I think we have enough we have a quorum yes yeah I think we do it looks like it let me run down attendance on roll call please announce whether you're here or not or say yes or say anything you'd like to say Mary mitovich Paul gy here deell here Jack yep maryan Bass here Liz Rory yeah I'm here Josh see you there I'm here and uh Jerry Mary movich is here as well she was waving her hand thank you and I didn't look up thank you uh Dan Shiels I know you're here and Amy lovess I'm here present good perfect Stephanie here good perfect Linda Holt here okay thank you Lindsay mccon I don't see and Chris Silva Chris had emailed that he will not be here tonight yeah he's on the road to Ken yeah I got a text from him he was going to try to call in okay so we'll see he may yet be able to join us I don't know um so let me go through with what the uh the formality of starting this meeting okay uh it's an open meeting senior citizen Senior Center committee is being conducted in person and Via Zoom speakers on the agenda which we don't have any may be participating remotely and the chair will allow the public to provide comments after the agenda is completed if a member of the public wishes to speak please raise your hand in the meeting room or on your computer when called upon please state your name uh for the meeting minutes the senior senate committee would welcome public comments and if there is any further action that is required by the committee the clerk will add the matter as appropriate to the forthcoming agenda depending on comment the committee May if they are able within a confin to the open meeting law respond with information as opposed to needing to deliberate on the matter please note while an option for remote attendance and or participation is being provided is a courtesy to the public the meeting will not be suspended or terminated if technological problems interrupt the virtual broadcast the individual attendees unless otherwise required by law accordingly Please be aware that other folks may be be able to see you so please take care not to screen share your computer anything you broadcast may be captured by the recording that's it okay um first item on the agenda tonight I move my page oh where's the agenda okay first item on the agend is is is here with me minutes put my where I place the agenda but anyway our first meting item on the agenda is to hopefully everybody received a copy and had a few minutes to review the minutes from our February 1 meeting and our February 15th meeting because I would like to uh via roll call um I would like to have those meeting minutes approved if possible uh would somebody make that motion to approve the meeting minutes of February 1 and the meeting minutes of February 15 also yeah what if we have an edit uh Jerry yes yeah I would I would like to um make a note uh the meeting minutes of February 1st um under new business um I would suggest that it says use of an Olympic Village model with activities spread out over multiple sites existing sites was mentioned by I think we should include that that was mentioned by Josh moris if if we could because it's Jack's leading a discussion Jack noted and then I think it would be nice to insert that Josh introduced the idea of the Olympic Village model if that's if that's correct per uh can you repeat where you are yeah so it's a number it's a minutes of February 1 Number Four under new business first paragraph You Know Jack led the discussion Jack noted that he has already received and then you get down to the last sentence of that first paragraph it says use of an Olympic Village model with activities spread out over multiple existing sites was mentioned as an interim solution I I would propose that it say was mentioned by Josh moris as an interim solution y well I agree that's that's a fair edit thanks any other edits on the February first minutes by anybody well we haven't had a motion yet so I make a mo motion approve approve the minutes of February 1st as amended second any further discussion on those minutes who who got who gets credit for the second on that one I do okay well we can vote on that if you want we can vote on the uh so we just vote on the February 1st minute that's correct that's correct because we made we made an amendment to that uh let me go bya roll call my sheet February 1 uh Mary miskovich yes thank you Paul gri yes Deb yes Jack yes Maryann Basset yes Liz yes thank you I'm yes Josh yes Dan yes Amy yes thank you uh Stephanie yes and that's it for voting members um but I have a motion to approve the minutes of the February 15th senior senate committee meeting so moved second second second okay thank you Paul any discussion on those who was the person who Moved Jack M Jack okay no discussion on those okay via roll call we'll approve the minutes of the February 15th meeting uh Mary miskovich uh yes thank you Paul yes Deb yes Jack yes Maryanne yes Liz yes I'm a yes Josh yes Dan yes Amy yes Stephanie yes see sometimes when I do the roll call I'll use your first name and last name sometime I just the first name so I try to keep everybody on the edge of their seat and make sure everybody remembers their full name I want to hear you say my last name this is Deb I don't want to say it um rousel got a guy there you go is that right yes very good Jerry it's not Russell it's rousel that's right all right I passed that test [Music] okay uh let's see next item on we did that we did that uh working group report uh had had a couple of busy uh weeks and and a couple of busy meetings um I didn't have them others did um I'm gonna I'm gonna kind of give this one to Dan since Dan was sort of the uh notaker clerk curator uh of of this working group so Dan I'm going to let you kind of report on the working group uh research of the the docu prior documentation uh which is quite extensive and uh you know just as as a reminder to everybody for a moment in order to move ourselves forward we need to understand where we've been gain any value from the information that's been gathered over all of these years there's a number of documents that do have a lot of value to them um and then later this evening we're going to talk a little bit about Finance uh those are two key factors that really play into how we're going to move this whole process forward so I'll be quiet Dan you've got it go for it great um so in the beginning of time I uh Jack produced a already curated list of documents from the focus from the perspective of the Senior Center focus group not all of which documents were from the focus group but at least the focus group doing all of their work had accumulated a number of documents and and Jack had taken a shot at going through what he had and cutting out duplications or whatever and he presented on I think February 1 during our first meeting um a list of these 33 and then we went through and actually presented a few of the examples on screen so we started with that but then we knew that there were many more documents out there from all of the other people who have been active and so I'm just going to slide down this really quick can everyone see a spreadsheet yep can everyone see it at least well enough to pretend to read the words no you can pretend all right um I'm just going to scroll down so you can get a grasp of the volume uh we had Jack had been good at grouping things um because it was 10 years of coverage since 2013 which we had somewhat decided that the report the final report from the community life committee I think um uh that was really the ultimate starting point for us uh so Jack grouped uh things into Mill and Main um things that were relating to aging Assessments in various towns um focus group activities uh a a general miscellaneous and then he had a couple of documents relating specifically to the Council on Aging and then after the February 1 meeting uh Deb rousel had provided a couple of documents and then we decided to form a working group and within a day or two before the working group started Peg Brown emailed me with about 20 items and and and then I got documents from Amy uh regarding the Council on Aging and some of these things were starting to overlap with other things which is a good thing because that helped us make sure that we really got the best version of the document sometimes there might have been an interim version um of a document and there is a really annoying feature within Microsoft Word documents if somebody has put a live date field then as soon as you try to print the document it flips to today 2024 it might have been a document from 2021 you can't convert it to BDF you can't you know it's annoying so um it was good to get everything that we did from Amy even if I'd already gotten it from Jack because I could help make sure which version do we want to keep as our primary reference docum so there's all this stuff and then Stephanie had produced a few documents and then I had accumulated some which were you know some cases duplicates of what everybody already had and the total of all this is about 89 documents and so the focus group met um Monday a couple weeks ago I think and and then again on Tuesday and again on Wednesday and I can't remember if it was also a Thursday excuse me for a second is it the working group or the focus group I'm sorry working group okay thank you the working group um which uh was Maran Basset and me and Paul and as well as of course Jack who was the original contributor um we went through every single line item and we reviewed and we chose which document was the best if there were duplicates and in some cases if it was a PowerPoint then I made a PDF out of it because some PowerPoints are not universally displayable by people but generally PDFs are uh and Word and Excel usually no matter what browser you have people can display it U but not PowerPoint so some of those things ended up getting replaced so this was the original list so I'm going to close that and what we ended up with was a nice shiny list of 50 two items that we decided to keep and we kept similar groupings uh we still have the top group as being the mill and Maine and there were two separate events where work was done resulting in a offer from a real estate company uh and then there would be supporting spreadsheets and all um group two aging assessments group three Senior Center focus group uh group four is now Council on Aging group five are things that are General to the town of mayard group six relates to other towns whether it's Acton or someplace in North Carolina if we thought that it was useful to hang on to that's where it went and then the general of miscellaneous goes down to group s so I I thought I would take a few minutes to show you some examples of the documents um we have two different sets and you can see that all of these documents are now grouped as six m in Maine that was the more recent event um that really was coming into focus at the beginning of 2023 and of course there was has worked on toward the end of 2022 to support that uh there is an 8 m in main that happened earlier it happened back in 2021 um two separate things so uh let's you can now see my collection so this document is I think simply a onepage diagram of what six m in M looks like that's useful later because Peg Brown made a nice drawing of it where she manually measured and annotated a version of this and quite a nicely done drawing so here we have what a proposal might look like in a spreadsheet format and I have never had any experience in renting real estate commercially I imagine most of the people on this meeting have not had experience at renting commercial real estate nope we're all going to need to look at this and catch up some and uh at some point in a future meeting it may become necessary for someone who is knowledgeable about real estate to throw something like this in front of us and have to walk us through it it would be a really good idea for each of us when we're not under time pressure to take a look at all these documents and see if you can figure some of it out for yourself I I think it will save us time when we get down into actually exploring real opportunities that that are presented um but in this in this particular case you can see that there are two options you don't know from looking at this what the options really are but you can see that there's different monetary amounts involved there's square footage cost per month I think is what these numbers for every rentable square foot what 1950 in the first year and it's every rentable square foot and it's a whole bunch of square feet in a building like you know in the space that we were talking about so you know it adds up to a lot of money every year all of these numbers down here are just the rent and of course I guess we we would pay electric yes at the same time but there were other things that we would have to pay for there are other charges there are tax is there's the cost of building it out so that we can actually do business as a senior center in one of these buildings we might have to rent Furniture you know there's a boatload of things besides these numbers you'd have to keep in the back of your mind that this is not the final answer as far as expensive all right so I'm going to let that one go [Music] um uh I'm just going to show this because it was really nice it really um uh at the beginning of January last year the focus group did a lot of work on getting this site ready for us to go walk around and take a look and so this brochure was available and I believe that this is a scan I made of the copy I went home with I tend to just do that with documents instead of trying to keep every piece of paper um as I already had this but this is an example of some very good work being done to try to demonstrate to the citizens of Mayor this is what could be a senior center um I'm going to go back in time now a little bit here is a proposal document that was from 20 2021 for a different building in the mill and Main complex and without getting deep into the weeds it's typical for there to be an overview about the entire campus wouldn't you want to rent in this campus Because look at all these buildings and it's easily available um there's amenities Fitness Center store you there's all sorts of stuff that goes along with the brass tax of ah here we go here are the amounts we would pay for square foot interestingly it's the same amounts roughly in the 2021 offer as in the 2023 offer I know nothing about commercial real estate I don't know if these are good rates or if they are exorian I don't know if they're competitive you know as a committee we would all have to go to school a little bit on this if we were going to collectively make recommendations to the select board um scrolling down you can see that's a really small diagram but uh now I I never figured out why this says second floor when the text of the offer says first floor first floor I don't know why it said that but there there we are uh our job here is not necessarily to dive deeply into the past but to rely on these documents as reference points in case we need them in the evaluation of current opportunities anybody you have any comments questions so far all right I'm going to let go of that um going back to our list uh we have a number of things under the category of Aging assessments um Jack on his own had pulled down documentation from different towns and he took note that they had been done by the same University of Massachusetts Boston group of professionals that had that are going to be doing the mayard study he found a couple of examples in different towns where they had done studies before that I really think we all ought to look at not today tomorrow but sometime soon this would be a great thing to read because the main Ed work is starting uh at least some of us have received already postcards today from the study organization advising us that if we are interested in participating the study here's what to do um so you want us to read other ones just to get an idea yes I think it's a great idea for us to read those in other towns so that we can become more conversent in the methods what type of data is being accumulated and they've already got their studies out so we can read those and then that'll tune our minds to what are the results that apply to the town of maner um it's my understanding that the Council on Aging has already been doing a lot of work with these folks to shape the study documents so that it is most applicable to our town I I've only overheard a little bit uh believe it or not my wife and I do not tell all so she does not tell me what goes on in the Council on Aging meetings and I don't ask and I don't look at her computer um but at some point I think it would make a lot of sense for Council on Aging to come and talk to us about that before the results are known just so that we can be T better tuned uh to receive the results when they become available um there's a senior center study in Ando that would be interesting I mean demographically the Anover is not like us no um it would be interesting to see what they had to say there you know there may be some interesting things about Andover like Andover is a high income place North Andover isn't and Lawrence isn't and maybe the Andover Senior Center is expected to have a footprint big enough to handle Lawrence I don't know no it isn't okay good I mean that's an example I mean we come into this thing I I don't know but by the time that we're done all of us need to become students I think of of as much as we can get in order to may I ask a question please so you started to show us a couple of things and you said you were going to show us how you made a decision on which one to keep and which one not to are you going to go through the whole list that way or just an example I I was just going to throw examples just so that you could see the what we kept [Music] um in the case of things in the mill and Main that we did not keep it was simply that we had many multiple copies um and we just kept the most current or the best versions in the case of the word document where Jack's copy had one date on it and some other copy from Peg had another date on it and what I got from Amy I actually got a Word document from Amy that had the earliest date June the 10th of 20121 for the proposal from the realtor but if you try to print it it fli fps to today and if you try to convert it to a PDF it flips to today so what I actually did was I went into Amy's document I edited it got rid of the date field and I just typed ju ne10 comma 2021 and then turned that into a PDF so yes I edited history a little bit but it was faithful to try to recreate a version that was the original document and then we discarded I we didn't discard things we set them aside um a word about the storage method right now in my computer I'm going to show my files you'll notice that I have a folder called prior research and there are two folders original submissions and reviewed we started with the original submissions and there's Jack Jack had groups one through five and then I decided to put Deb and Peg under the same general heading because it generally was focus group related so Jacks 33 plus Deb's 2 plus pegs 20 I think that's 55 are all in here uh then we got some from Stephanie and you can see as I flash on the screen that there are documents that pop up I have done the same thing in a Google Drive so that the working group could see everything that I was doing everything was in the Google Drive that's private that is since the working group is not a quorum of this committee we are allowed to be private once we as a committee decide to accept this work I will need to publish that so I'm only going to be publishing what the committee approves to public which I hope will be just the documents that we have recommended to the committee to be public so anyway the storage that I have is all the documents and then everything that we decided to keep is copied into a separate folder so all of the original things are here and then copies of what we approved are here and so if you look looked at all of these and added them up you get to 52 you know 11 and six 17 Etc if you went all the way through there um we have a question over here yes go ahead L hi um I just want to be clear all these documents are only accessible to that small group determining what stays or goes into the database we others of the committee can't have view until it's all been approved is that what you said at the moment I'll repeat I don't know if everybody could hear Liz's question could everyone hear Liz good the um right now today the only people that can see the pile of original documents are the working group they're in a Google Drive I can share I can send send you a link to that so that you can see the pile of the original documents I only reason why I'm asking that is because I'm making notes of things that you're saying go get educated go get educated but if I can't get at it I can't get educated okay and those will be publicly posted and not only you but the the outside world will be able to see them so will the outside world the same time she gets to see it the first time that's the only well I can share with you the Google Drive I just don't want to be lagging because I can't get at it because I'm not somebody asked for a question he doesn't know what's on there and actually I will be sending out the Google Drive link with the minutes for today because it will take me a little bit of time to work with the town on getting all of those documents published there there's a multi-step process where I have to upload them to a certain background library and then either Greg Wilson or someone else with the town has to review it and say yes this is not a time bomb we're going to allow it to be published and then I have to go in in a yet separate step to the website and draw links to that and only after I've done that third step are things publicly visible to the outside world that makes sense in the mean time I can send an email with the list of finally reviewed and accepted by the working group documents I can do that at any time that would be great so everybody has them and you know you don't need to go over them all yeah yep hey Dan so let's yeah let's let's assume now that you know tomorrow or next day when when you get time to do it because I know you've uh put Yan's effort into getting all this documentation together and I certainly thank you very very much for uh many people don't realize how much effort uh that you have personally put into this uh many many hours and and we do all very much appreciate that if you if if you could send out at least to this committee the uh the the link that you've got for all the documents so that if somebody wants to look at some other historical document that was chosen by the uh working group to not make the final cut they're willing to you they want to look at it they can look at it that's fine I think the the working group did a good job on the Final Cut I participated in one of the meetings just listened in um I I think you guys have cleaned it up very very nicely what I was hoping to do tonight was to take the list that you had which which you put the list up in the beginning of the final cut the 52 or 55 documents what I wanted to do tonight was have a motion to accept those documents to be published on the town website for all to see for all of us and for any other resident of the town or anybody else who can get on to it can go and take a look at those Jer yes um I don't know if you can do that because a lot of people haven't even seen it yet so the people that are on this committee haven't seen them so how can they approve them yeah I agree I agree with Deb this is this is Amy I I I can't I don't think I can approve something I haven't been able to actually I mean of course I submitted some documents but but if some of these are familiar there there's two there's two ways of looking at this one is to consider whether we were structured and had a reliable process and executed that process and you accept that process or whether the committee as a whole feels a need to replicate the work that we did to sift the documents and then that makes it another working group of the whole no I don't think I I'm not replicating I would just I would love to be able you've done all this great work and then you send this out to us and we all take time to just read through and then we come back for a vote on the great work that you've done is that what you're sort of referring to Deb yes the I have people sitting next to me that haven't seen that at all and we really are having trouble seeing it on the screen up there um I I think it's not fair to ask people to vote to accept that if they haven't had a chance to look at it no trust it's not a trust issue it's you know it's reality well it's a matter of okay it's just a matter of do we want to go through the whole exercise again with the committee of the whole we need to be we're not asking to do that we need to be careful with that because we're asking to have people have a chance to look at them at the final right the final Jerry up to you so so you look so does everybody because I've looked at a few but not not many but I have to admit that um so are you looking to view everything that has been submitted or you're looking to view the list that the uh working group put together the 52 or 55 documents that they GR read should be moved to the full committee is that the list you're looking at that you want to see those documents okay yes yes so Dan Dan can we make that available so everybody on this committee that can be done all right let's let's do that and let's bring this to a vote next time next committee meeting now keep in mind I certainly don't expect everybody's gon to this take a lot of time if you really want to dig into each of these documents but I would ask the people at least take some time review them so that the next meeting we can actually get this uploaded onto the town website um I'm not trying to rush it but you know we don't meet for another couple of weeks so so Dan can you can that be available uh the next day or so to everybody yeah I can do that tomorrow okay tonight so it's list 52 that we're going to look at not the contents of them no it'll be you it'll be the contents it'll be it'll be this list that is currently displayed of the 52 that survived and all of those documents there will they will be in the Google Drive organized in just the same pattern as I am displaying here yeah am I the only one that hasn't seen no no there's a lot of us on the focus group that have seen many of them because we had we you doing it right there some right but there's a lot of other people that are at large in that that have not seen the documents right Amy may not have seen the focus group collection right although Amy provided probably originally a lot of the documents that the focus group got I don't think so there's some overlap I think the best thing I just want to interject too I think this is a great place for Ground Zero I mean if we're all reading these documents and all of us are really oriented to what we're doing with past present future so I think it's just a really good jump start appreciate the the work well and it's it's really a chance all of us can catch up by looking at these documents some of some of the people in this room have been working for years on various aspects of this issue and people like me who have just recently moved to the state of Massachusetts well I've got a lot of catching up to do and this was a tool that we came up with to help everybody get to the same common initial level of knowledge that's great okay what what the full committe members are signing up for and I want you to understand it in the next two weeks you will go through and look at the documents yep yes yes okay cuz because two weeks from now we need to vote on it that's all no I agree I I have no disagreement I that's fine with me I me so so any other comments on this right now this particular issue so Dan you can get that out uh you know say tomorrow so then people can start to you know take a look download do what they want with it perfect perfect shirt with the Liaisons as well sure okay thank you thank you yeah I'd like to look through it thank you yeah it'll be everybody on this committee not just the voting members get to view it yes yes sorry I I should have stated that earlier I did thank you for bringing it up Linda um i' I'd like to move it on since we're not g to vote on this tonight I'd like to move this on to the uh to to new business um we can come back back to this again if we have to tonight uh but I'd like to move the new business and oh guess what we need to set up another small working group um we need to set up a working group to establish frequently asked questions and have a FAQ page on the website so that anybody in town can take a look because a lot of times people come up see I got this question well if you look at the frequently asked questions your question probably isn't that much different than what's somebody else already asked or thought about so if we can develop the FAQ uh it will help um I think get messages out to people better uh people can take a look and say oh they're already thinking about that they've already answered that that's good I don't need to send an email to ask somebody about it um so Deb um yeah you were going to kind of lead this group um do you have any good comments for tonight do you have any volunteers well I have um I've sent out a few emails and um Liz jur who is from the friends has decided she will help us I did send out a message to the focus group to see if there was anyone on there that had questions or wanted to help with that as well um I was going to send out an email to the lons as well to see if they wanted to anyone on there would like to help because I think if we spread it around instead of having the same people doing everything um it'll make it a little better I also would like to um post something on Facebook if it's okay with the committee asking the public what kind of questions are they looking for good yeah question they're looking for answers answers too yeah yep that that works out that's where I am and I'm hoping by that's today Thursday by Monday we'll get going on it I mean I've already started it but um I want more people to help well perfect so a couple things I just want to make sure and Josh's his hand up just hold on a half a second Josh okay um I just want to make sure that uh we keep in mind the quel uh yes so the working group uh needs to be five people or less um now others that you get to contribute to you know to to help with it get questions and you know any kind of support that's fine but from this whole Committee of voting members we can't have more than five uh on this uh working yes I I understand good long as everybody gets it okay no problem good perfect thanks je Josh go ahead just a suggestion um this is the way I handled it when we started our FAQs over in Newton um I sent something out uh maybe jar you could do this to all the members of the working group an email just saying send us three questions you don't need to give us the answers but just send us three questions you're going to get some duplicates inevitably but it gives you a good starting point okay thank you I like that idea [Music] yeah who was it that you sent it out to just out of curiosity I didn't catch that yeah so what I would suggest is out to the entire Senior Center committee and Liaisons um and just ask them what are three questions that either you have or you think residents would have and it gives you a whole bunch of questions you won't have the answers necessarily but but you have half the battle yeah perfect yeah good idea I like that idea we will take care of that in the next day or so okay thank you great suggestions thank you George um pooping any other discussion on the FAQ setting up a working group and doing what Josh just suggested I don't see any hand I have a comment go ahead um another possible Avenue and I guess this is for um Stephanie did we ever get the senior committee at Town of mro email thing set up yes SEC toown of.net okay that's another Avenue that basically said publish that and if you have questions send them to that I think Jerry and Dan have access to it yeah it forwards to their personal email okay so public suggestion is publicize that in the context if you have questions yep yep perfect um Stephanie is that already showing on the SEC website that email I'm not sure but it will be soon no I haven't looked at it because I was waiting for this to before I started trying to do any publishing work I was going to look at it then yeah I didn't learn that to F until we knew what you guys were doing so so the next uh what happened on Zoom here I'm just displaying oh you're looking all right watching committee page the this little funny resources is the back door is the the the gate to all of our documents that will be published who owns this page the town the town owns it and I have certain editing privileges subject to review from employees of the Town there's certain people that have to review anything I do before it's publicly visible can we were off topic though the next topic was open discussion about funds no it was a matter of I just wanted to the question had been asked on this floor whether there was the senior center committee email in existence yeah and it was a matter it should be and it will be at some point soon displayed here on this page but it would also be relevant for purposes of the fact page creation okay thank you right yep because I know I haven't seen it there yet but but I do know the email does exist uh T Point Peg the uh I mean Deb the next item is uh one of the tougher ones that we will all have to face in the not too distant uh future where there's a lot of questions we can answer uh there's a lot of things we can do we can pull up history we can look at property we can do all these great creative things only one thing you can do go do your window shopping but once you walk into the store and you pick up the merchandise you have to hand over money so I was going to take a few minutes and I know Chris Silva uh was is not able to attend this evening uh he is TR in um he was checking with Town Hall he had a conversation I believe with Greg Johnson regarding funding and it was a limited conversation and and I I'm not prepared tonight because I I thought Chris was going to be on the call um as I remember it was more about putting a line item in the FY 25 budget uh an unfunded line item and the discussion you know whether they could or couldn't do it and that was sort of going to be talked a little bit about tonight but that was a sort of a nonstarter anyway so moving from that we're going to move to uh some extensive work that Josh Mor has done uh in his position in the city of Newton and Josh has laid out funding opportunities things to think about things to talk about he's laid it out quite nicely I was going to have Josh take some time tonight uh to run through it with us because this in the end of the day is the most important thing we're going to end up facing we have to have money that we otherwise you know the statement is talk is cheap that's that's sort of the way it is so Josh go ahead please thank you very much Jerry um all right so I will just preface this by saying I do not have all the answers um I am in Newton I'm a jack of all trades master of none so uh I I think I've got everything you know high level figured out here but the devil's in the details and I will be the first one to admit that town structure Town finances might be a little different than City structure City finances so with that uh uh disclaimer I'm going to share screen I'm not going to go through this entire thing because it's wordy but it'll help me keep my thoughts in order so there are we all know there's two there's two major uh things that we need to accomplish here we need to figure out a short-term temporary solution and and temporary could be defined as a few years to many years and then we need to figure out the long-term solution long-term solution being uh most likely a new senior center in in some respect the short-term space needs mayard is a small town there's not a lot of options Out There Our Town facilities don't have the the capacity to take on what we what this community needs based on the senior population uh they can help compliment it as they are doing now um but they don't have a central place to call home um and we all know that the current facility over in the golf course um is is just not adequate so there's also very little commercial uh real estate available in town uh this was found out very quickly by the senior center committee or the Senior Center focus group rather and others uh who started looking around to see what uh what was available not surprisingly uh the mill is is one of a few if not the only option uh that I think is going to be viable for us um to the question that was asked earlier about the the cost for commercial real estate you know High Teens low 20s is is very reasonable these days um and that's without me even getting into what the specifics are the devil is in the details we'll need more information and and I I know just enough to be dangerous on that front um but it's not it's not out of the park by any means so we know that we need to find uh a temporary location I I worked under the assumption that it's the mill um unless somebody comes up with something else and I'm not suggesting we shouldn't keep our options open but that seems like the most viable so what are the funding options how do we how do we address the short the short-term space needs because as Jerry said this really all comes down to money it really does so there's a few things to think about first of all a lease is an ongoing expense for a city or town to enter into a lease they need to commit not just onetime money but they need to commit real money ongoing each year um and that becomes a bit of a rub um there's not to say you couldn't you know theoretically if you had a million dollars of free cash could you commit to a 5-year lease with that sure you could um it would be very unusual uh and I'll get into it in a little bit it's likely not going to happen and there's a reason why it's would be very unusual so what it means is that we really need to have those annual funds uh available to us so free cash could be used to front load but the town is going to need and Town Council is going to need um some sort of assurance that there is ongoing money in the out years to be able to uh continue to pay that lease so there really are only four options there's hybrid versions of each of these but really it falls into four buckets we commit revenue from New Growth we cut from another part of the budget we make more aggressive budget assumptions and free up annual revenue or we secure additional funding through an override I've had there there have been some people who have suggested that some of our local receipts whether it be uh marijuana money or rooms tax although we don't have a lot a lot of rooms tax here but meals tax could that go towards a lease the thing is is that a lot of people don't realize that seips are part of the annual revenue and they go to pay our annual expenses as a town just like any city or town so those are spoken for those are baked into the budget each and every year so it's not extra money we get each year so committing uh revenue from New Growth the other thing I'll just point out is that mayard like every community in the Commonwealth since Proposition two and a half passed and proposition for proposition 2 and a half for those folks that don't know limits uh our rate of Revenue growth to 2 and a half % with respect to property taxes excluding New Growth meaning and New Growth is defined as residential or commercial um development or Redevelopment that comes on to the books each year so for this next year uh we're looking at $300,000 in in New Growth so on one hand you might think that's perfect it's more money than we need for the the senior center lease the problem is is that the everybody knows that inflation has been crazy high over the last few years ignore that just just pretend that didn't exist the reality is is that municipalities just like any Private Business have been experiencing inflation greater than 2 and a half% forever essentially uh there's been a few years here and there where it's di below that but overall it Trends far above it complicating matters is that Maynard's New Growth is pretty low you'll see on this chart this was uh Parker Street development you know it gave us a nice bump but we're right back down to where we were and there's no reason to expect that we're going to see anything major coming down the line the uh the Powder Mill Corridor may help a little bit it's still a long ways out um even with that mayard it is is it just has limited land to be developed and limit limited opportunities for redevelopment so the reality is New Growth barely gets us up to uh you know 3% % is and that's that's essentially where we struggle as a town to be able to just maintain our core services so that $300,000 is spoken for and it's relied upon every year in order to balance the budget cutting from another part of the budget so this is tough this is very tough because every department is going to explain why their programs Services um or needs are critically important as well they should that's just that's how it works there's a few things to other to think about on that front too and I explained this this past summer for some folks may have seen it mayard is at the bottom of the charts for Middle sex County for New Growth Revenue State financial aid and we've had less operating overrides in nearly every other community in Middle sex so again Manor Crossing helped gave us a little bump but the reality is trying to cut 75,000 or 150,000 from the town budget is extremely difficult I don't think we'll be successful on that particular one so another option make more aggressive budget assumptions to free up annual revenue this one is interesting and it could could be a possibility but it's not without downfalls so every every city or town uh when they develop their budget they make budget assumptions and what those assumptions are is you assume how much revenue you're going to get from excise taxes or from meals taxes um you make assumptions about interest bearing accounts and any potential Revenue that's coming in outside of your property taxes um which are very predictable you make assumptions on same thing with the new with new growth for a municipality that makes very aggressive assumptions uh they can uh expend more in their budget the problem with that is that the more aggressive your budget assumptions are the tighter you have to run your city or town because if any of those assumptions were overly aggressive you run the risk of going red and that's not something that any any city or town can can should or can do so what ends up H the the flip side of that is that if you make to conservative assumptions you underexpanded and you are not investing in things that your your city or town really needs and you end up with more free cash in the fall and I'll explain what that is in just a sec actually I'll explain it right now when a city or town makes their budget assumptions they are the the state recommends that cities and towns maintain between three and 5% of their annual budget as free cash free cash is essentially um a lazy way of explaining it is it's leftover over money uh at the end of the fiscal year that becomes certified in the fall meaning that the state certifies it's there and then it's available for expenditure it sounds kind of funny because leftover money implies that we didn't need it but quite frankly we really do because nobody ever budgets perfectly you're not going to enter the you're not going to get to the end of the year with zero dollars um and you want to have a healthy amount of free cash and one time money is very important to the Financial Health of any city or town so how does mayard stack up so I mentioned three to 5% Maynard's about 4% so they're about right where you'd want to be you can go a little more you can go a little less so mayard over the last 10 years you can see we've been historically you know in the high high ones low twos uh I would ignore the covid Years everybody was was upside down at that point but I'd say that in general this this fall we're probably going to be in that million five to $2 million range of free cash maybe a little higher because uh interest bearing accounts are pretty good right now so here's the problem we could make a minor tweak for perspective if the town decided or dedicated $150,000 a year for a senior center lease it would equate to roughly a 2% or 0 2% decline in free cash reserves so you could go from 4% to 3.8% still be well with within the recommended range of the state no brainer right problem is that mayard because of all those financial limitations that I mentioned um and being on the low end of nearly every category from a revenue standpoint relies heavily on that free cash every fall to address our Capital needs and by address I mean barely makes a dent in our Capital needs um there's a lot that our town needs and there's just limited resources to get there so if we were to push the town to tweak their budget assumptions we could free up that money but it means that we're going to have less free cash to address all those Capital needs in the fall the other possibility the fourth is to secure additional funding through an override so this is always a sensitive subject with folks but I'm going to be very blunt um I have I strongly believe that mayor Public Schools is going to be seeking and operating override in the spring of 2025 um that is their news to deliver I'm not suggesting I have Insider knowledge I just know enough about finances I watch the budget closely um and it's a small town so we have an opportunity and I should say that if you're for any Community if you're looking for a a spring vote you need to announce in the fall if you want to announce in the fall you need to be planning for it in the winter before that's where we are right now so um if if I'm mainor Public Schools I'm already uh building my case right now so I'm not going to go through the entire thing here but the bottom line is that the override is probably our best bet to secure long-term funds for uh our short-term solution as well as our long-term solution and I'll explain that in just a second the one thing I want to the one of the reason I'm bringing this up now is that I don't want seniors being left in the dust on this right if we're not getting out ahead of this we're going to get left behind very quickly because we need to be building our case behind the scenes so that we're ready when any when whenever anybody else goes live and we need to be communicating and working collaboratively I think with both Town Hall fincom the select board and mayor Public Schools so there's a few things that I might suggest on this front I think that we should be trying to secure $150,000 a year in that override um it works out to about nine cents per day for the average taxpayer and I'll just caveat to confirm that I have I'm basing that off of extrapolating data from the previous uh green medal School override part of the reason why so it seems a little strange that you would ask for an operating override which is a permanent increase for a short-term need but there's a strategy there that I think is actually going to be very very good for mannered so I think the reality is is that trying to secure $150,000 a year from our existing budget will prove very challenging if not impossible I think that we should seek $150,000 in the override vote that occurs in the spring of 25 would go into effect the summer of 25 and I think the conversation that we need to have is how we secure if we can secure this coming Year's money so that we can enter into that lease sooner rather than later um I will be very honest with you the challenge with that is that we're going to have to take the temperature of town hall and Town Council because if we were to get money to cover that first year of the lease it would mean that we are entering into a lease where the out years are paid for by a uh source of funds that is yet to be approved that could be challenging and I'm just going to be honest with everybody about that so that'll be something we have to discuss and grapple with as a group so long-term space needs in order to get uh in order to address I I'll put it very plainly if we want to build a senior center it all starts with getting money approved for a feasibility study um the feasibility study done in Andor over was the same architect that I have on my project in Newton BH plusa they've done a million of these if folks have questions just let me know the fire station took forever we all know it it didn't get going until the town went and got money to start the feasibility study that's how it starts um you bring an architect on board and you get going and once that thing once you get the money and you start design projects happen they will not happen without that so the Fe what is a feasibility study briefly existing conditions evaluation report review and incorporate the UMass report uh as Jerry and others pointed out those UMass reports that's pretty much how most communities start their senior center projects uh Space Program development uh so that's where you develop once you know what you have you develop an Excel spreadsheet that identifies the square footage of what you have the square footage of what you need um and then you go from there they'll do a site search and selection process and then conceptual design development and basically they'll start creating floor plans and renderings of what the building will look like basically what you're trying to get to by number five is enough marketing material to be able to sell this to town at town meeting so tying it all together I don't have much left here the reason why I think the $150,000 makes a lot of sense for the short term as part of the override is that one thing that people often times do not think of when they're building new facilities especially when you're coming from a small undersized space like we are here in mayard is they don't think about the operating cost of a new building so the reason why I think it makes a lot of sense to go after $150,000 as a permanent increase uh in town funds for the senior center is that it helps us address our short-term needs by paying for that lease but when the lease is up and we move into the new facility we craft this language appropriately in in the warrant and that $150,000 rolls right into paying for the operating expenses The increased operating expenses of the new Senior Center whether that be staff or utility costs or maintenance the rest of this is just closing but um that that's it and I will just one sec I'm going to because I think it's it's timely couldn't have made this up so to get people excited about the future this was me today speaking at our formal groundbreaking event for our Senior Center in Newton um we had a few hundred people show up uh we've worked for six years on this project it all started with a very similar conversation I had with the Council on Aging there just being blunt about what our options are and what it takes to get a project going questions comments uh Josh you mentioned a little bit earlier that you really expect that the school committee is going to ask for an override I think you said for the fiscal year 25 um do you expect that that is just for operating costs that they can't get with their current budget or is it because of the bleachers project or is it because of some other construction need that is looming yeah it's it's operating so and they're not alone you're seeing it everywhere right now um cities and towns school districts are are hurting um what we did see over the last three to four years is inflation and escalation has hit School departments and municipalities incredibly hard again proposition 2 and a half limiting it to 2 and a half% most commun unities right around 3% if you include New Growth we saw annual inflation of many of our categories at 8 to 10% you get that three or four years in a row and really what's happening is you know I've worked for government forever now um and the old adage of do more with less but at some point what you're doing is you're it's deep Cuts it's it's harmful um and I think what you're seeing with the schools in the case I would be making if I were them which that I'm sure they will make is that many communities are passing these overrides and they're doing it because the needs of students have never been greater while enrollment is down slightly in many districts the pandemic hurt and it's going to hurt for many decades um and because those needs are so much greater with those increased needs come increased costs and you're having that those increased needs and costs at a time when everything you you Transportation utilities everything is incredibly expensive expensive right now it's gone up so much in the last few years that it's requiring cuts to Personnel um and programs in the schools and other departments in town as well okay I don't have a solution but several comments um I like what Josh has put together it does encapsulate pretty much everything that we're facing um at one point I had voice voiced to a couple of people about literally going to an override at this Springs town meeting that basically means we'd have to get our ducks in line in about three weeks and that's not realistic um so whether it's an override for us in the fall or whether spring of 2025 I don't know but a concern that I immediately voice given um the need for the schools to have an over ride and I also agree with Josh there will be an override probably for operating expenses but sitting in the middle of that is an expected override for the bleachers and that now totals about $3 million with improvements to Alumni field I bring that up because I think Josh has sort of stated you know mayard supports these kind of things I think there's going to be a fair amount of resistance and so my fundamental question not to be um fundamental question number one not to be addressed or pontificated upon tonight is whether a separate override rather than bundling with the school department if we bundle um and that there is Backlash on the schools we get caught up in the Flack for that so at some future point if we want to do an override is it on our own or you know combined with some others that's one point my other fundamental point that still is a sticking point in all of this particularly for leases the municipal procurement processes um that have been held up to me and literally mentioned at select board meetings is we the town cannot go solicit a proposal for lease space until funding is identified and identif is more than committed sorry is is effectively committed funding um and if I'm the vendor who wants to provide space and you come to me well I have one year's worth of funding I'm not going to be terribly responsive so there's that catch 22 that we need to find a way around uh I don't think we the town have been terribly pure about it in the past because there have been outreaches without funding agreed to so that's another issue that needs to be addressed here uh the third point that I want to make uh I think we have an obligation as a senior sener group in the materials which were mentioned in our earlier conversation in terms of historical materials was a piece of paper that lists the potential facilities looked at by the Senior Center focus group prior to that Amy uh as part of the COA had also identified other facilities and so forth so combined across those two lists uh we basically have wound up in a point where the only one that's sort of really viable is the mill and yet I don't think we would be complete in our discussions unless we brought that list up to date what are the potential lease spaces which might be available in this community and I will spit out off the top of my head there are probably three or four um the mill being at the Forefront of it it's Central it's space has been available literally there for 10 years the second one is the Beijing school which is an outlier in the town but they have made noises about making space available a third one which was actually mentioned by Chris in one of the earlier meetings before the senior center committee um got formed was potentially in mained Crossing um I have no idea what the spaces cost out there um they're struggling to fill that up they're building two new buildings they have now a commitment for a third build third new building which will be the tractor supply place I would think some conversation there that say Hey you know it's going to be at lease it' be five years s years and then it can revert to retail but that's another potential one and the fourth one which is I'm going to guess a Darkhorse again something Christ Sila mentioned that the state police crime lab on Acton street is what move out whether that's available in whatever time frame I have no idea but my point in this remark is I think we owe it to the town to say these are the potential available spaces and we're still faced with if you want to engage with any of those we have to be able to say we have the money so we're stuck in that do loop as well so those are my comments uh Linda Holt has had her hand up and I think she's going to offer some free cash from the finance committee but I'm not sure go ahead Linda I had some I had some questions um one is we're now in the golf course it it as we put this forward are do we have any savings from vacating the golf course course I mean in terms of utilities somebody else could use the space we could you know the town could get revenue from that space to mitigate this saying no nobody nobody would rent the space with no savings no there's no there's no there would be no the savings would be the savings would be potentially the the utilities So within the council and aging operating budget there's um there's an expense line for utilities and so for and and no one else would ever rent that space so the town would generate well you see that's the whole sticking is whole Sticky Wicket up there is that the use of that space needs to be appropriate okay okay you know we all know that technically it's not appropriate use C and aging there and so the cost saving be currently this fiscal year it's $7,600 for the coa's portion of utilities that's what and then Amy as we develop a new Senior Center are do you like for fees that you that people would pay for programs is that all revenue neutral we're not if we had a great Senior Center we can't make a profit from running better programs that would mitigate the lease cost or can we defay some of the lease costs if we had programs and and not not not not not strictly I mean the only program expense you know if we had we had a space where we had a pickle ball court we wouldn't be we wouldn't be paying the fee to the boys girls club which is nominal you know the charge per hour for using the pickle ball uh that would be nominal if we had programs we can't even defrise some of those lease costs okay Josh in your experience is there any opportunity for any grants any other funding for senior facilities senior developing senior programs could we go after any other source of funding except an override have you ever heard of that yeah so it's it's tough I'll tell you that there there's I don't know of any grants that you'll find that are um that you'll get an annual revenue Source yeah um you can get onetime money the only way that I've seen that uh be successful is uh State earmark grants um we were able to secure one for our senior center project um that actually is not bad because the FK the folks on the hill love to support seniors because you're the largest and fastest growing demographic in the Commonwealth too so there's a lot of Voters there yeah okay so that would be but that would be more permanent construction like buying or or even a feasibility study or something yeah so they they gave us a $100,000 for our towards our feasibility feasibility study okay that's helpful thank you yep actually if we wanted to declare seniors as a recreational asset we could apply for Community preservation money you know Jack you're not we're historic asset it's it's not are we count twice it's actually so here's here's the thing Jack actually raised a really good point what I what I will say is that if you're willing if Maynard is willing to make this a multigenerational center it is it is then really truly recreational um and it does open up the possibility of CPA funds and if we were to do that I would recommend that we look at floating a bond um and and that's how you really Leverage The Power of CPA it wouldn't pay for the whole thing but it could certainly help well again a comment um and this is I'm going to share it because I've been working on it its chance of of success I will announce beforehand is slim to none I have asked Kate Hogan's office to consider pushing Amendment to the CPA legislation all funding of senior center kinds of things to be incorporated into the CPA legislation um my my announcement upfront that that's slim to none people need to understand it took the state 20 years yeah pass the original CPA legislation but if in fact that could come to pass there is enough money in mayor CPA structure to probably cover a bond for um a lease certainly it might not cover um you know permanent construction and so forth good well I'm glad you did preface it too Jack that helped um but so I'm an idealist what can I say yeah yeah no that's very good that's very good and Josh thank you very much one for the work that you did on this um and and for presenting it tonight uh very well organized uh gives everybody lots of options to look at answer the number of the options you know they probably won't work but you know it it saved people from from later on say oh what about know we kind of already s a look at that we need to prioritize them so I'm going to suggest something tonight and hello um let let me I since we're getting near the end of this um yes Josh brought up something that I suspect as this committee um gets past the interim and begins to focus on the permanent or long-term Community is going to ask of us please consider a community center I say that because um the Community Life Center thing 10 years ago that was exactly the path it started off as complaint driven we need a new Senior Center and as we got into the practicalities of trying to address that it very quickly became this is more workable palatable appropriate if we do consider it as a multigenerational thing so raising a flag that I think that's coming down the pipe toward us I agree Jack I think that's that's one of the questions in the survey so uh the UMass uh survey that UMass survey is going to be useful there's a specific question in there that's asking you know what what the interest is in what type of facility so um that's going to be a a powerful piece of and I'll say the interesting thing I'll Loop this back to what Linda was asking about right if Manor were to say let's say that we decided we're going to build a senior center just an exclusive Senior Center guess what it's going to be a multigenerational center whether we call it a senior center or not because the reality is if you're going to build all that facility there's going to be demand for that space you're going to want to rent it and who's going to be renting it nights and weekends you'll have some seniors but you're going to have people of all ages so the the vast majority of communities who built senior centers actually operate as multigenerational facilities as community centers [Music] so so to keep a focus on this for the larger body that's sitting here this evening I would like to make a suggestion that we consider having a uh another working group I would certainly see two people uh who could possibly be on that working group that would maybe even want to volunteer one might be Josh one might be Jack and since Christ Sila is not in attendance this evening I'd even volunteer his name to go in but I did already talk to him about it in the I I talked to him already and he would be willing to based upon time availability uh uh help out I do think we need to have a a working a working group on this um as everybody is seeing tonight this is this is going to be the make a break you we can do discuss everything we want but without money we can't do any of it uh so this is probably the most important item that we've really got to go through uh does would everybody here tonight agree that uh we would need a working group to work on the financial to look at the financial aspects of how to move this whole process forward I can't Define it I I don't yes yes yes yeah I'm hearing lots of yeses and thumbs up um so Josh and Jack would you folks just like being in the Army again now or the Navy whichever brand would you be Vol willing to be volunteered um to work on this uh working group yes Josh well while the while the Navy stands for never again volunteer yourself uh I will step forward okay good good and Jack how about you well the Army probably has an equivalent say but sure you can't say it mixed company though right jack yes so I have to ask Chris Silva which branch of the service he wants to uh agree to defend right okay so um it looks like now we're GNA so we capture in the minutes that we will have a working group uh dealing with Finance the definition of it I don't know but Finance for this project um are there any other issues that we got to bring up tonight because it's now 8:26 I i' like to try to end these in an hour and a half so 8:30 so it to be a magic time uh we go over that's fine uh there are any other issues that need to be brought to the attention of this committee at this moment Jerry can I just add one more thing sure so I will give you this same very brief prep pep talk that I gave our group when we started seniors so in any city or town the focus is always going to be on pretty much anything but a senior center when I visited all when I visited 40 some odd senior centers they all said the same thing it took them forever and the reason it took them forever is because it was very difficult for the group to Galvanize it may seem strange here in mayor that there's there's multip multiple groups you got the counts on Aging the Senior Center focus group you know the the friends of the reality is mayor's not unique in that way I saw it everywhere I went and and it took time for them to Galvanize come together um and start rowing in the same direction I'll tell you the sooner this group comes together and and is all swimming in the same direction and starts really advocating for the needs here the sooner this thing will become a reality um so it's it's ours for the taking but we have to keep the uh the pressure up I think the word you were trying to use as make waves and the Navy can do that quite well we can yeah yeah see so perfect um any other issues thank you Josh that was very good on point any other issues I don't see any hands raised or people yelling uh I would accept uh probably one of the most important motions of the evening if somebody would like to make it um do we need any public comments first who's here in the public do we have any I'll open up the public comment just asking yeah no no you're right I open up but I I didn't see anybody on the list so I didn't I kind of skipped over that good procedural Point thank you now I would entertain make a motion I make a motion to adjourn the meeting at um 8:30 8:29 is there a second second thank you Paul uh V our next meeting will be oh yeah next meeting will be March uh 21st that correct I think it is yes two week yep second and third Thursday all right um roll call on the motion to adjourn uh Mary movich yes yes thank you Paul yes Deb yes Jack yes Maryann yes Liz yes yes Josh you yes I didn't hear you sorry good that's all right Dan yes Amy yes stepanie yes that's all the voting members it's unanimous meeting is officially adjourned thank you very much folks good meeting tonight good discussion