Good evening and welcome to the June 25th

Natick Select Board hearing.

We will call this session,

this meeting to order at 6:04 PM

and we will start with announcements.

Mr. Erickson.

Thank you Madam Chair. Just a brief announcement, just

to make note of a, a recent award that our finance division

and really town of Natick received, I just wanna give,

give big kudos to our talented finance division for getting

the national GFOA

or Government Finance Officers Association distinguished

budget presentation award for f for GY government, year

26 for our budget book for this FY 26.

It's a award that really sets a standard for

how budgets are formed and presented.

It ensures that our budget is meeting, you know,

national expectations and standards in the industry.

This isn't the first year we received this.

We've had it for the last several years,

and they just keep, keep doing a great job

down in our finance division with, you know, John Townsend,

Gloria Huong, who really is the, the mastermind

behind the budget, TN and the team.

So just a announcement that we see that reward,

we're waiting for the official plaque.

We actually do get a physical plaque

and we'll try to get some up on the walls here

in the select board meeting room.

Thank you, Mr. Erickson.

At this time, the meeting will move into public speak.

Any individual may raise an issue

that is not included on tonight's agenda,

and it will be taken under advisement by the board.

There'll be no opportunity for debate during this portion

of the meeting due to the requirements of open meeting law,

this section of the agenda shall be listed limited

to 10 minutes, and any individual addressing the board

during this section of the agenda shall

be limited to three minutes.

Is there anyone in the room who wishes

to address the board during public speak?

Please raise your hand. Seeing none.

I'll ask those online who are watching via Zoom.

If you could raise your hand if you wish

to address the board during this section of the meeting.

Seeing none, we will

take about a 10 minute recess while we wait

for Senate President Spilker to attend or to arrive.

And then we will move into the legislative update.

And before we rise for the Pledge of Allegiance, I'd like

to ask Mr. DeJesus, who has his hand up, were you seeking

to address the board in public speak

but didn't get your hand up in time?

If you could unmute yourself.

Hello? Can you hear me?

I can hear you.

For what purpose do you seek the floor?

I just wanted to talk about a, a request

and a little bit about myself.

If this is for public speak.

You have three minutes, so I will go ahead and start.

You now. Go ahead.

Okay. I'll probably just take a minute.

I wanted to say that I would like to see

and have a parade

about the city of Natick at that center area

that we were just watching on the recess.

My name is Christian De Jesus.

I am from WOR Massachusetts

and I moved over here not too long ago.

I am Hispanic

and so far living in this city.

I have been to the mall several times, been

to the library a handful of times

and been by the schools, been

by some meetings

and I'm planning on having goals for this city.

I've been trying to make adjustments

and improve improvements for the health department,

specifically about mental health

because that plays a big key role in there's a day

and age in this world with young people,

with all this technology

and elders passing

things on with this technology

and all this new advanced knowledge.

So yeah, I just wanted to get myself known and out there

and thank you very much.

Thank you Mr. De and welcome 10 Natick.

At this time, I'd like to ask all of those in the room

who are able to stand for the pledge allegiance.

In a moment of silence,

I pledge

Allegiance to include the flag,

the United States of America,

and to the republic for stands, one nation under God,

individual liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Linda.

Representative Linsky,

I'm waiting an invitation to come

Forward.

Please come forward and senator,

president, please come forward.

Take a seat. We've got an extra microphone if you wanna move

it over so you can sit together.

We didn't mean to segregate you.

We get along quite well actually. Right.

Madam President, would you like to begin?

Sure, sure. Good evening everyone.

It's wonderful being with you.

I appreciate the invitation to be here.

Oh, thank you. That helps. That's great. Thank you.

Good evening. I really appreciate the invitation to be here,

and it's always a pleasure to be with my friend

and col colleague Dave Linsky, working really well together.

On behalf of all the citizens of Natick, I wanna thank

the chair, the entire select board

chair of school committee.

Thank you so much, and the entire school committee

and Jamie, it's always great.

I mean, I have to say the close communication from the the

town of Natick really makes a difference as well.

We are aware of what the issues are here, so if something,

particularly just for example, if something comes up,

we're able to respond quickly through the State House

to help, to help Naus at Natick.

And I really appreciate that.

Thank you for all that you do

for the town of Natick as well.

Realize that it's not always an easy job

to be on the select board or on the school committee

or administrator either.

Thank you. Just happy to share a few updates for, for

the past few weeks and what's happening at the State House.

Let me start with the real breaking news this week.

I am very happy that the conference committee on joint

legislative rules reach agreement on a new set of rules

for the first time since 2019.

There are buzzwords that, that you hear us say sometimes.

And in the beginning of the session in January, speaker,

Mariano and I independently said we wanted

to deliver rules

and deliver more transparency, more efficiency

to the legislative process.

And I have to say that the new rules meet the moment.

A moment when news is are accessed digitally

and instantaneously,

and when trust in our institutions is at an all time low.

Unfortunately, our agreement draws on the best provisions

from both the House and the Senate

and truly blends the House

and the Senate proposed rules together,

it represents our shared commitment

to creating an efficient, transparent,

accessible legislative process to bring people in.

We want people to know what we're doing

'cause we are really proud of all that we're accomplishing.

We made the calendar more efficient,

required longer public notice periods for hearings,

mandatory committee hearing, live streaming,

and archiving the recording

and posting of committee votes, new requirements

for bill summaries so that if you, you know, you don't have

to read the 30 pages of a bill,

each bill will have a public online bill.

Summary and rules,

ensuring we're timely access

to conference committee reports.

This is a win for the public

and for transparency, also breaking news.

Tomorrow the Senate will pass debate

and pass a bill to protect, protect women's healthcare

and gender affirming care

and better protect the providers performing this

type of healthcare.

This is exciting. We, we did the first

blush at this a few years ago.

Since then, we've realized that we need to better protect

people coming here

and living here seeking the reproductive care,

women's healthcare, and gender affirming care.

And this is a, a big thing for, for our, our commonwealth.

Last week, the legislature agreed on a supplemental budget

that invests $1.4 billion from the millionaires

tax that was passed a few years back

into public statewide education

and public statewide transportation

Revenues from the millionaires tax out

outpace our predictions.

So with these sur surplus dollars, just for example, some

of the things that will help Natick, we included $73 million

for regional transit authorities, which will help

enlarge the Metro West Regional Transit Authority,

more hours, more locations and, and Fuller.

We had fair free for the regional transit authorities so

that it should help expand the services and access to Natick

and Metro West residents.

We put hundreds of millions

of dollars into special education

to help cover the special education costs

that we were hearing about from all school districts.

Public hire, education and career

and technical education.

We're hearing across the state that people want more seats.

So we, we've invested money to put more seats to create

and increase access to career and technical education.

We also added $75,000 for Natick pedestrian

and mobility improvements.

And I included some funding for electric vehicle chargers

for this community.

And I, David can talk about other things.

So this is good, really good news for the town

and for the school district with, with funding.

And I am very happy to report.

This is sort of breaking news too.

The House and Senate are very, very close

to agreeing on a fiscal 26 budget for Massachusetts.

It's this, you know, the house passed their version April.

We did ours in May, delivering support to communities

and vulnerable populations.

We pr we adopted an amendment to lower the cost

of prescription drugs focused on education

and mental health, and gave cities the authority, cities

and towns, the authority to decide

how many liquor licenses they have.

So you wouldn't have to go

through the legislative process and approval anymore.

We gave 225 to Boston figuring if

that Boston couldn't get that many.

Certainly if a town wanted to increase by a few,

the town should have the right to do that as well.

I know the board is specifically interested,

the boards are specifically interested in educational

funding and opportunities.

I can't speak until we have a final budget in place,

but, you know, we fought hard for education funding

and continue, will continue to do so

under the Senate unrestricted local aid, which have,

would have a 2.2% increase, which is

what we projected the budget would grow for this year.

So a 2.2% increase

for chapter 70 Natick would get a 5.8% increase from

last year, which is about 14

and a half thou million dollars in chapter 78.

So hopefully that would be helpful.

I again, added 700,000 for mental health funding

for Metro S communities, which Natick would receive,

could receive at least a hundred thousand dollars knowing

that our schools need this mental health.

This would specifically go to Metro S schools and,

and Natick schools would get a hundred thousand dollars

from that as well.

We increased funding for libraries and cultural councils

and restored the funding for the healthy incentive programs,

25 million that helps farmers, farmers markets,

and I know that's a big deal.

Families and students and, and schools.

I mean, it's, it's healthy food that we wanna support.

So I'm really pla proud of coming off

of last, the last session.

We had a historically productive last session when we cut

taxes past major climate economic development,

reigned in private equity in healthcare,

and so many other areas.

I I won't go into them all.

I do wanna say though, that

this comes at a moment when we are bracing

for uncertainty from the federal government.

I have to raise that. I am hoping

that the US Senate comes to its senses

and does not make the devastating cuts

that the US House made.

They can pull back and, and curtail what's going on

and take their constitutional power back.

And I am hoping that they do. There's still hope.

We are continuing to monitor Washington closely

and we can't predict what they're going to do,

but we will adopt, we'll adopt as best that we as we can.

But I need to say that federal cuts will be painful.

Just for an example, we get somewhere between 13

and 15 $16 billion from Medicaid funding from

the US government.

They, we are predicting some of that.

Even if they cut a portion of that,

we cannot backfill that funding.

And that will have a severe, painful impact on our residents

and our healthcare providers, our hospitals, our providers.

That will be devastating.

The federal government is trying to get rid

of the US Department of Education and Cuts.

We get three, four someti, 5 billion.

Some of it goes directly to the state, some directly

to the cities and towns.

Some of that has already been cut.

So we are looking and monitoring closely

and we will try working with all of you and,

and trying to adopt

and protect our residents as best as we can.

The Senate is not waiting.

I announced a few weeks ago the Senate

response Initiative in response to

what is happening on the federal level.

And as part of that, that initiative, we are working

to protect our residents, defend our Massachusetts values,

and help lead us through these dark time.

We've had hearings on how we can protect our climate.

We've heard from the Canadian general console about the

impact on tariffs

and the fact that a lot

of Canadians are in are not coming to Massachusetts.

Tourism is gonna be down, European visitors will be down,

other, other Canadians will be down.

We've proposed a study on eliminating the sales tax

for shovel ready housing projects to help builders

who have put a red light and stopped building

because of these tariffs.

They have put, the tariffs have put the project out of

touch, out of reach for the developers.

And so we're hoping that if we can get rid

of the 6.25% sales tax,

maybe the developers will put a green light

back on these projects.

'cause housing is such an important priority right now.

We are working so hard to increase our housing production

and increase our housing units and these tariffs

and the Trump policies are actually working in the exact

opposite direction of, of that.

So we'll keep looking at that.

And housing is one of the biggest priorities

for the Senate coming up this session.

We are looking as, in addition to the SHIELD Act,

we're looking at other areas

and data privacy legislation to keep the government from

unwanted tracking of all of our movements from our devices.

Having access to that.

We have boosted our funding for areas

that we know the federal government may cut in areas such

as our veterans,

who would've thought our veterans would get major cuts

and fired from jobs

and have trouble accessing their, their benefits.

We've boosted benefits

and funding for veterans, for seniors, farmers for food,

helping with food insecurity, residents with special needs.

Our children, families are vulnerable populations.

And we will continue to looking at

what is, what is happening.

There's very little the state government can do in a lot

of the areas that the federal government is cutting.

But we will continue working and,

and I believe it's important, we will not be silent.

We've already been outspoken.

And so both in terms of not being silent

and taking concrete action with whatever bills we can,

like the SHIELD Act, looking at getting rid

of the sales tax.

You know, anything that we can do.

And with that, I, I invite you, if you have any other ideas

as to what we can do as a Massachusetts legislature to,

to fight some of this, please let us know.

Lastly, I wanna say on the horizon,

I've committed the Senate

to passing a ban on cell phones in schools

before the next school year.

It is such a distraction. It's an unnecessary distraction.

It, I, I hear from so many people, it causes

cheating in schools cyber bullying,

and there's really no need for it.

So we are bills, were heard,

they're being reported out of the committee.

I would love feedback from the school committee,

from the select board as to what your thoughts are.

There are different ways to do it,

but I think it's really important.

School should be a safe, healthy place

for students to make friends have fun

and not have to worry about the cyber bullying

and all the, the pressure from the cell phones.

So I think that that's a really Im important piece

of legislation that, that we need to take up and pass

and we'll take up the Municipal Empower Empowerment Act.

I know that there are pieces to that that may be important

for Na Natick.

So please, you know, when when we get it, we, we will.

But let let us know what are the pieces that,

that you think are important

and what are pieces that, that may not be at all.

I think that there's a lot of pieces in there,

and certainly we wanna do what we can to help.

I'm proud the legislature agreed

to extend hybrid public meetings,

and I've committed for us to be looking at making

that permanent.

I think that that's in favor, that's important too,

and I'm in favor of that.

So in conclusion, you know, I wanna thank all

of you for what you do.

I know everyone here and at home.

I wanna thank you for your passion

and for helping Natick move forward.

It's a privilege to be in the State House

and represent such a diverse, wonderful, vibrant community.

I have to say, with everything that's going on,

you're a model for so many others,

and I thank you for all that you do

to help make way Natick such a wonderful place to be.

So thank you. That's it.

Thank you Madam President, representative

Linsky, thank you very much.

It's a pleasure to be here

and it's a pleasure to sit alongside my friend

and colleague, Senator Spko from Ashland,

who thankfully now represents all of the town

of Natick rather than just 60%.

So it's, it's a real joy. Yes, it is. It is. It is.

So I, I want to just, some of the spoke, went through a lot

of the major pieces that we've done.

I just want to highlight a couple of local earmarks

that I expect will be in the final budget

that we vote on in a couple of days.

There are some earmarks to both Senator Spilker

and I worked on that are gonna be gonna be very helpful.

There's $50,000

for Natick Public Schools programming support, 30,000

for the Natick Veterans Oral History project, 25,000

for the Natick Service Council food pantry,

something that I've been working on.

And similarly, 25,000 for the place

to turn Food pantry as well.

There's 50,000 for the Honeywell and Murphy Fields.

That's sort of a, that's been a priority of mine

for a long time, ever since I was a little league coach.

Most importantly, over 14 point a half million dollars in

chapter 70 funds.

In addition, in the fair share sub that Bilko talked about,

that was signed into law actually yesterday

by the, by the governor.

There's $75,000

for improvements at the West Natick Commuter Real Station

and something, again, that's a priority of mine.

There's $500,000 for METCO late buses, not just

for Natick obviously, but that's something that I find very,

very important in making sure their METCO students are able

to fully participate in the full school day,

which includes afterschool sports and, and programs.

I also want to talk a little bit about, this is a thank you

partly, but it's not easy to be

a public official or public servant these days either in a

volunteer or professional capacity.

So I want to thank all of you

and all of the people on local town boards who serve.

It's not an easy time to be in, in public service

and we really need good people to stand up

and try to do the right thing.

Unfortunately, we take a lot of abuse.

I'm gonna share something with you right now that not many

of you know, Melissa Hortman was a dear friend of mine.

Melissa Hortman was the speaker emerita

of the Minnesota House who was murdered

because she was a member

of the Minnesota House last weekend.

And that has hit me hard, quite frankly,

and it should hit anybody in public service hard.

You know, we're all as public servants, we're all trying

to do the right thing.

And you know, people have a right to to peacefully disagree.

They have a right to contact us,

but, you know, we shouldn't have to put our lives

and our families at stake

and at risk quite frankly for doing this.

So I want to thank each

and every person in the town of Natick

who participates in town government in some fashion

for the job that you do.

It's not easy and

that this town can't survive with what you do.

Alright, we're happy to answer any of the questions

that you put forth to us

and we'll probably go back and forth. Yeah,

Yeah.

We, we do, we, this is the 26th time I've got to do this,

and about the 20th time that Karen's got to do this.

Yeah. So yeah,

It is the 20th, 2000.

Thank you both. I really wanna appre thank you

for taking your time to come out and, and speak with us

and what, what we'll do going forward.

The school committee is represented by the vice chair,

Catherine Brunell, and we'll take turns going

between select board members and Ms.

Brunell to ask follow up questions.

So at this point okay, I'd like to look to the board

to see if you have a specific question you would

like to ask and follow up.

Then I will move to Ms. Brunell. Ms. Pope,

Thank you both for your service

and for your courage in such trying times.

I, this might be a question

that the school committee will share,

but I just wanted to get clarification.

I know that the chapter 70 funding, you talked about,

I think 14 million, $14 million, is that right?

But then there's the 50,000 you talked about

for programmatic support.

Explain how that works.

So chapter 70 is a direct

formulaic, mostly formulaic, we'll say.

Yeah. That goes into the, into the town budget

that the town town meeting has to appropriate, obviously

there, then there are certain local earmarks that

the Senate president and

and I worked hard to try to include there.

And those are administered through dsi, the Department

of Education, elementary

and Secondary Education that, you know, the,

the school administration makes requests,

they fill out a form and they get a check,

and then they get to fill out what they want to do.

And it's something that they, they're very good at

and they know how to do it. So

You, you need to make sure that you request it though,

otherwise it, it may not come Right.

So that's why it's important to keep track of that

and, and ask for it.

Yeah. And the, there's several things

that Desi would be working with the town of Natick to

allocate appropriate to Natick.

Thank you for that clarification. Yeah,

I, I wanna mention one other thing in the,

that we neglected in the, in the fair share sup

that we did yesterday in it, you know,

obviously there's a lot of different line items in it,

but there's $250 million

for special ed circuit breaker on Yeah, yeah.

That, that, but,

and one other thing, there's $80 million in additional

chapter 90 funds.

Right. So Natick historically gets around 1.3 million

a year in chapter 90.

Obviously this will be distributed

by formula on top of that.

So I think that's good news for Natick

and for all the rest of the towns

For roads, bridges, culverts,

anything that would help with that.

Ms au Thank you.

I have a list of questions compiled from other members,

so I'll just ask them off and on with other members.

Thank you. The first one comes from our administration.

So the circuit breaker is a special account that's set up

through the state funding.

There's a request to see if something like

that fund could be set up for

transportation reimbursement for homeless students.

And it's not vocational students. I get that.

It, it's not a separate fund.

It's paid through the general fund.

Every year there, there is no separate fund to, to,

to mirror for, for anything.

So the circuit breaker comes out

of the general fund like the other items.

I see. So when it comes to the school department, it's,

but it's specifically earmarked as circuit breaker money?

It, it might be, they figure out it's retroactive

because they figure out what was last year,

if I remember correctly.

So, and then it's sent to the, the city

or town, it would be sent to Natick

and that's the appropriation that goes to the town

for, for the circuit breaker.

I see. And but you're saying from your end, it's all,

it's on the, in your general fund?

Correct. So it looks different to us,

but to you it's from the same fund.

Correct. I see. Yeah.

Do you know, do you have any more specifics about the

circuit breaker then and how

That

Well, let me, let me say this.

This is, I, I saw your question. Yeah.

This was the first time that I had ever seen that.

Quite frankly, I would appreciate it if the finance

director from the school department could contact me

and maybe explain this to me a little more.

And this would be the type of thing, if a tweak needs

to be made, we could put it theoretically into the

Municipal Empowerment Act.

If a tweak in the accounting procedure needs to be done,

that would be a natural place for us to do this.

But if you could

Contact me, but there's no fund, there's no,

there's no special fund or, or anything. It

Sounds like an accounting issue more

Than anything else.

Exactly. Okay. Yeah. Thank you

Board member Ms.

Slager.

Thank you. Thank you both.

Appreciate the overview

and appreciate your attendance here tonight.

It's, it's wonderful to see you and,

and to hear what's going on on Beacon Hill.

This is one of the questions

that maybe you don't have an answer to that was given,

but what steps can the Commonwealth take to ensure

that the 9 27 project is completed?

You know, it is federally funded

and 80% federally, 20% state.

But it, it is going to be a huge disruption to our town and,

and also probably to, to neighboring towns.

So we wanna make sure that there

won't be any interruptions in this project

and that the funding will continue.

Do you have any update on that?

Yeah, I think the funding is allocated already

and I think it's been started already.

So I I, you know, we can stay on top of it,

but they, the, the agency is aware of this and,

and our keen interest in this,

and I think that it is moving forward

and should be completed by Nick Spring.

We, we actually posed

that question at the public meeting at Wilson a couple

of weeks ago, and the people from

the highway department were adamant the

money is physically here.

So unless somehow the federal government tries

to claw at back, I think we're,

I think we're good to go. Right?

But the funds are secured, these are funds, these funds

for this project are not discretionary

by the federal government, which is good.

Which means that they're, they're appropriated, they,

they're already here, you know,

they're, they're, they're set.

They shouldn't be able to take them back.

That's good to know. Thank you.

In follow up to that, if there are cost overruns,

where would we look to, if there are cost revenue, if,

if the project has cost rev overruns on,

on the particular budgeted items, where would we look?

This is a design build contract. It is.

So yeah, it's, that's a hard, that's a hard scenario.

I think that falls on the contractor,

to be honest with you. It

Falls on the contractor

and if, if for some some reason there's extraordinary

circumstances, DOT does have some

extraordinary sort of, you know, funds in

that they're allocated for, for special circumstances.

So I don't foresee that either as being a problem. Okay.

Thank you so much. Yeah. Ms. Brunell,

Thank you for addressing the concern that people have

around the federal government pulling back money

and the uncertainty there.

I know you don't have a crystal ball,

but several members asked questions related to that,

specifically about mental health supports.

But in general, were federal funds to be pulled back from

our school districts.

Is there anything you anticipate the state doing

to help backfill or create opportunities through grants

or other revenue sources so that it's not left on the,

in the hands of the local authorities or in local citizens?

I know that this is something that the senate president

and I share a passion for,

which is mental health supports in public schools.

There's probably no issue that both

of us feel more strongly about than that.

And I can assure you, we will do whatever we possibly

Can, right.

As best as we can. And that's why we,

we've increased the statewide supports for social

and emotional learning, mental health supports in schools

by millions of dollars.

And we, we've included an earmark, a local, a priority in,

in the budget of, as I mentioned,

that Natick would get a hundred thousand.

But I do wanna be clear

that if the federal government cuts billions

and billions of dollars from our budget,

we don't have the money to backfill all of it,

or a huge portion of it.

I, and I just think people need to be clear and,

and, you know, contact your, our federal delegation

and push them to, to fight this.

It's really important.

And our revenue, we don't know

what our revenue will be next year.

We have a surplus right now,

but most of that is from either the millionaires tax

or capital gains, which can't be used

for general operational on a, on a yearly basis either.

So it, it, it will be painful.

Thank you.

Members of the board, Mr. Sidney,

Thank you both for being here.

We really appreciate it.

So these, one of couple of the questions that were sent

to you were curious about the status of

the Assistant Fire chief bill and our special act.

If you could fill us in on those. I'll

Let you take that.

Yeah, they, they're both filed in the house.

They've both had their public hearings.

The clock is now ticking on that.

They've got 60 days to report those out.

That's will bring us, I think the end of July,

the beginning of August.

I've talked with the chairman of each of those committees

and I expect that they'll be reported out favorably pretty

soon and we'll get 'em to the house floor.

Ms. Brunell, thank you.

Speaking about projects

and things like, you know, infrastructure not for FY 26,

but is the legislature perhaps in the future looking at

additional funding for school capital

or town buildings to extend the life of existing buildings?

We know that when repairs

or replacements are not made, then

that shortens the life of any building.

So in Natick, I think that's a concern certainly

for the school committee and the age of some of our schools,

even with the generosity

of the MSBA process happening right now.

Right. Yeah. We did start

M-M-S-B-A accelerated repair program

and we started a commission we put in for the,

a commission potentially to look at repairs specifically.

So we'll see how that progresses.

But we're hoping that those pass.

Thank you. I think that,

I think our board would support that.

Great.

Members of the board, Ms. Pope?

Yes. Representative Linsky

and Senate President SP wanted to know about

your top priorities for this legislative session.

I'm very grateful for the breaking news that you gave us.

And, you know, some may say it's obvious,

but I would love for if you could articulate that for us.

Do you wanna go first? Sure.

Okay. Education will continue to be a top priority

as it has since the beginning of my,

my career as a legislator.

It's expanded though,

and I explain it

as the interest being from cradle to career.

So from early ed in care to K to 12,

which is why I originally ran for the legislature years ago.

And now public higher education.

I am very proud of Mass Educate,

a legislative initiative for free public community college

for our residents.

We also have put a lot of funding into supports

for those students to make sure that those that come

that never saw themselves as possible at being able to,

to attend college so that they can stay in school.

We've also expanded tremendously our support

for our state unit, public state universities

and our UMass system.

So that really, if somebody gets a Pell Federal Pell Grant

with the Senate and house working together,

the state support, their four year college would be free.

We've heard for so long how people wanted

to lower the school debt

and help make people it more accessible.

And we have accomplished that in Massachusetts.

I'm very proud of that.

If we continue more work, we need to continue

to work on early education

and care reform to enable parents to be, to be able

to have seats in, in early education

and go back to work if they want to,

and stabilize the, the whole system.

It's a workforce issue as well as, as support

for, for the whole system.

Housing remains a, a really top priority for,

for me in the, the Senate.

I'm very proud of the $5 billion housing bond bill

we did last session.

It will dramatically increase the number

of housing units in the state, but that takes time.

You know, it takes time to permit and build

and, and the whole process.

We need more housing now.

So I've instructed the senate chair

of the housing committee, Senator Seer, to go

around the state, find out what are the barriers

to creating more housing now, what can we do?

Nothing is off the table looking at affordable housing,

workforce housing, market rate housing and,

and what can we do for rental, for, for construction

of homes, first time home buyers.

It's any and everything we need to act

otherwise, our economy, our quality of life will suffer

for, for lack of housing right now.

So education, housing, healthcare is another major,

major priority.

I've had discussions the last few days

and also working with the, this the chair

of healthcare finance, pri you know,

primary care is an issue.

How many times I've heard people trying to find a doctor

as a primary care physician,

and then once they find somebody to make an appointment,

it's sometimes six to eight months.

That's not acceptable.

We need to, to fix our primary care system

here in Massachusetts.

And it's, and there are things that we can do

to increase accessibility

and we need to lower the cost of healthcare.

So those two areas of healthcare, increasing access

and lowering the cost will continue

to be a priority for, for us.

Then there's the, the cell phone ban.

Those areas will take a little bit of time.

The cell phone ban, I feel is something,

talk about our students' mental health.

That is such a, such a terrible thing for them

to have in school and we need to take action.

I think as adults, we are responsible to help them with this

and, and it can't wait. Thank you.

I think that from Senator Spilker, you,

you just heard sort of the breadth of issues that we

as state legislators have to deal with.

And the reality is, is that all of those issues

and so many, many more are also directly affected by

what I'll call the dysfunction

of Congress in Washington right now.

Because it's all, quite frankly falling on the states to try

to solve these problems.

And that's the reality.

And I think a lot of you have heard me talk about

what I say are the three different jobs

of a state legislator.

You know, that's the legislative job.

The second job is representing the cities

and towns in our districts as we went

through just a few minutes ago with state funding

and state projects and state grants

and making sure that all of you in municipal government,

you know, gets what you need and what you deserve.

And then the third part of the job,

and you've heard me talk about this,

is the constituent service job

because that's

where I can really find out what's going on in my

community, quite frankly.

And this, I'm gonna tell you something that's scares me.

My office has really noticed an uptick since the first

of the year in unemployment claims for people

who live in Natick and, and Wayland in my district,

and problems with them getting unemployment benefits.

The Massachusetts economy, as all of us know are,

is highly dependent on higher education, healthcare

and pharma and biotech.

All of those, those

Sectors, meds and nss, they're called meds and ns, meds

And ns.

All of those are deeply affected

by what's going on in Washington right now.

And the way that we get affected, quite frankly, is

that when one of our constituents works, you know,

at Harvard University

or the Mass General Hospital, which by the way,

mass General Brigham is the single largest recipient

of NIH grants in the country.

Okay. When those grants get cut or,

or healthcare funding gets cut

or higher, ed gets cut,

that plays out right here in Natick,

Massachusetts when somebody loses their job

and has to file for unemployment benefits.

So these are the things that keep us worrying

and up at night, quite frankly.

Right. Yeah. And by the way, it's worse than Mass General

Brigham, it's also Children's, which is number two.

Right? Right. And Beth Israel Deaconess,

which is number three in NIH grant recipients,

It's, yeah, it's many of the hospitals.

And this is why it's hard to project, if we get the cuts,

how that will impact our state revenue.

It's not only the cuts,

but then how many people will be laid off

and other areas of revenue so that what we take in

for next year, the year after can decrease as well.

And we'll have less of a pot to distribute to cities, towns

to residents and all of the, the programs

that we all hold near and dear.

Thank you Ms. Brunell.

Well, speaking of meds

and eds, the vaccine bills that are in front of you,

can you speak about that and where those are?

They don't have a, they,

they haven't had their public hearing yet, I don't think

before the public health committee.

There's a number of bills being filed.

I'm a co-sponsor of,

I will say the mandatory vaccination side of things.

But we hear, just so you know, we hear from lots

and lots of people repeatedly on both sides of this issue.

And it's not being helped, quite frankly, by

what the federal HHS is doing.

Definitely not. Yeah.

I'm a believer in the science of, of vaccine. Yeah.

So, yeah, I I think there will be a debate on,

on this issue though, so

We'll see.

Thank you. Thank you. You have a timeline,

do you think, beyond the debate?

No, I mean, we can keep track

and try to, to, to let you know when they do come up

and, and what happens.

Thank you Mr. Evans.

Thank you Madam Chair. Going back to affordable housing,

one of the things that we see in Natick,

like many other communities, is a lot of tear downs

of existing properties.

And this really

often removes the, the, I'll call 'em starter home

to mid market homes,

puts them out of the reach we're built.

We're, we're getting really good at, as a town

of building million dollar homes, most

of us probably couldn't afford to buy our homes if,

if we had to buy them today.

A lot of that ties back to the subdivision control law,

which to my knowledge hasn't sub been

substantively changed in decades.

What can we do to,

we we're doing a reasonably good job of

multi-unit housing

and accessory dwelling unit type things.

But what can we do on top of that to encourage developers

to not build the biggest house they can possibly

fit on a property?

I don't have a good answer for you, Bruce.

I don't either. 'cause it's basic, it's a market. It's

What the market drives

And if they own the property,

they generally have the right subject to town and,

and some statewide limitations.

But to build on it what, what they want.

Well think about that. Yeah.

Yeah. Just I appreciate that.

There is a very quick follow up to that.

One of the characterizations,

or I guess the rulings on section six six findings is

it can't be substantially more detrimental to the

neighborhood, which is, is highly subjective.

And if there's a way to tighten up how

that's defined so that a zoning board has more

to hang their hat on to be able to refuse a,

I'll call it an outsized house in a,

in a given neighborhood.

Okay.

We

Will ponder that.

Thank you

Again.

Perhaps related, the question here is about the state

climate schools and if you believe, if you see

in the future, again, not FY 26,

but the legislature taking action to fully align

the MSBA funding with the state climate goals.

Do you see any,

I mean, we have done some, I I I'm not certain that,

I don't know if there are any bills concerning

that we can check into that,

but you're actually the first person

that has ever asked me that. Right?

Thank you.

Well,

I can't take credit for the question again.

I, I wanted to mention member Matt Brand is here in the

audience and also Jamon Patel from the school committee.

This was a compilation of, of questions. Okay. But

I just wanted to let the public know and,

and others who are interested, that you can follow bills

and laws by going to ma legislature.gov.

You can create your own account so

that you can follow bills, you can put in Natick,

you can put in climate change, you can put in MSBA

and it'll pull up everything including

the hearings and events.

It's a really important tool for all of us to use so

that we are fully aware of what's going on

and able to, you know, communicate

with our legislative delegation about specificities

and also follow hearings.

So that's ma legislature.gov

and you can create an account. Right.

All all hearings, by the way, are now live streamed

And they're archived.

So if you miss it, you can archive it and,

and watch it afterwards as well.

So I do just wanna mention too, that I have, I'm blessed,

I have my district director, Susan Nichol here for all

of my towns who I know has interacted

and worked with, I think most of you, if not all of you,

and talk about when,

when David talked about constituent services,

that is an incredibly large

and important part of what we do as well.

And to say to the public that no issue is too small

or too complicated, we will try to help you

with whatever issue it is.

And we, we do sometimes, I I never,

before I was a legislator, I never would've thought

of calling my senator or representative about anything.

You know, I, I never would've thought of it.

But it, this is an important role that we play.

Sometimes it helps to just cut through red tape.

Sometimes we can connect you to somebody in an agency

to help get you an answer a little faster.

We will, at the very worst case scenario, listen and,

and try to try to help as much as we can.

Thank you Ms.

Slager. Thank you.

This one is a little tough.

I recently spoke to someone who is a legislative aide

not working for either one of you.

She's in her mid twenties. Although she is

an American citizen, many of the people

that she interacts with are not.

And she has personally guaranteed with a number

of people that she knows to take guardianship

of their children in the event that they're the parents

that, that she knows are detained by ice.

And it's just heartbreaking that that's what

it it has come to for her.

So I'm wondering, what are you seeing

and what are you doing in your offices

and what is a legislator legislature doing to

help our citizens

that are concerned about potentially being detained

or even, you know, citizens that are potentially going to be

arrested just on the basis of, of, of their skin color.

So what, what's going on,

If I may add to that, the,

the school committee had a very similar question

because students will stop coming to school,

have stopped coming to school

because of this fear from immigrant families.

So we have a very similar question and it's a real concern,

Right?

Schools and, and community places, people are not students

and adults are, are not coming anymore, unfortunately.

And I'll let David also answer

'cause this is very complicated.

Yeah. And we

as a state states do not have much control over immigration

that is expressly put in our constitution.

It's a federal issue.

And we can't stop ice, to be honest with you.

We can, we can help residents, we can,

if a situation like that comes,

maybe legal aid can help them get the guardianship papers

in, in line so they feel more comfortable.

It, it's a heartbreaking situation for many families

and especially when they don't know what's gonna happen

or when and if or, or any of that.

But we, we don't have

control over ICE and immigration.

We have been very outspoken with our federal delegation with

contacting the, the federal authorities.

But there, there's not a whole lot we can do,

but help the families as best as we can to,

to get them set up as well as if something happens,

they should certainly contact us

and their federal delegation as well

to get assistance. I don't know.

Yeah, I I I mean this is heartbreaking, Linda.

'cause I'm, I'm hearing those stories

from all over Massachusetts,

but all over the country as well.

And it's unfor it's unfortunate,

but this is what where our country is right now,

we've both been very supportive

of putting more funding into legal aid services,

Right.

For, for folks in these situations.

We have, but we know it's not enough. Right.

And, you know, we,

it, it, it really is heartbreaking

and this is not what America is supposed to be about.

And I'm hoping that, you know,

and we've been hoping for this for decades,

but the answer to this is to get congress

to do comprehensive immigration laws reform.

Yep.

This is, again, them pulling back their power, you

Know?

Yeah. It really is.

Congress needs to get on this

and they've refused to act for decades now, quite frankly.

Right. And this is what it has wr

And they were close just before the election

and then unfortunately

before, you know, the Trump asked them,

told them not to, not to pass, to pass it.

They were very close. Right.

He wanted to make it one

of the biggest issues in the election.

And he did. Right.

Ms. Brunell, do you have another question?

That's all of the questions I collected from the members.

Does anyone else? No.

And also I wanted

to thank assistant superintendent Sue

Baloni is here with us too.

Okay. Thank you very much. You have a moment afterwards?

Very much. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you Susan.

Thank you Karen and David,

Members of the board,

Just thank you, thank you for your, you know, honesty,

transparency, availability.

You have heard the issues that we're challenged with

and we know that you all are, you know, see

that are challenged with other issues that are beyond that.

And it's just, it's, it's critical,

especially this last one that we talked about.

And so it's critical that we're able to continue

to overcome these hurdles.

And so thank you, thank you,

Thank you.

And thank you all, all for your service

and for your invitation tonight. Yes.

Actually, we have a few more questions. I wanna let

Mr. Erickson, did you have a question

or a comment? And then I have a few

Thank you.

Just a quick question and I won't be too long.

But first, thank you obviously for coming

and for your partnership.

I think I talked to your teams sometimes

weekly, sometimes daily.

I know Susan extremely well and Dennis and,

and well you're, you've had a couple change in your office,

but met them just last week here in town hall.

But thank you for the partnership. It's been really great.

It's critical. One, one question I had.

So municipalities, especially Massachusetts,

just given the high cost of living and, and, and,

and just the, the economy here, you know, we we're strapped

with some challenge

of finding high quality people even just

work for the communities.

And that, I'm sure that's true on the school side as well,

just given the, the challenge of hiring teachers and, and,

and quality people to work in the school system.

But one thing that we're looking towards

and that we've actually done successfully on a number

of occasion is partnering with our,

with other municipalities

and just regionalization in general.

So just recently, for example, Natick

and the city of Framingham have partnered

to create a regional dispatch center.

Right. Still not up and running yet. Congratulations.

We're still working on that. So, and then we've also signed

on a regional housing consortium through Concord

with a number of communities.

What in the maybe upcoming legislative agenda

or maybe I can give you some ideas Yeah.

Outside of this meeting to continue

to look at regionalization.

'cause it's a way to do more with less essentially,

or do more with the same.

It allows us to do similar services

and there's a lot, a lot of services

that we are all mandated or even

or similarly provide to our constituents across the spectrum

of municipal governments

and maybe even in the school systems that we're mandated

to provide that it really could be more regionalized

and giving the tools

or at least breaking down some of the barriers to

that would be extremely beneficial to,

to allow communities to do more of that.

Especially in Massachusetts where we really don't have much,

at least, especially in Natick anyway, form

of county governments anymore

or any other things that could

almost have that regionalization.

That's a really great observation.

And as you're speaking, I I think of

sometimes when there's hardship, people are more open

to changing the way they do business.

And that's been part of it in the past.

Cities and towns don't wanna give up their autonomy,

whether it be the school district

or municipal services and programs.

But with, and as things are getting more expensive

and times are getting tighter

and tougher, there may be more opportunities for that.

So we can certainly look at what vehicles there may be

to help strengthen that.

So if you have ideas, let's con continue the conversation.

Thank you.

I had a question

and then I was just gonna speak on the

Municipal Empowerment Act.

Our board recently sent a letter to both of you with regard

to how certain aspects

of the Municipal Empowerment Act would,

would be helpful to Natick.

But my first question is that since 1980,

the Commonwealth has not raised alcohol

taxes on the excise level.

And so due to inflation,

that revenue has lost 74% of its value.

And at, at a time of real fiscal constraints.

I wanna point out to members of the public

that our beer excise is 11 cents a gallon,

which is the 44th in the state in the, in the United States.

44th out of 50, it's the lowest in New England.

Wine is the lowest in New England except for Vermont 32nd

overall and distilled spirits,

the excise tax is lowest in New

England except New Hampshire.

And so it seems to me that this is an opportunity ripe for

especially the, the associated healthcare costs

that arise due to the use and misuse of alcohol.

So I'm wondering why there hasn't really been

that I can see an effort to since 1980 to

raise taxes on And,

and for those of you don't know, when you buy alcohol,

you don't pay tax at the register.

It's paid at the distributor level.

But we did have the sales tax repealed. Right.

We did have a sales tax repealed

but ballot initiative in 2010.

This is, that's a tax that unfortunately voters hate.

I will say that there are two, the two most hated taxes

are sales taxes on alcohol and then the auto excise tax.

That's Yes. Clearly. What, what they,

I mean certainly it's something we can look at if we need

revenue, but I can tell you people aren't lining up

and asking us to raise those taxes,

But they also don't see it at the register.

Right? No, that's right. I mean, it's not something that,

and and even a small increase could be billions of dollars

of revenue at a time when we desperately need it.

So I would encourage the legis legislative delegation

to look into that as a possibility. But

Okay, we will,

You're right that,

I mean there are taxes and they do have a

hierarchy of how much people hate them,

Which most of them are pretty high.

Most of them are, yes. There's,

They want the services, there's, they want,

you know, but they don't want, yeah. There

Aren't a lot of taxes.

We're running out and embracing with regard

to the Municipal Empowerment Act.

The board has identified several proposed areas

that would benefit Natick.

The increase to local meals and lodge taxes.

Natick brings in between a half a million

and a million dollars on lodging, which is one of the,

the higher amounts that you know,

is, is in terms of like assessing towns

regionalization would be helpful with, especially

with regard to assessors, regional boards

of assessors would be really helpful.

The changing the

post-retirement or allowing temporary exemptions

to post-retirement employment status to allow for

experts who are retiring.

And we don't have a groundswell of people, engineers,

finance officers, assessors

who are going into the public sector.

So that's something that would, would help.

Okay.

And I think

allowing up to 5% local option motor vehicle excise

surcharge would be helpful.

I don't know that it's something that we would necessarily

adopt, but having that in our toolkit

and then the proposed new property tax exemption for seniors

that will allow, with the increase in taxes,

would allow the most vulnerable

and seniors on fixed income to be exempted out

of the levying of those.

So those types of things would be helpful for the Muni, for,

for Natick to have in its toolbox.

Okay. That's great to know.

And we will keep that letter in front

of us when we work on the bill. Thank you.

Well, I wanna thank you both for coming out

and spending an hour with us of your time

and being so candid about, you know, the challenges

that both of both the House and the Senate are facing

and the work that you're undertaking to serve the towns

that are in your, your districts.

And thank you and the state, the commonwealth, and thank

You.

Thank you. And, and we'll both I'm sure take this

opportunity to just encourage any constituent

who has an issue or a concern to reach out,

email, phone call.

We're both incredibly accessible.

Right. So,

And thank you again

for being such great partners. Really. Thank

You. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thanks

Guys. Take care.

We're gonna take a two minute recess.

We are back. The next part of our meeting is appointments.

The first set of appointments is the Board of Registrars.

We're having interviews for one three year term expiring

March 31st, 2028.

We have two candidates for members of the public

who wanna understand how this works.

The represent the Democratic Town Committee

and the Republican Town Committees put forward candidates.

The board of registrar is consists of the clerk

of the, the town clerk

and three members who are appointed by the select board.

So at this time, I'd like to ask Michael

Vidor to come to the podium.

If you could introduce yourself, say why you'd like to serve

and tell us a little bit about yourself.

We have your application.

Great, thank you. Yeah. I'm Mike Zer.

I have lived in Natick

for 16 years, precinct nine.

Throughout that time, on

and off I have been on various

committees of the town in an appointed role.

Most recently on the Town Governance Study committee.

I was also a town meeting member for a brief period,

and I am a longtime member of the Natick

Town Democratic Committee.

So when they approached me about possibly

applying for this position with the Board of Registrars,

I thought that would be a, an interesting

and rewarding way to continue my

public service in a, in a way for the town.

I have an interest, as you know, I think everybody does in

upholding the integrity of elections,

improving public trust in the process.

Transparency. So I think this would be

a good fit and I have learned a

bit about the position.

I think it's something that, that,

as I said, would be, would be interesting and, and rewarding

and something that I think that I could handle.

So I'm happy to talk more with you about it,

answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. Members of the board. Any questions?

No, no. Thank you so much. Okay.

Thank you

Ms. Debbie Shaw.

Hello.

Hello.

So I'm Debbie Shaw. I've lived in Natick seven years.

I'm from the Midwest. I,

I'm retired about three, four years now.

And I started volunteering in town.

I'm currently on the Council on Aging,

which I've seen a couple of you there, which

it's been a rewarding experience.

I've also, years leading up to my, I served as one year

as replacement registrar this past year.

And prior to that I had worked in the polls a couple years

out in the polls and then also in the office with sorting

and working with the ballots.

So I've seen the sides of processing.

And so when I was approached to be a registrar replacement,

I, you know, was very interested in seeing this side of it.

And so the past year has been very interesting.

It's been kind of a little bit of a learning curve

'cause there's a lot to it that you don't quite realize

until you're actually in it.

So I've appreciated learning with Nancy

and Bob, who are the other registrars, aunt Andrew now.

And I would like to continue as a registrar,

and I'm interested in, of course, as everyone is in,

in everything being on the up

and up with the voting machines and all the elections.

So, do you have any questions?

Thank you, Michelle. Board questions?

Comments, Mr. Sidney? Yeah.

What party are you registered in?

Republican.

If I may ask,

who are the other registrars at this time?

So currently the clerk is unenrolled Bob

Awkward is Democrat

And Nancy North

Graves.

Nancy North Graves a Republican.

And so this position became open

because of the change in the composition of the board.

So in other words, prior to Andrew's appointment,

Diane Packer was a member of the Democratic committee.

So there were two Democrats

and two Republicans when the composition changed

with the introduction of Andrew who was appointed,

and he's a member of the unenrolled that allowed

both parties to submit candidates.

Okay. And was Ms. Shaw submitted by the Republicans?

She is she, she, yes. Yes, she was last year.

And now she's up for reappointment. That's correct. Thank

You.

I I just wanted to underst this year.

I, I just wanted to understand how that was working. Yep.

Any other questions? Okay. We'll vote at this time.

Each of you have a ballot.

Oh,

Mr. Erickson.

Certainly. Madam Chair, I have four votes

for Michael Abbott and one vote for Debbie Shaw.

Roll call. Say who voted? Mr. Sidney.

Mr. T

Sir? Mr. Evans. Mr.

T

Sir. Ms. Slager? Mr. Abbott? Sir. Mr. Abbott? Sir.

Ms. Shaw? Okay.

Thank you for your service, Ms. Shaw and Mr. Abbott.

Sir, please, Mr. Walsh will be in touch

with you with regard to next steps.

You'll need to be signed in by the clerk's office.

Next up are appointments

for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

We have five positions that are open to your terms.

And just a couple of comments.

Randy Johnson and Susan Crossley are actually

traveling and they are on now.

So I'm gonna take them first

and then we'll, we'll move through the rest

of the, the list.

Yes. So, Mr. Johnson, are you available

or are you still on a ferry?

Hi, I'm off the ferry.

I'm in a car with my wife, my brother-in-law

and sister-in-law, but I'm able to talk.

Wonderful. We, we have your application materials and so,

because there's so many applicants for this board,

I'd like to ask, instead of going through your reason

for wanting to serve again, I'm going

to ask the board if they have any questions for you.

That's great.

I have no any

questions from members of the board?

I do have one question. Hi, Mr. Johnson.

Thank you for your service.

Do you feel in, in your, in your role,

do you feel that you, what

challenges do you see with our affordable housing residents

that you are gonna have to respond to?

What, what upcoming challenges do you foresee?

Well, I think one thing that trust always endeavors

to do is create

or facilitate the creation of more units

of affordable housing.

And, you know, anyone familiar with

that field knows it's always a struggle to get that done.

I think, you know, the trust was instrumental in getting

Auburn Street in the position it's in now.

I think we're looking ahead to work on

getting another project underway of similar scale

and that's, I I see that as the primary thing

that I would like to be involved in

and, you know, being on the, on the board.

Thank you so much.

Any other questions? Okay, let's move on

to Susan Crossley.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson. Safe travels.

You're welcome. Thank you.

Ms.

Crossley, are you in a place where you can speak?

Yes, I am welcome. Thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, I'm up in overlooking Niagara Falls

and I have a little corner in the restaurant here on a deck,

so I'm fine, I can speak.

Okay. We'll try not to hold all of that against you.

So you,

You were at the,

I believe the end of your first term.

Correct.

And I'd like

to ask the board if you have any questions or comments

after reviewing the application materials.

Ms. Crossley, I'd like to know

what you have found most challenging

over, over this first term.

I think that, you know, there's, it's twofold, I think

with what we're trying to do.

I completely agree with Randy

and the need for more units to be developed,

but I'm also very concerned about maintaining properties

that people have in Natick.

I think, you know, my background in the nonprofit sector, I,

I saw what would happen when people are at risk of eviction

because rents go up and they can't afford it.

So I, I think that's another major role that the trust,

you know, has to keep, keep working towards,

to make sure the people living in affordable housing in

Natick, seniors, people with disabilities, families,

that they have the support

and resources they need to be able to,

to stay in their homes and not be at risk of eviction.

Thank you, Ms. Crosley.

Any questions, comments from the board?

Then we'll go on to the next applicant. Is Reggie Lease on?

Okay, we'll come back to him. Oh, he's, he is,

sorry, I have to find up.

I don't see him earlier.

Yes, I off.

Oh, there you are. Yes, Mr. Lee,

You've just un you've just unmuted.

I find him on there, so, thanks Mr. Lee,

could you tell us, just to refresh my memory,

how many terms you've served?

I've just completed my first term.

Your first term,

Correct.

And what have you found most challenging in this in the

last three years or last two years?

Sorry.

You know, I'm gonna, I'll have to reiterate a little bit

of, of prior speakers is regard to, you know, the

need for an access

of affordable housing in the town of Natick.

And it, the challenge that takes

to develop affordable housing

and maintain affordable housing in the town.

But more explicit, I think we, we need, we, we, we started

to be more expensive regarding, you know,

letting people know in the town what we're trying to achieve

and what the goals are of the,

of the Affordable Housing trust board.

And I think this takes work, it takes time

and I think it, we need to allow the people of Natick

to understand what we're trying to achieve

and how we're going about our,

what our strategic goal goals are, what we, how we're,

how we're doing versus their goals.

Those goals and essentially, and the, and, and,

and highlighting the programs

and successes that we're having.

So I think it, you know, that's twofold type of issue

that we need to do that we, that we've had

and we need to continue to address in the,

hopefully in the next two years.

Thank you Mr. Lee. Mr. Evans.

Thank you Madam Chair. Just a question

following up on that.

One of the things that the zoning bylaws stipulates is

you either can contribute to an affordable housing

trust fund or you can create affordable housing units.

Now most developers these days opt

to do the payment in lieu.

So my question is, how would you see

optimizing the use of collecting those funds from builders

in, in the Affordable housing trust?

Clearly the, you know, funds flowing

to affordable housing is beneficial, but

however, you know, I think that,

however, you know, some of these numbers

that we do speak about could be quite large,

but with, without, without control of property,

the land itself, the ability of the town to,

to effectuate, you know, the developments

of substantial affording housing is, is low.

I, I will assure you that taking funds in lieu

and utilize them towards our goals

and our programs is much appreciated

and we'll do that efficiently in the future.

However, I think that anything that can be done with

regarding to change zoning in the town of Natick

to facilitate the development of affordable housing units

directly, it would be a, a significant benefit to the town

and that would require change to our zoning and zoning.

S

Thank you very much.

Any other questions for members of the board?

Okay, thank you Mr. Lee. Mr. Kramer.

Hello?

Hello, Mr. Kramer. How are you?

I'm good, how are you?

Well, thank you.

I'd like to ask members of the board you have,

you've served, we have your application materials.

I'd like to ask members of the board if,

if you have any questions for Mr. Kramer,

then I will ask the same question.

Over the last several years

that you've served on the Affordable Housing Trust,

what are some of the challenges that you,

that you've encountered and you foresee the trust facing in

the next two to four years?

You know, I, I, I think my, my colleagues have hit on many

of, of the significant points in,

in some of, of the biggest challenges.

You know, I would say the number one challenge being

real estate and Natick is expensive.

So, you know, we need to, you know,

five Auburn Street was a, was a rare opportunity and,

and we've taken it and we've done what we can with

what we have to advance it.

You know, and I, I think, you know,

the biggest challenge is to be, is to continue looking

for those opportunities where we truly can make an impact

and, and create units of affordable housing.

I think another challenge slash goal would be to

preserve the units that we have.

Other challenges that I could think of are the fact

that we are a, a, a board of volunteers and,

and, you know, I think we've become

stronger and, and more informed about affordable housing

and how the programs work on a local,

state and federal level.

And, you know, it, it, it's a, it truly takes time

and effort to learn how to be an effective member

of the board as opposed to just, you know,

cheering and advocating for affordable housing, which is,

I think only one part of our job.

Arja.

Thank you Mr. Kramer, that, that is a very good point.

Any questions or comments from members of the board?

Thank you, Mr. Kramer. Mr. Ramachandran,

Thank you.

As the chair of the, the current chair

of the NA Affordable Housing Trust, I'd like you

to also answer the same question,

and I recognize that you'll probably need to reiterate some

of what your colleagues have said, but

what do you see are the challenges facing the trust in the

next two to four years?

You know, there's definitely an overlap

between the points that raised by others.

I just wanted to add a few more points.

So I kind of see the challenges.

There's like fourfold challenges.

The first thing is funding.

I mean, it's, there's very little source of funding.

You know, we are thankful for the town appropriation for

what we have been getting so far.

You know, at between like at $80,000 you could barely build

a bathroom and like, you know, you're really looking forward

to leveraging some of the CPA funds.

The, the second is there's a significant amount

of disinformation because of the,

the nature of the political discourse

and the, the nature of the conversations

that happen over social media with very little information.

So that continues to be a challenge.

So I think it is important for trust members to be able

to provide facts and to dispel any myths

where such myths arise.

The, the third is, it's just expensive to build housing.

I mean, this is not just an affordable housing challenge,

it's just housing challenge.

In some ways it's more expensive

to build affordable housing than market rate housing.

If you take the regulations into consideration.

Case in point, the total development cost

for a unit at five Auburn Street, if you average it out,

it's $650,000.

I was talking with a colleague

who works in affordable housing in Cambridge

where it's close to between 750 to $800,000

for a two bedroom, two bath affordable housing units.

The fourth is like, there's very little land

to build affordable housing

and this is where zoning is going to come into play,

not just to create more affordable housing.

In some ways, I think it's important to create more housing,

even though we are an affordable housing trust, let's say.

If there is a zone identified within, you know,

walkable distance from Natick Center

and West Natick station,

where you can build perhaps like three units

instead of one unit.

Like many cities are embracing, like, you know,

like challenging single family zones.

This also answers Mr.

Evan's question, like, how do you prevent developers from

building enormous homes on these parcels?

I mean, the developers will do whatever it

takes to make a profit.

If they're allowed to build three small homes

and they can make the same profit, they'll do that.

I mean, but we need to have the kind

of zoning laws that all of them.

So that's where it'll, it's really important

to continue the dialogue

and I will wrap it up by maybe not a challenge,

but an opportunity here to work with other town bodies

and town administration

to perhaps like rethink the rules we have on our books

to like just pave the way for more housing.

Thank you Mr. Ramachandran.

Any questions or comments from members of the board?

Okay, we will move on to Ms. Hughes, Kaitlyn Hughes.

Hello everyone. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you Billy for setting this up.

My name is Kaitlyn Hughes.

I'm a two year resident of Natick.

My full-time job is

with the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

I also hold a master

of law in international human rights law.

I am a founding member

of the Young Professionals Board with Rodman for Kids.

So I do have board experience,

but really what most aligns me with this board is my

home ownership through the 40 DB program in Nat.

I bought my condo two years ago through that program

as a first generation low income student

and daughter of an immigrant traditional pathways towards

home ownership really were not attainable to me.

Bruce, like you said, housing is really, really terribly

unaffordable, especially in Natick.

I got the chance to shadow the

board last month that they're meeting.

They're really doing incredible work.

But I feel like this is a perspective

that might be missing from the current roster.

So I'd love to offer my list on where I can.

Thank you for your consideration.

Happy to take any questions.

Thank you Ms. Hughes. Questions from the board.

Ms. Hughes, if you were not appointed tonight,

would you be interested in being involved

as an associate member of the trust?

Yes, absolutely.

I appreciate you putting your application forward

and I will go to the seventh applicant, which is Mr.

Duggan. Ah, Mr.

Duggan, if you could come to the podium, introduce yourself

and if you could tell us briefly why you want to serve.

We do have your application materials.

Thank you for having me tonight.

I've been a resident of Natick for going on seven years now.

My wife and I bought our home here.

Then we've been raising our family here.

I have two young children who are at Lilja,

one going into third grade.

The other starting. And I have been very interested in

becoming more involved in the community

as my kids have gotten older

and life's gotten a little easier.

I have deep experience in affordable housing.

I am the head of marketing

and communications for a firm that invests exclusively in

and builds only affordable housing.

I've been doing that for several years

and I have a perspective

that encompasses everything from the developer perspective,

the thin margins to build affordable housing, as well as

what it takes to get community buy-in while

to develop new affordable housing

and preserve the affordable housing that we have.

I also happen to come from a background

that is not very affluent.

I know what it's like to struggle.

I know what it's like to grocery shop with a calculator

and so I've seen it from all sides

and I just wanted to, you know, take this opportunity

to put myself forward for consideration for the trust fund.

I trust the select board to make the right mix of people

and experience for this.

And I thank you for your consideration.

Thank you. Mr. Duggan.

Members of the board questions or comments?

I'll ask you the same question I asked Ms. Hughes were,

if you were not to be appointed tonight,

would you be interested in being

involved as an associate member?

I would, yes.

Thank you.

And you've applied to another border committee?

Yeah, the, the Leonard Morris Grants committee. Okay.

We will not be hearing those interviews this week,

this evening, but thank you.

Thank you. At this time we've heard all of the

applicants for the Affordable Housing Trust fund.

If you could fill out your applica, your ballots

and pass 'em down to Mr. Erickson, that would be great.

Just gonna get them

Or he can

Five, right?

Alright.

Yes.

Thank you

Catherine.

We're not doing the Moore line of credit. Okay.

I'll, I'll explain why. Okay.

Are we doing the net zero?

Yes. Yes.

And again next week because there's a resignation we got

today, so we're doing both times. Actually,

You know, if I may, Madam Chair, yes.

I just wanna say the quality of applicants for this,

for these positions is extraordinarily high.

I agree. Yes, it is time

and this was at least for me, an extremely tough decision.

And I just wanted to say that whatever the result is,

we're gonna end up with a really good set of appointees.

It has not always been the case that we've had a strong

community interest in affordable housing.

So I I too am very pleased. Agreed. Ditto.

Wonderful.

And while we're waiting, if I can just add

that if you are not appointed it, please

think about other ways that you can be involved

because this really was the most impressive group of,

of the full slate of candidates

that I've seen since I've been on the board.

I would be happy with any of them.

So if you aren't, it's not a reflection on you in any way.

That's actually true for almost any board we've seen.

They are getting good.

We've had a very strong response from the community

for which I'm very thankful.

Yes, Mr. Evans. Mad

Chair.

I just had a question about the

assistant positions Associate.

Associate, I'm sorry. Thank you.

Is there a limit in that or is it?

Nope, there's no limit.

So the Affordable Housing Trust has discussed

the Declaration of Trust sets the number of voting members,

but what they are doing now, there are people

who are interested and expressed interest,

but wouldn't be able to submit their name, for example,

because one withdrew his application

because he said he didn't have enough specialized knowledge

or understand the regulations

and the, the context he wanted to be,

have a better and deeper background

understanding of affordable housing trust.

So he withdrew his application,

but he's willing to, he's been attending meetings

and he's willing to serve on subcommittees

with voting members on projects in order to ramp up

and build bench strength.

That's one thing the trust has not had in the last five,

six years, maybe longer, is to have a deep bench

of experience and people who are willing

to work in subcommittees.

So that's my understanding of what

that role will look like. Perfect.

Thank you

Mr. Erickson.

Thank you. Would you like me to just read from the top

to the bottom please and number of votes?

Yes. Okay. So just starting at the top

and then I'm just following along with the names

as listed on the agenda.

Reginald received five votes. Glenn received four votes.

Susan received five votes. Ganesh received five votes.

Caitlin received, received one vote.

Randy received two votes and Patrick received three votes.

So top five vote getters for the five seats that I have.

So please correct my math is Reg Reginald, Glenn,

Susan, Ganesh, and Patrick

That, that's what I have.

Thank you for, I'm

Sorry, do you want to read

who you voted for into the record?

Yes, please.

Could you

Test?

Do you wanna pass him back? Okay.

Where's your short term memory?

I'm sorry, I don't remember either. Rich, I'll just

To save time, I'll just go ahead and do mine.

Reginald, I voted for Reginald Lee, Glenn Kramer,

Susan Crossley, Ganesh Ram, and Randy Johnson.

I am.

Thank you very much.

Ditto.

Okay, we got a ditto.

I I have Reginald Lease, Glenn Kramer,

Sue Crossley, Ganesh, and Patrick.

I voted for Reginald, Susan, Ganesh, Kaitlyn and Patrick.

I voted for Reginald Lee, Glenn Kramer, Susan Crosley,

Ganesh Ramachandra, and Patrick Duggan.

Thank you. So, okay,

Posterity.

Mr. Dugin. Did I say that right? Duggans Duggans. Yeah.

Duggans. Mr.

Duggan, bill Billy Walsh from the town administrator office

will be in touch with you about being sworn in

and what you need next steps.

Great. Thank you so much.

And thank you everyone who applied. Thank you. Ms. Hughes.

I encourage you to be involved

and also to look at other committees

that you might be interested in.

Thank you so much for putting your name forward

and submitting an application.

So with reference to the two other sets of appointments,

I'm just going to explain a couple things.

Morris Leonard Grant's panel, there are two

positions and three year terms.

Sarah Bennis has withdrawn her application.

However, there are the two incumbents.

There was a miscommunication

between the Metro West Community Foundation

and our office with regard to their need to reapply.

And so they were unaware of that requirement until today.

So I have asked them

to submit their applications and then Mr.

Dugan, cor and Isra

and those two will be interviewed on

July 9th at our next meeting.

So we are not going to be hearing those interviews today.

With regard to the net zero natick committee interview,

there is one opening advertised with

one incumbent and two new applicants.

However, today we received a resignation from Connor

who is on that committee opening up a second

three year term.

He is, he's unable to

continue serving so at the request of the members

of the net zero N community, instead of, instead

of having interviews today

and then again for an empty seat next week,

which seems a bit redundant, we're gonna move all of those

to 7 9 25 as well.

So the net zero

commu interviews will be held on 7 9 20 25.

At this point, we'll move into discussion and decision

and the first item on the agenda is critical success factors

to town to guide town staff initiatives.

And I will invite Mr. Por Pap, I'm gonna mess up your name.

Jay, I'm so sorry. Poor paddock.

I have a mental blank and I apologize for that. Mr.

Jay, if Mr. J thank you.

If you would like to, yeah, I I just wanted you

to talk a bit about what the critical success factors are.

Just contextualize it for us

and then we, then we can talk about

why we chose the ones we did.

So Jay Port Paddock Town communications director

and are you gonna share Jamie

The, I made you co-host a few Got it. Wanted to share

Directly.

I just wasn't, if you gimme one minute, I've,

I'm more than happy to pull it up though too.

Well, I'm gonna, I think I've got a

pretty big roll coming up, so I don't mind sharing,

but one second to get all the documents.

Jamie, I need to pull it up on a browser.

Do you, I don't go too deep,

but do you mind just giving me a little bit of time

and then I'll take over in then 60 seconds?

Sure. Would the board wanna move on to just another item

to let Jay, I can,

I can cover one South main if the board like, let's,

Let's talk about one South Maine,

that's item F That would be great.

And I believe I sent an email to the board just to try

to frame this conversation just in brief and for the public.

About five years ago, in 2020, the, the select board

voted to enter into an agreement with the owner

of one South Maine to do, among, among other things,

complete or support.

And the completion of the town is actually gonna take the

lead on completing some sidewalk work at

that location in exchange for an easement.

So that's another building in downtown Natick

where the property boundaries actually extend into the right

of, into what's perceived of

as the right of way and sidewalk.

So it was a negotiated agreement at that time.

Fast forward to today, that project's under construction

and in working with the same developer, same owner,

we realized that there's efficiencies

to having the developer actually do

the, all the sidewalk work.

So the town wouldn't do any

of the sidewalk work still in exchange for an easement.

However, we do need an amendment, an agreement to,

to amend the agreement in exchange

for the town doing the work.

We would give essentially,

or the proposal is to give a credit to the developer

for fees that they would pay the town and equivalent or,

or approximate to the amount

that the sidewalk costs would be.

Again, there's information in the packet

and there's information that

was sent to the board in advance.

It's all public documentation.

In my opinion, this is a strong benefit.

It, it allows for the developer to have the flexibility

and the, and the, the timing

and getting that work done all in

with one contractor at once.

'cause it wasn't all the sidewalk work,

it was only sidewalk work on South Maine

that the town was gonna be doing.

So Pond Street

and West Central Street were gonna be, it was gonna be

challenging to coordinate all that work.

There's still the financial benefit

to the developer as well.

We're giving them a credit or,

or an an a forgiveness on some fees.

Not all, it's a, it's a capped amount

and the town still receives the easement

that's important for the town.

So I would argue it's a win-win.

Any questions just needs to vote

of the board and then we'll execute.

If you have any questions that

we're happy to answer any questions,

Any questions seems clear to me.

So the motion would be to approve

and allow yes, self main agreement

and allow the chair to sign or to instruct the

Town administrator?

No, we have your signature on there

so we can add your

electronic signatures to it. Okay. It's all,

All

Of us is, yeah, it's all

of us on the document. Okay.

We're just approving

That and it's really

just an updated agreement.

We're not doing an amendment to the former agreement,

we're just doing a new agreement. Okay.

I move to approve the updated agreement

for one South Maine.

Second,

Moved by Ms. Pope, seconded by Mr. Sydney.

All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Passes.

Any opposed? Passes. 5 0 0. Thank you Mr. Erickson.

There is one second part to this though,

to approve a request to occupy a public way

for the sidewalk replacement.

Right. So now that we're gonna let them do the work,

they don't need to be able to occupy the way to do the work.

This is more on the Pond Street and other side. So second.

Moved by Mr. Sydney, seconded by Mr. Evans.

All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed?

5 0 0. Thank you Mr. Erickson.

Great. Thank you

Mr. J.

Yep. And just a brief question for the chair.

I can, I'm only gonna use three minutes.

I can give a total voiceover

or I could share two slides,

which may or may not be helpful.

I'm content doing either one. I

I yield to you.

Okay. We'll do the voiceover version. Okay.

So the topic we're talking about right now is the idea

of introducing critical success factors.

You might hear me say CSF just as an acronym,

but fundamentally what we're doing is we're talking about a

set of work that's been going on for almost two full years,

where ultimately this becomes

a guiding set of materials

and ultimately really principles that shape

how we achieve the vision of

what the town wants to accomplish.

In corporate America. This is very common.

You have goals and objectives

and you can pick your favorite acronym,

the various consultants sell.

We essentially embodied a version that Westboro actually did

and it successfully rolled out in a municipal setting.

I come from a 20 year corporate America background.

First 10 years I was just a kid.

Next eight years I figured out how

to do business at Staples, a Fortune 100 company.

And then my next five years I kind of worked within startups

and got to figure out how you actually build this.

It wasn't a natural fit in the municipal setting.

So that's why I stole from Westboro.

We've been talking to various iterations

of the board over time

and we were able to make some

good progress in recent months.

So what, I guess, Jamie,

I'll steal the screen share just in case I move it,

but what we're gonna flash are critical success factors.

Eight of those, which the board has been discussing

and ultimately is ult, you know, been having some degree

of meetings but wants to bring this in front of the public

so you guys can, you know,

have a public discussion about the eight success factors,

which will ultimately guide all town work.

Any town initiative that we town staff work on should

ultimately map to one of these eight items.

So that's what we're proposing

and that's just kind of framing the conversation

that the board can now have.

Thank you. A, a note to the public, these are numbered

but they're not numbered in order of importance

or weight or anything like that.

They're just numbered for, for reference purposes,

I'd like to open it to the, the board to discuss

how we came about these or anything

that you want the public to know.

Mr. Evans, I

Just wanted to reiterate what Mr.

Per paddock mentioned that we've,

we've discussed this at great length to try to

get it all on one page and,

and to get it to, to be meaningful.

And I think I'm confident that we did that.

I agree. And the most important part

of putting this together was to avoid jargon.

To ensure that the words we used were the words we wanted

to use that had weight and meaning

and meant what we said, which is one

of the reasons it took a couple of years

and several retreat sessions.

I'm really proud of the work we did.

I think it gives town departments

and town staff a sense of what the board holds important

and what our values are

and what we expect to see in terms

of the work they produce. Mr. Sidney?

Yeah, I, the only comment I have, I,

I really appreciate all the work Mr.

Poor Paddock put in to, you know, working with our,

the discussions we had during our retreats.

I would like to see the numbers replaced

with bullets in the final version.

That's fair.

Okay.

Just to make it really clear

that they're not prioritized. Yeah.

Okay.

I could agree with, with that. Fair enough.

Yeah, fair enough.

That sounds perfectly well And

to also have an adoption date on it.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's very important.

Other members of the board, and I

Think we talked about both an adoption date as well

as perhaps did we talk about an update date?

Maybe we talked about that for another policy, an

Update date. I,

I think that was on there that we would have an adoption

and then once, if it were updated we would

Say annually we should review this.

Right. Same thing with the financial

management principles, right?

This should be on a calendar for us to review.

So, so we are in June and next year

and June, prior to June, probably

after the board reorg in April

during a retreat.

Let's look at this and make sure,

I know we've gotten feedback from departments

that whether there's something that's not clear,

but yes, this should be on a regular review cycle.

Like some of the, I mean we don't look at every policy every

year, but this is something that's important.

So Agreed. Good

Ion

And just, yes, please just comment

as we go through the next year,

if we can get feedback from our staff

and if you can compile that, if there are any so that,

you know, we're ready to review this next

year, that would be very helpful.

Yeah, just, just to speak briefly to kind

of the last two comments as far

as revisions and then feedback.

We can do both just to kind of refresh

and, you know, ultimately give the public some information

on the backside of us, you know,

and having the board adopt these, these,

these aren't very similar to like our current vision

and value statement that's up on the select board

or other sort of documents.

This becomes truly operational.

So we're doing an inventory

and audit of everything the towns departments are working on

and then ultimately it maps to these, so we just have

to figure out the right cadence when the board

potentially revises it.

But then to the last question about feedback,

absolutely we'll fundamentally be giving feedback

because it's not, again, it's not a static document.

This will literally drive the work we do.

So there will be feedback and iterations

or at least suggestions coming from town staff

that the board can ultimately adopt.

So at this time, if there are no more comments from the

board or questions from public, Ms.

Vickers, if you could approach the

podium, introduce yourself.

Hello, Brinley Vickers. Thank you so much.

I just wanted to say I've been following this

and one of the reasons I came in person tonight is

'cause I really wanted to say I was very happy to see the

depth and breadth of this.

I think that it's very important

and I love the fact that you put the proactive environmental

sustainability in there.

I feel like that works in partnership with so many things

and oftentimes gets left off of the list in terms of a lens

for how to view things.

And so I really wanted to speak publicly to say thank you

so much for including

that specifically in this process. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

If there are no other comments, is there anyone online

who has a comment, please raise your virtual

hand or a question.

Seeing,

Seeing none, I'll ask

for a motion from the board move

To adopt the critical success factor three

document revised.

April 24th, 25.

Second. Moved by Mr. Sidney, seconded by Ms. Pope.

All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed?

5 0, 0. And thank you so much for leading us

through this process over the last two years.

Thank you Jay. Our next item is to,

our communications director will talk about

a communications calendar.

And this is an opportunity for the board to decide

to standardize which days and months the board will observe.

We've never done that before.

It's kind of been hit or miss in what we remember and doing.

And so Jay, please.

Yep. So as the chair kind of spoke there, it's definitely

for the board ultimately to adopt this document

and inform what we town staff do.

Ultimately, a lot of the holidays, federal

or cultural holidays, anything

that we recognize ends up kinda showing up on Facebook

and social media as well

as potentially our website and select instances.

What this does is it allows us to have a plan,

quite frankly, as we go through this too often, I, myself

and my day job end up promoting, you know, event

or holiday X and then the next question is, why not Y?

So this just adds some formality, a chance for the board

to give any feedback.

Revisions, we're not seeking a vote today.

This is very preliminary.

Ultimately, as well as the public giving any feedback

that they choose to this.

If you as I'll scroll through

and show you the 36 observances that are featured here.

You know, think of it pretty simply.

We don't want to do something too often.

There's only 52 weeks in a year.

So what we have is a, you know, a menu of a preliminary 36.

Ultimately there are additional opportunities for us

to do some proactive engagement if the board chooses to give

that direction, whether it be the interfaith community,

Natick is United, our veteran affairs

or veteran services director, we can ultimately,

you know, seek a lot of input.

But this is a very early stage preliminary

to get the conversation going.

And then it primarily comes

to life on the town's Facebook page.

Our fire department, our police department all do also do

some sporadic recognition.

It gives them a tool as well.

And ultimately it gives the board the ultimate opportunity

to adopt and give feedback.

So as I scroll through, just to kind of allow everyone

to take in what's on this document, like I mentioned,

there's 36 individual holidays.

I'm not gonna go through and reference any of them,

but January through December 11, federal holidays

that are marked in a blue.as well as 23 cultural

holidays and or events.

And then two that just fit the other bucket.

So this, this was informed by looking, I talked

with our NPS counter, my NPS counterpart.

The schools don't necessarily have a calendar per se,

they adopt individual holidays,

but I thought this approach is a little bit more

programmatic for us to operationalize.

Thank you so much. Members of the board,

do you have questions or comments Mr.

Sidney and then Ms. Schlager?

Yeah, I got one to add. We have

an election day every March.

That was one of my

Questions and I would add that

because it's our local election

and is in some ways more important than the one

that happens occasionally in November.

Yep.

Ms. Schlager.

Yeah, I, I realize it's not a,

the most celebrated religious holiday,

but I think Hanukkah should be on theirs

because we do celebrate

that on the common we have a Menorah lighting

and I think that should be part of it for December.

Good point.

No, I missed that. Ms. Pope

Rich, thank you.

That was one Mr. Sydney, that was one

of my questions was about our NA election.

One other question I have was about Columbus Day

and I see that it says is currently named

per the select board.

Perhaps we are resolved on, on, on that.

I, maybe this is something for us to discuss later.

The name of it Columbus Day versus Indigenous People's Day.

I think this is something that we might discuss.

So that was something that was discussed when I was,

when Bruce and I were first elected to the board

and it was put, the suggestion was put forth Columbus

Day slash Indigenous People's Day.

And then the temperature of the board was, that's kind

of like saying, you know, recognizing the union

and the South on the end of the Civil War,

it's either one or the other.

And the board needed to make a decision at the time the

board punted.

And so today at currently it is called Lum Columbus Day.

So should the board decide to change that, that we need to

put that slate that as an agenda item

and discuss Mr. Erickson,

Another component of that dialogue is

that it hasn't officially been changed

by the state or federal government either.

Right. So we actually are observing the federal

and state holiday known as Columbus Day.

Were not, they have not changed that name.

So the term is sort of a beyond the town officially that,

and one of the arguments that I remember hearing was

that Columbus Day was less about Columbus

and more about Italian heritage

and about the, they use Columbus as sort of the, the face of

that is my understanding from the, from the,

from the dialogue that the board had at that time.

So it's just thinking about what, what that holiday for some

might mean versus, and that could be why the,

the name has not changed, but just providing a little bit of

that additional context from that dialogue

that I recall from, I think it was

four or five years ago when this was,

Yeah, four years ago. Four years ago

When this was debated by this board

The first year.

Any other comments about the schedule of

the draft schedule that has been put before us, Ms.

Wilger and then Mr. Evans? Yeah, just

You, you probably have already spoken to some,

but reaching out to, you know, our, our

religious members in, in our community to make sure that,

that there's nothing that we're leaving

off that's important to them.

Yeah, I, I mentioned that briefly.

I have not yet, but absolutely.

That's a great call and I, I can take that.

I do have pretty strong relations across those folks.

Thank you

Mr. Evans. Mine

Is just a quick comment on a a thank you for,

for putting this together.

It's, it is very helpful.

We've overly relied on our chair quite honestly

to, to flag a lot of these

and it's very helpful for us to

see what's coming in the next month or two. So thank you.

It's a far more equitable approach.

I'm also curious why August has nothing

Because it's hot.

I'm just kidding.

It was words we could add Beltane,

That's, we could add my birthday.

Yes. That could be an other, that's

Definitely a national holiday. Yes.

Well, you know, it's interesting

because you know, obviously we

recognize the Solstice system and equinoxes just sort of

normally, but there's also the halves between those

and we recognize three out of the four of the halves,

Groundhog Day May day and Halloween.

The one we don't recognize is the one

in August, which is Beltane

That is like so deep into the trivia land.

That's like me saying

Rainman

Of you.

That's like me saying Halloween really should be all Hallows

Eve and be cultural slash religious,

but I'm not gonna impose that all Saints Day. My

Wife complains about it every year.

So that's how I know it.

Ah, okay. Or Boxing Day, I think,

I think this is a great first start

and perhaps at the end of the summer coming back

with whatever you find for us to look at.

Yep. That was, thank you for this initiative.

This was really great. Thanks.

Next up is the Johnson survey report decision criteria.

And again, we'll turn it over to Mr. J,

It's the j

You can go with Mr.

J going forward. I'm just,

so I'm gonna walk us through a recent flash vote survey.

I will say, just as a little disclaimer,

or maybe it's a movie trailer

before you watch the feature film,

I definitely think there's an, there's an opportunity for me

to come back to the board at the end of the summer,

potentially even fall

and do a little bit of a informational about

what flash vote is and is not. I just, I

Would deeply appreciate that.

Yeah, I, and I, I take the onus, it's a little bit

of education, but I can say I think it'll head off some

of the recent dialogue that I've heard.

Wonderful. Yep.

If, if I might just interrupt here,

I think it would be helpful to have

that somewhere on the website

whenever we are discussing the results of this

because people have

the wrong impression about what it is

and, you know, rather than spend the time at every meeting

where the flash vote is discussed to have, you know,

something that gets distributed maybe along

with the results or, or you know,

Or just a reference reference.

Like if it's on the website, say, please see.

So you mean a reference

To what you're talking about explaining what

To do, an explanation of flash vote.

Why it's statistically

I definitely wanna do a meeting

and I would definitely put the materials on the website.

There is a webpage

that's very prominently linked from the homepage.

So I guess I'm just trying to make sure

that I deliver on that.

But

Yeah, but I think that every time we discuss this,

that there's a, a, a baseline education that needs

to be given to people that are seeing it for the first time

or maybe the second time or the 10th time

because they had the wrong impression about what it is.

And you know, I think you're right.

You know, what you're hearing in the community is,

is I think people don't understand it yet.

So if there's a way to,

and I'll leave that up to you a, a way to figure out how

to make sure that that happens not just one time,

but every time we do a flash vote that we,

Yeah, just one clarification, we've,

this is I believe the sixth or seventh flash vote.

Yeah, but this is only the third one we

brought to the select board.

So this is part of our normal course of business.

The ones that we brought to the select board are,

because they're prominent, they're more important

and those also bring more divisive topics,

more emotionally charged.

So therefore the concern often is heightened in that regard.

So with thus far we've done immigration documentation

and now the second Johnson.

But absolutely every time we bring someone into a flash

vote, there's gonna be a subset

of people that it's brand new.

There's also gonna be a subset of people

that hasn't gotten past that barrier.

But I think, I think the materials I, I'm

probably 51% complete.

I think they can take us from, we'll say the second floor

of a 24 building to at least the 15th floor.

So like fundamentally there's, there's a huge education

and I, I, I understand the trust things,

but I think education will yield some positive trust.

Awesome. So just, just a brief headline

but to the survey at hand.

So this is a Johnson related survey.

The intent was around decision criteria that the board

can start to use towards the final, you know, parts

of this two and a half year process.

There's three primary findings pretty succinctly

around the potential decision criteria.

The two that popped was the notion

of preserving open space parks

and fields, 72% of all of our responders.

And the second being minimizing the

impact to the neighborhood.

And that was 57 of all responders.

We asked about the preferred financial approach

and it was preferred to use the existing funds,

which was 48%, which was 37% higher than the next choice,

which was really the yin

and yang of worry about funds later.

So I'll, we'll go into some details.

This is just to get us started.

The particular survey sample is certainly engaged

with the Johnson future use project.

82% are at least somewhat engaged.

There's a population, 26%

of those 82 percentage points is actively engaged.

So it's a, I think that will end up playing itself out

as we go through these reser results.

So as far as the validity

of the data, oops, sorry.

As far as the validity of the data

in total we had 681 responses

a against our 37,000 natick residents.

So no, we did not get everyone at the table.

But ultimately even with that 681

and then I'm gonna talk about the member panel 580

of the 6 81, we have a margin of error that fits within the,

you know, kind of, you know, the strong range of within four

or five percentage points.

So that just means anything within

that four percentage point bound should not be taken

to the bank as long as it stays,

there's a variability within that margin of error.

We should feel good about it.

The member panel response rate,

again member panels is defined as someone who

registered prior to the survey being deployed.

The response rate was about 44% of that population.

It's a little bit lower than we've seen in recent ones.

I'll talk through some of the variants

of the member panel versus the other, which is the delta.

Fundamentally this is our, it's kind of a,

not a best practice to do the same topic.

Back to back flash vote is very different than

what people might perceive as general surveys.

These are five question surveys in 48 hours

to get immediate results,

you often bring in sometimes single topic motivators

and in that case sometimes you

can see a little bit of a bias.

So in order to mitigate that,

and I'll show the data in the next few slides,

we're gonna rely on the member panel but show the other.

As far as the first question, which was geared

around the awareness and engagement,

that 82 percentage points that I've referenced is breaks out

between 56% somewhat engaged

or the 26 percentage points actively engaged.

When you look at the variances with within chart A,

you can see we're gonna primarily focus on the blue,

which is the member panel.

So when you go from the member panel, you can see that the

actively engaged to, sorry,

actively engaged at 26 percentage points all the way up

to 56% somewhat engaged.

But when you compare the red

and blue, so blue being the member panel,

red being the other, that's where you see plus 31

and minus 49 percentage points.

There's just a large variability of the people that came in

or were unregistered

and there could be a whole multitude of reasons why people,

you know, would choose not to register data privacy.

Maybe I just don't wanna do it,

but there could be other people that came in and registered

and potentially had a particular