##VIDEO ID:xU3IFBAPff0## e e e all right I'm calling the select board to order all person so that's good my loc call uh agenda tonight is uh public comment presentation discussion for f fy2 tax classification Victor is here for that presentation discussion uh possible vote on Tom arle 15 High School floor so I Jo hug in somewhere and um I don't know if he's doing that and then we have um update discussion and vote on parking kiosk uh discuss vast policies and future agendas so uh public comment if I'm going to use the sheet like I did last time so if you didn't sign in order if you don't want to speak just say pass or it's not required so how many in the room plan to give public comment okay so I'm going to try to keep it tight two minutes I don't like cutting anybody off so I will time everybody uh couple things one I want to wish my wife a happy birthday it's her birthday tonight she was not in the room and we're not going to sing but uh it's her birthday and two I just want to issue an apology for last week um I kind of spoke out of turn and insinuated that uh some of you were lying or fibbing or exaggerating uh in particular eish I apologize that's not that was not my intent I was advocating for you guys and that slept out uh and I apologize uh I don't know if anyone else wants to apologize for their comments if not and all right so uh Victor oh public comment sorry public comment trying trying to get you out of here Victor sorry all right it's going to go in order uh Mr lipet thank you Mr baji uh good evening I'm John lipet from 23 mineral Street homeowner I'd like to address the setting of property tax uh rates which you'll be considering this evening and your presentation from Victor about for the last 14 years reading has been very friendly to commercial property owners and much less friendly to homeowners typical homeowners tax bills have gone up 67% while the typical commercial property owners tax bills have gone up about 15% in other words that's about 5% a year for homeowners and 1% for businesses over the last 14 years reading homeowners in recent years have faced many Rising costs economic stress many families and seniors are struggling to make ends meet last year even with the increase of the shift from the property tax commercial tax rates of 1.1 typical homeowners property tax bill went up $375 or almost 4% the typical commercial property tax bill went down by $70 minus a little less than 1% if the shift is left at that level this year homeowners property tax bill by my calculations and fct will confirm this I hope or somewhere close to it we'll go up by about $133 or a little over 1% while a typical commercial commercial property owners taxes would go up by just $28 3/10 of 1% I think it's time at a minimum to level the playing field for this year so a typical residential and commercial property bills go up by about the same percentage you need a little bit of an increase in the CPI shift to do that this year to 1.11 and that would make everybody's tax bills go up by by about 1% um if the typical homeowner is being asked to pay 100 bucks more in property taxes I don't see any reason why it's typical commercial property owner shouldn't be asked to as well that only seems fair to me to level the playing field for the last couple years given the long track record that I mentioned even for just the last couple years I'd recommend tipping the playing field just a little bit toward homeowners this year and increase the CPI shift to 1.2 that is what I'd recommend you do this will reduce the property tax rate increase for homeowners for a little more money in their pockets which they can spend at running businesses or for whatever else their personal needs are yes I do want our businesses to stay in town and I also want to see our seniors stay in town and I want to see our kids be able to buy and homes and stay in the the community where they grew up as you know from looking at the comparing towns as Victor's very nicely laid out in his presentation reading has the second highest residential tax rate of the surrounding communities and reading has the lowest commercial tax rate so it isn't like a business could move or locate in in an adjacent town and Pay Less in property taxes they'd be paying more finally with one exception reading has the slowest CPI shift by a a large margin from the surrounding communities so to set readings CPI shift to 1.2 would be fairer for re's homeowners and the commercial tax rate would still be the lowest if maybe the second lowest of the surrounded communities depending on what they do this year um and by the way if in future years commercial property the reason this is happening is because residential property values been going up much faster than commercial properties um if that reverses in future your maybe we want to reduce the C you have to keep a sense of fairness one other thing I'd like to point out that if you increase the rate to 1.2 this year the seven largest commercial property owners in this uh uh town will contribute at least $80,000 more dollars in tax revenue to this community I think we could use that Revenue so I strongly increase you uh encourage you to increase the rate to 1.2 to be fair to homeowners and generate some Revenue ready been easily used thank you thank hi again it's me Rachel O'Neal the flower shop of Erics back again I guess I'm the first one on The Chopping board tonight um I want to thank the board for hearing us out last week and electing to have a vote tonight hopefully to pause the pay to park downtown my business continues to be slow for us due to the lack of walking customers they simply seem to be non-existent compared to what we are used to this time of year I keep he hearing the word data during these parking discussions I had some time this week to look into my own data this past September my walk-in orders were down 23% from September of 2020 yes that's right I literally had more walk-in customers during a pandemic I have my numbers here and would be willing to share them with all of you if you want to look at them I ran My Walkin sales at the end of the day today and we are down 65% for my walk-in and pickup orders from last year for the month I believe that whether or not a pause is voted through tonight a 15 or 30 minute even up to an hour parking spot with no Kiosk app needed should be placed in both lots and just one spot is not enough with clear signage for these and clearer signage for the parking in general instead of making this hard for our community that wants to support support their local shops let's make shopping dining going to the gym getting an appointment easy and more inviting to our customers we need them to come back downtown we need them to know that they have an easier and quicker option to visit businesses that they will not be longer than an hour as I watched the meeting in its entirety last week yep I stayed up watched do I noticed myself in my shop was mentioned as not being someone who speaks up or sends emails or asks for anything in the past you're right I kind of chocked it up to it's not in my hands however there are things that are in your hands only yours when I bought red roses for Valentine's Day and we had a snowstorm and then I'm throwing them out in the dumpster that's not on my hands I beat myself up about it but you cannot control the weather if I get a shipment of flowers for a wedding and then realize it's the wrong variety the couple wanted that's on me I have a really hard time tonight knowing that my sales are down because of others decisions I keep a log of holiday sales to look back year toe sometimes there's a Post-It note on these folders for example Mother's Day Co Valentine's Day blizzard Christmas fell on a Sunday trust me when I say that this year's holidays will save Park moving forward you will hear from me thank you [Music] Amy hi my name is Amy Collins from CH from good heart's children shop and last Tuesday night I stood up here to express my concerns over the new parking kiosk program I explained how this parking situation isn't our only challenge but could be the final straw as an esta Lish 30-year retail business goodarts has strong loyal base of customers from reading and Beyond but the current economic situation of high product costs Freight to receive our merchandise and Supply costs needed for everyday operation has definitely left us strained I would like to just mention a couple of notes I had from the end of last Tuesday's discussion amongst the select board first not once was the corre was the construction vehicles mentioned these vehicles have taken up six to eight spots every single day since the pandemic in our back parking lot when one Condo building was finished another one broke ground if all of these spots were just customers fighting for parking we would be in a much healthier State than we currently are the only Factor mentioned last week was that customers were challenged by employees taking up the spots and this was based on results from a traffic study done five years ago so now this new program comes along and is having a negative impact on our business Based on data from 5 years ago there definitely has been a negative impact of not holding these construction companies responsible to parking violations over these last couple years that mistake is on reading and I would ask wouldn't it be responsible to do a new traffic study in 2024 or 25 because I can definitely confirm as a business owner with direct abutment to one of these lots that we were never asked about the concerns of this program second for those who were dismissive to our concerns last week or who want to remain anonimous to their opinions in this I ask can't we are we so certain from 5 years ago that these parking kiosks were going to be the solutions to all of our problems can we even consider that the other successes from this program has even allowed us to alleviate the need for the kiosks all together the employee parking was increased definitely traffic is down if you ask anybody just in general for business with what's going on in the economy I hope that we can all admit the situation and the factors are different now than they were in 2019 when the study was done let's cut our losses before the community suffers any more divide let's raise the citation prices in the Lots from $25 to $50 the word will definitely get out and I guarantee none of these employees are going to want $50 coming right off of their next paycheck it doesn't matter if the kiosks are 1 Hour 2 hours or 4 hours free through the holidays it's still an inconvenience our customers have Toddlers and young children they're trying to get out of the cars so it doesn't matter and our customers are also not just from ring so there has been no awareness to Wakefield Lindfield stonum any other surrounding towns that we serve that are not aware of the program that's going on they come in and they're just driving right out because they're surprised by this insult to injury this is fourth quarter so please consider if there are any implications to even review this again what what they could be aren't those I don't even know if there are any implications to even pausing it to just get us through the holiday season thank you thank you [Music] Lori just screen just scream hi guys my name is Lori Hy I own both Treads and reading um I don't have a huge presentation really what happening for us is our locations were chosen for the parking our buildings were picked because of the parking that we had surrounding us and now we're finding that our tread one our six Lindon Street location is slower because the parking lot that we use is the brand street parking behind PDA dental and we have members of all ages some of them are here and it's not easy for them to get there get their phones out log in not sure how long they're going to be there if a class does go longer than an hour then they have to run out and make sure that their um parking meter goes longer it's just hurting us altogether and instead of me convincing them to go to our Winchester location because that's not what I want I'm trying to have my staff go out and use their card or pay from us it's just not working we're finding that all of our morning classes are just lower in numbers and unfortunately that means that they're not staying in that lot to go for a walk to Fat Larry's after and get a salad or a sandwich and they're not going a narrow we used to all leave together and go for walks and do all of that and no one's doing that anymore they're getting in their cars and they're leaving so I just feel like if we could pause it and find a better way to figure out the parking we only have four spots so my staff does not pay for parking I would rather if this doesn't pause I would rather give up for our four spots for some of our members that deserve it and pay for my team but that unfortunately is eventually going to hurt us in the end it's just not something we can continue to do so that's it [Music] Julie Julie Cala owner of Ana's Boutique as I stated before the board last week it is my belief that the paid parking is hurting some members of the small business Community my business directly ABS the CBS parking lot and our business is down significantly especially for the month of October when which usually kicks off the beginning of our busy season I've been a business owner here for almost 17 years and I've lived in this town for 23 years I choose to have my business here I've had several opportunities to relocate to surrounding towns like lynfield Burlington stonum all which have free parking I might add the lynfield um shopping area is one of the most successful shopping areas in the state so I choose to keep my business in reading and I don't know anymore if it's worth it because we've just had challenge after challenge for the past two years as Amy stated the construction that was never ending and was not clearly communicated to the businesses that tomorrow you're not going to have entrance to the parking lot for 3 hours it happened time and time again Vehicles stayed there all day long without seeming to have any repercussions and it just wasn't fair so as I stated last week we were looking forward to having a great holiday season this has not happened I also would like to address some of the comments made at the end of last week's meeting I went home and I watched this on TV and the comments I'm referring to were made by miss her her comment and I quote there were only four businesses that showed up well as you can see there's more businesses here tonight that are affected and another comment was lots of businesses don't agree with these four so I would I would be open to any conversation if someone doesn't agree with us I hope that they come and have a great discussion but again some of the businesses that are here our businesses are in the parking lots that are affected so if you have a business on Main Street that has ample parking you're not affected by this as much as some of the others are the one comment that I found particularly insulting was I've heard the same story from these businesses every year I found that comment surprising since like I stated before I've been in business almost 17 years and I've come before the select board three times I came twice about the split tax rate and now tonight will be my fourth about the parking issue which is my right as a taxpayer to do so I may add sorry and no business or taxpayer in this town should feel that they are being boed by anyone who serves on the select board the dismissive tone of Miss herrick's comments was both rude and unprofessional as elected officials it is essential for the board to listen objectively to all its constituents regardless whether you agree with them or not as a taxpayer and business owner it was very hard and very disappointing to watch and I know that I am not alone in that statement I also would like to take the opportunity to thank all the residents that have called my store stopped in sent emails and made calls to support us after seeing what transpired at last week's meeting I also have heard that people state that the businesses were all for this plan I'd like to be very clear that I was never asked my opinion before this was put in place or I would have strongly objected I know Amy and several others feel the same way and if you can find that you came around and asked us I I would like to see it because I never was asked in my opinion the data is too old what was monitored four years ago is vastly different than what is happening now the statistic shared at the end of the meeting indicated that only about 60 cars when you break the math down 60 cars a day are utilizing the parking kiosks that's between two Lots which to me suggests that the system is being significantly underused I know Amy had pictures I don't know if you want to see them we can show you some of the pictures of the parking lot um too on a typical day it used to be pretty full [Music] now this is what it looks like a lot of the time that's the same as tread and that's the same as tread so we're not fibbing we're not exaggerating it we're not trying to we're trying to run our business this is our livelihood we're adding to the data and the economy is down small businesses are closing down all around us we've lost several great businesses in Reading in the last few years so I'm asking all of you tonight to vote to pause or even better remove the kiosks before more damage is done and hopefully the small businesses affected can get back to work as usual thank you thank you very much [Music] please hi is shy uh P chav 620 Main Street I really don't have anything to add I want to support what everybody has already said prior to this they were spoton one issue that I brought up last week was the problems with the k we had two personal issues this week while one of my employees was sitting in his car after logging in on the app the parking attendant whatever came and took a picture of his license plate then realized he was in the car knocked on his window and said do you realize that this is a paid parking lot and he said yes I do and she said well you have to go to the kiosk or lck in he said I did she's like show it to me cuz you're not on my pet he showed it to her she clicked again if you he never appeared she was about to give him ticket and only that he was there personally to show her the app he would have got a ticket on yesterday Monday Bank holay Monday one of my kids happened to be working in double because we were trying to think we'd get busy somehow or another uh he goes into the kiosk and he logs in for the whole day they took his money so the kiosk doesn't know when it's Saturday or Sunday I think Julie had had customers come in on Saturday to us as well I Studio same with us yeah so who's running these kiosks who's telling them if the sign says Monday to Friday then if somebody comes in on Saturday it shouldn't accept their money the credit card anything so that's all I have to share they got to go oh sorry one other point as they've all said nobody from PC came near me to discuss what are I probably have one of the biggest businesses and the most amount of customers I was never asked my opinion on this ever so for the committee to say that they went around businesses I'd love to know what businesses they went to thank you very much whoever lives on Grand Street I can't read your writing sorry sorry about that somebody with an a Alice Alice okay uh I'm Alice white I'm not a small business owner although I very strongly support um what all of our small business owners are saying why were you been having a discussion about uh preventing customers from getting into small business with when that's what we want to encourage in towns is is kind of Beyond me um the reason I decided to say something is that I'm a nurse case manager and if you don't know what a nurse case manager is it's a specialty in nursing that deals with for me our Medicare population for over 30 years chronic diseases diabetes uh cardiac pulmonary so I'm really curious why your group uh or any advisory counsel would say that it's a good idea to put any barrier in between your seniors and their access to medications and CBS is a huge prescribing supplier huge we know that seniors are unlimited income they very often will not take a chance of getting any kind of a of a fine their you know they're not very techsavvy let's be honest they're not going to pull out an nap um it any at 40 nearly 50% it's upwards of like 46% of Hospital readmissions are often due to medications with it with medications necessary for for what the kind of conditions I talked about cardiac pulmonary diabetes insulin lasic things like that one day an interruption in just one day of medication can often result in a hospital admission if you've been to Lei ER there's 30 to 50 patients waiting for beds in that year so anything we can do as a society to encourage the medication compliance of our seniors is our responsibility and something this small we can't measure how many patients don't go into CVS to pick up their prescriptions but I see it on the other side so I really ask that you reconsider this um I don't think that the benefit outweighs all the risk so thanks [Music] Nick hi everybody thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak and everything I did want to just start off with a just a thank you the event on Saturday that was down here from the town of reading and the Chamber of Commerce was just it was wonderful and I just want to say thank you to the town Matt um in the Chamber of Commerce for all the work that they did with putting that together I was thrilled to be a part of it I got a chance to associate with some people I hadn't even seen in years and that's what reading has always been to me it's been about a special Community where we can come together and appreciate how great this town is so again I just want to say thank you on that and I hope for more you know it was great to you know connect with other businesses who had a wonderful day and we walked out with just a beautiful weather day too it was great um I want to talk about the parking meter um I think the hardest thing that I've had to realize with our customers who have come into my actually I should probably say what I'm Empower on Haven I'm Nick from Empower on Haven 190 Haven Street um the number one thing that I've heard from my customers that have come in it's just frustration um I have heard just you know from people in the community like oh let's boycott this let's boycott this store we'll show the town that's so hurtful that's so hurtful for all the good that we have in this community and I took a big chance in 2021 and opening the beautiful store on Haven Street uh the store is in honor of my mother I lost my mother in 2020 very tragically and Empower has brought meaning to me it's a store that appreciates our community but it was built with love and appreciation for so much good my mom shared my uh my aunt I'm fifth generation now in this community I really wanted this to succeed and be a place that a long-term establishment here in this community and I can't be more happy with what we've created and are continuing to build inside that store but it breaks my heart to hear the frustration from the customers when they come in asking me if I can help them or if I can walk outside to show them how the meter Works um the boycotting like I said we we got to come up with something better I've just it's it's time that I've had to take out of my busy schedule when I'm busy making sandwiches or bowls or drinks and everything or I think we just got to come to some sort of realization and come up with a better solution you know to this downtown situation that we have my Saving Grace um has been my door Dash so I have an another service that's allowed to do like online delivery and everything that we've had the biggest frustration with that is it cuts into your bottom line I mean they take 30% right off the top from our sales and everything that's there you know some days my door Dash is busier than my instore sales you know some days it's $100 maybe it's $200 or something on like a Monday through Thursday of some sorts but um you know I'm giv too much to the door Dash and everything so I think we definitely got to come up with something that can work the other thing I've had to deal with with door Dash is I've had even cars come down they can't even find a place to go or they're confused with the app or some even flat out refusing just to come and take the order of a customer from everything I've had to talk to service on door Dash multiple times in the past couple weeks and it's it's it's taking more time out of my busy schedule to trying to you know accommodate a customer and try and figure out what we can do at the end of the day you lose your money from it because they're not going to get their you know they're not going to get their order and everything and it's a frustration that we don't want to have continue we want to see you know more support and everything and again my my biggest thing I want to stress here is um you know our store is very different than another place that's right around the corner it's from the heart it's from my mom it's for my family but it's for our community and I want to see more of us appreciate those good things that we have in this town there are so many amazing people there are so so many amazing businesses and things that are here that we need to appreciate more of and we want to see more of more people come together and support what we have right downtown because we're so fortunate enough to have that so I encourage the board to come up with a another alternative or a solution for this matter to see how we can uh you know get back to regular business and everything I appreciate your time thank you thank you Mr Bean me speak [Music] hi everyone my name is Joe Bean of 138 bankr AV um thank you for putting this together I uh I'm here to support my friends who all have businesses here in town I they've all been telling me how bad this is for their business um I think of myself I I met a couple of you at the uh the day you were helping out down showing us how to use the meters and I remember when I was there I left and I was looking at the app and I'm saying do they know I've left how how do they know to not charge me and and I'm driving trying to figure this out and let it go nothing happened I I I don't know how the app knows that I'm not there anymore and not to charge me but um that was one thing I figured out too one of my biggest concerns is a barrier to business when people show up to downtown they just want to go in get what they need and go and they want to stop at a restaurant for a few hours they want to uh grab their prescriptions um I know Alice had mentioned about the prescriptions I know my mother she's 84 she would never download this app she would just switch her prescriptions to a pharmacy that has a parking lot so I'm not here as a representative of c CVS but I would think their prescription business is really going to get hurt with this um that's just my opinion because I don't think a lot of people of that age group would use the app I'm the type of guy I would fumble for change before I'd use the app um but when I heard one of my friends is her business is down 50% that really hit home and that's uh why I wanted to speak tonight and just to support her support the businesses who think this is wrong because I I believe them because that's this is what they do so thank you everybody I appreciate it I'm guessing Bobby just signed in thank you all right anyone else would like to speak that didn't sign in Caitlyn anyone on Zoom no one raising their hand from the main act oh no oh no we do my L on tonight no not all right we're good sorry go right to Victor vior Victor main act I've been called worse all right of all tomatoes and veget been confiscated from I know I recycled J you took mine well good evening uh members of the select board members of the public and the people watching at home uh this evening I'm here to present information relative to setting the tax rate uh this process is called classification and through classification it's my goal to inform the select board so so that they can make choices relative to picking factors that are used to set the tax rate and without further Ado here we go next page please the required actions by the select board it's selection of a minimum residential Factor that's actually this six digit decimal point number that I use to determine what the tax rate uh uh what the tax rates are expected to be and that is a choice that the select board makes uh selection of a discount for open space we have no open space as defined by the commw of Massachusetts so we don't do anything there granting of a residential exemption I get to it later on in the presentation but um mostly everybody here owns a home and occupies it so to consider a residential exemption would mean the wealthiest homes would pay for everybody else which no town that has a largely uh residential ownership like reing does does this there only about 12 times from common off and the granting of a small commercial exemption next page uh to figure out minimum residential factor with no shift um you basically take your estimated tax Levy which is about 80 $ 89.4 million divided by our 7.8 billion in uh real estate and personal property valuations and you come up with a single tax rate of 1141 so if they did nothing and keep the factor at one the tax rate would be 1141 or would it next page reading broke round many years ago with the creation of the reading senior circuit breaker income tax credit uh that we are uh honored to afford qualified seniors for this past uh season we had 230 seniors apply 223 were approved those that were not approved were issues relative to ownership or excessive Assets Now one thing about this uh local exemption when we first put this before town meeting I think it was a proud moment when town meeting stood up and voted to help seniors of this community and absorbed the cost of doing so neighbors helping neighbors in the best form I can think of um the state had Chang the credit and our credit is based on the state so they went from a credit that that was about $1,200 up to close to $2,600 previously we would Grant 150% tax relief so last year that 1,200 was 1,800 well with the increase of the credit the board of assessors backed it up to 100% the seniors aren't losing anything this will be the highest payment they have received in the eight years of this program um and where it's fed through the rest of the residential tax base I'll be shifting 463,000 within the residential class and it changes the tax rates a bit because it's within the residential class of properties um we would without a shift we would have a residential tax rate of 1141 and a commercial tax rate I'm sorry a residential rate of 1148 and a commercial tax rate of 1141 the average cost on the average taxpayer reading is about $60 for this program and a shift of 1.1 which is what this board did last year tax rates will be 1140 for residential and 1256 respectively for commercial next please okay this is going to be a couple of pages of numbers I'm not going through all the numbers this is just to give you an idea for fiscal 25 the average single family value in our community is $893,000 and if you look on the left where it says CIP shift that's what this generala was mentioning 1.1 to 1.2 what have you those various shift intervals the right hand column gives an estimate of what the anticipated tax bill would be but as I started out with that minimum residential factor that mrf that I mentioned select board will pick from that mrf column those six digits that I'll use to compute the tax rate based on the CIP shift the next page is a continuation of that data we have the capacity to go up to a shift of 1.5 so where this is an annual topic of discussion for the public and members of the board I calculate everything out at each shift interval to educate anybody who takes time to read this and more importantly for the board when we begin discussing it next page and that's a continuation of the calculation if they went to a 1.5 shift fa say the the average tax bill is estimated to be about 9900 average residential average residential yes now let's go on to the next page please this is just I have to Lop some years off there I mean is 2007 really relevant anymore um but that gives us uh an idea of how taxes have changed Through The Years from 2007 to what our estimate may be again at a 1.1 shift for fiscal year 2025 next page please uh a lot of citizens towns have a debt exclusion a debt exclusion is not a permanent increase to the tax levy but a temporary one and it's like a mortgage the town borrows money issues bonds to pay off a specific item over a specific amount of time the fiscal 25 the debt exclusion amount is just under a million3 it add 16 cents to the residential tax rate 143 to the average single family home and $318 to the average commercial property and for the benefit of the select board know that my measurements are based on 1.1 shift last year to a 1.1 shift this year if you do something different those numbers will be different next page please quick hit about single family sales um to produce assessments for fiscal 25 I go through every sale that occurred during Cal year 2023 and what I like to do is say okay your old assessment was based on 2022 sales always for the 14 years I've been here we've always had 200 20 plus sales each and every year but with the rise in interest rates last year the number of sales took a hit what didn't take a hit was the average sale price just under a million dollar that was up over 9% from the prior caliber year that we used to set assessments and the days on Market was a little bit longer which is understandable with higher interest rates and people making decisions on what ultimately could be the most valuable asset that'll ever obtained in their lives next page please the average commercial property is just under $2 million and again like I did with single family properties I extrapolated everything out to a shift of 1.5 um with the corresponding tax rates to give an estimate of tax bill so you see the bottom one is 1 uh10 that's what the board did last year if they did it again this year the average tax bill would be just under 25,000 for the average commercial property value but with so many small business owners here in uh particularly in the audience and watching from home one of the other measures that we do is the mediate commercial value which is much more reflective of your small businesses and investment you make in your business and in the community next page please H keep going this is all the same stuff up to 150 okay next one please median commercial property value I think last year it was 790 this year it's up to 835 to uh to me this is this kind of represents your small Standalone shop maybe on the building maybe a lease your triple net lease you're still on the hook for the taxes so this is a much more accurate measurement whereas the average value also has $35 million for Jordans and home depa that skew the number but if we go to a shift again 1.10 the average median commercial tax bill would be just under 105 and the again next couple of pages I take this all the way out to 1.5 for the benefit of the board to weigh their options next page um again with the focus on median commercial values in 2024 I was close median value was 792 uh tax rate last year was $ 12292 at a shift of 1.1 new values 8352 the tax rate is expected to be 12256 results in a tax increase of $28 next page please okay um what I tried to do with this one and got a little lost in cutting and pasting it was a uh I'm trying to measure and I do measure the difference from last year to this year of the average single family value which you could see in the fifth column to uh the the six column next to it tells what the increase would be at that average value uh from last year's tax bill and I also do the same with the median commercial value so when you look right down see at 1.1 you'll see the average single family value goes up $104 and the median commercial value goes up 208 so it's a lot of numbers thrown at you but uh it's basically follow the lines across and I take that out to 1.15 and then I do 5% increments after that because of space next page commercial value uh commercial property value breakdown uh we have 68 properties that are less than 500,000 that includes your small Park and lots of things of that nature 48 from 500,000 to a million 42 from a million to two 28 from 2 million to 10 million and seven properties over $10 million guess where they are just all Walkers Brook next page please and like I did with the uh single family homes this is a review again 2007 I am in a lop the first five years off of this for next year um so we can see it clearly uh but this gives you an idea of what commercial property taxes the average tax bill has done since 2007 next page please open space this is the Kamala Massachusetts def definition of open space there is no land in Reading classified with this restriction so uh when the select board makes their votes they have would expect them to uh vote against a discount for open space again because we and they know we don't have any that meets that definition next page please residential exemption um the amount of up to 35% of the average asss value of all Residential Properties including vacant land uh adoption would raise the residential tax rate substantially so apply to all Residential Properties uh before the exemption and again this is within just the residential class of properties uh basically in all the years I've worked out the calculation I've stopped working them out because it always works out the top third single family uh residential property values would fund this exemption for the rest of the town it's basically kind of a class Warfare thing and it's only adopted by 13 communities and I as a kid I grew up in Boston I owned a home in Chelsea it worked there because there was a large amount of investor owners in residential prop properties buy up the six families of pocket buties two families three families those are the people that paid for the exemption for the residents that live there yeah I don't um next please small commercial exemption definition of this is so narrow that I it's difficult to find properties that would qualify for it I there might be one or two in our community but basically with the definition being so narrow the total property value has to be less than a million dollar not more than 10 employees as certified by the department of employment and training um the department of employ employment and training is critical because the list I received comes from them um some businesses May pay employees independent contractors and therefore may not report under those requirements there so I wouldn't see them they wouldn't be eligible for the ex extion one business in a building of several would qualify only if the other business is qualified as well exemption goes to the real estate owner not necessarily the business owner less than a dozen communities in the commonweal have adopted this exemption and what it does it is a shift within the commercial rate that shifts any discount to the rest of the commercial tax base who don't qualify so it's a way to help one or two but by raising the cost for your other commercial taxpayers next [Music] page okay the next few pages are what are the surrounding communities do and well gee I work in half of these surrounding communities so um just to give you an idea where our neighbors are at I mean wuben has a very robust commercial tax base and therefore has a very low residential rate as they shift to their maximum capacity um the only town that does not do any shift whatsoever is North Reading and I do not know that they have any type of significant commercial tax base to support any kind of shift like that um Lakefield we shift to 1.75 as our tax rates and this is just again for your information next page okay Bob thanks for saddling me with this when we came here a group of concerned reading residents came up with communities that they feel reading is most like and this list is probably 20 something years old and I'm surprised I haven't retired it because I don't see how we are you you'll see other ones that have us listed along with Marshfield or what have you so it's time to update the list but this is other communities what they do what their shift rates are next [Music] page again what their tax rates are I mean we have Arlington Belmont Lexington and it tells you what their maximum shift are to what their uh what their potential shift capacity be to what they actually did uh I see Lexington messed up on their mrf they tried to get to 1.75 but didn't do the math right only got to 1.74 that happens um happened to me in ready I was supposed to go to 1.1 but rounded it come out to 1.09 sorry um next page and again this is all information from other communities that a body of reading once determined to be similar to reading like Lincoln and Milton and Sudbury all right next page excuse me question yeah sure I'm sorry was this a list that you think might be likely to be better comparable communities to running we just your a list of communities a previous board probably around 20 years ago my first classification hearing I was handed a list of similar type communities no I know once once I got done smirking honestly because it might have been the case 25 years ago it's not now but that previous list that you just put up there did I misinterpret that slide if you go back one that is some of the select communities that they mention I just dive a little bit deeper to give the tax rates and the tax shift so those communities are in our current like group of comparable communities or you just picked them no those were part of the group Define that's all I want clarification by prior boards gotta okay next one and my masterpiece everything you want to know about everybody so uh if I'm not mistaken is that my last slide no no well hey definitions that's all I have does anyone have any questions at all I have a quick question thank you for that um what am I correct saying that a current commercial base is under 7% just under seven 6.2 it's in here 6.29 the six yeah oh yeah about 6.3 right there in front of me sorry all right so I I just remember when I I came to this town as a business owner 0607 we were under 10 but we were closer to eight uh 8 n and now we're you dropped two whole points and it's forgive me for jumping in it's interesting that you pick up on that that's simply because of what this gentleman was talking about the explosive value increase in the residential real estate market in a flat commercial Market that's what happens because this is based on value see more homes too more units it's value most of it's value driven as you've seen a 9% increase um okay I just wanted 6.29 all right thank you that's all I have for now anyone else want to asor a fun question Karen um yes so um what I'm trying to do is oh excellent job by the way thanks too too much excellent I know I know you earn your money thank you um so I've been um was trying to do this ahead of the meeting but just doing it now getting the summary page in place so that I I just understand that the data you're presenting um there was another effectively a 10% increase in our assessed values for residential homes for the average residential home is that correct not for fiscal 25 the increase was off the top my head between 4 and 6% depending on neighborhood okay you know what I think I looked at the sale price sale price was up almost 10% 9.3 so in your presentation is the assessed value increase in there okay I'll take that out that's why we have to wait until October because while I do my values and have them approve usually midt because of our reading senior discount which is factored into the tax rate I need a couple days in early October to process that so then I can do my tax rate and mrf calculations to the value so um so and just confirming my understanding um so if we leave things the way they are the average residential taxx bill is going to increase $104 and the median commercial tax increase comparing Apples to Apples is only going to increase $28 those are the estimates yes okay anyone else Chris thanks Carl and thank you Victor once again for coming and hopefully this meeting can be archived for future people so they can kind of see the way that you present things because it's it's quite well other than obviously this list that we might have to update in the future because I don't even know where Marshfield is I think they have a fair they get something marveld tops field Adam um but I I just want to mention briefly that when I I moved to reading in 2008 my house I bought was $ 299,000 I sold it in 2018 for 4 50,000 it's now worth uh in 2024 $749,000 the days of $299,000 starter homes and ring are gone they ain't coming back no matter what we do anybody does it's not happening but I bring that up because you have to see that the way that that is increased year over year over year so from 18 to 24 it increased by 300,000 which is the original cost of what I paid from my house and my existing house I never would have thought I'd have a million dollar something house like ever I want to know where my gated community is who my dor is like these kind of scenarios I never would anticipate I like I know I can't afford my house if I was to buy it now the way that it is uh it's unfortunate for other families that can't get in on the ground floor um it is what it is but when you look at comparables around here with nobody ever wants to bring up that North Reading is 0% on their shift and their commercial base is 11.87 compared to reading which is 6.29 no one ever wants to bring that up we're just going to ignore that North Reading over the Border rate there is 0% why come to reading why go to North Reading it's 0% call it a day uh lynfield same thing they have a higher uh commercial base they're at 1172 so it's easy to to see numbers and be like look at reading the the fourth highest uh tax in all of massachus Etc but yes what is the commercial base compared to who you're trying to compare it to uh and uh nothing compares to to reading in that regard um so just I'm not a a gambler I I don't bet on anything but the way that what I'm good at is looking at money and going to a 1.2 rate which would increase our taxes here for residents by $6 in order to do that you would have to increase the commercial rate by $98 nobody is wagering $980 at the chance to win six bucks nobody right it it's it's like when you scale things out like this and just don't look at things on face value like it it nobody is doing this I I da poroy ain't betting on this and the other thing that that get mentioned that uh I also take issue with is that um uh I would love for commercial and residential Etc to be on the same playing field with things I agree but iish would love to know when we're picking up our trash because we can't pick up our own trash currently because they missed it again today but iish wants to know when they're coming to pick up her trash for her rate that she's paying they're not her electric bill is higher in reading for whatever reason cuz her electric is different next is going to come the water rates eventually that's going to be another mechanism that's coming I I don't doubt it um but I ju I just want to close that reading did make the uh big shift to doing the senior circuit breaker and was groundbreaking when they did that um and what I would like to see and what I've been working on uh behind the scenes and I'll give an update in a moment is the small commercial exemption because your definition that was up there does not apply to anybody reading and it doesn't apply anywhere else it's not my definition it's the common one it that's so instead of complaining about the definition like I always do I was looking at changing the definition because then like you mentioned we can shift the tax from uh the higher commercial properties Like Home Depot and uh Jordans Etc believe me they employ people too residents from here Etc they're providing jobs they're doing a fantastic service but small businesses also if they can get the relief the same way that the the senior circuit breaker worked then that allows us to shift the residential tax and the commercial thing to be a little bit more uh favoring the residential portion it's that simple so something has to be done about that otherwise we're going to be going through this Rigo every year pitting things against each other um so I spoke with representative hagy uh and Jones regarding this uh last year uh and the update on it now is that they're going to go back in January through the normal legislative process and meet with the new chair of the appropriate committee and testify during the public hearings and advocate for things that way so that's what uh Rich Hagerty is working on uh for the small commercial exemption and hopefully it can happen and reading can be the Pioneer in this and then eventually everyone's going to adopt it as well um otherwise we're just going to be doing this every single year and just nobody doing anything about it so thank you vior anyone else mark thank you that's twice um thank you so um I think as we look at our our neighboring communities and things we we we're trying to accomplish a lot of things here one is to establish fairness and Equity to see what's going on many of the communities around us in fact most of the communities around us do a very substantial shift um but between 1.57 and 1.75 and even with North Reading in that mix the average is still well above 1.5 as a shift and I think what we've talked about in the past has been kind of a grad or I'm going to say I've talked about in the past more of a gradual shift not necessarily to those numbers to get to that magnitude but a bit more of a change um over time and I think um Mr Li brought up a really excellent point which is that the shifts excuse me the tax rate the tax increases going on in this community have been very strong against residents um and less so against commercial and in fact we as a board for the last I think two or three years have been very careful and very circumspect about saying hey Co recovery let's work really hard let's moderate whatever increases we might be talking about I think we've done a really nice job of of of doing that um and at the same time we've also realized I think and again I'll speak for myself that this should be shifting up a little bit more again does it need to get to 1.5 or 1.75 certainly not in the near future in my opinion but I think it should be shifting um a bit upward I think when the community is um facing higher taxes some folks certainly can afford it they may not want to but they can certainly afford it and there are others who really can't and we talked a little bit about seniors we've talked about young couples that are moving in who are spending a lot of money to get a house um I think it's important that we continue the shift that we move toward our neighboring communities it's not trying to pit one thing against another in fact even if we didn't do a shift we're still pitting one thing against the other because then why is it a 1.0 it's always going to be excuse me that discussion where where is kind of the fair balance to find to me it's in kind of increasing the shift a bit higher than the 1.1 is we can talk more specifically about numbers later but kind of following that path one of the weird things here is that the weird things residential values keep going up so let's say you do cash out the problem is you're going to spend all that money and maybe more to go elsewhere it's not as if you have a windfall to put in your pocket and decide to buy a boat or whatever it's going to be those are the costs um and it's it is what it is right that's where we are so I as I see the values going up I appreciate that you know the residential side um is probably going to continue to be a little bit more but we've had these very low um changes going on the commercial side I think we need to kind of shift it again higher than the 1.1 to reflect that again I don't think 1.5 is something that's that's under consideration here but it's important that we think about it that way I look at other communities I look at communities that have more commercial base and appreciate that could really lower residential taxes that would be awesome we don't have the land we don't have the commercial base to do that however we do have a good commercial base we do have some very large tenants and again if we can find a way to um find a way for them to be paid excuse me more into the system that would be great we haven't and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts frowns upon that yes right so maybe this's legislative change that can happen to help us address it but in the meantime um we we kind of are dealing with what we've got here and I think it's very important we look to you know how can we balance this how can we have a slight increase in the shift not adding huge amounts to anybody but I think that the residential taxpayers of this community um deserve a little bit of a break and if it's $50 or $60 is the difference then it's $50 or $60 that's the difference I think that's very reasonable very appropriate so I I advocate for um increasing the shift I guess more along the lines of what I had been talking about what I think the majority of the board did last time um in that direction figure out what the right number might be mus just one thing I wanted to point out when you U mentioned the neighboring communities if you go through these neighboring communities reading is it at least 3% lower on the commercial we have in town the closest to us is stonum and they have 99.75% business um and then Wilmington and wubber have over 20% wubber Wilmington has 24% wubber has 27% so I understand what you're saying when it comes to that shift but we are the lowest commercial base in our neighboring towns by far so I think we have to remember that when we talk about the shift that's thank you um so I think I can say unequivocally I've been I'm the only one who's been coming to this meeting since 2007 uh when we moved the chocol tra from ubar this is the one meeting I attended as a as a business owner first then as a business owner and a resident because we were in Wakefield for a little bit and I never supported a shift and that was when our commercial base was higher and as our commercial base has been decreasing I have never supported the tax shift I I understand the methodology behind it even in small increments uh so I am going to advocate for keeping it the same uh because uh unfortunately like I've said the past several years next year for us for small businesses is going to be worse every year I've said that it's been worse our cost of goods our employee issues and in this town add parking add our water rates yes it's a great town to live in great town to go to school we have many great things going on but it's very expensive to live in this town for both on both ends being a small business owner and being a resident but I I I I look forward to this meeting every year but I've never been in favor of a split ever and I'm not going to change my tune um just because that's the way I feel uh at 6.3% I mean that's that's ridiculous that we want the majority of the town to subsidize this and you could say the flip side well why should the residents be subsidizing the small business Community I get it but it's it's very uh uneven unfortunately that's no one's fault but uh when we go to vote at our next meeting we're not voting tonight folks we're just discussing um you know I'm not afraid to tip my hand because of done every year I I will not support uh any kind of shift because I think next year is going to be worse uh for the small business and Commercial properties and as Chris said our our residential values have skyrocketed I mean I also I think we all here have a house that's worth over a million dollars on the board I can probably say that safely and who would have think think that would was possible so and here we are uh which is a good thing not a bad thing but it it just it adds uh a lot of things to people's plates so thank you Victor uh again oh yeah just just one quick thing just to add meliss your comment take a look at milrose which is a 5.1% uh commercial base and a 1.72 shift can I just interject something while we're talking about nor reading at 11 and us at six as we stated early we all hopefully realize it's a function of total value so depending on the type of businesses what have you depending on how the town ultimately values properties myself I comply everything with the Dr guidelines I try to come in at in assess speak rdit 95% do the best I can with commercials so it's a function of that if other communities you North Reading may have 11% but their resident values may not be up where ours are their average single family value might only be 68,000 as opposed to ours we're coming out at 8:35 that's going to affect that split number so these numbers here just understanding the way they come up with it would be helpful in making comparisons thank you thank you for the Indulgence listen just one other thing I wanted to point out when we talk about next year's read is that we're at some big debt exclusions and the businesses take a lot of that like if we keep the rate that we're at if I'm reading this correctly and correct me if I'm wrong Victor single family homes will the average single family home will take $143 but the businesses would take $318 of debt exclusions am I correct in saying that you are the one thing I will say is that debt exclusion number is about half what it historically was because what's happening is the town did retire some debt was always around 2.8 to $3 million and now with the school coming on that and that's my point we have a school in a senior center that we're looking at that number is going to jump significantly and the businesses are going to take that on more than the average single family average commercial yes what you're talking about not the medium you're right I do yep average commercial y that's two and a half times would be other yeah thank you um I just wanted to say that um I am very much concerned about affordability in this town and while it's wonderful that we were out there leading other communities with our senior circuit tax breaker when we are helping 223 seniors out of at 65 plus out of 6,500 these are Ballpark numbers that's 0 0 3% of seniors that's dialing it in and to your point we are going to be asking our residents to shoulder debt for a very important school project and this is an opportunity for us to make that a little bit easier to swallow for the vast majority of our residents the 94% of the folks that are paying the taxes in this town so um I I would be inclined to continue are using your words are slight shift to position us well before we go to the voters and ask for an estimated $130 million um 65 30% of our population is not using that school but they're part of this community they want to support it um I I was on a tax classification committee back in 2005 so this has been a very important um issue for me so just making sure that uh I'm clear that the circuit breaker you know started this shift and it's really important but it's not it's it's not doing much and um so those are just my general comments thank you I I would ask for any help to advertise our senior reading senior uh discount program every year in the preliminary tax bills we put a letter in that every resident receives okay those that filed the previous year my staff sends letters follows up with phone calls to get people in so I don't know where educating the public might be failing but anyone wants to put a shoulder into that and help us get the word out we'll go to senior's homes who are shuttin to help them to help them complete applications it's what we doing field it's what we do in read if you guys can help pump those numbers up please thank you anyone else good thank you oh I just real quick uh the residential dollar figure just so everybody knows is $11.40 and the commercial dollar figure is $12.56 for thousand of value corre yes so when we're saying numbers and everything and it makes it look like commercial businesses are getting breaks and all this stuff their their dollar figure still is higher by a buck uh which is what almost 10% uh when you break this out so um and to answer your question North Reading is 811k it's page 26 of the packet that you put in there for the average single family value and reading is 854 and through the shift is how you make up the discrepancy between residential values and Commercial values which is why the median commercial tax increases $28 the average commercial average residential tax increase is 104 so yes while it's a higher tax rate it's also making up for an inherent disparity in valuation thank you good thank you if there's any questions in the interim don't hesitate to reach out to me I'm happy to make myself available to answer anything at any time before our next meeting you than Victor thank you that Victor huh what time is ITV so we have a present sorry from Mr R and you can announce to the community you're not you're only broadcasting live on Verizon and on YouTube Comcast is not working they are working with Comcast to fix the situation I have any yeah you heard it right all right presentation on the high school floor I see Mr mileski here here all right good evening everyone nice to see you evening select board uh Jackie you can pull up the presentation so uh I think we did the field host floor project was discussed a couple of weeks ago a week ago uh at some level of depth we realized at that point you didn't have all the information you maybe need at that point to make uh as informed of a v as you maybe wanted to so we appreciate giving us the opportunity to come back tonight and share a little bit more about where we are with the project and why we're going to be asking town meeting or recommending recommending a project that's more than what was presented April town meeting U spring so uh a little bit of context I think the uh got to go the first slide you'll see that back in April 2024 debt was authorized of 1.7 million for the Fieldhouse floor project which is want to emphasize is the entire gym entire Fieldhouse uh and the bleachers and then we had said to T town meeting if it's during the design process if it was determined that there was a better option that would cost more money we would then come and obviously bring that forward at town meeting uh throughout the design process we feel our team has now uh landed an option that we think is a better option for our community and want to speak about that but tonight Jack you can go next slide um a little bit of context we talk about the Fieldhouse floor just want to emphasize something is probably known by everyone in the room that this is a uh is not the field house but also the Center Court is something that gets a great amount of use not only hundreds of students every day per PE class uh after school every day if you've ever been in there between 3 and five you know it's a a hub variety activities Sports uh and then also on the weekends Jim Sullivan gave that you know Point data point down there averaging on a random January February day of a b reading wreck basketball season uh about five to 600 students or uh community members coming in and using the surface so when we're talking tonight about safety and durability just wanted to make sure you all have in mind sort of the the scope of of activity that we're talking about here as well too Jack you can go next slide so uh as we went through kind of back in town meeting we uh talked about the 1.7 was going to get the like and kind option which Joe will speak about in a minute and obviously here tonight obviously we're going to speak a little bit about the wood athletic option and also about lumaflex so I'm going to turn over to Joe who's going to speak about where we are in the project and why what we're recommending is a little bit higher than what we be came for thank you Tom so um originally when we came to you we had uh requested um uh $1.7 million to replace the Fieldhouse floor in kind when I say in kind I'm talking about the track which is vulcanized rubber and the Center Court which is uh foam back back vinyl and it involved replacing the bleachers also and it's like Tom mentioned we we had told everybody that we were going to offer up um and look at different options for a higher quality Center Court and of course that carries a bigger number and that's the reason we're coming to you now um and the reason for that is in order for us to get a hardwood floor surface on the Center Court it means we're going to have to cut the entire Center Court of the um the basketball court out and depress the slab probably down 18 to 24 in and then repour it and then build up and build you know put the hwood flooring surface on top of that so that it marries in perfectly with the track so that there's no transition that's noticeable how what take has taken us a lot of time is that we had we were doing a lot of research behind the scenes we were we were visiting different school districts in the area uh to see how this hardwood floor system would marry up towards vulcanized rubber and we wanted to make sure we got it right because we didn't want to be the a guinea pig we wanted to make sure what we were going to put in was going to last um for generations to come so the foam back vinyl again it would be a very simple solution to go back and put what's in kind there we looked at a couple of different options for the foam um for putting the maple flooring in the middle without depressing the slab which would mean we'd build the floor up but then we'd have to have transitions to all the doors around the whole Fieldhouse which would cut into like uh runoff on the track playability and things like that it it really wouldn't work well so that's why we went with the depressing the slab idea so the project itself is something it's going to take us all of June all of July all of August and Trail into September to do it's going to be a summer a summer project if we move ahead with it um it's going to involve demoing the existing uh track Center Court bleachers and then going in there and cutting the Center Court out depressing the slab which that piece of it alone is probably 6 weeks to do that portion of the job which is why it's going to carry more time the in kind option was going to be much quicker because we weren't having to do all that work so there lies a lot of the cost the other thing to keep in mind is that the bleachers that we're going to be installing are adaa compliant which we what we have right now is original from 1970s and then not ADA Compliant so that just gives you a little bit of background of where where we where we've come and where we are right now so the uh Joe was able to speak a little bit about why that would incur an additional cost if we were to go with the wood option I'm going to speak briefly tonight about why we think the wood options the preferable option for our community as well I'd like to thank we're going to go through some slides that give some more data on or some you know researcher background on Wood versus uh Pham back vinyl I'd like to give a thank you to you see the name Rob felner who is the president of FJ robber Support Services who's helped us with a lot of our Research In addition to sort of what we've done in the RO as well Jack you can go next slide think at the uh this should be fine in your packet looks a little funky up here on the screen apologize for that uh the two major reasons for uh us recommending the wood surface comes down to safety factors which is for first and foremost ensuring a safer experience for our student athletes and for our community members and two also quality factors which we say is the biggest being durability I'll speak about each of those tonight too Jackie go next slide uh three major factors come up when you're looking at a wood surface or you know comparing Safety Services the first is around shock absorption uh you'll see that this is a little table put together by Rob bner about comparing what you can expect in shock absorption between a foam back vinyl surface and also a wood surface um ideal surface with a you know 50% uh shock absorption you'll see that foam back vinyl gives you 22 to 33% but then obviously a step up going into the uh wood athletic which is uh closer to 50% why would you care this is the uh the type of this is the factor that's associated most closely with overuse injuries and you know a lot of our student athletes a love of our community members are constantly using the wood floor so you'll see a floor that has better shock absorption is one that's able to limit the potential of student athletes developing uh over use injuries ankles knees things like that go next slide when you're looking at shock absorption also equally as important just looking at energy return as well so they're saying that there may be some surfaces that are really strong in shock absorption like sand but if you also don't have uh kind of a balance of energy return that's going to be like running on Sand so as you're looking at surfaces is important there's a balance between shock absorption and energy return both in terms of safety and in terms of quality of play Third factor for safety which I think is the most important one which is kind of the headline for me on the next slide uh is around elasticity and this is the one that's associated most closing with uh catastrophic knee injuries I've had a lot of questions from you know family me community members recently around like is the current surface unsafe I don't think we would go as far as to say we can say that a surface is unsafe uh I think what we can say is that we know that there's surfaces that are out there that we could invest in that would you know guarantee a high level of safety for our student athletes and that's why we're presenting the surface that we're on tonight we've had like anyone had a fair amount of knee injuries ankle injuries you talk to our High School coaches they will be able to describe you know certain situations people they know know what we're talking about uh I think it's really important that we invest in service can avoid the catastrophic or what I would say like trajectory changing injuries for student athletes so on that next slide uh you'll see that it's a um kind of the way that that's categorized is on a spectrum of surface of like area to point uh something that a you know it's recommended that a surface or playing basketball or volleyballs on an area elastic floor which is sort of the best type of area floor given that what when a student's knee or you know foot comes down on the ground sort of what does that depression look like um they'll say when a floor that is not an area floor there's a tendency that or higher risk of a student actually having their foot feel like it gets stuck and that's when you leave a some of larger injuries that we've seen so um if you ask a lot of our recent kind of major injuries to high school they've had ones where the kids feel like their legs get stuck so this is obviously the difference between foam back vinyl which is I wouldn't say is a full necessarily is considered like you know halfway between point and area it's certainly not up to the quality of surface when you're looking at elasticity as a a wood surface and we think this is most important for ensuring the safety of those who use the Fieldhouse Center Court you go next slide uh so the next that we get into just terms of quality factors one quickly that the wood floor holds up a little bit better on uh durability in terms especially for Rolling load so for heavy lifts that may come in to need to do work sort of up above the uh the court next slide um also the kind of longevity we'll say we had Rob beler at the fincom meeting last week who shared a wood surface should last at least 50 years possibly 70 80 if it's maintained really well versus a foam back vinyl which you can expect around something in the range of 20 years so obviously expecting that you can get you know better longevity durability on a wood surface couple of downsides on that the same time um first it takes more maintenance to maintain a wood floor you know that more annual maintenance I think Joe and his team I think we're lucky that we have a you know great uh facilities Department in our in our town who have maintained other wood surfaces if you're interested in learning more about what that cost would be I mean Joe can speak to that but they've done wood surfaces and they've maintained them really well uh the other kind of challenges are uh a any water damage particularly a flood could be especially damaging to a wood surface so I think making sure that we have everything buttoned up in the high school to avoid that the best that we can the other factor that it like leans in favor of a Pham back vinyl is is humidity if you're not able to control the humidity that can be a higher risk for like a wood surface buckling too um the other night at the fincon meeting FJ Roberts emphasized like the two most important things we could do to mitigate the risks of uh of like buckling due to humidity is one making sure we like move can move air in the Fieldhouse which think Joe was spoken about that we feel confident that we have the infrastructure to be able to do that decently well despite some of the Heat and two ensuring the quality of uh of like installation the installation was Pro pre Joe Huggins era and I feel confident that in the Joe Huggins era the there were some challenges with I know with the installation before and I think that'd be something the team would be on top of to ensure that that was in and done really well too and then last uh last slid so I should mention to I just think that we would be able to maintain and get close to what we think the floor surface life should be with the team that we have in place in our facilities department and then last factor is Aesthetics um I would say this is like the bottom of the barrel I know for some people this is the most exciting to have a state-of-the-art floor that looks amazing I would share that um this is sort of the the norm for uh schools and for communities that I think are probably our level of you know competition athletically you'll see that 10 of the 11 other middle sex League high schools already have or currently installing wood floors so this is something that we see when we travel to other you know opposing gyms and field houses uh and I think that is really something that for a community that takes great pride in the facilities that we have and great pride in a lot of the athletic traditions and other you know offerings that we give to the community I don't think that this is something that is you know a out of the league of what could be expected for something ready you go last uh just a kind of summary slide just emphasizing the or showing the difference between the foam back final cost of 1.7 the 3 million for the wood athletic again feel strongly on the durability piece and that's a great investment for the community in that way but more importantly than that I think it's really important to invest in the surface that we know can ensure safety for all that who who use that and I think research backs up that the uh floor the type of surface that can ensure that for our student athletes and for our community is is the wood uh Maple surface so Joe and I are here happy to answer any questions but thank you in advance for you know all the support thank you any questions um Mark so Tom thanks first of all for for sharing this um so we can see what's going on I think obviously um the driver of the project in the first place was safety and taking your point it's not that it's unsafe but it's something that we can do a lot better and seeing what's going on um I think this in a lot of ways makes a lot of sense I think that for me what's changed a little bit right now is that um we're needing to to think about the highest Community priorities in terms of what we're going to get done and the impact that has on our Capital plan and or debt exclusions all those different pieces we for the last several years I think we felt that we were in a really good position and it wasn't that hard to kind of add things as as needed and I think what's happening now in the last fin last two ago finon meeting the financial forum is starting to highlight that that's not really the case anymore that we need to be much more scrutinizing of what's going on and deciding okay this really is priority so something else it has to be a lesser priority to kind of exchange for that and my concern coming into this town meeting is that we make sure that the community is starting to understand that that's the case I see two highest priorities on the list at at a at a very high level in terms of big projects and all the respect you mentioned the school and I agree but the center of living is up there at the same time those are very substantial capital projects um and and dead exclusions no question I think we have a responsibility to the community to be really starting to prioritize the other pieces and what goes on I'm in agreement that this has priority I think that if it's going to cost an extra twice as much basically something else needs to fall down um in that range and I don't know that we as a community have been thinking about that quite as carefully in the past I think that we felt a little richer and I think we aren't I'm not feeling as Rich at the moment yes because I have a big project going on but I think we as a community have to start thinking that way and I I would encourage that even on this project if the if the floor is the priority then and I hear the ADA compliance on the bleachers which kind of stopped me in my tracks of saying gee I have a solution here but I think we have to look at projects and say wait a second maybe we'll do a little bit less on this because this is higher priority and I just want to encourage that thinking amongst all of us and amongst the community that's where we are we are getting tighter on operating budgets fact um as we look at Capital we're we're in a good spot however we have to decide what we're going to spend the money on and so that that's my um it's not push back it's a response kind of saying hey as we come to town meeting how do we view this we see it as a good investment you one of my questions was how long does it last and you basically said more than twice as long as expected so that all those are making great sense the cash outlay is higher how do we how do we find other ways to think about it other than just saying this's just take more free cash out I'm just asking that we start thinking that way as a community thank you K thank you um so I attended the full finance committee the other night and thank you for coming again there was a very robust discussion and um and I came away feeling like there's a lot of good reasons to really to go for this upgraded service longevity safety keeping our um students on the surfaces that they commonly see in competition um and I also to your point I really like your uh provider and this is exactly what the community center that we're working on Senior Center would need for flooring because they have the same joint bouncing issues anytime they want to do dance Zumba whatever they do over there I don't know what they to go there um so my only concern with this is is the timing of the expenditure because of the the um reasons that Mark elaborated on the other capital projects um I might I would love to know whether um the bleachers are also in horrible condition and not a compliant would there could there be a possibility to maybe get part of it done with the authorization that has been done and then look to get this the phase second phase of it done perhaps after we get um these other high priority projects um completed or even the first one because that's going to be the biggest one so that's my only concern but I appreciate the work and the thought that went into this and um you know I I'm convinced that it might be it might be a worthwhile investment and of course tell me to that thank you yeah Joe can you if it's possible or make sense or whatever it really doesn't make sense to do that for a couple reasons number one um the bleachers that are there not in horrible condition I just want everybody to know that they are old they're wooden bleachers um a lot of districts have them when I got here they were in horrible condition and we put probably $60,000 the first two summers that I was here into those and they get inspected every summer to make sure they're safe along with all the gym equipment but to take those bleachers and move them and roll them back into place over a new flooor I don't know that they're going to that's not a very good thing to do to those because they're not meant to be taken apart and moved they will move because they bolted to the wall and they come out like an accordion right but they wouldn't and um it it puts a lot of stress on them you where where would you put them number one you'd have to take them apart to work on the floor it's just it doesn't make any sense the other thing is let's just say you said okay let's do the quar over and leave the track again you're getting into work that's it all the floor needs to be uh U repaired there's cracks in the floor we'd want to do moisture mitigation which was never done as part of the high school project and it flooded out before and we think that's the reason why the track is failing is because the glue never cured so it's like almost like a like a total project encompassing just let's handle it all now and get it done it doesn't really lend itself to peace mailing it I I really can't think of how you'd even phase that not to mention the fact that we'd be taking the Fieldhouse offline for two years which it's going to be hot enough to pull it offline for one year right one summer I should say don't say that well it that's the biggest that's a busy time out there no no no no I know but I know what you're saying but I'm I'm just saying you don't want to pull it off for two seasons like that we want to get it back online as quickly as possible just like the tur Fields right exactly yeah exactly right so no thank you okay anyone else Chris thanks Carlo um I think there's there's a couple things the the return on the investment with the seeing it broken down with 20 years to 50 years Etc obviously we're getting overd double the the longevity off it as long as it's maintained so I think the the maintaining has to be really put at the Forefront if this goes ahead and actually passes Etc because I know um things in the past might not H might not have been maintained correctly um I'm not saying Joe anything that you did I'm just saying that I mean you can take the roads as an example just we have to maintain things otherwise our nice $3 million floor is going to be you know in disarray 10 years from now um but when you scale it out like that and see 20 years to 50 years just imagine what the price of this floor is going to be like in 20 years 5 million 10 million who knows I tell you what it ain't going to be 3 million like it's not um the other thing I don't I suggested it last time and I don't know where it stands if it's legal possible whatever scenario is if we're able to use the 500 or so K that we have in the Burbank icearena fund to be able to do this because it's definitely Recreation kids running Etc I I don't think the board over there would have an issue with it not that I don't think they vote regardless but if it's allowable that now takes you know this down to $800,000 instead of 1.3 it's under a million it's it's better in the head you know what I mean I just I don't know if that can be explored before town meeting and maybe you know it can't be done for whatever reason it is what it is but I think you have to look at it and see if it is possible um and you know this could be another way like Mark mentioned the Domino has to fall well maybe this gets used this direction and 800k is going to sit a little better than 1.3 um but yeah definitely just maintaining things and I know you mentioned the prior floor wasn't done right I know you're going to make sure whatever is done this time is done 150% better than it's supposed to be um so last time I was a yes with an aster on this uh I'm uh yes without the as now so thank you nice up um thank you guys for coming and presenting us um it makes a lot of sense now spend in my head that we're just doubling the price just because um like everyone said the longevity of it makes complete sense um I am with Mark in the sense that we really do have to be careful with our spending um we we have two large set exclusions the residents have a lot in their back but I will support this um I think seeing all their information the status of the floor current day and the fact that it will last double the time makes most sense thanks yeah I I I was able to see this at the finance committee meeting and I I forget if it was mentioned that the majority of our gyms have wood flooring currently and Facilities has been been maintaining those floors I don't know if that was mentioned is that y majority yep so yeah last time we didn't have this in front of us so it was like we were caught off guard and I was really taken aback by the the giant increase but having seen the presentation I don't want to repeat what everyone else said because what everyone else said that spoke before me made sense but uh I I I think I vot a no last time I would be in support of this for a number of reasons um but I would you know that's just I'm talking out loud this doesn't mean anything yet but uh and also have any questions from Jo Dr mesco here just quick comment so I appreciate your point on on the Burbank money just that money it's still money it's in a slightly different pocket right that money actually goes to the general fund already so it's kind of it's the same money but the notion of it's supporting Recreation might help people think about it yeah it's not up to me it's just another Avenue to just explore because it is it's not like we're replacing this with a golf cart a golf track or something like you know what I mean yeah all right do we have a motion or vote I just going to do this more support or yeah I have a motion uh move to support Article 15 of the subsequent town meeting warrant second thank you any discussion seeing none all those in favor five all those POs zero thank you thank you guys appreciate it all right next we are going to have uh update discussion and potential vote on parking kiosks so last time we met there was a you know a good conversation um there was a lot of things that I'm speaking for myself that weren't implemented correctly as a launch uh for this and uh I'm not right many times but I did not support this several years ago and I was hoping that we would do a better job as a town of maybe we did I don't think we did of you know flying cars giving the business something to hand out by the way paid parking is coming soon at least a month in advance uh as as some of the speakers said we don't just have reading residents shopping and reading we have people outside of reading going to our establishments uh including our gyms so the tree got trimmed as an update uh a sign got moved that was requested uh I know Parts have been ordered um I was discouraged to hear what happened to eishes employee I agree so the reason we put this on the agenda again or I did a lot of things have to be addressed in this launch of paid parking and reading um I think our our our update that was mentioned to to the parking uh employee parking around town that was an added benefit that we did with the guidance of the park committee uh yes the park committee uh did support these chaos and then we voted and and here we are today in mid October talking about this so I am was never in favor of this uh we have them now I can see the benefit of them tracking moving people around yes you can park in the back Lots now no problem wide open um Chris and Melissa not not did what they did that Friday and I stopped by twice we wouldn't have all this information of how bad things are going just on the kiosk themselves not everything that we've heard so we have to do a better job as a town and I know we're working on that so it's on the agenda again for me I want to see a pause for the rest of the year personally I'm speaking for myself I want to see a pause at a minimum CVS at a minimum if not both and get everything we have to get done make sure it works I asked last time can we have a grace period of no tickets I was told no I thought that was a horrible idea we need to warn these people say Hey you know you got to pay for this now we didn't do that uh signage needs to be better there's a whole list that I know you guys have that things have to be addressed so I just want to open it up there and you know anyone else can add what what they want to add but but yeah uh we have uh two motions that we're going to discuss um on each individual lot but that's kind of where I stand and I'll open it up to the board Mark thanks car so um actually five things the first one is there an update so since last week could you share that with us please so I will pass around this um spreadsheet this is just the updated number we last it's not it's not effectively really any different than the previous mbers it's higher than the first week lower than the second week in Aggregate and you can look at that you include this in the packet and hand are we allowed to speak at all during this or no it's up to me and probably not okay that was public comment sorry I understand that I just yeah I was just wondering you don't want to be till 12:00 I get it no no no disrespect but if it's a really targeted question maybe but this is for us to discuss and okay decide thank you just wanted to check no problem uh not okay so um so you see the numbers there um just the total number of of of transactions last week Monday through Sunday which there were no transactions on the weekend uh were 391 which was lower than 498 the previous week and higher than the first week of 369 so things are roughly trending the same as they have been and you can see that there and there's nothing really I don't think very interesting to call out um we did trim the tree by CVS our forry department went down there very early in the morning and they trimmed the entire tree not just a little portion over the kiosk um and they did that I think about 7:00 in the morning when there no businesses were open effectively um because they have big trucks the so we had some social media updates from the police department and the town uh we did move some signage the too light boards remain up in both in both of the Lots um we have an order on hold from pay by phone pending the outcome of this meeting for more signs uh of different sizes and we've scouted where we want to put those in the both the Lots um including in the center section um we're preparing a list again pending the outcome of this meeting is to which holidays and related days like Black Friday is not an official holiday um to switch to free parking because that's not in all of the dates it's Monday it's just the systems program for Monday so those have to come off and then we can refund anybody who was charged on Monday holiday we have that information we can we can refund them if they were paid by a credit card um automatically so um we revie you had asked about QR codes the the board had asked about QR codes we reviewed that with uh pay by phone the corporation and with the IT department and we are not encouraged to use that as they are considered not secure um in the mailer that we sent out to downtown um addresses there was a QR code on it which took you to the website takes this to the website so you can put a QR code onto the website but if you look at the side of the kiosk it tells you where to get the apps if you wish to download the app um that's on the side of every kiosk um line painting in the upper Haven lot uh you can't really see the lines there so we have asked the DPW to have it painted this week it'll be painted overnight um weather permitting it has to be warm enough for the paint to dry so if it's warm enough for the paint to dry Wednesday Thursday is what they're looking at it'll be done overnight and it'll be done by Morning by us by our line painting vendor line pting vendor yeah our line painting contractor um which we have on a contract um we note that I think one of the kiosks is automatically printing receipts um if not is that I'm hearing some Kevin do you want to speak to that so I would like to also let the board know that our economic development director Kevin McCarthy is here our community planning director Andrew McNichol is here and online is the Deputy police chief she was before Christine amandola um at the pleasure of the man of the chair if you would interested in what Kevin confirm that the receipts are the yeah and so I think we think that that creates confusion that people need to put the receipt in the on their windshield that they don't need to do that at all so we're going to turn that off um did you want to speak any further do that I think I successfully did that today may I should have come to the podium just so Zoom people can hear yeah only only to say that I think I successfully got into the got into the back end of the system today and turned off the automatic it been set automatic you know the back end as you can imagine is is um is a nested menus um can be kind of complicated so there's a learning curve to that but I think I turned off the automatic printing which I think will lessen the confusion um you know I mean the first time I did it it was like well it printed something out oh am I supposed to display this or not because some systems are pay and display and some are not so I think if you can you can push the button that says print print a receipt if you want if you have paid and you want to keep your receipt for reimbursement or whatever it is but it won't come out automatically I believe so we do need to test that and verify that that's working as as as it's supposed to thanks um so that's that's the we have had a number of other questions we have had tremendous feedback from the community um I'm personally appreciative of all the businesses who are here tonight who have given us their feedback um um you're welcome to call and email me directly with particular questions or incremental requests and and feedback um I welcome that um we have we have received feedback from folks with lots of different opinions on on the paid parking both for and against and so there's you know lots of voices that are chiming in um and it's um it's certainly a challenging situation um we've also heard lots of kind of you know different things that maybe we could do a little myth busting as it comes up from time to time um there there's been requests to te uh to ticket at a higher rate than $25 um we are at the legal maximum because when you add penalties you have to get to that $50 limit so that the police department is saying we can't have an a lower a lower tax a lower ticket sorry a higher ticket than that initial 25 because then people don't what typically happens is people don't pay the ticket and then they don't pay the ticket and then they get a delinquent notice or whatever what what I get is the letter from the R&B saying I have to pay my ticket which I have had that in the past I'm not proud um so you know that's that's typical and then you pay the higher the higher fee um we had a a request from a gentleman who uh thought that it was difficult to use to to understand how to start the kiosk going because the screen is black blank but when you at the top of the screen there's a plaque that says press any key to start so um so that's so there's there's a lot to it um there's there's lots of different um emotions and feelings and I validate everybody's concerns and everything they forward I certainly you know I trust our businesses when they're telling us their experiences um and so these this is some of the information if somebody asked how many spaces we had in each lot last time so it's 91 spots in the Brandy Court lot 73 spots in the upper Haven lot um some other things that we've done um the kiosks were delivered in November of 2023 so they were they were delivered last fall like in right before Thanksgiving and so a decision was made not to put them in right before Christmas at that time um but there was not a conversation about fourth quarter in 2024 um and so that wasn't a promise that anybody on our staff made this year and and certain open to that maybe that conversation should have been had um so I would not I would not dispute that um the the police department has been working on this for about eight years and the data and the work from the park committee from 2019 is is completely VI and the arguments about um how parking has changed and and how businesses changed since then and since Co is certainly I would validate that we continue to have parking complaints though all the time um and we continue to have um enforcement and so for so none of that's really changed um as far as the police department is concerned but I would I would defer to the deputy on the experience and the detail and the data Visa enforcement there um I'm open to other questions because this is not an exhaustive list but I wanted to give you basically a brief update can I actually continue so thank you for the update um so bunch of things one um the community asked us to take a proactive approach to how we're going to take care of Downtown parking that's what kind of let us here we had the park committee do their studies come up with their conclusions and and yes it was a study from five years ago whatever the timing is um I don't know that the businesses were kind of consulted but they certainly have been um I believe involved and heard of things for it's been well over a year since before we got the actual kios even though we didn't put with them in and discussions about when's that going to happen the signs going out to visit people so I know that you know the the town's been very involved in that it's not a brand new technology that other communities don't use we are not an outlier it's around us a lot um to be very clear the best support for all of our local businesses is for residents and non-residents to shop and read right that's what we're all looking for that's the main thing we're trying to get done I think we've had a rough roll out I think that I didn't realize that we have two hour spots on the street and 1 hour spots in the lot not sure that that makes any sense the two the one hour free you mean 1 hour free right it's two hours free on the street that's what the M online yeah yeah so I'm coming back and I'm not sure I understand that to be clear if you have a handicap Placer there's no fee correct no fee anywhere nope right so just have your your handicap Placer you can park in any legal spot you can't park in front of a fire hydrant but you can you can park in any legal spot y um I think Q4 start is is far from ideal regardless if it was discussed or not I don't think that that's a a great time to do it I also thought excuse me and I think Jane you and I talked a little bit about this I thought that there was going to be softer uh launch warnings and things or or or whatever whether that's right or wrong um in terms of of thinking probably that would have been the right way to do it to figure it out um and we certainly have the option to do that in when a ticket is about to be written to just make it a warning not a ticket um so so what does that mean um I think a couple of things should happen right away one ask legal what would it take to increase the limit on the $25 yeah can't ask legal what it would take to explore that is it a town meeting vote what is a state law a state law state law so if I get a ticket in Boston I think Bost I can't speak for Boston a lot of things don't work in Boston in the weird Nexus that yeah it seems a little a little strange but okay that's fine the other part is that um I think that from a timing point of view if we could consider kind of the the U Thanksgiving to end of year time period I'm going to call it I'm not saying it starts on Thanksgiving because it's Black Friday things like that um as a holiday pause I would suggest something like that armed with a some structure where we would review and rethink what it is that we want to do and how we want to do it in other words I think a just a let's just get rid of it folks this is the solution that we kind of agreed upon um it's not rolling out right it's not rolling out at the right time I think we can adjust but I think we owe it to to all of us to say how can we what should we what should we be doing what are the things that we can do better let's fix the problems we found okay and and and go forward so my thought on this would be to kind of hang till that you know maybe till the mid November period it's about 4 weeks then do this pause for the holidays armed with a commitment to kind of figure out how we want to address this that would be my suggestion to take for anyone else Karen sure um I just thought um I've made four trips on four different days to these kiosks and um if that little press any key button is I've been there there from the whole time well I'm like a typical user trying to be quick and missing it completely but I saw it today so I would say that each time um my use of the kiosk has been easier and also I would really love to put a stop to the misinformation that an app is needed an app is not needed I don't want to do apps I don't do apps an app is not needed and and and we are scaring technophobes Away by spreading misinformation that an app is needed if you can pay for groceries if you can pick up your subscription and wave a credit card or stick it in there or put coins in there you can use these kiosks who's asking who's spreading that out there not not one of us or that every so anybody that they need the select board has received emails and I heard from at least three members of the public tonight who say apps are bad and I'm asking myself have you had a chance to visit them yet there is misinformation that needs to go away so but I don't disagree that it's been a rough roll out and yeah I'm not making excuse I'm not making an excuse but we do not have a we have a twers IT department we have have plan can we can we we're discussing this right now I know I'm trying to discuss it too but I'm trying to run a business I'm trying to survive right we we all are correct and we have a lot to say that's why we're discussing it's very hard right now to hear you guys speak these things without us giving you our feedback as you as you speak them let us let us discuss it as a board hopefully we'll address everything and let's see where it goes I I I I I I I know what you're saying it's very tough to sit here and listen I don't I don't disagree I don't disagree but we have to run our meeting thank you Karen okay so um I am certainly glad we didn't launch this you know on Black Friday because that would be even worse and um um so I will say also that for the first time today I went to lower Haven and the clear the signage is very clear this is a municipal paid parking lot and it was a ghost town and yeah I sorry I'm St I'm done I'd be the first one to admit go oh ew that sounds expensive I think I'll go drive around look for on street parking so what I might ask as an individual resident not as a select board because I've been giving feedback and the kiosks are getting updated and they're better and once you notice this like press any key to start and press the instructions are getting better thank you um I would love to see and I did have a conversation with our economic development director about um a pro business um signage um that says you know first hour free like cuz that is different than he's very serious Municipal parking lot it's paid I'm like I I pulled in there today I'm like ew and I know it's a first hour free so it's just like a psychological thing so that might just be one suggestion because I'd like us to to make this better we Are For Better or For Worse we don't have a team full of people to vet these things so we are vetting this we're we're making changes I appreciate the staff's responsiveness um and I and I do not want to trash all of the hard work that has gone into this by staff and volunteers um I um my observations in the CVS parking lot are that the people that are picking up their subscriptions are really benefiting from this and a lot of those folks are going in and out and frankly some of them are just walking by the kiosk and I don't know if that's on purpose and I you know so we could talk about whether you know we want to give people a little a special holiday from this but you know I would encourage people to pay attention there are kiosk there and you could get ticketed because we have an officer looking around and keeping parking available one of the other things that I saw I think it was Friday that was disappointing was a Coca-Cola 18-wheeler parked in the parking lot taking up four spots like that shouldn't happen um so I don't know what we might do about that or where they're supposed to today I saw um another delivery vehicle smaller but parked not in a spot just parked in a spot a better spot so because um I've never been down to the CVS lot so much in the last 10 years and I feel like it's safer and it's hasslefree and and that is a big draw for people and that is why this was so important for the select board to take out and to create the park committee to help solve this problem so um one another idea might be um uh so in front of CVS was absolutely full except for the uh accessible parking space because people are just used to it I guess you know maybe some signage that businesses that are interested could go ahead and post their Windows reminding customers there's lots of easy Parky parking behind there and it is metered and I I I certainly agree that communication there can never be too much communication there are different ways to do it so I would encourage us spending more time on that um that um yeah I as as far as your idea about the holiday PA pause you know I'd be open to that with increased enforcement um so but you know I'd be I'd be open to I'd be open to suggestions because it's a learning curve like the road diet was in my mind and people are going to figure it out and I'm loving going in there it's super easy I don't even have to take my credit card out because nine times out of 10 I'm in there for an hour and all I do is I put my little license plate in there CU I don't like parking tickets and that's it that's all I have to say what um well I'm pretty sure everyone knows where I stand on this um but I feel like I've done a lot to back up my reason for wanting to pause immediately um I spent eight hours down in that parking lot I had a meeting with um deputy chief anander on Friday um and a lot of things happened Park's um recommendation was for a reason and I understand that we needed to move people through that parking lot the biggest problem with the kiosk and that I wish and maybe town meeting or select but I'm not exactly sure who picked the kios um I know it was not the police department um is those kiosks and the pay by phone system is not meant to work with 1 hour free it's not a program that works with 1 hour free parking so that should have been a red flag number one it wasn't going to work for reading I don't know why no one picked up on that but they didn't um I spent time with Bridget the day I was down there her backend app is Terri um for her to monitor those parking lots it's terrible um the roll out was not good the lack of signage isn't great I'd be curious what the cost would be for us to get new signs do we know what that cost will be for what kinds of signs the pay by phone you said they have them on order what what is that cost going to be to us Andrew development director I haven't seen the cost Andre can you come up you can sit next to me if you want Andrew I haven't seen the cost come in yet but I'd be venturing to guess two to a few hundred bucks okay couple hundred bucks um the kios themselves we all know are very quirky and I don't think it's the best um there's no directions on them if we want elderly people to use them yes it might say press any button but there's I've been to kios in Boston and other places and it gives you a step by step of how to do it there's nothing on there that says that um one resident that spoke tonight I think was a huge um red flag that she gave us is that blocking seniors from getting their prescriptions is huge like when I was down there for eight hours so many people just want to run in and out and grab their prescriptions at CVS and they don't see the kiosk because it's in a terrible location at that back CVS it's facing the wrong way it's hidden by a tree there's no sign there um it doesn't say anywhere on those signs that 1 hour is free and I think honestly the biggest thing out of this is what I said first the kiosks are not meant to have one hour free parking they should have never been chosen for our Lots because that is not how they work another solution should have been used so I recommend we pause them now and we need to Red come back to the table and talk about this because it's not working for our community yeah I just want to what Echo what Melissa say as far as what Alice said the case manager that was really eye openening to hear those words because my mother is one of those people um with medication having her hospitalized um and I knew that but she gave great detail on how it's a big thing so I I I I appreciate that perspective and and like I said the the two times I was there on that Friday and I've been there every week since it's been implemented talking to a few of the businesses just checking in and on at least two occasions I helped a senior that didn't know about it and was very frustrated I know it's a very small sample but they just said I'm going to go somewhere else again very small sample but I just happened to be there and I saw them just not knowing what to do I went over there I helped them I did it I got their plate for them it's it's another it's compounding what the issues that we've already heard from tonight you know and and who could have anticipated this you know when that study was done when when the park committee existed you know the the we were all focusing on moving the employees but how much Focus did we put on how pissed off the residents are going to be and seniors is are going to be I don't think that was a factor that was considered um I knew it was going to be but I didn't think it was going to be as much backlash as as it has been again it's not the whole town and not the whole town trops and downtown ready depends where you live right uh the west side of town probably goes to to wuber for certain things uh the north side of town might go to that North Reading Plaza that has CVS so it depends where you live but I've spoken of Crystal I've spoken of Jew I spoken to Pam um I spoken to Peter Sims I was spoken to a lot of people every week and they just don't know what to do they're looking for guidance they're looking to the town we're looking to the town to fix a lot of stuff they're here to look at us because we're the board uh even though you know so I just think for me I want to Temporary pause uh stting tomorrow yes because of the horrible mentation not because of any other reason really we should have did a better job plain and simple and a lot of it's the vendor's fault I'm not I'm not I'm not blaming anyone in particular but even with a successful roll out it would we still be would still be here I think so given the horrible roll out and how much work we have to do when we go to the vote I'm going to advocate for tomorrow let's address our these issues we still have to get AMX working correct the skimmers have to right so we that's another another thing that we have to get working this uh scann a different weave our credit card so to to's point on a weekend do those go dark or do they say the Kos don't accept payments on the weekends they did the first two weekend they did this past weekend was this is embarrassing this is embarrassing but I had you guys didn't do a good job let's pause it and let's get it done right me involve your businesses but this is embarrassing let me let me ask I'm asking chain a question the first two weeks they accepted payments the pay by phone app accepted payments on the weekend and so we turned that off so I we don't know why it was on because it was never program to be on so if I went to a kiosk on Saturday Sunday or holiday I'm saying does it does it I'm asking the question does it go dark or it says no fee required what does it say the screen I believe it says no fee no fee yeah I think um the data I gave you there was no payments taken on the weekend it is in the first two weeks the first two yes those were from the app yeah that okay right I no it was zero right you'll see like it says 100% for the payments on Saturday and Sunday were with the app right right so we don't have any data that supports that the kiosk ever accepted any payments on the weekends at the kosk it did accept it on Monday's holiday yesterday's holiday um which is not it's a Monday so that has to be to my point and the the blood pressure that's going up in the room we did a horrible job PL as we did a horrible job and I am not going to stand for another day uh wait till the week before Thanksgiving it's just that we need to bring the blood pressure down we need to focus on getting through this fourth quarter as challenging it's going to be for all of us and re-evaluate and and and and take it from there make sure everything is done have a grace period get some 4x5 postcards made and and and and do a better job I I looked at the minutes I asked for a grace period aggressive marketing campaign and to my knowledge those things weren't done and that's just me I mean I'm speaking for myself because I wasn't in favor of the stuff it's just another misstep that we and we all need to help each other build back up so people know that they're not working I I I agree so we have two we have two motions uh I think yeah Marcus yeah yeah so just just so you guys know you haven't seen Chris sitting here Chris cannot take part in the Brandy C Court lot because he has a commercial business that abuts it uh and then he will come back up for the CVS I would either have a suggestion or an amendment so I think if we if we agree to do a pause go ahead I just plug things in take a look if we agree to do some kind of a pause I think it's part of the motion should include an expectation of how we're going to explore it and when we expect to be able to talk about as opposed to just kind of stopping and and washing our hands I think that the the discussion is is focusing on implementation isn't working and it's bad timing but I think that also means we put together a proactive approach to dealing with this I think if we just kind of walk away that's not the right approach either no I I don't I don't disagree but I think we have a a pause period and then do a catchup at one of our meetings in December need to involve the businesses excuse me you need Jason let me we're there we're at the 5 yard line let us get there please um and then we need to reevaluate where we are on this laundry list of items because if they're not done I'm in agreement I even think we want to go further than that but what I want to do is make that formal that that's part of what the deal is that we're we're expecting to kind of come back and revid this issue and there's an expected time frame to do that and then I can be very supportive to this because I think that is where we are I just I'm concerned to just say stop is is putting things into the limbo that isn't right that's basically I think we should revisit this in January that's like my opinion I I'm fine with that I don't have other board members I'd like to suggest that maybe a couple members of this board might want to be on a subcommittee and come up with a specific list of items that they'd like to see completed and then in January to your point we see if they've been completed because I want to make sure a pause is not a we throw out all of the work that was done in the investment and the decision made by Tom meeting I'm not okay with that just because all the work was done does mean it was good work okay a do you mean a pause or is this you got to be honest are you going to bring them back and like Mark said what is what could we do in a really formal way to say what are the things that we need to have in place so that we can unpa them I I think we have to reassess it I am not going to support a subcommittee we have enough work town meeting voted for this Mr chair we don't have yeah they did to undo what they allocated the money they allocated the money I'm going to say what I said already town meeting did approve the kiosk those kiosk should have never been used in writing for one hour free parking they do not work like that that the vendor has told us the kios don't work like that they sell them it it's it's we need to get rid of them if you want my honest opinion I'm going to vote on a pause right now as a board we do not need a subcommittee as a board we can discuss in January but honestly Tom meeting did vote the money in to buy the kiosk but they didn't know the program wasn't going to work for bre correct I think yes I agree with that statement so what if it was along the lines of um we go through a motion that talks about the the period of pause because it has to have dates certain on it and then add to the back of it um further we reassess the situation and approach um asking the town to present to the select board in a January 2025 meeting right January 2025 meeting I have no that that sounds great happy to do that um are you going to pause it beyond that check-in date the check-in you want to have before you turn the parking you're going to you're going to pause it from tomorrow to January 15th do you want to have that I think we need to kind of meet regularly with you to make sure that we're hitting the marks that everybody wants to hit and I think we'll kind of hit number one and then there'll be more refinement there'll be more feedack we get periodic updates what would be so if we said January 15th and had corresponded kind of the feedback to the time frame is that what you're suggesting that they whatever the kind of the end date is that's when we should have a plan to talk about what's next um and I I'll defer to the manager on this um I was involved in some of the conversations with Council today um you'll have to if you want to make a change further traffic traffic regulations beyond that if you're gonna if if the pleasure of the board is to take out the kios if the pleasure of the board is to make a change set timing or any other regulation other than returning it back then you have to have a public hearing you have to have time to publicize that and go through that process not sorry not not trying to go there if I was no I know but I just I don't want to like turn it back on and then change it again right so the issue is when could the Town come back with some specific recommendations in consultation with the board in terms of how to a suggestion for how to address the issue and then the board can have a discussion about what it wants to do with that point first week in January second week in January early January is fine first week can I just ask another question sure I would hate to spend more money on this until we have more conversations yes I do not want spend another dollar on signs even if it's a couple hundred doar until we have more conversations on this age oh 100% so I don't know what maybe we as a board need to compile a list of things then chat with I don't know how that is going to work data shows where being I'm just trying to put a time frame on it so that we a plan to address it I just don't want to I just don't want to go ahead and buy signs I'm with you on% 100% with you all right I say let's let's I'm okay with adding this to the end because it doesn't say we're going to turn the back on right away we need a plan and a marketing campaign if we're going to do this so I will entertain the first motion um move to direct lot are we doing so Chris is coming up or not yes so the first one first one says upper Haven upper Haven okay so okay move to direct the town manager to refrain from collecting parking fees pursuant to article 5.19 of the traff traffic and parking regulations in the upper Haven Street Municipal parking lot from October 16th 2024 to January 15 2025 and to ask the town to reassess the situation work with the board uh with a presentation to the board with recommendations honor before January 15 2025 second any discussion Chris thank you Carlo um I got three quick things uh Rachel I didn't mean to slight you if that's what you thought I meant by my remark last time it's more of when I see people for the first time like Alice never saw her before no appreciated your comment I appreciate it it's just I you know we see a lot of people same old same old I'm same old same old at this point I just wanted everyone to know I you saw me I want everyone to know that they'll see me too absolutely but I appreciate everyone who's willing to to speak up and voice their opinion on things um absolutely everyone's uh uh comments are warranted uh the second thing is we can double ticket so we can't do $50 Etc but we can double tiet yes so that is an option to bring back that will some that exist yeah you can do that um so we can put that down and and third like I said last meeting and as I've been saying all along all my comments on this pertain to CBS only my thing that I did out there was CVS everything's been CVS this entire time and I'm leaving right after this is that the park it's nobody's fault in town this this is what I've learned like over the years is that the park committee that I was on had the information and data that it had at the time things have changed so back then with the information that we had it's nobody's fault that we're in this position but what we can do from here is where we have to go so I I voted back then to put things into place all the regulations over a dozen regulations and we're harping on one all regardless of all the good that the park committee did we're not throwing out all the the good grace that happened there uh so it's no one's fault no one gets kudos for doing whatever like we all put the time in it is what it is but uh I am making my vote tonight to also put the time in to voice my opinion on the way that it's going now and I voted uh the way I did back then I am voting the same way I'm voting right now it's to do the right thing based off the feedback that we have available at the time and here we are with the feedback that we have it's uh I was told not to say that the kiosk are horrible anymore because apparently we can't say that so the so so so I'll do you one better Mark the kiosk are not horrible they are horrendous and I am voting tonight to pause them as you mentioned at the CVS lot until next year where we can re-evaluate and see how things go but I agree with Melissa we should not be spending a nickel all right any other discussion seeing none other we already had a second all those in favor 5 Z thank you second motion see you Chris um so can I ask the chair uh how do you want this motion start same same everything same okay so second motion is move to direct the town manager move to direct the town manager to refrain from collecting parking fees pursuant to article 5.19 of the traffic and parking regulations in the Brandy Court Municipal parking lot from October 16th 2024 to January 15 20125 and to have the town reassess the situation at approach work with the board and then present to the select board honor before January 15 2025 with their recommendations second any discussion seeing none all those in favor zero thank you all right guys I'm sure you want to stay for our vasque update feel free we'll take no that's part of the deal we'll take a five minute recess just that we clear room thanks e e e e e e e e e WRA all right guys we're back from Recess all right so on the agenda we only a few more things the and uh yeah head on uh discuss fast apologies I I just want to read it's on no no it's shutting off okay I don't know why it's shutting off yeah it's shutting off Rob the host is not allowing participants to unmute themselves host has to do it is that KAIT yeah you text her kayin can you hear us no she can't we're muted oh mut yeah get a piece of paper no no you have to have two tin cans that's not going to reach to her hops oh she's not upstairs okay since she in New Hampshire [Music] yeah you there we go there you are all right we're good okay y good all right thank you so because we're cutting back out we're on next agenda item discuss vast policies and the reason I put this on the agenda and I just want to read a few things before we open it up so in our packet you'll see our a lot of stuff but I'm just going to read a little bit the select board is responsible for appointing volunteers to boards and committees in accordance with article four of the reading home reading home Rule Charter as well as those boards and committees created by local bylaw or select board policy the select board recognizes the following two issues related to the consideration of and appointment to the various Boards of committees the amount of time taken in the past for this process by select board and volunteers has been extra extraordinary and not necessarily productive and the depth of interviews given time constraints does not allow the full select board to do a thorough job of interviewing the select board therefore hereby implements the following process in order to address these two issues and that's why vasque was formed and I'm going read one final sentence um at the very end of our bask uh policy is the requirements of sections 1 15 uh 1.5 2.4 through 9 she'll be applicable to fill vacancies on the boards committies during the year so the reason I want to discuss this tonight is that because of the I'm going to call it the Bill Russell committee because it's a lot easier for me um so I reached out to camon via text on a scheduling matter if because of her uh voicing that she she wasn't going to do interviews until November December so when she got back for her trip I sent her a test that uh vas will have to be activated will you be able to do interviews um I did not get a response so then an email was shown to me about all her availability for November and December and for the record Karen did state it was for standing boards and committees what she committed to to do to do a mid-year update so this is what vasque has been designed for I I heard at a previous meeting that we should be doing the interviews on at one of our meetings so this is what vasque was set up for I don't know how many applications we have to date but this is a new committee that I feel should be interviewed by vas and the recomend recommendations brought to the board so I'm just going to ask Karen point blank with all those dates that you provided are you willing to do Bill Russell committee interviews I think what we need to do is um stick to the agenda item which is we want to talk about the vas process right just have a general discussion right okay so that question is off the topic well it's kind of pro was this your agenda item or was this my V subcommittee co-members cuz that email that you read I sent to my subc commmittee co-member it's my my agend so that's it's concerning I didn't he an email with Carlo if that's what you're insinuating no I wasn't insinuating anything well you insinuated this when you said about a text you also insinuated that we had so and your email to me I did send an email to you we are a subcommittee y we are responsible for executing the task of ask and I asked you to do the ad hoc and you told me no and I asked you to schedule a midyear update to do our standing committee that gave you my availability th those are the facts if that is corre you to do the ad hoc ones in my email to you and my um response was in the last actually it was an incomplete response but I have a little more thought so I did give you a uh an overview that in my experience on the vasque over the last four years is that it is used for um primarily for the spring appointments standing committees and outside of that we have had ad hoc committees created by the select board that we have handled ourself among those the appointments were handled by the select board directly for the Simons way committee two Town manager search committees one in 2021 and one in 2023 the commemoration committee I don't I'm getting used to that name as well the park committee the recal committee was interviewed by annual appointment in June 5 I believe the initial appointments were made by the select board according to this list that we got in our packet it says ad hoc Park members were interviewed and appointed during annual reappointments in June of 2021 so unless that's incorrect um in addition to that um the charter Review Committee I believe we made that those appointments and I do believe that that's kind of a standing committee in the charter so maybe the vasque should have done that but I believe we did that and the recal committee for those members that in community members that we needed to appoint we did it so those five or six committees that we have done so they're of the ad hoc nature not of the standing committees so on this list again it says recap was done by bask you know I was on the board I don't remember that I'm just reading from this if you're telling me this is inaccurate that's fine what are you looking at it was in our pack it's the vast meeting so when so I pulled the packet on Monday to prepare for this meeting when did this go in the packet cuz I don't know that I got an update that we had a new packet that we needed to 15 this was in the original packet the original packet okay all right I missed it could you help me with the page on that uh 68 the very end of the packet I think it's okay I don't know who prepared this as I'm looking for it who prepared this I don't know so can I ask if I could kind of coming back to the the topic um if I'm understanding correctly the goal is to say hey maybe we want to Define more clearly what we want Mas to do Andor maybe it's already there and we haven't been doing it that way that was my impression but what is it that we wanted to do is that kind topic of discussion that's why I read yeah that's why I read what I read okay so there two big things I think it sounds like so there there's an annual that it talks about here correct there is when there are vacancies and the vasque is again talked about in terms of dealing with vacancies um and then the third piece which I didn't see and maybe I just missed it was what if there's a new committee what if there's a new ad hoc committee how do we how do we deal with that what's what's vas's relationship to it and so I think maybe the discussion is what do we want to have happen that's what I thought the discussion was going to be but I asked Karen for this and she said no so I really love to stick to the agenda item personally so so let's stay with it right so what is it that we want it to do how do we want it to work what would be the I I I think this is a matter of interpretation we're not lawyers we didn't you know this is you know layman's terms for the most part but the reason I didn't read the whole thing because it's in our packet and the reasons I read the part that I read to me it's clear that vasque again this is to me that vasque does the majority of the interviews maybe not all the interviews but the majority of the interviews and yes it does not specifically say a new in quotes anywhere but it says all boards and committees all yeah doesn't segregate ad hoc doesn't segregate whatever new it says all I would imagine that so long as we're complying at Bas with what is here we have policy room to decide what it is that we want to do correct so why don't we just figure out what we what we'd like to happen which I think is the is the core discussion we at an ad hoc committee how do we want to deal with it vask no vas and the other stuff I guess is to a large extent here right the annual meeting plus when there are vacancies so I think it's kind of you know how do we want to deal with the ad hoc committee so the discussion is do we want bass to dig in when it's a an ad hoc committee which by definition is kind of a new big event um or not and maybe we just go through pros and cons I would find myself on the side of saying that it's better to kind of have that more in-depth interview in the smaller group first and then bring that back um and if other board members want to attend bask is a public meeting I believe right yeah so other members can certainly attend that as well as so long as we post so so Basque could do it other members that want to particip ipate or watch the vas can can watch it as long as we post so maybe maybe that's part of what we do is say we post for VAs meetings but on a new committee I would be I think having vas be there is the right thing I you know what did I'm not going to say anything else well said Mark so point of information I'm looking at this and I apologize I didn't see this but 49 you and I didn't 49 2024 you and I didn't conduct any interview so that's incorrect so you know I just want to work with accurate information P what the problem we had is that we started scheduling meetings and what what this again it's the bottom of the page it says 49 2024 supposed to be 2023 just looking at this list yeah that might be a it must be 23 and it's not Carlo and carry we did not interview any interviews we were sched meetings booking time in my calendar and then you decided that you didn't have the time to carry the weight of the vask and we didn't interview anyone the meetings were all cancelled and we started the process again we came to the select board we switched up the members we started the process all over again so I just want this to be correct and I haven't had a chance to look at all we we switched the members twice uh no let's but I'm just talking about this one piece of paper Carlo and Karen never interviewed anyone in 2024 I I don't know how I will agree with that stat that's all yeah okay so I I think everything else is accurate that might be a typo but I I think we're getting off topic I I so Mark spoke can I can I one other piece so I think back to a little bit of that discussion which is the purpose of vas also is not to create this unbelievable burden where this group is going to get together you know anytime somebody hops off a committee that oh that's an automatic ask meeting and it kind of says that but most certainly is not how we've been dealing with it to dat and and I'm going to go further and say I think we probably haven't been as we get lots of volunteers coming in when there are openings I think we aren't dealing with them timely we're dealing with them when it's on our schedule and maybe that's something that we ought to change it should be more timely but I don't think it needs to be every week or every two weeks or even every month but something more than once a year as we did recently I have no problem elevating someone at our meeting from associate the full member that's already on the committee that's 5 minutes they've been interviewed they're on the committee that's a an easy easy one for for new people they need to my opinion they need to be interviewed first by vasque and then brought to us maybe not in every case we appoint ourselves two committees Charter swc recal uh whatever right those are the recent ones so those are are pointing ourselves just like we're going to do with the design but getting back to this uh yeah we could clean it up more um and we haven't had a new committee we've had new committees but maybe not new ad hocs you our standing Boards of committees have been pretty solid we haven't added anything or taken away anything and I know we could take away committees did you know that no we could take away I did not we we could take away certain certain committees we could take away as long as they're on the chter it is it is the charter says we can disband committees certain ones I can think of one certain on I sorry help me so I think that there are certain committees listed in the charter those we cannot yes yes but there's other ones but other on that we've created we can then yes that's my point that that was was that okay sorry that's my point if I may I appreciate that um you know when we have a a border Committee in crisis you've been willing to put it on the the agenda so that we could dispense with it quickly the challenge that I just want to remind you of because you'll remember this is that when we still have to and correct me if I'm wrong um I'm Town manager we have still have to post these for two weeks so we there's always the possibility we have more than one candidate even if we're just promoting or demoting so it just makes it a little more complicated yeah and vacancies and promotions and demotions if wants to be a full we have to advertise it I believe I believe we did because it's still at vacancy on the Bo and I think we did that last think that's right so that's what I mean so it gets more complicated it's more work for everybody and so I just want to be cautious Chris thank you car uh the charter committee wasn't us that was um you appointed me but the residents uh was were town meeting members at Allan folds appointed himself so it wasn't Nas could did that correct but um my like I mentioned multiple times that uh the way that uh Jackie and I ran it for two years is that we were the first year we didn't interview uh any applicants new applicants whatever the scenario is we got Flack for it we realized we did it the wrong way so then we said we were re we're interviewing everybody so that's what her and I did for the the second year on that that's a once again policy thing people can do whatever they want to do um and it's mishmash what certain uh vast members have done over the years you know it's we can do whatever we want I've said it a thousand times this is always in flux like this but I think the core of this entire thing is we have to make it as easy for residents is possible it has to be whatever time is convenient for them not for me when we go and make these appointments because they're coming to us to volunteer we have all these openings uh we don't want to be uh uh I'm not beating a dead horse by saying it's two months from now three months from now whatever we're going to do it I don't want it to be they change their mind or put up any kind of barriers preventing this from happening so the way that Jackie and I done it back in the day anybody who applied anybody Caitlyn Jackie anybody sent me anything or the other Jackie about scheduling things I always gave them times dates I could meet whenever I'll meet whenever with anybody forever it's the luxury I have of owning my own business talking about the vask though correct that's what I meant when Jackie and I were on the bask I would meet whenever anytime that they sent me something I'd give them all these dates and i' yes yes yes yes yes and we do it all but once again again that's the way that her and I did it you guys can do whatever you want to do I would just say that we should be making it as easy as possible for residents and if that means that the Basque has to do uh interviews and it's not going to be a ton the ton comes in June May June uh kind of scenario when that's a ton of people these onesie twosies as you can see that I did throughout the the uh the years that are listed here it's not a big ask especially in the time of Zoom where it's just 5 minutes put a face to a name see what your application says a couple questions here and there and like you know just get a feeling out and ask if they know anybody else that wants to volunteer etc those kind of things so my thing is I mentioned it two three years ago was the Bas going to do the interviews for the town manager screening committee and uh that wasn't going to be the case back then I really didn't know the way that things worked but my question on that that I had asked back then is still pertinent to now that I think that V should be doing a majority of all of these uh appointments coming before us and then you know as Carlo mentioned the re-ups or whatever that can go through they've been interviewed then they they don't have to be uh again but uh Jackie and I like I said interviewed hundreds of people certain people declined to be reinterviewed and we still reup them anyway because they've been here for like 75 years and I'm not saying no to a 75 year like resident who doesn't want to uh up on a zoom meeting because they put their time in like I I'm not going to be telling them no so that's kind of like just vas has to just go ahead and do this Karen all right now that I'm looking at this document I'm seeing additional problems because Chris I agree with you the bulk of the vas work is a springtime reappointment and we agreed as a board at the time that yeah we should interview everyone so I understand that wasn't done in 2022 what I see from the data is that you the vasque Met for two sessions the two sessions in 22 with you and Jackie were conducted in August of 22 and in November of 22 those were like two sessions in a year that's fine that's a reasonable and that's so in 2023 you conducted looks like three dates of meetings but essentially it was like one session so what the current Basque has done so far is I'm pretty sure we met for more than three I think it was at least four probably we met for at least four dates already that would be one session correct y but four dates for one session and I have Rec L and I've been saying since June that I would be happy to do a midyear update um and that is what I was in the process of scheduling with Melissa um I appreciate talking about this it's fine if it's a policy that we make as a board that's great you know because I'll tell you what we had a little bit of a challenge in the spring where you know and and and it's my fault too we need a hard date we need a hard date for applications to come in we need to be respectful a select board MERS times they need to have time to look at the applications and the resumés and to your point always trying to be very respectful of volunteers times we mixed it up I think we had evenings Day times zooms are working great now and they weren't a thing when the first time I did this so it's really nice that people can can jump on for 10 minutes so um but I would also say if we're talking about putting policies in I think I think twice a year is more than enough um but what we could also do I've been thinking about this is I I would definitely like you know um just just to put some parameters on it or I can't have candidates coming in like the day of like it just doesn't work and it's not fair to anyone um but in addition to that we probably I haven't mentioned this to Melissa the vast could send out a nice um letter to boards and committees saying you know hi the vasque if you weren't aware because guess what faces change people change the vas meets once or twice a year and so plan accordingly in a in a much nicer just give them some more information about the role of the vast subcommittee what we like we like to interview everybody we love it if the chair wants to come and weigh in it's a public meeting we um anything else what else just you know that might be actually so what I was speaking to one of our Comm commes who has a planned retirement and I spoke to one of the members and you know I said you know just we don't we don't meet every month it's not how this works so but not all the chairs know that so if they know they have once or twice a year and and their members come to them and say I'd like to do this or I'm thinking about this then they kind of can give them advice about yeah we'll take care of that and and my advice to volunteers that you know decide to submit a cation after we've finished our spring interviews is like start going to the meetings hang in there you know well you know members have been doing that for years and then they get appointed when the time is right so sorry it's the chair what um I actually agree with Karen I would love to see our policy um more specific on our timings of the year I think it would take a lot of questions out of play the only thing I would be a little cautious of is ad hoc committees so to say we only meet twice a year and then have committees that unexpectedly are formed I think that would be the only caveat to that but I do think that I would love to see the policy laid out more specifically with times and deadlines for applications before we meet Etc because it did get a little crazy in June when we were getting applications like an hour before yeah so uh late spring early summer for the July 1 appointments and then a mid for vacancies but as this document you know kind of the these are vast meetings outside of the annual reappointments and and I know you know Mark Mark's and well Karen start with Karen sorry Karen me and Mark myself on Mark sorry I can't speak a lot of our stuff was on Zoom right a lot if not most Y into 2021 so 20 is not even on here 20's but that was all Zoom we shut down when I when we got elected in in 20 so and then we we kept that policy I kind of liked it when we opened up and could have in person that iners option because then you're really meeting the person you know and seeing them physically but yes zum has been a great addition to to uh to Basque and I think having the annual appointment time and uh you know November December December January whatever it is mid year would be December January more than November December uh for doing the math but I think that's but I think it's Al also at the vast discretion of those two members as as was laid out here in this one-page document if they want to take on if they're asked by a chair hey like C said we can't meet Quorum okay that's a serious issue we had an issue with Zoning for a long time we had bring two members out of retirement and I think Sai is still on it but I think he's no no I know but I'm saying his desire that's an extreme that's an extreme example which zba couldn't meet yeah literally couldn't meet and so those we're always going to address those issues we're never going to ignore those either as vasque or as a board we're never going to ignore those I don't think that needs to be inviting but we can put it right but I I think we need to be this is it is a little vague you know my interpretation is not all obviously our own appointments are our own appointments as a um we form a committee with other boards of committees but we we're involving resident interviews you know Recreation gets an appointment school committee gets an appointment those people AR getting interviewed but when we have residents that are applying I I think vast should do that that and and how we lay that out in here that that's what I'd like to see um so if it's an adock committee we had one resident for a CPA one forgot the CPA committee sorry but we had one resident that we could pick I think we need to be three people in person not a heavy lift if it was 10 yep I'm hoping that would have about to askask I really do 10 residents should have went to askas but it wasn't well maybe that's a policy that you want put in here yeah I mean yeah CU what about the to I'm sorry what about the town manager um what what if what if Matt moves to California to enjoy the weather and we need to do yet another town manager committee you want the vas doing that too or you know how are we going to that Comm is a lot different search an ad it's a lot different as far as there have to be certain people on there predetermined that we always well we did that with recap I mean we most our committees kind of look like that but we usually have some appointment responsibility right so I'm open I saw a mark writing but I'm hop I'm open to had almost I had a couple of questions so um 1.5.3 talks about the responsibility of the town in actually posting an opening and to the to the point of elevating somebody I think actually that's not what's supposed to happen without hting the opening encouraging other applicants if you don't get other applicants no worries if you do get other applicants then that actually should be a review process I think that's what 1.5.3 says process filling vaces on boards and committees during the year right so we probably should get ourselves in compliance with that so part of that is the town posting things yeah and do we want if if we come and say twice a year is the norm for standing committees then we probably would want to have a structure that says okay when you when there is a vacancy it might not be 5 days we go kind of to the is it going to looking to the next scheduled vasque meeting unless the board has a different pleasure and making sure that with lots of notice that goes out there and if you got two months there's no reason to only have two weeks you could open it for longer than that to get the stuff to come in and so so at at Hawks would kind of create a new priority but vacancies that exist the the question starts to become can you do it by meeting more than once is required I started writing down monthly too much bimonthly I don't know portly actually was kind of where I was circling into but at least take a look and say hey are there vacancies we do know that there are people that send their name in to the clerk and they wait right and they wait and they wait yeah right right even when they're a vacancies that Rec yeah even when there are vacancies so I think finding kind of fre a regular frequency and even sharing that with everybody so there's an expectation that's clear would be great and then that's when it happens unless the board in its pleasure says no no no we want to move this faster Andor we create a new committee and that new committee should jump to kind of create a meeting well and and I'm glad you mentioned that 1.5.3 one item number one if we can all go to that yeah within five days of learning about a vacancy and i' like I'd like to see some language maybe maybe not but I like I think it makes more sense that some kind of language that requested by the chair right like I think there was some discussion last time on Recreation is a big committee right um certain committies are bigger than others right and so it's not an urgent matter to fill a vacancy fill an actual vacancy oper down right so I I think it' be beneficial to us not just that we learn about a vacancy within 5 days of learning about a vacancy brought To Us by the chair of a border committee or some language like that that way it gets elevated to a higher level outside of the regular meeting right right I think that's some easy language to add Kaitlyn are you getting that yep 1.5.3 item number one after five 5 days learning about a vacancy from yeah hold on you want me to like edit this document right now I got to go find the actual well I'll take notes I don't know how much we're going to edit you know and you know you mean the chair notifies the town manager's office not us not skipping this process correct I'm saying that I'm use Recreation as an example yes if Recreation doesn't come to us or to Lara to say we want want somebody we don't know about town manag office yeah yeah whatever we don't know that could be also Comm better communicated to the Committees because we're not looking that neither them I think once we have a process then we make sure everybody knows what the process is yeah and the role of the chair of the committee could be in to notify saying hey help yeah help exactly can one other thing and Karen you brought this one up and I think it's an interesting one also was what what role if any should the chair of the committee play in um either the interview process or recommendation or anything what what role should they play and again I'm just kind of lobbing it up here for a sec so those are the folks closest to what's going on they certainly know it's time know yo I have a vacancy that's great and and we need to fill it should they have any other role in the discussion of the candidates so at minimum anybody can come testify at a vas meeting at minimum yeah should anything more than that and and even if it's just that probably we should make clear that that's kind of an opportunity yeah good thanks Carlo uh real quick just so everyone knows 1. 5.3.1 is posted on the website it's out in the hallway I love the hallway it's a great hallway out here out in the hallway on the board the vacancies are listed on the the board out in the hallway as well so Caitlyn Jackie have been doing a phenomenal job at least when I was serving on the bass of dealing with all this kind of stuff and just keeping it up to date all the time so I'm not sure if we're attempting to change something that they've been already doing effectively um and I like Mark's idea of like quarterly cuz I I mean to me like I said I'm isolated incident I'll meet whenever whenever I understand Mark you work you teach you do XYZ you don't have the same luxury as I do so I shouldn't EXP upon my schedule unto yours so I think putting something in there quarterly like before you say you want to do bass next time Mark you got to know it's quarterly and it's coming up and if you can't do it can bearly can be right if if you can't do it then has needed quarterly has needed in other words it's scheduled every to talk to roll on so I would just say that um there is there are always vacancies there are some committees and I don't know if Rex Rex is a big one but I feel like there are some committees that are generously sized and always have vacancies so I think mostes have vacancies current most committees have vacancies right now some sort or another all the time but it doesn't mean we have volunteer for all that's what I'm trying to say but I think we we don't necessarily know that we do or don't I think that's my impression go the hallway you the we have volunteers who are saying I've been on the list for six months I haven't heard Bo and that's not good enough for update on who we had for volunteers not that logo from Jackie or Caitlyn from Caitlyn I believe she had sent me one not long ago an update of people that had put applications in her committee so they keep track we also know for example when we can't appoint someone to a committee and they said you know I'm interested in committee a or committee C and if we can't put them on a we say to them oh you should reapply to committee C maybe we could be more proactive and and U interview them right then and there for committee C which we kind of do but it's not in here we right we I think do we interview them or we kind of push them and say you should apply I so my experience is we kind of said why don't you take a look at this other committee we did that with a couple people did everybody check every box or did we do would just the applicants that check double boxes or triple boxes like I'm definitely those people yeah but I feel like we also talked to a couple people that we knew there a lot of people for certain committees and we like have you thought about looking at this one and they'd say yeah oh yeah that I could be interested in that and then put them on that list I think that's all yeah and can we kind of help them through an interview and bring that back to it could be you know the vas get going you know vas is will try to find acceptable volunt I don't know if we need to cify that but whatever yeah in prac ice I think we're kind of doing that we never want to say no to people I like corly I would support that so can can I just can just think through this how does that work with the anual reappointment that's one of the quarters is it so one plus three trying to work on the towns so that means you're meeting four times it's January February March and April May June that the second qu so we got we interview everyone um the other thing that's come up is if we appoint somebody in when we have just appointed someone do we interview them again they're the only candidate like it can get a little more complicated than this re interviews within the year we didn't do at least Jackie and I didn't do like meaning we already interviewed dude uh oh Avon guy on cpdc who came out to the Kos thing um forget what his name is but uh he was moving here so we interviewed him he wasn't even a resident yet so then we didn't have to reinw him when he actually became a resident it's confusing but that's like a special case that that was the any case but what I'm saying is we didn't reinv him because we already did so if within the year if you have an interview you've already done I don't think that you need to go ahead and re so let's say we had a qu let's just use a Thom an example let's say we had a quarterly update in January we meet we appoint a new person that person is serving for the last three months of someone else's CH you still have to interview him like two months later it's a lot it's going to be more with the work than you think that's not going to happen that often though that's not going to happen that often okay something like that is not going to happen that often in practice a big issue right and so I think what we're we're really what we're talking about is now that we have a few things that we want to talk about how do we deal with them we could say hang on you have to wait for the annual which probably doesn't make sense or the board does it by itself and that's what we're discussing should the board do it by itself or should bass dig in so I I'm in favor of that with there an ad hoc that's a special and and bass takes that on we set up let's say a quarterly schedule where the annual is one of the quarters yeah right so it's it's the annual and then there are three other potentials and we call them potential because if there are no openings no applicants you don't need to have a meeting and um just to piggyback on you we as of September 25th we only had two interviews minus the ad hoc that Caitlyn was aware of so those quarterly could be very quick most times they'll certainly be much quicker than the annual but it probably is a handful or less of people of openings it's called the people have applied for but that means that we are able to to work with residents much faster as a result on a formal basis and if there's an informal reason obviously at the pleasure of the board we can have a discussion right I know yeah I I I think you know when we we've had these conversations in in my tenure about how we can polish these up a little bit right a different things not just this and how we can improve and I see this as an improvement um and I think you know I don't want to hold anybody up like Chris mentioned um I enjoyed being on vasque you know I I asked to to get off of it because of CPA that's kind of the only reason and be in the chair that's the only reason I I enjoy doing Basque and I will I will volunteer for it next year um so I think if we could you want just stick with these two little amendments for now want so so this tonight is only discussion actually anyway disc right kind of the what are the topics that we want to focus on and we can come back and set it on is there any more well the the committee chair thing is the other question I think to some extent is there a role for a committee chair and no need direct reaction no other than attending and letting them speak mean being part of the interview I would say then we open the C then it get it gets too political and and I agreed want to go there maybe what we do is just make it clear that the chair can participate in the essentially as a u a recommendation to the Bas meeting I have no problem with that no just so people know I think right now again people don't know what the process is what's going to go on other than kind of saying I have a vacancy I think that's all they know and they don't even probably know exactly what to do about that like I assume the letter of resignation has to come to the town clerk probably should formalize that just so everybody knows how it works I bet most people do it but why not make it clear no there's a lot of chasing um before we close this topic course I know you have a comment can we just talk about 1.5.1 um about how we expect members of this board to serve but go ahead and I'm sorry I didn't need to no I I Mark someone answered my question so I'm good what any particular bullet so so the whole number one vast members shall be appointed for staggered two-year terms so arranged that one term shall expire each year we didn't we haven't done that and again anybody can make a mistake we're busy but I just want to make sure and we've had a discussion two Springs ago where we were at odds as to what exactly that was members are appointed for two years end of discussion like Chris and Jackie and I would versus I was like no it says staggered one year so I'd like to be on the Bas now and I didn't win that battle but so I was since it's on the agenda let's talk about what we really what we think it says here and if we don't like it then let's change it what are we expecting to happen next spring yeah I I that's a good one because we had we had that discussion before I think the vast because the board changes every year sometimes that should be one [Music] year and one year at a time I think make it simple I mean you can do back to back the reason to not allow it to go beyond that is then if you and I are on the vas five years in a row it's going to become an issue like the the look of it is going to be a problem so I understand having a guard rail to prevent that from happening that we want to be rotating do I think that uh uh 2 years is too much maybe not depends like you kind of get used to it and I kind of liked it so look at number two to so that's what I'm saying this is where are we being clear enough because if we have a member no more than two years no more than two years that's clear to me but if you have a member who would like to serve the board shall strongly cons I don't know I'm putting it strugly the S board shall consider appointing a new member who wishes to serve over an incumbent replying for a second term that to me says we always have people root ating through and we don't have people saying no I want to we both want to do it again for another year I think the fact that if two members if Karen Melissa said they want to do it again next year why would I just tell them now number two says I I understand that but we have that option that I can be like now I want to do it and you're like it's policy we can do whatever we want but our policy says the opposite it it's a gray area I think where we can I don't think that at least since I've been here that if Carlo and me were doing vast one year and we said we wanted to do it again I don't think anyone has ever interjected and said that I would like to actually two Springs ago we did after your first year I was I only stayed on for one year and the reason I only stayed on for 2020 2021 was because I read the policy it said staggered and or I just thought it was one year at a time when we rotated so looking back at this I did raise my hand and say year three I'd like to like to serve on the bask again but so that's what I'm saying if you know what is our policy going to be we're going to rotate members through I mean the same two members for two years in a row is kind of a long time if you have so how I'm reading this is they're saying that your term can be 2 years but each we're screwed up right now cuz we both started at the same time ideally it's one person like and then if I'm reading this correctly it says no more than two consecutive terms which would be four years correct oh no no but that's that has come up before we've Mis we've interpreted it we've had discussions about what it means so consecutive terms to me would be four years because two years is your term according to one yeah I think we need to fix this the problem in this entire scenario is it's not up to any of us it's up to the chair who appoints the Val this the V the mistaken the chair of the select board makes all the appointments and that's how it's been are you saying I'm wrong Mark 1.5.1 says the select board shall appoint members to I understand that but it's been the chair every single year that we think when we go through the like the liaison assignments and things like that correct we vote for who we want on vasque we as a board out of the five of us we vot on two people all right yeah you are correct I'm now all right yes okay walk that back all right thank you exactly that has definitely come up before difference like where members have read this differently do we think a term is one year or two years do we want to stagger members as much as possible as it says in number two I think we should stagger them and you serve for a maximum of two consecutive years yeah that's and then you roll on seems reasonable second it's the two-year term that makes it tricky say that can't be twoyear term so it should be staggered onee term so it's we want to make appointment the appointments are staggered basically in other words in in a given year we should be appointing one person and then so wait a minute so you appoint that person then in the next year that person can reapply can reapply can can reapply right and then if they if the board agrees that's their second term second year yeah and then after that they will be coming off so how do we word this better it's their second year and their second so that's the intent we can figure that out well that's probably here right now I don't want to I don't want to do it another meeting I want to like vote on terms so there should be staggered oneyear terms I think that makes more sense yeah staggered onee terms does make any sense so arranged that one term shall expire each year does make any sense if it's a one- year term no it does CU it's staggered one year I think this just needs to be worded or how about we put in parenthesis so that means that you're you're appointed in year one so Melissa and I both got appointed this year both expire at the end of the year that's the problem right so we fixed that I think maybe by either one one person offers to yeah come off which is what I did in 2021 thinking that's how we were supposed to do it I think it's staggered onee terms so arrange that one term expires each okay that might make it a little more clear at least I don't know that not make sense you didn't ask for my opinion but yeah we did um the staggered two-year term that language I would interpret as being you want you want one person on you and and and in the next year so you would app point one year for two for two years one person for two years and and one person for one year and then the following year you you put another person on for two years so that they they they they switch every two years so that you have continuity right there's always one person on who's done it the year before a veteran on that you have a veteran and then you move people on which is not the direction this conversation has gone this conversation like a one year so can we take that for a sec following yours then we change the second sentence to say no M shall s serve more than one consecutive term terms being two years but one term at a time so once you do your two-year term after two years you are you have to you have to go up right and we set it up with the two in the first place where you know ideally we get to the point where one person has served for a year already and they stay and the second person comes new it's an opportunity for a newer a newer member yeah someone just got elected correct correct experience with an experience or not or not some years people are like no I'm too busy and they just step back so but I I know we've had misunderstandings about exactly how we do this so I was hoping are folks comfortable with no more than two years after two years you move on period yeah so I think change sentence to every year at least one needs to turn over at least every year one person needs to turn over that seems reason so we should have made a twoyear and a onee last time around yeah yeah if that's how we're interpreting it so that's what we should do going forward yes y okay it's fine so so number three on a two-person subcommittee having a chair and a secretary seems not very helpful never had a chair I know I don't think anyone's doing it because it we have had the luxury of having Jackie or Caitlyn being taking notes for us and it's only a twers subcommittee I've never heard of a bass chair before so it looks like it was for the purpose of scheduling say the bass chair in the town manager's office shall schedule dates I don't see the chair mentioned elsewhere I ask I missing it it's in the 1.5 Point appoint a chair and secretary to Ser yeah it is in there but we I I never right that's what I'm saying two just like it's not that hard to figure out the schedule they both have agree on the schedule was so we can eliminate that just get rid of it get rid of it yeah woo get rid of easy boom three gone awesome all right so we're comfortable with the language of one and two we nail that down so the only change would be in in point two no M the SE Shall Serve in the B for more than one consecutive turn Y which would be two years not four years right okay so it still should be longer than a term still should be staggered to your terms just than your CH the board that never makes sense right right yeah good are we good yes all right so we'll we'll vote on this stuff next meeting we'll get it formalized yeah have the language in did we decide so so the town manager appointment committee select preview committee whatever we called it are we ad hoc committees are we going to globally say every ad hoc goes through vasque or do we want to just have an agenda item where we decide we're sending this to vas or we're keeping it in the board I mean that do you mean a numbers thing like more than five applicants like that well we could just debate the merits they don't have it's like two a year let's say it's two a year do we want to take 10 minutes on an agenda to debate do we expect a large pool of applicants how does the board feel do you feel like we're too busy to do that or Bass could be helpful like at least we just take a quick vote we're going to send this one one to committee like it would be a vote I I I I I think to me it's based on number of applications because for if we do a 10-minute interview that takes 12 minutes or 8 minutes we're lotting 10 minutes right so to me like 1 to three is is reasonable at one of our meetings not on a big Agenda night and then beyond three like four 5 6 7 89 it's like okay I think vastor step in that's just my opinion can I just point out something you said you said not on a big Agenda night we've had big agendas I've been on the board I don't know if that's every so I'm just thinking that maybe it should be more on does a town meeting um a I'm sorry a town manager search committee more priority that stays with the select board versus other committees or boards I don't know again there's there's there's only a handful of committees in my recollection that have a resident that's not on another border committee I'm just thinking if you say like the numbers three that those interviews could be pushed three meetings out depending on what's on our agendas right it's a half hour I mean who the chair also if we said we're going to change it to quarterly meetings it will be they will be appointed handled at the next regularly scheduled quarterly meeting yeah suggest what if we said that the default is AD Hawks will go to vasque unless the board expresses its pleasure to to do the yeah I think that's the best way yeah I think it's better I point out that our basic meeting was supposed to be over at 88 and it's like 10:30 so like we had a lot of public comment did you say he allowed like 30 seconds for public comment I mean come on I was out there you guys I like Mark's suggestion it's always our decision yeah but I think Basque was formed for a reason those first couple of sentences I read because I'm not going to call it a burden that's not the right word but the added time to we only meet every two weeks normally so it it adds a lot so I I like that recommendation if we can add that should we also put in that our policy is to annually reenter interview everyone unless otherwise action taken by the select board but which is basically I'm saying put in writing what we've all kind of decided the last for future boards that can still do whatever they want we should still put it in there that that's how we felt because of our prior experience showing that this is the way it's supposed to be yeah it's just avoids misunderstandings so can we put a bullet in there that says it will be the policy of the select board that all uh candidates incumbents including incumbents or incumbents will always be reined for the annual appointment annual anoint annual appointment if you put annual then you're good because these onesie toies yeah right I think it's a good addition too and um yeah I'm not I'm not you gave an example and and I'm not saying when someone has a legit reason and they're like the only applicant I'm not saying and I think we had a couple examples if they don't they can't make the interview I'm not saying we wouldn't recommend them anyway but I don't I don't want it to make I want to leave us wiggle room for the realities of doing this but some people might work nights on Tuesdays or something and they can never make our meeting so there's got to be accommodations made I mean they could always send us an email we here's where you know to the select board I'm sorry I couldn't make any of the vast times I've been sick I would really like to be reappointed BL here's my credentials all right and I think the people that are serious do that anyway I think we make some progress which is good this policy is so much fun and then um so we got future agendas we have a meeting schedu for the 29th uh I I want to add to the 19th um pick our design because the applications Clos what November 1st for Bill Russell Ace Ace yeah yeah for Ace nov so 19th we'll pick our design November 19 and do we I know it's not on the agenda but it's a future agenda on the 19th are we going to be as a board picking our residents that vasque interviewed because we we proposed dates in early November that we could meet okay so only the 19th work so we making a decision tonight without knowing how many applications are coming in that we are definitely sending it to Bas do we have an update I I didn't ask for an update today I I asked for one to get them to get back to me tomorrow all right so we can we get an email I'm pretty sure we only have one applicate do you want to put a how a placeholder in there potential potential yeah sure that's fine because yeah we only get a couple right now we only have three in total then but you know everyone's so it's been open for a week we only have one applicant it's been I think yeah it's been longer than yeah she they come through her I will double check tomorrow but um okay and so we want to publicize they had it on Facebook yeah this committee is it's on the web page all right any other future agenda items yes suggestion y um for November 19th you got on there um Simon's way what if we had a presentation from the uh permanent building committee the recal permanent building committee that day that hopefully would include the feedback from the um soil study so an update which date do you want November 19th that so is the the testing is next week I understand 23r yeah yeah something like that so I think we we kind of need that as the precursor to that discussion so why don't we put it on there so update from PBC from the uh permanent building committee for the reading Center for active living which is adun yeah yeah it's a permanent building committe Perman building committee members plus two okay so we need to let them know that that's the expectation yeah yeah right right right okay uh that's good we have and can part of that I I would hope if you folks are in agreement is that um we would have at least a preliminary report back from the consultant yeah in advance in advance okay Chris thanks Carlo um So based off our vote tonight on the CBS kios scenario how many days do we have to advertise for a traffic thing is it 7 or 14 hearing a week days has to appear in the newspaper so because what we voted on reverted things back to the 4H hour limit no that's not true no I have heard from deputy chief idola the 4our parking went away when we implemented the paid parking so how many hours is it freefor all oh so even more importantly so even more importantly at the Wild Wild West don't say that all loud Zoom for the next six meetings no one's watching no one's watching no no one's watching right now don't worry I'm sorry for bringing this uplo parking and all the other things remain in effect just we cannot accept paid parking no fees and those no ticketing no enforcement there's there's no there's nothing to enforce oh that's not good so what this means is we have to advertise for the 7-Day thing we got to get the recommendation from Bridget I think she said two hours when Melissa and I met with her um revert it back to two hours for the 29th and that's it so we need it for the 29th yes you need we need we we need to post a hearing yep we got a week we can do it yeah we got time with two weeks from today so car there isn't really um there's no critical deadline from the resonance that I've talked to that we have to get all these appointments done at our 19th meeting it could be December 3rd we need to move things around yes but I I think for Ace in particular if we get enough applicants I think they want to get going I know but they could all right yeah it's only a few more weeks listen I I all right I'm not yes I I think well because we want to do everything that night we're committee by committee like our appointment ideally but we want to monitor the situation absolutely and because of the it's now a mid year y quote unquote y we get we might get more applicants for other stuff yep um all right so we're going to have a hearing on the 209th on fun um we already have the executive session on there we got the meters and the tier rates update on Opera fund so that's kind of October 29th yeah October oh wait that's all right October 29th we we agreed that we would yep allocate the Opera funds right hopefully yeah it says potential but hopefully we can do that um we still have more time I but I have that on there and then the 19th um we have an update we'll word it correctly that the right the committee will come and and we'll do that before Simon's way um cck a ball and anyone else for the 19th anything else uh oh 29th will vote on these vasque updates please on the 19th uh town meeting hopefully will be over maybe not but I mean something that comes up just let me know but I think yeah I I recommend you continue with your keeping in a real small meeing I'm trying all right a motion to Jour all those in favor 5 Z thank you