was quite a lot of tree damaged I called Josh Levine the next morning because Farmington Avenue was hit very hard I live on Farmington Road some tree damage was on private property but I am here to talk about the tree belt trees some of these were pulled over by the roots from a combination of wind damage and wet ground the new tree Warden Leah and I have had several conversations a week before the big storm a large tree limb next to my driveway on the tree belt fell and nearly missed a dog walker earlier in the summer another tree Bel tree limb missed another dog walker suddenly falling unexpectedly we are setting ourselves up for injury of innocent bystanders the liability could be huge and at this point Leah our new tree Warden has a long list of trees that need attention the budget for the town Tree Care is approximately $174,000 and this is not enough we need to make a separate budget for storm cleanup of trees because every time there's a storm her budget gets wiped out we need a separate budget for the storm cleanup and another line item for tree damage removal inside of our Parks the tree Warden evaluates and makes recommendations to trim or remove trees but things are not moving fast I have seen trees marked for removal and then 6 months later they're still there we moved here about 28 years ago into the what most people would call the Kibby track but the original name was Forest Acres it was a forest many of the trees in and around my yard are older than our 93-year-old home and this area was not clearcut when the building began although beautiful it is getting scary some of my neighbor trees have become threat threats if their trees fall in my yard it becomes my problem and in all probability my homeowners insurance may not cover the cost we are sorry um it's that three minutes if you want to just wrap up quickly wrap up quickly okay well it's almost done but I'll basically say I think we need to do more to support the tree Warden and we need to anticipate things getting worse over time because these trees have matured it's a beautiful tree canopy but there's definitely a threat thank you great thank you anyone else here to make comment please come Jane Newman 56 Magnolia Circle um five years ago the house next door to me burned down and was left unkempt in full of vermin ticks rodents and termites the lot was never taken care of last year there was there were five water main Brakes in front of my property and it compromised my property and my driveway the town said they weren't responsible now we have a construct we have construction on the street to repair the water M pipes so we we have the we can have a w appropriate water pressure the construction firm balazar has taken over the property next door and turned it into a full construction site full of dump trucks ex excavators pipes bulldozers and other large apparatus the noise dust and dirt is overwhelming and unhealthy all day long the trucks dump gravel sand and dirt their weight shakes my foundation and is quite startling why wasn't I told about this decision aren't there any bylaws or ordinances to protect Town residents no boundaries were set lines were set up except on the wetlands side on the other side of the house the trucks are idling at 6:30 in the morning and the dirt and dust has infiltrated my house and made the air unhealthy do I live in a town where residents aren't protected and able to have a say in protecting their property and their health there needs to be more Humane a more humane way to repair the infrastructure of the Town repairing the property when compromised and communicating with the residents when they are affected nobody told me that this was going to happen I want to know know how much longer this project is going to last and if the sewer storm drains and regrading of the street is also included in the project that was supposed to happen when the street was repaired over 5 years ago and they ran out of money the water as pours down the street from Primrose and runs over my neighbor and my property causing a great deal of water and damage there needs to be attention to this issue as promised great thank and done in a timely fashion thank you thank you uh anyone else yeah [Music] my name is Tom Naran my wife and I have lived in 77 Woodside Drive for 22 years we've been long time and continued supporters of improvements to Long medal schools which both of my daughters attended and as well as other much needed projects including the adult center the DPW garage and the high school I have a background in civil engineering in 45 years and during 45 years I've worked as a transportation planner engineer manager and consultant principally in California Connecticut and Massachusetts when I first heard about the possibility of a Consolidated Middle School I was surprised to find out that it was proposed to be built on an and what is already a ingested site near the high school and shops and that this proposal was being taken seriously so I decided to review the site feasibility traffic study I have to say that I was not surprised but I was certainly concerned about things in the report like an additional backup of 93 cars in the morning and afternoon as a result of the Consolidated School and that there would be so much difficulty for people to get out of the site that the traffic software that was used by the consultant was unable to determine how long the actual delay would be for parents leaving the school but more important I found a number of things that caused me to question the methodology the results and most importantly the findings that this site would be feasible based on traffic impacts we brought these shortcomings to the building committee's attention at the abutters meeting in August expecting that the committee would likely have its Consultants revise or redo the traffic feasibility study and revisit the site selection process it's now quite clear that our comments and feedback were discussed by the committee which is a good thing but they had no impact on the decision to move forward with the William site so to use a transportation metaphor it's like standing on the railroad tracks waving a red flag to an appro approaching train and having the engineer wave back to you but not slow down or stop the train fortunately a second more detailed traffic study is scheduled this month hopefully this study will include accurate assumptions reliable information on how many vehicles will travel to and from the Williams site impacts due to weather bicycling walking special events emergency vehicles and most important expected traffic and safety impacts on local streets throughout the neighborhood and the town actually throughout the town and I'm sorry we've had three minutes if you want to wrap up okay all of these items were missing from the original report great thank you so much oh I'm not quite oh we've already passed three minutes so yeah thank you appreciate you uh anyone else here resent comment excuse me Richard englon U 31 wood Drive I like to follow up on the traffic gu Tom we lived there for since ' 86 and I've been in Long meal on confer on William Street since the 1950s 700 students in this small location I attended the first meeting in June to me it was a sales pitch I could not visualize traffic today each year is heavier and heavier this building is being planned for the next 60 years where will traffic be where would how many more trucks there going to be is this can you picture 700 early teenagers 13 14 years old running around it's a mess today but I am looking tomorrow 5 years 10 years from today you know some people got to have common sense to figure things out I know there's an expense I know that we got to have a score you know we have to bite the bullet we need two schools we might have to pay but the best way out of this is to renovate remodel the two middle schools as it is it is safe it's confined you don't find 18 wheelers driving around Glenbrook 350 kids that's I can see the chaos I would like to see the msba uh which sort of contact come down and stand in the driveway in the rear and see the backup of the car especially the as we get into the fall weather but you got to have common sense you know Street Smart is one thing book smart is another but you got to have a combination of both thanks okay thank you anyone else here for a res comment my name is Peter CP I live at 33 ducksbury Lane I'm read something that bill the Julio could could come he's on vacation and so I'm going to read this for him what is a realistic Financial commitment necessary to support the combination of schools at the Williams Middle School site recent videos and photos expose the effects of severe travel traffic congestion to the general public town authorities project Consultants news stations and state representatives as witnesses to the issue this photographic evidence has already had an impact on current conditions and it demands additional costly mitigation if schools are combined on the Williams site raising the population to 700 kids the William site is too small to solve problems on the property itself the site and surrounding infrastructure must satisfy zoning police and fire authorities it is it is worrying that Long Meadow governing bodies and support services have not officially and publicly weighed in on site selection for a school we are told they will have agency during the next year before the final vote to pay for the project we expect their input to increase the true cost of approving the Williams site given its small size what will be required of the spaces external to the Williams school property would we pay for police presence during drop off hours and for all events would we pay to to widen Bliss and Williams for turn leans at a retaining wall on William voles add more sidewalks would we build speed bumps install traffic lights would taxpayers support widespread busing hopefully before these other costly measures are taken school hours are not the only worry the building committee has included in the discussion an an auditorium bringing parents into the school more regularly and the and the community Hub concept given the neighbors experience with weekend use of the athletic field and the recent back to school nights we can anticipate everything evening and weekend hours too in the decades to follow the limitations of this small site may have an even greater impact true we do not know whether another site would require as many costly solutions to traffic and parking problems as we can expect for the Williams site we've hit three minutes if you want to wrap up real quickly wow that was fast um personally I would ask that going forward no committee be allowed to rest funding for a project of this magnitude on a decision made prior to public knowledge of the advice and will cons cons consent of zoning police fire and other authorities like them I suggest that a tax bill should include notice of any project that will substantially increase taxes and I want it to include one resource that will announce Community forum and upcoming commitments under review thank you thank you did I see somebody over here for Resident comment [Applause] my name is Barbara Cordy Allen I live at 143 yardsley Road and we've lived here 45 years um this town is changing um unfortunately we have a house that we lived in and we had tenants from holy hell in there and it took us 7 months to get rid of them we' not we had notified the dog catcher or animal control of a pit bull that they brought in we did not approve of and it wound up that there were nine eventually um they ruined the house we asked the animal catcher to go back there refused she said they're nice people I've sent all of you copies of documents that I had so you have them a neighbor called and reported the same he even rounded up the dogs and brought them back to the house tried to get the dog catcher over there only to get told that they're their friends dogs and they be leaving in a week they didn't leave they just added more I think I don't know but I think that they were breeding the dogs there's nothing um that's nice about these people either the police were aware of the situation at that house um I don't know if there is a friendship between the animal catcher but she definitely did not do her job we found out that the dog had chased other people down the street and that nothing was done by the animal catcher the town manager was notified of this and a problems I didn't and I sent a letter to her did not get a call or a response until I placed another call demanding a response I got one not satisfactory at all the police were called by the neighbor because of loud noise and playing basketball they joined in and played basketball at 11:30 at night high-fiving the people their peace was disrupted not only by the people but by the police I think it's really poor judgment by the police department to go into this community policing they need to also think of the res residence there's a time and a place for that there's another problem that the building inspector gave a building permit for these people to put solar panels on my house they forged my name it's quite obvious any child could tell that it was a forg name and nothing was done about it the electric company stopped it I can't believe what is going on in this town um that this type of problem has existed it's been existing the police were called to be at the eviction on Thursday an officer showed up he did not arrest them for animal abuse there was a baby living in that house they never even reported it to family and youth whatever you call that program for that kid to be taken but we managed to get the commissioner involved on our own but it something needs to be done it's gone way too far good thank you anyone else yeah's I also have one person in the queue oh okay great thanks wajid mmud 45 Woodside Drive hi everyone one I live on 45 Woodside Drive first I want to say we are not anti- Middle School at all at at all also I am not afraid of my taxes going up I am happy to pay more for new school however we have many questions and concern about William Street location I can give you many reasons why William site is not appropriate but I will just focus on few first one is safety I don't think anyone of you have any idea what it's like to be on Williams or Terry Terry Drive at a school time every day it's disaster waiting to happen and you trying to double the kids and cars there Long Meadow is one of the best school systems around and people here are pretty well off including myself that being said longm kids are spoiled and they think their parents supposed to do pickup and drop off for them everyone every day uh imagine double the traffic everywhere another concern of mine is you're going to cut all those beautiful trees on William to make way for this another concern of mine is average fire truck is 10t wide Fire and Police use Williams to go all around Long marrow imagine there is emergency and both sides of William have traffic on it and fire truck is blowing their horn it will be Panic everywhere and we will have disaster on our hands so please rethink this location and choose different one we all can get along just fine thank you great thank you anyone else here in person want to make a resident comment okay go with the zoom hello uh can you hear me okay yep we can hear you uh just start with your name address and then you go ahead and get started Jeremy Dugan and uh Penny Dugan from 52 South Park AB uh good evening to the select board and thank you for your service to our community my wife Penny and I are hoping that the selector will consider the information provided to you and correspondence for consideration for allowing poat Gardens and free areas we were encouraged by a DPW employee and the town manager to open up this topic for discussion with the SL board and hopes that he would have a positive view of such an initiative the Massachusetts Department of agricultural resources mdar and the department of conservation and Recreation DCR have recommended that local communities and residents assist with creating native plant spaces for birds bees hummingbirds butterflies and other pollinators to help combat habitat loss erosion help conserve water when compared to LA and to fight against climate change I think this is a unique way for the FB to govern to engage with nature in a positive way by providing more options to the citizens of longa according to MD's Massachusetts pollinator protection plan homeowners and gardeners can play an important part in supporting pollinators by maintaining enhancing Andor increasing increasing pollinator habitat on their property the key to thinking about pollinator habitat is considering plants that provide food water and shelter to meet the needs of all pollinators these plants can include both native and non-native plants and ornamentals although it has been shown that Gardens with native plants tend to support more diverse pollinator groups while also being drought tolerant and requiring less management than those with non-native plantings we believe that there are underutilized open spaces along Tre bels that could be used for these purposes to have three seasons of beautiful color and lots of Natural Beauty with minimal maintenance costs my wife and I have done a lot of work to make our backyard space friendly to not native and native pollinators and other creatures and my wife just had our yard designated as a certified wildlife habitat and we live on in2 Acres beyond that uh we keep bees to help with the pollination in our neighborhood and area and unexpectedly the first year B keeper is able to proudly Harvest almost 60 pounds of honey from our hives um so we feel like we're doing our part and want to uh expand these opportunities with the tree belts please consider this request as well as our letter and the associated corporated references as you consider to add this topic to a future meeting's agenda for open discussion thank you all right great thank you so much all right Miss anybody here okay all right thank you uh we're going to be closing resident comment uh we are now going to be moving on to our joint meeting with the school committee so I don't know if we have anyone else school committee in person that wants to take a seat up here we have someone else online as got someone yeah oh we got a couple folks okay we'll let them log in okay ready um I reconvene our school committee meeting from earlier um and we'll call Ro for attendance uh Jamie Hench here Adam Rosen BL here Michaela Fitz Jerald here Julie Morgan here Zack Baran here and Nicole shaer here all right all right great thank you so much all right school committee thank you so much for joining us tonight um we'll return the favor and come to your meeting next week um but uh we are here for a very important business and that is to interview for the school committee vacancy uh that we currently have um you know the town of Long Meadow is so lucky to have such talented experienced uh residents that want to devote their time and energy and resour resources to give back to the town and I think that's what's happened here with these applicants and I know just looking at the applicants myself I think we've got very qualified folks and um and that's a great Pro it's going to be tough to pick and that's a a great problem for us to have so I want to thank all the applicants um at the start for applying and putting yourself um up for this vacancy um earlier today uh we uploaded to the agenda the applicant interview process so I just kind of want to go over that quickly so that everyone is on the same page and folks listening at home kind of understand what's going on um I used a I used the way that the applicants were numbered in the memo and then used a random number generator online to create a interview um order so we will have an interview order that's been randomized um each applicant when they get called up will have three up to three minutes to provide a self- introduction explaining why they have applied for this appointment and then after each um opening statement a question and answer session will follow each applicant will be asked up to six questions and um I am going to recognize members of the school committee and select board that want to answer ask questions and I will try to make sure that it is evenly distributed uh between the school committee and select board um as well as within um our boards and committees um we um the questions that we ask should be designed so that the applicants can demonstrate their interest and qualifications and we should be refraining from asking questions of a cross-examination type Manner and you know unless I allow so we're not going to um allow follow-up questions and then after we have interviewed all of the applicants we will then move into a general discussion phase phase where um the select board and school committee can discuss the general attributes that the board and committees uh value um as well as talking about the strengths assets and valuable experiences of the individual applicants and I think that this portion is important just because obviously as a school committee you all are going to be looking at this much differently than the select board and you guys going to have a different perspective and I would love to hear what you value which you guys would think uh would make a good member of the school committee so um if I don't know if you all have anything to add to that before we kind of jump into this no we ready to go great okay perfect so uh the first person that if they are here that we'll bring up to interview is Sarah Fernandez hi Sarah hello thank you so so much for joining us thank you so much for applying um so like I mentioned uh we'll begin with an opening statement up to 3 minutes and then after that we'll ask you some questions yeah not a problem um so my name is Sarah grayhack Fernandez um I am a licens mental health counselor a board certified behavior analyst and a licens applied behavior analyst here in the state of Massachusetts um I'm also a parent here uh in Long Meadow um to a little three-year-old so she'll soon be entering into the school system um I have worked in the surrounding area for about the past 10 years um and part of the reason why my husband and I moved to Long Meadow was for the school system um and when we got you know the call came out it was something I felt like I could do to help the town um with my understanding of children um we know that students take today are facing a mental health crisis as most other individuals are um not only in the state of Massachusetts but Nationwide um 48% of Youth ages 14 to 24 recently is um as in 2021 reported feeling sad and hopeless um and so you know while we recognize that mental health is important I feel that my expertise not only in mental health but behavioral health will be able to bring a unique view um to the school board um in things such as professional development performance standards and advocacy great thank you so much all right anybody have a question mark go ahead thank you thank you for replying sir I guess my my question is what what is it that you'd like to accomplish as a member of the school school committee in the next you're only going to have nine months because y who gets some point it's got to run next year hit the ground running um no I think like I said um professional development um you know there there is a need for teachers to you know not only do what they do in teaching their academics um but also understanding mental health and behavioral health challenges um for not only students who are on IEPs or are in other special ed programs such as 504s um but also for the everyday student thank you thank you any other questions good one of the goals of the committee is always to be engaged collaboratively with um other committees and elected bodies around town as well as the school department our Educators and our community um what are some of the experiences you've had that might be helpful in contributing to that collaboration absolutely so right now I work for the gondara mental health center um and I'm the director of three different programs uh at our agency I the director of inhome therapy intensive Hospital diversion and our dmh uh Community Support flux team um with that I am in charge of all of the hiring needs I'm in charge of you know making sure that we are still in good relations with dmh we have meetings once a month with dmh intensive Hospital diversion is a brand new program in the children's Behavioral Health Initiative World um and with that I need to reach out to the surrounding mobile crisis um facilities Baye State um and really make those connections in order to help support them with what their needs are so I feel that experience would be able to work hand in hand with making those connections with you guys and other committies great thank you for applying appreciate it great thank you um I have a question um could you talk a little bit about what you think are the biggest challenges facing our students today sure um I think that's going to go back to mental health not to you know beat a dead horse I but in the state of Massachusetts you know prior to the pandemic there was a high rate um of you know youth young individuals reporting sadness hopelessness um and that's only been exemplified you know with our social distancing that we had to do through the pandemic and now we're seeing you know on the back end of those things the same rates are still occurring um and so I mean that that's super important because you don't necessar know what an individual is going for great thank you anyone else Josh uh so joining the school committee at this time you'd have the the pleasure of not too far away from getting jumping into budget season have you reviewed the school budget and do do understand uh actually I mean step back what kind of budget do you work with now and uh do you understand do I stand budgeting oh no the budget yeah the budgeting issues that we have for uh at the school committee level sure so I haven't looked at the school committee budget but I do manage two budgets out of the three um because the dmh is contract so I don't have a budget per se for them um but I am first in how to make a budget work how can I ask follow up yeah sure how large how much more are we talking about for the budgets you manage now um I mean rough guesstimation my inhome therapy program should be bringing in at least 5 million this fiscal year if not much more thank you great thank you anyone else Julie Zach I'll take oh Andrew um thanks again for applying again we have an embarrassment of riches with all the applicants this year it's really great um sometimes as you probably know being on the school committee can be can handle a lot of controversial issues you know sometimes um the members have to make tough decisions that may disappoint those in our community who might support an initiative or a new program that we aren't able to do for some reason or aren't able to fund and sometimes you may know some of these uh proponents personally so in your prior work have you had any experience kind of making such kinds of tough decisions and sometimes controversial uh decisions and how might you approach such a situation and fellow talents people who might strongly disagree with your decision yeah I mean as a director I make those tough decisions and those tough calls probably on a daily basis um I think one of the big things is going to be listening to all sides to make sure that everybody feels heard and feels understood I you know when it comes to you know having the disappointment or the let down of something not going your way um you know making sure that you are felt like you are being heard is going to be one of the most important things um yeah great thank you thank you all right so that is six questions so thank you so much uh for joining us tonight and for applying and we we will be voting on the appointment next Tuesday at the school committee meeting thank you yeah thank you so much uh haven't had that happen before all right uh next up is uh bizat is that how you pronounce bizat Abbi and if you can start with your introductory statement up to three minutes and I think I forgot to mention that in uh response during the Q&A session uh answers are going to be limited to two minutes um but we didn't have that problem first so uh please please go ahead thank you I'm bat AB I live on 26 7even Bliss Road I have lived in long for the past uh 10 years I have two teenagers uh in high school first year and Junior uh my both my kids have been able to uh enjoy the L middle uh school system for for the past 10 years by profession I'm a social worker currently I'm the associate vice president for community behavioral health uh Inc it's located in infield and wer uh Connecticut um as you can tell from my accent you know I'm an immigrant I I moved to this country about 25 years ago I was in my mid-20s to complete my uh theological studies I used to study in Catholic Seminary to to become a Catholic priest and I gave that up and I got married and I'm I'm here so one of the reason you know I I chose to apply for this role is really it's time for me to engage in public services the the reason I'm here today is because uh a lot of people have helped me to be who I am and to achieve what I've achieved in in my professional career so it's time to give back for the community that uh I have been able to enjoy as well as my you know the my kids have enjoyed uh learning in this school system you know the contribution I would bring into this committee is that my background in financial management uh policy creation and implementation uh administering uh multiple programs uh and also I had the opportunity to be able to teach in higher Aid System and also provide student centered services at MIT as a student support service Dean um I would bring all these uh professional experiences and uh expertise into this field uh in short you know that's why I'm interested in uh applying for this role and uh I open it to all of you to ask me questions great thank you so much anyone want to start off with a question go ahead Dan thank you um and I certainly Echo what um what Andrew said as well as ven um I mean we have great candidates it's um so I would I would urge anyone who isn't chosen tonight um to try to serve on other committees as well um but really impressive resumes thank you every everyone for coming tonight my question's um just really fairly General but I'd be interested to hear um if you see improvements that could be made within the the school of long Ro public schools and what would those what would those be during your tenure yeah I know I EO what Sarah also talked about in her uh conversation with you about focusing on really working with our teachers administrators as well as parents and students on the well-being of the students uh we do really a good job in horning on academic Excellence but uh you know at least from my experience over the past 10 years uh we could do a lot better in terms of in uh improving the well-being of our our childr in the school settings uh means that you know we can uh provide very specific and targeted professional development that focus on whether it's trauma informed teaching approach or uh emotional intelligence Improvement uh work for both for the teachers as well as for the students that that would be my priority thank you thank you any other question questions Jamie thank you for applying truly I think it's wonderful um just to Echo what everybody else said um just aside from wellbeing because obviously that's that's a Hot Topic right um if you were to look at the Long Meadow public schools and we said hey you know choose your path what do you want to work on and you got you know jump into it are you what areas you have the most passion and about um yeah so you know I'm a social worker I identify myself as a social worker we have this theoretical approach that we Embrace as social workers that focused on social justice and the person in the environment and you know you look at the individual through you know through the lens of this big L uh approach that is you know the individual is a combination of who they are as a family member or their social context financially economically racially and all that stuff so our kids really need to be encouraged to explore and be curious about all these things but specifically to what you said you know instead of really perhaps focusing on you know what type of person you want to be c as a lawyer or a teacher or something I would focus on what kind of individual you would like to be when you turn whatever age and I think that would allow kids to really form who they are at this young age and perhaps being able to contribute at a later age and be well informed citizens so thank you Mark again thank you also replying the the nine months between now and next June will go like like that and you you have some really interesting goals and so I guess my question would be is if if you see your goals moving along would would you consider running for the school committee in in next year uh yeah it will depend on the experience I'm going to have with you if I get SED yeah but you know public service is really important and I would I would explore multiple ways of serving the community thank you great thank you and I think we've got Zach with a question thank you um and thank you for your application very excited to to learn a little bit more I'd be curious to know you mentioned um wanting to be able to uh give back to the community that has given so much to you do you have any recent examples of um opportunities that you've had to serve or give back in the community uh yeah thanks for asking that question Zach and uh yeah I had good history working with you and other long meow uh Town members on the diversity and inclusion task force about a few years back and that's one uh thing that I contributed to the community uh I think we delivered uh a good well thought out uh recommend condition for the town board uh to be specific that's it but in my work you know again as a social worker I think every day we strive to contribute to the communities so I I I see it as everyday contribution and one of my big uh responsibility now is to provide medication assisted treatment programs in prison settings and I I I oversee seven programs and seven prisons in jails in uh Conneticut and that's really targeting the most marginalized Community uh members of our community who needed the services who are at risk of dying from overdose especially when they get out of prisons and jails and my my job is to make sure that these individuals are being provided proper care uh while inside the gel and also when they come back to our communities so I see that as also as a contribution to the community great thank you thank you Adam uh you know it probably sounds like a a tired old song keep saying it's a very impressive resume and thank you so much for applying um you know I see that you have some fantastic experience uh specifically in on committees um in the past you know from this experience that you have what what's strengths would you like to bring to the school committee here yeah uh you know I I've I've served I'm serving as a board member for nsw Asi as a Treasurer so specifically I I think I have really excellent background around uh you know leading people and uh sort of working together with folks who are responsible about financial fiary and that's the skill I would bring and uh the other one is specifically really crafting and and implementing new policies to help develop really good programs that's great thank you thank you anyone else a question all right thank you so much for joining us and like I mentioned we'll be making the appointment next week all right all right we've got Estelle Jordan next oh it's okay this is just like the school committee school spirit yes that's exactly all right Estelle thank you for joining us thank you for applying um and you know like with the others we'll give you three minutes here to just tell us a little bit about yourself all right good evening uh my name my name is Estelle Jordan I live in 756 Long medist Street I'm a mother a one-year-old and a 3-year-old I'm a wife I'm a veteran and I'm still in the military service in the um Air National Guard I'm applying for this position because I'm inspired by my mother-in-law uh my husband and my two brother-in-laws grew up in town um unfortunately one of my brother-in-laws have cable policy and my mother-in-law went through the school system and they got the right resources and the support they needed and he was able to graduate along M high and even get an associates degree so it's really impressive the quality of Education U System we have here in this town and I want to continue that Legacy um and moreover I care about my children's future I'm U representing um hopefully all the working mothers in this town and young mothers and um I really care about you know what's going to happen to the middle school and forward um because because it will impact my kids um also I'm a first generation Korean americ and first one the family to go to um undergrad and graduate degree so I understand the trans formative power of education and therefore I want to continue enhancing and maintaining quality of Education here in Long meow uh school system uh briefly some of the qualifications I have I have a long history of Public Service not just military um and it's specifically in the military realm I served as a y lecturer for Department of the Air Force ROTC so I have a long history of uh training and educating about U over several thousand of students um so I'm very familiar what it's like to uh uh mentor and tutor a lot of college kids and uh what kind of quality of students that a lot of these um um School College admissions look for um and moreover I am um while in still a military service I work in cyber security and I serve with v in the fiber task force um and I understand the um recognize the U importance of technological resources our students need and potential for a lot of innovation however I equally understand that there is a great threat as well so um other I guess qualification I'm pretty good at Conflict Management I know there are a lot of contentious um topics go on especially when you come to this committee and I have long history of understanding uh making the right not the right choices but what is best needed for the town or I guess with my job for the mission the Air Force so um I'm comfortable making tough decisions um even though um sometimes it's not easy um and the contribution I can make is uh diversity um I am as you can see I'm Asian-American um but also I'm first generation and I know there are a lot of small groups of families here are also first generation um and especially there are a lot of military families I think a lot of people recognize and with military families they have a lot of um specific resources that they need that I could really help them um and of course as I mentioned before a lot of young working mothers and especially remote work that we do so thank you great thank you Estelle all right wonderful questions Adam uh well first of all thank you for applying thank you for your service to this country um I hope I'm not taking loow hanging fruit from anybody else but you know just having this wealth and experience what do you see in in the coming years as the role of uh artificial intelligence in education in Long meta um I think the big thing is that um I know with a lot of people where chat PT will is kind of like a cheating system you know AI can do your homework AI can do all of that and uh on a long term um I see AI is something that we use as like an Excel spreadsheet where it's kind of an a to our studies it should not be a primary use for um to get immediate answers our students still should understand how to think critically and AI should be used as a resource to that uh one of the things I I me and my uh colleagues always talk about is using chat gbt as if you want to know a different solution than what you have initially came up with yourself initially but that should not be the primary solution because AI does not it it does not lead you always to the right answer so thank you great thank you oh Josh I know long meow we have children with various needs and abilities and um and I from my perspective I I think the town works really hard to accommodate both by law and just by being the right thing to do in your experience I know your kids aren't uh at school age yet but have you do you have any particular places do you think the town could do better on or should focus on more um I know as I mentioned um there are a lot of military families here and I know one of my colleagues um her her kid is still waiting on you know special needs plans and education from the town um from the school system um I mean to be honest I don't know the whole process I understand a lot of government and all of that the process takes forever and of course it includes people work um on top of that I also dealt with my son he needed um speech therapy and that forever um I can't give you specifically on how how does that really work but what I could say is that um I definitely have the time and I definitely want to be the voice um and advocate for those families cuz I care you know just like my neighbor Sarah I know she has a lot of experience on that too so thank you great thank you ni Nicole thank you again for um Coming forward it's great to have so many um volunteers for the position um I'm wondering if you can speak to how your experience both um in the community but also professionally has shaped your understanding of the role of the committee and what that work um could do to support these students in schools of long met I'm assuming school committee correct yes um so right now just briefly working in the task force um I got a gain um I task force um I gained understanding of um that there needs to be specific sorry there needs to be um a lot of time and dedication that needs to be done uh to come up with uh best solution um and I also understand that you know a lot of voices needs to be heard from residents it's a lot of uh making sure you reach out the community and and you hear their concerns I'm assuming that's what the school committee is I I honestly don't know what the full expectation is but I do know that being part of the committee you need to make sure that you hear the local um like the parents and you know some even though the topic might be controversial you need to make sure that you take the time to understand and even study and do the research so thank you great thank you Mark thank you st is there any anything from your professional uh part the professional part of your career whether it's the military or cyber knowledge cyber security that you'd like to see brought brought to the school in the school department that you think you could uniquely bring to them um I think I think um it'll be interesting to know a little bit more about um if there is a um like computer science or like a tech class I know when I was younger we had like a class how to type a keyboard I don't know if that's still a thing uh but I think there there I really would like to uh see an um education on how to uh be better informed about uh threats um on the internet because as you all know there are a lot of misinformation and I have extensive um experience on that working against um certain um cyber missions on it but just understanding students to seek truth and know what the truth is is really important and not be distracted by you know false information or something that initially and quickly like uh you know satisfy you know whatever they think they for saw like cute pictures of puppies or you know can I just follow real quick this has nothing to do with anything but I'm just interested about your opinion about cell phones in the schools oh [Music] um cell phones and schools um I think um gosh it's so hard to say um I think we can't deny the fact that um cell phones um well I don't think we could really take away from it I think I don't know what the issue is right um like when I was in high schol school like I had a cell phone on my phone and I like looked at it when teacher was you know teaching you know I think it's the the generation needs to understand that hey it's an etiquette thing you know there's a time in place to have your phone and there's a time in place for you to um pay attention and I think you know having a cell phone is you know you're right but it should be utilized in a matter of respect and also etiquette and if I don't know they isue but if the teacher says like no cell phone in class then you know then the students should be respectful of that and um it should be used for emergency use so that's my opinion I you clearly have young kids I mean okay you know things are changing we'll know what it is in the future all right we've got space for one more question if anyone wants to ask okay all right thank you so much Estelle appreciate it we're going to keep the Clapping going uh next up is Gina fast is Gina with us no not on Zoom okay um and then Gina is not with us then we'll move on to Georgia Robert hi Georgia thank you for joining us thank you for applying um and like everyone else you can start off with three minutes to introduce yourself okay great um so Georgia Robert 89 hazardville Road this is uh my 26th year in education um I taught for eight years in Massachusetts um and then the rest of my career in Connecticut taught uh middle school high school English for many many years department head of English departments in Ellington as well as Simsbury and now I serve as an assistant principal uh for Simsbury High School um recently I'd say the last eight years I have been very fortunate to be part of the committee in Simsbury that sets the strategic planning goal for 5 years at a time I really enjoy that work um enjoy um having a voice in uh what the goals are going to look like um caring bring out that work at the building level so um that's one of the reasons that I uh threw in an application and you see me here today um I have two sons at the high school they uh went to Wolf Swamp Road School I moved here for the schools basically my husband and I and um our kids have had a a great time in the school system um I have a senior and a freshman um I am an active music mom um my senior has been involved since fourth grade um and uh both children have played three Sports um so I'm an active Sports parent as well um another thing I wanted to highlight is just the the volunteerism I've been doing as a board member um it's now breakthrough T but it used to be JDRF um so I worked with JDRF in recent years the Connecticut western Mass chapter um one of the things that's really important to me is having a very healthy collaborative board and um you know working together and sort of providing that united front um and I think that's something I would love um to be able to contribute to the school committee as well great thank you so much um anyone want to Adam go ahead you know thank you so much for coming out um again another impressive uh resume makes me feel like I need to do more on my resume um but uh you know it seems like you have a a very unique intersection here where you have both uh significant professional experience um you know especially uh uh in the the secondary education uh Arena and you're you're a parent here so you know seeing um you know how things are are working in uh in Long Meadow you know comparing your your professional opinions to to what you're seeing with uh your your children's education you know for your time on the committee do you have any goals of anything you'd like to to see improved or areas you think you could be helpful um I I do I mean a couple things on my mind would be um I mean something as small as Chromebook insurance or some sort of kind of sustainability um initiative with the Chromebook program um payto play sports that's something I I do hear a lot as an active uh you know in many parent circles so I I would love to be involved in and I know that's I know that's on the committee's mind I've I've seen that reflected in the meetings um but I would love to be a part of I guess smoothing that out not that it necessarily needs to go away but just what does it look like in other places um and and how do you do your best to make it as Equitable as you can and also um you know I'm I'm really excited about the Middle School one of the things about me wanting to serve in this role at some point was it was very important to me that I do it at a time that my you know I almost like have one foot out the door with my senior and I've got the Freshman um I've enjoyed my time collaborating you know at the Town level the most when I sort of did not like have a horse in the race so a good example of that would be coming out in community forums when uh redistricting was happening you know we're wol swamp it wasn't going to affect us but I enjoyed being part of that process I also came out when the Architects were here on that Middle School planning night um participated in that Workshop again you know that my son will be graduating when the middle school is built hopefully um and so I like that I can kind of have that level-headed approach where I'm I'm super invested and I know how important it is to keep the school system functioning is one of the best in western Mass and highly excellent you know it's kind of what keeps our home values where they are um and all of that great stuff but I I do feel like I um had the right vantage point at the moment thank you thank you Andrew so you have a great wealth of experience as a teacher and administrator and um now you're thought you might be on the school committee side of things so I was just wondering you know you've worked with many different School committees in different districts I I see in your what are your observations of what uh made those good examples perhaps of school committees work well and what are some things that in your experience you saw School committees could have done better or could have been uh done to make become more effective essentially so what's your view of a school of the school committees that you worked with on the other side basically um two big points one is I think that you know the health of the of the committee you know as someone who is in an administrative role say I were going to consider moving to another District you you do pay attention you want make sure how stable is the school committee what you know what is the climate like on the school committee because you know there are some towns in the area where people stay they do stay away from applying to those towns in particular just because of the volatility um on those boards so I do think that you know that that calm calm on the surface but you're swimming underneath is very important and um have developing strong Rel relationships with everyone on the committee is very important and then the other part is you know I I do work in education all day like I'm not I'm not on the school committee to talk about examples that you know of how my school does it you know if once in a while if someone is asking or curious or hey could you find out what some other school schools in the Farmington Valley are doing sure but essentially you know the school committee is to set policy the school committee is to develop the budget there's nothing more important than funding you know when it comes to running a school system so I see the purpose as you know setting the policy listening to the community um filtering through difficult you know comments and tough times and uh most importantly developing a very strong budget great thank you ni thank you for coming out tonight also um just to kind of build off of that idea of school committee as an educator um several of us are also Educators so I'm curious um what are your thoughts about how School committees can sort of best support the work of the school district how we can best support the continued progress that our district is working towards um improving Equitable um and um inclusive spaces for all of our students um you know I I I think the vision of The Graduate and um some of of the longrange goals and and the vision that the school system has um are very important I think that you know the role of the school committee is definitely to listen you know a lot of times you probably are hearing from maybe families or situations where people do feel marginalized in some way shape or form um so listening to that being responsive you know communicating with the superintendent um and keeping those lines of communication I think are very important um I think it's important to be a very positive voice in the community as well and um making sure that the the community you know I I I tease a lot of my friends like you don't you don't come to town meeting you know it's like you people don't always take advantage of all of the opportunities they have to be active but um being responsive listening and being clear um of what is happening behind the scenes because I do find people they don't they don't all watch the meetings online they're not always well informed and they they probably do need to hear more about what the various boards in towns are are exploring in doing to to make those changes happen for students thank you Jim thank you for the um being one who sat in your seat before I8 years ago I had to sit here before the same I appreciate where you're at but the question that we asked everybody was one that Mr Gold had asked I think earlier b um is you know after these nine months which you're going to like blink and they're going to be gone you know do you is this a you're just looking to do a stop Gap or are you really trying to participate in the committee longer term given you have a senior that's obviously going to be transitioning and a nth grader going to 10th is something you're going to look to continue or is this just hey we'll get you guys guys buy for the next 9 months and you know then whoever gets elected is in um it's it's something I'm looking to continue I mean one of the questions I always have is just um as some of the other candidates mentioned that work life balance and you know being that I am in a school system you know that's one of the questions for me is more what subcommittee assignment you know if this were to work out what subcommittee assignment will I get how would I be able to sort of manage that piece of it um but yes that's been on my mind to continue that um and I see it as something you know that I I would potentially want to do a bit longer I I really enjoy this I think it's just the sort of the educational nerdy side of me that enjoys committees a little too much yeah great thank you Josh uh so on the Middle School building committee we have discussed a number of things on how to maybe alleviate some traffic concerns one of the things we have talked about and not in any any sort of detail is having staggered start times for different start times for different grades and I was just curious about your uh when you were on the committee that was exploring a later start time just want to hear about your experience with that um that yeah that was a great opportunity again it was another opportunity where I truly was open-minded on that topic um but I had studied it the year before uh with simburg so we had gone through a year-long um committee with all stakeholders involved that had looked at it I was and still am open to it I do think it works best when the surrounding towns want to move at the same time you know so say for example you know it it can be a challenge for a high school to do it on their own but if sort of the neighboring towns the towns that you tend to play in sports or in the conference are considering it at the same time time um then I think that tends to work well but it was definitely you know a positive it was a positive experience I think people were educated on it explored the topic um I think it was given its sort of due course in the committee we have space for one more question if anyone has one okay if not I'll oh go ahead now thanks U thank you again for applying um you brought up a point earlier um on pay to play for athletics in town and um as a volunteer coach myself I get a lot of um you know questions and you know why is my why do we have to pay for my kid to play um there's booster clubs involved and I've talked to some of the members of the school committee in the past and Mr Hench has done a a good job on this topic for several years now but I'm just curious if you have any initial thoughts um or suggestions um around this topic um well it does add up very quickly it it does add up um and I I I do worry about people who may want may not want to come forward is there a process for you know how easy are we making it maybe when parents do need help that's one of the questions that I've had that I've had conversations with families um to kind of say I don't I don't know that there is a clear process but you certainly could start by reaching out to the athletic director if that is a concern um um I would just like to see a balance found and maybe transparency so that the community understands how it works you know i' I've had that question asked of me just because of what I do like hey do you know if the money is going back to the general education fund or is it is that specific money being allocated to that specific sport so I think some transparency around you know what it is why we have it how it's functioning and even if it's just goals to move to a lower payto pay fee you know that it's the school committee doesn't have to solve the problem immediately but you know is there is there a plan to work towards bringing that fee down for families or maybe um lowering the the cap for the family I think that would be a a very tangible step as well thank you great thank you so much for joining us Georgia that was six questions we have the limit so thank you and we'll be making the appointment next next Tuesday the thank thank you so much great all right uh now we oh all right um now we have space for discussion amongst the select board and school committee if you all would like to make any comments or say anything about this process or any of the applicants this is going to be really tough yeah yeah an embarrassment of riches was a nice way to put yeah very curious to learn what each of you might think would be like you would be very happy to see like a a skill or a focus that maybe your current board is lacking or could be stronger in some particular topic or I I think I'm sure the five of us are interested in learning what you guys think are the are good qualities basically to focus on essentially anybody want to jump in go for it you can take it so number one everybody I thought did a really F fantastic job and have some incredible resumes I mean from my my vantage point from a school committee member from from a while I think the more diversity of thought and the different perspectives are very important to me whenever I think about it fact that we have a physician we have many great you know Educators on board we've had business people on board to really give kind of a very differing perspective because remember we're we're not supposed to be getting involved in how to actually administer it we're just supposed to be seeing from a higher level um so that is important to me so you know you know and I didn't hopefully I don't pronounce her name wrong Estella or Stella Estelle Estelle sorry I apologize but that that was interesting I mean to to come from a military I don't think I've ever been on a committee with somebody who's served you know and you know you have to kind of sit back and go somebody who's willing to serve in that capacity is willing to jump in that would be a very differing perspective that's interesting um that obviously Georgia you know and and and others you know have this you know education background that is invaluable you could you can see it on some of them have so much information and probably could do a really great job of filling in some of the gaps that we have within our committee that have you know you either transitioned out from a curriculum or whatever it may be but from my vantage point that would be hey you know do they fill like kind of back fill what we need which is more diversity with from and I'm not I'm talking diversity within the school of thought where do they come from are they coming from you know certain education versus you know an Educator's education versus a business person versus a US Air Force that's very different I kind of like that I think it's good for our students too because sometimes in Long Meadow um you know I think Bill the plant came in a number of years ago and he gave a really great perspective right he comes from the construction side of things and you know sometimes we as you know you know parents and Long Meadow we kind of poo poo that air that trade you know but that trade is valuable you know there's there's great people in that trade you know same thing you know with serving our country you know we had one of the best um you know gentleman who was a part of our committee being one of our students who's at West Point right now who went that rout and he was amazing um and he was a great person somebody you know like that being on here would be very interesting to me as well so to provide that perspective to our students so that's kind of my quick sense but everybody did a great job I remember how nerve-wracking it was whenever we were up there I think we had seven people whenever we did and it was just one after another after another um but you know and I I get it's nerve ragging and it's truly appreciated everybody jumped in and you know was willing to step up so wish you could take all four of them okay I I just wanted to ask about the process you know I I I've gone through this is the sixth time I think appointment and this this process is a little different and it doesn't mean it's you know anything other than different but what's the process moving forward I think I'd like to understand it and I think the candidates would like to understand it you know and and I and I'll tell you you know if the chair you know recognizes Adam to make a motion to appoint somebody that's very different from the the previous process which was uh a closed blind vote through a a reduction and I don't know Nicole if you saw that that process and and I don't I don't know if one's better or not but I just I'm asking what the process is going to be yeah so we've had additional discussions about this um you know when we decided to when we T had this discussion about how to conduct this interview we also briefly talked about the voting process and we did review you know I think you put that together back in that had been used a few times correct like four or five times right um so I think we are leaning towards doing something similar to that something that is more um system you know has more of a procedure more of a system to it um than How We Do board committee appointments with uh with motions yeah did you want to add anything to that was that like what we did for the Middle School building committee where we had it was almost like rank choice I was not on the board at that time so I'm not so you watching the answer Josh is it is different cuz I was at both but this is is literally everybody gets piece of paper and or not but but write down your your choice and then somebody just goes and says and ask everybody who vote and if nobody gets a majority of the votes a person or persons with the lowest votes drop are dropped off and then again everybody again votes verbally for the the choices and eventually and it shouldn't take more than one round and I think it never did take more than two somebody ends up with in our case I guess it's going to be six votes yeah and we'll send out a document this week yeah that outlines the voting um structure is this a is this an opportunity for us to have an actual policy to to put in place for of these appointments I mean Mark you mentioned we've done I don't know since your time six at least um shouldn't we have a policy that we can that policy was adopted by the school committee and the select board at the time so there was I guess there is a policy but since it's a selectboard pol it's like any other policy it's made to be superseded by whoever's in in office at the time so I don't have a problem with policy being superseded because I think the times changed there is an existing policy it's an absolutely existing our understanding is that there is not currently an existing policy there's document that lays out sort of what the Comm practice has been but it was voted for by both if you go back to the minutes both the school committee and the select board adopted it as a policy I know that I did our policy documents as of now I'm not sure if it was removed I suspect what you're saying is true that it was at the time U but it doesn't reside in their policy manual oppy it more and and I think the basically the only real difference between the way that the interviews were conducted before and conducted tonight was just that every member asked a question of every applicant uh where we didn't do that this time where just to ask question specifically alternating between the school committee question and the select board and you're right it's questions all got asked so like we worked well in the sandbox together so yeah that was really the only difference yeah go ahead M um I just wanted to come back to when you were saying Andrew what might we be looking for as current school committee members and again it's really hard everybody was so did such a great job um answering the questions and are so highly qualified and there's one side where there's some different perspectives like Jamie said it's really important to bring that and it comes back to kind of what Georgia was saying um for me it really hit was um having a very healthy collaborative board and how important that is especially since September's almost over um so it's kind of I think important for me as like I'm in my second year of my term things that like we're all hoping to accomplish and I feel like we already have a collaborative board to make sure we have somebody that can like come in and hit the ground running for the next 9 months is important and so I think that's a priority for me yeah go ahead I I would experiment with that you you took the words right out of my mouth with the idea of hit the ground running um knowing that this is a short-term appointment um and knowing that we have been one of the things that I've said multiple times over the years since joining the board was that it has been an absolute pleasure and honor because of how well the group has worked together over the years not always bringing in different perspectives different ideas and yet finding a space to come together and have those discussions and work our way to W something that we can kind of all get behind has just been really important to us um and has made us I think um highly effective which is really important um so we have a lot of great perspectives and I love that we had applicants that are focused on a variety of different things um from mental health to cyber security um to educational policy um that that is great to have so many different perspectives and also folks who have children of different ages is also always nice for us um some of us have kids who are at the high school age and others who are younger kids so we get a broad view of where the district is and what's going on um but that idea of being able to hit the ground running for me partly comes back to um how strong of an understanding someone has on what the role of the school committee is um and how the school committee can best support the work of the district um so that was really um something that I was focused on and concerned about as well great thank you you Andrew just you know my my day job as a Management Consultant for nonprofit boards and so when people ask how do you appoint somebody to the board the answer we give right along is you design the board for the organization you want to be not the organization you are and the example I'll use because nobody here seems to be in that category is if you're going into a building's you know area maybe you want to find somebody who's in the construction industry or who knows that now none of these candidates wor so I can use that as an example but it it's really design the board for the gaps and where you want to go because if you design the the board members for the skills you have you're just going to perpetuate what what you're doing so that's kind of the professional answer thank you great thanks anything else on this all right well thank you all for joining us do you all need to close your meeting here we do yes absolutely um I will entertain a motion to adjourn our meeting so move we have a motion do we have a second second thank you any conversation related to that not I said the seeing none we'll move to a vote Zach yes Julie yes Adam yay Michaela yes Jamie yes and yes for me as well thank you very much we'll see you all next week than you for coming this has been fun we should do this again let's do it next week you want to propose any friendly competition Tuesday next week correct don't forget we start a little earlier than guys too sorry all right thank you guys okay uh now we are on to more interviews with board and committee interviews so we will begin with the capital planning committee we've got three folks that have applied uh for the capital planning committee we have Alexander Aken John Skye and era smolowitz Ira or IRA sorry so and Alex are both in attendance um and John Mr sky is going to be um postponed to another meeting okay great thank you so I'm going to move Alex and Ira both in all right Alex thank you for joining us since you're on here first we'll uh start with you if you just start start with your name address and just let us know a little bit about why you applied for the capital planning committee uh Alex aen uh 207 cry Lane I am actually reapplying because I've been on it for the last couple years and I've been in Long meow for like 5 years now and couple years into it I was able to join this and really enjoy being part of the community this is kind of my first step into joining the community getting a part of it and being part of this committee so I wanted to continue to do this as I I'm just I see stuff that can still be done and I want to continue with what I've been doing for the last couple years great thank you so much and um era if you can also start with your name address and why you're applying for the capital planning committee yes excuse me Iris MTZ 196 metalock Drive I've been on the committee a number of years now and I very much enjoy the committee I feel well satisfied that I'm making an input and I would like to continue with that Trend great thank you so much any questions from the board Mark yeah I'll ask them both and they can ask answer one at the time El and then I what works and what doesn't work um having more money works but uh that's not it it having all of us kind of um work together having four or five people all looking at different ideas in the budget it's like we all kind of have different opinions of what what we like to see and what we find important and it kind of allows us to kind of all sit together and and make a decision on what we feel is best for the community coming from different aspects I taught Capital budgeting at the NBA level and one of the ways of doing this is to take the uh output which is the cost and over over time show the input of the benefits discounted at the cost of capital and see if the benefits exceed the cost now if we have a request for a fire truck or an ambulance at someone it's obvious that the cost is there but the benefits are almost infinite so it guess approval but the other hand if you want a new tractor it would be useful if we could have show us how much more efficient the new tracker is compared to the old how much we will save in gasoline Manpower and so on and we can somehow discount that that would be helpful not not 100% mandatory but certainly helpful thank you any other questions all right that was quick thank you both for joining us we'll be uh voting on your appointment at our next meeting thank you thank you thank you all right next up we've got the Conservation Commission Richard McCulla and Lawrence kubera I don't believe Lawrence is here okay thanks for joining us Richard if you could start with your name address and tell us a little bit about why you applied sure um Rick Mulla uh at 281 con street so I've grown up in town uh along with my wife uh and uh you know we have 15-year-old twins here in in town uh and uh uh you know have a long history as a a family in this town my dad actually uh was a builder and developer uh starting in the 60s he built and developed all the way through up till two 2000 and I took over for him at that point in time um so I grew up in the luxury uh residential construction in town and surrounding communities um you know so I know it it may not seem like the natural uh fit for me but or uh but I've always you know appreciated going in front of conservation I've gone in front of it plenty of times in La Meadow in the past and uh Summers more in recent years um and I've always had an appreciation for for conservation and protection of the wetlands um currently I'm not a builder per se I still have the license uh but I've been a realtor for 24 years and I've transition full time to that and so you know I spent a lot of time talking about the Wonders wonderful things about Long Meadow um between the school system the sidewalk system and of course uh how we protect uh the town and you know Bliss Park Turner Park The Meadows um so uh I I think I have an interesting perspective uh you know like I said not might not be the most uh what you would figure as you know I don't have any background in conservation and that sort of thing uh but I hold an appreciation from the other side and um I have a you know a curiosity to do that uh and uh don't have really any experience with boards or commissions um from that perspective but uh no I'd like to to build on my knowledge my background um and I think anyone who would if I was ever on that commission um I would have that unique ability to uh you know see from the other side as well great thank you Josh uh Rick from my experience nobody knows more about uh Wetlands law than Builders so I I got I got you there uh do you have any client in clients in Long Meadow as a realtor that may lead to a conflict with the board no no so I guess if you did if you had a client who said i' I want to hire you uh I'm want to buy this house but I know it has a wetland issue uh you're prepared to say have a conflict either recuse yourself from the board or turn down that client uh I think I would recuse myself first yeah uh no I I uh I would have no problem with that uh um you know I like to think that I can think from a central point of view and I I would be able to recognize an obvious conflict uh I haven't had something like that yet uh where I've brought people you know uh or helped people with conservation uh um longm doesn't have that much of an issue as as other right right right thank you great thank you Mark Mr M have you have you spoken to anybody on the Conservation Commission right now to kind of get a sense of what you're getting yourself into well I don't know what I'm getting myself into but I I talked to uh John bresenhan uh okay a few months ago uh there was something that happened in a house that I built uh almost 20 years ago in Pendleton uh something where there there was a wash out and uh and uh so I was called in to kind of help facilitate uh getting stepen Roberts involved and and remediating the issue and you know we're were talking a little bit and I said hey this is something that you know I I wouldn't mind being on conservation he said we have an opening yeah so thank it has it has uh come up and that's kind of where it started I think and and not only that but before that you know playing with the idea but yeah great thank you anyone else all right great thank you so much for joining us tonight and we'll vote on your appointment at our next meeting okay thank you so much uh next up we have the Council on Aging two folks I believe we're also going to be poping those poting those okay there's a possibility that they would attend via Zoom but with connection issues on vacation they might not have access okay so sounds good all right next up historical commission three folks on the agenda do we have them yes all right so we have Margaret con right she's here and then Greg Morrison and Brett lucich are both on Zoom [Music] perfect and just so everyone's clear um Margaret and and Brett are both applying for reappointment Greg would be a new appointment okay great Margaret we'll start with you since you're in person can you start off with just your name address and tell us about why you're seeking reappointment uh I'm Margaret con CN and I live at 66 Woodland Road um thank you for this opportunity I've been a dedicated member of the historical commission since 2014 we have accomplished a number of fruitful tasks including surveys and documentation of the barns of Long Meadow houses built before 1901 and supporting the rehabilitation of the Brewer young Mansion we continue to monitor the street projects that take place in historic districts and comment when asked about other projects that while not affecting specific historical structures may have an impact on the historical appearance and environment of the town we are blessed to live in a beautiful historically significant town in Massachusetts however this does not happen magically or without the care and attention of generations of concerned and involved citizens projects and tasks are constantly arising in the natural order of town life in need to be attended to by people who make the decision to devote their energy and knowledge to maintaining the historical appearance and semi- Rural environment that has made Long Meadow a very desirable place within which to make a home our commission is down several members so I would like to take this opportunity to appeal to members of our community to consider joining our group and help continue our mission to identify preserve educate and advise our town about our unique Heritage again thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today great thank you so much and we'll move over to Brett to introduce yourself and explain why you're uh sorry name name address and explain why you're seeking reappointment sure uh name is Brett lucasi 38 Crescent Road and um I love history and I love the old houses in this community and I feel I want to be a part of um keeping things there and you know exploring opportunities for uh restoration or helping people like construction I I've restored a couple of homes myself and um so just want to be a part of it great thank you and Greg you're seeking appointment for the first time if you could start with your name address and uh talk a little bit about why you're seeking this appointment thank you U my name is Greg Morrison I live at 90 Ellington Street and my family and I moved to Long Meadow a year ago um I'm a his preservation consultant and architect for firm based on Memphis Tennessee and I been involved ination since I was a teenager in the Northeast um but now most of the work I do is in Tennessee and I'm just interested in getting sort of back into the preservation World up here and specifically in Long Meadow there's a lot of really great inventory here I think it's fascinating that like we have so much focus on the 18th century architecture but like now more and more houses are coming of age and how we deal with the the historical aspect of like midcentury houses and all that that's be a fun thing to see how that all unfolds and just want to contribute what I can on that Throne great thank you Margaret look at this you made an appeal work like that all right any questions from the board for these folks Mark I I don't have any questions but I think margar since you're the one of the senior members of the group maybe you can just take a second and explain because this always comes up the difference between the historic Commission historical commission the historic district commission and right and the Historic Society okay um the historical society is a private organization it's not um although it's focused on Long Meadow it's not part of the town government um they have a little more freedom to act as they wish um the historical commission um is part of the town government one of the Committees of the town and um we have more of an overview process we we don't have any money unless we apply to some organization or get a grant um although I I think we have $50 in postage we allow um but uh we more our mission is to identify preserve educate and advise the town about our unique Heritage the historic district Commission um focuses specifically on the historic district in the center of town um around the green and all the homes there and um they they have a little more um clout in that District in that they can tell people uh specifically how to handle the appearance of their homes what to do if they want to do some building or renovation things like that thank you yeah any other questions say I was part of the historic district commission as well I think I'm um aged out you because you only allowed so much time but I found it a really interesting U important place to be and um and I think we are both working as a historic commission and historic disine commission to help preserve long meow you know the the historic areas of Long Meadow both are important thank yes thank you anything else from the board all right great thank you all so much for joining us appreciate you applying and you'll hear from us uh after our next meeting thank you you thank you all right and last we've got uh parks and wreck commission we've got William Welch and Alexandra STM uh Alexandra is on the zoom okay perfect all right since we've got you here in front of us you could start off that'd be great name address and a little bit about why you're applying sure uh my name is way Welch and I live at 25 mbook Road I'm interested in the Parks and Recreation committee because first I'm a firm believer in public service and giving back to the community um I did two terms with the finance committee and did not seek reappointment uh because I wanted to explore other commit and other sort of aspects and sectors of the Town Parks and Recreation seemed interesting to me because I think it's a at a bit of a uh inflection point in terms of some of the projects that it will have to consider in the next couple of years uh there's the middle um school project there's uh Bliss Park uh there is the sort of normal infrastructure issues that go along with um The Parks and Recreation um resources and then finally there's the townwide um survey that you know we need to act upon um so for me it seems to pose a number of interesting and challenging issues for which I feel like I have a skill set that will add value great thank you so much and Alexandra start with um Alexandra strong 678 Comber Street um sorry were you going to say something oh sorry no I think you you knew what what you're doing uh just a little bit about why you're applying yes um so I I lived in Long Meadow for the last 2 and a half years I lived in uh Glaston bre Connecticut before that um and I have young kids so I have um a 4-year-old and a 7-year-old at who's a second grader at uh blueberry and um my four-year-old daughter is um in the uh pre in preschool at Greenwood and so she's been in Greenwood for the last two and a half years and um as a Long Meadow family we use a lot of the um parks and we use a lot of the open space and we use a lot of Trails um it's one of our favorite things to do um the four of us and um I uh really love the resources that we have and I think that this is a a place where um I can bring some perspective as um this type of user to the committee um and I think it's important that we kind of you know shepher are the resources that we have in town um into where we're going I guess um I have um a little bit about me I am a chemistry professor at Smith college um I heard about the position um being available from Andrew berky who works um in my in the same uh Department with me um who's on the commission um and uh my kids do uh the um like the soccer the sports and stuff in in um and I know that the Parks have something to do with that as well great thank you so much uh questions from the board Josh uh just a general question for both of you have you read the report that uh followed that survey you mentioned last year with uh our inventory in town and what parks and ideas we may have uh and then a specific question do you have any thoughts on uh what we should do with the Bliss Court Bliss Park tennis courts which uh I was Rec I recently found out how much we spend on a year I was a little Disturbed uh so uh so two-part question I'm happy to go first or if you would like to go first um so I did read the report um and there were things in there that weren't surprising there were other things that um surprised me a little bit uh based on what I would say as um things that I hear anecdotally from residents as opposed to the comments the thoughts that get captured in the survey I continue to think surveys are valuable but they always don't seem to get the full picture I think from the residence um but there were things in there for example one issue in particular that I have chosen that act on and I felt that the survey was helpful in that regard um as to the clay courts um I actually happened to be uh I just wanted to observe a Park and Recreation committee meeting I was actually at the meeting two weeks ago and that was one of the topics that came up um I think my initial thought without knowing more is that the status quo can't continue and that's really driven by usage um from an anecdotal perspective but what was interesting about the conversation that was occurring within the committee were the ways by which they want to try to capture in a more data driven way usage on the courts um and I think my anidolic experience is one that is shared by many people uh they just don't seem like they get used and therefore I do think that's going to um push a lot of public opinion or sentiment as to ultimately how you decide the issue uh but without knowing more the issue of cost did not come up uh without knowing more um that's my culinary view of it thank you great thank you Alexander did you want to chime in on that sure I think that you know our our town has um limited amounts of space and I think that we should use the space that we have effectively for the needs that we have now um um I we go to Bliss Park all the time as a family and I don't think I've ever seen anyone um using those cords and I think that it's such a central location where there's so many possible uses for that I think we would have to um find out more about what people want to do with that specifically and you have to pay attention to the cost but it does seem like a pretty high cost um um feature of of a park that can um certainly use attention um in other areas specifically um with the like playground equipment there um I think that um another I guess I'll just leave it there you can ask further questions if you want to and have you read the report that was produced uh last year oh yes sorry um I read that report when it came out and I wasn't thinking that I would get involved in the committee at the time and so I haven't gone back to read over it um I think at that point we weren't sure what was going to happen with the pool and so I remember the um the par the pool um at Bliss park or Reynolds pool I think it's called um being um closed was a big part of people um people's concerns um but I'd have to review it further um yeah great thank you any other questions mark yeah Mr TR you mentioned cost and your you know response a little bit so I guess I'd like to ask you first and then Mr Mr Wells a little bit how how do you believe the parks and wreck department can help fund some of the or or get funding for some of the things that needs to be done whether it's through T you know Town funding or I'll call Creative funding is there any thoughts that you may have on that yeah so um in my role as a professor um I apply for a lot of federal grants to fund my research uh Smith college is an undergraduate institution but we have an active research program and so writing grants is a very important skill and I think getting funds either state or federal funds I'm not we apply um uh for we can apply for every type of um Parks Grant in Massachusetts due to the size of the town but I think that um looking for sources of funding outside the town can will be um a lot more popular than chipping away at our budget or raising taxes when we're already getting close to the maximum we can get to there I also think that having um models of local local businesses funding things like um athletic pens for Youth Sports and other ways to bring in some revenue streams for the um programs that we do run as a town um having you know the name of a business on the back of a kids's t-shirt is a pretty low um it's not like um NASCAR size advertisements right um and those types of um creative um sort of in kind and monetary um donations could be very helpful um with keeping our budget up thank you thank you so I am familiar with a number of the different sources of revenue that I think the town currently you know seeks on behalf of parks and Rex I know they do uh a good job of trying to identify grants um I know that they implement the advertising policy on the fields and I know that they wish more money would be coming in than has come in um and I know that a number of the youth associations do try to get corporate sponsors for a number of the different teams one idea that I actually have been thinking about um one that would be more privately driven but I have thought about whether or not there's an opportunity for what I would call you know the parks and recreation community meaning the families and those who support the different youth associations uh start something akin to Leaf which is the nonprofit that as you know supports the school system it strikes me that there is an opportunity there's a need and I suspect there's a desire to do something similar uh on the athletic side um so that is one thought that I've had um as it relates to funding sources and you know I think the sort of extreme position that we're in thank you okay thank you any other questions on board all right thank you so much both of you for applying and for joining us tonight and you'll hear from us after our next meeting thank you great thank you so much all right next up we have the board of registar vacancy appointment um the Republican Town committee presented a new nominee Tracy Demarco to be on the board of registrars I believe that this actually conversation is time sensitive right we have to make this appointment tonight um correct I believe so okay yeah yeah um so now that we have a new uh nomy any discussion from folks on this one uh yeah yeah go I could uh we got a letter from um stepen Kennedy and I just wanted to address it um so that it said that it pointed us to chapter mgl 51 section 15 um which uh it urg us to follow it which I believe we have been and I believe we will um but I I just what it says is and I'll try to be brief uh when terms of the registrars expire if there's a vacancy the appointing authority which is us will app point essor so as nearly as possible the members of the board shall represent the two leading political parties as uh described in another chapter and then provided that a city or town clerk not need not be enrolled and in no case shall an appointment be made to cause a board to have more than two members of the same political party including the city or town clerk um and so what the letter we got said that this was a originally I think the idea was that there were two of each including the clerk was at that time and 20 years ago when we board regist was first put in place that the clerk was a Republican and so there was the Republican was a the clerk was a Republican and then there was a one appointment as a Republican and two as Democrats and so that means that the board has one Republican and two Democrat spots they pointed board I I I disag agree with that reading um and I because and I don't know what happened 20 years ago maybe there was a Miss well actually I should say 20 years ago was the clerk elected yes Lis Lions was an elected position so that so that's so you're saying that he was basically just trying to make sure they were trying to make sure there's it's equal to and two they had to and so we don't have elected clerks so I think that this applies to towns where there's an elected clerk we uh I don't know if Tim's an elected in in a party it doesn't matter because we didn't he wasn't elected so I think that uh our duty under the statute is to make sure that we have as balance as as well as we can so I I'm not concerned that we're doing anything wrong whatever we choose to do um but as I said at the last two meetings ago I think that we should uh continue with our our prior practices um you know this is a the board of registrars is a an important an incredibly important board in our current political climate and um so we have to have people that are that we can trust and that are that are trustworthy because this is an important thing I don't want us to have a town where things go Haywire especially this this election um so I but I think we should consider our our past practices and uh continue on with that yeah thank you and and what Josh is referring to is a resident letter that we received I think everyone on the select board received that letter and so um I is that in our correspondence no because came the weekend over weekend yeah it wasn't put to select board it was okay um but no but I thank you for that clarification and I agree with your reading of it and um and and your interpretation of it as well so thank you go ahead andw I agree I mean I feel like it's given the situation where there's an odd number we' the practice that's been been uh pursued over the many years is as Equitable as you can be basically so y Mark did you have I agree with Josh's reading of I went back today and looked at chapter 51 as he did so I I agree we're doing the right thing and I more folks say that we've been doing the right thing yes yeah yeah I was just going to say um kind of like the appointment process I think we need to with the school committee appointment process I think this is something that we should moving forward um rather than we've always done it this way we should actually have something a policy in place um so when this comes up again we actually have a policy just like the appointments for the school committee but um I I agree with everyone on the and Josh's comments and everyone on the board but I I think we should have a policy so with that I I'll make a motion to um I'll make a motion to appoint Tracy DeMarco for uh the board of registar vacancy um expiring March 31st 2027 second all right any further discussion no okay um so with no further discussion all those in favor all right great uh so Trac DeMarco has gotten the appointment and now oh she I'm right here sorry I didn't thank you for coming yeah thank you and congratulations um okay great so we will now move on to a public hearing so we have a public hearing we have good energy here to present on our Municipal aggregation final plan so I'll give you guys a second and we also have two folks from the energy and sustainability committee Doug Taylor and Bryant Mill thank you guys for joining sorry we're seeing a lot of you lately I want my own watch out what you ask for you know I know years ago Michelle Mar tried talking me to get I turned it down how could you miss this all right let just share my screen on the zoom so everyone's able to okay see the presentation but we should be good now great perfect uh I assume you're from good energy I am I am just want to make sure before we jump in we only need to go to slide I think 13 okay um and I'll grab anything from the appendix below that if we need it no she's going to start at the beginning oh s oh yeah yeah we'll just go through stop at 13 okay 1 got awesome all right this was a packed agenda thanks for getting us on here I'm Alice mcneel I'm client manager on the good energy team we are the consultant that the town selected to develop the aggregation program so tonight I'll try to keep this short and tight um we're just going to go through our draft plan we've been developing this since the spring um the dpu process basically is that we need to have a draft plan first of all that the town is okay with that has been publicly reviewed and commented on um and then it can be submitted for dpu review the dpu has new guidelines out that um should allow us this just happened in July so we don't know quite yet uh but should allow us to get approval in 180 days so that's really exciting um in the dpu space so um yeah so at the end we'll open this up to Q&A I'll also put forth that some of the last slides um we're introducing our product selection options to bring to you all at your next meeting we're hoping that you'll vote on this um so please feel free to ask any questions while I'm here great thank you awesome oh great thanks um so I just wanted to touch on uh for everyone what aggregation is this program um uses the collective power from the town residents and businesses to go out and select their own supplier it's how any Municipal aggregation works except we're using residents and businesses um and we still use eversource as all the delivery services so that's filling account maintenance that's also wires and polls storm outage response those are all kind of the big players that eversource provides um so in this program the supplier that we select will actually provide the electricity um but everything else still comes from ever source so um nothing really changes for anyone who participates you still pay just one bill to eversource um at each month and they make sure that our supplier gets paid uh so just a little bit more about aggregation um I'm sure many of you know Massachusetts has a deregulated electricity Market uh which means you can choose who you want to supply your electricity um this graph is a little bit hard to see but what it's supposed to show you is that Municipal aggregation is kind of the green bars there these are our um CL rate classes residential commercial and then like our L our lowincome residential um these bre classes are already primarily on aggregation in the state there's 170 cities and towns um we have over 65 of them at this point um so we have lots of Consultants who are also working on these programs in the state and in New England um so nothing new but very excited to get this up and going in Long Meadow um I'd also oh not yet that's okay that's okay I also just want to talk about how this is different um from third party supply I'm sure we'll have a lot of questions when we come to launch the program about this um but what's important here is that because the town is going out to negotiate with the supplier directly um able to get really good terms which means you can participate you cannot participate you could decide to participate for a few months or for no months and there's never a fee to join or leave the program um also hopefully competitive rates and we have the opportunity to add additional recks um to our own Supply I'd also just note um that because eversource is still running all the delivery services things like low-income discounts budget billing and net metering if you have solar on your home are still calcul ated the exact same way nothing changes for them awesome thanks um so just a little background before we get into the actual public hearing on the plan um so we met with the doar which is the Department of energy resources um earlier in August and we gave them the rundown of our plan of course they have best practices and principles that they reviewed with us um so we feel we're we're well equipped and uh they gave us our kind of like consultation certificate so they approved approve um and then actually September 3rd a few weeks ago we started the public review which basically just means the plan has been available um we've also done some other Outreach to let people know how to review this plan but ultimately today's public hearing is probably the first people are really getting involved in this but it is active um on our program website on the municipal site and hard copies are also available awesome so um tonight we'll do the public hearing we'll take questions happy to take comments um we also have an online form that you can complete um any Resident can review this plan and submit questions and comments um and we will um answer all of them and if there's anything we need to incorporate into the plan we'll make sure that happens um once the town is satisfied we will move to submit this to Department of Public Utilities um and then hopefully in a quick 180-day turnaround we have a program that we can take out to bid to select a supplier all right we can jump into the plan um so just an overview we have three big goals of the program the first is of course like the foundation of aggregation which is using the bu purchasing power of all of our residents and businesses um to get good rates select a qualified supplier um and the second bullet point here is to use that supplier to offer alter native electricity Supply this can be electricity Supply that's just as whatever Source provides which includes 62% renewable energy um all the way up to 100% so we'll talk about some of those product options in a minute um and then the final goal is of course just to give people more options they don't have to participate we'll talk about volunteer participation later um but yes so these are our goals going forward now we can look at what it will look like to actually participate in this program when it launches we can go to the next that's okay um so the way we like to think about it is um when the program launches long metal Community electricity will become eversource Supply uh the default Supply so if you were to move into town or come off of a third party supplier what would happen right now is you automatically get a signed eversource so if you either moved into town or came off of third party supply um um at the time of launch you'd be moved on to our program's aggregation um when we launch the program everyone who is on eversource for their supply pretty much everyone has them for their delivery services um they're eligible I'll not eligible to be automatically enrolled they of course will have a 30-day consideration period during this period they'll be notified by letter we'll have our public meetings um and then ultimately they'll have a couple different ways that they can choose to to participate in the program or not participate in the program um for accessibility reasons we have online versions via phone as well as a opt out card that we actually mail with the with the letter um so people can opt out in a couple different ways um and we try to attract a lot of attention around that period have public meetings attend publicboard meetings um to let people ask their questions if anyone has already chosen their electricity supplier so they have a third party supplier um they're not eligible to be automatically enrolled but they absolutely can participate they just have to affirmatively decide that um and I'll just note again that eversource like nothing changes with accounts when we enroll them in a program it just means at the very bottom of the bill where we talk about Supply you'll see Long Meadow Community electricity instead of eversource just as you would really any third party supplier great so we're going to talk about two product Suites um some of our first consultations it seems like we're leaning toward suite number one but we'd like to talk about both of them have you guys ask questions um and ultimately have you decide at your next meeting so I'll just walk through suite number one we have two product offerings um we in this in these types of programs we have to have a default and optional products the default product is basically means anyone who would be eligible ible for automatic enrollment that's the product they'll go into um and for suite number one that's the Long Meadow basic it includes the exact amount of renewable energy that eversource includes um and just to like break down what what those percentages mean the state has a renewable energy standard it's called the RPS that changes each year um and it's a good thing that we're increasing how much of electricity generation has to come from these renewable sources there's lots of different classes within renewable energy but for the sake of this we're calling it 62% is their total for 2024 that the state requires anyone eversource me you know National Grid has to uh provide so in this Suite the basic just includes what's required 62% um and then we'll have an optional product which includes extra Rex uh to reach 100 so 62% is our base and then we we would have an extra 38% to get us to 100% um this is an optional product so people could opt into it they would have to affirmatively say I want this of course there's a higher price you pay a premium um to add Rex into your supply um so for the most part people would get this letter and 30 days before the program starts they can say I want one or the other or I want neither um and so that's product suite number one number two uh we actually offer three different products and the default does include some additional wrecks so um quite a few of our programs follow this product Suite quite a few Pro uh follow product suite number one it depends on the needs and wants of the Town um but the default is kind of a win-win we have some extra X we're also not breaking the bank to get to 100% so it's supposed to be a good win-win here the basic becomes an optional product so could choose to up down and get the most um economic benefits with the basic or the plus you'll still offer that ghost to 100% so I'd like to look at two different programs just so you can see what the um price implications are for choosing either of those product speeds so um we have two pro programs that both launched around the same time in 2016 um we have the red line here the eversource rate it's jumped all around it changes every 6 months no matter where you are in the state um and that's why that looks so Jagged because we're looking at years of data and then we have our two programs Acushnet which is blue and dadam which is green um and you'll see the rate changes here uh they went to bid at the same time each time so that's why they're um their timelines move very similarly um and what I want to point out here is of course the price stability that this Pro a program like this offers but also a cush net um follows suite number one it has no additional Renewables um in its products in its default and then we have Dam which is green which is ever so slightly higher than a Kush net but includes five and then jump to 10% um in January of 2021 so you'll see that little Gap that starts to appear but we're talking about t of a scent um so I just wanted to to give you a look of what it looks like uh the financial implications are very similar for both communities regardless of what you choose um for your default Supply in terms of Rex and then we see for both communities uh remember a kushit does not have any additional Rex in its default but of course does have Rex in its 100% product so just in those two product offerings a kushit um still save 21% cost uh against basic service um and in their 100% product with the few people that choose to participate in that they're still putting you know 230 megawatt hours of Rex back onto the grid and that's like 180,000 lbs of CO2 that doesn't usually mean much but using for comparison sake Dam still saved 19% against basic service put almost 5,000 megawatt hours on the grid which is like 4 million pounds of CO2 pollution avoided each year so really simp similar in terms of financial performance um really different in terms of environmental impact and I'll just note before we move on to questions this decision does not have to be made um right now it could be made either before we submit a plan to dpu or after it's been approved and before we actually go out to bid we of course need to know before we go out to bid but those are kind of our two um injection points that we can can make this decision all right great thank you so much um Josh uh why doesn't sweet one have standard as a a mid-tier option um so we kind of find that people are one or the other we either find that people we used to have a 50% product so our full products we use used to be a basic a standard maybe 10 15% a 50% and 100 because our um RPS for 2024 is 60 and I think will'll reach 75% by 2027 um if you add really anything more than 10 15% you're going to hit 100 by 20 28 like really quick so um we actually find that if people want to jump to 100 they're going to do it um we can totally talk about having um another option like a mid-tier product we have a community that does that um and we find that participation is like less than a perc um um but if you think that people would be interested in that we can look into it yeah I'm just I'm I'm loed to I I have solar so this won't affect me all that much thankfully um but I'm Lo to tell people they're I know you can opt out but to say at a minimum or you're you're all or nothing right and so I mean not nothing because it's still 62 % but I I I don't know I I I could see people saying well I want to help a little bit that's right 10% so I I think not I think more options are better and I I would be curious to see maybe we won't get much by in but um I'd rather see more than less okay got it Andrew so I'm sure many people um had the same takeaway as I do when I look at this and I'm quite surprised and pleased that the long meow standard going up 10% is almost inconsequentially more expensive or only slightly more expensive so my next question is because I do believe many people would want to do something but you know if it's you know the cost is always a factor and if it's a small amount of cost to help and feel like we're making a difference as a town then they're going to be I think there's going to be a lot of buy into that but then my next question is what do you think the increase would be to like go for 100% for example because you're going from 62% to 72% you're and it's a very minimal cost increase what would happen at 20% or now you're approaching 100% yeah so is there a reason why we didn't put a graph to show what the cost would be at like 100% would it be significantly higher I'll answer your last question first um that's a pretty small percentage of people we would say like of the people participating 85% are in the default like this is most of the people um absolutely we want to provide options for people who want to give a little more want to give a lot more um I think there might be a slide in the appendix I know you'll have to scan through it but just if it's helpful and um maybe before we look at these I'll just say this is a very different Market that we're about to look at this is a different utility um but just so you can see kind of what the span of those is um I'll I'll say let me stop there we go so we just did this pit not too long ago um the program launched in June um and this is their product Suite so they choose option two where they added a little bit of extra Renewables into their standard they have a basic option that's optional and then they have a 100% option so our prices here go from 12 to 14 Cent so we're not looking at a massive uh range here but um especially when we had a summer like we did this year those pennies really add up so you'll see people's preferences change throughout the year and and they can absolutely move that around um but we're not talking like dollars we're talking cents but even at 100% the belter town rate is about 80% of the National Grid right right so it's still a savings right and I and I just want to say we can't make that comparison we don't know what utilities do every six months but yes that's true yeah Mark Ellison just I appreciate when will you know good energy be able to tell people in Long midle what those two or three prices will be for the you know following the negotiation on Supply oh as well as soon as we have a successful bid we've chosen a supplier they we've signed contracts we' locked in rates usually from the end of the bid to the launch is like two to three months so we actually start Outreach maybe month and a half before the program so you will bid the supply of Long Meadow prior to actually getting people to opt in or out so people when they opt in hopefully opt up hopefully will know the prices they're opting in for yes or opting up for absolutely or opting out or don't talk we're not going to op yep all of this this is actually part of why we keep our Outreach to kind of a limited time frame is because we want to come to everyone with like full information rat term and Rex um so they they can make an educated decision and just so when you're bidding this to I assume M which is what you folks do you've got a track record that says X percentage of the people in Long meow representing wide percentage of the energy use will take this and so that's how you know what to offer these suppliers yeah terms of volume and we don't have to get into this if you don't want to but it's actually a really interesting part of meus agregation is if you're doing third party supply you're coming to One customer the risk is really small if I leave or I break my contract whatever talking about you know a bigger a bigger um a really big population that you'd be serving when we go out to bid they actually like that the security of well let's give it 85% of people are going to participate of who's eligible not of the Town um so they build in tiny little risk premiums to you know make sure that if so and so leaves and comes back it's not going to break the bank it's not going to affect your neighbor um so all of that is kind of baked into a rate that the supplier gives us plus whatever we want for re um so all of that's like baked in okay I just want to ask one other question yeah so one of the things that I liked about this was that ever sourced by law must change rebid their supply contract every six months what not just what do you recommend for a length of a contract but what's potentially possible out there and to what extent does the town get get get to say to you we want a x length of time contract because it it locks it in yeah sure I mean if we locked it in before Russia invaded the Ukraine oh yeah and we locked it in for 30 years we'd be kind of sitting pretty here yeah yep yep we did some bids around that time um and it did work out and we did we did bids afterward where we bid a shorter amount of time so we follow the of course the electricity markets but also the gas markets are a great tell for what the electricity Market is going to do um so when we go out to bid we will go to suppliers and say give us everything you've got I want to see what it's going to cost if we add 5% 10% 20% or nothing plus see it for 12 months 24 months 36 months as much as they'll give us we'll come to you basically with every opportunity and um we of course will recommend what we think is best um especially when we go to launch this program bid in the spring and was launched in the summer um we'll be looking to bid in hopefully early well yeah late winter early spring and maybe launching um next spring so it depends on what schedule the utility in is in as well so they change twice a year every six months uh February 1st and August 1st so depending on when you're launching we would definitely recommend oh let's let's hold off a month and launch right before the utilities is going to announce their rate or something like that um but we kind of give you every scenario you could want and you guys have lots of say we will give our two cents as your consultant um but ultimately we've seen anywhere is you know from 12 to in this past bid 12 to 36 months was the longest that one of our um suppliers was willing to go out but we have had programs that have run for four years on the same contract rate how how do we how do we get that option I mean I my perspective I think one of the things that I'd look for is offering residents of the Town stability in their electrical supply not not delivery we can't control that but their electrical supply and two years is nice three years may be better and four years or five years may be even greater for stability how do how do we get that input first of all we've got to go find it but how do we get that to you um so the actual bid is um we have a pre-bid session where we come to you and we say here's all our options here's what we think you guys can go back and discuss it's usually like a week before because the electricity Market's pretty fast um then on the day of the bid if anything looks really different we can always pull out we don't have to make a decision um but if it looks similar to what we the decisions that we had the conversations we had in the pre bid um we'll move forward within like you know an hour or so um and have the contract signed but we will have a couple of meetings leading up where we'll give you an idea of okay here's what the market looks like here's what we're expecting in the next couple months let's pick a bid date um and we'll only take you out to bid if we think it's fit and we'll only take the bid if we think it's fit thank Great Dan um this is really nice presentation by the way um this is probably a very dumb question but I'm going to ask it anyway so on the town side with Town buildings and all the town bills are we voting as a select board uh to adopt this as well and choose which option outside of what the homeowners are doing yep so probably you guys already have an aggregation a lot of Municipal yeah buildings schools anyone that has um really consistent electricity use a it's you know it just makes sense um so you're totally eligible but you probably have your own Municipal aggregation we already get constellation we have a several contracts already for the towns so this isn't changing anything that if you look at the utility bill the electrical bill that comes from the town and there's actually a bill in here Mike if you can go back to go up to it or something and the bill says your your electricity is gener is delivered by it says eversource but in the towns it says constellation 16 16 yeah right there there there's a the this I should get up this one says supplier it'll say ABC the towns bills this now says constellation most people in town it probably says everything Source but it will say long mle Community electricity electricity if once this goes into effect not a dumb question so who's Mak oh sorry I was just follow up very quick so who's making that decision on this on The Suite for the T for the you are okay that's the you guys are making a decision about which products we we want to put into the plan that'll get you know dpu will approved when it actually comes time for the bid um Mark you might actually be the one in the room um whomever we want to assign to be the signer we really just need one or two people in the room the for the pre-bid meeting we could have everyone in here to help make the decision um but ultimately we just need one person to sign and backx back a a sheet but I have a question um once dpu comes back after the public review is over how quickly could we go out to bid after that um well we're if let's say this ends October 7th is the end for public hearing um and then we have maybe a week or two that we actually spend filing and submitting to the dpu plus 180 days um so we'll have that whole time 180 days where we're talking about what we want to do um in terms of Outreach and what we want to you know how we want to market the products once that's actually done 180 days we could go out if the market looks okay anytime in the next couple of months um usually we'll go out to bed like we just had a bunch of plans come through and we plan to B them in October so a month is is like a good Benchmark go Jos does our our our aggregation bids does does our buying power change depending on how many people opt in and okay so the answer to that is no no um so that's part of that little premium that's built in that like safety risk management for the supplier is we could have one person in the program and the rate's not going to change they wrote that into contract in the LA and my my follow question was going to be if it was yes does eversource try to fight back against aggregation and lower their rates for long meow we're we're exploring Municipal fiber and that's something we we know Comcast is going to do they're going to lower their internet rates to try to fight try to keep their customers do does eversource do that or are they just too big they don't care no um thankfully uh they actually don't care what anyone chooses for their supply they cannot make any money off their supply they can make as much as they want off the deliver and I think we all that expains a lot yeah um but we they can't actually make any money off Supply so it doesn't matter if we choose ever Source or the aggregation so it doesn't matter where it's coming from everyone okay great I just want one of the questions that I get a lot is so what got what took you guys so long to do this if it's such a good deal because it is a good deal I think there's no downside that I can see for for residents and when I first heard about this which was at a couple of MMA meetings ago the the towns were quoting that was not to throw stones here but it was a the prior Administration in Massachusetts in the governor's position they're quoting two to three years to get the Department of Public Utilities to approve the suite and this is no different from a rate submission like if eversource wanted to you know go out and create a new rate system it's like kind of they did for our street lights which was killing us because it took so long and they were backlog a long time right thankfully we just launched Quincy's program it was at dpu for over a thousand days um great so it took a long time but but now the new administration's come in and they said Gee if 170 communities have figured out maybe it's not so tough to get that 171st Community approved and so now they're turning them over in 180 in 180 days and so that's the reason why we hadn't done this previously you know I mean it would have been good to start and get in the pipeline but in fact by starting now we actually aren't losing too much time over had we started two and a half years ago yeah go ahead Andrew go ahead well simple question just for perspective so are 62% in Massachusetts minimum just wanted to know how that compares to other states in our region or other states um interesting question so we also run aggregations in New Hampshire and Rhode Island and in Rhode Island they keep it very clean they have RI Rhode Island existing r so that's supporting um already existing solar or um even even the burning of waste like any kind of what they're calling renewable energy they have existing projects and then they have RI new which is any new projects um that come online I think after like the '90s um so in Massachusetts we have all of these tiny little subsections of clean one clean two a solar carve out and um the 62% in terms of how much is actually Mass class one that's really like the wreck of all wrecks it's like it's the new projects that we're funding to create demand for more renewable energy in uh New England I think that is something like 28 maybe 30% I can definitely show you a breakdown um of what that looks like but fairly similar in mass in Rhode Island uh their RPS is 28% so pretty similar to our ma class 1% but we add on all these extra pieces of renewable that we want to fund um so we get to 62% but the ma class one is is closer to like 30 so you lost me a little bit in the minutia but basically does it sound like we're it's about a commensurate commitment to renewable energy among these surrounding states or is like a Pioneer okay so we're like Leading Edge here yes okay the other thing it's worth saying is that that 62% goes up every year so if even if you sign up for the basic this year it's 62% next year 63% in the following years so we can be proud of that yes yes you should be proud of that anything else just quickly so on the op on the opt-in opt out if I were to opt out is it you said it's 6 months after that I can opt back in or no no anytime um eversource changes every six months um but you can come in basically as much as your meter is read everything that happens at the utility happens on the meter read so you could one month say I want in next month I want out um so you can basically change once a month um on your meter read as much as you'd like you can come in when rates are great you know at the program and if ever Source has a great rate go and take advantage of it and last question there's no additional cost to the town in terms of like this opt in or opt out and no administrative cost or anything that the town would no no cost our fee which is 001 cents per kilowatt hour is baked into the rate so if the rate is 10 cents it would be 10.1 with our admin fee so we collect that off of the usage so it's their advantage to get more people in town y to sign up for it y yeah and I'm fully in support of this I think this just makes so much sense it it helps us towards our climate goals it's makes sense financially for our pocketbooks uh and it's just I think I think Mark I mean what marks that kind of long overdue um but you know glad that we're doing it and I think Josh and you know a couple of others have alluded to how this conversation kind of it seems you know there's some similarities with our conversation with Municipal fiber as well and they actually work together here in a way Mark asked a question of Fiers spring at the last meeting about how bonds could be backed and if we have our own Municipal aggregation that is actually a way uh to finance through mck and you know you uh have backing for our fiber bond so actually you know this this was not some kind of grand strategy but this kind of seems like it might be working out pretty well that these two initiatives are happening um at the same time um I I guess a question procedurally I had was you mentioned that you would like for us to vote at our next meeting um and so our next meeting is October 7th and I think public comment ends October 7th so just want to make sure that's appropriate for us to do to have this vote before Pro you know public comment officially ends we were timing it to end um with your meeting so okay got it so 700 p.m. October 7th yeah yeah okay yeah no that that's great that's fine and then um and then sorry and I think I maybe uh misunderstood one point so you you said that there were two different junctures which we could have this vote so if we do not want to vote on October 7th and there is a later date that we could vote is that correct that's for the site yes um so we would move forward then if we didn't want to vote now we would move forward in the plan which basically gives us flexibility to do either option and we would need to then make a decision after it's been approved and out of dpu before we can go to bid um so those are our two points we can make a decision okay great thank you we still have to vote on some AG aggregation as a whole though right on 7eventh is that what I we're just voting on which product right voting on which products we we would want approval of course that this is good to go to dpu that would be postp public comment um and if we do have any comments or questions that we feel we need to address in the plan we'd redraft the plan and then bring it back to yeah all right great this is a rate submission that has to go to the dpu so we basically have to agree on the rate that we're submitting for their submitting on ourf great anything else thank you very sorry energy energy and sustainability folks I just got one little thing you know yesterday we had a booth at the pride event and the and put out a pad to have people write down questions if they had questions about this I don't know if you guys are interested here there's only like three answers here they gave but just to get an idea of what the public is asking out there you want to hear yeah goe please all right first one it was uh is there a way to get a clearer about possible savings on electrical supply rates so I guess you're going to know that people are going to be wanting to know right away what how much money they're going to be saving I'm sure that's going to be like a main question for like everybody you know yeah yeah I can just speak a little bit to um what we see in our other programs typically we're looking at a 5 to 10% savings it's it's not landfall it's you know on on your bill maybe five bucks um it totally depends of course on the season that the utility is in utility typically you know we see summer winter rates we they have changed when they go out to bid so they're breaking up the two most expensive months in the year January and February so um we don't quite know what that's going to look like yet we don't expect it to be as volatile um but of course we never guarantee any any um concrete savings cuz we don't know what the utility will be okay next sorry just one real quick um I think one of the things to answer that is what happens after you go out to bid and then you start notifying the residents the belter town postcard kind of summarizes what would happen similarly here in Long Meadow and it shows the users what their savings would Oh I thought there was one that showed it well you do a PO on the postcard you show people what their options are so they can really get an idea on what their savings could be yep okay another one was uh how many communities around Mass have these plans and how many of them have discontinued them oh actually none none are disc continue we've got 170 in the state and the last one was they somebody wanted more clarity on how this will work with people that have solar panels and if they have locked in contracts or if they're a Solar Company or whatever sure yep so net metering if it's through ever Source if they have solar that it's being metered on their home that doesn't affect it at all um if you create more more than you use um and you usually get compensated for that it's calculated still based on eversource's basic service rate so it's the exact same that they would be compensated if they were on eversource um that's good if they participate in community shared solder so it's not on their home but they get the benefits of it that's totally fine um the only thing in terms of a locked in contract if they have a thirdparty supplier um that provides them Rex they would need to you know of course evaluate if there's cancellation fees but they would need to leave them to join our supply I think Brian that's a I unfortunately read a lot of solar contracts I think what that question is probably about is there are people who lease panels and put made of 20 on the roof and they pay for every megawatt hour that comes down so I don't think this that that contract is between the panels and your house although it does then go out too so it's probably more a complex answer but I think that you're you're paying a certain amount out and it's uh they're all over the place but I so I don't know how that would affect it but that's that's probably what that question is to because you wouldn't have a locked in contract otherwise it's just the easiest way we explain it like to Residents I mean we wouldn't get into this in the public meetings but is we show them a bill and I can tell you if I can tell you based on what your bill looks like if it's going to impact you and for the most part it's the supplier section if your net metering shows up on your eversource bill you're good it's not going to be it's not going to be effective some some people get bills from Tesla for instance so I I don't think that I think that's a totally separate thing but I may be wrong but that that's what my my guess would be yeah great thanks anything else all right yeah great thank you wonderful presentation thank you so much for being here yeah I really appreciate it and energy sustainability folks thank you all for being here as well all right great thank thank so much all right um okay so next we've got select board comments um got a few comments about events past and future um last week we had a wonderful 911 um event over at the long meal fire department hosted by the fire department and the police department I want to thank them for always putting on um a a great event to remember uh that day uh 23 years ago um and also uh we were invited to attend an event at Lya uh another 911 event and I want to thank them again for inviting us and making us a part uh of that great event um last week Fiers spring folks uh we talked about a community event where uh people would have a chance in the community to come and hear Fiers Springs pres presentation and ask them questions that will be on October 9th at the adult center um at 6:00 p.m. so uh we'll be publicizing that more but that'll be a chance for the town to come and talk to fibers spring fibers spring had a booth at Pride yesterday and they had a lot of folks stop by and ask questions so that was great um stores library is uh doing a like their biggest fundraiser of the year which is the weekend of September 27th um it's their book sale at the community house um and the funds raised from this go a long way in funding all of their uh Library programming throughout the year so this is really really important uh but that is September 27th uh that weekend and then they have one more drive-through book drop off this Saturday from 10: to 2: um and then also forgot to mention that yesterday was long metal Pride uh it was a great event I think that the organizers Nate Munich and Elizabeth Morgan mentioned and a big thank you to them they mentioned that the number of booths increased by 50% from last year to this year um and so that takes a lot of volunteers a lot of different folks um you know working hard to to put that to put that to put that together um and so uh I want to thank everyone involved um uh that you know that helped out Josh yeah it's uh agreed on uh Elizabeth and Nate and everyone who worked with them kudos to them it was a a huge event and I I'm really proud of Long Meadow when I when I see that that turnout and I think it also makes us shows us that we're a welcoming Community I know the people come in from all all around I saw a lot of different license plates uh parked by the community house so that's great um there was also uh I I certainly didn't know but representative Ash and Senator Aliva presented $10,000 from the state to the pride Alliance which I thought was pretty incredible big had the big check and everything uh I wanted to address I guess I didn't realize how much longer we would go I was going to address some things that we heard at public comment uh but we've lost all our audience uh that that was here um but I I thought that one of the things that brought up the select board or sorry the tree cleanup a separate budget um I think is uh good idea Mark mentioned at our last meeting I think that having separate uh or pulling out of our reserved cash rather than DPW budget in order to uh fund things like that because otherwise it does eat up our budget um I was talking to Lynn yesterday uh that uh we have our we have a planning meeting on the 25th coming up up and uh one of the things that we talked that I suggested to our facilitators to talk about uh have a a longer tree plan because it's unmistakable that we have a lot of old trees that um sometimes when I'm running around I look up and I we'll cross the street like I don't know about that one so there's we're very proud of our trees in this town with good reason but we have to take care of them keep everyone safe so um I think stay tuned on that uh then finally I I just want to I can't speak for the whole Middle School building committee um but I'd like to discuss a few things that came up today um and I I was with uh a few other folks and Lynn was there Marty yesterday at the uh build Middle School building committee had a table of Pride had a lot of good conversations a lot of productive conversations a lot of uh interesting things that uh you know they people bring up points and that's why we we talk to the public um because we we can't think of everything um but the one thing we have I've said it before I'll keep saying it we had a long process we had a lot of meetings and to hear people say that this was done in the it wasn't done in the open or they the public didn't have input it does I don't like to hear it because there was we had specific Outreach on things and uh and there was public meetings but that's people a lot of people do pay attention to town but a lot of people unfortunately don't until uh they are not happy with the decision that was made and there was a lot of opportunity for public input that being said we we got a lot of input still and we talk to experts and and making our decision on where we're going to where we our preferred plan and that that die has been cast so there will be a vote on whether we want to have that or not but I uh on whether the town wants to do it um and so at some specific points on that we heard that the Emergency Services aren't involved that's not that's incorrect I was talking to deputy chief Ry yesterday that pride and uh Emergency Services has been giving input on and having meetings and uh have discussed traffic and we'll continue to do so um and we have we have experts on traffic I know that that is the number one concern we've heard from people which I think I would love to hear more on educational aspects but we've heard a lot on traffic and we have experts working on it we know it's going it's a concern it' be concern anywhere in town so we have to do the best we can and that is absolutely the goal and then the the final thing I want to mention is we keep hearing that there are zoning issues do residents not have to follow the same or do does the town not have to follow the same laws as residents and I think the short answer on that is is yes I'm not a municipal law expert but uh the town bylaws have limited power over Municipal projects one and two there's also a state law it's commonly known as the do amendment that severely limits what zoning bylaws can restrict for nonprofit educational purposes so I think the town has even stronger protection on that but you can only you can using the over you can put in buildings much larger than you would be able to normally and put in buildings in different places Williams is in a residential zone so if if somebody said today I want to put a giant building on it for a commercial purpose they couldn't do it but because it's educational the guidelines are different so again the short answer is does the same zoning laws have to be change followed uh to me I as far as I know the answer is no and we can have I've asked uh Karen and Lyn to to run that down with our attorneys um so we will'll have more information on that if people are wondering but that's that's my understanding U and then so finally we heard from a traffic consultant today uh in town um that lives in is in a butter and there are lots of people in town with Incredible backgrounds and knowledge on a host of topics that we would love to hear from um if we have we s open meetings we have we're going to be meeting for the next 3 years um if people have input I think it would it's very valuable because we want to do right we want to make sure that we have a worldclass educational place that serves the whole town and is everyone's happy with not I mean we can't make everyone happy but I want we want to do our best so um it's uh almost 10 o'clock so I'll stop talking great thank you anyone else Mark yeah I was at a meeting of the scanic Valley Regional Health Trust just as an aside they're doing quite well financially their forecasts for this year are following what they thought they were going to do even though we got a zero we and the employee who are members got a 0% increase in their medical uh premiums so it is drawing down their their reserves but as planned but the reason that I'm I'm speaking today is because uh many people may know or may not know that the treasurer of the scanic Valley Regional Health Trust is Paul Pik who was formerly the CFO of the town of long meow and uh in the basement of The Community House there happens to be a cabinet that has the records of the scanting Valley Regional Health Trust and the question came up is As town is moving to its town hall and um as we're going to start clearing out the community house uh can the town of long meow find a place for that filing cabinet of records for the scandic Valley Regional Health Trust I don't have an answer to that but I wanted to bring that up because you know we'll talk to Lynn and other PE it's not like they got 12 filing cabinets or even three they've got a filing cabinet but nevertheless we' got to find a place for it and I don't know where we're going to find a place for it but the request did come up because somebody in the fanic valley region you know we can't put it in paik's basement we can't put it in my basement for example so we'll talk more about that but that's the request that's come up great thank you anyone else yeah just just quickly um Echo the same similar comments that Josh had said as as well as you benath in terms of the The Pride event that went on uh over the the weekend um you it was nice to see Lynn there as well as other Town's people uh a ton of residents and um I had thought they were actually going to be downsizing but in fact it I mean I think you said there was like 30 more or like 60 boo 60 more booths it was pretty crazy but um just want to thank all the the organizers um that came out um everyone that helped set up and and volunteer and um this is now my third year uh going and speaking and I know Josh has spoken a bunch in the past um in benath and I think something like Pride I mean this this is an event that we should all be attending and and going and supporting our residents especially when this committee reaches out to each one of us to show support for our residents and I think it's important that our leaders um show up and attend these events and um like I said it was a really good event to be at um the other couple events I wanted to say thank you to the police and fire for the 911 events as well as l um you know it's always difficult in Long Meadow we we lost one of our own um you know from Long Meadow Jee roer um so it's always a you know a solemn day important day for for us to attend and and be present and um think of um you know the sacrifices that everyone made you know nearly 3,000 people um the other thing I I I did want to mention as well about a few weeks ago we did a a townwide um tour of of uh buildings this is now my third time uh on this tour Andrew joined me this time and I I think I've seen the buildings just growing up in town but I think one of the things that made me most proud was the playgrounds so the playgrounds as you know a couple years ago was a in my opinion never should have been a contentious issue um it went all the way down to the the last minute before town meeting um where the finance committee um finally gave in to the voices of the residents of this community that um children that couldn't use the the playgrounds and um residents their their children um it just Ada accessibility issues and it took several residents to step up and say we need to do the right thing and provide a space in the community for our youth to be able to play with their friends and get outside and have a good time so I was so happy to see the the playgrounds multiple playgrounds during that tour um it was really nice to see and tomorrow we're going to be uh cutting the ribbon um at a playground as well so um I did want to make you know a brighter note of that project I thought it was very impactful and we're seeing tons of kids um every weekend every day uh utilize the playgrounds um also a couple weeks ago um I should have mentioned last meeting but um I attended the the um form at the adult center for the uh demolition of the old uh DPW building and there was actually I was telling Lynn there's probably about 30 people there um and 10 Tim Keane from DPW as well so this is just one of many conversations that are going to continue to to happen but um it's good to get the Public's input and there will be more uh conversations but yeah with that said um that's really all that I have great thank you all right uh Town manager report thanks I will be quick I'm not going to read it verbatim um but a couple topics of covering in here the water interconnection study uh has been awarded to a Ecom this is to design a redundancy in the system um to hook up either with Enfield or potentially an interconnection with East Long Meadow uh so that's gone out and they're starting their work um that uh uh that was a funding at a town meeting article uh and then the High School stadium field study this is a study for synthetic vers natural grass uh feasibility this was also a town meeting article this was a citizen petition at the annual town meeting a contract has been awarded to Tom Irwin advisers they're the contractor that advised us on Wolf Swamp fields and that has been awarded in the amount of $50,000 and you'll see there's a uh several phases that are included in that uh including stakeholder visioning and interviews with the public and feedback sessions so stay tuned on that uh attached to my report this is more for the select board as a heads up for your next meeting but the shared Health Services intermunicipal agreement has been drafted um it's gone through several iterations uh and dph has required that we do this as an intermunicipal agreement so it's a long document again attached to this report it will come to you October 7th for a further discussion but I did want to make sure you had time with this uh because I will be asking for a vote either the 7th or the 21st because we need to have this submitted to dph by the end of October and all of the communities within our shared services agreement are having these same conversations right now and um as has been mentioned the elementary playgrounds um work is continuing at Wolf Swamp but a ground I'm sorry a grand opening is scheduled for tomorrow at 3:15 at Blueberry and there is one scheduled for September 26th at 3:00 at Center School in the uh rubberized surf ing is being installed at Wolf Swamp I believe this week so stay tuned for a ground o grand opening on that great thank you so much um any comments from the select board Mark yeah I just want to make note because we've had a lot of discussion about it I that the the water usage is up about I think it's like 17 or 18% over last year Ln I think the datea is phenomenal because it gives a good sense of that but I think it's also good be not good that it's up but it helps us understand a little bit the complex nature of our trying to guess what the water's going to be because last year was a down year and this year looks like it's certainly going to be a a much much more productive Year great thank you anyone else okay um we will move on to draft meeting minutes from July 15 2024 any any comments on these meeting minutes all right uh with no comments I will move to approve the July 15th 2024 meeting minutes second all right any further discussion okay all those in favor all right next up the fall special town meeting warrant update so in the agenda we've provided three articles that might appear on the fall Town warrant and uh just wanted to give the select board an opportunity to discuss these articles before our warrant review begins at our next meeting um and so a couple of these you know we've already talked about uh but kind of wanted to just kind of go more in depth the first one that we have is the commercial vehicle bylaw that we talked about a few meetings ago at that meeting we decided to send it over to the planning board for them to take a look the planning board um took a look at them made some revisions and then sent it back to us and that is um attached to our agenda and is Karen jumping on to talk about this one okay cool hi everyone Hi Karan thank you for joining us so late this isn't the last item that I have I'll be St a little bit all right great but so um I attached a memo to the cover of this just to you know in case any member of the public who hadn't been following along um wanted some background on this so I won't really go through the memo with you but I do want to um point out that um if the I know at your last meeting you had a discussion about you know not wanting to rush this and and you would be okay if maybe it um went to annual town meeting but if you do want to bring it to fall town meeting we would ask that the select board uh votes on this being the f whatever you come up with tonight as being the final language for the planning board to then go ahead and set their public hearing date um because they will only have with the reminder deadlines and everything they will only have uh one meeting to hold um the public Hearing in before town meeting happens so um with that being said um I'll just go through there's a couple of uh comments that I pulled off to the the side and at this point this document I tried to keep all the track changes in that you all made as well so I just want to so that everybody can see exactly what's being suggested by who so I I just want to be very clear that black text in this document is existing language in our current bylaw um the blue and purple uh track changes are the original track changes that were made um by Josh and then by the select board at your first discussion and then the red track changes and the comments pulled off to the side those are the comments made by by the planning board and so um there's uh there's just a couple of things that I would like to pull out here so the first um point you can see where the planning board uh made a comment is in um Mike do you mind scrolling up just a little bit oh uh you can go down so that we can see the um okay just stop thank you do you do is it okay if I share my screen oh yeah of course is that g change okay thank you then I just control where we're looking all right one moment oh it's disabled yeah you should you should be able to do it now okay great thank you um okay not used to having an assistant Mike you're too helpful so um we're in 31517 so this is uses in Resident zones as you know the only thing that the planning board commented on is the commercial vehicle language that you were already commenting on and so the first thing um the first like point of information that they wanted to was around the um the language of uh uh uh the weight of the vehicle that the uh the sorry the select board was originally suggesting could be parked in the driveway so um I think uh originally here um there maybe have been some discussion of way in the select board decided to remove that the planning board liked the idea of having qualification of weight on there so that we didn't you know we weren't accidentally allowing tractor trailers for example um in someone's parking uh in someone's driveway um but they did want to limit it to class one or class two as defined by the Federal Highway Administration I believe that your last meeting J showed that um uh graphic uh that was by the Federal Highway Administration that had the different classes of vehicles um uh listed in there class one and class two are considered uh like quote light to duty vehicles and um Class 2 goes up to 10,000 lb um but I I believe that the definition itself is more than weight it's also meant to it's meant to Encompass also the vehicle type so um the this is actually the point of where the planning board had the longest conversation um there are many members of that board who are more knowledgeable about vehicles and I am and they pointed out that um uh 6,000 pounds which I think is the limit of class one and that is that that number that the select board originally had set as that bottom limit um and later on in the same section c here to be part to the rear of this uh straight line and we'll get to that in a second 6,000 lb is actually like less than many of the commercial passenger um SUVs way at this time so if if we were to uh limit um uh vehicles to weighing 6,000 lb in order to be parked in a certain area of the driveway we would essentially be saying passenger vehicles non-commercial types of the same vehicle versus the same vehicle that has a commercial plate couldn't be parked in the same location and there doesn't seem like a real uh a real like Public Safety reason to justify that I do know that the weight limit was to try and um uh just try and preserve Sidelines that gets at the bottom of section c here so um uh for example Crystal and the planning board you know was pointing out that Jeeps now and um you know Common SUV models that we see driving around Long mow all the time they they weigh about 6,500 lb um but that's what for suggested class one or class two vehicles in there also because of course the CT enforcement officers are not going keep weighing Vehicles themselves so being uh limiting it to to types of vehicles rather than like weight of vehicles seems more appropriate so that's the first suggestion um then the next suggestion that they made in the same section here um is again striking that that Clause um that says that weigh more than 6,000 PB um so that there's no uh limit there and instead the way that the sentence now reads if you take out that that strike through commercial vehicles as a whole must be part to the rear of the street line um they struck out setep back back here uh and um the reason there is because uh the street line um and this is a conversation that Josh and I have had uh the street line is the uh the end of the RightWay and the start of private property so essentially the way that the planning board has redrafted the sentence it's saying that commercial vehicles can't be parked on the sidewalk they can't be parked on the road they have to be parked directly in the drive way but it's not requiring them to be parked all the way to the back of the streets that back line which is um uh 40 ft from the right of way in the residence one and residence 2 districts um and the reason that they uh they're also interested in in safety and preserving Sidelines and everything like that but the reason that they ultimately ended up making this recommendation is because in much of the R1 District so that uh you're probably familiar with this but that's like a good amount of town um where uh properties are denser um often times the perk the the garages are closer to the street line than 40 ft so actually the street setback line goes behind the garage and so in those cases if any of those um homeowners or property you know renters were parking the commercial vehicle there they wouldn't be able to actually use their spway for the commercial vehicle because they couldn't Gets behind the 40 foot line um the 40ft street step back line so um in order to be Equitable to all residents uh driving commercial vehicles they're they're recommending that change of language um and I I did see this is the most complicated uh area where they have made suggestions here so I did see I forgot one thing too um they have uh added the word registered commercial vehicle in that first sentence so the par of no more than one class one or Class 2 registered commercial vehicle um I know that there was back and forth about the difference between registered and in active use with Josh's original draft here um the they discussed both um and they um had preferred the word registered because it entails a time limit of two years and it's difficult to know you know it would be difficult to prove that something was or was not in active use quote un quote within just a year's time or something like that so um that's the first Clause that the planning board amended and there's just one other I believe on the next oh actually that was it that's that's the uh um the totality of their comments here so again the way that the planning board I believe the sentiment from the select board was that um you know this was a change that you were interested in initiating you were inviting the planning board to review your proposed changes and make some comments back so that's how the planning board is viewing doing this um and ultimately it's the select board's uh proposal however so um again whatever you would decide uh if you're ready to decide on any language tonight whether it's taking the planning board suggestions continuing to amend it Etc um we just need to know tonight if you wanted to move forward to Ang uh sorry special call Town Meeting great thank you so much Karen uh Josh I'm not saying this because this is 10:20 at night but I I would like to take more time on this um I I'm really glad that the planning board pitched in on this I I think that it's uh really helpful especially the uh ra1 and ra2 uh discussion um that's something that I guess when I was thinking about this I was more thinking of my street and not uh all the streets and so I'm really glad that that was um that experience was brought in um but I but I want to talk more about it and and think more about this and I I feel like if we brought this to the fall town meeting it's going to be a bit rushed um and so I I'm not ready I don't want to do it half cooked and I I'd like to talk more um I I'll go to a planning board meeting I couldn't do the one where this was being discussed um but I would like to go talk about it and put our heads together um is a couple of specific things on it I think class one and two I I pulled up the FHA append index I think those are too small uh if that doesn't include pickup trucks um I think that it it's silly to have a commercial bylaw where we don't include pickup trucks uh so that's my first issue and then second I I really as I said I think that the ra1 and ra2 uh Distinction on the street setback line is really helpful and um so but I would like to talk more about that um CU I it you keep saying 40 ft is that because every setback in town is at least 40 ft the this um the street setback line so as a as opposed to the street line right so those are two different things the street setbacks line is defined in the zoning bylaw as being 40 ft from the street line no it's not I'm I'm looking at it right now it's the line running parallel or concentric to the street line as lining up the front of the building right that's my understanding so it's that's the primary set back line no it's the street I'm looking at I'm looking at the bylaws all right uh I'm stopping sharing I'm pulling up the bylaw myself um and this is again we Karen you and I have talked about this that a lot of these definitions need need work this is a little for for what it's worth I I agree with Josh I think this needs some some some more work I mean from what Karin explained and I'm not sure I gathered it correctly but striking out the word setback significantly changes the intent or you know enforcement of of this of this bylaw from what I think Josh wanted or what I thought was at the last time this came up at a town meeting so before we go do this I'd want to go through it and take a look to me the planning board has pointed out astutely pointed out holes in what I proposed and what we discussed and to say let's get this on the warrant in two months I think is not that's too quick I concur I mean I feel like I this has been very helpful but it raises more questions for me for example the street line I mean I think that most of us would probably agree that if you have an opportunity to park it towards the rear you would want to enable that but perhaps make an exception for those residences that don't have it within 40 ft or just Define what the setback line is which I also believe was the in in line with the front of the house um so I but we don't we don't have to go into that tonight is pretty late I mean in my opinion but but one question I do have for you K is did you not get a sense at all then that the that the planning board was uh like thought this was a bad idea it's not like they said hey someone brought that up three years ago they they were generally in favor of it is that the sense you got from being at that meeting I yeah I think um it's a great question I think it's mixed there's five individual people on the board and there was not a consensus of like yes we need to do this now there but there was uh I want to take the word consensus back there was not Universal agreement that this was like an urgent priority um but I would say that I I do feel like I heard from three out of the five voices that they thought it was time to do it and um it it is mentioned in our longrange plan as I believe Josh brought up at your last meeting and that is known um amongst the planning board of course and so that was discussed as well they of course they acknowledge that this is brought up recently at town meeting and it's been brought up it it comes up regularly at town meeting and it's a contentious issue and it's often modified on the floor of town meetings so there's also a sense that we being the town staff and the board should work hard to come up with something that is is defensible and that makes sense but there's sort of no way of knowing how the public the public that attends town meeting um will react to it so that's the sense that I got thanks just make one slight point on that I I don't think this is what came up at town meeting four years ago uh I was on the planning board when uh we talked about this and I said hey I think we should update this whole bylaw but we were I think we were just looking at the definition of commercial so yeah and that was amended on the floor so that I don't think that this issue has come up recently I know that it may have in the past but since I've been in town and when I was on planing board we were looking at it from this angle thank you um if if I could just I know uh that this will not be discussed uh in detail tonight um you know the sentiments of the board but I do just want to give a point of information regarding the street stepb back line so Josh I don't know if the part of the bylaw that you were looking at maybe the definition section um but if you look at um what you don't have to do tonight when you're doing further research on this um if you look at 315 uh 31531 yes a street setback it says the residents A2 res A1 and agricultural resemblance um uh there's a whole bunch of words here um there's nothing no structure Etc uh shall be um erected or constructed or placed nearer than 40 ft to the line of the street or way upon um upon which the lot abds the the what I'm calling the primary St uh the primary setback is uh is the street setback line but that is that 40 ft so the the definition says the front of the house but the front of the house can't be close than 40 ft so that's where the 40 ft comes into play there may be some pre-exist existing structures that have different setbacks especially on the south side of town um yes and that did not come up with the planning board so yeah so that that's something to keep discussing I just yeah all all more reason to to um continue to discuss this m okay totally great uh anything else on this all right seems like we're going to pass on this one for now so we'll continue this conversation but thank you all for engaging in this and I I think this is an important thing for us to take a look at and um I agree with Josh that better to do this right than Rush this so thank you all um next is the specialized stretch code recommendation from the energy and sustainability committee um do folks want to step up here and and and talk about this Mark you had your hand up do you want to talk about this yeah I I I just preview this I I understand where the committee is coming from I was the champion of the town of Long Meadow adopting the stretch energy code and I think people need to understand that from when we adopted it was probably 10 years ago or so the stretch energy code in the in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has changed at least twice maybe more than that so it's much tougher now than it was when we even adopted it my concern about this specialized stretch energy code you know we we we were having discussions back then of would we put a damper on people who want to put additions to their house because clearly there aren't very many if any new houses being built in Long Meadow but people need to understand that if you have a new building code any addition you put on must meet that new new energy code part of the if it's big enough yeah right and and so the you know because we've always wanted to encourage people to put additions on because that's our new growth in our on our prop two and a half base you know we we we ought to be careful about making the the cost of putting on that addition far too much and frankly the the the stretch energy code is already a stretch for a lot of people it requires you know instead of 2x4 construction 2x6 construction it requires extra all that the specialized energy code is going a very very long way and I think we need to understand you know as people of often say what the what the unknown implications are of of doing it before we just do because in theory it sounds like it's a great idea you know everybody wants to save more energy but I think that there are unintended consequences that we ought to understand before we just say yes we ought to do it well sorry let me you guys want to speak on this first here um and just kind of explain you know what this is and um any know anything else you want to share about this yes this is like Mark said this is a step above the stretch code I'm not sure it's a huge step in like you've mentioned the all the codes tighten up over time so that whatever we adopt as you either leave the stretch code or specialized code the those codes are going to get tightened over time um we we did have a look back to see all right had we had this extra code in place what would the impact have been it would have been very small um and would probably still be very small because I I think you have to have a big enough addition for this to apply if we had the uh had this in place um where it might make a difference depending on when it's adopted would be the middle school and the colvest project but I think in terms of the residential area it won't have much impact okay thank you it only really affect anything uh over 4,000 square ft for residential that's good to know so it wouldn't impact people renovating their homes unless you're making some massive addition um so some immediate questions that came to my mind when I was learning about this of course was you know if we for examp if we had the specialized code how much more expensive would building the middle school be for example and then another question is we're in this case you're balancing climate concerns with like uh private development when you mentioned kvest so I want just want to address both of those individually it do you have any sense that the way we would currently build the middle school would that already kind of meet that code or would it be more I don't know yeah so that's an important thing to know like when we're talking about bonding like going to town for $150 million school we need to know kind of if we had that what would happen CU that will impact everyone obviously another thought I had was you know we instead of instead of a stick sometimes you consider a carrot when you're thinking about trying to you know we want to encourage development in our town um we all care about climate change of course and renewable energy and and it's obviously there's some virtuous things to in making the code more stringent but could you not consider we as a town if we wanted to make the special standard um optional but give those who adopt it like I was partial tax abatement to mitigate some of the increased cost that they will bear so in that kind of situation we would achieve what we want from a climate change perspective and a renewable energy perspective but also avoid deterring businesses and maybe private development projects uh from uh avoid deterring them from taking place which of course also enhance our town so I mean I think this is the beginning of a discussion um but those are the kind of thoughts that I had upon initial glancing at this material and I I think at the bottom of the document that you all provided uh appendix a um it IT addresses new school buildings and it says that it would require the same efficiency uh it would have the same efficiency requirements as a stretch code plus wiring for electrification if not solar right so uh you know that doesn't answer the question but kind of gives us an idea of what how that would impact the stretch code but not isn't mention the specialized code is that mean so it would be additional clearly well so so the stretch code requirements plus the wiring for electrification and solar uh and solar so that's why you know it it gives you an idea of what I'm sorry you're saying the specialized criteria would be you have to meet the stretch code Plus have wiring for solar I see okay so maybe it won't be as more much more expensive as I as we might think we just need to know kind of have that part of the analysis I think it may have a partial answer to it and I agree with the Andrew we we need to know the answer to that yeah um because we are already looking at spending a lot of money and including theoretically spending a lot of money on uh geothermal uh climate control and I don't know how that fits into this I assume it's that you know that's the gold standard now for efficiency but I don't know how it fits into this and and wiring for electrification I know that there's two RS that will at least two RS that will theoretically have solar panels on them um I I know that I talked to uh Kay from The Arc from jwa yesterday who uh said that to multiple people but I don't know if all electric means has to have wired for splits in every room or if the geothermal does work so that is to me that the big unknown because it reading the other everything else it doesn't sound like this is going to affect as you said all that much we don't have much land to build on but we when we are one of the entities who are going to do one of the big buildings uh hopefully um we need to know how it's going to affect us okay oh I had one additional followup so it's only new construction so not Renovations correct or renovations than 4,000 square ft it does apply to that because I'm renovation is more than 4,000 okay so for example The Community House and the town hall if those were renovated it would impact that as well it could okay if it's big enough yeah see what this is just trying to do is get everything up to date CU When the state goes uh green and 2 2080 or 50 or whatever they got planned there you're going to have have to do all this anyways that's why they want the electrification in there there not won't be fossil fuels then around anything so y yeah Green energy and I think it's Municipal Elation moving towards that it it really I would be surprised if the middle school is planning on doing geothermal that this would not you know fit that I yeah I would be shocked yeah yeah so it's like if that's already the plan this this is going to be like lead gold certified or certifi whatever it is right yeah sorry just a couple questions so um has has your committee looked at other other communities similar to Long Meadow that have been in this scenario and they adopted it and just mhst adopted recently so we've had uh had a couple meetings with some of their people who implemented it so I'm sure they probably had some of the similar questions that uh you know Andrew made some good points and yeah they they didn't have like it was mention of a new school and they they have a little more room for development but they they wanted to my words they wanted to be ahead of the curve when it came to adopting this they wanted to show how serious they were about and the other question is does this I know Karen's on the the line but does this open us up if we were to adopt this as a town open us up for other um like grants and uh funds that might be available uh with the state to getting to this next level not that I've heard of yes it would um you but those those um those grants programs at least the ones that I'm aware of they also have other requirements so it's not just adopting the specialized stretch code um like for example we're we're a green communities uh Community um that's a do grant program they have created a new grant program over the past couple of years two new Grant programs one is called climate leaders and the other one is the decarbonization Grant I think it's called and um I believe you know I'm speaking off the top of my head wasn't prar to talk about this tonight but I believe that for the decarbonization grant this would be a requisite and um for the climate leaders Grant this is definitely a requisite but there's other commitments that the town would have to make as well such as um converting to a hybrid and electric Fleet example um so it's not just a check the box and then it opens up for GR dollars thank you yeah great question um Bri I just found a thing here on one of our uh papers here it say during a meeting with a Cape Cod Builder organization a developer or home builder stated average home in Cap Cod will cost a homeowner $30,000 more than a home built to base code but in reality the department energy resource states that after incentives homeowner the homeowner would save $20,000 in building for 2500 squ foot home that's the base code yeah not the stretch no that it said the stretch oh you said base yeah and that's also talking about a new construction which yeah because there's incentives and stuff uh that are available to to the homeowner we do have that one new house on sh um so you know we don't have to vote on anything tonight this is just kind of to for the select board to ask questions better understand this uh before we start our article um before we start a warrant review uh one thing that I saw at the bottom of this document is that the energy and sustainability committees recommending that we hold you know two or you know they hold somebody hold two well publicized presentations um so that folks are maybe more informed of this before town meeting is that kind of the gist of it yeah yeah but Hearing in the last issue there's only room for one only time for one more public meeting and you've got some open questions think can maybe not can I say one yeah go ahead Andrew do you think that do you know this this question about how much it might increase the cost of the middle school is that something that you can actually find out or someone oh there's yeah there's no way we'll be able to get the number now yeah that that's what I figured it's not simple that would be a next well actually the answer might be nothing the answer might be the proposed design review is going to incorporate all this already if the answer to that is not if that's not the answer then could be we'll know next fall I would think Josh is there someone you can connect them with to to they can get supply the codes and then the person the architect or can give an opinion yeah because that would be very valuable I think okay thank you all right anything else on this all right thank you both yeah thanks for appreciate you being here thanks so much see you next meeting have my sign ready all right and next we've got the public shade tree byaw and is that the and then we've got Leah on to speak about this one our tree Warden hey everyone hi Leah thank you so much for joining us um do you want to walk through this one for us yeah so uh this is the draft tree public shade tree by law which you have recently reviewed in the form of regulations um back in I want to say April might have been the last time you had seen them maybe it looks like May um and so since May the town management Ken Lynn Sean and myself met with Town Council we kind of you know went through the document as a whole and I think the main sticking point we had had in our previous discussions internally and with you all was uh regarding the fees and how those were allowed under mgl 87 so um you know the one of the big reasons for switching from a from regulations to a by law was um you know adopting regulations under mgl 87 that can only be done in terms terms of um public Shady trees so moving to a bylaw here that would be able to incorporate Park trees trees on school properties uh that kind trees on other town-owned land that are considered within the right of way as a public Shad Tre and then also um you know it provides a bit more of formality and then there have been written Provisions within the draft F that then state that the tree Warden has the opportunity to adopt regulations um much like a lot of other bylaws in town so um the big part of the um revisions that have been made that I'd like to draw your attention to I think it's page seven which defines the finds along with the uh you know potential mitigation so uh there we go right there um so if you go up just a little bit there's the unauthorized treat pruning alterations removals and fines so last time we had spoke there were concerns on or um you know there's a it was hard to kind of clarify what fines were really being discussed so we wanted to make that a bit more obvious here um you know we called out the $500 fine that's defined in mgl 87 um you know there's also the fine for just destruction to town property similar to lot of other bylaws I've seen it in Wetland violation laws where they allow a f of up to $300 per day per violation um so that Avenue is called out here along with other legal enforcement action by the town if there was anything else that you know was damaged in the process anything else we find necessary to um make grounds for an additional fine um so we also call out Restoration in this section when I think of the restoration portion fall out here I primarily think of things like we're seeing on Long Meadow Street in terms of the L project um you know there's obviously quite a bit of trees that were removed in that area and therefore restoration was determined necessary and it was you know a fund was set up to have that kind of buffer for additional tree plantings um and it allows for both onsite and off-site mitigation for those plantings because we don't know always you know we take trees from one area and ideally you know makes sense to kind of put them back in that area however we do tend to overcrowd and it might not in that specific instance make sense to replant in that location so this allows for you know especially bringing some other trees to town so of course still providing the town with that good but in locations where it's maybe underserved or needs additional um you know shade cover there if you go down just a little bit further this is kind of where we get more into the um when a tree was removed maybe without permission from the tree Warden uh in violation of mgl 87 and the bylaw um also another instance could be for this could be us structure could be used for if somebody were removing a town tree that got approved at a hearing but it was for purposes such as creating a driveway or something of that sort um you know this defined the mitigation per inch so that's where we take previously we were previously calling the spines and now we've moved it to mitigation for removal of a healthy tree uh it allows the tree Warden to Define proper mitigation for those removals at a I think it's an inch by inch sorry the little bubbles in the way so Hur see yeah so we're calling out either contribution of funds or they're required to replant a in um replanting of trees and then in section A there it kind of defines uh the parameters of replanting those trees so that way we're not um running into any issues where people are purchasing maybe trees that are too small that are set up going to be set up to fail or not be able to survive to a certain age I was just brought to my attention at a mass tree Warden meeting that a lot of urban street trees have a um a lifespan of between I think it was 9 and 25 years so it's not really that long um so we want to make sure that we're kind of making this bylaw in a way that would help kind of enhance that maybe we're getting more towards the 25 maybe we're exceeding the 25 rather than you know getting a lot you know a lot of biomass in the ground at the moment that are just going to have to be removed again later so uh you know the idea of bringing this back to you all was hopes to have it reviewed uh any additional questions or need for clarification can be vetted out in time uh for tomorrow where the tree committee is going to review and have requested a vote for support on this fly law um the the Conservation Commission is also requested to review this because it is uh it does include treat on conservation land there might be a little bit of a rub there so that meeting will be held on the 25th and then ultimately after those all all of those discussions and comments are combined uh the hope would be to put this on the warrant for fall town meeting and put it to a ro great thank you so much Leah any comments from the board Leah thank you for doing this this is a lot of what we asked for I I'll tell you that and I'm going to use this kind of as a soap box for my own situation or a situation that's come up you know we have adding this as a bylaw will also imply an obligation by the town to do a lot of work that they now don't do very well and I'm going to refer directly and Leah you know because we've had the email back and forth request for tree pruning you know I I mentioned it two weeks ago at our select board meeting there's a tree down the street from me that fell over in a storm a month before it still isn't being pruned if we can't get that done why are we going to impose a bylaw this goes back to do we require the town to do the same things we require the the residents to do clearly these bylaws are great to say to Residents you can't trim a pound tree you can't cut a tree down you can't remove a tree but if we're going to impose a bylaw and it's a bylaw we have to do it with the thought that we're going to impose it on the town as well as on the res resents and if we're not equipped to to you know fulfill the the the letter in this as well as the spirit of the bylaws we ought not create the bylaw until we have the resources needed to do it frankly I think our budget is woefully inadequate to maintain this Lee is doing a great job in terms of what we're doing with residents but in terms of what the towns are doing we don't have the budget to support this and so I think before we do that or at least while we do this we've got to go hand in glove with coming up a way of do this because you you can't have bylaws and say but the town can't afford to do it or it takes us six months or a year to get something done anything else all right so uh just to clarify uh something Leah the tree committee is going to be meeting tomorrow and looking at this yes um we're meeting tomorrow at 6 o' it's on as an agenda item I think it I asked them to put it on as a public hearing discussion item okay so there may be further revisions to this there shouldn't I don't anticipate further revisions from them um I might anticipate some from the Conservation Commission requesting that trees on conservation land are omitted from this um as you know I I have a great working relationship with the commission however you know they're thinking in longevity terms you they don't always know that the next person will have a good working relationship with them and they uh you know are a bit more protective of their land because typically most of the time their trees also fall within jurisdictional resource areas so they'd like to have a little bit of extra capture on their end as well okay great thank you uh so if there's nothing else thank you so much for joining us Leah and uh we'll continue this this discussion at our next meeting thank you okay uh next we're moving into new business and the Massachusetts hero act property tax AB bment local option adoption um this actually we do not need to discuss tonight this is informational um but we will need to discuss this basically a year from now for um adoption in FY 2026 so uh don't need to discuss it unless somebody has any comment that they want to make about it but this is just an informational item on the agenda okay uh next uh we have the zoning bylaw change referrals and this is the process that we have to follow where we have to refer these zoning bylaw um changes to the planning board uh to continue the process for it to get onto the warrant at town meeting um anyone have any comments to make on this go Josh when we were doing the uh codification to put the bylaws online right occasionally in work in my day job have to look at some of our definitions and uh zoning by laws and I was hoping that some of them would get caught as not making sense when they were C codifying them and I'm really glad they are now being addressed so I I think all of these are fantastic changes and the the more we can work to make these clear so when people read them they don't have to they know exactly what they need to do I think that's that's great great great thank you anything else no all right well I i' move we refer these uh uh these revisions as proposed in the memorandum um from Karin uh to the planning board for uh review and public hearing second any further discussion all right all those favor all right great next y thank you Ken next we've got the center school carnival street closure application I'll move we approve the uh street closure uh application for Center School on Long Meadow Street for September 20th 2024 second any further discussion all those in favor all right great and next we've got the Center School Halloween hustle 5K street closure application I move we approve the Center School Halloween hustle 5K street closure application for October 26 2024 second any further discussion all right all those in favor do road block party application and move we approve the Dober road block party application for September 22nd 2024 with a rain date of September 9 29th 2024 second any further discussion all right all those in favor and next we've got a one-day liquor license application from the long meow Adult Center Community Fund we we approve the long meow Adult Center Community Fund application for one-day liquor license for for October 3rd 2024 second any further discussion all those in favor all those opposed all right and uh we've got correspondents I think I I just wanted to mention one item the pollinator Garden letter to the select board this was an item that um was talked about during public comment by Jeremy and Penny Dugan uh this is something that we're looking into further they made a request uh that the select board approve a pollin pollinator Garden in the tree belt in front of their property and I think we're looking into it to see if we actually need if they actually need approval from the town or not um and so um I I think I don't know if they're still on but if they still are just just hold on and uh we'll get back to you on that one and thanks for thanks for staying on um anything else um on correspondence I just quick one a couple so the PO uh the pollinator uh correspondence that was I thought that was uh pretty cool to hear from the residents I think it's a great idea something we should definitely look into um especially with climate change and you know we see a lot of folks who might be like obsessed with their their lawns um but the Dugan are you know stepping up and um doing nice things for the the property for the town I think it's a good idea uh environment mentally um and then the other piece was on the the board of regist just a quick question I think last meeting um the folks that were here they suggested that they they didn't receive a a letter back there was some there was some initial confusion with that um I had drafted a letter uh there was some confusion as to who was sending it out um my record I indicated that I did send out but it's possible that it never made it to um Mr roges so that letter was then amended to extend the deadline to later this month this way if there was any confusion as to if the letter was received by him or not they had plenty of time to submit it so I extended that deadline to September 26th um originally it was September 10th they did get it in before our meeting so we but but the town did send them um I didn't send it certified so I have no you know like it was a busy week I could have very well printed it out left on my desk and never put it out that might be what what could have happened just being transparent as possible great anything else move rejourn second any further discussion all right all those in favor all right we got in under 11 thank you thank you e for