##VIDEO ID:NYQDezGgZAo## e e e e e e e e e e e thank you Mike thank you can we have a approval of the minutes from January 7th approval of the minutes of January 7th 2025 is there a second second discussion hearing none all in favor I I thank you new public business um we have a lot on the agenda tonight so anybody with new public business hopefully you'll try to stay to the two minutes Mr Brad street Bill Brad street town meeting member Precinct one in at a prior meeting David Mills brought up a uh a subject that uh the boards and the public need to behave themselves while they're here try to remain in I don't know decorum I will say what I won't say what used to be the verbiage that used at the Richmond Holton schools I don't want to be offensive but I I made some copies I've highlighted some sections perhaps they might be a basis to get started not the final result but they get started on the efforts that the SL board member knows was thought and I do think was important thank you Bill Coy Ricki thank you I think I thank you thank you hi paper doesn't like I'll give you all the oh thanks good evening Coy rybicki town meeting member Precinct 5 at the last select board meeting the chair asked Rodney to post the job description for the town manager on the town website and encourag us to go take a look at it I have looked at it and also went to the search firm's website to see what content they had there the paperwork I just handed you is a job description from the town website and a snippet from the search firm's website on their content for the ideal candidate in my 30 plus HR career these are some of the weakest job descriptions I have seen why both do a good job of describing Danvers and describing the soft skill attributes that we seek I would argue that the ability to collaborate lead and negotiate amongst other attributes defined within these documents are inherent qualities of any successful senior executive at this level what is is lacking is the definition of the knowledge and experience of what we are seeking in the ideal candidate having that defin will attract those qualified candidates that we seek and will act as a screening tool for the screening committee as they begin to review applicants never presenting an issue without a potential solution I suggest the town amend what is in the public eye to include skill and experience as follows and that'll be on the third page that's in your packet and I'll read it for the public and those people viewing at home the Bachelor's of master's degree in public policy or related experience with 10 years of experience oversight of a municipality with 300 employees and a budget of $125 million the experience with Union negotiations and management of those unions experience with town-owned and provided utilities such as electricity Water and Sewer short and long-term strategy development and implementation implementation for example development of an information technology plan that addresses the modernization of Enterprise business processes experience with a significant Municipal event that impacted the whole community and involved dealing with state and federal authorities and the media an experience with region ization experience with such topics as waste management and Water Resources the other thing I'll mention that I didn't see in the description that typically a see is the ability to pass a background check credit criminal and education I don't know whether the search firm is going to be doing that but if it's not in the contract I would strongly suggest that the town contract with an entity that does this for a living and as a final suggestion uh when I was doing my research luxington had three finalists for their position whose names are in the newspaper we know who they hired but it might be worth speaking with those finalists to see if our position would interest them thank you thank you co and I will um confirm that in the contract they will do a background check of the finalist before they come to us did you hear me yes than thank you thank you for this work and obviously we'll share this with the rest of the screening committee for their information anyone else new business Mark Mr iiki I congratulate you because you're one of the few and I have also gone through the description that it was totally inadequate so thank you for the mark would you speak to the chair please yes sir my uh I have four items that I like to bring up to the board and one is as a result of uh December 17th uh meeting that we had at this room and you requested me to provide a danvers's proposed submitt to the Danver select board Proclamation regarding the current and future developments at Beverly airport I want to report to the board of Selectmen that a proclamation or guidance or on the Beverly airport has been completed and submitted to the chairman for Action need immediate action due to current progress and develop actions note no new legal action is being undertaken that I know of the current status of the appointing of the vacancy on the board of uh Beverly airport Commissioners is still vacant that's been over four months and we need to get that position filled or as you require requested in the past meetings that there be a negotiation to improve the number of Commissioners for the town of danvas so they'll have a representative government in the airport facility so there is a vacancy due to resignation of a danvas commissioner four months ago action of the commission are proceeding without representation we have one individual that comes to the meeting meetings correction Aaron Henry is still a member of that until he's replaced that's what I was just going to add because Aaron Henry has been overextended on his assignments and that's the reason he resigned and he has been a participant right along but I think we need somebody that has the Danvers interest at heart Aaron is too busy for that position town meeting actions in the May 2024 requested that an environmental report be prepared by the Beverly airport to identify and remedy the effects of the on the daners community noise air water hazardous contaminants imposed on dver residents are evident throughout the airport and they are going through some serious ious environmental issues that need to be addressed the last item is not Beverly related I have been interested as a electrical engineer a construction manager and all that on the solar panel array that's been proceeding at the um what do you call it landfill facility I call it the dump and is be becoming a $12 million Revenue Source but we are neglecting the monitoring and the administration of the funds that have been allocated there was $4.5 million in the first installment in 22 and then another 1.2 or 2.2 million doll uh installment that was voted on last year we need a business plan of what that facility is going to be and how it's going to be handled we have an exposure of $ 122.5 million that we need to monitor for the residents of this town so all I ask is and I've been asking for this thing for three years now what is is the business plan and how is the Electric Division going to develop this site after it's backfilled because right now all we're doing is adding contaminated or semic contaminated soil into the landfill facility to level it on the pey side and I'm just wondering what are the plans and I would really really would like to have someone give us a explanation of what the business plan is and how it's going to work and how much it's going to cost that's all I have for now but I would seriously I have forwarded the U danas select board Proclamation that you asked for in the December meeting and I would really want to get that disposed of as soon as possible because Beverly airport is proceeding without danver's input or recommendation recommendations thank you I took your email and forward it to Mr connley for his review as well as Town Council well I think if if I may uh it needs the board of Selectmen or or the select board as you call yourself now uh select Board needs to defend the residents that are being affected in this matter and the thing is we and the residents have been pleading this case for years and there's been no uh recommendation or Proclamation from the board of Selectmen you listen but we need to do something thank you thank you Mark anyone else new public business okay the board will receive a quarterly update from the danas Police [Applause] [Music] Department welcome Chief good evening um I do have some PowerPoint slides here I'm not sure what the best way to people to see this it's kind of a that's yeah they can turn the seats around like this TR seats twist their necks Bo move uh present tonight I have uh Lieutenant Rob suvin is here uh he's uh working the evening shift tonight also uh speaking in a few moments would be uh just attorney Paul Tucker and with him is Sharon Lewis's Chief of Staff uh since the last meeting I want to give update uh we provide this to the select board as well as to um the community Through social media um on November 26 2024 s County District Attorney's Office in the dam Police Department released a joint statement regarding um the identity of four Dam residents who were indicted by the grand jury additional those four indictments uh two additional juveniles under the age of 14 were also CH charged in the incident um altogether uh the six of childs with alound battery on police with intellectual disabilities assault and battery to intimidate based on race religion or disability which is the hate crime statute and two counts of assault and battery dangerous weapon for a bicycle and a shod foot um all six have been arraigned some juvenile court and the uh Cas is still pending in the court system uh some of this stuff that we continue to do as a department uh to address issues is off continue to spend extra time in the Square after school especially during the warmer weather and during earlier relase days um after the last meeting there was discussion about the conditions of CVS in the square and the activities in CVS um so that Friday morning I actually went down and met with the manager um Charlie um he was very thankful uh we discussed some of his concerns and we also offered to work with them to help identify the use that will cause the problems um he did mention it's a very busy store a lot of kids come in some kids are just playing loud and a little disruptive and they respond well to when they Direct directed to behave but there were a couple of people that were causing some serious problems um so we continue to work with them to identify those individuals and address those issues um the Boston Children's Hospital has contacted us and would like to um continue their safety incentive program this spring and summer uh last year they provided uh tokens from Cookie Monster that could be given out by the officers who observe either safe bike riding or helmet use uh about a two weeks ago uh superintendent and Valar super B and I initiate a conversation with mot to partner with them on numerous programs for the uh rest of the school year this includes a bike safety program in the elementary middle schools um currently they're doing a promotional um yard sign asking um art programs to submit uh designs for um lawn signs to encourage wearing bicycle helmets that's been sent out to all the schools and art teachers and also we hope to participate with the um Massachusetts bike roll to bike walk or roll to school day what it is is the schools get together and they walk the school with school school personnel and police um and then next week at damis we'll participate in the legal updates training with John sheft uh one of the topics included will be uh bicycle enforcement efforts uh more recently want to address this before we go into a review of 2024 um on Wednesday January 8th at 2 225 2025 5 at approximately 5:15 p.m. an on BR occurred the CVS pharmacy located at one Maple Street in the Square a white male wearing black face mask dark color jackets tan pant sunglasses and black shoes enter the store brandishing a firearm in order the pharmacist to give them numerous prescription narcotics uh the meal exit through the back of the store flat on foot towards con Street and Berry Street area um officers responded conducted a thorough service with the assistant of the S County service department unit uh and the information the incident remains after investigation by damis police department detectives M state police crime lab and the FBI violent crimes task force now go into kind of a review of 2024 and then moving for we can do qu the updates as far as kind activities in town um so in 2024 D police officers responded to 24, 720 calls for service um pretty consistent with numbers from 20 23 um officers conducted 2562 directed patrols during the year um a directed Patrol is um identified area within the office's uh beat where they um spend extra time based on either past crimes orct predicted activities um officers conducted 544 community policing initiatives initiatives and they responded to 2,225 Medical AIDS during 2024 DMS police also made 100 98 arrests issued 206 criminal summonses requested 61 criminal hearings requested 22 warrants placed 13 individuals in dep of custody and responded to 226 calls for uh mental health crisises some the top call locations for 2024 our top is liby Tree Mall which consists of Target colds Nordstrom Rack and then some of the surrounding parking lots that 9999 calls for service at the mall OT Plaza 376 calls for service and then recovery Centers of America 354 calls for service um in 2024 responded to 1,163 motor vehicle crashes of those crashes 191 hit and runs um 185 resulted in personal injuries 12 involved pedestrians nine involved bicycles and we had one fatal moot vehicle motorcycle accident most common accident locations in 2024 Elliott 128 OSS Street at 128 and then Andover Street at pav uh track enforcement uh D has conducted 554 selective enforcements uh during that during the year 833 motor vehicle citations were issued 670 them were warnings and 112 resulted in either criminal complaints or arrests uh most common violations would be speeding next would be crosswalk violations and the third would be stop sign violations 2024 officers respond to 148 domestic related incidents resulting in 33 arrests we also responded to 105 simple assaults 36 aggravated assaults and seven indecent assaults regarding some lses in the community uh responded to 290 shoplifting incidents uh 39 incidents involved ly over $1,200 34 incidents involved ly under $1,200 we had 35 s motiv Vehicles 20 burglaries of bnes 14 loes from vehicles and nine lastes from buildings in 2024 we had 105 cases of fraud reporters to the police department um some of the common activities are the grandparents scam where an individual receives a call from a third party saying that their grandson and granddaughter was arrested and that they need bail money and they request usually cash payment to pay for their bail um typically once they get that if they do they'll call back again saying oh we made a mistake the bill went up because you were too late and they try to fently obtain money through that um sweep stakes and lottery scams again you know you've won so much money but we need a percent down to process the fee you'll get it all back and that happens uh often and then fishing scams which people looking for passwords account numbers and Social Security numbers uh some of the common red flags that we try to discuss with the public is uh request for payments and gift cards um the IRS does not not take Apple pay or Green Dot Red Dot cards or Green Dot cards um request for large sums of cash um unusual home locations for pick up if they're saying hey you owe money the the federal government will come to you and get it kind of a kind of a red flag and most recently we've seen an increase in use of Bitcoin machines U these ATMs once the money is deposited it's very difficult to actually track where it goes and try to get that money back um discuss a little about Staffing levels um currently the Staffing levels for the D police m is 47 offices that's from the first patrolman down up to the chief uh we currently have two vacancies created created by retirements um of those two vacancies we hope to have one student officer enrolled in the NEC Academy which starts at March 3rd 2025 uh we have three recruits currently attending lynfield Police Academy they'll graduate on February 28th and they'll begin an 8we field training program uh we have one officer who has been deployed in the Middle East since last April uh we're hopeful that should return to duty hopefully in late May early sorry late April early may this year and we currently have three offices on long-term uh sick leavea uh we are currently in the Pro promotional process the ranks of uh s and Lieutenant so back in September the offices took a written exam through Civil Service uh in December they completed their assessment center and we're hoping either this week or next week we'll get the certifi promotional list from civil service and with the assistant of town manager we can hopefully move forward and fill a couple promot tional positions within the department uh national accreditation um we continue to maintain our accreditation through Kalia um through this process we must maintain 398 standards of those 398 standards 330 mandatory and we get to choose um 68 of those additional standards uh between October 4th and October 11th of this past year uh we successfully completed our thirdy year annual review uh during this assessment 132 stands were reviewed by a uh clear assessor um some specific interest areas of interest that we discussed with the assessor was our Communications division uh detaining management and our recruitment selection process our fourth and final inter review will be in April of this year uh followed by an on-site by an assessor and then in March of 2026 uh we'll attend a conference where will stand in front of the commission and hopefully be be accredited for I think the 11th accreditation process uh feasibility study uh this past year during 2024 uh the assistance of the Town manager we began a feasibility study to address uh the department cell block booking room and property evidence areas um so we worked with uh G Architects to develop a strategic improvements the Department's booking room cell block and property evidence room uh the police station was built in 1977 right around there um there's a large Edition built in 2017 which now houses our training room in our dispat patch Center um but we're really seeing the need to actually improve our um property evidence rooms as well as our cell block and our booking area so we worked with uh DPW in The Architects to develop options to modernize and maximize usable space while maintaining the building's exis existing footprint to reduce costs so we're hoping to see this project added to the capital projects list in the near future um just want to go through a couple of community engagements activities that we've done over the past uh three months we didn't go to the whole year because it would get too long but we wanted to go over a couple of activities that we've done recently um back during October during the faith and blue weekend uh we hosted a food drive at Stop and Shop with all the the donations going towards the damis People to People food pantry this was a huge success um TimeWise they were definitely struggling um so they're very thankful and they enjoy our food dries because everything we bring is right from the store it's not I clean up my cabinet this might expire in six months everything that we bring in is freshly bought that weekend so they know that they're it's good for a decent amount of time also October we had our second annual pumpkin painting with the police so we had a project on the back parking lot where families could come down and paint pumpkins with the police department uh we had Texas Roadhouse came down helped sponsor the event and a huge success uh with the holidays coming uh November 23rd we did a second food drive at Market Basket and again we able to pretty much fill the shelves of the food pantry um again right before Thanksgiving weekend December 7th we had an annual toy drive at Target this is about a 5 hour activity where we go to Target and we look for donations of toys uh for for children in the community um we take a little different approach than toys F tots um everything that we collect goes directly to Dam's families which is very important to us um this is a program we're very proud about proud to be part of um this is I think our third or fourth year doing this um what we do is we work with the D Public School social workers to identify families uh this year we identified 12 families that were in need of uh some help um of these 12 families we'll provide um toys clothing hygiene products and gift cards for 26 children in Damas um through our partners with DCF we also identifi three Foster families in damis and we're able to provide them with toys um for those children and we also made a donation to The DCF um shopping night they have a shopping night where they allow fost families come to the main office and S them and actually pick out some items so we were able to make donations to them as well as you can see in that picture on the right that's just a that's half the room of the donations we got in a matter of five hours at Target um with the remaining toys uh we partnered with the senior center and we set up a table and provide a shopping experience with d seniors um during the event the senior s estimated that 80 seniors participated in the event so we actually replenish the table I think two or three times with toys that they could purchase they just take for their children or grandchildren and again um you know kind of something that we like to do and um definitely benefits the families of Damas that's all I have um I have a couple proposed dat for future um updates if this work for the board uh March 18th June 17th September 16th um March 18th would give us a chance to kind of discuss what's going on prior to the summer uh June 1th might be a good date to kind of check in how The Summer's going in September we can do a wrap up of the summer so um if any any questions I'm happy to try to answer them thank you Chief uh questions D oh thank thank you chief for the update that's um that's a lot I I love the community part of it um I I think community policing is so important so um my question is this information readily available do residents uh we can make it um traditionally we use this during our citiz Academy um we present this information uh we can definitely you know put some stuff together social media to update the community on some items yeah I think it would be useful for people to know what's happening and what our Police Department involved with we used to um release an annual report um unfortunately we had a turnover in our crime analyst we had almost a year we didn't have have one and then when we had a new an come on it was halfway through the year it was kind of tough for him to do it so we hope to actually for next year have a full uh you report that we'll publish on our website thank you no further questions thank you Morin M seems thanks Chief um my question is you said that there's police presence on early release days and on warmer days so is there somebody that's really walking the square are they patrolling continuously yes so there there's the square actually intersects with three different areas area one two and three okay so throughout the shifts you do have those three area cars have different portions of the square so they're throughout the square we just definitely try to spay special attention to the warmer days and the early release days um it's not uncommon to see a cruiser on High Street down by the jimmies area because of McDonald's um we do our best to have someone down around CVS area U but it all depends on call service call of vol call of service volume um unfortunately like you said before 2 to 3 o'clock in the afternoon is a busy time for us with other accidents other in in town so we do our best to keep C down as much as we can but um as I mentioned we we try to pay special attention to the warmer days especially as the spring comes with the first few warm days we'll have a lot of kids downtown so make sure we have increased presence and then also on the early early release days okay great and what about weekends and nights too weekend and nights you know the cruises are out there in out and around the area um you know they're encouraged to spend time downtown um you know we do Walkin talks depending on the weather and what's going on um they're encouraged to get out of the cars off as as they can to to get involved with the community um we actually use the D High School publishes a sports schedule use that as well to the supervisor say Hey you know watch the sports schedule if there's a game at the high school since come off is down to the um sports games um same with the square the mall if you can so we do try to get as much as we can okay and um I know it's weather permitting but the rail trail too you know we want to try to see if we can get people you know to watch that because there's been some problems on the rail trail um that's it for me thank you thank you David thank you Dan um all I wanted to say is that uh I'm sitting here and for 70 years 70 I have known each of the danvas police Chiefs um professionally but with a good personal connection and I think that Chief level is doing a superb job and it is one of the most difficult jobs in local government thank you Chief thank you thank you David Michael thank you uh hi Chief thank you for coming thank you for bringing our your guest uh with us uh for us tonight thank you I appreciate that um couple of questions for you uh you have three people out on long-term disability sickness not disability sickness okay and how many shifts a week is that creating for overtime um the three um probably 12 to 15 shifts a week so we have people going back to back on these shifts when this is going on at times yes yeah and the promotions you're going to be doing those maybe in a couple weeks hope so uh the list should come out um I think the appeal process ended I think uh yesterday or Friday uh one Civil Service uh least to that list we can begin processing it is it three sergeants you're going to be making at least uh one Lieutenant at least three sergeants if not more and then that'll create more over time right um the winter months is usually the best Staffing wise because you know weatherwise people aren taking time off um with the three recruits coming out the academy on February 28th um they should be out of the off field training by early May which gets into a a busy time for time off so we're hoping that it's going to balance itself out okay um do you know uh the amount of traffic stops your most active officer has right now most of a lot of the traffic stops there have to do with lot the grant it's going right now I don't have the exact numbers for each officer as far as numbers okay any any ideas somebody that tops the list or you don't don't need a name I'm just looking for a number I don't have the information okay what about arrests is there somebody that's getting the a person pulling the most arrests uh evening shift there's quite a few offices the evening shift yeah uh the foot Patrols in the Square um you said that uh some of the area cars right now they're stopping in the center of town and they're doing some Patrol down there right per shift yes okay is that nightly daily it should be daily yes okay can you commit that it will be daily based on call volume we do our best to get offices down Town y I understand um do we have a traffic car we do not would you be interested in getting one back at some point yes that would be uh beneficial having someone that could dedicate you know 40 hours 35 40 hours a week to traffic enforcement solely yes would be very helpful okay is that I know I believe Salem has some kind of a uh Team of officers like a crisis team or intervention team you probably know about it more than I do is it have a community impact unit yeah is there any anything uh that could be happening with the amb with that that might offset um patrol answering calls to certain situations that has been a goal of mine since I got promoted um unfortunately we've been so short staffed uh for the past five years um that we have been kind of chasing out tail to get fully a full compliment um it is a discussion that Tomy man and I are having currently and would be talked about during the uh budget process I know I I've said it a bunch of times S I don't know that if you're allowed to say it but I think you need at least four more people so I don't know if you can say that or in the future if you can say that but uh I think that'll be discussed on the budget process that will be addressed all right um let's see the uh suspects in the the Chris uh case the ducky case so all of them have been charged now they all have formal charges against them okay all right uh I think the rest of my questions you you gave us a lot of information tonight I appreciate that oh uh two other questions do you think we're going to be getting a uh canine back that's a tough question um a good question right now the trend is towards Comfort dogs versus Patrol dogs um most departments who have added Patrol dogs have moved away from the sheids and they're going to Labs because of liability and um post pretty much um so if we were to get one um it would probably either be a comfort dog or a lap type dog um there's a lot to having the dog there's staffing issues you're required to they only work at 7 hour shift versus 8 hour shift so you're back filling the hour if you shift um a cruiser assigned to them probably not quite doubles the price but the expens it's very expensive to outfit a cruiser for that um so it's just not an easy thing to do um the training is really a lot of money as well and if they're assigned to like a NM type organization call outs get very expensive and Sheriff's department and State Police Supply that as needed anyhow right we have uh Sheriff's Department next to in Middleton we have State Police and we also have nck so if we call nck with the phone call we can probably have three to 10 dogs here within half hour if needed um right now I correct me if I'm wrong you have two detectives yes all right any idea if we're going to be getting some more uh during the promotional process we hope to promote a supervisor to run CID uh then we have to back fill the stre detectives positions um again depends on Staffing if we can facilitate Staffing levels correctly we to have more detectives um it's a very important role they do a lot of behind the- scenes work um it's a tough position and we' like to have more but again just with the Staffing numbers we've had so far you know we have the two the concern I'm having is um Staffing and uh that we're going to have you know possibly 400 more citizens next year at this time living in the center of town uh that's what just what's being built now so uh with those if you just had five people out of that that are problematic um that's is going to add to the workload so you're going to you're going to need more people and uh it just has to get done that's just my opinion so thank you very much thank you Mike thank you Mr chairman uh just a quick question uh s can I speak oh sure thank you Chief uh you alluded to the fact that um we used to get a regular update on the statistics yes and I remember that yes and then it's gone away because you didn't have the proper Staffing so with the numbers you gave us tonight I don't know if I should be alarmed or should say well it's the same as what's going on in other similar siiz communities which is the right answer I think it's similar to other communities um you know if you look at a lot of our crime like issues at the mall like I said that you know we have Target Best Buy Noom rack Kohls um we do have a lot of shoplifting at those type of incidents um looking at the motor vehicles sto Motor Vehicles it was 35 listed um a lot of those are car rentals that aren't returned that are reported stolen so they interest stolen vehicles um early in the year also there was there was a phenomenon called the Kia challenge where um teens were stealing key they found like an override how to steal key and they were stealing them from different communities and they'd steal one from Salem drop it in Damas steal one from Damas drop it in Lynn and they were just dropping cars around so that was that added to that um so I think we're probably close to other communities when you come back with Statistics in the future can you have some comparisons available I think that would be helpful so year for year or whatever it is that you can provide at on a regular basis going forwards I think we like to see these statistics it's been a number of years since we've seen them so sure it's helpful and I've had people in the community ask me why we don't get that information so be helpful do you had a question no I I was just following up uh I didn't know if select board member being said traffic car I wasn't sure what that meant the chief can explain it um so what that would be would be right now we run five area cars on the day shift and evening shift if we had a traffic car it would be additional car that would just be dedicated to traffic enforcement so their entire shift would be traffic related calls whether it's running radar um parking complaints you know uh crosswalk violations so it's just dedicated to performing traffic functions um sometimes there'll also be a priority car for major accidents so if it's a more than a fender bender that traffic car might actually handle the accident investigation but it's just a d dedicated car that works on traffic issues thank you okay that's that in the audience bill in Bill Brad street Town me member Precinct one obviously we need additional offices I would certainly I would certainly like to see the town make every effort they could to get our additional offices uh it might be difficult but it has to be done and along with the traffic I I'd prefer to see a Traffic Division and them handling traffic problems to assigning a car when they can a a separate division to handle that makes sense to me thank you good thank you anyone else in the audience mark Chief how are you there's two questions that I have uh one is to the chair please mark yes sir the question is the dispatch was previously sized for three or four dispatchers and currently we have one is that correct Jamie uh we have two dispatch on Evy shift so we have two dispatches one handles police one handles fire fire department so it's a um two dispatches for shift so but we occupy one seat at the station is that right or are we occupying others I'm what I'm looking at is we had Promises of additional towns participating in the dispatching of our uh facilities that we have built and I have not seen any Improvement except for Danvers as being the only one that's occupying that facility so that that's just a comment but I I know that it's on everybody's mind but nobody's thinking about it but the last question I have is public access to your training room because that is a facility that's available for public meetings that can be used and it's isolated from the rest of the station and I don't know why we do not use that more often because that is I don't know 60 or 70 um P people can participate in that room but it's something that we have available and we don't use it uh we forbidden of using it no that's not true well that's it is used I've been in there a numerous times for different meetings with different groups I don't know what the rules are to get in there but it's it's used is it overused I don't know is it underused I don't know could we get a clarification of how to access that room and who do we go to a good question Chief who do they access so right now the room will handle 46 to 48 people comfortably that's where it's set up for um if you em email uh Lynn dong she can be found on D's website She's My executive assistant and we can kind of coordinate um we do have an issue now with parking um so traditionally um the lot behind the police station we used as our own parking lot um the mall is very good to us over the years um we could host 30 40 cars there no problem um massport has taken that parking lot over and we no longer able to use that lot as as parking so um if we do have larger meetings parking can become an issue there is parking on the street is there not there is parking it's just not as convenient as it once was okay thank you okay anyone else in the audience yes sir I'm Bill McKenzie 34 harb Street just recently I'm a contractor in town I've been a contractor for over 40 years recently I had a client of mine call me they were in trouble they had a gentleman say that they needed a new chimney repointed the gentleman got up on the roof he said $450 got up on the roof tore the chimney down below the roof line and went down and said I need more money by the time they got the new chimney back up through through the attic a building inspector came by and looked for the permit there was no permit they already paid him $80,000 for a chimney small little chimney 80,000 80 80,000 the additional cost of that chimy for them to complete was another $70,000 meanwhile the gentleman that was contacted by building inspector said I'll be in Monday morning to pull that permit he's ghosted he's gone meanwhile they call me they're all upset they're good friends of mine they're elderly if I'm elderly they're elderly um and they didn't know what to do so I set them down we we we looked through the whole project the best thing to do is do away with a chimney put a power vent boiler in $30,000 done 100% meanwhile they're out at $80,000 and they called Damas police and they said there's nothing we can do I don't know if there is or not but you know that's a lot of money for for people in dvas to be taken from lot of money for anybody to be taken from absolutely but Chief alluded to the number of fraud calls they have yeah and they are they they're in the process of you know talking with a person a lawyer and they they gave the guy initial cost of what 10,000 or cash and then they gave him a check for 70,000 he's cashed a check the guy's from Plymouth Mass and since then he's taken his website down everything's gone no no communication nothing is's enough brick left in that front lawn to do the chimney again even though it's almost all done so the guy definitely didn't know what he was doing the total house is a dust ball there's silica dust everywhere H plaster dust everywhere and these people are living amongst it I don't know what if what could be done was still in the process of it I had I had to get their CH their heating system up and running because the guy left a metal liner hanging out of the roof blowing around in the wind and you know Carbon oxide is really dangerous so he jumped right on it took care of him but still he's in the hall I'm helping him out I hope we can get him some help thank you sorry to hear that story anyone else if you want to give me um send me an email with their name and we'll make sure we reach out to them anyone else anything you want to close with Chief I'm happy to introduce uh please do Mr attorney Paul Tucker to speak about juo please reform welcome thank you Mr chairman good evening to the board members and members of the public thanks for the invitation yeah introduce yourself so the folks at home will know who you are okay my name is Paul Tucker I am the district attorney for Essex County and at the invitation of Chief level to come and speak about the Criminal Justice Reform of 2018 as it pertains to the juvenile law uh what I thought I would do Mr chairman if if um if that's what you're looking for I can give you an overview I've got some examples of things some of the difficulties that we've had and in terms of the actual Danver case um I think Chief level did a pretty good job of of covering that and I'd be happy to take some questions so yeah I think the board and the community wants to get a better understanding on that law or the reform and why are the police hands tied if they are or they're not sure so a couple of things this this happened in 2018 I actually happened to be a member of the legislature at the time I was a state rep for eight years and did some work on this and with any big Bill and this was an omnus bill with any big bill I think we can always find some things I disagreed with but overall thought it was a good enough Bill to support it um we have run into some issues with it as it pertains to my office and the prosecutions so basically some of the highlights of this one is it it raised the age of what we call delinquency and when I say delinquency that's really a criminal charge it's the same thing it would be in adult Court would be a criminal offense we changed the language when it comes to juvenile court versus adult Court um some of the some of the descriptors that changed a little bit so somebody that's been found delinquent would be the same thing as being found guilty in a in an adult court so first thing and probably one of the more important pieces was it raised the age of delinquency which was 7 years old raised it to 12 so what that means in effect is that a person under the age of 12 cannot be charged with a criminal offense so that's one of the first big things that was done so a definition of a delinquent child is some between the ages of 12 and 18 that commits an offense now I should also add that when it comes to town bylaws city ordinances or civil offenses like a like a civil traffic ticket those also cannot be charged so you would not be able to charge somebody with delinquency that violates a a a town bylaw in danamas it also has been problematic for us and I'm going to I'm going to try to give the best example exle of this that I can somebody that falls within this age group 12 to 18 on a first offense for an offense that carries with it a jail term of less than six months or a fine on a first offense that charge cannot go forward this was the legislature's way of basically giving somebody a second bite to the apple and it's caused some issues in terms of figuring out what's a first offense so what the legislature did working with the court system if and I'll just use Danver PD as an example if Danver brought somebody in that fell within this age range and they brought a complaint forward to charge them what would happen is the clerk of the court in this case it would be in Salem would take a look at it and they would run this person's name through our computer system which is called mascots if the charge was something that carried a penalty of 6 months or less or a fine and there was no record of that person in the system that charge would be dismissed it's basically somebody's first bite at the Apple um the other thing that we've had some issues with and I'll just give you just a a brief tutorial on is something called diversion there's a few different diversion programs out there diversion basically means we're trying to keep somebody out of the system we're trying to give them the help that they need and if they follow the rules the case will be dismissed it used to be for juveniles only the legislature as part of this reform as well has actually taken that age away somebody could have committed an offense at 55 years old and as long as they fell within the parameters of of what the charge was they would also get that first bite of the apple as well so when it comes to Diversion the Essex County DA's office actually in my estimation we have a tremendous Juvenile Diversion program it talks about mental health counseling it talks about restorative justice repairing the hamson sometimes that particularly juveniles can cause getting them together with somebody who who they've caused harm too now let me just throw a dendon there that's not for every case there's certainly cases that we're going to bring forward in court and that this person would not have the opportunity for stora of Justice in a minute I'm going to get give you an example of what that looks like here's one of the problems we've run into again because of Criminal Justice Reform the state in terms of the legislature gave judges is the power to craft their own diversion program which basically is not a program and I I will tell you this and and it's something that has been a frustration in my office particularly among Juvenile Justice Advocates when we take somebody into our diversion program it's a real program it's robust in the Juvenile Diversion program the legislature took away the need for any programming be it mental health counseling some type of community service even something like writing an apology to the victim of a crime so in terms of judicial Diversion the DA's office used to have the opportunity to object and we could stop it that's now also been taken away we do not have the ability anymore to disagree with the judge now that's not a critique of judges because oftentimes we try to work with what's best what's best for this this young person what we're really looking for is what's the best outcome and that's part of the job of the court now that's also balanced with a big part of my job which is to balance Public Safety and sometimes those lines are not so clear-cut when it comes to the list of offenses of in terms of diversion there's also a number of offenses and it's a long list of offenses that are not eligible for diversion as you can imagine some type of sexual assault a violent crime uh operating under the influence of alcohol those are not eligible for diversion we also have a tool of something called a youthful offender I'm going to get into that in a couple of minutes other cases that are not eligible for diversion is is a charge that carries a mandatory sentence where the judge has no discretion whe if a person is found either delinquent or guilty they have to make sure they serve the whole sentence um if diversion is done successfully and that's the goal in these cases the charge is dropped and the record is expunged there's two types of diversion one is pre-arraignment one is post arraignment best case scenario it's pre-arraignment the person gets no record here's what we know when in terms of of Statistics when we can keep a juvenile out of the court system out of the incarceration system their chances for Success exponentially are much much higher we also know that the inverse is true as well that if somebody enters the system at 14 15 16 chances are the recidivis rates for that person are also going to be much higher than if we had kept them out again a big part of my job is to balance Public Safety and we've got to make sure we also hold people accountable as well just a piece on the restorative justice it's something that's important to me because I think under the right circumstances it works well let me just give you an example a real example it happened in middlex County so two kids break into a store small store with the intent to cause some malicious damage they do that they spray paint some stuff they break a few things the next morning the police department goes they find out the two kids that did it they let the Shar owner know that these two young people have been charged and the sharp owner says I don't want them charged I don't want them to have a record but I also don't want them to think they got away with it so they did one of these restorative justice meetings and the shop owner got to sit across from these two young people and talk about the harm that they had caused to him his business bus how he had to close for the day how he had to send his sole employee home without pay cuz that person didn't work and the two juveniles got to express remorse realizing the stupidity of what they had done that was a successful restorative justice case and in those cases as far as I'm concerned you can look at that as success and some people would say well they literally got away with something what we're looking for is the best outcomes what's the best outcomes for young people restorative justice has to be voluntary and it has to be successful if it's not we can still bring those charges forward um big change has been the ability of police officers to make arrests in schools there used to be a number of charges that we could bring disturbing an assembly in a school disorderly conduct disturbing the peace the police no longer have the right to make those arrests and if you take that exact same behavior and you move it from the school off the school grounds into the street it's criminalized this has been something that's been debated and as I mentioned before and having been a state repap for eight years I will tell you that the the making of legislation often times takes compromise I know the board is certainly familiar with that as well and this is one of those pieces of the comprehensive bill that was part of that compromise when certain people get together from really two really different uh sides of of the spectrum and you've got to get somewhere in the middle this is one of those ones that came up interestingly enough um in the in the discussions I happen to be on on the education committee at the time was how we Empower our SRO and if I could just take a minute in terms of the Anderson case the sro's in that case and a couple other cases recently at S6 Tech as well have done EXT extraordinary work in Damas they do strong work they know the kids and I I just want to add one more piece on the Anderson case I know there was a lot of public information out there some true some not one of the things that I heard in my office that reached my level was why did it take so long and I will tell you what appears to be on the surface often times people think it's a very simple case we just connect the dots from A to B are not so simple the amount of work that was done by Denis PD and my office and and another piece of my office which is our our video person trying to put videos together and damis did an extraordinary job getting ring cameras business cameras to go step by step by step to be able to show that we can prove the case and often times I think people expect us that we should be expedient rather than than careful I never want to do that I'd rather take the extra time and make sure we do it right so I want to make sure that I let you know that I was very pleased with the work that Danver PD when I mentioned at the top of my remarks that that first offense we're not seeing that in terms of prosecutions it's problematic and I'll tell you what we're seeing is oftentimes by the time a case Rises to my level where we have to prosecute it's a serious case it might be a gun case and that person may have been getting in trouble at a couple of different points and I think what's what's unfortunate is that in my office and I'm sure my colleagues across the Commonwealth those are missed opportunities for us to try to help those juveniles it's not all about prosecution it's not always about punishment sometimes it is don't get me wrong but often times we can try to get to the heart of the matter is there a domestic violence situation is there a sexual assault component is there anger management these are things that we can address if we know about them part of that has been taken away for us we've seen this a lot in particularly in Lawrence and in Lynn with his gang activity some of these young people that have coming up in our radar have been known to the police they've committed some offenses but because of some of these changes it's made it difficult for us and by the time they do come up on our radar often times it's too late the other piece of it and I I will say I know there's been a lot of talk in damis about the square and kids after school You're Not Alone um I just attended a meeting 3 weeks ago in Salem where we met with the superintendent of schools and number of stakeholders the amount of disorderly Behavior after school in Salem right now is staggering and it's been it's been leading to some really serious crimes as well um I mentioned earlier youthful offender this is the tool that I have which came about probably about 25 years ago after a couple of really horrendous crimes under the youthful offender my office has the ability to try somebody between the ages of 14 and 18 as an adult this is for for a felony it's got to be a serious felony something that caused serious barley har or death a Firearms offense this changes the venue it changes the realm from juvenile court to Superior Court which does a few things and four of the young people involved in the dver case four out of the six we've charged as youthful offenders what does that mean from a practical standpoint we can release their information to the public you saw the names of four of these individuals in the paper two were under the age of 14 so they're still going to fall within the jurisdiction of the juvenile court but the four that we did indict that the chief mentioned we indicted them as youthful offenders that moves the case to Superior Court the media can cover the case and they will receive according to the judges decisions potentially potentially the same punishment as an adult the issue of Juvenile Diversion as I mentioned before has been a has been it it's been frustrating to prosecutors uh we're really trying to work with the judges we're trying to get mandatory programming for these people for these young people we think we've been having some pretty good success the other piece and I I'll just close the loop is when Behavior such as you've seen in danas Square Rises to what might be an annoyance it might be disturbing folks it might be seen as being disorderly one of the things that that we have as a tool is something called a child receiving assistance used to be called the Chin's child in need of services this is what we call a status offense it's something that we can bring to the Court's attention because of the status of the young men and women because of their age it's things that we would not be able to bring as an adult examples a runaway habitual truant missing from school um disobeying parents we can bring that that child in as a child to receive assistance through the court and we've had some success with it there's been some limitations on Transportation of how we get these juveniles they can't be handcuffed they can't be held in a lockup but it it does give us at least some room to be able to do something and then the last piece and um I I know U Mr chairman you mentioned about the data for for danver's PD there's a very robust data component to all of this we want to see if if there's any metrics if what we're doing is working I can tell you anecdotally now in the fiveyear period just ended in December the 5year period from Criminal Justice Reform we're looking at some longitudinal studies what we do know is arrests are down and if you look statistically at the at uniform crime reports crime is down there might be some anecdotal stories that we see some really terrible crimes that are still happening we've had some some tough tough ones in Lyn and Lawrence some Gang Related incidents involving people within this age group and sometimes we take a look at those anecdotes and people sometimes misconstrue that there's there's heavy violence that's not always the case so I think these are something we really need what's what's the measuring stick can we find out if these changes in criminal justice reform are actually doing what they're supposed to be doing so I I also want to thank the board for your interest in this um we've worked really closely on on um Chris's case uh Chris and his mom came to my office about a month ago I was able to sit down talk with them hear them hear their concerns and I think actually give them some comfort as well just to let them know firsthand the work that Danver PD did and the work that my office is doing now so I I thank you for your interest in this the board if they have any questions Mike uh yes uh thank you very much for coming and very much appreciate it can I clear one thing real quick uh Mr McKenzie brought up a case can those that couple just go file their own charges so I'd be interested after they meet with the chief to take a look at that um we have been I'll say inundated with an epidemic of scams this one being one of the more common ones um we estimate in Essex County reported scams $1 million last year that figure is probably about 50% low um it's amazing I've done public service announcements we've sent out we we've spoken at at the elderly housing we just did some things over in pey at the senior center we did one in sale and we have a woman who was the victim of a of a scam who gets out and tells her story and it's frightening this is a woman with a law degree 30-year career working for the state and and as she's giving $113,000 into a Bitcoin machine and a gas station in Salem she's saying to herself I know this is a scam I know it is but the guy was on the phone with her and convinced her to do it and then buy the gift cards the um the foundation scams the chimy scams we've seen quite a bit of it we've had some success Prosecuting them so what what I'd like to do after M Mr McKenzie passes that on to the chief um we've got two people in our office that are doing incredibly good work on this and we'd be happy to pursue it with Damas um so statistically would you say that this juvenile law that's been placed uh came into uh brought life to in 2018 are we winning we losing are we staying the same it it seems just practically looking at it doesn't seem like it's a great thing so there's been a lot of difficulties I will tell you that there's been difficulties from my office there's been difficulties from the police what we're hearing from the police oftentimes is they don't want to make an arrest because there's a feeling that nothing's going to happen that's a real thing um I I will also say that depending on on what your yard stick is to measure we've also had a lot of success stories as well kids that that would have otherwise gone into the system um we've been able to successfully divert them you know we we've we had a couple of cases in in the last two months uh one was a young man who pulled a number of fire alarms in the mall in Salem and and we ended up we put him in diversion he was an appropriate candidate he spent two weekends at the firehouse with firefighters he had to go to the businesses that that he pulled the arms at and apologized he washed some fire trucks spent some time there we don't expect to see him again prior to this that person probably would have been charged and I I I just want to be clear that you know the better outcomes for for offenders particularly juveniles if we can work with them better outcomes long term things that that housing join the military College college scholarships these are things that are that a criminal record sometimes can derail so we also are mindful about that um but as I said earlier my job is also Public Safety and I want to make sure that we have to hold people accountable as well I I think by the time you get to see them it's it's a failure at home I think we get a parenting problem and that's a huge issue as well as technology it's such a young age for the kids the uh uh return offenders uh what kind of number any thoughts on that 50% 70% so depending on the type of crime and and we also work with Sheriff Carpenter as well he tracks his um recidivism rates as well he's had some success some of the higher rate recidivism rates of people that have substance use issues people that have mental health issues often times we see people with dual diagnosis and it's a struggle and I will tell you um one of the biggest frustrations that I've had I've been da now two years I'm I'm halfway through my my term one of the biggest struggles we have is getting treatment for people I'm trying to find treatment for people who are addicted to to substances the biggest issue we've had has been trying to access mental health and we've reached out we we we've made some good connections up in marac Valley with marac Valley Family Services part of our diversion program is a mental health component whether you think you need it or not we make sure that they have to take it where holding on to people trying to move them out of diversion we having trouble accessing the mental health piece so we've been struggling it's it has been difficult is there a lack of mental health facilities very much very much it's a lack of beds um one of my La in my last year State Rep I I helped a couple of families whose um children juveniles were being boarded in emergency rooms we had a family from Salem had a 13-year-old spent 12 days at Beverly Hospital in emergency room just sitting in there waiting for a bed and I actually called at the time Secretary um cus who was a a cabinet secretary on the fourth of July and said this this is wrong she end up getting me a bet it shouldn't have to come to that but it's it's we're in I think we're in DIA Straits when it comes to that I really do would you uh agree with the statement that uh maybe there is uh the numbers of crime and or arrests being lower is due to the fact that uh police officers today have to deal with the fact that a certain amount of the public would rather film The Incident than to help and uh also um people are soe happy so why would an officer want to get involved considering you know 30 35 years ago when it was just all hands- on Deck would you agree that people are just more uh officers are just more um less likely to get involved because of that and uh also this this and I hate to say it the post commission seems like it's a lob sided situation I I'm all for correct behavior um you know in law enforcement or any any kind of uh uh enforcing agency um it just seems that we're biting our own tail here so personal opinion as a I had 32 years on the police department of Salem and my son's on the job now 15 years um halfway through his career's detective Sergeant he works really hard I worry about I worry about the office officers that are on the job who are feeling that way I think if you take a look at the numbers again my personal opinion you take a look at the numbers of men and women that are entering police work the numbers are way way down if you take a look at when I took the civil service exam I got on a job in 1983 um there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Salem residents on my list and fortunately I was I was um able to get on the job those numbers of hundreds now I think are probably down to dozens it's really really difficult um something has to change um I tell the officers that that pendulum has to swing back it's got to come back and fortunately there's still a lot of good people that that will look for the job this is an environment now like no other time that I've seen in terms of the post commission um one of the things that that we were Massachusetts was 50th by the way when it came to licensing police officers and if I could boil it down to this I don't want to get too far off track Mr chairman um we licens Bobbers hairdressers plumbers contractors I think there was a there was a need to license police officers one of the things we saw we had testimony from Springfield where an officer was was fired five different times kept popping up in different departments having said that if you're going to have a post commission and going to do this you've got to do it right it has to be fair and it has to be due process exactly um let's see I had one more question I think uh you answered a lot of questions I appreciate you coming tonight uh as a community uh looking to uh possibly change the laws it seems like there's a lot of um there's a lot of meat to it um and maybe it's just a lack of information on the Public's part um is it uh you know as a community is is there even any chance of you know uh a group getting together uh to you know get our legislature to change the laws to or is it is it just again it's turning with the times I'm asking a general question I don't mean to go off TR either yeah yeah I think it it depends which direction you want to go and my former colleague re CN is here who I I really enjoyed serving with and and we worked really well together it's it would be it would be a difficult proposition to try to change some of this right now I'll tell you why when when an Omnibus Bill is put forward there's not a lot of appetite to go back and change unless there's something glaring I think and and I don't disagree with that I think sometimes you have to give things a chance to work and when I mentioned earlier so we're really um a little past four years into this by the time it was actually implemented and and given a chance to work um I would suggest that we that we tweak things maybe there's some opportunities I've heard from police officers prosecutors some things we can be doing differently and we're happy to take a look at that as well um there's been some some discussion around the jurisdiction of the juvenile court some good good things there work with emerging adults um a lot of this is still work in progress so yeah but but I don't disagree with at least the fact that you that you put a spotlight on it and and say let's take a look at it all right thank you very much thank you Mike David thank you Mr chairman I would just like to make a couple comments um I was an assistant district attorney 57 years ago and throughout the last 57 years I've paid a lot of attention to law enforcement and prosecution in the Commonwealth um I have known this district attorney and John blet its predecessor and Kevin Michael Burke the predecessor and a lot of the young people who work for a pittance um sometimes you have a a young lawyer making 50 or $60,000 who is opposing um a high-priced Boston Mafia type lawyer who makes a million dollars a year and so the leadership that comes from the district attorney is so important to the souls and the efforts of the young people mostly young people who take those jobs um I am very proud of Essex County and of this District Attorney's work and the two predecessors and I have worked with them closely what has troubled me a lot is unfairness when we had the locker hockey locker room situation in uh in danvas which was Dreadful uh um two members of the school committee Eric Crane and Arthur scus who are both lawyers took a brutal beating publicly and in the newspapers of having somehow screwed up as members of the school committee I personally reviewed every single legal opinion and every law that was applicable to them they made no mistakes their work as school committee members and lawyers was impeccable no one knew that no one cared about that and no one paid any attention that's really sad when we had this s situation of our youngster three or four months ago um the danvas police took a brutal attack on why they would not name the parents name the students do this and publicize because the people have a right to know well we don't the legislature has an enormous network of protective laws very legitimate hammered out over years of work as Mr as district attorney Tucker has said which which constrain what can be said and what can be done with about these young hoodlums and McDonald's is one of my favorite Hangouts and so I know what I'm talking about I just want to say for the abuse that you take for the the silence that you must maintain and I'm looking at our wonderful Chief Jamie level as well I do understand and I ask other people to understand and I will keep watching and applauding you when you do the beautiful jobs that you do thank you for being here tonight thank you thank you David Morin Mr Tucker thank you very much for coming and you know it's a tough job what you and you staff do and and rep currens and everything we understand that the laws need to be a little bit more harder but we do want to try to save as many people as we can and put them in these programs and I do think um as you say mental health is really if we can stop it here and find out what the issue was at the beginning to try to keep them from getting incarcerated would be good but they also have to perform what happened to Chris Anderson though was unacceptable um you know I'm very concerned um with the additional housing that's coming in town um I do agree with select board member bean and other members of the board that we do need more police um you know you do hear about the ly and I work in Lyn you know I do see the gangs um I hear the stories in Lawrence and things like that we don't want this to come to Damas you know um so with hopefully more police officers coming for Jamie and his and his crew that would be good and um more awareness for the community uh more police patrols that we talked about um I think when they see the police let's hope that they get scared I know when I used to see police and when I still see police I get scared you know um but thank you for what you do I know it's a tough job um do you think sometimes like when we were talking about the police officers um not wanting or not feeling that they shouldn't make the arrest because of being sued I don't know what what your personal opinion is about the um the body cams um does that help them or hurt them yeah it's interesting had a um uh interesting approach I guess so when when the body cams first came into being I was still on the job and they really hadn't taken taken hold in Massachusetts and initially I was very resistant um I was wrong the body cams I think one of the best things that's happened frankly it's a protection for the police the amount of of uh misconduct complaints against police officers has Dro dramatically and it tells the story um I think that that the ability to have the body cameras and we use it for great evidence as well and we've actually had to bring Personnel on board for Discovery purposes because we have to give it to defense attorneys as we should um sometimes the the the work is definitely it's worth the effort and I I think it's I think they've been very very good I'm a proponent of the body cams I think most police officers are as well so great thank you thank you for sharing that thank you that's it Dan thank you D thank you da terer for the update great information um and also thank you for your cander into the fact that the law had some very good things but there were definitely some things that we could work on um I had a lot of questions that I just scratch out because you answered them uh School based arrest and maybe the chief for you um it says on in the law that the office that the it requires that the assign school resource officer enter into a memorandum of understanding setting boundaries I suppose we have that for our SOS yes now if there's violent in the school they can still make an arrest is that correct yes absolutely yes so the the non arrest within the school is only if it has to do with school discipline discipline and disruption I think the it's one of one of the charges used to be disrupting a school assembly and I think the feeling was that offices handled different things different ways and what might be an annoyance to folks and and to school administrators sometimes the police felt that they had to take some action sometimes the administrators felt it was best left to them so the legislature put this in place um we should be clear that if there is a any type of of violence police are going to act immediately it's really this this very subjective uh decision if somebody is being annoying or or has causing some type of disruption and you know there were there were there were a few cases where I remember one of them from when I was at the State House who was in it was in a larger Urban District where an administrator told a student take a hat off or refused to take a hat off the officer moved in they scuffled end up arresting him that's what we're trying to stay away from that's really a school discipline issue and that's really not why the police officers are there I also will say I think that the the training I can speak for Essex County and I'll speak for damas the training that the school resource officers get has changed the whole approach to the job I I I couldn't be happier with the job and there was we had a case not that long ago was that Essex tech and and chief levels um um school resource officer there were phenomenal the work that they did they got right on this there's there's some you know when when a serious case happens what you want to happen on the police side they did it exactly as they should I was very pleased with the work that they've done so so in that case the school and the S work together to make the call as to what that threshold is and I suppose during the training they get examples of what like the one you just gave yeah so there's a lot of training that goes with it and I think a lot of it is a is building a working relationship as well between the officers and the administration which I know you have here in town um I met three weeks ago with superintendent B on a number of issues and he's he's just a great partner as well um and I think very fortunate to to have that here in town and you may or may not have an answer for this but one of the changes were to decriminalize anything that someone steal less than 12200 do we know I mean how do we come up with that and we had a case at CVS May there was a gun involved but if there was no weapon they walked in and got a bottle of oxyon that's only costing $450 they can just walk is that what I mean that's just not quite accurate if I could just I'll take the time thank you for raising it though so what the $1,200 figure is is what changes aasy from a misdemeanor to a felony so under $1,200 is still chargeable so that but it just takes it into into the I guess the Lesser realm of a misdemeanor and in a case where and I'll just use shoplifting as an example um I know that that some Das across the country have decided that on their own they would they would internally decriminalize it I guess is the best way to say it I would not do that I I don't think it's right I don't think it's fair to shop owners I don't think it's fair to the public who have to pay for that now having said that if if somebody that's 15 years old shoplift something and it's a first offense I think that's case we can look at to see if they deserve that first bite shoplifting is not a victimless crime we had a person from Salem that went to Home Depot up and down New England Stole almost $500,000 worth of highend electronics and tools that's that's not a victimless crime and I I know there was at least one da a former da in Massachusetts that had a policy of not charging shoplifting I I couldn't disagree with that more yeah and the last question I have is for civil infractions what do we have as a town left in our toolbox to enforce violation of local ordinance since what what do we do do we yeah so that that's that's a difficult one I think in that case you'd have have to default back to the child receiving assistance if it's problematic that dis disobeying piece you'd have to work with the parents you'd really have to get the parents on board as well and you could bring that person in you could put conditions on them maybe it's a curfew maybe it's a staya away order the other thing that danis could do is also issue a no trespass let's just say for example at the CVS causing issues that the Danver PD would have the ability to issue that person a no trespass and if they went in then some charges could result from there so are a few things it is it is a little more limiting but there are a few things that you can do often times honestly it's the parents to make sure that you've got them on board with you as well so thank you thank you for the update thank you anyone in the audience questions Jim AI Jim marose town meeting member Precinct uh three I almost forgot okay do we get credits for this uh course I had a lot of questions you answer a lot of them but I mean again the whole answer is why you're here is because we had a couple of meetings and there was a lot of parents here that were just really really concerned about what was going on and and they were talking about their kids being in fear in the schools and so and kind of like you mentioned like in in Salem and Lynn there's there's a lot of violence going on in the schools and and is that going to start happening in Damas I mean I know that even in your reports you said that the crime rates going down but then to support the the bill that as it is that it it has some good points but yet on the same token we're talking about less violence uh less crime being reported less crime being arrested or people being arrested so that you know that just kind of doesn't you know make sense but and and again uh you know the post commission that's just another thing that puts fear into the the police and and and I know that U you mentioned something about the judge and the da and how Jim address the chair please oh yeah thank you the you know the whole issue that you know in within the law the judge has you know total sway on what's going to happen where in the past before this law the da had had options to to to make decisions about what's going to happen with the with the the the criminal and and so there's a lot of little bits and pieces of this law that we you know kind of should be tweaked as we talked about and and I'm just saying that I I think that you know there's been a lot of legislation especially stuck in these omnius bills and and just recently legislation has been passed that they've had to create emergency orders to fix them and so we got to do some these Omnibus bills I know it's no excuse I mean it's all in in there but there's got to be a way to fix and tweak these problems it's all I just wanted to good point highlight and point out and again because the parents are concerned about their kids and I don't know I I know you've talked to our you know that the DA's talks our school people and and I've talked to Dan and and the superintendent of the junior high as well and and and they said the same thing it's just kind of tough with this law not specifically but we got to do something just to protect the kids I mean we need a little more if we have to increase school policies or whatever but something's got to be done thank you anyone else yes hello Lauren Steves Hood Terrace um I just have a a few questions I guess that I would like clarified um you first started by saying that if uh they bring a child in on charges and you look in your system and and they haven't been charged the system the the charge basically is wiped out he doesn't they don't have a record so the second time around what's in the system to tell you oh the first time was expunged that's my first question I don't know if you want to answer them one by one you want me to ask all of them I'll do that I'll take one at a time okay please so um interestingly enough you hit on the very first problem that this legislation showed and we were scratching our head saying if the first offense is expunged how do we know there was the first offense so it's been fixed so there's a criminal complaint that's filed it goes to the clerk's office the clerk makes a note he checks something called M courts which is basically it's it's the computer system if there isn't no record in there of this person they will make a note that the person's been charged and they've gotten their one bite of the Apple so if they came back and a second time the notation is a red flag it'll pop up said first offense damous January 25th of 2025 was in there now he gets arrested in February the first one will show up and as it shows up as a second it actually looks like a first offense but it's a notation was made so that they didn't have that when this when this bill was first filed it's been fixed so thank you for answering that I appreciate it um the second one and I don't know how likely this would ever be um but Mo moving the age from seven so seven up to 12 um and I say this with the thoughts of the the gangs that you deal with in Lynn and Lawrence you're saying nobody under the age of 12 um can be charged are we talking murder attempted murder uh serious uh assault and battery Etc so anyone under the age of 12 bright line rule cannot be charged with any crime at all the only action that we as a DA's office would be able to take is to file some type of a civil commitment which is a parallel track to criminal different standard of proof different results we're not just going to send that person home uh but we we would not be able to prosecute the case for any charge under the age of 12 do you do you see that as a problem well it would be a problem for us and just this is very hypothetical and let let's let's also say it would be extremely rare um it would be problematic for us but I want to be clear that person does not just automatically go home as if nothing ever happened there are there are um things that we can do on the Civil side as for civil commitment and basically what happens is every six months there will be a review on that person's case and if the whatever it was that that that they committed if there was a the actual words out that their release would it can't be incompatible with Public Safety is the is the standard so we would have to keep going back every six months and have the judge renew the order I've never had to deal with that it's rare um again that was put in place with an eye toward Rehabilitation of a Jun juvenile rather than rather than punishment so I hope that answers it um and then I guess to wrap everything up uh you you kind of described that it's not just damers dealing with the the after school kids and you're seeing staggering amounts in Lynn and Salem and and everywhere else which kind of seems counterintuitive to what you're saying that these laws are helping these kids get a bite at the second apple or a get out of jail free car if you will um and it seemed like it's me maybe not necessarily working as well it was as it was intended to if we're still seeing such a large number of kids causing disturbances and then I guess to tie in specifically with damers and I understand these bylaws that can't be enforced that we've been talking about but spe the the big specific issue that we've had especially in the summertime when the weather is nice is these these kids in in groups of five six seven eight in bicycles riding into the middle of the street I mean I've seen a motorcycle 3T from running a kid over cuz he just shot out into traffic and we're kind of being told there's nothing we can do you I that there's no way that that's not disorderly conduct or or some type of of moving violation that these kids are someone's going to get killed so I just would like an explanation as to why something can't be done about those specific situations because it seems very very dangerous um and that's all I had thank you so just to put put the numbers in context um the meetings that I had in Salem with the superintendent and and the various stakeholders um we were talking in Salem about 25 kids we actually had all the names about 25 kids against the backdrop of thousands of of Salem kids so often times what we see actually even with adults as well it's a small percentage of people who are committing an outsize percentage of the crime for for violent crime somewhere around 20% of of people commit about 80% of the crime those numbers are probably going to hold for juveniles as well so what we've done what they did in Lynn was basically try to keep kids busy and give them something to do now that's that's a bit of a simplistic answer but I met with with the Lyn mayor and some of the things he did every kid in Lynn this past summer who wanted a job got a job every single kid it's a big commitment um my office works with a group called leap for Education we just gave them a substantial Grant to help kids get some jobs it's about keeping kids busy it's about having parents get involved when we see the gang activity it's generally kids who are going home to an empty house and gang members are really good at grooming kids and identifying kids and what they'll tell them is they'll say that that you know you're a juvenile nothing can happen to you hold the drugs hold the guns and then that kid who may have been doing some minor crimes things that we didn't pick up because of these changes in the laws the first time we see him or her is when they've got the guns and the drugs it is frustrating on the town bylaws and the bicycles I get that um I think what Damas is doing by by increasing the presence increasing the the interaction between the police and the kids I'm sure that whatever it is that that re reaching out to the parents reaching out to school people the the mentorships these are things that we just have to keep doing you can't just throw your hands up and say there was nothing we can do so there are some things we really have to do stay at I know it's been frustrating da Tucker thank you for coming this evening thank you for your cander we really appreciate it and uh Chief leville will see you in March and thank you for your information tonight great thanks Mr chairman I want to thank chairman lubis my chief of staff who helped me put this together as well Chief level and Lieutenant Sullivan my former student at Salem State who I talked a lot thank you thank you very much and at this time we'll take a brief five minute recess e e e e e e e e e e e and the Casper plan and with us tonight is hi I'm Tanya Jenkins I'm welcome thank you I am the safety and sustainability coordinator for the Electric Division um so I'm working with the Casper plan which is the climate action sustainability preservation and resiliency plan um the Danver select board played a crucial role in initiating this climate action processing plan and uh starting back in 2022 and then they signed it formally um in August of 20123 and there's six Focus areas within the plan that's the um energy buildings natural resources public health and safety transportation and land use and solid waste and so tonight we are going to have a presentation from the energy area by Jeff Eli who is the energy resource manager welcome Jeff thanks for having me thank you for having me back I am my name is Jeffrey elely I am the energy resource manager for the Electric Division I am the energy Champion for the plan so uh as Tanya alluded to we'll uh she's going to bring forward some of the champions for the six sections of the plan uh of course I'm the first I'm the guinea pig uh to uh give my update uh I luckily we luckily uh work in the Electric Division so we have a good amount of control about where the energy uh for the town comes from and uh I'll just go into it very briefly I'll look over some of the the goals for the energy source uh section and how we're addressing some of those uh goals and uh tasks within tasks within the plan um let's if I can get this to work nope let's see here yeah technical difficulties Rodney will he hit it it's I'm not getting it to work not connecting you can hit the yeah there you go just go back next one so the major goal for the uh energy portion is to drive the transition to 100% carbon- free energy use uh we do that in three different ways local renewable energy local renewable energy generation grid and infrastructure resilience and energy Supply uh our energy Supply focuses mostly on the Massachusetts decarbonization road map which is uh the planning scenarios for Massachusetts to achieve Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050 and then that uh emphasizes Equitable and affordable transition away from fossil fuels through electrification efficiency and decarbonized energy Supply which is my main focus is decarbonized energy Supply um and I'll show you that in the next slide uh so actually these are the two goals here goal one is we have energy that is carbon free and local and then we our goal two is strategically used and store energy to reduce emissions and costs that's uh mostly through battery storage uh then go uh next slide please so strategy 1.1 secure long-term renewable energy contracts with new utility scale renewable sources in the region just as a background danver's electric secures long-term energy contracts with suppliers from all over the Northeast the iso New England where we procure our energy from is uh New York all the New England states and then now up into uh Quebec through hydroelectric H Hydro Quebec but as you can see from the large uh PI from the pie chart the largest section it's about 60% is from nuclear and that's through contracts that we have longterm contracts that we have in Seabrook and Millstone uh sebr is just right over the Massachusetts New Hampshire border uh you probably seen the Seabrook uh Power Plant uh we' we have procure very cheap electricity through seab Brook that's uh classified as a non-carbon resource so we're well on our way towards that uh 100% uh goal uh but we also get our power from Hydro a a big portion from Hydro Quebec uh we get our big portion from first light out in uh western Mass some Hydro out in uh New York and then of course we have smaller wind contracts we have some smaller solar contracts and I'm going to go into it a little bit further but we have some local renewable energy generation through our solar contracts here in town uh next slide please I'll share this we have a a more uh detailed power supply map but I'm not going to click into it and go all that but next slide um so maximize local solar production with in damers is a strategy 1.2 uh we do that in several different ways uh mostly through our uh in town generation and our most recent one the schools go solar project it's three uh three solar arrays on roof the rooftops of the Smith School The Highlands Elementary School and the high school um the sizes are there the largest ones at the High School littered amongst the the the rooftops of the high school uh this is a power purchase agreement so it was no cost for damers electric to build and maintain these we actually had a a company called select uh do the installation and they maintain the panels uh and we pay them a fixed rate for all electricity generated on those schools it's similar to like any other power supply contract for all the electricity generated they be that those panels are in essence a a generator for us and then so that's in town generation that we we pay them on a monthly basis for each one of those uh for each one of those arrays and then we also have existing solar already in uh in Danver we have a uh F about 5.63 megawatts installed that's um 70 residential systems PV systems that's on rooftops uh six Direct Connect PV systems PPA PV systems that includes the schools and then 10 commercial behind the meter system systems those are older systems that were put on uh there's one at uh gambers Indoor Sports we have one at uh what else uh Cherry Cherry Hill there's a couple places at Cherry Hill that have them uh the prep has a ground mounted St John's Prep has a ground mounted uh system and so and then we are also as uh Mr zubri alluded to we we have a plans for landfill solar project right now there's a filling operation uh we've got some preliminary design uh yeah I think it's on the next slide what I yeah so we we have a landfill solar project it's we did a preliminary design two megawatts of AC capacity at the landfill solar for the landfill solar uh we're currently filling it and it's about 650 400 watt panels uh it's a fairly lengthy process to get these landfill uh projects uh completed it involves uh public hearings it involves uh permitting it involves uh Department involment protection permitting uh that will all kick off in the the spring even before the landfill uh operations completed we will be moving on uh that So eventually there will be a uh RFP request for proposals for the uh entire system so we're still working on that Danver electric will be spearheading that initiative and um we'll it'll involve the Public Public hearings it'll involve the select board involve everybody we not trying to put one over on anybody um it's just a the whole opening the landfill and and filling it was and and getting that permit was contingent upon doing the solar um that's how the D typically likes to reopen uh landfills that's not in their uh they don't love to do that kind of thing so we're try we're as transparent as we can be we just there's a lot of pre-work that has to be done in order to get these things built and um we're working with bber engineering it's a danver's uh engineering firm to uh to go through that process and it's a it's a year years long process so uh we're we're right in the middle of that and then for future projects we continue to support new residential solar uh that's rooftop mostly through uh danver's electric uh PV rebate program it's capped at 400 $4,500 per system um and that's issued through our business office and then we continually get proposals from businesses to put commercial solar on buildings all over daners um Cherry Hill uh a Honda dealership and we offer competitive PPA pricing for those uh for those installers and for those uh businesses that want to put it on uh we kind of take them on a case-by Case basis they're not super uh common in that uh aspect but we uh work with those with those installers and with those business owners to uh make it happen next slide and then the last one update is uh strategy 2.1 deploy energy storage at appropriate rate structures to minimize energy supply cost this is mostly Peak shaving uh so you've probably seen initiatives to uh lower the peak during hot times hot days uh it's built off of that but at a much larger scale so you build a giant battery uh at a at a site that you have land you know the space to put these giant batteries and then you can discharge the batteries at when you're hitting your Peaks and so right now we have just about to be finished completion a 5 megawatt battery at the Old Fern cof substation on Fern crof Road uh and Milton cat is the owner operator of that battery um no cost to dver uh dver electric or the town of dver uh but for they when they run the battery during transmission and capacity Peaks there's a shared savings model for the town and the battery owner and so uh that's how the arrangement usually works it cuts down the liability on the uh Electric Division it cuts down the liability in the town and uh most of the risk is pretty much all the risk is on the uh the battery owner to hit those transmission Peaks um and then we're hoping to have that online in Spring 2025 they're finishing up some fire protection on that uh on that site right now uh so we can do our witness testing and test the battery and that sort of thing I think that might be it for energy updates I will now open it up to any questions thank you Jee got any questions yes thank you very much 100 % for carbon free energy use that's for sure um and just a quick question and you may or may not know how do we uh size up compared to other communities around the NorthShore as far as our trajectory heading toward this 100% carbon free we're far we're we're ahead of most communities okay um and that's mainly due to the fact that we own and uh have the we we have the seab brook nuclear uh energy resource um adjacent communities like Middleton and um um yeah Middleton's probably the biggest like they they're going to have struggle to find these carbon free contracts and um they're they're not as they're challenge to to um to procure uh we work with energy New England which is like a uh they they kind of coordinate other Municipal electric divisions within uh this region of Massachusetts and so there's like 25 communi and so we have group purchasing power so that's how we leverage our um smaller communities into getting these contracts um but we're poised to be you know 85 90% in the next two years you know and so right now we have these long-term we're we're unlike National Grid and eversource we're able to enter into these 10 to 5 10 15 year contracts with energy suppliers and that puts us at a much better and more stable rates and that's why we don't see rate changes as much uh compared to national grid and neosaurus communities we keep our rates pretty low and are really stable um and so that that's really the biggest uh Advantage I think to being able to procure these contracts whether they be wind contracts whether they be natural gas contracts which we still have to do you know we we we don't take and I think some people think that we damage electrics takes every wind or solar or any renewable energy contract whatever the price is and that's not the case we EV valate each contract as it comes and if it doesn't work you know fiscally for the for the utility and for what makes sense and we we won't take that contract um but we've been fortunate in our group buying ability to um keep those costs down and and rat stable so um I don't see us having to make any major issue uh uh changes but uh that's the general like layout of how we get things done okay and U probably the question that a lot of people have and a lot of residents have and I do have you spoke of it a little bit the rate how do all these changes affect so is it that if we go to 100% carbon free we get all nuclear or use some Hydro we just Plateau on the rate or we don't go up as much as other community or is there a possibility for Resident to feel like we're getting a break and the rate can actually go down our power supply costs and our um operating costs are are broken out are separate I can tell you only about power supply cost because I I don't I can't speak to our omm and our um and that sort of that side of the rate uh I know that power supply are we're 90% hedged in our long-term contracts we're only exposed to the market 10 and 10% of our total um usage you know for the whole town so we are not anticipating any rate rate changes up or down uh for a you know foreseeable future I mean we evaluate it every six months uh similar to uh eversource National Grid uh I we don't have any um risk right now of having to raise rates um yeah we're we're looking fine for that um you know things could really change and like the market like for natural gas could go through the roof and then suddenly like you might see like a little bit but right now it's it's fairly stable because we're very very well hedged and do we have a buffer like in case things go up the roof like we we built in some buffer where the taxpayer are not going to feel it right away yep y okay uh can you elaborate on the on the rebate program a little more what how do we how do we get that so I can only I'm going to only speak to uh the solar rebate program because there's we have additional rebates for other items electric related items but they're more related to building uh the building aspect because it's um things that you put in your home okay um that would be more decarbonization for buildings so um definitely can elaborate that at a different time for the solar rebate it's just a one-time rebate where you um if you were to get solar you would be conversing with me cuz I'm the interconnection manager as well in for the utility and at the uh at after you complete your installation you just request a rebate form and I'd give it to you and you fill it out send it it's a one-page thing and give it back to me and then you you're mailed a check so it's that simple for the rebate okay yep thank you very much do you have it on your house what that yeah so back with that what D said about the solar rebate too is don't they also get a um tack um deduction they do federal taxes too it's still 30% we don't know what's going to happen with the new Administration um but as it stands right now 30% yeah so it's good for residents to know if you're thinking about Sol absolutely contact Jeffrey and maybe even talk to your tax accountant about that too yeah and I can also say whoever's listening uh from home uh I can also recommend a few installers I can't give you the best one I can definitely recommend some reputable ones that have worked in D that's wonderful and um we talked about the schools the uh Smith School Highland School and the high school do you see that Damas will be putting um more panels on the other schools we looked at all the schools and those are the three best candidates um we couldn't I think it it came down to the structural how much the school uh roofs can hold in terms of like the structural integrity and whether we if we put a new roof on a on a building it's definitely becomes you know VI candidate um I know there were portions of the high school that we couldn't put on so that it there needs to be a structural analysis done for each school I know those three schools were the were the the candidates but for for new buildings of course you know that that's why Smith the the Smith School building was solar ready solar ready um and so uh we knew we could put it on that school uh and then we expanded to the high school and the Highland School because they were also candidates and we don't know if we're going to be doing some improvements to some of the schools yeah it's definitely something that stay tuned with that yeah if the superintendent um wants to have a discussion with me about that and if they want to move forward that's and just um when you when you talk about the uh group purchasing power right we get a better deal how many communities are in that roughly roughly 20 20 okay so and and it's it's nice to hear that we're ahead of the curve so good job Jeff you know with credit but yeah well no but you and your staff that's good energy is very important uh for the future and then just um other question about the batteries like you say you have this one big battery just things that like I read about like with the batteries so if the battery doesn't work doesn't the battery become like hazardous waste afterwards and how do we you know kind of dispose of that it's you know I mean the biggest thing that's coming up with batteries and it's and I don't mean to be an alarmist is the is the is the fire issue with batteries um and and the potential risk and we're trying to mitigate that now with new there's all there's new fire regulations and that's why a giant stand pipe is going to be put in to deal with fire regulations in terms of the batteries uh the Milton cat as batteries degrade and uh over time as they all do uh they the unit those units individual battery uh blocks cells whatever are swapped out um as they erode and Milton cat then will have to recycle and deal with them after that okay and also like I don't know if um didn't Bev put on solar panels on and then they're stuck the old ones are stuck somewhere you know like for I'm just worried about hazardous waste and for sure yeah I mean part of the part of the whole issue is maintenance we don't we don't own any of the of that equipment and that's part of the we don't want to own battery we don't want to get into the battery ownership model I think in for Dam electric at that this moment and so uh let Milton cat owns and operates and maintains the batteries select owns operates and maintains the solar panels on the school and we make sure that we have a maintenance and plan in place and that you know they're Li they're responsible for dealing with issues okay great well thank you for what you do ener itg is very important to us going forward thank you David thank you Mr chairman I just want to say that I think your presentation was excellent because I think I understood what you were saying thank you that's the goal thank you I'll set Michael uh thank you I'm going to be that guy sorry that's all right um the solar panels that we're going to do use at the dump are we going to own them we haven't determined yet it's uh it's going to go up for requests for proposals requests for information however whatever the business model is it's going to make sense most to the the rate payer and for uh damage electric as a business operating and owning panels potentially um we went the PPA non-ownership model for the schools because uh it made sense fiscally at the time and um but we haven't gotten to that point of of knowing what we're going to do um we didn't even know up until I don't know six months ago that we could do two megawatts there was a preliminary study done that thought we could only do one megawatt there um and now it's been expanded out to two so there's been there's been talk on both sides about whether you own them or you don't own them I I I don't have a particular preference about owning them or not owning them um but it's uh it needs to be evaluated fiscally uh about what the what the best method moving forward is yes so so when it comes to solar panels windmills uh batteries um my question is the amount of gain that we get from using them versus the amount of cost uh to maintain them the damage to the uh Wildlife um for instance a windmill uh has approximately a th000 gallons of oil in it so if it's in the ocean that's weeping into the ocean uh we saw over n Tucket I believe this year the blades came off and caused a big uh problem on the island and all around it uh cars uh vehicles with batteries are a huge problem because the fire and the fire departments can't put them out and some communities have come up with picking up the vehicle and putting it in a dumpster and bury it in sand uh problems can be a battery uh goes bad in a vehicle and now you're locked in the vehicle when it starts on fire um I'm not against any of these I think they got to be used in much smaller much smaller um uh ways uh because when I read through this thing here it says that we're looking to get rid of oil heat heat gas heat propane heat uh those that's what it says it's it I know in some communities if you build a new house you can't build a fireplace so that means we'll be totally reliable on electricity and I think in Damas we're lucky we have an excellent electric company and um rarely do we lose electric and if we do those they run out there trudge through the bad weather and and and get it working but again the I don't think the grid can handle it I I read that the there's not even enough copper or minerals in the to stand up to the to the push that they're they're pushing out there to sell the cars and and all these um uh Renewables so you know with say take the one thing the the dump the amount of land we're going to use for all these panels in the cost to put all that together when do we see the return if any well because it only is sunny so much every day yeah it's also not buildable it's not buildable land so you can't redevelop that land into anything because it's already a landfill it's not it's not it's a it's an unused resource it's just land sitting out there and now you're going to put solar panels on it that's going to generate electricity within your system that's carbon free and that is in town generation so instead of having to pay to go get the electricity from Quebec instead of having to go pay and get the electricity from from Western Massachusetts and get it to Danvers it's being generated here there's a value to that is there an unsafe amount of radiation coming off of these as well no there's not an unsafe radiation there's no scientific proof around that I'm not going to get into a debate about scientific about radiation from solar panels that's not why I'm here today I'm not here today to debate with you about electric vehicles versus Ice vehicles and how how much each one catches on fire either I'm not here to talk about building usage I'm here to talk about where we get our energy from and that's what the energy section is about if you want to talk have a debate about about the the building component to this to this plan that's another day another time and that we're talking about heat pump you're alluding to heat pumps and you're alluding to electrification in homes which is a viable alternative and it's not for everybody and it's a personal preference whether you have a heat pump in your home versus whether you have uh a fireplace or whether you have uh natural gas or oil personally I don't think we should be burning oil in our homes and putting large tanks of oil in our in our basements and I think it's a much better alternative to have heat pumps that are more efficient and cheaper to run but that is not my I mean that's really not why I'm here I mean that's part of my job uh working for danver's electric is to promote those programs and very successful programs at that and um we can talk about that another time but in terms of radiation in terms of solar panels these are proven Technologies and are not going to cause anybody any harm by the uh whoever lives near the landfill so I want to put that um to bed so that's it okay I wasn't trying to debate you I just wanted to bring up some some thoughts I I am totally fine we can have another discussion offline as well if you want bill you have a question your hand is up is are you resting [Laughter] it again Bill Brad street Town meum appre one just a point of information we're talking about uh hydroelectric solar seems to me in the past I read bill will you speak into the microphone please yes I will in the past I had read something about U I know it's the Bay of Fundy where the ties go in and out very uh quickly that they were talking about or trying to see if they could do create these units so would as the tie went in and out it would generate power I'm only looking to see if gentleman can offer some information can it work is it working are they even trying to make it work or is it not viable thank you fun not at a large scale I I uh it's definitely viable but it's it's also like uh I think it's very expensive to do it I I know I I talked to some this is years ago uh up in uh a National Grid I used to work for National Grid and um at a a conference or a a some kind of presentation somebody from Canada Quebec had a small scale one that they were able to deploy in like a river and they you know obviously can it's much smaller they can build prototypes but that's the that's the about as far as I I've seen for that kind of Technology what have you been to the Bay of Fundy I have no desire thank the comment was made that whatever is done is going to be costly if we don't do anything it's still going to be costly so we're kind of stuck we're going to have to pay for something either now or down the down the line I don't have a crystal ball I just if we need to do it we ought to be doing it now and not later when it's perhaps even more of a problem I'd rather change a small light bulb than a very large one bill Jeff allude to the fact that uh rate payers have a very good rate if you will compared to other communities compared to national grid Etc so i' like to I'd like to see it kept that way to there you [Music] go you have one more uh Nova Sam town meeting member Precinct one I'm just curious about the long-term um reliability of seab Brook I'm just is it in good health is it doing great yeah great Jeff what do they extend the contract the life expectancy to to they uh right now our current contract is out to 2050 um they're constantly doing uh reactor I I word reactor I don't want to scare anybody but it is uh maintenance and some there's an occasional times when the it goes down for maintenance they actually have a whole second reactor that they take parts from actually that isn't active and so they have a whole second thing that they able to keep the thing going you know the one going I don't know anything I guess the next question is what happens in 2050 right and I don't have an answer to that cuz we're not quite there yet I think we would start hearing about extending it again um but that wouldn't for another 10 years yeah anyone else sany Francis Kini from Precinct 6 is this something that's mandatory do we have to go to solar energy or no can we keep our propane and oil oh no you okay good because my concern is putting up these solar panel what is the concern I one concern that I have if you have it up on the roof if you need to have your shingles of stuff replaced what's going to happen with the solar panels then you have to call somebody else to deal with the panels and and then do the arrangements and you know chimney work if we need some chimney work you know there's all these other issues that we also need to address and let people know how to handle that too I'm happy to know we can keep it but it's good to have a choice so I'll tell you you can go to Grossman there's a young man there selling solar panels no we've only done and I and I I put up numbers and in 70 70 residential systems in a town of 11,000 customers is a small drop in the bucket we offer it as a program to give people an option um just as in any other uh community that has a utility that offers a solar program um you know a better bang for a buck perhaps is to go after larger systems um that somewhat our policy I don't I don't think we're aggressively pushing a commercial program per se um when when you speak to uh I think our more of our impact has been in heat pump in that that side of electri electrification um and so when you hear about from the plan a goal of uh and we're just talking about a goal here we're not talking about mandatory type of things happening in Danvers um the goal is to uh move towards electrification because we know where electricity comes from and our rates are low so last question Bill McKenzie Haba street I was just wondering that the maple square and Damas Square what is their use the new building do they have solar panels on the roof there no um you you can just speak into the microphone sorry uh I don't have the I don't have the exact numbers uh the I'm not involved in the engineering there um in terms of like what the Transformer requirement was or what the um what the estimated usage is of course it's an increase are they C they're not I'd have to see what they're using what they what they have for uh I don't know off top of my head thank you Jeff thank you for coming tonight Tanya thank you very much for coming appreciate it the town manager will report to the board in various items of Interest Rodney thank you uh through you Mr chairman a couple items to update the board and the public on this evening uh first thanks for everyone who attended uh the Martin Luther King event yesterday at the high school move like king um special thank you to Danver Public Schools as well as human rights and inclusion for hosting the event it was well intended um in your packets this evening that was old there's a memorandum from Aaron Henry our director of land use and Community Services uh related to um notification for a Butters um because I'm not a subject matter expert if you don't mind I'm going to read directly from the memorandum so I don't mess it up and don't get in trouble with Aaron um the town follows requirements outlined by state law for all Conservation Commission planning board zoning board of appeals applications so the permits that fall under this include subdivision site plan review special permits findings variances and all conservation filings um they're regulated by two different general laws the first is um the zoning act chapter 4A the second is chapter 131 section 40 uh the concom rules um they require parties of Interest receive notice of any public hearing at least 14 days before any public hearing relating to such application they also require General notice to be published in the local paper um it requires 300 feet uh for zoning and 100 for Conservation Commission we presently deviate from that standard in a couple different ways to the benefit of the residents in the area we always run it at 300 ft so even though for concom you could theoretically do it for 100 ft just for staff's ease all our circles are drawn at 300 feet we also don't go by the a butter to an AB butter standard we do a full 300 ft so even though some of those technically may may not be legal parties of Interest we still include them in the notification buffer um I think that's all I want to hit um but then again uh in addition to this memorandum we've heard some feedback on notification in general so I think what we'd like to do as a first step is to provide this information and then moving forward maybe get together with staff and develop some plans on how we can better notify the community for these projects I think we just want to differentiate between the legal legal notification of parties of Interest versus General General notification uh to the public in the area thank you and at our last meeting we granted permission for 17 Elm Street to block the public way in their construction and in the attorney's description of the project it was stated that they notified the immediate abdas that's not 300 ft but that it causes me to pause and think one what is 300 fet and why weren't the neighbors notified of that project and why would the building inspector allow how immediate but is only to be notified I assume it's the building inspector's perview I'd request permission to follow up on that because if he meant immediate as 300 I'd want to just clarify the actual that's what it was written in the attorney's description of the project to this board we were only here to discuss the closing of the public way but it did say immediate but is okay thank you anyone else with any comments okay anything else Rodney uh a couple more so again if it start with you we'd like to bring staff back at a future date to talk about how we can expand our notification efforts thank you uh moving on it is budget season and the FY 26 budget season will involve various dates some of which I'm going to share with you this evening uh Saturday March 15th will be our select board budget review that's a Saturday all day Affair uh following that uh Tuesday April 1st and if necessary Thursday April 3rd we'll have select board War review then moving on to fincom Monday April 14th Wednesday April 16th and Thursday April 17th we'll have finance committee budget review and then Monday April 28th and Wednesday April 30th we'll have finance committee warrant review all leading up to the Grand show on Monday May 19th 2025 of annual town meeting uh speaking of annual town meeting I have another update there'll be a for the special town meeting there'll be a caucus prior to the town meeting on February 3rd at 700 p.m. for one seat each in precincts 1 3 and 6 anyone interested should arrive in the auditorium Lobby between 6:30 and 6:45 for the 700 p.m. caucus and also a reminder that nomination papers for the annual Town election will be available in the town clerk's office beginning on Monday February 3rd for anyone interested in running for office you can feel free to reach out to the town clerk's office with any questions and if there any questions on that item we're joined a special guest tonight of assistant town clerk Stephanie jerose this is her first time I believe clerking the meeting so we welcome her and she can answer any of those questions and that's all I have thank you great job tonight Stephanie thank you that ity yep that's all thank you uh correspondant new business closing comments Michael right on to me huh okay um well David's not there sir yes yes did somebody tell him we were ending I'm sorry um I was happy that we had the uh Chief and the uh district attorney in uh it does still leave us a lot of questions to the fact that the laws uh might be a little bit too light considering um um there's more population in all of our cities and towns especially with the MBTA uh rules uh where we're going to be we're going to have more people whether we want to or not um and so that's going to create more uh calls for service uh so I I just would ra like to reach out to the public and say you know it it's going to take U some effort if you want to get the laws changed or adjusted or tweaked uh to to get what we might need to get done to uh be able to give the police the um tools they need to to do the work that we need them to do and to do it the best that we're looking for in our community um other than that thank you for everything and uh that's it thank you d uh thank you Mr chairman uh I just want to start by apologizing to the residents who reach out to me with the past few weeks um I did not realize that being out of the country this is safety on the email where you can't have access uh so it was quickly corrected by uh the town manager but I didn't have enough time to to get back to everyone so if I did not get back to you it was because I didn't have access to the email uh Kudos again to the HRC for the MLK event yesterday it was very well attended event and uh we we heard from residents as to how they move like King in their day-to-day life and how they tried to uh bring up the legacy of Dr King and there were um representative Sally Ken and Senator John lley did give some recognition to to uh former selectman uh David McKenna for uh starting that committee and being part of the beginning of that program uh everybody acknowledged the fact that it's a work in progress we all on a journey no one is perfect sometimes it gets ugly but we have to stick together and continue to do the work um a former and inaugural Dei director Josh Ron was also acknowledged and received the seed of Hope award from the HRC as someone was seed who instill some seed of Hope in our community with her short time so that was also a great thing um quick question to the town manager I did sign up for the MMA meeting this week connect 350 1 but I was confused when I signed up I wasn't sure if select board members are allowed to attend or three days or if it's just the Saturday session may I Rodney um Thursday's the opening session you get your credentials Friday is the session with guest speakers there's a dinner Saturday is breakfast and a business meeting at lunch for select board members to vote for offices next year have you signed up I I have but I was a couple of things number one I I don't know if we had gotten a correspondence about it that I missed no it's all comes from MMA via email okay and you signed up I did okay so you signed up for all three days if you wish I wasn't sure if that was the case because when I signed up um and I wasn't sure if I should go to the 3 days that's up to you if there's anything particular that could be of Greater interest to select board members I've never attended one I wasn't aware of it it came to my email and yeah we would should have discussed it last meeting but everybody gets the email from MMA it's your choice I don't know if Mike signed up no I didn't sign up no I did not okay too busy just got back from Florida work so what is you're allowed to go all three days is that your question yeah the question is I'm I mean I'm not going to go for three days I was just trying to find out I get it what what day will be Friday is the most important day okay that's where those workshops are that's where the guest speakers are of importance um this Saturday and I very rarely attended Saturday because it's in it's out um but there's more to come there's there's the luncheon with the election and speakers from the select Board Association okay yeah I I think it' be a good idea somehow for us to like maybe get that information in the future maybe kind of discuss it I had no idea what it was I could have reached out but I didn't realize until yesterday and it was a holiday I didn't want you met anyone well that's that's the type of thing you could have reached out and asked any one of us so what is it you're going to do what do you want to do you going in Friday I'll probably go in on Friday right we look for you I don't know if I'll put in three days you're not going Thursday Thursday's just the the um vendors and a little opening some something but Friday's the big day okay okay thank you I won't be there Thursday either I'll be here so okay um so I'm going in Thursday in the afternoon and leaving Saturday okay thank you another thing uh we got in our package a note from the HRC about the native land acknowledgement and I know Mr Brad street have mentioned that several times my suggestion to this board would be to send it back to the HRC and have them meet with the um with Anthony silver and the center for Native American awareness so that if we were to adopt something it we get a seal of approval from them um that that would be my suggestion I I think just taking it like I mean this is a good document as it is but I I think that getting input from them uh will be more impactful that's all thank you that it that's it okay thank you me yes you I'm next don't forget me okay um I was I couldn't attend the mod with the King celebration I was away but I heard it was really good um thank you very much um I want to again thank the chief and the district attorney Tucker for the updates in the community um it'd be nice did Jamie say that those dates are we going to pick one or is he coming to all three of all three okay and I think that's nice to have Rob thank you for coming to um come in front of us and keep us updated remember we want to keep our community safe um we also myself and a few other board members danan and Mike also attended um uh strategic planning at the high school um with Dan Bower it was really kind of cool it was actually pretty fun too um they had like uh you know magic markers where You' write your thoughts on big pieces of paper where you see kids what what will they need within five 10 or 15 years or even 20 years um you know the technology was it was amazing wasn't it it's really pretty good so I wanted to thank Dan Bower and his team for that and I also wanted to give the condolences to the jwy family I attended very sad um the loss of Stan J wildy um he really was a great great man big heart if anybody knew him you just knew him and love loved him um and he volunteered so much in the community you know he coached a lot of kids and you know just before he passed I mean I was shocked because I was in Florida when I heard about it and uh he was one of his friends had a hip operation and there St before then plowing the driveway and shoveling the stairs and Jack's like what are you doing what were you just had a hip operation but that's the kind of guy that Stan was so it's a huge loss of the community so um rest thean that's it thank you thank you and before we go uh our assistant town clerk is keep me on track we didn't approve the consent calendar can we have a motion to approve the consent calendar I'll make the motion to to approve the consent calendar is there a second second discussion hearing on all in favor I hi thank you Stephanie see you did it good job Stephanie if you see a vet please say thank you to the vet he or she and with that uh meeting is adjourned good night danas