Select Board - Regular Meeting

Okay. Um, let's see. Welcome everybody. I'd like to welcome you to the December 22nd, 2025 Boxboro Select Board Meeting. I don't sound excited when I listen to it there. Um it is 7 pm. Um it is 7 pm and as is our custom if you join us to pledge allegiance to the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you everybody. Um, okay. So, we have we're down two members. Um, but we have a quorum, so we'll be able to just zip right through and get things done. So, we will actually we going to start with our video. Were we able to cue that up? Yes. Video. I have a little special Boxboro TV video. BXB TV video. It flashed across my what screen and I just thought we should watch it together. It's 3 minutes of your life. You'll all be fine. He's getting cold.

No, this is just so cute though. And honestly, Emily, if you don't want to be part of this next year, I don't know why not. Look at what it says. Boxboro's holiday lunchon. Oh, is that the one you made, Bob? Yep. Do you want to tell us about it, Mike? You can narrate. Certainly. So, uh, we do a holiday lunchon each year and, uh, as you can see, we invited Emily to come. Yay. You got to make a snowman. All right.

And we had, um, staff members from every department here. um had a little lunchon, made snowmen, and uh Steph McGuinness from the building inspections department coordinated, put together the whole thing. These were her ideas and you can see all the smiling faces and you know, this is one of the little things that we like to do to keep morale up. Um you know, retention and maybe we should show this as a recruitment video. I don't know. You know, get to know each other, have a little bit of fun. Larry again this year won one of the door prizes. Did it? Oh, Larry always wins. He's like the lucky one. It's fixed. It's fixed. Yeah, it's fixed. Yeah. Look at Look at that sweater. Look at that sweater.

But see, Becky's got her reindeer on. It's not quite as like out there as well. The really funny thing is later as it goes, it's like, "Oh, guess who made which snowman?" But you can tell who Rajons is because of his sweater on top of his on top of his radio antenna. And some people got really creative. Yeah. Yeah. There's one downstairs that's really creative. I like the melting one. Oh, he's sad. Sad. Upset. And that one is funny.

So, this there's Oh, and he's got snow a snowball, which I love. Yeah. So, this event as well as the recognition event that we do in the spring are all right. I want to know who made the troll. Really? Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. That was That one was mine. Was that yours? The cyclops. No cyclones. It was a cycl. Oh, I thought it was Shrek or something. They didn't give me two eyes. You only got one eye. Isn't that sad? A. Okay. Wait. But whoever made the dove, come on. That's pretty amazing. I'm sorry. Strong to get another eye from someone. That reminds me of Gumby and Pokey. Yeah, exactly. Yes, it does. Well, I don't want anyone to feel left out. I know we could probably stop now, but I don't want him to say, "How come he didn't show my snowman?"

Yes. Yeah. So, so this employee lunchon as well as the um you know all volunteer recognition that we do in the spring um is funded partly from the um the stipen that the select board has forfeited. That's right. We we donate our stipens. We don't that doesn't fully cover both events. The rest are covered by anonymous donations. Awesome. Okay. So, it's all right. So, no additional taxpayer funds were used beyond hours, stipens, and donations. Wonderful. Well, thank you. And and honestly, I thought that was super fun. Um, yeah, I was just like at home and all of a sudden it popped up in my YouTube, so I thought it was great

on YouTube. Yeah, it was in YouTube. Yeah. So, okay. Next up, um, is there any public input? Any any residents that want to talk about any non-aggenda items? We have one. We have one. Oh, sorry. Hi, Becky. I know you were looking at the screen, but Well, I know because usually I forget them. I know. Well, thank you. So, first, since it's not on your agenda and you don't have another meeting before the end of the year, I'd like to thank and congratulate Jeff Langren on his retirement effective December 31st. The town owes Jeff a huge debt of gratitude for having worked for Boxer for more than 25 years. So, thank you, Jeff, 100%.

That said, between Jeff's retirement and the fact we've lost three full-time police officers in the last six weeks, I'm worried about the morale and safety of our remaining officers. We're down six. We're down to six officers. Town meeting voted a long time ago to always have two officers on, especially on the overnight shift. Additionally, two of the officers that left attended the police academy at a significant cost to the town. Many of our officers are working backto-back 16-our days and are justifiably exhausted. At some point, this becomes a safety concern. I really hope that when you renewed the CH chief's contract and gave him a $20,000 raise, you made his goals employee retention and staff morale. In a year when we're looking at an override, I think $20,000 is ridiculous and frankly tonedeaf. The whole police department thing is starting to feel very Carterish again and we do not want to go back to that dark time.

Thank you, Becky. So, we were actually going to address that in reports at the end so we can take it out of order. Do you want to talk about how we're managing staffing, what's going on? Sure. Um, and even since Becky brought brought it up, justification for, you know, like what how the select board is looking at these numbers.

Sure. Absolutely. Uh so let me just first start with um any any recruitments and and hiring. Uh we always base them on um on comparative analysis. We um you know primarily our 20 comp communities. Uh and that was the data that I presented you for these two contracts as well as the uh three previous contracts um earlier in the year as well as the three union contracts uh which is also the same as what we did for the um the regional dispatch negotiations which we did uh last summer as well. M um as far as the police department um we are advertising we do have applications in and uh interviewing interviews will be starting shortly. Um the the chief has assured me that all shifts will be uh covered and I asked him about uh safety and um and he said that you know that uh while it's um while it's less than the staffing he would like and less than full staffing um he assured me that we'll be safe and and all shifts will be covered.

Okay. Um but before you start Mike you're advertising for how many police officers to fill to fill? It's uh I think it's two. We're down four. Uh we're down three. I believe we'll be down four when Jeff retires. When When Josh Right. When he retires. Yeah. The with next week.

Yep. Um so we are um very conscious of of um what's going to happen during the budget season. And while there have been multiple comments um at at meetings and in the news about staff reductions um in my 40 years of management, I have never laid anyone off and I don't intend on starting now.

Uh we have openings in the police department, openings in the fire department, and an unfilled position in the assessor's department. And um those that assessor's position as well as one each in fire and police. Um, I've talked with uh those department heads and asked them not to fill that last spot yet. Um, until we know exactly, and we're going to talk later about the budget tonight, but until we know the direction of that, I would rather not fill a position than bring somebody on and lay and lay people off.

Um, so we're going to have asked them to advertise for one less than than their openings at least for the time being until we until we know the exact budget direction. Mike, will this um impact like I know we had to have like two officers at any given time, right? Like to make sure that was one of the things that was voted. A town meeting is repeatedly asked for that. Um so will we be able to satisfy that?

Uh we don't always have um two on patrol on the road in the evening. During the daytime we do and as much as possible we do but we I don't think we've had um constant you know two on patrol at night uh for quite a while. So it would we would so we would still have at least two in the day at least one at night and and as much as possible too. When I spoke to the chief there's a little bit of a quandry in order to fill those midnight shifts he would have to order people in. He he puts the overtime out as an option. it doesn't get filled, he'd have to order in. The guys don't want to be ordered in. Okay? You know, so so he kind of he tries to manage that.

But even if we So this if we hire four, he would still have to order in.

No, he wouldn't. If if we had four people, but Town Me's going to have to make a decision. And as Mike said, one of the strategies to not lay people off is to not fill all positions. So as we move through the budget season, we'll be looking at numbers and we'll see what we'll see what kind of a stomach we have to to be able to fill all those. But if we do indeed need to go to a B budget, we will not be filling all four positions. There just it just won't be possible. Um we won't have the money. So, so again, we'll be looking at all these scenarios and um I want to assure people there are is always somebody on duty. We'll be managing the daytime staff to make sure that there's always coverage. It it's not like we'll ever be without coverage. So um we also depend on mutual aid quite frankly. So um luckily we have good relationships with all the towns around us. So, we'll we'll be kind of navigating through that. So, I also understand your concerns, Becky, about um the two newest hires leaving. Um I will say there was strategy behind that, too. They were high. Well, maybe you can explain a little bit about and I don't know if this is okay to talk about in public. It's public record, right? But they were hired like we hired them at a lower step, at a lower rate because to some degree we knew they weren't staying. So,

so when we joined regional dispatch a number of years ago, um we it was very important for us to have a landing place for for everyone who worked for us in dispatch. Um be um there was a uh provision in the negotiations with dispatch prior to when I got here that you know um to take care of them if we joined regional dispatch. We did in fact join regional dispatch. There were a couple of uh safety nets that we put out. One was that they would get um a guaranteed interview and preferential hiring in the regional dispatch

because just you understand we couldn't lose our dispatchers. We had to give them something so that they would stay and continue to dispatch understanding their jobs were being eliminated. Yep. And then uh we hired two of our dispatchers, sent them to the police academy and uh they came on. One of them uh recently left after two years serving as a police officer here and left for another larger department to get more experience with the intention of going to a federal agency and the other uh police officer that I just spoke of is with us still.

And I I and I think the other thing of note is that we did negotiate out the Quinn bill out of our police contract. The latest officer to leave is leaving to go to a town that has the Quinn. He'll make $8,000 more a year. We can't compete with that. So, he's not leaving because of leadership. He's leaving because leaving because he can work five minutes from here and make $8,000 more a year based pay. So, we have to just accept some of the limitations that we put on ourselves due to our budget, due to our capacity, and we're just going to have to work with it. So, as Mike said, there are three, I believe, three candidates right now. We have, you know, the chief isn't going to just hire anyone who shows up at the door. I don't want you to worry, but I I don't think it's fair to blame leadership for attrition. in these circumstances. So, okay. Um, any other public input?

None that I see right now. All right. Um, community spotlight. We are seeking residents interested in serving on the board of assessors. And somebody made an awesome graphic. It's on the front page of the website and it basically um Kelly, can you pull it up right now? Only because it's it's perfect. that says exactly. Oh, you have it already. Well, hold that up for camera. All right, we can Yeah, she can pop it up.

All right. So, amazing volunteer opportunities for anyone in Boxboro interested in fair and accurate property assessment, real estate, municipal operations, and I happen to know that half if not more than half the time is addicted to Zillow. So, if you love following real estate and you want to help be part of valuing property in the town of Oxro, I would say more than half. I bet you guys all have Zillow accounts. No. No. Oh, well, everybody I know does. So, I have Zillow on my phone. He has Zillow on his phone. I don't have an account. No, but you have it on your phone. You look at it, right? Sure. Does anybody look at their neighbor's values? I called Verizon and told them to don't don't let me access the website anymore. Stopped at the gate.

See, you were addicted at one point. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, it's a great opportunity to put that addiction to good use and um apply to be on the board of assessors. Um you'll get state required training. there's no cost and yeah, you know, we'd love to have additional faces in town. Anything you want to add to that? Um, yeah, applications are already starting to come in. They're coming into an administration and then once we have a pool, uh, we'll bring them to you and you'll see their, you know, their resume, their interest form, whatever they send in. And, um, the other thing is while you said there's no cost, there's no cost to the individuals applying, there is a cost to the town, right? We'll be paid, right?

Yeah. So with the the three member board uh will be required to attend the um MAO 100 which is the basic course uh within the first year. So they don't needed to come on board within the first year and um I believe the cost for um for the three individuals was about $1,200. Um so you know so the town would obviously pay that for people volunteering come step up to an important position like this. Awesome. Well, I hope we get a nice list and if we have more than we need three people, right? If we get more, is there an opportunity for associate members or people still want to be involved? I think so. I think you want to keep it as a board of three.

Okay. All right. All right. Okay. So, moving right along. Introduction of new employee Emily Rue. Come on up to the microphone and introduce yourself. So, Emily is joining us as our new treasurer collector. So, if you want to give us a little hello and a little bit about your background and sure all about being an AB grad.

Yes. So, I did graduate um from ACT and Boxboro in 2001. Um so, figure out my age. Um I've been doing uh municipal work as a treasure collector for seven years. I was in the private sector at first and then I started in Shirley and as the assistant, then I became the treasur collector. Um, I was there for five year, just over five years. Um, I went to a bigger town, um, just shy of a year and a half, and realized a smaller town is more up my alley and where, um, I'm needed and where I can do the most good. Nice. Well, welcome. All right. So, I ask everyone who comes in and you're from Actton, Boxboro, and you grew up in Actton, so you might, you know, feel a little biased there, but what do you love about Boxboro? What brought you here besides just being a small town?

It's okay. Um, I I like the small bucolic New England feel that Boxboro offers. And yes, being right next to Actton, um, my parents are still there right over by the library. That's awesome. Which is nice. And it it just kind of life has a way of coming full circle. So I I just feel that's the opportunity that's been handed to me. Wonderful. Welcome back. Thank you. Any questions for Emily? No. Welcome. You're welcome. Thank you. So if you need us, we're accessible through Mike, through Kelly. You can email us, call us, but if we can help in any way with your adjustments, just let us know. Thank you. I appreciate it. You're welcome. And thanks for coming in tonight. I

I want to say how excited we are to have Emily arrive today. It's her very first day. Um she joins a great staff uh with Marcia Sans as the assistant treasur collector in the treasure collector's office. Um she has hit the ground running. She's got a couple of ideas of things she wants to change already and we talked about one of them earlier today and and she said asked me would I consider such and so and so I explained to her my management style is uh that I don't hire great people so that I can boss them around and tell them what to do. I hire great people so that they can come in, give us ideas, and we give them permission to go do it. And so the first thing she would like to do is entertain the thought of going back to um quarterly mailings of the tax bills. And and I said absolutely. I think um that the last year has been a a disaster with with you know the um it'll cost a little more and I know people are concerned about that but I think the $6,000 is probably worth uh people who have already paid off their mortgage getting their tax bill four times a year and us getting that revenue in in on time and people not getting penalties that we are not allowed by state law to to wave or reduce or anything like that. So, in the door two hours later with her first great idea and I think they're going to keep on coming. We're so excited to have you here, Emily. Welcome to Boxboro.

Thank you. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, expect that to start in FY27. Yep. So, those mailing

So, that'll be July 1st. That's when FY just for anyone who's like got to Google that. July 1st, 2026. And we've we have been talking about that for a while because we've seen the residual uh negative effects of the mailings just going out twice a year. And you know what, for the cost, well, $6,000 is a lot of money. It's um the the pain that people are going through, you know, if they don't get to get those demand notices or they just happen to forget because, you know, it's now four months after they got the bill. So, thanks for that great idea, Emily. So, we used to use the tax bills as a way to send information out like dog licenses, transfer station. Um, we could do fire station information like I you know, is is that something that could be factored into it?

I will certainly take any ideas from Emily on that. Okay. So, we'll be talking to you Emily. Oh, you have to use the microphone to talk microphone. Did I say microphone? Oh my god. Am I 5 years old? Microphone. Just do you mind clarifying? What do you mean like send the bills as a source of information? No. So what we used to do is when you so when the bills go out they're in an envelope and we used to call them stuffers. So we so we would put all the pieces of paper in with the in with the tax bills. So you can have a mailing insert as long as it's uh not political in nature and as long as it doesn't increase the postage. It probably will increase the Now we used to be able to put one sheet of paper. We'll do it on 20 pound paper. We'll do it on nice light paper.

It shouldn't. But well it all depends how many we stuff. Hopefully we are keeping it concise and not like have too too much will lose its importance. Yeah. Right. Exactly. I know I'm not against it. I'm for doing it. I just want to make sure that if we have two pieces of paper that's it say someone else wants to put another one. It was too much. Well, it was things like um when it was time to buy your transfer station sticker and especially if we changed the fees this year it would probably a really good thing to let everybody know about. Um you know I'm dog licenses used to I'm trying to remember those of you longtime residents. What else used to go out in our tax? Sustainability survey. Oh survey. Yeah. get back almost 900 responses. Yeah. Yeah. Because people open it. We open that was, you know, you can one piece of paper

and you could either go online or you could send the paper back or drop it off. We got 900 responses which is pretty good for a survey. And of course, Emily, you'd have oversight. So, and it wouldn't be political at all. So, the only question I have Emily on mic, are the envelopes stuffed here or there's a We used to have a senior work off to it. That's why I'm asking. So, what's the status right now? I don't I don't think there's you answer. It's okay. So, we use um Kelly and Ryan as the bill print company and they print stuff and mail. So, if we So, we don't even have to do it in house anymore. So, if we give them an additional piece of paper, they they put the insert on whatever card stock, whatever color paper we tell them to, they add the insert to the mailing.

Okay. Because Right. Because that was my question. Bummer. Because that that was my that was my question. Do we have someone here in town hall add a piece of paper to that envelope and it's not. It's done by an outside. Yeah. We used to use the senior tax work off. It was actually kind of fun. Right. So, oh my gosh, we got all professional and new and that's why I'm asking. Yeah. All right. Oh, well. Okay. All right. Thank you, Emily. You're welcome. Welcome to the millennium. Any Okay. So, I move to appoint Emily Rue as treasurer collector effective Monday, December 22nd, 2025 with a term ending June 30th, 2026. Is there a second? Second.

Um, just to explain to everybody, this is um an annual appointment. We'll do it again at town meeting. Correct. Is it article? We'll do it again in June. Well, article the town meeting will approve the funds and all that and then we appoint in June. Right. We have our appointathon, right? In case anyone is worried that she's only going to be with us for six months, we hope it'll be much more than six months. Good. That's what we want to hear. All right. All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed? Abstain. All right. That's unanimous. Next up, um, an update on the green communities grant and our next steps. I saw Jay is up there. Is Alex up there? Who's going to take this one on? Davies, I think. Oh, oh, Kate. Where's Kate? Oh, yep. I see you up there, too. Sorry. There you are. Somebody. So, who's going to take it on?

It's Kate. All right. Um, hi, everybody. Kate.

Hi. from the sustainability uh committee here. So, I wanted to give you a quick update on our green communities designation grant and how that process is going and sort of planning for next steps. Um, as you all will remember, I hope we became a green community in November 2024. Um, and the money from that what we originally get as part of becoming a green community is called the designation grant. We got a $132,000ish as um part of that grant process. Um that became available in July of this year. So, at the beginning of um financial year 26 and we have a bunch of priority projects, top priority projects that we had laid out in advance of that process that we are in the process of contracting at the moment and that will hopefully be started to be implemented in January um 2026. Maybe a few of them might start a little bit later than that. Um but those will be underway in the beginning of the new year. So those projects are um Blantford weatherization, DPW lighting um that's shifting to LED lighting um and library and town hall lighting as well. Um, and then there are because of the way that the contracting process has gone, it looks like we're actually going to have enough money to bump four additional projects up from our what was going to be our later on list to um stuff that we can actually prioritize for for also early in 2026. So, there's four additional projects that we have planned ahead of schedule. Um that's DPW weatherization, library weatherization, town hall weatherization,

and potentially a contribution to um a police vehicle that would be a hybrid vehicle. So is weatherization insulation, Kate? Yes, it is insulation. And I'm sorry if I just screamed in your headphones. I apologize. No, no, you are. You recoil. I'm like, oh, I'm loud. My dog just barked in the other room. Um wasn't Hold on, hold on one second. And Nick, can you turn our speakers up? This happened two weeks ago, too. And then and Dennis said that the people online could hear, so it wasn't their mic. It's the speakers in here. Okay. But I'm having trouble hearing, Kate. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. I don't think it's your fault. It's not here. Keep going, Kate. You're good. Yeah, keep talking. Okay, we'll see. So, is weatherization insulation? We'll go back to that question.

Weatherization is insulation. Yes. And it's an it's a requirement. We have to do weatherization. That is a requirement by the state as a first priority project before we can invest in any other you know high level highquality projects like electrification. You have to do the weatherization first because that's where you get the maximum amount of your um efficiency savings. So you're going to that's how you can save the most money the fastest is to do the weatherization first. Great. Um so that's why that's a a top priority. Um other questions before I move on.

So Kate, if you can explain I think like um what's the return on investment with this? Again, we are not investing the state is giving us the grant like how quickly will we be able to see uh the benefits of these like uh in terms of um the weatherization and the LED lighting and all that. Is it like in a couple of years time or?

Great question. I can't give you exact numbers at all, but I can tell you that the reason that the state prioritizes weatherization and lighting is because you should see savings on your bills almost instantly. Um, and certainly in the winter months, um, the weatherization will make a a big impact in terms of what we're paying for heating. Um, especially in the older buildings. So, and so in our big old buildings like Blanchard and Town Hall, that's um the reason to prioritize those projects upfront. Uh the lighting will also save us uh in terms of costs very much right away. Um you won't probably see the return as much as quickly, but it's very much a really good investment, which is again why those are the top priority projects.

Okay, just one quick question. You just mentioned at the town hall and I thought you just said the school. Can we go into the school? Have you approached the school because it's under the regional control right now? Yes, it's this has been organized in agreement with the the school the school district. So that's that's all been organized with um in partnership with Kate Crosby who's the um energy efficiency guru for the school district. Great. Um so that's that's already kind of been worked out and planned. Um and all the other schools in the in Actton have already had their weatherization and so forth done. So Blanchard is really the last the last one to be done. Excellent. Thank you.

Yeah. Any other questions? Uh do we have a timeline on the completion date for this

for the weatherization for the initial projects? I think the expectation, the hope if we can get these projects contracted ASAP and and imple implementation underway. I think our hope is that we're going to have much of the implementation done by March. Um that's so in the first quarter. That's our hope. Um I think Blanchard we may have done in January. I don't maybe Alec has an update. I'm not sure, but that was the last that we'd heard was that they were going to try and do some of that weatherization. not over the Christmas break, but starting in January, like in the hours after school. Um, so that that would would because it's our biggest building, we're really trying to get that done in the winter so that we can make the biggest savings.

Alec, do you have an update? I saw you took yourself off mute.

Yes, so I can speak to that. Um, we had initially we had initially been targeting a uh a week of school vacation. Um, but that just simply wasn't going to link up. However, the school system has said that we can do um we can do after hours shifts. So, effectively when their janitors are in in the building doing their work in the evening hours, in the the late afternoon, um we can have our uh project expediter in doing the exact same uh during the exact same hours, which is a a fairly common practice with a lot of the projects in the future. you'll see us sync it up with a summer vacation, but in this case, we wanted to get the projects done as soon as possible so that we could then start our reporting process both to you on our savings as well as to the state.

All right. Thank you. All right, Case K, we derailed you. You want to finish your presentation?

You're you're good. The only thing I wanted to add was sort of like looking towards 2026. Um once we spend this competitive grant money of 132K then we become eligible for to apply for the competitive grants which can be quite a bit of money. Um you know 250k and potentially more depending on how what we're applying for and how we're applying um is what would be eligible for per per year. So we do want to get on to spending this money and applying for those grants. Um the April round is pretty unlikely that we will have actually spent the all of the designation grant money um in time to be eligible for the April round, but there is a round that will open up in October. That's what we're currently targeting and that will give us enough time to kind of have conversations and do some math and figure out what we should be applying for as part of that competitive grant round. um which I think is meaningful for us to spend a little bit of time so that we can be really strategic about what we're asking for. Um there's a couple of different projects that we could bid for that would be really big projects and make a really big impact um on our energy savings and on our cost savings. Um, but we need to really do the math and make sure that that's going to align with like the school budgeting process and the what's going on with the town with various other um funding priorities. So, I think October is what we would like to target for our competitive grant um opportunity and it will give us a chance to come back to you all and get your input on that.

So, I have two questions. Are they only because you brought up budget season and prioritization? Is that in terms of time management to work on it or are these matching grants?

There are depending on what we would apply for, there might be some fund requirements that like this if we were going to do something at the school, they would have to be able to put in some money in order for us to do a really big project there. So that's why we need to look at kind of short-term and versus long-term project ideas um and really do the math on what makes the most sense because I don't think anybody wants to um be stressing people out about the school budget right now. Is it I mean does it make sense to be focusing more on municipal buildings versus like I mean the police stations 80s town hall what is this 50s you know does it make sense to maybe put a pin in Blanchard love you Blanchard but

you know focus on the municipal side and let the region take care of the Blanchard building. Well, the it does make sense. It potentially makes sense to put a pin in Blanchard except that um Actton has used a lot of their green funding to

do the work on um the Actton schools. So, I do think that there's um a good argument for us to use green funding to focus on savings at Blanchard, but as you say, it might not be the top priority. I think we might want to think about town hall. You know, there's a lot of other buildings that we have that are also old and and top priority. So, we just haven't had a chance to really kind of compare apples to apples yet. So, that's that's the work that we want to do between now and when the competitive grant process opens up for us.

Sounds good. And please know, I'm not saying that we shouldn't be a good partner. If if we were indeed in the regional agreement and Aton was indeed investing in the school buildings, I I do understand the point that Box should be doing the same. But I'm also thinking of prioritizing when money's tight. You know, where do we put it? What makes sense? And what can the taxpayers, you know, stomach? I'm 100% on board with that. I think the whole sustainability committee um is very cognizant of that tension. So, we're that's why I think we're we want to make sure that we're um playing the long game here and being strategic about what we're applying for. Well, I think the other thing to remember is when we talk about sustainability, as much as I want to see the return on investment, the investment is in our children.

You know, whether you believe in global warming or climate change or whatever, we are zone 6. We are no longer zone 5. We are Connecticut. I love to say that. Um, you know, it's real. So, the real sustainability is for our children and our children's children. Yep. So, all right. So, you will probably hear from us in the next few months with more of an update and also to get more input on what priorities might be.

Kate, before you go, I have a couple of quick um questions so that way everybody understands. I know the next grant for the competitive one is in October. when does it open and would you guys have enough like by that time ahead of time we should have our projects outlined and like do we have time set aside to get all the grants written out and vetted by KP law whoever so that this time around when we submit it goes through and we don't hit any hiccups along the way.

Yes. I don't have the exact date right in front of me. Um, but I know that it is I think it's in earlyish October. Um, and we will that that competitive grant round opens. We will we're in really close contact um with Kelly Brown who as you will know is a is a Boxboro resident and also helps to run the green communities grant process. So she's in really good contact with the sustainability committee and with Ian. Um, so we have really good input from her on like when things are due, what materials need to be organized and and um, you know, kind of giving helping to give us a little bit of a strategic outline of what things might be best to submit when. So, um, Kelly's been super helpful and we'll continue to follow her guidance on on the planning for those grants. I think October is a really good goal. April feels like it would be a really short turnaround, especially with um all the things that we would be potentially planning for a May annual town meeting.

Yeah. Any other questions, comments from the floor Zoom? No. Well, thank you for popping in tonight and updating us and um much appreciated. Thank you. Keep up the good work. Thanks a lot, everybody. You're welcome. Let us know if you need anything from us. All right. Good night. Um, next up, land donation acceptance 126 Mass A. Mike, do you want to take that? And I see Kathy Boris popped in.

Yes, please. Um, so this is um I've been talking with the Force family for uh about a year and prior to that, the uh chair of the water resources uh committee had been talking with them. Um and I know they had spoken in the past with the uh conservation commission as well. Um so uh the late uh Ray Wars uh senior his he dug a fire pond on this uh 7 and 12 acre land uh down at 126 Massav. Um

so for those who don't know it's where Summer Road and Massav intersect and it's on the left if you're facing Summer, it's on the left side, right? Correct. Yes. If you're facing summer Yes. If you're at Liberty Square, it's behind the Flamingo. Yeah. Yeah. So, so he had this land behind it. Yeah. In between Summer and Flamingo and behind Flamingo. Yes. Correct. So, he Flamingo is a liquor store.

So, he had this land, the 7 and 12 acres, which is, let's say, very water rich um and and not doesn't lend itself to be developed. In fact, it'll never be developed. Um he dug a fire pond so that the fire department would have a place where they could go drop a hose and be able to fight fires in that area that he was a volunteer fireman, right? Yes, he was. Yes, he was. He helped build the fire station that we're trying to replace. Yeah. Yeah. Good old days.

Yep. Um so it was his intention and and wish that this land be used uh by the town for water purposes whether it's drinking water, water conservation or firefighting purposes. He um you know his family uh since he passed his family has been talking with the water resources uh committee um mostly with less. Um less uh introduced uh Ray Jr. and I who had been talking through last year. Um I'd also spoken um with uh with Kathy's brother George and and then more recently um in the past months with with Kathy and uh there was an interest in selling the land um for conservation quite some time ago as well as um um you know for for water purposes. Um but the the town as we know is not in a in a position right now to be to be buying up land. Um the the family um with with Kathy as the lead were amendable to donating the land as long as it was used for for water purposes for for municipal water purposes for the benefit of the town in fulfilling her father's wishes. And um the way to do that now, the family uh again with Kathy at the lead is in the process of closing out their father's estate and I think this is one of the last things they need to do and they'll be closed in the state by the end of this month. Um so there are two ways that the town could accept this donated land and you know the agreement is that you know the town accept the land if it's agreeable to everyone for water purposes. We erect a sign on the uh on the land uh memorializing uh Mr. Divorce and his dedication to water in

the town. And um so there are two ways the either town meeting could authorize the select board to accept this donation for all municipal purposes. um or the conservation um commission is or is really the only other entity that can just outright accept land and they can accept land for conservation purposes and a town meeting would be problematic because that's in March and they're closing the estate this month. Uh so what has been agreed to by all parties is for the conservation commission to uh to vote to accept this land which they did on December 17th and then for the select board uh to approve that ex that acceptance by the town for conservation purposes and then the town comes back at a future date to town meeting um to to do the ne take the necessary steps um and that may be years down the line. It may be maybe shorter, maybe longer. Um, you know, to and define what those water purposes are. But to be clear, this land won't be developed. It'll be it'll be for firefighting. It would be for a town well. It would be just to protect the aquifer. Something something along those lines.

Kathy, did you want to add anything? I think Mike has done a terrific job in summarizing it. Um, I can answer questions if there are any, but I I think that pretty much uh puts a wrap on it. All right. Any questions from the board?

I So, yes, I was at the water resources committee meeting on I guess it was Tuesday night of last week and they raised this question of why why municipal versus conservation land. Uh, the reason you said makes sense. Uh but their question really centered on does does uh acceptance by the conservation commission take a water resources use um out of the possibilities in the future or is it are we limiting ourselves by by doing it this way in service of the timeline?

Um so we're not limiting ourselves. We did check this with town council but there is another step afterwards. Um, and the first thing would be, but it's a step we would have to take if if it was going to be accepted as municipal land, right? Anyway, right, we'd have to go to town meeting anyways, right? And it's just that we can't do that by the end of December. Um, so um, yes, the so there is an extra step involved. U, but what would what would happen is that the, you know, conservation has agreed that they're not going to put an outright conservation restriction on this land so that nothing else can be done on it. There will be conditions and those conditions will include water purposes. Sure. And that's that will be the language that gets put into it. So

So will they work with the water resources committee to to figure out and maybe the fire department also?

Um yes. So the chief has been involved and he was asked early on you know if there was a purpose and and chief said yeah actually that as as the late Mr. divorce had pointed out that was an ideal location to have uh a source of water for fighting fires around there because there isn't something else real close. So the chief has been has um concurred with that and the um and yes the water resources commission uh or committee would would be involved in in setting up those conditions and then at some point um you know we would take it back to to town meeting to change the you know the way that's that's written

I don't think anyone had an issue with the process but they we just weren't sure what the answer to the question is so thank you and and and I have been in in communication with Liz Marowitz, the chair of the conservation commission and and that all seemed perfectly acceptable to her for them to accept. Sounded like a quick vote on Wednesday last week. Yeah.

Yeah. And and I think um you know taking in this land into conservation and then using it later for for water uh purposes I really think serves the town well. This is the best use of this land. It lines up with the voice family's wishes and the intent of their father. So, I I really think it's a a big win for the town and and such a generous um offer by the Vor family to do this for the town and and for the future of this community.

Mike, is it all um written out clearly in the acceptance like by the cons? So, that way whatever you brought up, right, is it all like spelled out? I I I defer to Mike and Alec, but um based on the water resources meeting and then the cons the next night, it and then the papers that I see in the packet, it seems it seems right to me all squared away. And um you know, there's there's obviously some costs involved in in accepting this donation. You know, tit title search, you know, writing up of the deed, legal costs, and then uh putting up of a new sign. And um and those costs are all being borne um uh using articles that the water resources uh committee had had passed. Uh two uh articles specifically uh will will cover all the costs of this land including the sign hopefully including the sign. I know that you know to meet all the signed bylaw requirements is a is a very oh it's a very expensive proposition like the the um

No, they're very small. They can't possibly be expensive. Just takes barbar. I think the zoning board will probably play nice on that one. Good. Oh, stop the laughing down there. All right. Any other questions, comments, or concerns. All right. Seeing none, I move to approve the acceptance by the conservation commission as a donation, a deed of the land identified as assessor's lot 15-083 for conservation commission purposes. Second. Any further discussion? That last thing should just say for conservation purposes, not conservation commission. Oh, sorry about that. Oops.

And you know, and I actually read this ahead of time, too. I'm sorry I missed that. All right. Um, friendly amendment. I'm going to remove um assessors lot 15083 for conservation purposes. Does a seconder accept the amendment? I accept that. Yes. Alrighty. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed? Abstain. That is unanimous. All right. My tea is lukewarm. Just saying. Trying to get out of here before my tea is cold. It's not going to happen. You got to move. Okay. Next up, economics development committee. Um Kathy, thank you again. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be rude. Thank you very much. And happy holidays to everyone. You too. Happy holidays.

Yep. Good night. Um Okay. Next up, economic development committee and mass econ update. Abby Reap, chair of the EDC. Right. So, we actually invited you in tonight, I believe, because we are all very heavily, too. Very heavily focused on economic development relative to bringing businesses in, expanding businesses that are currently here in order to create new growth and help us um kind of rectify the drop in commercial activity in town relative to taxes. If I remember right from our presentation from the assessor, at one point 24% or was it 24 or 25?

24% of our tax base was born by commercial development and now it's down to 17%. And that's a significant shift um tax burden over to taxpayers. So, so that is why we invited EDC to come in and update us. And you know, I think the big thing is how can we help you um further your goals,

your committee's goals. So, let me just first give you um a little background because last Thursday um Alec Sam who's our liaison, Mike John's um and I met with Doug Kellum who is from Mass Econ. He's a senior director in charge of location services. Um, and for anybody that doesn't know, Mass Econ is a private nonprofit partnership of business industry leaders and government dedicated to the economic growth of Massachusetts. So, they think large scale, you know, how can we bring companies to Massachusetts? Um and they are oh, you know, they're really at the at the lead in terms of, you know, having their fingers on the, you know, on the pulse to know what's happening with companies that are looking to relocate or companies, you know, outside of the state that are looking to come here. So, um, our conversation with Doug started with, um, kind of talking about Sincor and you all know that what happened. We were alerted that, um, this company has, I don't know how long they've been in Boxboro. I think they've been here quite some time

since the 80s. I thought I read at least 20 years. Yeah. So, um they are leaving Boxboro for New Hampshire and when they leave they're there's 250 jobs that leave Boxboro and uh an office building that is about 100,000 square feet and that office building is owned by Jumbo Capital Management who owns two buildings there on Swanson Road. So now there's going to be one vacant building or we hope not. But in any case, so and no, we can't put a fire station there. Don't even ask. Don't even ask. Um, so actually, you know, no, no, no. Actually,

Sincor, you know, um, their departure or the news of their departure is what precipitated this call with with Mass Econ. and Rich Gazardi, who's the former chair of uh EDC, had reached out to Doug and he had already had a relationship with Doug when he was chair and they um you know they touched base now and then. Um the EDC pays or the town pays uh $1,000 a year for our membership with Mass Econ. And so we really need to be leveraging that and to be able to use the services that they do offer and the information that they offer. they have a lot of data. So that was the first thing um when we did learn that Sincor was leaving was we talked about doing what we call like an exit interview. So Alec has reached out to Sincor and to Jumbo Capital Management because I wanted to know hey you know what are their plans? Have they already started marketing that property?

Yeah,

it's important for us to kind of know where they are. Um, and so we talked to Doug about data gathering in in that sense. And he he said that was we were definitely on the right track. That was what we should be doing. We should be talking to to SinCore even though, you know, we're not going to get them back, but to kind of learn why why they did like doing business in Boxboro, what made them choose Boxboro in the first place, what worked for them while they were here, and and of course to learn why why they're leaving as well. Um so we you know we talked about that and then um this was an idea that we had already kicked around at EDC as well and that is doing outreach to all of the companies in Boxboro and you know Doug recommended focusing on the larger corporations because we have so many here that you know maybe don't we don't think about quite often. We have AMD,

we have Qualcomm, um, Intel, we have Intel coming, Intel, right here, and then we also have, uh, developers. We have Lincoln Properties. That's a huge company

and Campanelli. And so, we have a lot of stuff going on here in Boxboro. And we really need to be keeping in touch with all of these companies and having constant conversations with them and make sure that they know that we're here. We support what they do. we want them to bring more business here. Um, and you know, we want to keep their business. So, you know, Doug called it a retention call program. And so, what that's going to involve is having this database, which the EDC has talked about this for now a year and a half. We had a um an intern, I don't know if you you all remember John John Paul um I think it was Legudis. Anyway, he started working on this database. um he collected data on all the companies from Becky Harris, town clerk, gave him a list. He went to the secretary of state's office and started compiling this list. But what we have is kind of just a big list and we haven't done anything with it because nobody's had the bandwidth to do that. But we really need to focus. We need to get back to that list and sort it by largest companies and start a regular program of of outreach. And I, as a, you know, as a volunteer, I'm willing to to knock on doors and and go talk to to business owners, but I think it it's much more meaningful if it comes from town administration. Um so that we can again have these relationships and kind of learn before it happens whether a company is thinking of moving and also if they're you know thinking of expanding

that that would be really or if they have associates that might consider relocating here if they were a little more aware that we're here and available.

Well exactly and so um the other thing we talked to Doug about was kind of being ready because he is location services. So, we talked to him about some of the properties here in Boxboro and the development that's happening. And what just being on their radar is really important because when they do have somebody come to them to say, "Hey, we're looking for 100,000 square feet. We want to do X, Y, and Z. This is our business." Um, he might say, "Hey, you should check out Boxboro." And, you know, he'll make a short list. So, if we get on a short list, we really need to have a pitch. we need we kind of need to get that together and and I would say that that's something that we should be doing in the first quarter of 2026. Get this pitch deck ready and so we can um be ready for for any company that is thinking of relocating here because we do have a lot of assets, a lot of things we can sell, you know, a skilled workforce, you know, education. Um we actually have low energy cost. Oh, even the fact we don't have a split tax rate, you know, it's it's a single tax rate which selling point

phenomenal driver. Oh, yeah. With electricity cost being so low. Yes. Exactly. So, um and nobody believes that. We we also need to, you know, when we're thinking about how we sell ourselves, we also have to think about, you know, what the objections are in terms of our water supply, um the length of time it takes to permit things here, zoning, um and of course just the tax rate in general. So, there are certain things that are in our control, there are certain things that are not in our control, but we have to kind of keep all of that in mind as we, you know, get ready to pitch to companies.

Sure. Um Doug offered um Massiecon has a wealth of information and there's something they have like ready 100 mass ready 100 and this tons of data there and he offered to walk us through it. So we're going to schedule another meeting in January and just get on a Zoom call and go through the data and see what we can use. Um, and I think it's really important that we stay on their radar so we keep meeting with him and kind of telling him what's going on, you know, make sure that he knows if um, if we have a zoning change in one part of town or that sort of thing. So, that's potential that'll be

Yeah. Do you think that'll be recorded? Because I'm thinking that's something that'd be great for the select board to either watch or participate in if we promise not to talk with. Yeah. So, I mean, these were just things um and I think again I think the big win here having this call was establishing that that relationship um kind of reestablishing the relationship with EDC and Mass Econ um and just staying on their radar screen and

leveraging that information that they have. Well, one of the things we talked about at BLF was was creating um kind kind of a task force um select board, FINCOM, EDC, planning board, getting everybody, for lack of a better word, on board to be able to be looking at this and and working together with a shared mission. Um we haven't been able to do that as a town and I think that's something that we need to focus on. That is that one of your goals? That should probably be a goal. Add it to the list. Actually, I think economic development is on your list on the list, right? But but I think creating that task force

and that's why I wanted Mike to have that separately, not from the other financial things, right? Development, we wanted it separate because that should be front and center. I have a couple of questions.

Um, sure. I just want to say one more thing and um after Kristine's comment about getting those boards together. So the um economic development committee has a grant to work on an economic development plan which is part of the master plan and it's really important for us to understand what does Boxboro's economy look like where where where will we be in the next 10 to 15 years and I think that will help us focus in zoning um and think you know thinking about that like what what is the potential here so um I like the idea of bringing those boards together um from an economic development standpoint

and again I understand it's more volunteer hours and I understand a lot of us are already stretched thin but I also think it's just really important agree you know as we head into the next decade for so many reasons um the first one is like was Doug even aware of like what we had available yes he was kind of alarmingly actually what was that he seems to do these like undercover boss visits and no that's good that's good that he was he was I love that show like oh I've been there

did he have any recommendations of like for the immediate future what like who to go after or do they have any businesses right now looking for anything so that he didn't say his first recommendation was that we get out there and talk to the companies that are here now it's really really important that we do that now Yes. And um but he did he did ask about where there's capacity, right? And and we went sort of building by building. Yeah, we did talk about we did talk about Campanelli. Um you know the park. Okay. Well, I I don't want to forget Central Street. I don't think Central We also talked about Central Street. Okay. We all seem to forget that over there. Exactly. Okay. Good. Okay. All right. Great.

Yes.

There were there were two other things. Abby mentioned some of the strengths and and and Doug recognized those strengths, the highly educated workforce, the great school system. Uh but we also talked about last mile transportation, right? Which to a lot of employers bringing a you know workforce in they're going to be they want to know can you connect with the commuter rails and we do we connect all the way through Boxboro to Littleton and to Actton. The other thing that we didn't talk about on this call but I know is important to employers coming in is housing. appropriate housing. And what we have is we have a lot of condos and we have million-dollar homes and we have a huge gap in the middle. And it's one thing for the future that I'm sure the housing production plan is going to talk about, but we need to strategically talk about, you know, what's right for the middle to to keep seniors living in our community as well as starter homes, but as well as young professionals who can come in and want to have have or keep a career and be in this community to work. Mhm.

So that's part of that plan I think and Alec and I have talked about that. I mean did he have any recommendations? Has he said like I mean recently this community did this kind of zoning change and that brought them additional businesses in like so kind of like a community like ours like more like an insight like you know case study of another place. Um we didn't we didn't really uh dive in that deeply. We we only had a half an hour. Okay. Um but again these are the things why we should keep meeting with him. But but Abby the the next steps included having him introduce us to his data set which includes

aspects of other towns and regional you know data having to do with so we'll be able and land use that where we can really dive in and see where we stand out where we compare favorably. Yeah, exactly. The the middle ground, right? Like I mean, if there's anything that we can do to change to bring Right. And they had to have tremendous amount of data that we couldn't parse, but he hopefully can help us work with.

Yeah. Should we have like an education a small brief one like probably in town meeting if not for this one maybe in the May one about I think the people in town need to know about these things. We can talk to the moderator about that. So basically be a report like an EDC report. One of the recommendations may forgive me if you said Abby but did you mention the pitch deck that he was the pitch deck? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. recommended that we Yeah. that we put a pitch deck together because you know what? What if in February we get a call? Yeah. Yeah. Nice. We don't want to scramble. Exciting. Yeah. This is very exciting. Abby, I've got

done. I'm done. Abby, I've got one question. Any conversation with Sin? Did Sincor give give you any indication of why they're leaving out of state? We haven't been able to speak with Sincor yet. Alec uh has reached out, but he has not heard back yet. Because I'm just wondering if it's if they're moving in my you got to hear my words. Are they moving out of Boxboro or are they moving out of Massachusetts? Moving out of Massachusetts. I Right. That's my question. So it might not have anything to do with Boxboro. Oh yeah, it might not have anything to do with Boxboro. It might have to do with Massachusetts. That's why I was interested in hearing what they what they said.

Sure. And so again, on the positive side, we want to we want to ask them about doing business in Boxboro. They were here for so many years. What worked for them? what was good that that can help us sell Boxboro because if it worked for them for all these years, it could work for another company that's going to come in. Sure. So, we can learn. We just want to learn from that. No, exactly. And that's why I think it's important to know, you know, that their corp or whatever said it's it's not Boxboro. We like Boxboro, but this we can't stand the state. Well, that also will help us talk to our legislators, too. It will. So, Right. We still have to find out. That's why we need that answer. We need that answer. Great. Thanks. I see Alec is on. I don't know whether he wanted to add anything on it.

Alec, anything? No, I think Abby did a great job covering it. Um, you know, my office has not had a lot of bandwidth in in the first couple years to really dive into the grassroots of economic development, putting together this list, building a relationship with some of our our bigger corporations. I think we've done a lot of great work for the small business community. Um, but this was a bit of a wakeup call for us on the staffing side, too. It's time to reconnect with the major employers of Boxboro and start really developing that relationship. And Alec, you haven't heard I think Abby said you haven't heard from them about as far as my question, was it Boxboro or was it Massachusetts? You haven't heard back from it. Said quote,

that's correct. T I I will say in my own experience, having done work similar to this in the past, typically when employer like this is leaving um for state lines, it typically is more of a state situation. Maybe they got a good soliciting package from the state of New Hampshire, from um from the city of Salem. Um I think it was that they're they're moving up to. Um it's not typically uh not typically a town item, especially in cases like this where they don't own the property. They're leasing the property. Uh but we'll know for certain after we've been able to make contact and have those deep conversations. Great. Thanks, Al.

Yeah. Um to Alex's point, we have, as you know, the economic development committee has focused a lot on small businesses. We had the business grants. We did village for a day. We did a um a village study working group. Um and so, you know, we've we've got that now. We've got our economic development plan that's going to be kicking off. So, we're going to learn a lot in the next six months, I think, um about what's going to again what's going to drive Boxboro's economy. you know, we we can't just focus on on obviously can't just focus on small businesses, especially when we have these global companies here.

Well, I also think, you know, Alec, one of the things you just said is perhaps New Hampshire or Salem approached them with um with incentives and that's all the more reason to have relationships with our businesses. So, we let them know if they are being courted to let us know because there are inherent costs to relocate. They're going to lose employees. they're going to have to, you know, outfit whatever wherever they're going is going to cost money. So, if we can get ahead of it to have conversations, we might not change their mind, right? But we might help with a transition or help prevent a transition. Right. Yeah. Right. Okay.

One thing I mentioned to Abby when uh we had a couple of recent meetings was that uh some communities will have representatives from their large corporation side on their EDC. And that's something that the town may consider. And it it may be something the town doesn't want to do, but it may be something to at least consider. You know, are we representing because we are representing our small businesses on the committee and we may want to think about are we representing larger interests and even if that means you have someone who's on the committee um who may not be a resident here, but is a resident business. Does the charter demand you have to be a resident to be on the committee? I don't remember. I don't know.

Yeah, we'll have to look at that. Well, cuz that was my first thought is that should be something we should change. I think that I think the information that an executive of a larger company could share with us and teach us would be invaluable and they would learn from us too. Goes both ways. And the other option is I'm just thinking out loud here if they weren't a committee member. I mean, if we could establish a couple of people in town that would come to our meetings and give us, you know, some insight, that'd be great. Okay. Anything else? Are there vacancies on the committee? Yes, there are. There's vacancies on every committee. Well, this one seems like a good

All right. Well, then I'm going to suggest we look and see if there is a residency requirement. And if there isn't, perhaps that's the next step is to reach out to get to know some of our larger companies and ask if they'd like to be, you know, to participate. Um, we'd have to come up with the win for them. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Abby. Thanks, Abby. Okay. Well, 8:30. Let's work Let's work towards 8:30.

So, next up, possible implementation of electronic voting devices, right? Oh, no. I'm sorry. Set date for dead exclusion ballot vote. Okay. So, the reason we are talking about this now, I'm glad that Fincom is here. It seems to us to make sense that um right after Maytown meeting, we should have the ballot vote so that we can get fun. Sorry, March. Thank you. getting tired already. Um, right after the March time meeting, we should have a ballot vote so we can get funds in place so the fire station design can commence. Do you want to talk us through that?

Yes. So, uh, Becky Harris and I have been talking and she's on this meeting, so I'm sure we'll want to make sure she can speak as well. Um, we tried to get this uh vote the day after town meeting, which doesn't seem to be possible because the poll pads that are going to be used at town meeting on March 9th, need to be reprogrammed and brought back so they can be used at the ballot election. Um, I think the earliest date that Becky was able to come up with was a week later, which is March 17th, but St. Patrick's Day, that's a holiday. We can't do it that day. Just kidding, Becky. Lucky day is a good fact a positive vote. Oh, and it's evacuation day.

Um, so, so yes, and the, you know, the the election cost is about $5,000. Um, but we know that escalation cost on this size project is about $4,000 a day. So, if we were to wait, we could legally wait. We have 90 days to to make the ballot vote after the town meeting. Um, but if we waited for our scheduled town meeting vote on June 2nd, that's 85 days. It's about $340,000. Yeah. So, you know, you you take 5,000 off of that, you know, you you save, you know, 330 $335,000 if you can do it that much quicker.

So, that's that's the intention. Save money as well as get the design going on the building as soon as you can after the the vote is made. So, that Well, it's fresh in everyone's mind. Well, it's fresh. but also so that the sooner the design is done, the soon the construction starts and you get ahead a little bit of some of the materials and labor uh escalation costs. Agreed. Becky, do you want to weigh in on that? Anything else to add, Beck?

Uh, nope. I don't really have anything else to add. I think the um we talked about the week later because it's a Tuesday because people are used to having elections on Tuesdays. It's um you know it's possible to do it any of the other days just not the immediate day after. So we can't do it the 10th. We could theoretically do it the 11th 12th somewhere in there. But it kind of made sense to us and this is how it was done in in 2019 and that special town meeting for the school um funding. It was done a week later after the town meeting vote. So um I think that would be a sensible thing to do. All right. Great. Thanks, Becky.

Any other questions, comments, or concerns from the board or for anyone in the public? Does Vinc want to weigh in? Are you guys good? Make sense? So, I have a I have a question. If it's possible to do it, you know, not on the 10th, but on the 11th or 12th, do you want to try to do that or or do you want to stick with, you know, people being used to voting on a Tuesday? Tuesday, right? Yeah. Let's keep it simple. I'm We're looking around. We've got all the voters sitting here, too. Everyone's nodding their head. What does that mean? Always the week after. The week after. Yeah. Do it the week after. Always the week after. It's consistent. Yep. Keep it the 17. You do a Thursday. No one's going to remember to come vote. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Keep it the 17th.

Yeah. Oh, nope. I'm I'm in agreement. I just wanted to get a sense of all the people here that are voters. So, okay. Um, anybody on Zoom have a comment? Seeing no hands. Okay. Okay. I move to set the date of Tuesday, March 17th, 2026 for the debt exclusion ballot vote subject to approval by the town meeting and compliance with applicable election laws. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed, abstain. That is unanimous.

Excellent. Okay. Um possible um implementation of electronic voting devices. So, so this has come up because um at least in my mind it's mostly about saving time so that we can get maximum participation so that we can you know we know that people with children leave at 9 because they've got to get their kids to bed. Um so trying to get as much done as quickly in the first two hours of town meeting and Becky has done a ton of research. It's in our packet online if people want to read it. And our town moderator Dennis Reap is here to discuss it also. So take it Dennis. Okay. Uh yeah, Becky and I agreed that whoever you call on first goes first because we both have, I think, uh quite a bit to offer. Yeah.

Or perhaps facts of the matter to help clarify. So, Oh, yeah. You mentioned the the time involved. Um I I think we can take some lessons learned from our last fall town meeting where we did the standing count

three times, which is very unusual. we might have one standing count per meeting which could even include two or three nights sometimes. So, uh ju just so everyone understands the time involved uh we had on that fall town meeting. There were over just a little over 400 people there in the room for the first vote. Um, we voted on the amendment to article one if you recall and it went to standing count and it took a little under 8 minutes. It felt a lot longer. I think felt much longer.

Uh, but it only took seven minutes and something. It was less than eight. Uh, then uh not long after that, we went to the vote on the main motion uh after the amendment failed. almost the same number of people. Uh the the tellers obviously had practice. They did it in under five minutes. And then later that evening, there was a sense of the meeting vote on article three about the the fire station and that went to standing count because that was actually just majority. It was close and I think everybody wanted to know the numbers. Anyway, uh the tellers accomplished that task. The tellers and and Becky accomplished that task in under four minutes. They got if you're, you know, concerned with time and especially before 9:00, if we only talk about one article before 9 and take one vote, I don't think clickers is really a huge timesaver.

You know, I'll pine a little bit on clickers in general. I think clickers are a really would be nice thing. If we had them today, it'd be great. Somebody already climbed the learning curve before we got here to do it. uh if you do want to implement them, uh I think it's a nice place to be someday. Um of course I think the voters of town meeting would have a lot to say about it. We we know from Becky there is a cost. Um, if you're talking about prioritizing this year, which I heard that word earlier this evening, um, I would strongly uh, recommend prioritizing again if it's talking about prioritizing expenditures, getting us in the regency for May when we we are going to have probably the largest town meeting in over 10 years versus taking a similar amount of money to buy clickers that might save this 10 minutes if that's what you're thinking of in terms of doing it now

in a year where I know there's a lot of competing interests and even a lot of things to consider in terms of managing town meeting size. Our the last three town meetings we had this last fall, our annual in 25, and our annual in 24 were the three biggest town meetings in over 10 years with uh just under 400 in for ATM 24, 445 at annual town meeting 25, and we had 412 sign in for the fall town meeting. Mhm. Uh just for reference going back it was you have to go back to 2019 when we had 346 people show up for the marijuana zoning

right and before that 2013 for the over 600 that showed up at the regency for the regionalization. I mean I see the fire station coming in March we're in Blanchard. We're going to be over 400 people probably or close to it. I think the last two meetings kind of show that and that's to me that's the practical limit in that space. Okay,

if we go to May uh ATM and we're talking we got more fire station talk perhaps we have town budget which includes a school budget which even includes potential override. Uh all those things say to me it's over four, you might be getting close to six. Um, if you go back in time, we've had, you know, high numbers in the past for override votes when there were fewer people in town. So, so we're kind of talking about two things right here. So, you are talking about um I'm a rounder, you guys. We all know I'm a rounder. I have $10,000 in my head for clickers if we bought the minimum number of clickers. Yep. What was it?

9800 numbers. See? $9,800. I'm a rounder. Woohoo. For the minimum number. Do you actually if somebody has that in front of them, why don't you read that out what the numbers would be? Yeah. So, it's $9,980 for 200 clickers. It's $14,180 for 300 clickers, and it's $18,380 for 400 clickers. And Becky, you looked into being able to borrow clickers, correct? Like with other towns that have them, the same software.

It's It's definitely possible to borrow clickers. Um, it's also possible to rent them for $10 per clicker. So, that saves if it's just that one meeting that you're concerned about getting more. Um, that saves some money. And then you can decide you want to buy those clickers for $45 if you rent them and then, uh, apply that cost to the the purchase.

Okay. Good to own. a couple ways to do it, but um I do think we'd be able to borrow clickers because there are so many towns nearby that that use the same company. Um so I don't know. I I'm I'm not sure. I'm not a huge advocate of clickers in general, but I'm not sure which way I would go in terms of the um the number of clickers. Sure. To buy. It's kind of hard to know, but

Okay. So there there's the cost, okay, and there's the time saving, which I 16 minutes, okay, not huge, but we haven't talked about privacy. And there I know there's been a lot of discussion back and forth about privacy. The clicker allows people to vote privately. We vote at the bot ballot privately. We've always, you know, a town meeting has been a history of you show your face, you raise your hand, people know exactly how you're voting. But I think people are moving away from that. They want to vote privately. And we heard a lot about that. the select board, members of the select board heard a lot about that at the last couple of town meetings. Um, people feeling very uncomfortable and maybe even choosing not to vote versus vote. And you would know those numbers by the total number of people who voted, you know, for instance, on those big important things, how many people just abstained. But but that that is something that we, you know, and I'd love for other select board members to chime in. Privacy is probably the second most important issue that we're talking about here. No, I I I would agree. I I I have received the emails saying that um people were persuaded or people, as you just said, people decided not to vote either way. And uh

or felt pressured to vote a certain way. And and I think that for me, the real concern is people say yes at town meeting and they say no at the ballot. I'd rather just know at town meeting. If it's a no, it's a no, you know. So, and um you know, I think that's part of the issue for you. Um so I was all for this but as I was thinking there are a couple things that came to my mind I wanted to make sure that like we are able to address that one is um this probably does involve some amount of teaching like how to utilize this in the town meeting right like to for people

even it might be simple yes no but like people can still make errors and mistakes with that right in terms of other friends who live in other towns. It's not hard and yes, they do a practice, but it's not something we shouldn't be using that as a reason to not pursue that. Not no I'm not saying but that's something to like take into consideration. Want to make sure that should we do it in a time when it is when we are taking up an important vote. The other piece is what if the vote is really close. Normally when we have elections, right, when the vote is really co close, we do a hand count of the ballots. You have something the green card.

No, not the green card, but like in not I'm not talking about ATM. I'm talking in general when there is something with that is close you have the back the ballots to see hey is it really like off by only two votes or three votes whatever the case is. If it happens with the clickers like that say it is off by only two votes. How do you then do you then have people stand up at that point? No. No. How do you then like it's validated by validate that that like is that's the method of voting that you selected to use you use the result of that voting method. That's it.

There's no recall. You're asking about recalls because what happens in elections is a recall and that's when you have to revote. You don't automatically count. No, I mean not revote. Recount. Sorry. Recount. No, but my point is that there's no recount with us. Yeah. I mean, and is that going to be okay with our town? I know like there might be people who It's up to us to decide. That's I think that's what Dennis is saying. Well, it No, it'll be up to town meeting. If you want to go to Clickers, you're going to need to spend money. You're going to have a warrant article on Yeah, because that might You're going to sell it at town meeting and these are the kind of questions people will ask. Uh, and if it is to decide which articles you use the clicker for, Dennis, it's the same as deciding when it's a green card.

Actually, every town I'm aware of that uses clickers, once you go to clickers, you use them for every single vote.

Oh, okay. You have to imagine there is ultimately time savings even for the simple it's you know 90 to10 vote you know which is easy for me to call I'm still saying raise your cards I look at them put your cards down raise them again I've observed uh at least one town meeting recently where they use the clickers and even those simple votes that have vast you know vast majority easy to call uh they go quicker Then just raise your hand. Put your hand down. Raise your hand. Put your hand down because everybody votes in within literally seconds. The numbers are on the screen

and you can see the numbers and I don't know the exact protocol for okay, you're done or everybody's voted. Uh but it's done. It's recorded and you know if you do those types of votes and we do 10 20 something right well we have a consent agenda thankfully. you get the 40 votes times a minute, you know, may maybe it adds up. Uh, okay. I didn't know that. I thought you still decided when we use clickers. So, it it's it's either clickers or no clickers. Well, I think as moderator, I can declare the method of voting. There you go. Uh, well, that was right. It's up to Dennis. But if we went to clickers and everybody had a clicker, I would see no reason to use any other method,

right? uh because it it would mo ultimately prove itself to to I think everybody in the room. Yes, this works. It's reliable and it will be faster. Dennis, I have a qu Dennis and Becky, I have a question for either one of you who know the answer.

If if Becky, if your people or if you hand out I'm just making up numbers. 500 clickers and when the times when the time comes to vote Dennis and you voted and the and the results show that it's 200 to 100 I'm making again I'm making up numbers so that's 300 do you assume the other 200 people did not vote or or how do we know that those votes actually got um calculated tallied I should say is

um I'm not sure the actual mechanics of that voting system and whether it can detect people who didn't vote. So you have a check on oh obviously you know the obvious thing to me is 20 200 people abstained in your example right but but 20 pick a number yeah pick yeah you're going you're getting to the reliability oh did my clicker actually work I have the impression the systems are capable of yeah Becky carrying a state

that's a good it's a good question but I I have a feeling and I might be wrong on this but I think you can you can program them to even have an abstain category so then you could you could know that you have the right number of clickers if you but I mean it's also hard to tell exactly how many people are in the room at a given moment. So people leave, they go to the bathroom, they step out to take a call. You're never going to know if everybody's actually in the room. So someone may just choose not to vote at all and not click an abstain button. I would suppose um so again

I think Bob that to me the first thing you would do is everybody vote yes and make sure that the number of clickers that were handed out you get you know what I mean you test it and then you assume that it's going to work. Yeah. I think there are wellestablished protocols for war how to set it up in the first place. I I I'm I'm going to say me personally me personally I'm for it. I just wanted to make sure that someone if someone asked a question we had an answer to that question. These are the exact kind of questions we need better answers than what we're fumbling with right now. Right. Exactly. Like I said, so it's your decision if you want to present a warrant article on this. I think collectively we all need to become more educated. Right. We've learned a lot quite a bit in just the past two months looking into some of the numbers. And

Becky, help us understand your reticence.

You said you're not a fan. I mean, I'm I'm personally I like Open Town Meeting being open and I think that's part of the appeal and part of just how box and it's it's sort of a this is the way it's always been done thing. Maybe not for good reason, but I am hesitant just because I I do like that aspect. Um, I also think there's just things that can go wrong in logistics and it's just a little extra something that we can not that they're errorprone because I'm sure that they're very reliable but there are you know anytime you're relying on technology there's things that can go wrong. So, I I do worry a little bit about that, but my main concern is just in a year when we're doing debt exclusions and overrides that we shouldn't be asking for spending money on something we don't really need.

Can the fincome tell us um at 10 at the minimum 10,000 how much is $10,000 on everyone's individual tax bill? No. If you don't know, it's okay. That's that's a lot of math. Actual computer program that does NO, I KNOW. I KNOW. And I'm like, well, no, we we'll ask that later then. Um, well, no, because that that does factor into it because free cash. It'd be free cash anyway. All right. Which isn't free, right, Tony?

No, we raised it. We raised it. Well, I'm in I'm Yeah. No, you know, jump in. I'm inclined though, select board that we put it in the warrant and we let town meeting vote. And if they say yes, we want clickers, great. If they say no, we don't, great. And if they say yes, we want the Regency, great. I'm going to be advocating for the Regency cuz I am with you, Dennis, on that one. But um but that's gonna be my recommendation is let town meeting decide. Maria um so two things. I watched your last meeting when you discussed this and I don't want you to forget what Adam said who has been at town meeting in Actton as have I

every time there's a vote because I don't think they use him for every vote. Every time there's a vote there's an explanation and he said that at the last meeting. Go back and watch what he said. It is not as quick as you think. even though they've had these clickers for years, people go every meeting there's always uh you know it there's always the explaining it and did they all go through and we have to test it and so it's not it I don't I I've been to a town meeting and I've watched Actton because I used to go to their town meetings when I was on the school committee. It is not the greatest thing since life.

Do they use it for every vote or just specific votes? I don't think they use it for every vote, but I don't know. I would defer to explaining it cuz I I don't know. I don't remember. It's been a while. I'm getting older. I don't remember. But I do remember that the first year they had it, I thought, "Oh, this is cool." Like maybe, you know, this might speed it up. It didn't so much speed it up. And then the next year, I'm like, "Well, we're a year in again." It didn't feel like it really sped it up. And Adam said that at the last meeting, so go back and look at that little No, I remember Adam saying that. I do. But then I talked to other people who disagreed. So, it's a perception, right? And you know, like I said, we were sitting in the audience and from the outside looking in. So, that's one thing. The other thing is it's 9,000 or whatever, $10,000 for clickers. Round it. Yeah.

All right. Um, but that is clickers and I assume software. Um, Becky, I guess you for the numbers. But then there's got to be a yearly cost to that because we have it. Hold on. It's it's about a,000. It's an annual fee of,000. Yep. $1,000. So, it's $1,000 a year for software ongoing for the contract. Oh, listen to Becky. What's that, Becky? It's a It's not a required contract, so we don't have to pay the the thousand, but it gives us the upgrades and whatever software. I think it's sort of necessary, right? Yeah. Because what what Becky wrote was $1,000 a year for software upgrades and support. So you okay

so the other question Becky do we know like so we have other programs where we have like it's five years and we know that we're going to have to upgrade the software so then there's you know it's $1,000 a year and I'm just making up numbers to for support on the software but we know that in five years we're going to need to do an upgrade on that software so now it's $5,000. Do we know if there's you know kind of a buy in to the next level after or if other towns have had to deal with that? So they said the warranty is three years and um basically town I think we're not far enough in that we've seen them like completely need to be re rebought. So they basically said like 10 to 15 years you could be still using the same clickers.

Um but it's so there isn't really a hard like oh they're going to die in in five years and you need to get a whole new batch. Okay. And then one last question. Are these rechargeable clickers or are they battery operated? They have the little um coin batteries. Okay. Like this little Yeah. go in your um car clicker thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so do you need They said they should last at least three years, those batteries, but they're pretty cheap to buy.

That's fine. But um we have 250 clickers. Are we going to check those before every meeting to make sure that the battery I guess you know there's there's things like that that I think about um you know and in three years are you going to sit there and with the little screwdriver who's popping out the little batteries and replacing them?

The only thing I have to say is we are the every single town that's contiguous to uses them. That's the only thing I have to say. Boxboro always sticks to the this is how we do it and we're just going to not work off. I'm I'm thinking about, you know, long-term costs. And it doesn't sound like it's a lot, but it's not just a one-time thing. Every time we add something to the budget, right? And there is an ongoing cost. In 10 years, we're sitting here saying, "We got to scrub a budget because we've been adding $1,000 here. It's death by a thousand cuts." So, not everything is just $10,000 and we're done. We'll take it out of free cash because free cash is there, but it's not a savings account that we can just keep dipping into. It's a savings account we keep for a rainy day like we're in now. I agree. This is a nice to have, not a need to have. So, I'm sorry I mixed my two hats.

No worries. We do it all the time. Yeah. Go ahead. Just Okay. So, I got a logist logistical and and scalability question. We always argue the most about $1,000. Always. But 10 million. Let's do it. I don't know. Go ahead, Tony. Sorry. We have a certain number have a certain number of clickers. we may decide to borrow some more or or or rent some more. But if we, you know, decide, okay, we think we'd have 400 people at the meeting and 450 show up, what do we do then? Right. Right. So, we got to sort of we got to overestimate every time and actually do more rentals or more borrowing to go way above what we think we might have show up.

Um, it's not it's not really that easily scalable. It's just got a limit on it. Whereas a hand show of hands is, you know, infinitely scalable. Whoever shows up, long as there's room in the regency, which there should be for, you know, a large number of people, you can cover it. Well, like I said, I think we let town meeting decide. I I I honestly think we bring it to town meeting. If they don't want it, we don't we don't do it. Yes. So, thinking of town meeting, I think the question I was going to challenge you with tonight, and I say challenge because I'm I'm sort of in Becky's camp that, you know, what's the problem we're trying to solve here?

For me, it's Okay. If it's the problem of the time, perhaps it's a wash and I think five minutes of a standing count on a town meeting that goes on for hours and over more than one night is not much at all. The privacy thing I think you've you say you've heard a lot. I I think you're hearing from a vocal minority, but I don't want to sort of discount,

you know, it's always a vocal minority. So, but yeah, when you see the numbers like often the vote counts and just last town meeting, we had 412 in the room that registered as voters walking in the door and got a green card. And that 412, you had 392 vote on the article one amendment. You had 399 vote on the final. So, yeah, there's a 5% of they outside the room having a smoke, going to the bathroom, they didn't want to vote, their green card didn't work. I don't know. Uh all these things can happen, but that sort of explains that you're, you know, because it was white

or they're the people who were uncomfortable with having to vote on something that was very contentious and, you know, something that, you know, obviously was very close in the end. So, if you're talking about trying to solve that problem, you know, I don't know if those margins make any difference in the end when it's you got to get three, four, 500 people to show up in the first place. Uh, that's all something to think about, but something to present if you have this as a warrant article to the voters when you're trying to either sell the idea or if some people want to speak against it. I think there's there's really good arguments on both sides. Agreed. Agreed. Sam,

what was the vote count for question three for Warren three? That dropped down. I my about 224 give or take. I think those were the numbers. Becky, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but yeah, that was that was that was a drop off at that point. So, not really a sense of the meeting, a sense of you know, some of the meeting though. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm that's what I'm saying. So this I I'll say this discussion is is very very interesting and I'm I'm actually conflicted on this but I'm I want to make town meeting more accessible. I want more people to come and I don't I don't know whether clickers

help or hurt that. Uh I'm taking interested to hear streamlining streamlining the conversation. you know, a sense of the meeting vote should be a sense of the meeting vote. And that if if if 45% of the people that voted on the on the zoning article left, then that's what like what information and Kristen just said everyone was very interested in the outcome of that vote. What does that really get us? You can't lock the doors. You can't lock the door. Fires, isn't it?

So So to me So to me it's it's like can the clickers make this more accessible? Can it make it more streamlined? Can we get a sense of the meeting? Can are there other ways we can say um can we get a sense of the meeting without debating what we just debated for an additional hour? I I don't really know what that is. There's child care. There's at the end of the day the clock on the wall is the clock on the wall. But but my priority, you know, Kristen says the privacy is hers. Mine is making making the entire process more accessible. I would love it if 500, 600, 700 people walked in the front door. Um, and I don't know if people are coming to town help that or not, but but

but I, you know, I'm listening. Yeah, that's that's an interesting thing because our thought is and everyone here and even listening remotely, we're we're people who come to town meeting and most of us aren't shy about expressing our opinion and actually voting and standing in front of somebody else and saying this is how I'm voting. But I think it is interesting to think about are there people that don't go just because of that pressure what they're voting what they're voting on. So yeah,

and I don't know if there's any data from towns that went from no clickers to clickers and if that actually moved the needle at all. And uh that's something I'll see if I can get some information about because I think that's the most interesting aspect of this that's been brought up tonight that we hadn't already thought about. Thank you. I I think that uh I find that very interesting too. And as you said that I'm thinking on multiple night town meetings, three or four nights, every night drops off. Drops off.

And that makes me think that, you know, people get tired of just the length of it. and you know towards the end of each town meeting drops off and then each successive one is less. So that's an interesting thing to at least think about how do we increase accessibility. I don't have any answers. If I I read um in the conquered conquered local newspaper I forget what it's called. They are looking at hybrid town meeting and I don't know where that's going to go and I it's not a it's not it's not it's up to them right. No it would be the legislature. You need a legislation. That's that would take the act of the legislature. Well, no, but there Concret is looking at that. Concret is looking at basically being a leader and saying we need to make it accessible to everybody because not everyone can get there.

Yeah. They want to lobby the legislature and bring this up and and again, I think you open up a huge I mean, you're worried about trying to figure out how I know. Yeah. No, trust me, the whole idea of the hybrid is overwhelming. Right. Um but yeah, but accessibility is I think on everyone's minds and participation. Yeah. So yeah, baby steps. Yeah, baby steps. Baby steps. All right. Um Maria. Okay, we don't really have any action. Um we're not talking about the warrant, but I think that my inclination is that we let Tom decide and that it does it should. But we'll we the warrant is not on the agenda tonight. Yeah. Warrant's closed, correct? Did we close the warrant?

It has not been closed. No, we didn't close the warrant. No. So, um, cuz we're waiting for the fire station building committee. All right. So, going back to the ballot Oh, sure. vote. Um, I should have mentioned this earlier. So, I had sent to Tony and Mike a copy of the override warning from whenever 22 20. And so, question one, right, I want to make sure that the ballot wasn't closed because question one is about the ballot question because we were looking at it for the bigger override but for March. So, I wasn't sure if if like it was closed or if you added that to it. No, we decided to wait until the fire station building committee has their language. It just made sense not to close it. Have to open it again.

It's just that this question of the ballot vote needs to go on to that warrant. Yes, 100%. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Yes. Um Yeah, because that's that was even the motion that town meeting subject to approval by town meeting. So, yeah. Yep. Okay. Now, um, special note aside from the motion, I'm literally going to read this. Um, debt exclusion ballot and override virtual training for box town boards, committees, commissions, and staff is scheduled for Tuesday, January 13th at 9:00 a.m. It is a Zoom, right, Becky? Yes.

Or a Google Meet or whatever. This free training offered by KP Law is important for board and committee members and staff because questions from the public often come up, sometimes informally, about overrides or debt exclusions. I personally got pulled aside at the manura lighting to talk about this. So yes, it is not always clear what is allowed when responding and even factual explanations can unintentionally cross into advocacy. This session will help clarify what you can and cannot say, how to respond appropriately to public questions, and how to avoid potential legal or ethics issues. Having this guidance ahead of time helps protect both individuals and the town. Attendance is strongly encouraged for anyone who interacts with the public or serves on a board or committee. You should have received an email from the town clerk, but if you have not, please contact Becky at rh harrisbox-ma.gov. Um, it has not yet been confirmed whether this training will be recorded. So, I I think it's just really important. I know a lot of people have already said, "I already had the training. I don't need more training." But but when you think about all the conversation we're all going to be having, I think it does make really good sense that if it fits in your calendar to attend this

um can we have it recorded because not everybody can. I know it's Yeah. Um the the idea of recording, I love that idea, but um KP Law is not so gung-ho about recording their trainings just because they say the law changes and so they don't want that floating around out there. Um, she said the woman who was scheduling it for Lauren Goldberg said she would talk to her and get back to me. So, it's still hopefully a possibility, but don't hold. Well, could we have an evening one then if we can't? Because I mean, it's true. I mean, I have flexibility in my work schedule, but not everyone does because Yeah. Yeah. because I would have voted for other times. Yeah. I would have voted for other times

if it if I knew it wasn't going to be recorded. Okay. Yeah. I mean that it's for me I would like to attend but I'm not sure right 9:00 it's right smack in the middle of my work day. So right I think right I think the issue with KP law is it's kind of like did you attend or did you not attend? So I it's it's odd to me that they won't record it because campaign finance commission did record the one that the fire station building committee had and there were members who couldn't make it and we we watched it afterwards. Yeah. So it seems odd that AP not when campaign finance is willing to

so I am not a techie Becky but um could it be available a techie Becky um could it be available as a recording for a certain amount of time and then the recording would no longer be available like like all you can do is share a Zoom link or whatnot and then you can always put it yeah Zoom typically only goes to YouTube for 90 days like it they should be able to do that and even if they have to put a disclaimer right like I mean by the time you view this recording, things might have changed, right? It's just an idea because I now that it occurs to me. Yeah. Not everyone can be there at 9:00 a.m. on a Tuesday. On a Tuesday. Yeah. Is there some reason you're not using campaign finance? That's who the fire station

because it's more legal questions. It's free. We're not paying KP. It's a it's part of whatever. But um for me it's because we I we want attorney advice on what we can and can't say because campaign finance is a little different than what you can and can't say about an override. That's respectfully not true. That's exactly what we learned through campaign finance. That's exactly what we learned. What we could and could not say as board members from the table about overrides specifically. Yes. Because that's what we're the whole I'm gonna get up. Yeah. Yep. you are

the whole the fire station building committee is geared towards for instance the March override for you know getting this vote and then it going to the ballot. So leading up to the March meetings, we need to know what we can or cannot say at the table, right? Because uh when we t discuss the warrant articles and so and then when we get to design, it's all about the override because it's a debt exclusion vote. So that's what So I I guess that's Well, are you against KP Law doing it where we're not paying for it? Because before the objection was how much it's going to cost and it's free. I just think that they did a really good job. Priya still has the contact information from the person there. So when we sent them flyers that we were for our information, we still have that recording also.

Yes, we also still have the recording. We sent flyers to them when we first, you know, were giving out theformational session flyers for them to approve to make sure that they were and then they were all the same after that, but for the first time we sent Allen down to the the transfer station, they approved our flyers for us. I mean, and Pria still has his phone number and she's occasionally called him over the course of the last year um or two years or whatever it it's been. I just I guess I understand it's a legal question, but that is what the campaign finance answered. Those are all about the override because there's nothing else for us to you know, Mike and Becky, do you want to respond to this? I mean,

this this was just brought up to me as we should probably do this, contact KP Law, and I didn't know that there was a KP finance training done already. So, um, if that's available, that recording is available, we should make that more widely, you know, distribute that to everyone who's on this training as well. And, um, I think, you know, the more the better. It's probably just nice to have a different perspective as well. Mike, what do you think? Uh, seems to I I I like what she said about different perspective. you know, maybe do the the KP law training and then I can also distribute the recording of what campaign finance or we could have them like I I don't think he'll mind um I forget what is his name done.

Jason Jason, right? Jason Tate. Yes. If you would want to do another one, but we want perspectives like I actually like the idea of having KP Law do it and then see how different they are and see if there's any contradicting information. We could. Yeah. I mean, please know I I appreciate what you're all saying, but I don't see any harm in and you don't have to attend. If you don't want to attend KP Laws, don't attend. Yeah. I And I would still like if KP Law can record it, it will still be helpful. Yeah. Yeah. But not ask can, you know, record it and then and then get rid of it in a month. Yep. Or something like that. Some time limited like someone brought up. Great.

Okay. Okay. Moving right along. Um but

um school committee update. So I'm just going to read. Adam couldn't be with us tonight, so he sent something to be read into the record. December 18th summary. The meeting focused on continued deliberation of the AB forward reorganization options. The committee acknowledged strong community emotions following the prior meeting and emphasized its responsibility to deliberate publicly, independently, and transparently on decisions affecting the entire district. Members discussed the tension between preserving stability for current school communities and addressing long-term sustainability, equity, enrollment decline, and fiscal pressures. The presentation reviewed four remaining reorganization options and introduced new enrollment approaches, including maintaining elements of open enrollment using a district-wide lottery or moving to a geography based assignment model of flexibility zones. The discussion highlighted how enrollment policy choices significantly affect student disruption, equity, school identity, and the creation of new communities particular on particularly under broader reorganizational models. Public participation centered heavily on AB forward. Speakers expressed concern about divisiveness, targeted disruption, and the potential impact on students sense of belonging. Many urged the committee to pursue solutions to that distribute change more broadly, while others emphasized minimizing disruption and preserving existing school cultures. Following deliberation, the committee voted to remove two options from further consideration, narrowing the field to focus future discussions. The vote was framed as a step to concentrate analysis and community input on the remaining paths forward rather than a final decision. So um so I was at that meeting also and um yes I so so a lot happened. You can watch the recording and absolutely um Andrew presented the the new enrollment approaches and I think that along with the new information that AB forward has

on their website. Um, what I was observing were a lot of parents feeling that there were a lot of unknowns and everything got way more complicated because now we weren't only just talking about reorganizing where the children were going to be in which building, but also how they were going to be placed there. And so I yes it got very emotional and you know and and partly you know I came to understand I I personally couldn't understand why the Mariam and McCarthy town parents were so upset at the option of of being combined and then I realized they were afraid that if you took and I'm making numbers up 700 kids to fit into a 450 building people that really wanted to be there wouldn't be able to be there anymore like I couldn't understand it. I thought it was a Mariam verse McCarthy town we don't want to be with them but it wasn't. And it was like what if we can't be there and our we have to be distributed elsewhere. So it you know so you had that piece of it and then you had you know um I'm just going to say it sounded to me like there was some um significant support for geographical locations which would mean eliminating all of our school cultures. And and what that would also happen is the 120 kids from Actton roughly that come to Blancher would no longer be allowed to be at Blanchard. they would be back in acting because they would have to be near their school. Boxboro again now remember there's 120 box kids out there that would have to come back. So just yeah so so at any rate there are just so many moving pieces right now and I think it was smart that the school committee they um they narrowed it down to option four and option 52 you know and I'm not going to try to explain it because that is not my job. It's all online but we are down to those two options and then again adding in new enrollment approaches and I think that the other thing that having been to all the meetings we've heard a lot from three school communities Conan Mary McCarthy town for the first time I heard

Boardwalk school participation and there were I think three parents from the boardwalk there was zero blancher participation but I also know just because we are involved in the school that at the the idea of the change in enrollment and the potential that everyone will go back into a lottery now has Blanchard parents paying attention because for better or worse, Blanchard felt untouched. Mhm.

Boardwalk School felt untouched. Nothing's going to happen to us. Well, it's becoming more a community. So, they are um the one thing I I want to say it's January 8th. Um they are dedicating a whole meeting to public participation and they are also soliciting written um you know written comments from people. I know they are reading them all. They they are reading every email that comes in. But I think that now that this has kind of changed and it's drilling down and everybody is feeling more involved. I'm not gonna say impacted. Everyone's feeling more involved. You know, I highly recommend people try to attend that meeting or watch it and uh and participate because we talked a little bit earlier about loud minorities and that's what I've been hearing at all of the school committee meetings was very loud minorities, not the whole community. And I am a little concerned that the school committee is hyperfocusing on the noise and and not the whole community. And and I would argue that that happened with us last year. We are hyperfocusing on one community that was very noisy and maybe not paying attention to everybody else. And so so I I think it's just something really easy for any of us in town government to do because it's the people sitting in front of you that you're listening to. So that was a combination of Adam's summary and then my thoughts on his summary. But did anybody else did anybody else watch it, have an opinion or this is the opportunity to chat? I I well I think it's just difficult Kristen and I hear you but I think it's difficult for anyone in in town politics boxboro acton select board school committee fincom whatever that when you ask for when you ask for comments and the minority comes and takes the time and comes into and gives a report how can you not listen to them

oh no no no you do listen to them but you have to factor in you have to find a way to get get that other input or or you well that's the problem you still need advocate for the majority that doesn't participate. You still have to think about how that affects the majority. No, you're right. I think I think and that's the challenge we all have sitting sitting on any side of these tables is that that's what it is. I mean, Dennis brought up numbers. We have 6,000 residents and we have 400 people coming to town meeting to vote. So, we're basing We are listening to the minority, aren't we? Yeah, we are. Yep. Well, like I said, when Enrollment Approaches came out, um I I'm impressed. People are reading it. You know, it's it's out there, but I think we all need to be paying attention. Yep.

Anybody else have any? No. How's that? Very cold. Very, very cold. Okay. Flaming hot update. Um budget update. Warm enough. Can go. There's some hot water. All right. No. All right. Could I

Thank you for being here. Could I preface the budget update discussion with it would be nice for um I think administration and finance probably I would assume both from from school but I know from town to know coming out of this discussion or at least have some direction on override or no override and Regency or Blanchard and and we just because we have a week till we present the budget at budget Saturday or a little over a week And um so it would just be good to have that have that direction on on what we're doing.

Let's start with fun. Let's start with fun. So the FINCOM is bringing what to Muda Saturday for for nibbles. What' you guys vote? Bagels, cranberry juice, orange juice. Bagels, cranberry juice, and orange juice. So the select word, we have to decide what we're going to bring. So you all think about that. Cream cheese. So you're going to bring cream cheese. We got to bring the cream cheese. So, I'm going to suggest we do co we you want us to do coffee and tea and something else? Maybe fruits and are we thinking we'll be all day like Thank you. I Oh, look at how hot it is. Woohoo. No. How have you budgeted in your like do we need lunch? Because I know in the past

budget Saturday we're usually done between 12 and how about 1:00? Yeah. Lunch on budget Saturday. We usually get lunch on Catholic. Okay. All right. A longer day. Right. Well, if we don't get lunch, we'll have more money for the Regency. Did you just kid that? No. I can't believe you put that in. Bob loves me. Nobody else. None of your other people. Get ice cubes quick. Thank you, Bob. All right. Fun stuff is over. I'm going to put my S. Yeah, there. It's okay. Be nice to Even that hat won't save you from that sin.

All right, off we go. Okay, go. All right, budget update. Let's go, Tony. So, so I think we should actually on budget Saturday, we think we should start off the day though with a budget overview and look at the model. So, because I think you will need to pressure test the the assumptions in that model. Um, so last time I spoke here, I was quite cautious about where we stood in terms of the override and the budget. Um, we've had a further fin meeting since then. Um, I think I'm now I'm probably in the cautiously optimistic category now. So, um, on the last model we looked at, um, at FINCOM, we have a a budget, um, excess levy capacity of about $650,000. Um, which I think is too close for comfort, but I think we're getting there in terms of our numbers. Um,

we still have it's Yes, we still have that's for the A budget. That's for the A for the A budget. Yeah, for the A budget. For the worst case scenario, we still have 650. Okay. So I mean but there are lots of un there are lots of variables in in the calculation. So there's a lot of caveats in that. So that assumes um nothing to the override uh nothing nothing to the um overlay reserve. Yeah.

Um because we previously had 300,000 in there that's been taken out. That assumes nothing in warrant articles for raise and appropriate. Um we've based the um levy or maximum allowable levy calculation based on uh you know 150,000 new growth rate that may be too high. It's pretty

conservative but still could be too high because we and we've been trending downwards. So there are a number of things in there that we that we need to be aware that could change the the calculation in the end. And remember last year when we we did the the estimate for the the levy the levy calculation we were slightly off because new growth was lower um the overlay um reserve was higher than we put in in the model. So things things change between the actual town meeting and what goes into the calculation to the to the state. So that's why I think 650,000 is not enough to be comfortable with as a number. So, we need to go back to the budget, back to the a budget and do some scrubbing of the budget basically. Um, I did send out a bumper fund sheet of of of numbers to FinCom and I sent to Kristen as well and to and to Mike um of all of the um items where we underspent the budget in the last in in FY25 and where we stand in FY26 in terms of spending levels because last year we actually underspent the budget by a million dollars. Um and we actually um had revenues coming in greater than we than we budgeted of half a million dollars. So we're a million half dollars that we taxed

the town that we shouldn't have taxed basically and it's gone back to free cash now. Um so we think there's capacity in the budget even in the a budget to actually go in and actually um pull out more more more costs. Um,

so I think that'll be our challenge on budget Saturday partly and as we go through the budget process to look at all of those numbers uh and really sort of pressure test those um you know we would like to not be taking out of the um staffing costs you know the for the lower paid staff because you know we've had these big pay increases for fire chief DB you know sorry police chief B chief that is not you know and then at the same time we sort of taking it to take these cutting back on steps and and cost of living for you know the the the lower page workers is not is not right either. So yes, we have some constraints there. Uh but that yeah that's that's where we are.

Tony, I'm sorry. Yeah, Tony Marie, you said 650,000 and I know that's an early number. What was the number last year? Last year we estimated something just over a million dollars. Um and it came in at about 850 I think when the final calculation was done. So, okay. So, we it dropped a bit. So, yeah. And the only reason I'm asking is because I know there was a a little bit of talk about an override last year and then we they said, "Okay, we don't need it." And I was just bas Why why did why was the decision? Okay, we don't need it this year because of that number was about a million dollars last year and now this year that million dollars has dropped down again very preliminary $650,000

and and I'm I'm with you at that point. I just wanted to get a sense of comparison. Why not last year and why maybe this year? Yeah. I mean, I think it's is a judgment call, right? I mean, where where do you feel comfortable? I feel comfortable at something over a million. I feel less comfortable at 650 because then then we're in that sort of zone where something changes by two or 300,000 and suddenly you you're you know, we're we're out of compliance. Correct. No, I get you. No, I I just want a comparison, that's all. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I am I honestly can't remember um on budget Saturday when department comes department has come in. I I guess I'd really like to understand where that million dollars is coming from. And I'd also love to know if that's been historical, you know, because as long as we've been on the board, we've been pretty much level services, right? So if we've been historically sending five, eight, a million dollars back to free cash, then that's something that's systemic, right? Whereas if last year, for whatever reason, we came up with a million dollars, then that's a one-time event. So I love department heads to all kind of factor that in and um and that's just on the municipal side right give us back anything

we've been getting a million dollars back since co now first year of co thank you Maria Maria just show off she she can walk now don't she's skipping the first year of co um in 20 right we shut down the budget right and and frankly we shut it down because we couldn't didn't spend any money because you couldn't do any projects or anything. So we that's when we started to get these big numbers back. Um and then so that was in going into FY 21. Yeah. Then going into FY22 we're like okay we understood that I wasn't on the board at that point. I also wasn't on FINCOM at that point. You were here right? No not yet. Oh

um no I left FINCOM. I wasn't on the board yet. But again, we got the budget numbers and um it was the interimm TA at that point. Um we got the budget numbers and we thought we were budgeting tight and we got more money back. So we kept getting an extraordinary amount of free cash back. It's like a million a million five. Yeah.

And we didn't really know how we weren't spending it. Um and we haven't so we keep kind of tightening stuff up. But you know in the last three years we've had a a surplus in medical insurance and we get that number based on what the TA has for headcount and cost. Right. So that's a real number when it gets budgeted. How all of a sudden we're 125,000 under that budget has been always kind of a head scratcher. We did ask Kungwa for some information on that. Okay. So um so we've tried but it's been consistent. Before CO we were maybe a half a million dollars back into free cash. Well, back in the day, I remember 250 300. We had 350. It wasn't a lot of money. And then all of a sudden,

you know, it kind of ballooned and we, you know, we haven't been able to get our arms around where this million dollars is coming from and why a lot of it is on the fixed stuff that like we didn't think there was a lot of discretion, right? you know, sorry. So, I gave a report uh you'll remember to fin last year um as we were, you know, approaching this the spring. Um and I can share that with the select board on here are the areas where um we either had less staffing or we know we had um uh you know a lot of people who who selected to take the um the the bonus that benefit that we opt to I shouldn't call it a buyout.

Well well an opt out an opt out. I knew it was a something, but there were a lot of there were probably a dozen or so reasons why we had and some of those reasons were different than the year before why we had but I can forward that to you because I think it would be good for you to see that there were you know uh some reasons some that we'll tighten up this year and some that just I don't think could have been predicted u but we'll try to you know yeah we just need to be tight I think just need to try you know do our best I think to try to be closer to that to that number right

um the other thing that we c we can do um which would require a financial policy change would be to fund our reserve fund from free cash. So many towns do this. So so um that would give us an extra $175,000 roughly of levy capacity because it'll be coming out of free cash. So we want to add that to whatever we can get from the budget um scrubbing into into the reserve. So ideally come in something like $1.2 $2 million with of excess levy capacity. Okay. You know, I think we'd feel comfortable with that number. So, we this year we could come in with 1.2. Yeah.

No, he's saying he'd like to get there by and looking at that. So, that that would be comparable to last year similar to last year. Yeah. It means and it would mean of course no override this year. We'll probably be back into override again next year potentially, but it is a good thing if we I mean kicking it down the road a little bit. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, the only the only question I have and and I and I don't want to take a lot of Tony, I apologize. You know, when override if we kick it down the down the road a year, we're going to have the fire station and you know that that would be two big votes coming coming in one year. Yeah. Yeah. I think we just have to accept that. Yeah. You can, but it would happen this year anyway. Yeah. Because we have

you have a May override and you'd have a January February fire station override. You're always going to have those two big votes at the same time if you do an override for the town. Yeah, I guess. Okay. And I don't think we can tactically sort of like, you know, organize it to to to not, you know, not to not deal with it. I think we have to, you know, it is what it is. And they're they're very different things. Actually, a debt exclusion override is very different to an operational override in terms of its impact. I mean, they're both, you know, will impact taxes ultimately, right? But uh well the operational override the operational override wouldn't affect current year taxes the fire station building that would affect would would affect current year taxes.

That would have a much bigger effect on taxes actually than the the operational override would have because the operational override would essentially be we're going to just be the same level of taxation increase that we've had previous years and we can map out what that's been every year, right? For the average for the average house or whatever. Um whereas the fire station override is going to have a significant increase in taxes but won't affect the the levy limit you know as such. Yeah. Okay. And that debt exclusion is doesn't hit the first year. It's going to be it'll be delayed the year after. Yeah. Be a little bit of delay on it.

So on budget Saturday I would like to take a half an hour to talk about what you were just talking about. I mean, I I know you all mocked me because I sent you that Boston Globe article and I I realize if you don't have a subscription, you can't read it, but um so you have a subscription also. Uh at any rate, you know, we need to look at what the Mass Municipal Association is recommending. Um I think we need to continue putting pressure on our legislature. I see that smirk down there. I read the GLOBE EVERY DAY.

AH, YOU GOT TO ADMIT IT. There was a nice uh Yeah. emoji of oldfashioned. Anyway, um I you know I do think we need to look at at systemic changes basically and how do we approach these things and we take the fear factor out of it and let people know it's not a blank check. It's you know that it's all part of the mechanics of our budget. So I would like to take a little bit of time on budget Saturday to talk about that to make sure everyone even just to catch everybody up to date on what the legislature is or is not doing and I don't just mean our people. Well, I mean like the high state focused on the city of Boston problem, right? Well, I know Michelle Woo is all over it that we need to get rid of two and a half.

Yeah, that's a bit I mean that's a little bit a little bit abstract in a way though, isn't it? And what what we're facing now is we need to model out what our what our budget's going to be%. Yeah. So, what I want everyone to understand here is what's what's the model and what are the assumptions we're putting into that because we're putting in assumptions based on information that we that we that we collectively have. And I want to make sure that everyone's on board with what those assumptions are. You know, revenues. Yeah. And all all the all the other things we put into it. So that so that you know when when we come down to a final number for this is what the levy will look like and this is where the levy limit is, we can all say that looks that looks right. Mhm.

Um, so that that's what we should start from, I think, and then say, "Okay, then how can we shave off some of that budget to get to where we need to be?" Yep. Yep. Okay. All right. Any other questions? Nope. Yes, ma'am. No. What? I think Mike was looking for like action. Yeah. I Yeah, that's that's my question. Do Well, I think you're still doing the same thing. You're doing a level service and then you're doing a B budget which is level funded and we're going to have to find some happy meetings somewhere. I'm not sure that's right. So, okay. Well, help us out.

So, so, so I think to the A budget I So, what we're looking at is is what what what we're calling the A minus budget, I suppose, which is basically the A budget less less, you know, with say 300,000, which is a big ask actually, I think, because in fact it gets it closer to the Budget in many ways. So, it's between the A and the Budget. we're looking for. So, is the direction to Mike is is it fin suggestion that that Mike find an additional $300,000 in the municipal budget? In the A budget. In the A budget. Yeah. Yeah.

I I think what I the answer I would like to hear is um is the town leadership going to go for an override this year or not? And I'll know how to adjust accordingly. If there's not going to be an override going this year, then we don't need to do two budgets. will prepare one budget and I'll know and I know I'll know how to fine tune to get there. Yeah, I think that's what we said. That's Yeah, that's what we said. Yeah. Yeah. Said if we can come in at an A minus budget then there is no override. What's everybody thinking? I I agree with that. I agree with that. Yeah. This is kind of which comes first because if you can find the 300,000 then I agree that there's no override. You can find

question informed by the by the budget. That's I'm sorry. What? Yeah. I'm saying what you're saying. Yeah. Right. Exactly. If you can find the 300,000 Yeah. then there is no need for an override. Well, technically there's no need for an override now. I know. I know. I know. I know. But gives it gives income the million dollar comfort. You give us all the million dollar comfort level. Yes. I know. No. Right. No. Just as comfortable.

No. No. No. Exactly. And I think the other thing too is and I agree with your concern. It seems like Maria, you said for the past three years when the when the auditors come give give us back our money, it's like, well, we got an extra extra million dollar. We got an extra $500,000. So, somehow we've been overestimating, Tony, and I think you were the one that said it is that we've been overt taxing the one way or the other, the taxpayers. Yeah.

So, if if you can come in at 300,000, call the $280,000, I don't think there's a need for an override this year. Does that make sense to you, sir? what you're saying makes sense. I what I'm still not quite processing is is how you can say to us yes or no and that'll that'll tell you what to do. I'm sorry I don't see what if Okay, we can add and subtract budget sat budget Saturday isn't the be all end all. I think the task for Mike is what does it look like if you cut another $300,000 in the municipal side budget, right? So I I think that's it. What does it look like? Because we can always put things back.

Yes. Right. Like like if it kind turns out we can only hire one police officer instead of two or three, we might think, oh, you know what? Let's put some money back. So if you look at budget Saturday, Sam, it's kind of like our first pass of all of us sitting around the table. The department heads come in and present everything to us. They they they have powerpoints. They go through their numbers and they give justification for what they're asking for. Now, they've already met with Mike and his team. So they've already been scrubbed by him and then they're coming before have has anyone met with you yet? Okay. So they're coming before all of us and and then we add and subtract right up until town meeting pretty much. So think of think of it as our baseline at the end of the day.

Granted I and granted I've this is my first time going through this. I'm just saying if you're going to ask me do we need an override yes or no? I'm gonna say shouldn't we shouldn't we do budget Saturday and then ask me. He's asking for direction on how to get to budget Saturday. Understand I understand. That's why I'm agreeing with Bob. I'm I'm saying that right now we're pretty confident we do not need an override. We That's right. Then sure fine. If if the budget would be scrubbed for Yeah. Yeah. which also puts us in a better position next year because next year we say look we've held off two years in a row on an override.

Um and this budget scrubbed. There's nowhere else to go. So um because now that's how we held off last year on an override. And I think next year Afton's also going to be looking maybe maybe even looking for an override. One of the reasons we're in such a good place, good so to speak, is because the school was limited on what they could do for an increase because Actton limited their their increase. And that's why we went from oh my god, we need an override to oh, we might be able to sweep by this year. I agree. Yeah. We thought we could have a 10% school assessment increase, right? And it's 5.5%. So,

so the other thing I want to say one nice thing that came out of the tri board meeting and then quite frankly, you know, attending schoolboard meetings, the actincom has volunteered to come and give us an idea of actton's finances if we think that's helpful. And I think sometime I know I I said I didn't think so. I didn't think we needed it, but I love the fact that people are reaching across the town line for lack of a better word so that we can all move into next year. No, I I I agree. If both towns are going for an override, that's a little crazy. That's never happened in my memory. It did happen. It happened with the last override. Oh, did it? Okay. It seems to me like it would help. Right. You're in it together, you know. Yeah. It seems to me it would help. But I

Okay. I'm looking forward to going through learning a lot more. Budget is a lot of fun. We actually do a weird way. So, you know, the only other thing is, you know, I know we go right up to town. Get up. Well, no. By like, let's hope by the time we go to print, we're not making changes. But we we need to make a decision on the override, I would say, at budget Saturday. We need to have that's why we said an A minus budget, right? We don't want to be looking at an A budget and a B budget on budget Saturday. We want to be looking at an A minus budget and say, does this work? Because we need to have an override committee

um you know, forming in the town. We're not it. So, then they can't wait until March, right? So, so the the committee might might do something this year or might do something next year, right? But if it needs to be this year, it needs to be known to whomever it may be that we're doing an override. Oh, I wasn't saying we were waiting to decide if over I was explaining to Sam that we can move things around, but I I was not at all saying that. And I agree with you and and I I'm just going to say it again. You don't like to do it, but we have $4.2 $2 million in free cash that would bail us out of an override if we had to. So, we don't have to have an override this year. I don't know that. I can't speak.

Well, I I I've done my research. It's not recommended, but it's allowed. So, I'm just million. I understand that. I understand that. But if we're that close, it's an option. And we have a lot of I think if you look into and get back to like A and A minus, I think that's the direction. So that that way we don't have to have A and a B budget. So well I would just go I don't think we need an A budget anymore. Just a Yeah, just the A minus budget. Yeah, just the A minus budget. Yeah, just just one budget. That's it. Just Okay. Of course, he's already made two budgets, so he's like great. Thanks. No, no, but no, this but I I I hate the B budget.

I appreciate your cander

for well one biggest reason. We have segregated one group of employees, our non-union, non-contract employees. We have said in the beginning of the B budget, they're not getting a cola. And it's and it's absolutely wrong. And and I I've thought about it every single night. You know, our contract employees are safeguarded unless town meeting doesn't pass. Then you can you got an exit clause from all those contracts, including mine. Same with our union employees. They're all protected because they've got another two years on their their contract. Although you can do layoffs, but what we've said in the beginning of the B budget is is we're we're not doing colas. And and I did that and that's very uncomfortable because, you know, we can't deny that the cost of living is going up, but we're saying you're not getting this. So, I love the fact that we can abandon the B budget, focus on one budget, and I would say, you know, I wouldn't even call it an A minus. We're going to go back and rework the the A budget and and scrub it.

That was the best way we could come up with. Yeah. Yeah. Well, what are we looking at here? Somewhere between I get it. I get it. We we, you know, abandon B and we take A and we start reworking. And that's all the direction I need. That's that's that's good. So, I want to go back to what Tony said when he was talking about or Marie, I'm not sure who, um, some of our fixed costs that we were budgeting for actually coming in 100, 150 under. At what point do we start being conservative if if we if there's a fiveyear history of it always coming in under? At what point do we start being conservative there and acknowledge that maybe we'll have to backfill it later? So, I mean, that's something else to think about because and again, that's getting back to break out the million dollars. Where was it so that we could really understand it? Yeah, we sent us

Oh, I haven't had time to look at it, Tony. I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. I haven't. You sent it yesterday. When did you send it? Yesterday. Saturday. You didn't jump on that in some I baked 1,000 cookies yesterday. I'm not even kidding. We baked 1,000 cookies. The cookie boxes went out. But anyway, I won't eat it. I promise. And I'll share with all you guys. Okay. All right. All right. We're We're going to get there and we're all going to be friends when it's over. Um, so that so that gives me good direction on on that. So that's very helpful. The other one that um we're we're friends now. We'll be friends later.

The other one we could use some some direction on though um and it relates to um I I guess all this and that is where we're going to hold the the town meeting. and he and I I know we don't have it on for a vote tonight, but I do want to get back to uh principal VTO and um and and give him some you know they've got um a band concert scheduled for one night, a chorus concert. They've got a number of things that if we move from the Regency and go back to dates that we have told them previously we don't need the Blanchard. Um, I if we're going to mess them up, I'd rather do it early and not, you know, come back, you know, cuz because we're we're messing with kids programs and things like that, I I don't want I want to be as least disruptive as possible.

I had to talk to Mike about other things. So, I told him that I would get back to him or you would get back to him after budget Saturday. And he said, "Fine. Nothing's going to change between okay, the end of half day tomorrow and then go back to school June 4th." On the 4th. So, actually, we'd still be getting back to him before anything would happen. So we'll have the discussion there you know. Yeah. So we'll have that discussion by Saturday. I did um talk with him today. Okay. And I told him that I would be calling him tomorrow whether I had no information or with any information. So I am going to you know follow through and call him and I'll just let him know that that we we understand and concerned about the children and we'll get to him as soon as we possibly know anything because Maria.

Well, he's on a tattletail. I didn't tell you that. I already called him. Is this going to be on the agenda for budget Saturday as well? It should be. It should be. Okay. Yeah. Only because the school needs to know if if we're going to go venue. Yeah. Basically, I mean, it's a warrant article, so technically it's not on the agenda, but we have to tell the school because yeah, they're going to have to move stuff around because if we change our mind, they've already filled those dates. So, if we don't have an override, do we need to be at the region? That's what we're saying. That's why that's exactly why it's after budget Saturday. That's the box. Yeah. Yeah. But the election is never going to be. So it's this is just about tell me. The election's never going to be at Regency. You talking about the date though.

The date. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that's what I explained to Mike because until we know if we're having an override or not, we don't know what we're doing. And if if can we get numbers around really what it cost, not like this is what it cost last time because last time Yeah, Kelly is already working on it versus BXTV. Yeah, Kelly has those numbers. We have those for budget Saturday. Yeah, budget Saturday TV when we did it there. Much less expensive than whoever it was last time that you guys used. Yeah. So, as long as we get them for budget Saturday, what what it costs at the regency that's at the region. Agree. Okay. Yep.

We should have had the clickers discussion after the budget. We'd all be home by now. I know. All right. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Okay, you guys. As a time-saving measure, we're going to consider the 26 27 annual renewal licenses using a consent agenda. I'm going to ask each board member if they have any licenses they'd wish to hold. So, it's very similar to town meeting. I'm going to read off the licenses. If you want to hold them and have a discussion about whether they should be renewed or not, you just say hold and um and we'll go back address anyone that's been held and then pass everything else.

Give you a little bit of information from the start that might help and that is everyone is up to date on the taxes. Uh Kelly has checked all that. Um everyone has submitted everything that they need to for all of these licenses. Yeah, it was a good package. Thanks. great package. She's worked very hard on pulling it all together and as always there's things that come in late, but you have everything. So, as far as what I think we skipped an agenda item. I think there's a one day there's a one day liquor license. I imagine that's why Hillary is raising her hand right now. Oh, don't worry, Hillary. We'll get there. Don't you worry. We're getting it, Hillary. I promise. Okay. But that was a separate uh

it's a separate leg, but it was before all the annual approvals and uh just Yep. wanted to make sure we got there. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Let's just finish. Let's do this. All right. Well, let's let's let Hillary go. Hillary, we're going to say yes. Um but All right. So, let's go back. All right. So, for Winterfest Derigible, and I never know if I'm saying it right or not, needs a one-day liquor license. Um Hillary, did you want to talk to us about that? tour. Yep. Um, thank you, ma'am. Can you hear me? Yep.

Okay. Yeah, we're having Winterfest on January 31st, Saturday, from 1 to 4 p.m. at Steel Farm. Um, with a bad weather date of the following day, same time. Um, so yeah, we had Derigible come the past several years. Um, they were they're they've been wellreceived by the community. Um, they're excited that we asked them again. Mhm. Um, so is it derigible or derigible? Do you know? I mean, I say derigible. I It sounds better. Digible sounds better. Okay.

All right. Okay. I move to approve a special 1-day liquor license for Winterfest on January 31st, 2026 from 1 to 4:00 p.m. Bad weather date. We're not going to ask for rain. Bad weather date, February 1st, 2026, cuz maybe we'll get a blizzard on Saturday. um to Derigible Brewery Company, 24 Porter Road, Littleton, Mass 01460, with Hillary Grean, chair of the Recreation Commission as applicant, subject to all applicables, local and state requirements. Seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor of a blizzard on No, I'm just kidding. All in favor of the motion, please say I. I. Opposed? Abstain. All right, done. Hillary, you got it.

You got it. No, but wouldn't that be amazing if we got an awesome snowstorm on Friday, the guys plowed on Saturday, and then you had Winterfest on Sunday? That would be amazing. Yeah, really amazed. See if they could clean it up that quick. Well, I mean, anyway. All right. Well, I'm going to wish for snow next. All right. All right. Thank you. Thank you, good night.

All right. Alcohol license renewals. Merry Christmas. All right. So, as I read these off, you're going to say hold if you want to discuss them further. Box Regency LLC. Craft Food Halls 500 Beaver Park Road LLC Oscars Burritos Mexican Grill Inc. Ki Corp. Boxboro Pearl Liquor Corp. Thinking Flower Inc. Who's K? Who's Ki? Kimi is um Oh my god, it's in the package. That's Flamingo. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And I don't know if it's Ky or Ky. Not Flaming, but Flamingo. Just flamingo. All right, let's

I move to Okay, so you ready? There were nobody was Nobody held them. I move to approve the 2026 renewal liquor license for Box. What? Box Regency LLC, CFH500 Beaverbrook Road LLC, Oscars Burritos Mexican Grill, Inc. Cy Corp, Boxboro Liquor Corp. and Thinkingflower Inc. for a term ending December 31st, 2026. Second. Did you do bumblebee? That's We have the next one. That's victual or this is just alcohol. Alcohol. Okay. All right. Um, is there a second? Second. All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed.

Abstain. That would be 400.

Pri, are you dying inside? I'm just teasing. Oh, come on. That was good. Okay. Common victual license renewals. Boxboro Regency LLC. Craft Food House 500 Beaverbrook Road LLC Bumblebee Pit Stop LLC Harvard Sportsman's Club Inc. Oscars Burritos Mexican Grill Inc. Thinking Flower Inc. All right. No, nobody was held. So I move to approve the 2026 Common Vixer license for Boxboro Regency LLC, CFH500 Viva Brook Road LLC, Bumblebee Pit Stop LLC, Harvard Sportsman's Club, Inc. Oscars Burritos Mexican Grill Inc. and Thinking Flower Inc. for the term ending December 31st, 2026.

Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed? Abstain. That would be unanimous. Next. Public entertainment licenses. There are only two. Boxboro Regency LLC. Craft Food Halls, 500 Beaver Park Road, LLC. Seeing that none were held, I move to approve the annual public entertainment license for the Boxboro Regency LLC and CFH500 Beaver Brook Road LLC for the term ending January 1st, 2027. Second. Oh, did they get a two-year? Are we sure that's right? Did they get two years? No, it's one day. So, is there is it Oh, yeah. It's one day. So, is the reason it's one day different?

The others expire December 31st and this one expires January 1st. There was a reason. Yeah, that's the way those are set up. We're just going to trust you. It just has something to do with this public entertainment. All right. Yeah, remember we did that last time. Oh, probably for New Year's Eve because otherwise their permit would expire New Year's Eve at midnight. Midnight. Okay, that totally makes sense. Thank you, Kelly. Okay. Is there a second? That ABC thought of everything. I second that. All right. Sam got that one. Sam got that one.

Um, all those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed. Abstain. That would be unanimous. Class 2 used vehicle dealer license renewals. Same thing. Gold if you need to. Um there are three. Alpha Trading Services, Inc., CBK Automotive Repair, Inc., the Wind Group, Inc. And Mike, the same thing is through is true on these three as far as they've they've all paid their taxes, right? Yes. Okay. Everybody on all your list is up to date on taxes. Okay. They know the routine now. I moved your actually the easiest the the the vehicle dealerships they were the easiest to work with this year. All right go go go dealers

first time. Okay seeing that there were no holds I move to approve the class 2 vehicle dealers license for Alpha Trading Services Inc. CBK Automotive Repair Inc. and the Windgroup Inc. for a term ending January 1st 2027. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor please say I. I opposed. Abstain. That one's unanimous. Class one vehicle dealers license renewal. There's only one. Alpha Trading Services. Seeing that there was no hold, I move to approve the class one vehicle dealers license for Alpha Trading Services, Inc. for a term ending date January 1st, 2027. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed? I

abstain. That one's unanimous. All right, we're done. Now, before y'all leave, we have to sign everything. Yep. A whole bunch of stuff. So, if people want to do that while we're doing reports and announcements, I think that's totally fine. Maybe. Yeah. Um Pria's boys are home. Pria, you go first. You can get out of here. Um we had um the three um sites. We approved the design funding, right, Mike? for the three sites. Uh yes, as far as the um yes, the committee did

the the fire station building committee. So it was um for 72 road it was about 2,781,660. Um the 1300 massab is $2,776,410. And then the 984 site is $2,765,910. So how much is 72? I'm sorry I wasn't fast enough. 2,781,660. Okay. So they're all within spitting distance of each other. each other. Yeah. What's What are the three properties? Not to be gross. What

What are the three properties? Um it is 72 store road 1300 Massap and 984. Again this doesn't include the land purchase cost. This is design funding. Okay, but that includes for the green design. The green design. It also includes the green design as I was questioning because I thought it was Yeah, I I knew where you were going. So it doesn't include the land purchase. So like it's just for the design including the green design. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And and that was the main thing on that day. I don't think we had anything beyond that. So, and we will be finalizing the language and all that between the January 5th and the 8th. Are those the two days? Oh god, that's

Yeah, that week is going to be I think didn't we have two meetings that week? Right. Monday and Thursday. Okay. We were supposed to talk about rescheduling January 5th because you're going to be at fire station and that's budget. It's the day after budget. It was already not going to be a meeting on the calendar. No, I thought January 5th we had a meeting. Did we get rid of it already? The day after budget. It's That's the first Monday. So, we're the second Monday. Oh, never mind then. I thought we had a slipboard meeting that day. I think I'm I think I'm confusing. You know what? I was thinking that, too. Yeah, we were. Okay. We're both wrong. Good. We were Yeah, but never mind. We have two We do. We have We have Monday, Thursday. Monday and Thursday that week. Yeah. Okay. So,

that's weird. I could have swear I looked at it. The one other thing the fire station committee uh talked about is the testing for the environmental surveys have been done on uh 984 Massav and 1300 Massav. Um they were already done over at 72 Stow Road. So they'll be on an equal platform and then the uh borings uh were also done over at uh 984 Massav. So we'll get the Geotac in information. Um we felt like that wasn't needed at 1300 Massav uh because they already have their septic the building and everything is already there. So uh so that now those sites will all be on an equal um equal footing so great. Excellent.

All right, we'll just work backwards. Yeah. So question. So when are we meeting again? The 12th. January 12th, apparently. I honestly thought I checked the calendar and saw select board there, but I guess I didn't. Well, we both missed that. Yeah, I was gonna say. Okay. So, the next one is the 12th. Yep. Okay. Yeah.

Um the report I have is the um liaison to the personnel board. The personnel board met. They are looking at the cola. Mike mentioned about the cola for a group of people. Um they're going to be making a recommendation. Um as you as everyone has said there is um the personnel board um has um is is actually we didn't the personal board looked into this with council and it doesn't really matter now because if we don't go to the B budget but anyways um steps have to take place so steps automatic not the steps do by by law have have to happen for people who are under that program but the op but the option is cola and there was going to be a re was what was going to be a recommendation for for zero cola. Mike's very uncomfortable with it and the personnel board quite frankly is is uncomfortable with with zero cola for the non-union contract. So they're working with Mike as far as getting a number so that everybody gets a cost of living increase based upon cost of living is going up. So the personnel will make that recommendation.

Good. And I mean I know we're not supposed to discuss it. So all I can say is good. Yes, we will. All right. We need to do a meeting probably with the um with the select board chair, yourself, uh Fincom chair Tony, um Allen, the the personnel board chair, and myself to uh to take Raj John's comp data and look at that and come up with a recommended cola. Okay, that works because Allan is actually I think Allan's coming up with that number. Yes. with Raj with John's input. Allan is coming up with that number and Allan is really on board with all everything we've said that that that we can't exclude a a group of people. Well, and I we're not allowed to discuss it right now. We're just reporting. Okay. Yep. I'll keep my opinion to myself.

So, once Ellen comes up with that with the personnel board, then we should schedule to meet with the four of us to recommend some town meeting. Beautiful. Sam, do you have any I I feel like we kind of hit your say I had lots of announcements about the the consom, the EDC, and the water resources committee, which all of which got taken care of during the meeting today. So, aren't you lucky? I bring you nothing. I've got you nothing. Um, I already talked about the school committee as a natural part of our meeting. So, I've got nothing. Do I have anything else? What am I for? Do you want to make those two announcements? Oh, announcements. Yes. And I actually wish we had done this first. Oh my gosh. We got to move these back to the beginning because that's when there's actually people here and like who's still watching. This is going up on the website and posted.

It's already there. Yeah, this is already on the website. All right. Yeah, let's move things like this like like um back to the beginning. I know we moved it to the end, but let's put it back. Um transfer station holiday hours this coming Wednesday, Christmas Eve, they'll be open from 11 to 5. So, you got to get there early. And Wednesday, December 31st, New Year's Eve, will be regular hours. So, yeah. transfer station closes two hours early on Christmas Eve. All right, the other thing is the Boxboro Minutemen with help from the Boxboro DPW will be collecting and shipping Christmas trees from Boxboro residents this year on Saturday, January 3rd between 10:00 a.m. and 2 p.m. beginning December 20th. Look for the sign up forms on the Boxboro Minutemen's website. Um boxboromen.org minute.org. The cost for pickup is $20. Deadline for all payments is December 31st. For pickup, please have your tree outside where it can be easily located by the Miniman and ready for pickup. If you prefer not to sign up for tree pickup, you can also deliver your tree for disposal to the old Boxboro DPW facility next to Blanchard um located at 577 Mass A on Saturday, January 3rd between 10 and 2. A disposal fee of $10 will be collected on site when you drop off your tree. For questions, email captainmen.org. org.

Okay. Okay. Um I have uh minutes. Do we have minutes? Well, Mike hasn't done his updates yet. He's like, "What about me?" I have a lot of updates, but I will I can put some Oh, I think you should prioritize. I can defer some of them. Oh. Did Brook Village come in asking for transfer station sticker? No. Okay. So, they're going to uh but speaking of Brook Village, um they did receive a $200,000 mass D grant um towards the water system. Great. And that letter came in today. Um All right, hit the highlights.

The board has tasked uh the chief and I with coming up with temporary housing for the fire station. We have that. Um it's housing um cooking in and living you know basically in um in restrooms the uh designed built delivered $560,000. Okay. So half a million dollars for temporary housing for the fire station. One time cost Yeah. onetime cost. No recurring Well, we have to heat and cool it. That would be for that would be for two years. Okay. Yeah. How quickly could it be set up? Um, I'll have to go back and look at the details, but

I just I'm not asking because I want it to be set up tomorrow. I'm asking because timeline to me matters. Yep. Uh, as we talked about when they were here, if if they can't break ground on a new fire station for two years from whatever meeting we have and whatever vote we have, then you sort of you spill this timeline out. So, I'm just curious. Um, I will I will get that and email it and then announce it at the next meeting as well. As far as if we give them a go-ahhead and, you know, special town meeting votes the money or I was going to say, yeah, I assume we need a special time meeting first, but then Yeah, we would. And and that would be, you know, if if if the others don't pass, then then we vote to for the temporary housing. Yeah.

Well, even if it does, you know, timeline of construction of the of a new firehouse, I I agree, Sam. Yeah. Yeah. I just I I don't want to.

Yeah, that makes sense. Um Okay. Um this one I thought was worthy. Um I did mention this to uh to EDC um and Alec, but one of our local companies um Sweeney Drywall Finishes um right over on on Codman Hill. Um I didn't realize they were such a big company. They just received Yeah, they just received a $3750 grant from the Mass uh Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Um small grant, but that's to to train their $320 employees on safety measures to keep from getting hurt. And I thought one, it was cool that a a local company knew enough to go to the the the state and apply for this sort of grant. two, they care enough about their employees and reducing risk that they went and and they got this. And so I got a letter the other day that that they were awarded that.

Nice. Um, the other thing I wanted to mention, I mentioned it earlier about how critical uh, last mile transportation is when you're trying to bring employers and retain employers here, especially it becomes even more important, I think, as we bring in um, millennials and a multigenerational workforce, people that maybe opt not to have a vehicle or whatever. Um, we've now set up a permanent transportation method with Boxboro Connects, not just a year to year because when it looked like the grant was going to run out and we were scrambling and we've actually found a way to apply our cherry sheet money from the MBTA uh to fund that every year.

Yeah. So, we have a sustainable model to to uh have transportation in and around the community and also to the to stations, which I think is really important. um considering other towns have have lost it and we we took steps to ensure it goes forward. Right. You saw that uh we received uh some funding from the state uh to go to the fire department uh due to the extra runs that they have to make because of the closing of the hospital. A little disappointing, but okay, we'll take it. Um, capital committee did meet uh this past week and we reviewed

uh about $2.5 million in in capital items that'll move to capital Saturday or we can discuss them in or you all can discuss them and vote them in in detail. Um and we a lot of questions came up from the five member committee and uh I've reached out and gotten a lot of those answers back and uh those continue to come in. Um, I think the rest of the updates and announcements can wait unless you got more signing to do, I can keep going on. Yep. Sounds good. I'm sorry. I'm done. We're done. Uh, I think that's it.

I will say just to fill time while she's still signing, uh, the fuel tank project is is done. Um the only thing on that that's remaining is we do have um two buried tanks that uh at some point we'll need to dig out, but we're not under pressure to get those uh you know like we don't have to do it next year. So that's not in the capital plan for next year. We deferred we had money there, but we deferred it a year. They're already empty though, aren't they? They're emptied and monitored. Um we just need to get them out of the ground. That's we need to Yeah, we need we can't leave them there forever. So we need to dig those out. But it's it's a uh yeah I would say within the next two or three years we and we did put in the capital plan for two years out. Good. So anything else?

Nope. That's it. All right. Um last but not least, everyone have a chance to read the meeting minutes? We did. Okay. I move to approve the meeting minutes of November 24th, 2025, December 1st, 2025, which was a joint meeting of the select board and the planning board, and December 8th, 2025 as presented. I'll move we'll move to accept them as presented. Um any further discussion? Seconding, right? You're seconding. Yeah, he's seconded. Okay. Any further discussion? All those in favor, please say I. I. I. All right. I move to adjurnn. Second. All in favor, please say I. I. And it is 9:45. We're done.