##VIDEO ID:pkHrw_PLhbo## I am calling the select Bo to order it's going to go over the meeting tonight public comment Le on Tom man reports interview a candidate for Town fires committee on voting request from cpdc on exemption pursuant GLC 268 a 19 B1 thereby allowing him to participate in certain zoning matters discuss annual Town election Clos warrant for State primary discuss trash contract with Republic and uh discuss trash contract with Republic and a barrel update um discuss multi-use water rate solution and second meters uh Reading Center for active living recal update future agenda discussion and approve three sets of minutes well before 11: all right uh if anyone didn't sign in please sign in you have to do it right now but we have public comment and you want to speak on public comment hi I'm Marilyn chapley 11 John Carver Road Precinct seven and 10 years on the Council on Aging and growing that's a lot younger then um I'll be really quick I just want to say thank you to everyone um this kind of a quiet project you don't see us out with our flags and Banners and you don't see a lot of people coming out in the evening um but there's tremendous support and need behind the work that's going on to create a um Center for active living and tremendous appreciation for it so I just want to say thank you and be the face of it to an extent tonight um I thank the select board keep agreeing to okay let's look at the next step in the process I thank our current and past Town manager and assistant Town manager uh there's a legacy there and great work going forward um the reak health committee of course and I'll say right now I don't think I'm going to last till 10 to watch tonight I might by Zoom at home and I know lots of others will be and if not we be watching the video after the fact but if we aren't there in person on the screen or in the room it's not that we're not paying attention we really appreciate apprciate it and believe me it will be digested with great interest um Community Services Elder services facility has weighed in of course my Council on agent colleague so it's just thank you to everyone this is a really important project by the end of the decade stats show that as many as one out of three of us will be over 60 years old that's a lot you know it's a real shift in the composition of a community and in the the kinds of resources that will be really important to make this a good place for people to age in place so again while we're kind of a quiet group except for a few of us that just won't go away um it's it's a very important project I'm widely appreciated and we're paying attent to attention to it um and I think that's all I had to say if I missed anybody thank you I'm sorry I made my quick Oscars list of all the people but we're really excited about the work that's um transitioning now into the um permanent building committee and we will be as involved as we can in that certainly supporting so raah raah keep thank you thank you I'll go with this side Tony you next thank you and I forgot to mention this is not picking on anybody just try to keep it a two minutes I don't want to do a timer but I'm just trying to for everybody thank you Mr chairman D 130 John Street um today I'm talking about Mr Mango's uh request for an exemption uh the standard for an exemption for Massachusetts GL 2 268a section 19 is that the interest is not so substantial as to be deemed likely to affect the Integrity fortunately between the history of some of Mr Bell's projects and the circumstances around his appointment a not unreasonable person could question the Integrity of the process there were four volunteer application interview sessions two on June 3rd one on June 5th and one on June 10 Mr Mango's application was received on the final day of the interviews at the end of the final interview session Miss Murphy and Miss herck scheduled the time to meet to make a recommendation to the board that meeting was eventually postponed to June 17th at the June 17th me meeting Mr mangelo was provided an opportunity to meet with the V vasb the opportunity was provided to no other applicant also his is the only interview not available for viewing on the town's website for Miss mangelo to be given this unique opportunity means that someone on this board had irum vented the normal process and attempt to push him onto the cbdc at the select board meeting discussing his appointment the public was assured that Mr manello had no business pending before the cbdc this is not quite accurate 459 Main Street is an approved project in the process being developed however the addition of any signage or modification from the approved design will require an additional approval from the cpdc the history of 459 Main Street development raises serious questions as to the Integrity of any zoning changes that may imp this property such as those being proposed to meet the MBTA communities act the original application requested a the original application requested a waiver for a higher density than was allowed by wri in 40R District the plan was originally approved but at a lower density this led to the development team to sue the town a compromise was reached and the project was eventually approved at less than the requested density but more than Allowed by right and now Mr Bell will be working on potential 40-yard zoning changes that could directly impact this property this could result in development that the original requested higher density or even more the appearance of conflict in this case is substantial and definitely affects the Integrity of the entire MBTA community's act nothing against Mr Mel's K excuse me Mr mello's character but because of the select board interference in the circumstances around his appointment and the significant appearance of impropriety I suggest the request for exemption be denied for now instead submit all the relevant information to the state ethics commission and ask them for ruling in the meantime the remainder of the cpdc can continue working on a proposal for November town meeting if the commission feels that an exemption is warranted the board can grant it no one can question the Integrity of the decision and Mr mangelo can join cpdc in their deliberations if the commission has questions or recommends denying the exemption then no time will be lost I'm not questioning anyone's Integrity however this is probably the best path forward when looking at the big picture and doing what is right for the town the alternative is that someone in town discontent with the decision either way could submit a complaint to the state ethics commission this could stop all discussion about the NBA communities act while the complaint is investigated or Worse reverse any decisions reached and force the town to start all over in either case the town would suffer the penalties for failing to meet his obligation under the npta communities act thank you thanks good evening I'm Bill Sullivan blueberry l uh I'm also the the chair of the Town Forest committee and I just wanted to speak in support of Christine Le and her recommend that her appointment to the town Forest committee it's a voler be approved she's been coming to our meetings it's been and we look forward to having her as a member of the committee thank you okay thank you Nancy doctor uh PE Street and prec one town meeting member um my question is why would Mr manello be granted an exemption from Mass General law why would an exception be made to a reading volunteer that's not granted to any other volunteer myself any of you any of the other volunteers my understanding is that he is a well-known real estate developer he has many projects in town and pending future projects his appointment was at best questionable because this board knew of the many landmines this is a slippery slope changing rules now for him and for him alone my concern is not about his Integrity or his reputation it's actually about this Sports and that's actually what's on the line is your reputations the reality is you knew in advance that there was going to be potential conflict of interest and the fact that you now are um attempting to circumvent um guidelines ethical and legal guidelines that already residents who volunteer must abide by is Highly Questionable um I don't think this passes the smell test and my concern and I would like the Town Council toine if you vote in affirmative of this what are the legal ramifications beyond what a previous speaker has raised does this open litigation for Elder developers to the town this is um concerning that you would even consider this request and I'm going to ask that um since your reputations have been kind of hanging by a thread that you vote against this thank you thank you anyone else in the audience see n k anyone on Zoom no one on Zoom all right thank you um these on reports Chris thanks Carlo um so yeah it's been like a month since we've met so um a couple kilum School building committee meetings um has happened since then as well as uh a tour busbridge High School um so the uh kilum school building committee unanimously voted to move ahead with option B1 as the preferred design solution for um the new kilum school uh what that ends up entailing is it's a rectangle shaped design built behind the existing kilum um a couple I think 15 20 feet away from existing kilum behind it um that gets built up and then they demo the front and the parking lot becomes in the front um so it's kind of a you know finite process that they have to be able to follow to be able to actually accomplish that um so B1 is a three-story uh new school with uh 12 rise classrooms on the bottom and then first second um Etc going up um the big thing with that is that we'd be able to move rise out of uh reading Memorial High School into kilum have a dozen new classrooms it doesn't take care of the waiting list that we currently have I mean I think there's a couple hundred people on it don't quote me it probably changes dayto day but um the the benefit like I said is is taking out of our out of rmhs and putting it over there people um would end up being able to fill the classrooms at reading Memorial High School with other Innovation pathway kind of grants that we saw a little bit ago at the school committee what they were doing over there but um the tour that we took to Oxbridge high school with everything that they had with the 3D printing models home economics a shop room all these kind of things that we had when we were in school um I didn't know don't exist at the high school actually don't exist there um but xxbridge high school has been kind of pioneering um taking those kind of things back in a h in house in there kind of a model for the rest of the state of who everyone wants to come and tour and see what kind of things they're doing over there uh so myself Nancy um and Carla car pulled down to Oxbridge um and met everybody over there um and toward the school and I think the biggest takeaway that I had from it is not while I was there and just seeing everything um you know I really haven't been in Reading Memorial High School other than to the library uh for meetings there um but just seeing how this school was compared to what I was uh in when I was uh back in 97 at High School uh just seeing that and then the video that I shot I gave to uh Leon in my office to help me edit and put the whole thing together and he didn't know anything about it before I had given it to him and even he commented saying where is this place it's so cools and all the things that these people are doing this is a high school where's Oxbridge I said nobody knows where Oxbridge is but it's on the border of Rh Island so it's a lot of good that can come from this even from an outsider who has no clue about anything who now lives in Pennsylvania just being that far removed and just seeing what we can really do to this so there's a benefit even if your kids don't go to Kellen they're going to go to our MHS if you have kids and there's like a real benefit there which dub tails on to another item that we spoke about is the conflict of interests that we have with the killum project um even though I'm an elected official that's on the committee we qualify as appointed officials which is different than the elected official policy so you four are all set I am not in this particular bucket um so it's a you know you can all proceed as usual but I'm exempt from doing certain things that I would be able to do if I wasn't on the committe um so the long and short of it is the the building is roughly 135 million that obviously is subject to change that's the max that's with full geothermal options there uh currently that's being um hashed out with the subcommittee on that uh whether or not it's full geothermal half Electric solar all this other stuff that's going to be at a subsequent meeting sometime in September October I believe um and then the biggest thing is it would come up for a vote for the town in June of 2025 once again all these numbers things are all subject to change but that's roughly um everything that happened with that so it it was good to see uh what could be done there um I like the options and we'll see how it goes that's what I got all right I'll save a question for the end mark thanks um I used to ride my bike to Oxbridge all the time just and from ring no actually from we we dip our toe over the Rhode Island border and then ride Backes car is not in charge of GPS anymore because she took us the wrong way so Nancy had to get us going back yes um so the big things that have been going on have related to the reading Center for active living U both recal um having meetings in preparation for the SE evening we'll have the final presentation tonight which is great it's in the packet so folks can can see it and we we'll have that discussion the permanent building committee has actually met I think twice since our last meeting and uh the key ingredient now in the process is to hire an owners's project manager so uh we had an RFQ that went out um we got five responses uh we met last night there are three groups that are going to be interviewed hopefully next week um Plus minus that's uh sorry the the first week in September sorry it's two weeks forward thank youis me another week the first week in September um with the goal I think of hiring someone um in late September getting them on boarded um and then we want to get their input into the entire process the entire activity and bring that back and add that kind of to the site selection discussion that's going to come tonight from recel so that's really what's going to be coming from them um so Nancy zimac from the Council on Aging and I are the two additional members on the permanent building committee for that project um and I think it's going it's going forward nicely and that's that's our key Next Step um I'm going to save the rest of the the Thunder for the for the recal presentation but as as Marilyn did a really nice job just to thank everybody who's been involved to date on all the work that's gone on it's been arguably close to 10 years but certainly five years of very strong efforts and the last two have been even stronger lots of folks involved thank you to everybody for doing that and and uh we keep going forward hopefully we get this project to the voters roughly in the same time frame next year as the K school project thank you K yeah I um was willing uh and able to meet with the um Trails committee uh they have a new chair um who we recently appointed um and it was exciting to hear about the new Boardwalk they have created in the town forest and to have another understanding of just how much coordination how much volunteer effort they get I think again the scouts and the many volunteers they work with and they also had um the um the students up again this summer the volunteer students I'm going to forget their organization but they come here every summer and they've been incredibly valuable um over at Pinevale and at the cabin and I'm not sure where they were working this year but um you know it raises a concern that we have Town Forest Trails um reading has hisorical I'm not sure if there's one more committee all trying to to to do their jobs with a budget of $20,000 um might want to ask that we take a look at that for the next budget going forward it used to be that they had a budget on their own and it's only recently that they were lumped together so but clearly we know with climate change and we with climate change we have trees falling trees dying we have 900 miles 900 I don't know we have a lot of acres and a lot of miles of trails so anyway it's unrealistic to think that that that no budget or a very limited budget is going to make sure that people are safe and that these trails and U precious forests are maintained um I also attended um the two killum meetings that we had since then I also attended an MMA um presentation on the inflation reduction act um state is absolutely looking to help municipalities go and get as much inflation reduction act credits as they can the two biggest items are for um geothermal where if you design a building with 50 or 55% or more uh geothermal you will get 30% of the cost back once it goes into service by filing a couple of tax forms just like you might do at home for the very same um law um and the other low hanging fruit and I've had a discussion um with Matt a little bit is is for the Eves so those are the kind of the the two areas that for reading especially the state is you know putting resources out there and MMA is on it just trying to get the word out there that for the next 10 years these are unlimited budgets that we can bring into our communities so it was a great seminar as usual thank you um R your name is m thanks sorry um so cpdc uh July 31st I a lot of community members were there for the MBT Community Forum that they held and they put forward four concept steps um I believe they're going to have another one coming up I just don't have the date of that um at their August 12th meeting they discussed um the concepts and it sounds like their plan will be to pick a concept out of those four and present it to the select board for our vote um so they'll give us a recommendation and then we'll go forward with that um they also discussed the grant that was received by reading um in November of 2023 from the community one stop for growth where $100,000 of that grant money will be used to do a feasibility study of the industrial district which I think is also known as Eastern Gateway um the land over where rmld is that runs along Ash Street and where Market Basket Plaza is um so it sounds like that is they're planning to meet with that group within the next couple weeks and they also want to put together a steering committee um for that group which one of the cpdc members a part of um at their last meeting they um John Weston is GNA to continue on as their chair and Heather klish was um nominated and approved secretary um one thing I wanted to bring up tonight was the vasque um uh group Karen and I um I know Miss Lusk is here tonight to be interviewed and I thank you for your patience and for volunteering I appreciate that um her application I think lost somewhere along the way I know she put in a second one and that got missed for our June interviews so she's here tonight and I appreciate that and um I know that we have several volunteers that have put in applications recently since our June interviews and we also have um a chair at least of one committee that has reached out to town staff um Mr Gaff and on the rec committee he would like to fill his full membership spot uh spot that's become open so I don't think that it's reasonable that we do these um interviews at our meetings um I just don't think with our agenda in the fall that that's going to work and I want to be respectful of the people that are volunteering for these positions I want to be respectful of our boards and committees I want to make sure they're fully running and I want to be respectful of all of our time so I don't know if I know Karen at one point you mentioned that it probably wasn't feasible for you to do these meetings before November or December so I'm hoping that we can either get them on in September or I don't know if you would consider stepping down and let another member jump in just so we can you know get everything up and with um I also these are kind of offshoots but I spoke to Carl mcfaden um about what he had mentioned at our last meeting about having the profits of Burbank um being air marked for the rec committee I know wreck also discussed that I really like that idea I think it's something that um was what Mr verbank kind of saw for you know that money to go back to the kids of this town whether it's for programming or facilities or whatever that may be um so I'd love for that to be on a future agenda I think we might have to do something with the lease or contract we have with the ice arena to get that going forward but I mean I think if we could do something where that money is distributed back to the rec committee for them to use for projects you know we could even say you know a portions for capital projects and maybe another portion is for like adaptive Sports which I know they really struggle with funding to get those Sports up and running um so I think that would be a really good use of that money um lastly um middle of July I got to meet with Albert plus which was a great meeting um he is the director of equity and social justice um in the fall he's planning to bring us a strategic plan um to follow up on the Dei assessment that was completed in the spring and um I look forward to working with Al and I in the future that's it thanks uh for me the uh Andrew Town staff put on a great Forum at the library it was a unique format where there was groups of us with all the different Maps split off into the two rooms um he did a presentation and everyone just kind of like spoke among them amongst themselves and made notes and and hopefully we'll get that compiled at some point but it was very good and very informative and I just walked around and spoke to some people individually uh because of our we all got a preview of the map so I don't want to take any uh time away from anyone else but it was very very good to see that in motion I know we're getting close to to a final map and then uh for CPA I uh missed a meeting that had Chase from the CPA Coalition because we had our meeting but uh that was a good meeting of Q&A and then Chase gave a lot of examples of other community and um and then at the subsequent meeting uh that I did attend and it was almost a full Bo of all of us um based on what chase you know advised us uh the committee is that there is uh not enough time for us to get on this presidential ballot uh it would be wise and uh a better chance of passing if a ballot committee was uh formed and um basically he recommended we didn't take any votes uh we just had discussion on um 20126 uh uh vote for CPA that was Chase's recommendation not the committee's recommendation and then we also discussed uh you know the range for the rate and we kind of didn't come to consensus we didn't want to have a vote but we're kind of maybe going in the middle we're not sure yet we don't want to speak out of turn and we're gonna try to uh we're gonna at our next meeting try to revise um our charge to come back to the board to see what we're going to do with the committee if we're not going to be that active for a while we'll probably meet less um but still do work and um that's really it it's been a productive uh committee we got a lot of things hammered out and um so the next meeting is I think next week so I'll have more information at our next meeting but so we uh probably soon come to this board with a recommendation to not um move forward for this election cycle a presidential election cycle the success rates are much higher so there are some um we have our next state Primary in the fall of 26 so I bring it to April town meeting and then um have it on the the ballot uh for the fall 2026 so again those those are all things that we discussed nothing's been settled and um but we're clearly not going to make the deadline for this coming November and that's it Matt good I I'm sorry sure before you go last night um staff did a great job um with streetscapes on Haven Street and I was remiss in not mentioning that and we had a lot of grade of attendance by residents who regularly walk down there Marilyn you were there um so it was a really good forum and I look forward to more trees and really uh Innovative safety features and I I think staff engineering um DPW Chris was there and um planning we're all there listening and and those were the two major issues more trees heat island concerns and safety issues so so thank you well done thank you nice think one in yeah thank you before sorry Matt um I'm Miss to I'm looking at Bill Sullivan in the back and didn't even register so um very much on on topic 10wn Forest committee is coming to us first or second meeting in September I'm not remembering right now the first um the first great so um the the Town Forest committee has been discussing kind of what do we need to do to preserve the forest to take care of the manage the trees but very importantly to manage the invasives and um we discussed at our last meeting Ken's point where there's $220,000 to be spent among all the Committees the projects require a lot more funding than that and they need to come forward to town meeting so the presentation that Bill's going to make in early September is going to talk about what we need to do basically to off the invasives to finish um the projects related to the the wrong trees that were planted and to really preserve and support the Town Forest and then so that'll be coming to us as a presentation and then to Town weing f thank you you're welcome I have a question that I forgot Chris did you mention a potential vote in June of 25 yes so a special election it apparently it has to be because there's some laws where it has to happen two months after meeting or okay all just want to make sure I heard what I heard thanks all right Matt yep that's that's our time frame too so okay um a reminder Fall Street Fair is actually coming up I can't believe it it's already fall that's September 8th we'll put that up on the calendar it'll also be in the to manager minute and we'll put it up on social media it's always a great time so hope everybody could come and attend um I'm happy to announce we have hired a Economic Development planner his name is Kevin McCarthy um he started last week I can't wait for you all to meet him he has a lot of great experience with the City of Lawrence with the British and Irish governments as well so um vast experience he's hit the ground running I've taken him around to a lot of the businesses already um and he was well received and he's very um active and ambitious and I think he's going to be a great asset to us here we've I've also uh made an offer that was accepted for a public health nurse SL nurse Advocate if you remember we' sort of combined that position um she will start in September when she starts I'll introduce her to you in her name um and she has a lot of experience in Boston hospitals um so really well trained nurse so excited about that um and we're planning a climate week uh for September I'm going to let Jane talk about the particulars of that but um it should be a funfilled week um we do a lot for the climate in reading and it's time to sort of showcase that and hopefully coincide with some of the M SS activities as well so um so I'll hand it over to Jane briefly if you don't mind really brief I've been told to be brief keep meing short yeah it's a long me so I've been working with on uh over the summer on recal the OPM project Film School building committee the select board retreat MBTA communities and supporting a number of board initiatives um and uh subcommittees and staff initiatives but the climate week we're going to do it's a new thing we haven't done this in town when I sat down with staff earlier this week to start planning it we have pages and pages of different ways that we have um done a number of um energy saving and climate related activities including um expanding our EV Fleet um variables be Motors all kinds of things um lots of technical stuff so we're going to package it and and talk about it in our community and I'll be reaching out to a variety of local boards communes commissions and Community groups who have been involved in these efforts like the Town Forest meeting the trails Comm concom and the Garden Club um because we have a we've done just kind of a whole lot of amazing things and we really want to highlight that and it will culminate in um the opening of the muts margan um conservation land do ribbon cutting there will be a fantastic event the community is going to be invited once we nail down the date because we're trying to coordinate that with um Congressman Molt's office and our delegation will issue a press release everybody will be invited it's going to be it's going to be a great time so I think people will be kind of surprised at all that's actually gone on over the last five to six years thank you all right uh next on the agenda is interview Christine and we don't do this too often in our own sessions but Christine if you come up to the podium just you know few words about yourself and why you want to be in the Town Forest commit uh my name is Christine Lusk I've lived in reading about 19 years I've been on town meeting should have known this but I'm going to say approximately eight years I've been on school councel since my son was in second grade and he just graduated so a lot of years um and I'm passionate about the Town Forest when I'm not disabled I am in the Town Forest probably four times a week uh with my dog and sometimes with my husband sometimes with my kids um and I just I love the Town Forest I knew that they were looking for members to join the Town Forest um and I was looking for another volunteer opportunity in town so it just seemed like a good pit thank you any questions from the board Chris thanks car and thanks Christine have you been over to the Grove Street parking lot yet to see how that's been working out or yes I have um I haven't been to the town course that much just because I'm in a walking Bo but I have been to the new parking lot um I do like it I don't necessarily love how the the first way you would think of going in is straight uphill um and then downhill um just for mobility issues somebody in a baby carriage I feel like that's not ideal but there is the other path that takes you along Grove Street to come into the down forest a traditional way um I do love that there's a parking lot I know that parking's not an issue there but I do feel bad for the residents because um there's always cars you know on Family Circle I think those residents especially feel like um Everybody enjoying the town par us are kind of parking in their yards and the current parking you're it's sort of Muddy there so I do I do love that we have the parking lot to give people some options to park that are not right along the street and I do hope that it uh makes the residents of Grove Street a little cier do you think there has to be like a sign or something pointing out which direction cuz I know what you mean about going up the the hill in um I you know was funny we spoke about that the last Town Forest meeting um you know that that is sort of the the way that they would expect me or people to go and I do think maybe some signage would be a good idea just letting people know like hey you can also go to Grove Street this way um yes thank you anyone else okay no just want to thank you for stepping up and I appreciate um the chair coming and and and making a statement on your behalf and and that's great appreciate that we always appreciate that when chairs are willing to win the time so thank you we need the help thank you for your time thank very much we have a motion yep uh move to appoint Christine L to a full member on the town fors committee with the term expiring June 30th 2027 second thank you any discussion none all those in favor 5 Z thank you thank you guys all right next item on the agenda review and vote on request from Community Planning and Development commission member gelo to approve the exemption pursuing to GLC 26819 parentheses B1 thereby allowing him to participate in certain zoning matters uh I have been speaking to State ethics and I going to recuse myself this agenda item and um hand over the G gavel to Karen and um the conflict it really hasn't been resolved but the current conflict is that I own a property uh in the downtown so I'm going to recuse myself and leave the RO and like last time I will be joining Carlo as well for the same [Applause] so this is okay so should we take somebody from the public do are there any comments from the public first like we memb talk come up please Nancy I said it was not a hearing com Nancy doctor Pearl Street and Precinct one toown meeting member um I think any developer that's on this type of board should be held to a higher not lower standard and so I'd like you to keep that in mind I do appreciate both of the select members accusing themselves because of a conflict of interests and I think that should be your guide because volunteers um have to abide by Mass General law for ethics and for legality reasons particularly about conflict of interests so I think if we look at the select board's um modeling that should guide your vote if you cannot actually um be in a discussion you should recuse yourself and if you cannot actually then stay involved in a board you should resign thank you anybody online okay we do have we do have Guy online if you would like for him to speak you guys have a problem with that no okay I think that'd be wonderful thanks good evening can you all hear me okay yes yes okay sorry about that having a bit of a zoom issue there to log me out um thank you all thanking your time this evening um to listen and then rule on this matter um for the record my name is gu and C CBC voting member um and I I place this request in um you know with the understanding that in in my opinion and then I sure you've seen Andrew's notes on this um that we're both of the opinion that the the two properties in question that I own um would not be uh positively impacted by the zoning of B MBTA communities and um furthermore U I have no additional Properties or projects that would be coming a part of the CPC that would have anything to do with BTA Zing this present time or that we so um what I had done for us this evening just to kind of Ash it out so everyone had the full understanding and information I put together a little spreadsheet that shows the two properties in question it's going to show the density um of those properties as they sit today and how that bumps up against the proposed MBTA communities just so we can all be on the same page and understand that there truly is no conflict for my high persec and I'm sure once you see the figures you would agree um is it okay if I share that yes please okay thank you um we are we know if we can all see that okay I know you guys are on screen is that visible to you yes okay great so the first proper question is 18-20 Arlon Street and and for the record neither of these I believe fall in more than one proposed plan so each property is in a certain potential um offering from the CP uh from the um that'll be presented it's an option right so -20 Aron Street as it resides today's theth C the lot size is 4,961 ft and the density on it today is 17.6 MBTA um housing would have a density of 15 and therefore I'm already exceeding that so no additional units can be derived whether this was included in the one of the proposed plans or um the the next property in Rush is for 59 Main Street and um that was um a gentleman earlier had mentioned um that had been project that was went in front of cbdc was denied and then mitigated and the resolution wased um in this instance the lot size is 10,210 squ Ft uh we're currently approved for 10 residential and uh commercial space totaling 11 units there therefore deriving a total density of 47 units per acre again with NBTA it would be 15 so we're already 3x plus that value so I think you know before we took the conversation any further I think the most important piece of this is understanding what's in front of us today and what was being called into conflict with what I felt needed to be discussed so that we can all have the um you know being conscious of understanding that we're approaching this from a purely you know benefici with most benefiting R so I think that that information there should should give everyone a clear understanding any any questions on this or we derive the figures I I have one question um you mentioned Andrew's notes has anyone seen those or do we ever can we look at those I didn't hear I don't know which notes is talking about yeah guy you mentioned Andrew had notes discussing this I yeah just run the same calculations that I had okay got it okay it was these calculations okay got it that's our I understand to be fair these are not his these are mine yeah but it's the same formula um you know to calculate density we take the lot size we divide that by the square feet of an acre that gives us a percentage right because it's of how many square feet that is per acre gives us percentage and then we take that factor by the amount of units and we divide it and that gives us the unit units per right that's the formula that's used to derive unit here which is which is our density Factor so that's how we get to that would you have a question uh comment not question okay um can I ask you a question couple questions two questions um yes please have you reached out to the um ethics at the State those folks and spoke with with them about your situation I I I have not okay because I'm I'm a little concerned um having our two select board members having left the building I'm sure they're still in the building um but they've left the room and it seems to me that it might be a really good idea for you to personally reach out to the state ethics commission and be very clear about this um and then my other question was um I appreciate you filed the disclosure I filed another a number of those myself um and that's very much appreciated I would like to understand who were the other business partners at 459 Main Street sure yeah so that that that 459 Main Street is is uh there's four of us in total um one of them is my my um my brother-in-law je gu federa the weding resident the one is my my wife's first cousin jei c ring resident and the last partner is Robert Johnson not a ring resident okay so um so I'm not really surprised that well I am surprised I've never SE had this situation come before the select board before but I I I did raise a concern in your initial vasque um meeting about um you know the the number of times your partners have come before the select board or appeared before cpdc or other boards and and my concern was that that was going to be problematic for you but and I know at that time you you told us that you had no business before cpdc and it wasn't an issue and and at the same time I realized you hadn't served on one of these boards before but it's probably becoming more clear you know how your business business and your relationship with your partners is going to kind of throw you some curveballs in terms of conflicts while you're serving on this board and I appreciate you stepping up all the same yeah no I can I can appreciate that Karen U as far as I'm I know right uh they have no further projects from part of the cpdc so I I don't quite see where the the conflict FES there I know they've been in front of you before but still haven't scores of other people right so when you live in rning one can only assume that a neighbor or a friend a family member or a colleague may come in front of the board and I think that's the whole point of one person recusing himself when when there is a confence so I have no issue doing that if if the the occasion did arise as I did the other night but um yeah I mean I tonight we're strictly speaking about this this instance here whereas I own property that that could potentially be impacted and I think we're clearly demonstrating here that there is no positive outcome prob the one of those properties um and to follow on the 459 Main Street property um we were were told earlier that a lawsuit was filed against the town um were you party to that yes okay okay well thank you Mark I defer you yeah thank you um so I guess more just kind of comment discussion in terms of where we are what's going on um I too was very uncomfortable um with having a developer be part of cpdc I don't think it's right I think it is asking for conflicts to come up um and even if it's not a specific one at this point or not the fact that the that having a developer there I think is just not the right transparent message that we're that we're looking for I do appreciate that you brought these forward I think you do need to go to state ethics on them um I am concerned about them there are other business partners the MBTA communities you know the final presentations aren't here yet um what Tom meeting decides to do is still up in the air also so things could change um and I would not be comfortable um changing the rules essentially um to to say that there's no conflict um I believe that there is one and I'm voting that way what what would the conf be ask that the subject matter could impact you depending on what the discussions are either in front of cpdc or or a town meeting and that the vote at cpdc having influence potentially over what town meeting is going to do I think that that's just the at minimum the appearance of impropriety and possibly more and I wouldn't be comfortable with that so may I ask one further question sure do do you agree that neither of these two properties have have a positive impact from any of the if if NBTA remains at a 15 per acre density you would agree that neither of these properties can be positively impacted by that I think one of our earlier speakers mentioned that there still could be issues coming forward to cpdc related to one or both of these properties and I I have a problem with that whether it's MBTA oriented or not but that's not but that's not what why I'm filing for exception though right so you're filing for an exception if we come forward for signage right I'm just going to recuse myself step out of the room or not not ATT that understand that's a different that's a different discussion but but strictly for MBTA where MBTA is not yet resolved where MBTA is not resolved and the discussion could impact these properties or others or others through um relations that you have with Partnerships that's where I I am not comfortable right but you that's a rabbit hole for anybody that sits on the board has a friend that owns a property that resides in one of these I mean how I guess is that what you're saying at this point that every person that has an acquaintance that owns a property in there I'm saying that every developer on the board is in that situ situation where I have a problem developer but a landowner could benefit from this spr a land owner [Music] could right so what's the difference that the the the ethics regulations are are written in a way where you appropriately came forward with a disclosure but I think that it requires a determination from them I I as a board member would not support any kind of relaxation of the regulations no no I I I understand that I'm asking specifically would you agree that these two properties AR going to posit positively be impacted by NTA so so where where I'm reviewing this is that there's a question of should there be a relaxation of the ethics code related to this and my answer is no thank you so I think it's a a couple things first of all I'm not say this is a relaxation of the ethics code it's he's asking for a waiver and we have done those waivers in the past for multiple reasons for various committees and Boards um that's first second I think my recommendation to you guys would be let's have guy go to the ethics commission speak to them about them give them the information and see what they say it's also my understanding that Carlo and Chris are waiting to hear bathroom ethics whether they can even in have any input so my suggestion would be to put this on a future agenda I as a future agenda agenda item and see what the ethics commission says and then we are crossing our eye you know teased on our eyes doing all the right things um because then we don't put MBTA communities in risk of making a wrong decision along the way so that's what I would suggest is if we could just have guy talk to ethics have Chris and Carlo um follow up with them and then put it on as a future generate so to be clear excuse me so to be clear um yeah because this says review and vote and I I don't I think I would vote no tonight um what I want to understand is um if my two colleagues ever accuse themselves tonight for this discussion I would expect that U Mr manella is going to need to recuse himself from future MBTA communities discussions until such time that the state ethics board says it's okay and if I don't disagree with you because I don't know if he already has and the chair just walked in and I don't disagree with you at all I thought what Carlo said when he walked out is I'm still waiting to hear back an answer that's all I'm saying is that's why I'm saying we don't vote tonight we put it on as a future agenda item and then hear what the ethics board says maybe I miss I think I'm I'm okay with that with Karen's Proviso which is that um until it's there's Clarity that it can't participate in those discussions yes agree i' be fine with that I'm agreed y may I say something um just a little bit of advice you as a board cannot tell a another board member that they have to recuse I'm sure you're right this is we just expressed our opinions okay I'm just just wanted to make sure you understood that yeah thank you so maybe our suggestion could be that guy recues himself until he gets an answer from the Ethics Committee on whether he should he can participate then we can come back to this whether we want to allow him to have that waiver once we hear back from the ethics I'm good with that I think that would be a good step um good next step I I would check with them I'm happy to do so I'll do so immediately tomorrow um and and just one one further comment this was brought up um Mark the whole the whole point to be joining was to bring the perspective of a developer in front of a board that deals strictly with developments I think it's an Insight that's lost has been lost or at least not that and I think it brings some great I I hope to bring some great insights to the board so I I was doing this more so from the from the the spirit of hey here's here's how things are viewed and how that can maybe help shape and and assist some conversations so I think it's a it's a that benefit I can understand the appearance and I appreciate that um but you know we're all we're all operating under the assumption that we're people of high in I hope that uh shines through okay so I think we're done um we invite Chris and carag then talk about that election okay that is over all right so I see Lara at the podium so we discuss moving our annual Town election so um I've been at at your request I've done a little bit of research on the potential or possibility of moving the town election as assuming that you're considering to move it into May um the as far as the town clerk's office is concern in running the elections it really doesn't matter whether it's in April May or June my preference would be either keep it in May or Mo I'm sorry keep it in April or move it to may not to June June become will become an issue with um heat and uh having election staff um there this will not require a charter change it actually only requires a bylaw change so um there'll be several areas within the bylaw that will need to be changed but that we can work with the bylaw committee to make those changes um just a couple things to be aware of currently the town meeting warrant article one is the uh town is election and then um it goes from there the if you move the election into may you you we will have to get out of that practice of having article one is the election we'd have to have two separate warrants which is not a problem there's nothing in the law the bylaw the CH or the charter stopping us from doing that um it's just a a a tradition within reading um one potential problem to be aware of is that if you move it into May so let's say you move it to like the first Tuesday or the second Tuesday of May you're running into a potential problem with town meeting because you can you cannot have town meeting continue on beyond the election meaning that you can't start town meeting with one set of town meeting members have the election have another set of town meeting members to finished town meeting so you'd want to make sure that you plan the election to happen in such a way that town meeting is not going to affect it and two there's two solutions to that move it so that you move the election to the first or second Tuesday of May and then move town meeting as well so it happens after the election or keep town meeting as it is and move the um election so that it happens after town meeting at the end of May does that make sense y yeah um just kind of a few things to keep in mind there's some yeah I spoke with Town Council a little bit and she had some concerns one of them was at this what I just mentioned about town meeting um and then another thing to be aware of is that once once you make this change whatever year you make this change town meeting members are going to have an extra month or or more um of time of service questions oh last thanks Laura so I guess there's no real downside to doing it other than if we did the third Tuesday in May or something have it be because the election's the first Tuesday in April right so if we dides as correct as long as we pay attention to how how town meeting fits in there yes there there's not really a downside if you move it into June there will be yeah um and then it's just a bylaw change would that have to come through us still after the fact or no it'll have to go to town meeting okay so to go to the bylaw committee I will work with the bylaw committee to make the changes and then it'll have to go to town meeting to make the the the bylaw changes so I'm not saying that it's it's up to us like who makes this decision to just move elections like that but it's is it something that I mean have you heard the the other side to this scenario like let's keep it here because of XYZ or no one is really from Reading residents or from anybody ever um not not really no I mean this is the first I've started questioning it there are other towns that have moved their elections to be in May the thing that you know as far as Mass General law is that the election and town meeting have to be done by the end of June so you you have to make sure that the timing I mean if we have a town meeting that goes into six nights we move it and so the town meeting it happens in May so let's say that you decideed you want to do the first ele first Tuesday in May for the election you move town meeting after that then you're going to run into going into June you have a six night seven night town meeting you're going to run into the possibility of not finishing it until the end of June now keep in mind in reading and this is something that I have to verify but I'm almost positive that that being done by the end of June means also that 7-Day waiting period of town meeting so once town meeting adjourns s die we have seven days which means the town meeting has to end by within seven days of June 30th yeah so I don't see a going for the June scenario um I I guess we had a a taste of the May election stuff where um it's not cold out you putting signs in the ground then we had I guess the the biggest thing is the turnout for something that happened in May wasn't numbers that anyone could have predicted um and if we can get more turnout in the future because of a a change like that I mean that's kind of what I'm heading towards and it's the same amount financially so I have to say that I mean I don't know this for sure but I'm willing to um say that the reason why the turnout in that at that May special election was higher than predicted was because of vote by mail not because of the timing okay but even well compared with the April election no it was the same I thought the May election was the turnout was higher than the April the April election yes I don't we didn't have an April election March March March March that's what he meant it was in March no it wasn't higher sure yeah I no how about if we check it out you can check it out Laura the I think you're referring to iners no I'm saying the total amount of vote I thought was significantly higher in May if it wasn't if it's the same then you know locally I thought it was too but I'm not sure either I thought it was higher because it was a it was primary was the primary okay that's the the catch you have to go to the prior election that was not a primary and base the numbers of that sorry I'm hopefully I filled in my stats for the last couple elections and I can I'm sorry I saying if you filled them in then Chris has his answers hopefully I did see so um the total votes cast for the May was 6,020 which was a 29.8% turnout for March for the local election it was 7,350 which was a 35.6% turnout if you go back to April of 2023 it was 4,640 which is a 22.72% turnout so yeah that's my thing because the the primary being added there inflated that number but a typical election we were getting 4,000 votes compared to a May special which is 6,000 so in looking at that let's let's take a look at a little bit of comparison when you do vote by mail ballots at the April of 2023 there was 627 vote by mail ballots at the May of 2024 there was 3,164 vote by mail ballots that's the reason for the increase not the timing why would Nobody Knows Why more people that's 3,000 mail in votes because because in January of 2023 or 2024 they were all every registered voter was mailed a postcard do you want vote by mail ballots for the presidential election they checked all elections they automatically got a vote by mail ballot for May whether they wanted it or not so those 3,000 weren't turned in they were mailed out no those were turned in those were turned in that's I thought yeah yeah okay yeah but I see what you're saying because on a non-presidential election year with those postcards still go out in January no okay that's the difference they only go out during state election years yeah okay so 2026 will be the next one correct so April of 25 you don't anticipate a surge amount of votes the normal the normal said the mail pretty much the normal so we're we are not re the town is not required to send out postcards as the state is however in 2023 we put a vote by mail application in with the census and we still only got 627 back well you can't argue with 3,000 mailon votes so any other questions from um my only question would be if we if it did shift to May and you did town meeting before the election would you overlap April spring break that would prend on depend on when you if you leave town meeting the way it is no can you leave town meeting the way it is and still do a May election though yes as long as you keep in mind that you're going to run into a problem with the fact that town meeting could possibly not end before the election yes okay so we'd have to do third or fourth I'm good you I'm not sure I understand what the real motivation here is trying to move it if if it was specifically to get more people um to vote it seems that whatever the mechanism people now may know what mail mail and balance are about that may be something that's happening can't answer that definitively but it may be that that's part of what's going on here um if the real motivation was kind of you know hey let's get out of the the lousy weather um this is New England I think we can handle it I I'm I'm not sure what the motivation is to move things here I guess I'm not feeling it strongly um again if I saw and we all saw a huge increase in turnout that that would happen sure that that makes it very interesting other than that I'm not sure why we move it seems like a hassle um I'm usually at at let's find a better way change it but this this feels like a I'm not seeing the motivation from my perspective it like I said it doesn't matter when we hold it you know but so one thing that I can say that and this is proving Statewide is that the um the amount the voter turnout is increasing throughout the state with both vote by male the vote by mail ballots is what's increasing what's going to be interesting is in November of 2020 we had 10,096 vote by mail balance returned um it'll be interesting to see how many's returned in this November I'm willing to bet it's going to go way above that President yeah I I put this on the agenda because I think it was just a discussion and I would be more apt to do what Wakefield does and go at the end of April I know three weeks doesn't make a big difference but it it it does weatherwise it is New England and for Lara to say um it's I was expecting oh this is going to be a you know what show but not hearing that um and it doesn't mess with any potential special elections or other primaries it doesn't mess with anything our September election it doesn't there's no conflicts if we move our annual election not that I'm aware of so I would throw out there and we can end it or keep talking is May is kind of questionable yeah it was nice uh that weather um I don't know foresee too many special elections I just heard one maybe in June but that's not for uh the you know any of us or school committee that's for a project but I would advocate for end of April just to give us an extra three weeks of hopefully more spr weather um May it was nice don't get me wrong um but I think it's too late may ask a question so if you advocate for end of April for the election what what would you suggest for a town meeting after after um what another thing to just be aware of is that currently as we've discussed to the at the presidential primary you move the election into so that it happens on the same day of March and I have stated that my name will not be attached to that ever again but just so you know if you if you make it to the end of April it's going to be harder to move it to the same day as the primary yeah that's the potential problem well for me it's better because you can't do it to me you're retiring soon anyway listen that was going to be my question so then in that instance the town is going to be looking at running two elections when it well it it in it is still running two elections it's just that not the same from my perspective it's running two elections no matter what you do but right um You you will have one in March and you will have one in April you won't be able and like I said if if I'm here in four years I I won't do it you wouldn't front them together again okay all right so where really matter anyway and you know the reason why is not is I mean I've always said when it comes to the work or what needs to be done given the right resources we can accomplish anything but it's not fair to the voters there's too many voters that their ballots did not count because they were run on the same day and what happened is a lot of them got the first ballot they got the second ballot and they thought we sent them too and they never sent back that second ballot because they and they screamed at us for screwing up yeah that's one some of them took two ballots and returned them back in the same envelope thinking that they were going to save Town money and that dis did discounted their votes we had to reject those so things like that happen it's just it's not fair to the voters to hold with vote by mail it's simply because of vote by mail that I'm saying I won't do it again any thanks um so if you had your decision Laura on all the scenarios that have just come forward what would you pick Lura can make the decision what is it I just want your opinion it's not the decision I just want to hear what you would prefer to do my opinion is is that you can hold the election anytime you would like as long as it does not interfere with town meeting but you don't want the double election scenario and we can avoid the double election by moving the election but you won't commit to saying May thir week in May I'm Switzerland Switzerland I must remain neutral at all times you tell me what you want me to do you give me the resources I will accomplish it I'll talk to you after laa we'll hash this up one more question do we think that we run into too many conflicts of interest if we move town meeting to May in what way and just like end of school year stuff at the high school spring sports for parents graduations proms like I'm just thinking of a variety of things April's kind of a month that's there's not a lot going on for families the transition month from certain I just think that kids coming home from college or in may like I don't know I just wonder if I wonder if town meeting in May would be tricky for people there Mo elction to February there's nothing going on in February fa March is great can we do town meeting in March that would be amazing get that out of the way yeah that' be nice um but I that's the only thing I'm saying is is that a concern I don't know yeah good point yeah Karen I'm just um I don't disagree that um it's nicer having nicer weather um to try to speak with people and people are more willing to speak um because they were out in a boat enjoying the weather um so I'm just looking at some of the other towns around here um Wilmington Wakefield and Arlington all start their Town meetings end of April um I was going to ask you and maybe this is a question for the moderator these open Town meetings seem to go in two nights I think Arlington's representative and they are the they had 66 articles this year so that was at least four nights and they I've heard from their staff in previous years there Town meetings were really long too so I what I see is that town meetings are happening in late April early May they're getting done um but I see in these open meetings it's only two nights so it's maybe a smaller commitment for some communities um and can you just remind me again was there a conflict between having an election on say April 20th and then starting to meeting like seven days later or is that the requirement I I'm sorry I was still taking notes from the previous article um there isn't a particular requirement as as far as I know um I'd have to double check but I don't think that there's a requirement on the time frame between the election and town meeting except to allow time for me to certify it it has to be certified the election has to be certified before town meeting starts so that the town meeting members and it takes at least seven days so yeah okay so I thought I heard you say seven days so we would want to realistically y okay um so North Reading uh recently in the last few years moved their town meeting and their election so it happens in June but since I've been here their town meeting has never been more than one night that's open too I believe it's all move to North ring right switch to open town meeting how do we switch to open town meeting not on the agenda that would not on the agenda that would take a major change not on the agenda try to change as what that would take a major change stop talking thank you thank you anyone else I think well but not no we're not not think public comments sorry know I mean anyone of us um all right thank you Lara I guess stay where you are for the and I guess if you know I think we discussed it enough and we'll see what happens um um do I have any direction or just this was a discuss tonight I I I think is there any okay good point is there any consensus or any direction that anyone wants to go in I heard Mark keep it the same Chris it's hard for me I I made the argument that you know voter turnout I didn't realize the semantics that um it was mailin kind of thing so higher voter turnout would mean move the election since it's the same I mean yes it would be me saying that it's nicer weather I would assume that would increase more turno because more people out going to vot uh but that doesn't seem to really take fruit but how long are we talking to like really go through this with the bylaw thing like are we talking it's like multiple meetings and long hours and all this or is it like well it it'll take a little bit for the I mean I I it'll take a little bit for the bylaw committee to come up with something and I would work with them um and we'd have to also pretty much pull Town Council in on that too to make sure that we get um because because this it pertains to elections we want to make sure that we get it right um so will it happen so you can make it to November town meeting no can we do it in April possibly which means it won't take effect until 2026 I think I'm more apt to just keep it the way that it is it doesn't I mean I would prefer it but it just seems like there's a lot of moving parts and it still runs the risk of failing at town meeting for whatever reason anyway so like why would we spend the money um I think I feel like just keeping it the same makes more sense at this point I worry about moving town meeting to may I just think it could be get tricky um don't get me wrong I would love to do things in the warmer weather but I think at this point it just makes sense to keep it the same Karen any opinion or any I only see that we could move it out two weeks and that would be fine with me um I I I think that late April beginning of May it's all the same I remember discussions that we had in town meeting years and years ago and I don't remember what the topic was but there were a lot of folks who called themselves uh snowbirds and were concerned that decisions were being made while they hadn't yet returned um from Florida so pushing out an election a little bit later sort of helps that population that tends to go south for the winter but I really I I agree you you don't want to have it during um school vacation week so that really could we could move it to weeks if we wanted to do you have the calendar open um I had this year's calendar open so it's it's still you know it's around the 4th and usually it's in the 20 is a school vacation so I didn't pull up 25 yet or 2 I agree with you when you said there no bir thing because you know a lot of people do go south but I think we don't have that issue with mail and ballots anymore so we kind of get around that part of it I'm open to the two weeks but two weeks seems easier like less headache for people if they were going to change things because it's not conflicting with other things but if it does fall on APR vacation which moves um all the time because Easter moves that's a problem April so this year if you went two weeks out that's April vacation it elections April 8th this year that would move it to April 22nd which is dead center April vacation yeah it's it's going to be different every year yeah because Easter moves almost a month April vacation sorry April but it varies it's not but not by Easter yeah not by Easter sorry not by Easter but it does move sometimes all right I mean I would love to push in two weeks but it sounds like a lot of work and um I think for now we'll just uh thank you for helping us and uh anytime yeah all right so uh now we're going to close the warrant for the state primary so pretty simple just uh it it um the warrant for the September 3rd election do we have something to sign right there's no motion right no no there is there's you have to V okay motion please yep move that the board close the warrant for the state primary to be held on September 3rd 2024 second second thank any discussion saying none all those in favor 5 Zer thank you thank you laa thank you very much get this signed right look at us ahead schedule um next on the agenda uh trash talk on the uh trash contract with Republic in a barrel update so we'll have uh Chris take it away might say it's a barrel mine was better do we have anybody from Republic in the room or on the zoom yet yes Dan hi okay Dan okay so Dan Higgins from Republic is here so we'll turn it over Chris um Jane has a few words as well uh just as a by way of Preamble what we're what we're really looking for from the board tonight is some guidance Visa the size of recycling barrels to procure uh we'd like to get the procurement underway and start planning a roll out for the carts in Spring otherwise the roll out will be too close to snow and in the new season Chris is going to cover um Republic's proposal to us uh which gives us a lot of data to inform how um what the future sort of is looking like for trash contracts and for collection so um there's a a real concern around doing you don't have to decide anything now about weekly or bi-weekly collections for recycling or bulk inclusion in our in our uh trash contract but uh we want you to have the data so you can make an informed decision as we look for that guidance on the size of the barrels uh that we want to procure so that is the primary goal for this evening um there is a a gentleman here from uh a couple of folks actually looks like from our public services that are here so um I would ask the DPW director Chris Cole to U begin his presentation thank you Chris thank you Jane um so as Janes said um there are a couple of Representatives here from Republic so um after the presentation um you can even ask them any questions you would like on their proposals operations whatever you may want to discuss with them um so as um Caitlyn can you put the presentation up please yes one moment that's Dr you it's going get one more it's going to be one more always get three uh the other um it's page 22 of the P yeah okay yeah which one that's the presentation that was given a town meeting this is the the one that I submitted to you that was okay so which one do you want the other one yeah one in the packet you can share the packet if you don't have there's a couple in the packet yeah it's page 22 in the packet the title is Republic Services proposals right there we go thank you sorry so you can go to the second slide right so just um a little background here so um we're here tonight because we Republic has given us some proposals um for the board to consider um as Jane said the ultimate outcome that we'd like from the board tonight is is a decision on what size carts um we should proceed with ordering for trash and recycling um but the proposals will at least give the boards you know an idea of what's out there for options um you know for going forward um there are six proposals to look at um all containing automated collection with five additional years um the major question is going to be for recycling whether we go with a 64 or a 96 gallon cart and also weekly verse bi-weekly recycl bi-weekly meaning every collection will be every other week um any included amenities that we currently have in our contract with um Republic um would remain um even if we um go out via an RFP in a couple of years once our current contract expires um I intend to keep those same amenities the same such as Cur side leaf collection scrap metal and um paper shredding um B bulk wavs pickup is another um thing that you should keep in mind because bulk ways could either be included in the contract as it is now where residents are allowed one bulk item per week um they can dispose of or the other option is to remove bulk waste from the contract and allow the residents to just um schedule payment pickup directly with the the um trash hauler um for a given fee um and as I said carts will be ordered once the board decides on the best path forward as far as what's sized um currs we should we should go for next slide Kaitlin so I just put this up there because Republic gave this to us um as a hypothetical proposal but manual collection is a thing of the past um you are no longer going to be able to do manual collection um automated is the way of the future but if hypothetically you know we were to remain with manual collection these are the C prices that they're saying that you would see and you can see they're um they're outrageous um $7 million enough for 31 um next slide cin so if you can see this can we zoom in a little bit on that Caitlin possibly little more yeah little bit little bit that's better yeah yeah might have you scroll down just a minute once we get down to the bottom um a little bit but um I think um Market um requested that we just put that first line on it so that is another hypothetical pricing um So currently the contract we have increases 3% each um year and if we were to extend that out you know six years um to coincide with the proposals that Republic has given us um what would that final dollar amount for contract value look like you know like a 3% increase a year um just to compare something to um comparing to what we can't have yeah exactly yeah yeah um so the the next one is is the slide that I just showed you previously with um you know an additional you know the next six years of manual collection and what those costs would be um but the the first real slide real um proposal um is number one there and in your packets um what Republic submitted was labeled probably as 3A 3B and so forth I just renumbered everything as one through six just to make it simpler and the first one would be continue a manual collection through the the expiration of our current contract on June 30th the 26 um and then a 5year extension with automated collections starting on July 1st 26 so FY 26 would be a 3% increase um as as it is our current contract um FY 27 would increaseed by 134% and then um beyond that it was a % across the board through FY 31 uh option two um automated collection would begin July 1st of 25 weekly Recycling and bulk waste um would be included in the proposal as we have now um FY 26 would see a 25% increase um followed by 27% um across the board FY 31 uh option three automated collection begins again July 1st 25 weekly recycling but this time no bulk um bulk would be paid entirely um paid in um scheduled um for by the uh resident um FY 26 would have a 22% increase followed by 27% increases across the board so it's a little slightly less than prior one uh option four automated collection would start July 1st 25 um this is bi-weekly recycling meaning recycling happens every other week and in includes bulk was collection uh 24% increase in FY 26 um and then 19% increase across the board through FY 31 option five um would be automated collection again July 1st 25 bi-weekly recycling but no bulk um the bulk was be paid for by the residents um FY 26 would have a 21% increase and then 19% across the board through FY 31 uh the last proposal uh would start automated collection July 1st 25 um would hold would retain the current contract pricing that we have now for FY 26 um but would be bi-weekly recycling um uh no bulk uh plus that fiveyear extension so the first year um since it's a current contract pricing will be a 3% increase FY 27 would then increase by 74% followed by between 7 and 8% um through FY 31 um I will note um Kay if you just scroll down just a little bit please yep so the The Gray Line you see there at the bottom it says estimated additional processing per ton recycling charge um those costs there are actually all included already in the price proposals that I just um went through with you I just wanted to show you what the actual estimated annual breakdown would be below um what this cost is is based on what the market is doing for recycling um it's almost like an escalator you know so um if the you know based on the cost Republic has to incur for getting disposing of the recycling um sometimes it's not very favorable and so they have to incur cost to the um municipality um per ton so um yeah that's everything on that slide if you want to go to the next one Caitlin just ask question sure yeah good um between five and six it was I'm trying to remember the discussion was six kind of a a slightly improved offer versus five otherwise I'm not sure why yeah six um six was slightly better because six held the current contract pricing for that FY 26 year right so there probably wouldn't be I mean if we were considering six five probably wouldn't make any sense right financially depends on your um your appetite for the budget as you out because it changes but the budget is drastically different you know 19% increase each year versus S or you know yeah then you have a 74% increase in that first year in the option six where you only have a 21 and a 19 in option five can do that present value one figure out the real cost Isa I just ask for question so that um additional processing and recycling charge isn't that like the opposite of incentivizing towns to push recycling if they're charging you an extra fee to dump it well I mean it is I mean why would towns push recycling when it's just actually costing more money and I can let Republic speak for this if they want um but um it's it's basically just because the market is so volatile um I see what you're saying but but um the market is just so volatile right now that um the disposal costs are just through the roof I guess I don't want to see this happen but I guess my question is is if people didn't recycle and our cost there went down would our trash cost go up then or would it not t increase T okay question to Melissa's point you what you have to do is yes you see the 284 328 and I brought this up to Jane and Chris during my presentation when you see that that's the extra for the recycling you have to factor in what is the increase on the actual trash disposal itself so if trash itself was 100,000 then yes you are being highly motivated to throw stuff in your trash as opposed to recycle cuz it's costing you more so I don't know if you guys were able to get the number for that whatever we PID in tonnage for trash hopefully it's on par with this um but that's kind of where I left it last week okay can't any questions at this all right have a few more slides what yep Exel so basically what as I said what we need the board to decide tonight is you know one is there one of these options that the board may want to consider and move forward with for Republic um you know do note that um definitely if um you were Look to You know did go with the bi-weekly recycling option it definitely would require a 96 gallon cart um what we're actually propos you know was suggesting to the board is that the um the town go with the 96 gallon cart now the more we've heard for recycling um even if it is just weekly um because then if down the road we want to switch at some point to buy a weekly recycling we already have the 96 gallon cart in place um but if you know the board doesn't have to do anything with this proposal and um you know our current contract will remain in effect through June 30th 6 um myself Jane and um other Town staff are already in a working group with mass D and other area towns to talk about um the best way to put together new rfps and contracts and so forth um working towards you know that um getting getting that out um that is the preference of town staff because you know from talking to mass the um you know getting the competitive um pricing um would be a a better option to see what's really out there on the market um so yeah the bottom line then is you know what size carts for both trash and recycling should the town order then just the last slide Caitlyn so as far as cart roll out goes as Jane mentioned um at the beginning um once um we determine you determine the best path forward including cart size as we l of carts the lead time on these carts is 6 to8 weeks and then it takes about three weeks to deliver the carts to every household so even if we order them now we're pushing up against winter and we really don't want to have to work the bugs out on this roll out like if there snow on the ground so we feel that the best option would be to hold off until spring and have a roll out in April We'll order them now um but you know have do our roll out in April and then we have plenty of time to get all the the um the issues worked out with the uh with row and so forth is the money that we budgeted still in line with any of the questions for Chris then I have some Chris for Republic any we have questions for Chris yes uh you mentioned um these barrels all have to be assembled once they get here would it be possible to um as they get assembled you're going to have to store them somewhere for six months have you considered putting out a memo to let residents start picking them up just kind of get ahead of that and then you then you only have to deliver what's left in the spring um that's definitely a conversation we can have um you know again it's a logistical thing just trying to make sure we get the proper roll out and um because one of the things is making sure that you know we get a cart delivered to every household you know and making sure that that's verified and so forth um definitely something we can discuss any else what do we know where we store um well we'll I mean we'll have some that we store I mean we'll have to store them at our DPW garage do you think you'll they'll be able to store them is there I mean it's a lot of barrels yeah no it's about 15,000 barrels so I mean if if we went with the 96 gallons that's a lot of large barrels they they come disassembled obviously not you know it's still 96 gallons and whatever but um I I believe our understanding is that um we will order them now we'll secure them now we'll get the design and and and then we work with our vendor staff and a third party to do that assembly and that roll out and that part takes a few weeks but I don't think we're going to get them all in in 6 to8 weeks and then store them for the winter here no um we'll there's a lot of planning that we'll go in and we'll be working with a team to to do this in an efficient manner and not have um you know and try to make sure that we're sorting out all the little pieces in in advance and not have everybody just getting their deliveries and then have it snow like a nice October storm would really make this super snow last year so no I mean you never know you never know this is true anything can happen that's right New England we love you uh so so yes I do like Karen's idea that if we don't have to use Tas the town resources and staff to deliver things and people are willing to pick them up you know obviously on volunteering sure I yeah I know that some folks are yeah like anxious because they've they're that maybe somebody on this board has a barrel that's about to fall apart and doesn't want to buy a new I don't know maybe but um you know main that's the problem yeah yeah I know I totally get it I totally get it uh and as Chris said it's something that we can look at and and see if there's maybe some folks want to Pilot what I wouldn't want to do is make an additional problem or add complexity to to delivering them boom boom boom boom boom down the streets and make it take longar because we got to skip you know a handful of houses so that's the piece that I would just I want to think that through and plan that a little bit before we would commit this this third party come has done this process numerous times so they have a system I wasn't thinking they just go down the street and they have to deliver them to everyone so it's not a big deal I wasn't thinking of it that way okay we have an example right outside of the 96 that's a 96 96 rightside I'm gonna have to build a house for that the one thing that's really important to remember I know that there are some folks that are concerned about um how big they are and and they're lighter the recycling barrels are lighter and what's really great I don't know people shop online but um I know I do we get a lot of uh cardboard boxes and breaking them down and putting them in these barrels is a lot easier than the 64 gallon barrels and they're still very light and quite maneuverable I have one of these at my house you do you have this size yeah yeah it's my recycling brows you take the trash out I mean I don't even take the trash I take the trash going have to do it occasionally but I wouldn't be looking forward to it I if I can p it off on in a child maybe but generally it's me gets hard okay so I have two questions uh first how would we handle collecting people's barrels that that we said we would pick up like would we well that that's another option uh thing we're looking into Logistics right now um there's a possibility that this third- party company um for additional fee um would also take the old barrel and potentially bring it down to our DPW garage put it in a dumpster for us to um recycle and get rid of with that put us over budget on the 900 thing or we uh I haven't got any pricing on that yet so that's a that's a for further compensation but it's an option and then in terms of the 96 I I I like the size of that Barrel Etc but I know there are people that aren't going to be able to handle that Barrel at all that's like a high schooler compar to like especially in case it does ever snow again yeah like I love it I'm all for it I'm going to be using it it's going to be fantastic but it ain't about me it's about everyone else who can so like I I know we'll talk about that afterwards what we're going to do but for me that's great for everyone else it it might not be I have a question but I'm a preface that we can't discuss it but I think you all know where I'm going with this question does the town Seal have to be on the trash barel no no no okay you can put whatever we want on it you just say town of reading okay all right and that's I have questions for Republic but that's oh and then one last thing not a question but I was last to have the meeting my my meeting was today because I was away and I wanted to do it in person and talk to Chris briefly about what this Chris mentioned about accommodations that is very daunting for a lot of people and I'm hoping that you know DPW you know will'll make some accommodations uh for for people so don't I don't want everyone to panic that they get that and it's just not manageable I I think we're willing to work the Town and DB was willing to work with residents that 100% adamant that it's too big sure is there the possibility of allowing residents to get a smaller Barrel yeah we're going to consider that you know on like a case by casee basis you know as it as it comes to us I briefly mentioned to Chris and I don't know if you looked you said that we did a survey back in the day did did we actually do that where like based off the results we can kind of feel the temperature of where this is going to go yeah it was actually a Sur that Jane put out so if you want to talk a little about that Jane you can yeah I I I did that survey it was a while ago and um and and I did an analysis on it too which was a little inside baseball for my graduate degree but um a statistical analysis on it it's kind of it's kind of old now so because the decision was made to procure cards and the 64 gallon cart um there's a correlation that's statistically significant that house size leads to L wanting larger carts or more carts and so that was part of where we came up with the decision that there would be um additional carts that could be rented um you know on a an annualized basis um for larger households um and it also informed us as to um some folks wanted um that were correlated to age typically that they might want a smaller C so um we had a pretty good response rate on that I don't remember what it was off the top of my head um but yeah we have a survey but it was really more for preparing for town meeting versus this conversation because I'm more concerned with if 10% of the population would prefer 32 gallon trash and recycle I'm just throwing that number out there I would have to assume it's going to be 10% like one in 10 people are going to want the smaller work I don't think it was yeah we I don't think you can draw that necessarily that correlation from it um but I can I can send you that number I I the concern I have is I don't really want to get where we're buying three or four sizes of barrels oh I agree you know it's sort of like we want we'd like people to take the 64 gallon for the trash and the 96 gallon for the recycling and try it and then there will be some who are we to understand that that will be you know not a great start and so we can work with those folks we'd like to kind of keep them at the 64 gallon 32 the problem with some of the 32 gallons we've heard is that when you invert them there's actually a suctioning effect and the bags don't always come out because they're so narrow at the bottom and the plastic so if I'm not not making that up so that's kind of problematic as well so my only concern is that if if we anticipate like how you mentioned a case-by case basis turns into a thousand people that's no longer a case-by casee basis um and I think in the beginning it's going to be uh a good portion and then as people end up getting these and finding out because uh like uh people only find out at the last minute on a lot of things it's unfortunate I was one of those people before but um I think it's going to cause a nightmare after the fact of people that didn't know about any of this even though it's going to be advertised a dozen times in mailings we still have to do something for them so I don't know how we can factor in some number I I think part of that I'm sorry Matt I know it's worked in other towns too the switch up that we did it where where I'm from you know everybody got the same one and then if somebody needed a smaller one they did it on a case-by Case basis switched it out and and it worked fine and we found that it wasn't um as many people as we thought that wanted the smaller barrels once they got the larger ones so so I guess in the trash scenario you can always give the duplicates to the people that wanted the second Barrel so that kind of works out there it's when you there's no way someone's going to want that 96 that like compared to would want like the 32 scenario like that margin is way it's much bigger than that 32 for sure oh yeah I okay um thank you I I I know I have a few questions for Republic not many but I'm sure the board might I don't know if who us here wants to come to the podium chairman board Town leadership Dan Higgins for public services U thank you for this discussion you know this is very important to us and the whole reason we our company in the industry is moving away from manual collection your current program is safety you know that the our driver's jobs is the fifth most dangerous in the country and the application where you have a rearload truck with a help from the back that is like exponentially um difficult we had a fatality for one of our employees in another state who was on rear ofb a truck and a similar truck that servic is writing um and it was a fatality um and so we made a decision and we have 2400 contracts in the whole country um to not do manual going forward so you know our contract is uh goes through 2026 we've been working with staff Town leadership since last fall and to identify after that fatality why we wanted to consider um going to automation that's why we've had probably over a dozen proposals to town leadership talking about the timing in some of those proposals we have Ste increases normally if you went out to bid we're going to bid the starting rate year one with increases on the out years and uh I think one through five we we put increases in gently over a period of time to stretch it out six kind of point in front um can I answer question the know the the presentation includes what our costs were um as of like late fall was about $115 a ton for recycling your current contract and most of the contracts that existed really tra about five years ago most of the collection contracts included that the um contractor the huler would pay for the cost of recycling most contracts then China sword hit and things went a little crazy with with the cost and the value um the industry has moved where we no longer my company won't do it and many others won't we will no longer um sign contracts where we're getting paid for the collection including the cost of recycling if we did that we'd have to give you some crazy number because no one could have predicted what happen when China saw was no insights for recycling would cost cost an awful lot so we paid last fall about $15 a ton that translated to $284 the proposal we've given to the town um and your points exactly on is is that um we would we would we propose a rate to process the recycling at the plant and then 80% of the commodity value this the marketing of the recyclables you would get that that would offset it uh Chris asked for what would you know what was the most recent example of that scenario so in June a month ago that rate was 50 5397 basically $54 so we paid last fall about 115 the current rate in June was $54 the town currently pays for a ton of trash about $110 I think and that's going to go up now that's been going up in so you would have saved 40 something dollars so to your point yes currently we we pay for all of it you know and we won't sign a contract going forward and that's how the industry is moving so I I just want to clarify about the manual you know we appreciate our partnership with the town um you know Chris tell tried to get into the town many years ago we um we we purchased JRM um and the Twan Raad truck is very dangerous having having an employee in the back of that truck uh puts them at risk every day and I think we shared a video with Town leadership that just you know just feel compelling so that's why we're here um you know we're modernizing the program we we find when we take a manual collection contract that you're going to get an uptick when you have a a cart like that maybe 5 to 10% that's our experience you do have a trac Li four barrels per week so uh towns that have unlimited go about 10 or 15% you probably get a bounce of about 5 to 10% the residents in the last 12 months have done a real good job of the of diverting trash and putting in recycling your diversion rates about 27% that's awesome um if you go to carts it'll uptick simply because that that is a lot easier for people to put things in especially those that use the cardboard and the the footprint of that card is the same if you remember when we used to do dual stream recycling um bottles and cans in one bid and paper in the other the footprint of that car is the same as two bins so in the old days we all had two blue bins in our garages and that footprint is the same size in the bottom it gives you that the snow cone or the ice cream cone going up to get more volume in there um we you know the go to market most towns go with the 65 gallon weekly trash 95 gallon every other week you have currently weekly recycling so the D not the Dilemma but the question to you is um what do we what do we go with and and our suggestion is that we've had towns that went with 65 for recycling that were were every other week and in a short order they maximized out the volume for the residents um the other thing I the other thing I want to share share with you this big and and the town the uh town team has done a good job of looking at what the cost of the program are from other folks we're we're currently our cost of service to service the town exceeds what we're being paid so we my company is subsidizing in about 2third of the cost of your program so that's a reality so you you have a financial headwind that's going to hit you in 2026 no um we won't extend the contract manually we love to work with you and automating but uh most companies are moving to automation um towns have seen bid upticks the cost of our service is just Skyrock you know um after after the the cost of just gone up significantly for disposal for pro processing so we've given you multiple we want to work with you we tried to work with you and um give you options and we're willing to work with you on on in different ways of doing that the other thing is that you know we're we're we're the only company industry that developed an e vehicle trash and recycling truck we introduced it in 2021 it's been implemented right now so at the point where if this town wants to go with an EV trash or recycling truck it would have to be a fully automated truck we're only developing fully automated trucks so in the end if that's important to you at some point um you have to have a fully automated truck with the arm dealing with the car thank you uh board any questions no just me I have something you you seem more well yeah well I just seem you do a lot of track in um I'll just focus on Massachusetts to the Greater Boston area how many communities do weekly versus bi-weekly recycling if you got a guess well I'm going to say good question I think and the DP does have the information so we can confirm it most of them do every other week you know most of them do week I'm going to say it's maybe 10 or 15% I think know there's does do it weekly yeah I think so like most of most of like we have we have 53 contracts in the Commonwealth and most of them are and I don't know if you've come across this and you know we had trash gate uh last year two years ago two years ago I know J you want to take the heat for that one um so we had trash gate and uh dealt with that and I guess have you come across with the every two week pickup of recycling and it gets missed then what are the what do the consumers do if there's labor issues truck issues you miss that pickup the Barrel's full and we have to wait two more weeks is that been a problem we did have issues and we appreciate your patience two years ago um in the event we miss your home say your pickup is tomorrow we miss it tomorrow it's called in to us before 1 2 o00 we'll try to go get it otherwise we come back into town the next day and we pick it up first thing first thing so so I mean I our company that's the way we approach it uh that we would pick it up the next day we're in town 5 days a week right yeah and okay so it's something that can be put in a contract or is that language standard thatly it's our standard and now what we find is that towns that are 52 weeks a year recycling we're driving every street we're driving by everybody's home right but not everybody puts it out because if they have a 65 or or 95 it's not full all the time so they don't put it out you know so we're driving around you know Greenhouse emissions Etc and it's not as efficient when it's when it's every other week almost everybody has it up you know and then we've worked with towns where there's a lot of people a lot of big recyclers lot of big families and they get two of these so um we've had Towns at Water Town looked a couple years ago they they buy 65 gallon on the recycling everybody in the city council wanted to go to weaking so we gave them the number it was a huge number your number is about 150,000 a year the cost to between weekly and every other week you know so it's a financial headwin you're going to pay so we we're putting things on the table to say think about it what's important to you now and and then it gives you flexibility if you have to go over the week what a town looked at you know weekly it was too expensive and the solution was to give people who want one a second car it was a real big deal we gave them a real nice deal I think they did a good job of summarizing and it's like it's like maybe 200 people wasn't a big deal as everybody thought yeah definitely well worth doing that our truck is in front of the house we move two more feet get the second bin dumping versus going to your house 52 weeks a year at 26 yeah know I I get it and you know most people don't like change right it's just the way it is and I think for this community and other communities that have done it before us and communities that are looking to do it it's it's an adjustment is going to be Kinks but I I think with your industry where it's getting more difficult with costs you know as as everything else is it's just I know it's contract's a contract but I guess what we learned from trash gate was how how important the the contract is and how important you either make up for it or penalties or whatever it is because that was not pleasant um and a lot of different things happened I want you know but it's just we want to avoid that at all costs and I think and so do we yeah of course of course no but I know trucks break down I know employees get sick I know you know whatever are you guys Union or non-union um we are not Union nonunion right um so the that's all I have thank you one of the other things I can add on you know bulk is one of the things we've talked about so you know if you right now we pick up one bulk a in per week in many towns when they have they face a financial headwind they look at what services are not critical to everybody not everybody needs a bulk every week we can send a truck out and schedule it so for you it'd be it it' be about maybe $40,000 a year cost to the collection cost and then Chris asked me to look at you know other towns that have gone from weekly bulk to to bulk on schedule you know and it's about 9% reduction in the 100 so for you that would be about 60 Grand so if you took Bal your whole cost would be about 100 Grand approximately you know so um and then you know what happens people find a way to reuse it recycle it all we pick it up and do something with it and we would give you a price between $25 $45 something reasonable and okay to pick it up got thanks Carlo um I know from my own house uh this last uh Friday uh I said there's no way in the world they are going to miss picking up my recycling the Tuesday before I'm slated to vote on something and sure enough my recycling G missed and I'm not the only one obviously there other people in my street Etc but when I subscrib to C C click fix after um this past winter um because a bunch of stuff was destroyed and put in one of the premier parking spots down at the the depot I did the C click fixing so DBW would come out pick all the stuff up Etc in doing so that signed me up for C click fix and it's probably one of the worst things I ever did because every single day all I'm getting is M trash pickup Mis recycling Miss Etc emails all the time this board is in unless you're signed up for it you're not knowing about all these things that are happening other than the vocal people that we've been getting but I would say that trash gate was a bad scenario but by no means has it actually subsided compared to the the rate of things that I'm seeing through C click fix I understand that things happen where trucks break down all those scenarios that you had mentioned um and I'd love to work with the Republic Etc uh going forward on things but I mean you have to have your own data to know that it isn't an isolated incident my house not being picked up there was people a week before that a week before that it just keeps coming through and we just can't have that especially with the massive increase that's coming I mean we're going to have to come up with Millions out of nowhere to do something like this so I hope you appreciate constructive criticism but like this scenario cannot fly going forward here at all like Carlo mentioned people like keeping the way the things are Etc we liked our trash and recycling being picked up I mean it's it's that simple pick up the trash recycling fix the roads make sure my kids get off to school say call it a day uh and those scenarios are not happening so I don't know if it's because everyone's not moving to automated and the trucks are breaking down obviously new ones aren't going to because they're newer but something's got to be done here in the interim for me to feel confident to vote on anything because not even Tony Soprano could justify voting on this contract the way that it is you couldn't just justify nobody would tell us to renew the contract with you I I would be surprised if I actually found someone that would not disagree with everything I just said I appreciate your comments and you know from our standpoint if you're talking about trash service then we're not doing our job to the extent we need to because it should be something that's done and we get we get hit this summer with like seven unexpected leave of absences you know a couple of guys with injuries family issues whatever and that's that's part of this challenge of having manual collection the guys are not going to stay in the trucks you know the best scenario for us is to have four guys that come into town on their trucks every day they know the rust they know the stops and they know they know the town in every we we had three guys get injured you know this summer and then other family things and and two fraternities um um so we got hit with and and no excuse but that was our reality for us to get someone else to come in and do it we have we have two drivers right now from our facility in Houston and one from Pennsylvania that are working you know in in our team and so it takes so much to try to get a guy to come and do manual no one's coming in our door to do manual collection and that's the challenge we have automated collection is a different scenario we can increase the quality of service again the things we just went through difficult I think we're overcoming them but the U automation of service helps us keep the Staffing on the routes and increases the quality of service the man we can't keep people on the route 40% of our help is up in the back of the truck or on or on leave on injury leave you know all the time and is that like not isolated with just your company with other ones like I I understand that people go through EPs and flows and in you and everyone else moving away from this but as an outsider looking in it just seems as if we were used to JRM dealing with the same scenarios that you were dealing with but the trash was picked up in the recycle and and then once we swapped over people stopped getting injured like or started getting injured do you know what I mean it's like hard to justify we were good for years of the same manual stuff that you mentioned and then swap over to do a different company and like you mentioned I I I I own my own company as well so I understand some contracts you win some contracts you lose currently you are losing massively with reading but you're in a contract that's the way it is to me seeing that it just seems like reading doesn't matter now I know you're going to tell me that they do and I I you know I'm kind of exaggerating the point but in the grand scheme of things am I picking up a current uh person or putting somebody else on a different truck to go somewhere else other than reading absolutely with my own company that's just the way that it's going and it just it's unfortunate what is happening here and hopefully like you said shifting completely to manual I mean to automated uh going forward is going to alleviate some of those but it's hard to really see it right now I I appreciate your points then definitely the challenge of keeping the Staffing on the trucks is our big issue and that and we think we've overcome it we worked with um some reporting we don't know reporting with Town leadership in terms of looking at that down the road we have in the next year something called track my truck where residents to put um track my truck on their cell phones and track our trucks will'll tell it'll tell you the truck is two hours out or you put a mpck up um at the time see that is something I like because it it it gives you that security that something's actually going to happen rather than my trash wasn't picked up where are these people Etc like so I mean that's a positive definitely question yeah or more comment I think um what you've heard laid out very nicely are are problems that residents are having still and you mentioned that you'd be willing to put in some kind of a service guarantee into the contract and I'm wondering what that might entail I hear the point of automated versus manual saves but if a truck breaks down is their extra equipment so we go through this in all of our Lives already in terms of service guarantees making sure that there aren't outages would be very interested in what specifically you folks would do and offer it to this community um to guarantee that we're going to get stuff done I mean I hear that a truck will come out the next day and if you can that's great what reassures us that that's going to happen because unfortunately right now we have kind of the you know some black eyes that have happened what are you folks willing to put into the contract to secure that and make it happen so that it's trust me it's painful for us because we hear from residents who whether it's smelly trash or whatever it's not okay we hear about it and we share that with you we need to know that something is going to happen it's going to get done it's going to get picked up the Assurance of next day is one wonderful how do you back that up I think of equipment is probably the next biggest thing that's going to happen once You' got the people side taken care of it's equipment is there extra equipment that's available that's in other words if you say there are five trucks assigned to reading is that it and is that are they all always in full use about asking you to say right now here's exactly what it is but I think the community is very concerned I got a note today that I I shared with Matt from a resident yes with just this weekend problem last week's problem how can you reassure this community how can you basically say hey we will take care of you not as a promise in words but it is here's the action now we can take a look at and I think you know by by automating that solves I think the biggest challenge we have I think it it truly does and um you know in service quality the consistency and I've drivers can retired in the job right now they don't last they don't last because they just get one it's just a process no appreciate the points that well taken and we our guys work really hard you know so we you know they work really hard we they sacrifice every day in many ways um and we want we want you to appreciate what we're doing so and for what you think and we our guys don't know whether or not know we're subsidized and ready they have no idea so no one treat you any differently you know we we have we have a lot of backup trucks we we we are not buying real low trucks you know we have automated trucks we have a lot of automated trucks so if you go know the rest of our Fleet is automated you know most of the towns we service are automated um so we have plenty of those trucks and we have plenty of drivers that can do that to throw a guy in the back of a truck is a different it's a different ball game so 100% I so I did want to understand because I know um so we were talking about our automated carts earlier tonight and on the roll out and I also know that a lot of our residents already have purchased virtually identical carts and I've heard anecdotes I don't have them I've heard anecdotes that you do have some um automated trucks in our community picking up trucks already um are the trucks dual Dual Purpose like how are you managing them it depends on the trucks um some of the trucks have a cart Tipper which is semi-automated so yeah so it's a cart Tipper so it's semi-automated and and truthfully the the carts that you're buying from Home Depot you know the danger or the exposure we have is when they when they're when they're dumped by the arm or the cart tip they're going to fall apart in time these These are guaranteed for 10 years you have a warranty on these the ones stuff was looking for is 10 years the ones at Home Depot I would not put them with an aut they ain't going to last and they going be placed in the C so um they're not the same so this will last 10 years they're made for trucks with hydraulics I no so we have know we have two types of trucks out there there automated and then totally manual and then there a could be a semi take a manual truck and put a car so as soon as Runing switches over to these carts a lot of your labor costs go away if we can agree on how you want to be serviced you know we need to you know I can't go I mean under the current contract without doing anything except for rolling out like car it's like all of a sudden you don't have a lot of expenses and a lot of risk to your uh Workforce that you had before the issue we have is you know there two years left in the contract and we're not going to go and buy a half a million dollar truck automating two years left in the contract so that's how you said you already had them we have them in other towns and I have Spears but you know not enough to service the town day day one trucks you're going to buy new trucks if we sign out new contract interesting you sign we order them interesting we order we order and it takes and it takes about 12 to you know 12 to 18 months to get a trash R we we purchase a th000 trucks a year off the know orders every year you know by 2028 half the trucks we are replacement trucks about a thousand a year half of those trucks will be EVS by 20120 that's we committed to they um we have uh it's it's a Mac uh uh in the midwest I think is where yeah in down south so primarily yeah yeah Ash Kos big so we develop from the bottom up an e vehicle Jos only ones in the industry doing it okay thank youw so one of the questions I have and I appreciate the employment um issues you may have whether it's people are injured or out on leave so that can create an issue with picking up trash but I know a couple weeks ago when we had an issue with trash being not picked up couple residents called Republic and the reason they were given was it was mechanical issues with the truck it wasn't employee issues and whether that's accurate or not I don't know that's what they were given from Republic so I guess my concern is is that I think as we all know things don't last as long anymore so we're going to go get these fancy tracks and I do worry that we're going to still have issues when it comes to the trucks actually working properly and for how long and again to Mark's Point how many backups do we have because C click fix like Chris said it's every single day multiple residents in this town are not having trash or recycling picked up and this can just not continue it cannot so I do worry that okay we go to these more fancier trucks and they're automated but I just feel like we could be running into issues of the trucks just not working properly at all times that's a good question I mean we we have standards in terms of our preventive maintenance of the trucks and and the we bought JM we knew going in that the trucks were all I we we run trucks maximum 8 to 10 years depend on the type of truck maximum then they become a spear or backup or something else get rid of them they trucks for 14 20 years know they're not made 100% they're not made to go beyond that so but to my point actually is is things that were made years ago actually did last longer than these trucks cars my car and computer the computers the electronics of these vehicles just don't always work right and then it's a issue of can we fix it and how quickly can we fix it so I understand that this is how trash is going and we have to move to this route but I do worry that we could run into similar issues and it may not be workers that are the issue it could be trucks that are the issue and I have you seen this with the other trucks that you're using in other towns that you're having problems with them um because I just worry that things that are more electronic aren't always better good point I mean not not that extent we do with the railers we we have know 2400 contracts we have from a maintenance program for our trucks to certain standards like our drivers they go through their trucks as a CDL driver and it's not safe they don't they don't go out we bought JRM a two two-thirds of that Fleet couldn't operate safely in day one we knew that going in so we had he expected respect it was it was no it was there and and our trucks you know they they're not going to go out so we know we you know you know I feel really confident I work with contracts all over the country and um no we don't have those issues no we don't I was a general manager down the South Shore we implemented um 2014 CG fuel vehicles and and there you know and they were a lighter weight truck you know and they and everybody all the drives not going to last they're still on the road still on the road see trucks they working in Brockton picking up which is heavy duty residential trash in Brockton you know they they're still in the road the ones that we haveed in 2014 which surprised me you know cuz it was new lightweight truck not as heavy as the steel Mac diesels but and you think if you ever go to EVS the EVS don't have all the Hydraulics all the things that can go wrong they don't have the maintenance cost goes down with the EBS trash they don't have any Hydraulics that's what's exciting this exciting huh Chris I'm excited so I will say that the EVS don't have hydraulics Etc like you're mentioning but the problem even with my own lightning that I had was the battery it takes one cell in that battery and your fancy brand new EV trash trucks are down for two to three weeks that my truck was gone for two to three weeks for one dead cell on my battery I couldn't charge my truck and that's Ford you know what I mean so I would just caution against thinking everything's going to be rainbows and butterflies in the future it's getting the latest and greatest everything's going to go great for a year my truck was fantastic and then I can't drive it and who can fix it Ford that's it nowhere else I can't bring it anywhere it's not a carburetor or you know spark plug or something they're fantastic but just from my own experience it's it's not it's good points and when we got into this road we we invested in a joint venture in a bad company to get to get the to do that and then then recondition so we have we have trucks operating um South Southeast mid Midwest Minnesota on the west coast Colorado and Louisville Colorado was the first Municipal contract in the country that signed for EVS yeah and we've been we've been since 21 we've had them on the road working to work out all the Kinks and in the cold weather States they're fine I mean the challenge is it's a it's it's a sweet spot of you know the the the U hilliness of the area the temperature the power grid all all of that all of that so there's a whole bunch of of targets that have to be hit but um it's it's we're we're doing it we're excited and it it with it'll never be rainbows for us our work is tough and we we when you're talking about it means we're not doing a job Chris think we're good thank you thank thank you we appreciate the partnership we're excited and appreciate you considering making such a big change thank you that was helpful thank you wait uh trash talk is over I think they need a decision oh no oh oh sorry that trash talk barrel barrel yeah you can give some direction on that that would be 96 okay anyone else um on 9 Rec oh just recycling right oh 96 yes s yeah okay I'm not deciding I'm saying for five of us I'm just saying I agree with you 96 as well but I do think that we do have to have an option for residents that if they get these and they can't use them we do need to swap it out for them yeah there has to be a stipulation anybody in this town that wants the smaller Barrel is getting one there's no reach out to Chris Chris you just said this I want to get a small it has to be whoever wants it has to get it and I'm fine with doing the the 96 scenario but anybody that wants to get a smaller one is going to have to get one from me I mean that's the only way I'm going to feel comfortable because there's so many people that aren't able bodied that are going to be able to deal with these things and I as long as they can get the smaller one I'm look I just got to see click fix just right now rubbish was just reported um it's uh as long as anybody who wants a smaller one gets one that I'm fine with so um I think that the story here has to be a road show that starts now where you take these around because I think there'll be an initial response of oh no way I mean I'm looking at this thing and thinking holy mackel but it's got to go around to people and they got to see it frankly at their house to some extent they think a road show and you know what this fall street fair I say Fall Street Fair yeah that's a good ide we talked about that there's a bad experience that goes with that that's not not a good one um but somehow I think people need to see what literally the size what goes into it um what space they have available what it's like to handle it and so no are you going to get to all every single resident in town no but you need to get to Su sure um and then let people talk a little bit more about it as kind of part of what goes on so I think that 64 on trash is is right um I think the 96 on recycling is right with the Proviso that it's got to got to start talking this and letting people not just talk it touch it right absolutely meeting the funds yeah I think at your house or at a house someone's house differ only people can we have at the Compost Center Senior how many do we have yeah that's of s Library we have a lot of s we use them I think that yeah I mean we have the 96s here at Town Hall you know we have samples of the 64s the you know 30 48s and 32s I think so I don't know that it's realistic to get to people's houses just I don't know that's real but I think Library Senior Center Town Hall Fair Day common anything the town has coming up we need to put these out there so people to touch see yeah I mean and then maybe if they want one to go to their house I just don't know it's realistic get so you can get everyone but the chief drives around town which I think is one of the most awesome things see him in the neighborhood and doing different things I think a little bit of an effort like that going out occasionally and even just you know I hate to say it but you know with barrels you're showing it to people I hear all the time everybody is is talking to me about my Barrel is falling apart you told me that we were about to buy barrels what's going on when is it going to happen and and what size is it here too y I think obviously the most realistic ones are easy to do let's do that yeah but I think going out and showing people and seeing because I think otherwise the the natural reaction is that's huge period huge it is it is hug but whether can handle it or not is the real question like currently you lie that down those are my four red bins yeah and it's footprint is I think just about the same as the 64 right the the base is about the same so it's really the top that you talk room if you could fit a bin in your garage like the top you're not going to be able to get by it's I mean even a YouTube video showing it at somebody's house might be a great start too I think that sounds like you just vol to have come on down September right after that we're doing it than got a lot of folks to hit there I love it all right we're Road okay um anyone else I think we're good we all that's great that's what we needed that's exactly what we need really appreciate it appr work and color you're going to be in charge of color color we're taking requests yeah we'll talk to the VOR about it okay whatever's the cheapap bright orange or yellow wouldn't be your choice I think that that there's a yellow green mix that I'm having trouble with right now all right I think we're good I want do a YouTube video Mark's House Beaver Road Mark the Drone maybe Mark be great I think got some invasive he's back there he's long B next is one of my favorite topics discuss multi-unit water rate solution in second meters um thank you thank you Dan thanks so much guys [Applause] okay um we could probably start with the secondary water MERS first um because Chris has a slideshow on that so we can you know run through that and and talk about look like thank you if you can put those slides up Kaitlin I appreciate it second water so that's page 90 uh 29 pack can you see it yeah yes thank you yeah so we're just going to talk a little about second um secondary water meters for irrigation tonight and um give you a little background as to what their purpose is and what are some of the pros and cons um with them so what is a secondary water meter so it's a meter that measures the amount of water use is used for your outside irrigation um so any any water meter is located on the interior of the house in a climate controlled area because during the winter we don't want the meter to freeze um any meter would also be required to have a back back flow valve um on it to make sure there's no impurities that come from the irrigation and back feed into the water system um to contaminate that but there are two different um methods of measuring um quantities with these uh secondary meters the first one is just having a separate water account where only water is build and no sewer charge um the other is a deduct meter where the sewer usage is deducted from the sewer charge on the domestic meter so it calculates how much W how much water is um taken in by the secondary meter and then it deducts that amount from the main meter so it knows how much um sewage um charge to deduct from your bill so if you go to next slide Caitlin please so now just a few pros and cons so the pros are obviously it reduces the resident sewer bill by not charging sewer for water use for irrigation some of the cons um that we've seen doing so would actually require the sewer rate to be increased townwide um to compensate for the sewer Revenue lost by not billing foru on the second meter and I'll discuss this on the next slide in um next slides in a minute um another another um con is it provides an incentive for um providing an incentive if using irrigation does not promote water conservation um this reading is um known for and there's also fraud potential you know someone you know has this meter that is now not being built for sewer and you know there's always the potential that they could replum the inside of their house into this meter and you know 're not they they're not getting charged s um that's always a possibility um next slide Caitlyn so how is sewage calculated um on your water meter so the water is first red um to determine the quarterly usage and then the sewer usage in Reading is 50% of the total water usage exactly 50% um next slide Kaitlin so sewer rate impact so as I said uh a minute ago the second water meters would force an increase in the sewer rate townwide so the amount of sewage leaving ready is not going to change no matter what happens um with you know second meters you know we still have to pay the same amount to MW to get rid of our sewage so with that said um Now by having a second meter that's now not going to be charged sewer for any water used for irrigation you're going to have a loss in your sewer revenues that's going to have to be made up somehow and the the only way of doing that is by increasing the sewer rates townwide even for those that don't have second meter irrigation um next slide C please so the best way that we could come up with to estimate as to how much water usage was for outside watering so we have we're compare we have two Calas here that I got some data from the collector's office we have Calia 20 2 on the next slide you see calendar year 23 so what we have here is June to November is call it the um the irrigation billing periods and then December to May are the billing periods where you for the major majority anyway you wouldn't be using irrigation so if you subtract the two the difference is theory in theory you know the water that's being used for outside um watering um over the course of the year and then where sewer is half of that um like for FY for a cal year 22 the water usage is 1.6 million so sewer um sewer Revenue collected with that for outside water usage was 88,000 uh next slide Caitlyn please so in Calia 23 um you know again we did the same calculation the water um usage build outside watering was is $992,000 and that in turn the sewer was 496000 next slide k please so this this chart right here just did a little analysis um to show that we have 8,142 water accounts in town so looking at that those calculations that I just showed you if 1% of all accounts um had a second meter and weren't getting charged sewer you would you would have to make up $8,000 in L sewer Revenue um if 5% of the accounts $40,000 22 in 22 yeah you're going to say that yeah yeah in 22 yeah yeah we have 22 and 23 so people aren't seeing this and they're listening oh okay yeah yeah so in 22 um yeah 5% of the uh meters have had second Accounts at second water me um it would be $40,000 in less sewer revenue and so forth down down the um down the board in fy2 in Cal year 23 1% um is equal to almost $5,000 in L sewer Revenue 5% is almost $25,000 and 10% is almost $50,000 and and so forth as you can see on the chart there so that is definitely one concern with um you know having second water meters is the less sewer revenue and how you make that cost on next slide Kaitlin so you ask the question how many irrigation systems do we have in town really don't know because we did a query of what we have for irrigation permits and going back probably 10 years maybe we only have 19 permits now I know there's a lot more than 19 irrigation systems contractor no my house has no permits on it that is a 100% guarantee no permits so we ask those residents that have uninspected or unper permanent irrigation systems to please contact the town to have them inspected irrigation systems permit is necessary when do they start permitting those if they're a second water meter no no no no but this isn't a second water Med he's not he's just talking about irrigation systems yeah just the just the irrigation if they um because I mean it is plumbing and so you would have had to have a plumbing um inspection done you know for you know connecting your Iration system to the internal Plumbing the inside part yeah you're supposed to pull a permit for things a lot of people in this town don't know that I'm sure all ours are okay that's the side BR let's go that's why we're going to make up the $50,000 dollar and permit Revenue keep going and then you know we have um some properties that they don't irrigate via the town's water they have their own irrigation well um what we have for permanent um systems we have 180 um in town irrigation walls think we're going to start putting more in my neighbors just decid to put one in I haven't seen going in here uh next slide C so now one thing we wanted to look at is what are other communities doing so we initially um I initially surveyed some communities and got back um a few results um and then just yesterday we got back some more information that I'll share with you in a moment um but this slide right here you can see um we we heard back from andova Burlington and Milton and you know these communities for example um they allowed second meters um utilizes separate water accounts versus deduct meters because even as I found out from our collectors here deduct meters are just more complicated when you have to do the calculation and everything versus having a separate meter that just calculates water yeah when I heard that that seems too complic um the meter and transponder would be supplied by the town but the resident would have to pay you know the invoice for the um cost of the water meter the transponder um and the cost to um for the town to stalling um backflop valve would be required um so how these um separate meters work is the town would install the second meter but there would be a t that comes in um before your Master Meter it would tee off to the separate meter so the homeowner would be required to hire their own plumber um to connect the irrigation to the second meter and what these towns also require is that um they also have a moisture sensor so if it's raining out the irrigation is not going to come on okay next next uh well actually not next next slide um then I mentioned that we also did reach out to other communities just yesterday so what we found with that is we reached out to like um several of the surrounding communities so like lynfield do not water meters second water meters North Reading doesn't allow second water meters tuxbury does allow the use of second meters um just as I described here so the cost time would be born by the resident for the installation um the second meters do not charge sewer um they did not say how the sewer rate was affected they weren't really um certain about that answer wakefields does not allow they used to allow them going back like 2005 and then when the town saw that the sewer rates had to be increased um they made a townwide decision and put a moratorium on them back in 2005 um Wilmington doesn't allow them Winchester is the same basically as tuxbury they allow the use of the second meters it's a separate account and um but in Tukes spry they use a tiered R system like reading does and the second water meters a build on the tiered system based on their water consumption um we reached out to Bill Ricker and W but have not received responses from them yet just something to point out lyfi North Reading and I believe some of Wilmington are sewer I mean I'm not sewer a lot of those Home Septic okay I wasn't aware of that so they wouldn't want second meters because their septic systems and not SE okay good point so that's what I have for second meters great any questions Chris thanks Carlo um and I know Paul is here um he's contacted me a couple months back regarding the whole second water meters wondering why we never did them Etc and I you know gave my Spiel the same time about the vote last time previous time um I so what Paul put together in his presentation he compare the peer communities to MW communities instead and 16 of those allow um second water meters and only six don't and the six that don't are arlingon Clinton Everett Malden Somerville and winth um so when you compare it to those communities with MW it's significantly it's 16 to6 and then based off population that he had in here um 84% of them allows second water meters based off popul um so for me when I see the numbers come up there that the sewer thing is going to be under $486,000 Etc that is $486,000 that never should have been charged to anybody with an irrigation meter they didn't pay for the water that was going into the sewer like that we were charging somebody for something they never actually received and that's not okay with me just not for anything in general that's you're paying for something that you never receive now I understand that we have been subsidizing irrigation people since 2005 whenever we stopped doing second meters this whole time but now I think that for me that it's time that we actually get things back to the way that they were supposed to be where people get charged for what they use it's for me it's that simple we shouldn't be charging for water that somebody isn't using like that I mean that's that's just my personal opinion on this I understand that other people are going to the rates are going to go up I know when we do the water rates the sewer thing is always something we can always mess with a lot easier um but I mean it's people have to get into the mindset that 500 Grand's going to come from somewhere but uh irrigation people have been paying for your stuff the last 20 years here and that's not okay and I mean Paul has more stuff in his presentation here that that he gave but I mean I'm completely on board with everything that he said in here um and I think more along the lines we don't have to roll this out as one Mass thing for the entire town we can roll it out in stages phases whatever we want to do just to see how things work out I agree with the fraud I don't want to have fraud happen absolutely not but the home earner has to pay the the brunt of everything that's happening the town's not going to be out the money on this so if somebody wants to do the math and I did the math myself it financially doesn't work out for me for like 5 10 years to be able to have a licensed plumber come in put the second meter do everything that you put on there for me it doesn't make sense for somebody else with bigger yards and whatever they do maybe it does for them but that's their choice to make um so that's kind of really kind of the mindset that I'm at in this I know Melissa has a question but yep Melissa I mean I think it's a little bit of a scare tactic to go with it's going to cost the town 500,000 or 800,000 because it's there's no chance 100% of the people in town second meter so I think that's a little bit of a scare tactic there um I agree with Chris I don't think that residents that have irrigation systems should be paying into the sewer I also think now that we have the teared water rate system residents with irrigation systems are already paying more money for those systems so they're making it up um when it comes to the fraud I kind of have a hard time seeing that happen considering a person's water bill would go down so significantly it's going to free some red flags that someone's going to realize something's not right um so again I I think we'd be hard pressed if we even get 20% of residents that jump on this so I agree that residents that choose to do this should be able to mark thanks so um so this one is kind of interesting I think my biggest concern is that water is not an unlimited resource and we need to be and I'm sure everybody is very cognizant of it I think the idea if we do something like this having the um the moisture sensor is critical and my guess is that a lot of older systems don't have it um I know my neighbors don't because it's it's raining and the and the system's on so you know maybe that that helps um but the notion that um you know this is something I guess you know if people want to do it they can do it and I think the way that it's working now is that you're you're paying you know as if it's regular water and if you're using more because of our tiered water rate you're you're paying more and um you know some some of my some of my neighbors and I had a little discussion about this the other day and um you know question is you know what again you can use what you want I'm hoping that people are thinking about this the same way we just learned about trash our trash costs are going to a minimum double and if we don't reduce the costs just are going to keep spiraling water is kind of in the same boat the MW each year whacks us with new water rates it goes crazy it's a limited resource I'm all in favor of figuring out how do we conserve how do we do the best that we can um if having some residents be able to do this you know makes a difference in their bills one of the people I spoke with said that their bill was tremendous I I couldn't believe the number um you know and I guess you know maybe that there's a huge difference with that I just I would you know follow Chris's point that you don't just kind of Helter Skelter say let's go everybody let's do it um I think we talked two years ago about trying it maybe on a pilot basis to see what happens I think that probably makes good sense and and and see kind of what that does I can imagine that the the the workload first of all to do all the installations to do maintenance to make sure everything is working the billing I'm sure is a nothing um but the other stuff I'm sure does have an impact on Town resources um you know I'm not against trying it I think I would love to be able to share the information with people about conservation at the same time just to be be wary that this you know it costs more it's costing everybody more um you if you look at those bills um you know how many people are doing outside irrigation that would want a second meter we'll see you know a few you know everybody probably not everybody and and Chris you said you did the it didn't work for you I always do everything return on investment how long is it going to take me to recuit my money 5 years Etc doesn't make sense other people maybe it does so if we offer it you know it is what it is some people do it some don't the other piece of it is that and again I don't know if my information is correct but I've heard that um installing more Wells actually is more problematic that it's it's um dangerous to the to the entire water to the aquafer system and that that's not necessarily a preferred solution to if you decide you're going to irrigate let's just get a well and do it so I I I wouldn't want to just kind of outand say no don't do this but I would counsel us let's go very slowly let's try it let's see what happens let's see how it works what what we learned from it and and if it's it's going okay see what we can do from there by the way I don't know what that presentation is that you're talking about but I would love to maybe see it whoever cre Paul sent it to us on July 16th ah July yeah Paul Silva I have an extra copy if you like one if I've got it here thank you I'm all set right I did not see it C can I just ask you you put calendar year numbers up there MH why did it go down and do we have more current numbers um yeah I mean that was well they that was just a full calendar year so calendar year 23 was the last full calendar year that we had you know we're in 24 right now why did they one year one year was a wet year one year was a dry year summer was there any sun last year was there any R this year until and there was the cyia 22 was a very Dr in 23 was very wet I um I see lots of sprinklers going in the rain I see lots of sprinklers going in the streets um I I I just I also um we we discussed this previously a pilot program where you're asking residents to go ahead and invest let's just say I don't know what your estimate was a couple thousand dollars to get this set up you're not going to be able to shut that door again you're gonna hear all kinds of so there's no such thing as a pilot for this I mean unless you it's just from a billing perspective you know which is kind of what people have today they have a second water meter but we go back to charging them our rates like that's the only pilot part and believe me we're going to hear a lot about if we choose to do that we're going to hear a lot of bit about I spent all this money which is we already here every single year from the 19 people that have them is that the number 19 um No 19 people they got permits for their meters uh permits for their sprinklers not second meters okay those aren't so there were are only a few people that have second water meters now and we hear from every one of them I spent 20 years ago I paid good money to have this installed and now you're trampling on me so um I I but my biggest concern is Shifting Shifting the burden of maintaining our sewer system and and onto the rest of the rate payers and making up that lost Revenue um I just I just don't see that that is an equitable solution and who wouldn't want to implement something that saved them money not everybody's going to do the cost analysis that you will do some people just do it anyway so I I fear for the inequity of it and I also fear that a pilot is just going to be making a number of people very very unhappy unless it's permanent thanks um so people who have the existing second water meters from back in the day they still currently have them and they are still currently charged at the different rate that they would have been before correct it charged at the regular water rate and it's it's just charge sewer as well so whoever had them installed before who was lucky enough to get a double water meter scenario they're not making out in the exchange no oh well that doesn't seem fair like if if we were going to Institute a pilot program of 500 100 whatever number we came up with whatever keeps it low but within reason those people would have to be into that you can't be out a couple thousand dollars and and then have us say oh by the way we're changing this to me that doesn't sit well at all like no I understand it happens but if my vote would make sure that it would never happen it that doesn't make sense to me you don't invest the money into this uh with the even with the the the catch that oh by the way we might change this so you do it at your own risk then nobody's going to do it they're going to be like if the select board changes every other year whatever scenario then I don't want to base my my future on water rates based off who gets Ed like that doesn't sit well with me at all so I think whatever we put in place they would be in place going forward that's why we keep the number low in the beginning we don't offer it to to 15,000 people whatever it is in there but we got to keep it and adhere to to whatever we come up with um I mean that's the only thing that seems fair to me and and and the whole Equitable thing I believe me I agree with that being things Equitable Etc we also talked about how you're going to make it for the people that get into the pilot you're going to have people that don't get into the pilot and how's that about issues we talked about all of these isues it's based off a I would say that it would be a lottery some you got to put in you don't get it you don't get it is what it is we offered it we'll see how it goes but the whole Equitable thing uh people have been paying for water to go into their to water that's going into the sewer that really actually isn't going into the sewer there's nothing that I mention that many people's water watering devices are going into the sewers but I mean that's rainwater and well I I think more I'm just basing things up my own my own land uh I know that when my sprinklers worked and weren't cut in the whole Spiel we mentioned earlier um I think that it's for me to go ahead and like I said I ran the numbers I'm not going to do this so you can offer it to me you can give me super discounted rates I'm not doing it other people that's their decision to make and we're not going to sit here I'm not going to sit here and ding people for stuff that's going into the sewer that really isn't for the last 20 years and just justify it because uh it is what it is so are you saying that if we have a 100 people right now in this town that have second water meters from back in the day those are the first 100 people that get to be part of this program I didn't know that they weren't I didn't I didn't know that those people weren't grandfathers in I thought that they were so I mean if that's the case then uh I can talk to collectors again but they it would take some more research on their end to figure out tell us how much water they're using too through the second meter because it's got its own account I think that makes the most sense I would like to know the number if it's 30 then that's not enough for us to to move a needle but I would like to obviously open it up to some number whatever if if it's 100 people have second meters then we offer it to 100 other ones that's still the low number 200 people no I think we need I didn't think of it that way until you mentioned it and Chris confirmed it that I think we need to get some data on that and then have it under the agenda again just so we don't talk in circles for another half hour just so we can have more data to say okay if it's 30 if it's 300 that's a big difference right so I'm I I was going to go with the pilot Lottery system right and I but I think we have to start here because those people already made the investment as long as everything is working and current maybe have to update stuff this is 20 years ago they' have to have the sensor like yeah yeah whatever um but I just I'm going to end it here with Paul did a lot of work on this I'd like the opportunity to make some comments just a couple minutes just a couple can you keep it to a couple minutes all right if you can come up please thank you just brief you know Chris mentioned some of it but I want to acknowledge on I mention some of the things that Chris mentioned you do a lot of work on this um I'm not going to rehash a lot of it but one of his primary methodologies was to look at water usage be in the summer and the winter and to say that the excess is irrigation a much better methodology would be to call stonum who has second meters and see what their percentages are I'm sure they're a lot different than what the ones that Chris came up with the other point that I had on I don't if we can go back to his presentation it said that sewer is charged at half the volume of the water well if anybody wants to come and look at their water bill if it looks like mine it's at 100% I use 1700 um 1700 uh square feet of water and I was charging 100 square ft 7,700 Square ft of storage charges so I don't know where that 50% number comes from but there's my bill if You' like to look at it this isue and Kon you mentioned this issue a fairness this isn't the the change makes things fair and Equitable no they absolutely do 22 Town 16 towns out of 22 towns that get water 100% of their water in sewer from the MW all second meters you heard Chris say that we have to make up the revenue that lost in they made it up but it's it would be fair people would be paying for the sew that they use not fair when I have to pay the sewer that you are not paying for it's just that simple no what it is you're not paying for the sewer now that you're using I'm paying no that's not true that's that's exactly what happen I have a second water meter so that's you don't need second water but your seor rate is subsidized because mine is overpriced that's what's happening right now maybe you don't understand it but that's exactly what's happening right now you may want to do some research to find about having a a sewer system that we've all participate in when you live in ring you have a water system and a sewer system and you agree to be part of that so but we all have to pay and the way we pay is it's a ratio to how much water you use and I I do understand where you're coming from you're like my water may not be going back into the sewer I understand where you're coming from but I know we have massive wad old sewer systems and we have to raise everybody else's prices to pay for it if you get free because it's the fair and Equitable thing to jesz jeez I don't know what happened I just shocked my by B all right you win no I shocked all of us wow it would have been the first one all right 10 more seconds we let uh yes so the bottom line it is Equitable in fness in the terms of this pilot program in 2014 stonum our neighbors to the east implemented it on day one there was no pilot program there was also no problem and no issues in putting it through so it wasn't well let's do 100 let's do 50 they did it for all I have a concern or a question why stonum can do something that we don't think we can do that doesn't make any sense to me in terms of conservation Mark you mentioned conservation issues I think the conservation issues are very well handled by the MW they have no restrictions on external water usage right now anywhere across the system and that's because the Quin reservoirs at 94% of capacity they also have the ability should those numbers drop to implement first of all voluntary restrictions and then later mandatory restrictions so I don't think it's I don't think it's on the town necessarily to impose those restrictions of those 23 towns that get 100% of their water and 100% of their sewer from the MW rating is the only town that has a watering restriction nobody else has one why is that because we care about conservation no one well mwa cares about conservation too and they've come to the conclusion that there's no need to have a restriction on water use so I don't think it's fair or riate for the town to impose that on reading when the water source where we're getting our water is not imposing it on us stonum stonum used 735 million gallons of water last year we Ed 572 we have a population that's 10% bigger why is that that is because reading I'm sorry Stone them knows what their residents want admittedly we are going to pay more for water me as an individual and any individual who's going to water their lawn a little bit more or water their Gardens a little bit more will pay more for water all right we are back from recess we had a bit of a medical emergency that was addressed and everything is fine and we're going to continue with our agenda next is recal update I don't think Chris we're all set oh the water part of the I think we could move on from that I don't Sharon could make it tonight to talk about the new issue so you could better update and just move right yeah know camera's right she's right that was a two-parter right right yeah no thank you all right Mr Sasso you're up thank you Carlo um John Sasso 66 Richard Ro member of the recal excuse me we need to call to order oh sorry we do we have do we have a form yes two three on four there are four of us here right now is there anyone online John I didn't see him sorry um okay I we'll call the recal uh committee to order um uh so um say if you're present Mark doler yes um Michael Colman I'm here John Parsons yes here John Sasso present is there anybody on Zoom from recal Ron aini Ron aini uhon is nor nor bco John John O'Neal okay it says in the corner I don't know it says Nancy entered the waiting room I don't know that could be n just that sure it is okay um so just um to Gage we do have a relatively comprehensive presentation that we put together um just to get some guidance from the chair um how would you like me to proceed uh I mean yes it's a lot I I I I think go over the the basics I mean you know we've other than Melissa the four of us have been uh very involved with this for the past three years but I'm not saying to Short Change anyone but do the best you can okay just do the best you can all right great I don't want you to miss any big points but I I I yeah I will try to um I I may go quickly through some pieces um yeah and if we have questions we'll ask questions yes great thank you so um again I want to thank everybody for giving me the opportunity tonight to present uh on behalf of recal um um I'll present everybody in a minute um but I really want to give this as an update from the work that was performed last year again as you said um with the exception that most of the other folks here have have heard most of this or much of it um the other main thing I want to convey tonight is our recommendation for a site um that came out of the initial work on the feasibility study um next slide please so um there's a lot of stuff here in this presentation again I'll probably go through um some of it pretty quickly um but I do wanted to serve as a resource for those folks that haven't seen this before um this is going to become an issue that I think folks will want to get a Le learn a lot so so this presentation we were hoping will serve as a as a resource for folks to go back and look at uh next slide please so um I won't I won't read the mission um but I I wanted to point out quickly that um there's been some conversations about um what we actually mean by recal um and so I want to make that I want to add some clarity to that um and we we talked a lot about this so we've talked about a senior center or a community center with dedicated space for senior center so when we talk about the reading Center for active living or recal we are talking about a com a comprehensive Center that includes the senior uh requirements as well as opportunities for the community so um it really does cover both Concepts I'm going to refer to it through the presentation as the a center or recal um and we've tried to use that terminology moving forward uh next slide please so um I do want to thank um uh other the other members of of the uh recal committee um there was a lot of work put into this for those that um have have uh been involved and seen this over the past few years um a big thank you to everybody um also to Jenner and Chris and Elder Services um the COA and all of their um work uh I think COA really did a lot of joint meetings with us so it was a lot of work that was put into this and we dragged in a number of other resources um throughout the process a lot of other communities that we visited that gave us their time and their and their input um so this this is this was a team effort this is a huge team effort so I just want to make sure folks recognize um certainly not just me standing up here tonight uh next slide please so um I one interesting point um on here is that um we are already exceeding the estimates for uh the a the 60 plus Community um that were originally um uh documented by um The gentology Institute in their last um in their last assessment uh as of this year 2024 uh the 60 plus Community represents 7,760 people out of the 27107 you know we're well on the way to 30% and we're only in 2024 um so this a huge huge one one of the huge driving factors for this is is that growing population um next slide please so there's kind of three different pieces on here there's the issue of our current Center and and the space constraints constraints that that Center has um for those that have been to the center I think it doesn't need to be explained but um you know we definitely have some very small room we can't really do multiple programs or multiple large programs consistently uh in in combination um so uh that you know you can see just here the types of rooms that exist in the current Center a lot of the programs have weight lists um we've um uh just an example of some of the recent ones that um that have occurred um I'm sorry have my other glasses on here so I can't read it from here um they the annual Independence Day barbecue um so there 28 on the weight list just for that that occurred uh last month um and the other pieces that we just talked about the population growing while the usage is actually growing um the um uh the team has presented data about the number of what we call um uh interactions people that independently come to the uh Center so each person that comes in is an interaction not an independent interaction but overall so we're seeing those numbers uh increase and again those are driving the um the needs of of of of this Center to to meet the community's needs and we're not you know we're not able to do that in the in the current space that we have uh next uh slide please uh I'm not going to go through this in any more detail again hopefully folks have had a chance to to be at the center uh and see it this was a slide actually that I think we put together and presented the last time and kind of lay out the different areas I I I will say the things that always strike me is the game room where you can't actually put the pool pool handle all the way without hitting the wall um you know the the there's no private offices um there's an office in a hallway um it's just it's just a really it's a really tough space uh currently so and they do a great job uh accommodating the best they can but it it's definitely uh it's definitely born uh next slide please um this is an important slide because a lot of folks have said hey why do this come up so quickly why are we doing this now well this is not a new thing it's been around for uh if you go back to 20 2015 when the original needs were defined by the Metropolitan Area Community study which then led to the 2017 study by UMass um we we've been we've been eight plus years in the making um and these are these are decisions and activities that have been supported by the select board by town meeting and funding um by the more recent um things with Opera and and the community's been engaged in the last three years we've we've really dragged in a lot of folks to uh give us good feedback and input so I I just want to make it clear I'm not going to go through all the detailed pieces that have occurred over the last few years but I just want to make the point this is not something new uh next slide please so um we have we've had two phases of efforts the first phase was actually kicked off back in November of 2021 um and that's when the initial uh Charter from the select board came out and then we did an update um in June of 2023 so I want to just quickly go back through those two areas so next slide please so um the UMass study so in I think it was early I think it was may have been April of 2021 if I'm wrong I I apologize but town meeting actually allocated $50,000 for a u a fe for a a study to look at um the feasibility of a of a center in in uh Define the needs and so um that was the UMass when I say the UMass study that was that study that was funded by the 50k out of meeting and the intention was to kind of investigate the needs and um and really um you know the answer which was kind of a follow on to their original uh piece of work looking at whether or not things were still available in the community um you know they they still felt that what what existed was not adequate to support the the 60 plus Community um the center was was woefully um under underresourced from a from the perspective of space um and then we got a lot of good feedback I I'll talk about some of the survey results in a minute um and that um there was there was a um a strong a strong uh group of folks that wanted to see um this be expanded so which is why we kind of mov from just a senior only Center into the kind of the all ages Community Center uh conversation um so uh let me just jump to the next slide real quick so there's it's like a 90 page report that was put out and these are just a couple of the pieces that came out of the survey in terms of who we surveyed there were close to 1500 people that participated um we looked at um the demographics we looked at you know what people um wanted to see in the center what what activities um but two there were two two questions that I think are worth discussing one is um if if a new center is built will people use it um and so the that that actually 75% of the people said they would be very or somewhat likely to use a new center um the second question which I think deserves um a point is the funding we we asked them well how much would you be willing to pay for a new center um and basically uh $100 or less add additional to your current tax uh Bill 64% between1 and $200 47% and greater than $200 23% now this was two going on two and a half years ago a lot has changed in the economy I'd be interesting to know what sort of response we get today um I think this is a big issue that the community is going to have to deal with moving forward is how do how do we really if we really do believe this is an important priority how do we fund it and pay for it uh next slide please so um in addition to um the survey in in terms of actual filling out of survey um UMass um facilitated a number of community fors um and I I just pull these out because I think these are really interesting pieces one is we ask people about how did they what do they think about the community how is it is is it a good place to live from a positive and negative perspective um and so they gave us some some good points on that um if we were going to build a center what would it look like what what would they feel it it should be um should it be it should be all inclusive it should be accessible um there should be interesting programs um and then we asked them about some very specific needs and and we felt those specific needs would help us drive to at the time we were really focused on facility so what would the kind of the pieces of the of the community uh Center Senior Center look like um based on some of the specific needs that people were were asking us for and and again what were those facility implications um there were other things that were were um pulled in such as things about Transportation um and the cost of programs so we didn't lose any of that in this but but it it wasn't the primary focus at this particular point in time um next slide please so in addition to doing the survey in addition to doing facilitated peer groups um recal actually went out and visited 15 local U peer centers um uh interesting just a couple interesting points on this um there's a bullet point that says what is current center missing um that's actually meant to mean what is the current Center of that person we were interviewing not the well not what the Pleasant Street Center was missing but what did their Center Miss um and the reason we ask that question is because a number of these centers were new centers that had just been built and so we were asking them well you just built your Center what did you forget um and so you know it it it it it varied from more storage space to washers and dryers to a gym to um all sorts of different things that they felt uh they could have done better with more parking came up I think in all of them um so that was a a really I think an interesting question um the other point um I I I want to point I know qu people have asked questions about this is the bullet on Center operations so we did try to get some Financial numbers about what these other centers were um how they were how they were um budgeting for their uh Elder services and their centers um it was really I think it was difficult to get apple to Apple comparisons because of the way people budgeted um but I think the the the two pieces that I would I would pause it is one is um we found that our funding in general was lower um and two we did a per capita basis assessment um I don't have that data in front of me it was buried in one of the last presentations um but it was also lower so I think we we've recognize that there's been actually some additional investment in in Reading in the in the um in the Elder Services plus with the Opera funds so I think the community is recognizing that that is something that needs some further uh care and attention but I I just want to point that out that we did try to um and continue to try to pull financial information to know where do we stand as it compared to some of the other communities uh next slide please um again these are just some images of some of the centers we visited um some really beautiful uh sites some uh some commercial very very in-depth commercial kitchens some game rooms lar large multi-purpose rooms um and these were both just to be clear these were both senior centers and some of them were community centers as well so it wasn't just focused on an only senior only centers um I think Lexington was one that we visited that that is a senior community center as well there's a couple others on the list as well uh next slide please so um these were the presentation in February 2023 these were the four recommendations that we presented to the select board um uh simply put um we needed to do something um and we needed to do something quickly or at least put something in place to move forward with this project um and um uh one of the points that I do want to make is that um we also talked about communication um I'll talk a little bit more about this um but the COA has actually taken um a step forward in in um supporting U more more communication um they've done a lot of open houses they've been really um taking taking that on so recal tried to do that as part of their first phase um thankfully um COA took took that um activity on pretty pretty well the last few months uh next slide please so um based on those recommendations um you folks decided to um extend recal um Breathe new life um and um allow us uh not to Sunset uh with um four very specific um chout editions um the biggest of of those was to move forward with a feasibility study um I I do want to um mention at this point be um I apologize maybe I shouldn't have mentioned in the last slide um one of the things that we uh had done at that point as well is we had also um gone through the process of soliciting in the community for other sites um we put out a RFP for both a lease and a buy option I believe and um that's what kind of led us into the whole negotiations with Walgreens um obviously that fell through um but the reason I bring it up because it was actually some some folks had asked that question in some of the more recent discussions about well why haven't we looked at other centers or sites in the community that we could use potentially as other buildings underutilized and I I just want to um make the statement that we have done that we we did look and and um while um we put some effort investigation into that um those um those efforts did not come to fruition um so poize wanted to take a quick step back with that um okay so again um following the February 2023 recommendations um we had a new Charter for recal uh the priority in that was really on the feasibility study but but also to continue to look into things about programmatics um how we can potentially expand funding and financing options and also Transportation um next slide please so um in any of our assessments moving forward I just wanted to mention these these eight criteria that came out of the actually came out of the phase one effort um these are the things that we use as the litmus test to compare all of our kind of views that came up on different sites and different views these were the priorities and and um I think um I think BH and did a nice job putting this in a in a real easy easy to understand ey chart to said okay these are the things that we really want to focus on so um anything that we look at um we really Tred to use that as our as our criteria uh next slide so um as I mentioned in addition to the feasibility study we were asked to go look at um some other issues of Transportation finance and programs um we did three uh excuse me four additional site visits um and so I'm not going to read all the details but I I do want to mention that um uh this actually continued to help um with some cross-pollination of ideas into the current Elder Services programmatics um there is a backup slide in the presentation um I won't present it tonight but please take a look at it there's a lot of stuff that Elder Services has done and added to their programmatics um and I I think much of it has come from uh not just their own ideas but things that they've pulled out from other centers and visiting these other places so um that's that's been an important um ad I think there's a lot more work to do on transportations I'm not going to kid you um and um obviously we have we have to consider how the financial impacts are going to apply but um I think all of this information and data will continue to support and help coming up with good solutions that these centers have all they're they're out there they've already a lot of them have solved these problems or have come up with solutions that we can use and and uh adopt and not have to necessarily figure it out on our own so I I think this continues to be a good source of information uh next slide please so um I already mentioned that um we we've um we've been very worked very closely with recal um again like excuse me with COA um like I said um we many of our meetings were Jo held jointly um as I mentioned they've taken on the communication process I I do want to mention um while not a COA initiative and certainly not a town initiative um there has been a Renning uh friends of seniors group um formed um and they've already started um to do some fundraising um and one of the things that we found in a lot of these other centers is that when they especially those that built new centers um they actually um they're they're they're nonprofit friends of seniors group have have contributed towards things like FFN and other things like that so I I think we we will benefit from this in many ways um so I just want to make sure folks were aware of that if you hadn't already known uh next slide um so there have been a lot of other activities going on while recal is happening um um there's ideas about um how we improve health and and wellness overall um this certainly continues to be the desire to to get Folks up and moving especially after covid um and so we kind of do view recal as one of the recal as as the opportunity to bring a lot of these priorities together so again we talked not just about the seniors but about um other things that can be done um the the intergenerational programming aspect as something that a lot of centers have um have have done and had had very positive responses from so we'd like to see this kind of as the vision for for the center moving forward uh next slide all right I'm going to get into the feasibility study um next slide please um so we were somewhat limited um we we really could we really had to look at um sites that um were feasible from the community's perspective and there really were only three options that we looked at the first was the existing Pleasant Street Center um the second um uh the the property on Oakland Road across from the high school and the third um the property to the right of Range Road down the Simmons way um area um those are kind of the three areas that we looked at and and um just want to be clear so U bhna was the vendor that was selected to help us with this PRI with this feasibility study it was broken up into three phases um the the first phase being kind of okay let's just look in general at the sites and see if we can come up with um options that would fit on each of the sites and what they would look like and so that's really what the majority of this work is represented I I want to make it clear that anything that you see on these slides tonight was never intended to be a final presentation of this is what it's going to look like it really was intended to be okay what could we put here what what does it look like and how could then be be then used to satisfy the the needs and requirements for for a particular Center um so bhna did a really nice job with the shets they held a number of uh Community meetings they got a lot of feedback a lot of updates um so I'm going to just jump to some of the quick things to show you as examples uh next slide please so um this is the Pleasant Street Center site um you can see um kind of that little X area is the existing um existing building um outline and what you see uh in white kind of to the right and left are the extensions of what would have what what could have been an addition to the existing Center um the big uh rectangle on the right hand side represents basically the area where a new park a two-story level parking garage would be um I have to say the visuals from the street we did get a couple of them they they just were very I would say undesirable would probably be my term um not not to mention the garage flow was one way in one way out which is really wasn't also very conducive um basically no setback um and because of having to have that to get some of the extra parking it really limited the amount of space that we could put on the site uh the the amount of um additional additional uh building um that would be there for programmatic rooming as well um so um but so this just an example of of kind of the overall footprint um uh the bhna did break this up and show specific rooms in terms of number of sizes and we'll talk a little about that in a minute um next slide please this is just an example of what um was uh put forward on the Simmons way site um you can see on the bottom kind of bottom left is where the building in this particular configuration was was laid out uh we actually had another configuration where the building was a little bit further back with with parking kind of in that area so there's a whole bunch of different ways that one could put that together um one of the things that we wanted to make sure was what we put there would kind of be aligned with some of the concepts that swc had been working on um we do show some pickle ball courts there um they're not actually in the recal assessment if you will but just to kind of show that there are other that land is still available there still things that can be done on the outdoors and not just um not just the senior center and parking or whatever so um I know there's been some other conversations about other potential um configurations in this site but um uh this is this kind of the the main one that we looked at at least from a comparative perspective next slide um so this is the um more detailed building layout um basically it's the same building layout that we used for both um um the Oakland Road and the Simmons way site um the two buildings effectively from a space and functionality perspective were the same um again as I mentioned neither of these were intended to be what a final thing would look like from a design perspective it was just intended to try to make sure we could understand what what sort of space would we have and what would these things look like on the site um next slide please so this gives you a view of the three sites as in the proxim to downtown um obviously you can see where the PSC is the bottom Red Dot below the yellow the Oakland Road site is um uh basically at 11:00 and kind of out at 1:00 is in the far in the far distant is the Simmons way Simons way site um just gives you an idea about um proximity to downtown and services and that's why I mentioned that um regardless of where we pick we we are going to need to address some of the transportation and parking issues uh next slide so um this is an eyar but um what I wanted to convey here is that after we put all these shetes together after we put all the potential ideas um we actually sat down and said okay how do we compare these how do we come up with an assessment that says okay what does this site look like versus another site and we did it in two ways we did it quantitatively and so this is kind of the spreadsheet view of the different criteria that we used bhna actually brought in their tools from having done this at other sites and we basically uh came up with detailed criteria um and then both both uh recal and COA and others uh provided input into that and we came up with um rankings for the three sites quantitatively uh next slide please in addition to the quantitative assessment um we looked at some of the qualitative uh pieces um uh this slide here this couple couple points on this first is the far left shows you the comparison against the existing Pleasant Street Center um the size of the building the number of rooms um different different kind of aspects of that and then we did a little bit of comparative assessment about what would the what would a Pleasant Street center with a gym look like or without a gym and what would a what would that how would that compare with Simmons way in Oakland Road based on a comparative assessment there um we also brought in inputs from historical um they gave an assessment of what what uh the changes to the Pleasant Street Center would look like um we looked at some other um uh assessments with conservation uh Recreation has provided a lot of input um and then I would say most importantly we we spent time meeting with the butters on on these different sites to try to get their feedback and input um clearly there was a a lot of um a lot of feedback on the on the Oakland Road Site in particular um next next slide please um so I won't go through these next two slides in great detail but um this kind of a listing of site benefits um for the three different sites um one point that's not on here is that if we chose to use either the Oakland Road or the Simmons way site um it opens up the Pleasant Street Center for other opportunities whether we rent it sell it lease it whatever um I didn't put that on here but it is something that people have talked about um next slide uh again and then these are kind of the the drawbacks um that uh were identified and again I I I'm not going to go through and read all these you can kind of look at them at your leisure um uh one one of the things though that um I would say about the site drawbacks is that um we highlighted that you know if there were any of these drawbacks that still existed after we made a recommendation maybe there would be some time to look at you know trying to what what could we do to mitigate some of those issues or at least understand them better uh next slide so um I apologize I don't remember what the meeting date was but recal did take a vote and um formally recommended that we use the sim Simmons way site as our um as our preferred site um we um we also I just heard recently the COA did meet um about a week or so ago um and did the they had a um a formal vote as well to to concur with that recommendation um we um we certainly feel that um this this this definitely is the priority um it's something that's long overdue um we would like our preferred our preferred option is to include a gym um because we we've heard from from other centers that it's one of the things that they really feel they missed um uh but um you know there are other priorities that the community is going to have to decide um how they work on that um we did um we did look at the I mean we did rank the sites in general um obviously the Pleasant stre site we did feel was the lowest of the three um Oakland Road was ranked at number two although there are a number of concerns there still um uh the biggest issue on the um on the um uh Simmons way site was the concern about existing contaminants in the in the um in the ground and I know that that's being looked at um separately so uh last slide um so where are we now um so uh the permanent building committee has agreed to take this project on um I believe the select board has already appointed um two additional members to that committee and so that effort is underway um not going to read the details of this slide either but the short story is is they are working to come back um to the to to you guys with a formal final site recommendation um they um there's some issues with having I think the issues with the owner's pro project manager have been resolved at this point um and so that that's kind of moving along with um then being so the the bhna contract actually um included work into that next feasibility phase for design um activities as well so that was covered from a uh cost perspective originally but where that effort will be given this new uh this new schedule is still to be needs to be seen and with that I will stop and answer any questions if I can good job thank you anyone have any questions um I was just interested in the feasibility study Monday um monies is there was there sufficient to like continue with this project because for the school was a really big number and so it was yeah I can't answer that question I know that I believe that um as part of the Opera funding we allocated I think it was $300,000 towards the feasibility study um how much of that it's been spent I mean I think the as it as the contract was awarded if I remember correctly and you can correct me Mark the contract actually was within that particular budget but there may be other things that have come up that that have driven that to be a additional cost I I can't answer that sorry that's pretty spot on I mean the there is money in there to take it to the next level of schematics which I I don't remember is it like 60% I forget the percentage next level of schematics schematic design and there may be some other things that are outside a little bit TBD but with the with the owner project manager on board working together with the bh+ a that those are the next steps once the site is selected anyone else no Chris uh thanks Carlo and thanks John um I know you had briefly mentioned the the survey results in how things might change nowadays based off what it was back then with such I would say low figures for what people were willing to pay I mean it might be a little generous so we included that question in the survey explicitly um we were trying to figure out a way of assessing you know not just what people wanted and need but what they'd be willing to pay for um I mean obviously I I think the community has to kind of figure out priori wise where I mean I I would I would go back to Melissa's um suggestion about how we figure out all of these things together um but at least as it relates to the senior center SL excuse me as it relates to recal um I would say that that you know there there was an explicit question asked and there was an answer um you know even if you go back and watch some of the community forms that occurred you know there's a yeah I want this but I don't want it to you know burden here in the community and how has that changed over the last three years I can I mean I I can't explicitly say but we all know things have only gotten more expensive so um I would be concerned about that and it's worth it's it's definitely worth something that the community should look at so all the other centers that you visited the 15 or so that that you had mentioned how are they handling this I'm sorry can you say it again so all the other 15 or so centers that you visited all the other ones um how are they funding what so there's for them right so there's two let me break this up so there's the what I would call the building facility Capital costs um I mean that's a I would say most of the centers that we've seen that have been built those usually just go through Deb exclusions and or some other Capital funding project but in terms of actual operational costs um we've seen and this is an area where I think we need to do more work but we've seen grant funding we've seen um kind of funding through user fees I.E usage of of um of of costs we've seen a lot of volunteer hu huge a lot of volunteer support um I think we had this conversation about you know if we build this new center this bigger Center is it going to Triple the cost of operating and I think our I have to say our feeling because in this by the way this is actually something that I believe is in um feedback from the feasibility study that one there is a gentleman who was a contractor in the bhna group that was specifically tasked with providing us with some operational costs but I think our feeling was that this doesn't mean that we're going to Triple the operational budget either I I think that was our perspective I think that's certainly what we saw when we looked at some of the other centers that just because you build a a center that's two or three or four times bigger doesn't mean your budget automatically has to be expanded that far a there are a lot of other way ways to skin the cat if you will um I think we saw some of that in terms of how they funded and brought in different programs um a lot of them were either self-funded again either volunteers um there definitely is it's not there's not going to be any operational cost increase because there will but I don't think it's a it's not a kind of straight line you know uh situation I I I mean that I would I would really want to see more from what um that I I don't think we actually got a final report from them on on that but but I I think that that's an important thing for us to know because it's going to impact not just the capital side but the actual operational um Town budget as well is there a phase marker John like whenever this gets covered like um to John's Point are we doubling the people tripling keeping it the same adding one person which is going to be some negligible you know what I mean like is there a phase where this gets brought forward so what they did is that a a consultant I think actually who does this for different centers he goes in and says okay this is what you're going to do this is what it's going to cost you to operate it this is the number of people you're going to need we didn't pull the the trigger on that just waiting till we get further down the road but I think pre kind of final town meeting and final voters I think we'd have to have that I mean the other thing to consider is you know there's been a lot of discussion about like just like operating hours like is it just a lot of these Centers do like8 to 4:30 or they don't do hours on the weekends or maybe they do a night I mean that obviously influences the way you manage that as well so you have some you have some levers that you I'll call it that you have some levers that you can pull in terms of how much you need to support based on the types of programs and the types of things you want to do and what staff you have to have to support it I think that's all kind of coupled it isn't just it isn't just the building that drives that in my opinion nice um has there any been yeah has there been any discussion between COA that you know of anyone in the room and recal on moving pickle ball forward and not waiting for a site to be picked I know that's not wasn't part of your charge but if Simon's way is the preferred site I am hoping even with recal sun setting that COA because it's it's a very 60 plus um activity that they'll want to hopefully parse it out or recommend to parse it out and in that is a phase right we've already determined that Simon's way is the only place in town that this can go unless we going to stop putting on some rootes right on some on the top of buildings which is not feasible so I'm just asking that has that been discussed I I don't personally recall a discussion about that um I would say we included this on our prospective plan if you will because we felt it was an important aspect of the kind of the outdoor outdoor activity um we did actually I think we explicitly excluded it from our cost assessment um in terms of the dollars and cents that were presented for the three options um I think it was broken out completely separate um so from that perspective I I don't think it's something that we we we never tied it to the to the building from that standpoint so if you said hey we want to build this now as long as you had a plan for how that was working I I I can't see that being something that would get in the way but we didn't I I no I I don't recall any other discussion unless anybody else could remember okay I mean it'll be a separate topic I think for us but I just want to ask if because it's just a big part of our has become a big part of our community uh and the country not just us um that it's outdoor activity was clearly one of the things that came up as part of this process as an important thing to include I think it's one of the reasons why we really felt the Pleasant Street site unfortunately it just had no opportunity for doing that corre that in of itself really you know put it at the bottom of the list com from Mel sure M sure there was just one just so the people the two people that are watching we tried not to talk about the outdoor activity too much because that's really separate and not not included in the cost estimat or or anything but they're in um both Oakland Street and pleas um Simon's way there's pickle all for the indoor part in the gy and lines lines lines okay and um that's been very successful program in some of the centers in other towns that uh has been very very extensively used by a lot of uh adult and 60 plus and okay thank you yeah can I add that to so I think that um so discussions certainly are are starting on this topic um but one of the things that I think is really important is to let the PBC get its its feet into this completely with the op the owner's project manager digging in so that they can take it Forward decide what they need to do um to kind of get the project started and I think my opinion is that that is a great point to kind of confirm okay build building up front building in back whatever you're going to do here's the space that could be available for let's say pickle ball in this case so the initial drawing had I think Four Courts this drawing has six I've heard people talk about eight I my opinion all possible well not possible it has to happen I mean we we told we took it out of the Birch Metal Master Plan just I mean it's a separate topic it has to happen not isn't going to happen it has to happen that that's just another another topic Al together so I just wanted to you know because I know it's becoming it's coming more to the Forefront and and it's part of this site um whatever gets done here right whether it's this building because if this building doesn't pass we're still getting pick ball so that that's that's my point so I'll leave it there any other questions for John yep so I just want to make sure I understand it correctly the uh PBC will pick aite correct or they're reviewing the three sites knowing that you guys recommended Simon's way is that thing I'm M correct saying that sounds right I think the the hope would be that they would identify any um different issues other issues um that would creep up um and a process to take it forward so as recal sunsets at the end of August the the body that's driving is really this permanent building committee um with this two temporary members okay great thank you and if I could just add so that's from uh construction point of view I guess would be the right way to put that I think that the community is going to have to really dig in to to this project um certainly whatever staff and committees can do but I think that there needs to be a very strong Community effort also that's going to need to get behind this and driving it Forward yeah and I think you know I hopefully PBC and the consulta will come with a b and c I'm just going to make it easy 10 million 20 million 30 million and this is what you get for those three things right and then we got to pick one right so that that's what hopefully will come out of this if they just do here's one site 50 million take it or leave it that's not going to pass in my opinion we have to have some options just like we're do we do with MBT communities we have to have some options and then we're going to R it down to one map and then we're going to vote but with this that that's a mandate and this is a a cost you know a debt exclusion so so I I would just add um although not necessarily in this presentation um we did um even with regards to the pickle ball was just mentioning we we tried to break things out a bit so that what the information that we presented to the whoever in this case to PBC now um and the stuff that came out of uh bhna in particular um is really I guess I would call it somewhat modular and so it is um it is possible to look at it that way and and come up with approaches that might say okay well you know maybe we can't do the X Y and Z but we can do X or we can do x and z we can't do y um I I I I certainly would Advocate that this is an important enough priority that we need something yeah but what that ultimately is going to look like and how we get there I I think is still yet to be defined but I would like to believe that we've delivered on our commitment to give you guys and now the PBC enough information to now take it to the next step well thank you I know that that's good to know good to hear I think you guys have done a lot of work I mean staff recal COA Rec committee you know swc was had some aspect of this so and it's been going on for years so I'm glad we're I'd say we're at the 30 yard line 20 yard line I know where we're at but we're P the 50 yes for sure absolutely all right any other questions thank you very much I appreciate your time tonight thanks for bearing with me no thank you good job no than bad all right excuse me for one second joh you want to make a motion for recal sorry I take a motion to um adjourn the recal committee second okay um Mark dler yes Michael Colman yes John Parsons yes John Sasso yes Ron aini yes um John O'Neal not present nor Bako not present okay turn thank you thank you all right guys we're at the future agenda and uh if you did or did not notice we now have two meetings in September because there was a mistake on our previous future agendas on the primary I already uh laid out the tent oh yes hello can I say something I came tonight because I went to the uh to your secretary and was told tonight was going to be a discussion of uh two family homes that had a single meter on the water rate and was I did I misunderstand that did she tell me the wrong thing uh that was on discussion for this evening no we we discussed it we had we obviously had the medical incident in in the yes I saw you discussed that was a completely different issue right right and then we came back and we said that we can we can get some more information and come back uh to a future meeting and and talk a little bit more both in the interest of time and also our town accountant wasn't available tonight to talk about the the software aspect of it so but it was it was discussed very briefly you're not wrong dis all no I know no it wasn't dis you're right yes and so I was told it was tonight so it didn't happen tonight can unfortunately it did not happen a few circumstances and come on a night it's going to happen sure we you know we'll talk look at the please look at the agendas yeah we have to make sure the town accountant's here okay sorry about that okay sorry thank you sorry thank you okay um okay so I I already kind of laid out I started I started working on the 10th and um obviously anybody can bring up and I think what's is it on here the um our Retreat so our Retreat is here um for the 29th I think is a Thursday that's correct 9 to1 I'm not sure if everybody responded uh I know there was a survey put out right small yeah three question questionnaire came out tonight to you no no I mean like on the date obviously we already picked the date but yeah that that's already been settled but yes uh today we all got an email um with a very small amount of homework so so that is the date the 29th correct yes it's on the very top of that future agenda list yeah it's in blue oh you're right I'm sorry I missed that I did not see that and so I saw from your email sorry um Jane that so we're going to have like a moderator yep there'll be a facilitator yes his name is Jeff nutting he is a former Town Administrator for many many years the former president of the MMA U board of directors of the MMA board of directors of Maya so um and he's been doing facilitation work for boards and committees for a long time so fantastic is that what we've done in the past for our we've used different um facilitators and U mostly sort of In-House facilitators um so this would be sort of an outof town or um you know separate facilitator um and I worked through Maya to help um connect with great um I know that Karen had some hesitation from attending and maybe with this upside facilitator I am hoping that you change your mind because I I think the five of us it would be very productive to be together and not have one member visting I don't know what happened at the last meeting I was not there I didn't not attend or watch so but with an outside facilitator I'm hoping that we can get everyone there for that me I think it's important that we all work together all right so we're talking about agendas I was looking at the rec committee they have eight full members and a couple of Associates um there's no rush for them to be on that meeting if you feel like you need to move some things around that's a five minute agenda item I'm not I'm not concerned this is elevating it's not interviewing it's not you know interviewing and we've been asked minutes we've been asked multiple times so yeah that's a it's a very small lift that's not a good deal can we bring that back to bask if you're elevating a member you don't need to bring it to mask you simply vote to elevate the member okay but elevating true that's just a associ it wasn't clear to me that that was strictly an elevation wck it is yeah it is okay because they pretty much have a full commit and the chair wants a full board so they want all the full members they can get that's really awesome that's good that's great yeah they came to me yesterday again asking y well I think the next time the meets we need to put some hard deadlines in place and we need to be really clear to people because they were tripling it trickling it and it's just not um it's just not a great way to run things had a couple suggestions for future agenda items um one is that the let's call it the potential for the Pleasant Street Center um if the town does in fact construct something new um that would leave the Pleasant Street Center available and we probably should think that through a little bit in terms of what's its value literally as a town asset or however you want to think about it's a future future agenda um I don't think it's that far I think that pre- toown meeting we should have thought this through pretty well through pre-april town meeting sorry not November pre April April okay yeah I'm catch you all right um the other thing is in this a future agenda I'm going to bang my drum one more time it would be great if we could develop a master plan there are other committees in town that are thinking about things that they're calling Master plans and whenever I hear it I I say to them please don't call it that because it'll just create a lot of confusion but what's the blueprint for what we what's our vision and maybe the retreat is a starting point but to actually go through an exercise with someone that will put in the work and develop this plan and kind of build out what do we want our community to be I don't think it's been done in certainly more than a decade I think it's closer than two it's a long time and and as we're doing different things we're we're building the airplane a little bit more while it's flying than we probably ought to um I think it would be a good thing to do so that's another future yeah yeah you talked about it quite a few times so anyone else I I would like after thinking about it and I think given what Melissa said I I I really think we all all five of us need to be there I think if Karen's not going to commit I'm not available that I'm sorry I I just don't think we should have it to my opinion that's just my opinion I it's not it's not fair the four of us to go over boards and policies without your input and you never as far as I know you never commented on what days you were available we not available that day okay so I I I encourage you go ahead and start going over policies on your own I just don't see how that's productive to the community you know it is 11:15 and we have three sets of meetings to meeting minutes to do are we going to do them tonight because I I have work in the morning I don't I don't want to be here all night I think we all have work in the morning yeah sure we do what I think to to Mark's point about the whole airplane scenario I mean I'm I'm carving out time as well to make the retreat and if it's going to be uh four of us then I don't see the point either it it's got to be the five of us and you know that's that whatever day we can make work so my response my response to that with having two kids in doing my whole scenario that I have is I will make any day any time available for the select Ford Retreat you name it and I'm going to make it work so we we can take a different date anytime any date for me I know not everyone's in that same position I agree but we got to work within people's schedules and if if we can't get a response on a schedule then I don't know what we do I mean it's it really isn't fair if if it's four of us doesn't matter who the four are well and as you might recall the original discussion I said I was did not have time this summer to do that and I was overridden and so that is why I am unavailable to do that so that's one thing and the other comment I had is that I really need to see certain board members treating other people better before I commit to going to another Retreat because the Last Retreat turned into an attack a personal attack I will not I will not invest time in that everybody at The Last Retreat contributed to what you just said everybody not one not one specific because you're going to say no and I'm going to say you went after my wife so for you to say that that's not the case still see here's where we are so I would say that you go ahead and you go to this Retreat and I do not need to be there and and you went ahead and scheduled it so and and I would just go and do it we didn't go ahead and scheduled it there were dates that went into sep I am I've really I am you guys are we going to finish this meeting because our policies can be polies say that we don't make decisions after 10:30 so we're ignoring our policies right now so can I suggest we either we should make a decision to to have it or not on this date and if not on this date to to push it that's kind of what we need to figure out yeah I not to make believe in this but get get a pulse I I push to we all make commit carved out time uh not only the three or four hours but you know that's going to be a it's called a half day right at the end of summer and and I know we all have schedules um and commitments and work and family and end of summer and school's already been started but we we agreed on this date and I was hoping Cara would come around um for whatever reason it is uh to to Value this is important but I'm not say she say it's not important but she can't make it she can't make it but I think it needs to be a board of five every Retreat I've done has been a board of five and I I'll has to postpone it to a future date if we can agree on a date just to be fair all five of us does make sense put another dual pull up and the okay well so we BR booked the room and the uh facilitator so we'll have to rebook this well they they are booked for this week but cancel for now not rebooked because we don't have a date okay so cancel and then all right is there a fee associated with that no no I don't I it was just through Maya and it was through I the we were going to have it in Linfield so I talked to the Town Administrator there he made some space available but oh thank you but it's easier it's not a financial issue do you want to look in like October or November or just leave it for now and then I think leave it for now let us get through the the end of summer and uh let's get into September and what have you whatever you call apple picking apple picking hay rides you don't like app picking let's do minutes let's do minutes does anyone have any uh Kaitlyn get any amendments or changes three sets of minutes I I did yeah I got a few from Karen um pull them up I have a few as well but I meant to send them and didn't shame yeah I wanted to add stuff but I'm fine with all three of them we'll start with six uh June 18 Jun 18 yep these are Karen's edits uh um you said in red right yeah are they down the bottom I don't know I see underlined red stuff those are just names name I think that's just name spelling okay so for this one 618 yeah yeah so um I asked let's see um you know given our conversation earlier um about creating a waiver for a volunteer with a potential conflict of interest you guys weren't here I um I think it's important that in these meeting minutes where we don't have a 50 vote um and it's not just just not applied consistently we need to be clear about who um was for and against and so I suggested that under the cpdc and there I might have missed some under the cpdc we need to just be clear about how the vote was split um we did it under Housing Authority with the abstaining and yeah a couple of under so let's I think it's important that when we have split votes we we are clear let's see can you give us an example I know what you're talking about 32s and yeah like so right here it says like with a 3-2 vote I think she wants to say who who voted yeah who who voted again who voted for and who voted against to make it clear y y and there's another one I just saw it move to appoint Stephen Kook yeah there's a couple of them I'll I'll go through all of them and and make sure that they all say everything okay thank you that's going to be a little bit of work anything else with the ATT that was it I think that was I had a couple comments on the 18 18 let's finish C first if she's just so oh no I did have another one um I'm and I'm sorry um it didn't get sent so in the public comment um these are supposed to be summary minutes and longer meetings are longer minutes but it's not appropriate to have a member of the public accusing a select board member about lying and leaving that in there in the minutes it's not summary it's inappropriate so I asked for the second sentence to be removed I think Miss mol's name spelled incorrectly um somebody can correct that the SEC I would like the second sentence removed the third one can remain she noed she is disappointed with the entire situation um you know but it's not okay to have members of the public making personal accusations based on their opinion it's done it's toxic it's done all the time it happens all the time it's been all us no it doesn't no it does not minutes against me it's currently in this one asking uh me to apolog of all Carlo to resign like okay she said if she said it that's a Verbatim I don't even know if it's verbatim Caitlyn was that verbatim text again we don't these are supposed to be summary minutes why was someone these are not so they need to be summary minutes we went through this we spent hours on it she said a whole statement and I only wrote three sentences okay so but the way you wrote it you stated herck lied okay that's just not that's not okay it's not a summary can I make a suggestion yeah please one the words shown in the text replace with she believes that yep that would she believes that shown in the text she believes that herck Li about not being supposed to be a summary I'd be fine if it's she believes that with what was shown in the text as long as that these are supposed to be summary minutes so how are we making them longer I think that removing the the words about the text and come back to she believes that would be a su of what was stated it makes it clear that's her opinion I think to me it's clear it's her opinion that's public comment it's everybody listed here all well this is why I don't want to go to a select board retreat with you you're not trying you don't want to agree for being fair somebody says it I I've been trashed here multiple times myself that goes into the minut so have I I think Mark's excuse me I think Mark's suggestion is fair you know and and and in keeping with how we've all been attacked over the years at public comment and you know and again it happens unfortunately um sometimes it's it's you know it I don't know what to say it's and I would really like to finish up tonight so let's go so let's go with Marx y change okay then um a couple of things on the last names of people in particular like Gennady I think it's yes I think it's pilovsky um I think I think but I'm not sure I think it's p yeah it's not that u y a okay I thought I looked this up before but I will look it up again too many vs too many vs I mean con con um and then actually there's no V and then if you go down to film so um discuss and vote on Bill Russ committee which is the third to last page sorry um you somewhere else now I'm under so this is discussion vote on Bill Russell committee there you are okay so um it says Phil Filmore so his his name is Filmore is his first name his last name is Phillip and he is the thir Philmore Philip II I don't know how many El's in Philip I think it's two I'm much p i l I usually two I think it is the third yep so that's correcting his name um and that was all I had on that one anyone else in the 18th all right want to approve each set like instead doing all three you think be L cleaner oh yeah obviously the separate ones let's approve the 18th please uh move to approve the meeting minutes from June 18th 2024 as amended second second Mark any discussion say n all those in favor 5 Z thank you next set of minutes any uh changes July 9th 27th sorry sorry sorry sorry June way too many windows June 27th June 27th 88 your 9:30 meeting yeah uh no comments okay I just had one from Karen uh let's see right here can everyone see that no oh now I can yeah what's that's weird I'm fine with that yeah that's I'm fine with that yeah that's fine okay and that was it for this SEC anyone else have any changes to the 27th all right Chris move to approve the meeting minutes from June 27 2024 as amended second thanks any discussion seeing none all those in favor five zero thank you one more set I do have a couple of comments on the July night okay okay I didn't receive any others so let me just pull up that word doc and we can do marks okay page one hold on one sec yep uh okay um okay under Linda snow dos are noted I have a sentence to add at the end the board was provided with a statement from Jackie McCarthy correcting the record that in fact she did not speak with Linda snow doxer about the town manager selection process it's actually referenced later in the document also I think I would to just amend that to the board was provided with an email thank you an email yep yep Co anything else yep one more I think um what section just tell me what section uh wow okay open meeting lot complaint number two Dan doer yeah got it third paragraph the small one that's with the big one Town Council noted plan is essentially three parts I think we got to help clarify a little bit here so this this is this the spouse question but I think it was not McCarthy did send an email clearing up the first part regarding Linda snow doxer not speaking with her about the time manager search process that's not a double negative with that where well meaning it was not McCarthy did send an email clearing up the first part yes so you're clearing up that that it's cleared up you're now making it that it was cleared up that it wasn't cleared up you see what I mean clarify so maybe it would be better to say it was noted McCarthy did send an email clarifying stating stating I think it makes more sense the way that it was written seems right as opposed to yours which seems the beginning the end but it feels like it connects to the spouse thing which was actually not what that email discussed right that's a different part saying yeah different part how about it was noted McCarthy did send an email clearing up the first part stating that Linda snow doer did not speak with her husband so for member Mark doer so that's not actually what Jackie's email was about so the email I think is about I got confused in this one but the her email is about um that Linda snow dooer did not she did not speak with Lind Stone do about the to she was setting the record straight because right that email right that's what that email was so wasn't talking I never saw the email so I don't know um yeah she never saw so so I my suggestion would be it was not mcarthy did send an email clarifying that that Linda snow dox did not speak with her about the time manager search process um did not speak with her okay about I got you she's doing it live y sorry was look here uh email clarify speak with her so I think that's factually correct I think that's that's you know Mak sense doesn't fully address the whole spous He thing you got to mention the email wasn't mentioned in the first part of that right Chris yeah that was my only comment okay anyone else no okay move to approve the meeting minutes from July 9th 2024 for as amended second no Melissa all right Melissa second any discussion seeing none all those in favor 5 Z one more motion motion to adour second second Mark um no discussion all those in favor zero 11:30 not too shabby e