Town Council - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress. July 22nd, 2026. Can I have a moment of silence, please? Please stand for the closing.

with a rating just as proud.

Note to residents, all citizens are welcome to attend the public meeting in person. To view the live meeting remotely, citizens are encouraged to watch the live stream on Franklin Town Hall TV YouTube channel. are live broadcast on Comcast Channel 9 and Verizon Channel 29. To listen to the meeting remotely, citizens may call in using the number 1-929-205-6099. To participate in the meeting remotely, citizens may join a Zoom webinar using the information I provide below. Meetings are recorded and archived by Franklin TV. ON THE FRANKLIN TOWN HALL TV YOUTUBE CHANNEL, AND SHOWN REPEAT ON CALMCAST CHANNEL 9 AND VERIZON CHANNEL 29. THE ZOOM WEBINAR DETAIL ID NUMBER IS 817-9687-9137. ANY PARTICIPANTS? WHO WISH TO SPEAK MUST ENTER THEIR FULL NAME AND ADDRESS WHEN JOINING THE WEBINAR. ALL PARTICIPANTS WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE MUTED UPON JOINING THE WEBINAR. IN ORDER TO SPEAK, PARTICIPANTS WILL NEED TO SELECT THE RAISE HAND FUNCTION TO REQUEST TO BE UNMUTED. ALL SPEAKERS WILL BE REQUIRED TO STATE THEIR FULL NAME AND STREET ADDRESS BEFORE COMMENTING. upcoming town sponsored community events. Before I get started with that, before I announce upcoming events, I would like to hold a moment of silence in honor of Oliver Lewis, who tragically lost his life last month at the young age of 15. There is a vigil happening tonight for Oliver. I think it's at dusk. It's dusk to dark. I think it's dusk to dark. And while we can't be there in person, we are keeping Oliver's family and loved ones in our thoughts and prayers. At this time, we ask everyone to join us in a moment of silence in honor of Oliver Lewis. May he rest in peace.

That's a tough one.

Upcoming town sponsors community events. The exhibition now through August 22nd at the Franklin Historical Museum. The Bridal Fashion, a fascinating display of wedding gowns spanning from the 19th to the 21st century, offering insights into rapid social changes. THE SECOND ONE IS THE FRANKLIN FARMERS MARKETS TAKES PLACE EVERY FRIDAY THROUGH OCTOBER 23RD FROM 2 PM TO 6 PM. at the Franklin Town Carmen. This week, though, July 24th, at the Farmer's Market, the Agricultural Commission is holding their annual zucchini race. The race is beginning at 2 p.m. That should be a lot of fun. And the last one is concerts on the Carmen. The next upcoming concert dates are... Friday July 24th, Friday July 31st, and Friday August 7th. Those are the upcoming events. OK, CITIZENS' COMMENTS. CITIZENS ARE WELCOME TO EXPRESS THEIR VIEWS FOR UP TO THREE MINUTES ON A MATTER THAT IS NOT ON THE AGENDA IN COMPLIANCE WITH CHAPTER 38, SECTION 20, THE OPEN MEETING LAW. THE COUNCIL CANNOT ENGAGE IN A DIALOGUE OR COMMENT ON A MATTER RAISED DURING CITIZEN COMMENTS. The council may ask the town administrator to review the matter. Nothing herein shall prevent the town administrator from correcting a misstatement of fact. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to speak? Jim? Take your choice. Anywhere.

I'm Jim Lane. I live in 154 Long Hill Road in Franklin. I'm part of the COA as well as the newest member of the FinCon. I'm speaking on behalf of Sarah Amaral, the director of Franklin Senior Center today. So if I would, if you don't mind, I'll just briefly read about two minutes that she's presenting. Sarah says to all of you, I'd like to share two exciting community events from the Franklin Senior Center. First, I want to say thank you to the town for the beautiful pavilion that has made our first ever summer concert series. The first two concerts have been an incredible success, drawing large crowds and creating wonderful summer evenings filled with music, sunsets, and community. We hope you'll all join us in the final two concerts On Monday, August 3rd, featuring the Ukulele Friends Orchestra. And Monday, August 10th, featuring the Bluegrass Music Concerts beginning at 7pm. They are free, but the ice cream is for sale. And are open to everybody. Bring a chair, a blanket, enjoy summer evening with us. I've already done this with my wife for a prior one. It's fantastic. Also, she says, I'd like to highlight a brand new initiative tonight, Voices of Franklin. To me, she says, this program represents a true fabric of Franklin. In partnership with the Franklin Recreation Department and Interact Club, will bring together residents of different generations for meaningful conversations, for discussions that will help us better understand one another. Imagine comparing technology from when you were 16 to 76. or discussing what matters most to you as a Franklin resident at the Franklin Essential Special Community. Our first session for this event initiative is Tuesday, August 18th, from 11 a.m. to 1.30 p.m., and she says, we'd love to see the community members join us. Thank you, Sarah Amaral, Director of the Franklin Senior Center. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Jim. Is there anybody else?

Kim Mewchow, 4 Briarwood Road. And I have several things, one of which you can probably tell by what I'm wearing. What can I say? But first, you already mentioned it, but my deepest consolation is to the Oliver Lewis family, that it was a horrible tragedy. I am happy that the town was able to help meet with MassDOT and that they're taking steps in order to fix that intersection as a bike rider. I avoid that area with a 10-foot pole for that exact reason. But it's just real difficult. But I'm going to segue to something else and then I'm going to end with the PMC. So this is going to be a real surprise for everyone. You know, 36 years ago, my husband and I moved to this town, probably for the wrong reasons. We were working in Boston, and it was the farthest we could go at the end of the train line that we could afford the house. We are so happy that we ended here, and this has been the best decision we ever made, even though we were totally clueless when we actually moved here. But I wanted to thank Jamie and Karen for the thoughtfulness and the time that they spend in hiring employees. I am so impressed with the caliber of the vast majority of the town employees. You know, it's really exciting because Kaylee Keaton was named the 2026 Common Heroine from the area. I actually saw her in action one day when I was at the library. She is so incredibly talented. with the children that we are so lucky to have her. And with Felicia, who would have thought that the library, they always do summer reading programs for kids. Well, who would have thought they would have done a teen and adult reading program. And not only that, they brought it to the senior center at the senior closing ceremony of the senior Olympics to try and get the seniors to sign up. And not only is it reading books, but you can explore places in the library. You can visit the farmer's market, the sculpture garden, kayak at the beaver pond, so many different things in the town, not just the library. And you get points. And you get prizes. It's just so exciting in terms of things that they do. I think most of you probably don't know, but I do food rescue. And I also have this talent of being able to find homes for everything. And I don't necessarily just do it in Franklin. I also do it in Bellingham. So I had gotten a call from the Bellingham Senior Center from my buddy who said, I have a banana box full of floaty toys. Will you pick it up and find a home for it? What am I going to do with this? Imagine my surprise when I talked to Kim Carney at the recreation department and said, I have these floaties. She goes, send me a picture. I sent her a picture. She goes, I'll take them. I go, really? And she goes, yeah. We have a preschool group that we do pretend swimming. It's perfect for them to learn to use a floatie running around the gym with their floaties on. So I mean, it's so exciting to be able to work with so many different people. And then whether or not it's like Ryan and Corey doing the FIFA watch parties, Laurie Key and Alicia Sullivan continually every month offering stop the bleed and hands only CPR. That is so valuable to our community, whether you're doing it at the senior center, the fire station, et cetera. Kathleen Liberty being able to get the Dana Farber Okay. And don't forget, the Pan Mass Challenge is coming through in a week and a half. And so just there's going to be close to 6,000 riders around here, Norfolk, Rentham, et cetera. Please be aware. Watch out for us. We will watch out for you. And also remember that just because the Pan Mass is over, The Fat Tuesday team is actually riding with Lester and I in the ALS ride, so there are rides going through October. We're still going to be on the road practicing. So just be aware of the cyclists on the road. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Is there anybody else?

Go ahead. I'll go last. That's all right.

Name and address. My name is Fran Yannis-Gaywitz. My address is 445 Beverly Road in Franklin. And I may be out of line here, and I apologize if I am, because it's concerning an agenda item. I had a chance to look at some of the data, and it's regarding the town's transfer of sewer capacity to Millis and Medway.

Yep. You can come up when we do that. That'll be fine.

That'll be great. Thanks.

Good evening. Do you want to guess what I'm here to talk about? Elections. That's right. So I'm Nancy Dinello, your town clerk. And I am here to remind the voters of Franklin of the upcoming state primary, which is September 1st. from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Franklin High School. We'll also be offering in-person early voting in the clerk's office starting on Saturday, August 22nd through Friday, August 28th. Weekend hours both days, Saturday and Sunday, will be from 8 a.m. till noon time And then weekdays are going to be during our normal business hours. And now, by now you probably have all received that little card, the vote by mail application from the Secretary of the Commonwealth. If you've already applied through my office for a vote by mail ballot, you do not have to complete that card. Just totally disregard it. To date, we've received 2,500 vote by mail requests, and they're still coming in. Ballots have arrived. They came in this past Monday, and we're currently in the process of mailing them out to voters. Just a few reminders. If you are enrolled in a party, you cannot choose the opposite party ballot. So if you're a registered Democrat, you cannot request a Republican ballot. You have to get that Democratic ballot. What you can do is you can come into the office by August 22nd. It has to be before the 22nd. on or before the 22nd, I should say, to change your party affiliation. And then you can obviously choose the ballot that you would like. Or you may want to opt to vote in person at that point. If you're an unenrolled voter, which is commonly referred to as independent, you must select a party ballot on your vote by mail application. Be sure to just check off one party. You can't get two ballots. Don't check off Democrat and Republican. And make sure you do check off one of them. We've received hundreds of cards from independent voters that didn't check off what ballot that they want. So we in turn have to mail them out a letter and ask them to make their choice. If we do not receive that letter back, we can't mail you a ballot. So please make sure that if you do receive that letter, mail it back to us or drop it off to us. Last day to register to vote is August 22nd. Please don't wait until the last minute. And then lastly, the town clerk's office will be closed on election day. So please plan accordingly. And as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to call me or just look at the website. We have all the information there on the website that you could need. Yes, Jean.

Yeah, just one question. Of course. Can you just explain the in-person rules? So if you're affiliated with a party, can you vote in the other party's primary or you have to stick with the one that you're affiliated with?

If you're affiliated, if you're a registered Democrat, you cannot choose a Republican ballot. You have to choose the Democratic ballot. If you want a Republican ballot, you have to change your party's affiliation before the 22nd of August. So if you want to be able to flip-flop like a lot of people do, register to vote as independent. Unenrolled is what we call it now, but people know it isn't. You can choose either ballot. And that will not, you will always revert right back to your party. So it won't change your affiliation. If you're a registered Democrat, I'm sorry, if you're a registered independent and you want a Democratic ballot, you're not going to be a Democrat. You're still going to be an independent voter. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? THANK YOU.

THANKS, NANCY.

IS THERE ANYBODY ELSE IN THE AUDIENCE? HOW ABOUT ANYBODY IN ZOOMLAND? JULIA, SEE ANYBODY?

I CAN'T. HAND UP.

ALL RIGHT. MOVING ON. COUNCIL OF COMMENTS. COUNCILOR MOLOI.

Obviously, I think it's been said, I'm sure we'll all say it, just kind of a prayer and a thought for the Lewis family and the turmoil they're going through is awful. But I just wanted to say more broadly, thank you to all the town members who were involved in all the activities and events we've had over the last few weeks. There's been a lot going on from the Fan Fest to the Pride events to the Fourth of July celebrations. It's been a fun couple of weeks and been such a great turnout across the town at all these events. Just great to see all the people out there. And we all know that doesn't happen without a lot of effort from folks who work in the town to support that. So I just wanted to say thank you to them. And that's it, sir.

Thank you. I'll say you actually stole the comment that I had. With regards to the World Cup and what we did as a town, I thought it was fantastic. But just kind of to add to that, there have been a number of unfortunate incidents in town recently and I did just want to say thank you again to our service folks who have been so quick to respond and help It's very much appreciated. I don't know how we get by without it. So that was just on my mind.

All right. I also wanted to give my heartfelt condolences to Oliver's friends and family. That was tragic. But my thanks to Jeff Roy, who got MassDOT out to look at that intersection so quickly so that we could hopefully avoid similar tragedies in the future. I also wanted to just mention, I think this was back in May, but the rail trail race, they just gave out the donations that they had received through that. They made more than $8,000 and they gave most of it to the Franklin Bellingham Rail Trail Committee to support SNET maintenance and improvements, but also the Franklin Food Pantry And the St. Lee's Loafs and Fishes Food Pantry in Bellingham also got money from that, which I thought was incredible. So I wanted to thank the volunteers and organizers who continue to make events like that a success. And I also wanted to mention that this Saturday at 2 p.m. at the library, author and journalist Ted Reinstein, I think is how you say his name, will be giving a talk exploring lesser known stories behind the more famous stories of New England's Revolutionary War period, which I thought was appropriate for the month of July and the 250th anniversary of this country. So I think that sounds really fascinating and I plan to be there.

And that's all I've got.

I just want to comment that winter is nice, but isn't summer in Franklin fantastic? Councilman Malloy touched on a lot of things that we've had over the last couple of months. I applaud the town staff. I applaud the citizens, the residents who donate their time. It's been fantastic. And as a soccer lover, out of 104 matches, I think I've probably watched 92 of them or something like that. So the FIFA event was fantastic, and it had – Residents not even from Franklin, it was a great event. So I applaud summer and I applaud everything we do in Franklin during the summer. It's wonderful. I just also wanted to bring, last night the process started for those who don't keep up with what's going on the town website or development, but the process started last night with the design review for a redevelopment of the Depot Plaza building in downtown off Main Street. So I spoke at that meeting last night, and I'll say it here. I'm a proponent for that development. It is, as I said last night, it's a game of chicken or egg. That is the egg that I think will get things started downtown for hopefully redevelopment of other parcels and properties downtown. During the meeting last night, the design review, they did say that they were going to take public comment around design for the next couple of weeks. So please go back and watch that video, and you'll get where you should send your comments in. Or reach out to me, and I'll get you an address. I don't have that address readily available. But please, if you're interested, attend the design review, planning board meetings that are coming up, But I do think that that's going to be a spark to get us going. And last but not least, we do have an Economic Development Committee meeting tomorrow night. It is really focused on new growth, which I think is, as I've said before, is a critical component to allow us to generate additional revenue so that we do not have to take drastic steps whether that is cutting services or a $10 million override. I'm just throwing a number out there to be extreme. But my point is that if you're interested in – that is going to have a big play over the next – I would say over the next five years and beyond, but definitely over the next five years for forecasting. So if you're interested, tune in tomorrow night or even come and attend the meeting to hear more about new growth and how that will impact the taxes going forward. With that, I'm done. Thank you. Meeting will be in here? Meeting will be in the council chamber, 6 o'clock.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to use my time tonight to talk about what community actually looks like in Franklin because the past few weeks have given us a lot of examples. Let's start with the people who make the town run. On July 8th, Plan C, a company here in Franklin, was named recipient of the Associated Industries of Massachusetts Excellence in Manufacturing Award, and they were honored at the State House. They employed 150 people here in Franklin producing precision tungsten and molybdenum components. And they built their manufacturing training center here in town to train the next generation of mechanics. So congratulations to the whole team there. Closer to home, I want to give a big shout out to Sophie Smith, who joined the town administrator's office as an administrative assistant in late June. In under three weeks, she was on her A-game scheduling meetings for both the Economic Development Committee and this Communications Subcommittee, and I'm sure other committees do. She's got dates confirmed, calendars sent out, no follow-up needed. She's kind of quiet, competent work that keeps this town running. The same spirit showed up over the Fourth of July. This year marked the nation's 250th, you know, birthday. And I want to explicitly recognize the Franklin Fourth of July Coalition and its co-chairs, Joe Carmagnani and Paul Cordick, by name. They've run this event together since 2017, largely on volunteer time and fundraised dollars. And the town pays nothing for it. This year, they pulled off a five-day, 250th anniversary celebration without missing a beat. And thank you to our police, fire, and DPW for their partnership. Volunteers carried the load elsewhere, too. I attended two fallen hero ceremonies this stretch. On June 24th, I went to the ceremony honoring Technical Sergeant Baldo S. Lazzarini in the U.S. Army, who was killed in Italy in 1945. And on July 4th, 5th, I attended Lieutenant Junior Grade Howard T. Feely from the U.S. Navy who was killed in a training crash in 1943. American Legion Post 75 and the VFW Post 3402 run these almost every week and encourage residents to attend. I close on a lighter note. On July 13th, the Massachusetts American Legion Softball League held its first ever All-Star game, and four Franklin Post 75 players were selected for the All-Star game. Emerson Smart, Isabella Barbado, Elizabeth Burkholder, and Chloe Rao. Congratulations to all four. And that concludes my comments. Thank you, Matt. Jane?

Just a couple of things. I finally made it to Farmer's Market. The bread booths are dangerous. I was with you. Yes. I was with you. They're dangerous, so go with blinders. I also wanted to just touch with Oliver and his family. Heartfelt condolences. Tragic loss no family should ever have to go through. And I agree with Councillor LeBlanc. With this project that's built uptown, I think people need to be paying attention. This is a four-story building that they are proposing to put downtown roughly 57 units, roughly 47 parking spaces. And if you don't want four-story buildings in your downtown, then you need to be paying attention. You need to be going to the meetings. You need to be speaking up. this many parking spaces being utilized, this many more apartments downtown, we're actually going to hurt businesses that are currently there because there's not enough parking downtown. And I know everyone says there is, but as someone who constantly has to circle the downtown three, four, five times, every time I try to go someplace downtown, I'm telling you, there isn't. So I think that, yes, we do need to be paying attention, though I think that renovating a building is great, and I'm not even against having apartments being put in there, because it would be commercial at the bottom, but a four-story building downtown center is not the look of Franklin, and I think that everyone should be very well aware of what's being proposed. Other than that, I don't have anything else.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly want to offer my heartfelt condolences to the Lewis family for such a tragic loss of a bright young man. Just know that we're thinking of you. And thank you to all of the first responders that handled that incident with such grace. Certainly want to say thank you to all of our staff and volunteers for all of the events, but particularly the 4th of July coalition. It was hot as hell those five days, right? And it was great to see so many people from Franklin and surrounding communities out, but the volunteers that were out there making sure everything happened didn't miss a beat. Sales were down and attendance was down from everything that I've read so it's important that we support those efforts going forward and you know, just make sure that they know that we are supporting them in everything that they're doing. Lastly, I just on a personal note want to say thank you to everybody that reached out to me when my dad passed away. There was an outpouring of calls and texts and Facebook posts in the hundreds and cards and masses being said in his honor and flowers and people hugging me in the streets and it was very much appreciated by me and by my family. So thank you very much for that and with that I yield.

Just a few comments. As everyone said tonight, my condolences to the family, the Lewis family for the loss of their son, which is absolutely tragic. And then I just wanted to point out that in the news story that Governor Healey is recommending that there's be $100 million of more local aid for the towns. Great to see it. You know, it's a campaign year. I asked Jamie if he thought he had any idea of how much money that would come our way. He doesn't know. No one knows yet. But I'd really like to see this become a campaign issue, you know, and that it's something that maybe going forward that we see more money coming in the form of local aid to the towns. And that's it for me.

Thanks. Sure. SO I WOULD ALSO, OBVIOUSLY, MY CONDOLENCES TO LOUIS' FAMILY, AND ALSO MY CONDOLENCES TO THE BIZZANI FAMILY. STEVE BIZZANI PASSED AWAY. I KNOW GENE KNOWS HIM FROM HIS SON AND MY SON PLAYED FOOTBALL WITH HIS SON, AND HIS FATHER WAS DENNIS, AND THE FIELD WAS NAMED AFTER HIM ON on Peck Street, and he was always a person that would, if you needed something done in the town, you know, he could get things done. So to Nicole and Zach and Joshua and Renee, I definitely will miss him.

And he was a great...

a great addition to this town along with his father and the rest of the family. And I have to give a special thank you to the Franklin Fire Department. A few weeks ago, I was coming off the golf course and I see a missed call by I SAID, OH, WHAT HAPPENED? THIS WAS RIGHT AFTER ALL OF IT PASSED AWAY. I SAID, WELL, WHAT'S GOING ON IN FRANKLIN NOW? HE GOES, WELL, I'M ACTUALLY AT YOUR HOUSE. SO MY DECK WENT ON FIRE. THE CANDLES SPILLED OVER, AND MY SON WAS INSIDE GETTING FOOD READY. NEXT THING YOU KNOW, THE FLAMES WERE UP. SO HE CALLED 911, AND I GOT TO THANK YOU GUYS, BECAUSE YOU GUYS CAME IN THERE, AND I JUST DIDN'T KNOW HOW MANY TRUCKS WERE THERE. THEY WERE ALL THERE, AND LIKE I SAID, I'M COMING OUT FROM AROUND THE CORNER, AND I'M LIKE, BUT THEY DID A GREAT JOB. THEY WENT ASIDE, MADE SURE NOTHING WAS ON, NOTHING WAS, YOU KNOW, IN THE WALLS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT, AND THEY BLASTED THE HECK OUT OF IT. IT WAS JUST A DECK, NOTHING REALLY OUT. SO THANK YOU GUYS, BECAUSE I KNOW YOU GUYS DID A GREAT JOB, AND YOU WERE RIGHT THERE. SO THAT'S A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE I HAD WITH THEM, BUT... GLAD NO ONE WAS HURT. BUT NOBODY WAS HURT. Wood's easy to replace. Yeah, you guys teased me a little bit, but that was okay. I deserved that. But outside of that, that's it. So subcommittee reports. So the Joint Budget Subcommittee's next meeting is August 13th at 6 p.m. Is that correct? That's correct. The EDC obviously is tomorrow night, Mike. I already said that. Communications, you had a meeting last week.

Yeah, so we had two things that we worked on are actually on the agenda today for legislation that we will be voting on. And then the third thing that I wanted to mention is... additional office hours on Saturday August 15th we had talked a couple times about looking for times that were not Thursday morning during a workday and so the library has time right now they I think they have 9 to 11 30 held for us from there that time down but um so they're holding some time for us on saturday morning so that we can meet um residents and anyone who wants to come talk to us that can't make it on a thursday morning that's awesome that's awesome uh and the town charter ad hoc committee our next meeting will be september 3rd at 6 p.m we had to cancel it due to

council committee alleges father passed away that that day I believe so it wouldn't be right so and then the police station building committee the next meeting is going to be September 2nd right in right in right in council chambers and in AT THIS POINT, BRIAN CHANDLER RESIGNED. THAT'S RIGHT. SO I NEED TO ANNOUNCE ANOTHER. DO WE HAVE THAT?

IT'S ON RESOLUTION TONIGHT. YEAH.

I DIDN'T KNOW IF YOU WANTED ME TO. JAMIE, IT'S THE TOWN ADMINISTRATOR'S REPORT.

Through you, Mr. Chairman, just a few updates. First, I know a lot of folks in the community are asking, or they've seen some of the improvements, but I'm just here for the record, and there'll be some more coming out this week. I just want to thank Rep Roy and Senator Rausch, and I have been obviously working with MassDOT on the King Street 495 intersection. First, I want to thank Rep Roy and Senator Rauch for just pulling a meeting together so quickly. I do want to thank MassDOT for their incredible diligence quickly. For folks that drive in that intersection, you've already seen some of the brush cleared away, some of the trees taken down. They're putting up new signs. They're trying to do a lead-in off the highway with some signage to make sure people are aware of pedestrian crossings. THEY'LL BE DOING SOME STREET PAINTING. SOME OF THE LINES HAVE FADED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE INTERSECTION. AS YOU CAN ALSO TELL, THEY'VE BEEN KIND OF GOING UP AND DOWN THE WHOLE INTERCHANGE, JUST MOWING ALL THE GRASS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE WHOLE INTERCHANGE. WE HAVE PUT IN A REQUEST TO TRY TO HAVE THEM UP ON EXIT 17 OR 43. I'M SORRY, I STILL CALL IT THE OLD NUMBER. BUT I THINK THERE'S BEEN, WE DID PUT IN A REQUEST. I KNOW THERE'S SOME FOLKS ON FACEBOOK THAT HAVE BEEN ASKING FOR THAT, SO THEY'LL GET THERE AT SOME POINT. And I think most importantly, one of the things that the public should be aware of is that MassDOT is committing to a full 90 degree stop light at the end of that intersection. Obviously that's not something you can just build in a day and they're going to do it, but I don't have all the details yet, but today they did tell me that in a few weeks they're going to be doing a temporary stop that's there. and they're working with Liz in our office to put out some materials to try to make the public aware of that. We're going to be doing a PR campaign over the next few weeks from the state. They'll likely be out in town. And just to make sure that people are aware, we agreed to help them get out the message a few weeks earlier. So Liz will probably be putting out some materials on social media and our news posts probably Friday, maybe latest Monday, depending on when MassDOT sends the materials over. To me, that is the most crucial element, is to force and mandate that people have to stop with a stoplight at that intersection when they cross. They will certainly be some sort at key times, obviously some traffic fill back up the interstate but that pales in comparison obviously what this community's experienced over the last month so we will have some more formal I think materials to distribute we'll keep everybody in the loop but I thought because we had a council meeting tonight just letting all you know all that and letting know that MassDOT has been out here probably for people that drive by I've seen some trucks out there and they have been doing their best to try to make as many improvements as possible over the last few weeks and just want to appreciate Particularly Barry at District 3, who's their head chief, has been in almost daily contact with either myself, OR REP. ROY AND SENATOR RAUSH. REP. ROY AND SENATOR RAUSH ARE ALSO DOING A GREAT JOB KEEPING THE LEWIS FAMILY IN THE LOOP, JUST MAKING SURE THAT THEY HAVE ALL THE COMMUNICATIONS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF THE STATE TO MAKE SURE THAT THEIR WISH, AS THEY WERE ON THE PHONE CALLS WITH US WITH MASS.DOT, OBVIOUSLY THAT THIS NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN, TO DO EVERYTHING WE CAN TO MAKE SURE THAT THE ENTIRE INTERSECTION IS SAFE, NOT JUST ON THAT ONE, BUT ALSO THE OTHER THREE ENTRANCE AND EXIT RAMPS OFF OF KING STREET. For those people that ask maybe online, just reassure people that they are going to be redesigning that intersection to a 90 degree pier stop with a light at some point in the future. And there'll be some temporary measures put in to have people stop here in the next month or so. So hopefully that's good news for everybody who's been asking a lot of questions. And just for the record, in case people are watching at home, I've gotten a lot of these questions I know I forwarded emails to all of you but just to be clear the town DPW does not own or manage that intersection you know and that's owned by the state and federal government because there's a federal interstate with State Highway so I just want to make sure that if anybody hasn't been paying attention to social media or whatever I just want to make sure folks at home they were watching tonight we're aware of that Other couple tips really quickly. One, thank you for all the positive comments from the Council and the community over all the great events. I do want to send a real special shout out to Ryan Jenney, Corey Shea, Julie McCann right here, who's doing other work while she's here as well, Liz Galazian, Marina Zelaya, and the countless Board and Committee volunteers. These folks all spent an enormous amount of hours of their own time offline. doing a lot to make those events happen and we're greatly appreciative of the community feedback that's come in from that so thank you to all of them and obviously all the other comments to all the other great events and organizers throughout town. A couple bits of good news. I don't have firm details yet, and I'll be working on this for the rest of the summer, but I have an agreement in principle that the lot next to the children's museum, we are hopeful to work out a deal with the MBTA so that the town can be able to use that. I would note it's owned by CSX, and of course we have some friends at CSX because we just bought the other trailhead. I have been working on this for many months. It's hard to always put out an update, but I did get confirmation from the T that the proposal the town put forward to trade some property off of Grove Street, which ironically, by the way, the state already uses for a staging area. So I'm working with the T over the next few weeks to start understanding what that process looks like. And how we can transfer those properties may require special legislation. It's certainly you're Certainly going to require some cleanups and some easements and some rights. There'll probably be some votes that may have to be taken by the council But I'm hoping to do this without any financial transactions, which would be really a positive But for us to be able to use that acre and a quarter next to the Children's Museum for municipal parking we talked about parking downtown and The real trouble area of parking is really in the crossing area. There's really no parking. There's no municipal parking. There's no town or state parking. So that's really good news. They made a lot of progress on that. I'm happy to report that, that they're willing to move forward on a conceptual deal, how we get there. I'll have some more updates in the future. And really quickly, a few grants. A huge shout out to Bricolai, Goodlander, and the Conservation Commission for getting a $1,200 grant for the Riverbend Conservation Area. Huge shout out to the Senior Center, Samer Amaral, that was being discussed earlier. $20,000 grant for accessibility upgrades down at the Senior Center. And while this may sound boring to some people at home, it's very exciting for us. $30,000 grant from the state, from our planning office, for updating our hazard mitigation plan. So we're required to do that every five years, and we usually apply for grant money. These may be small awards, but it just hopefully shows the community and the council and everybody else. Our departments are independently out there looking for things, and they're applying for things, and they're being awarded things. And even to be able to set up a forest stewardship plan up at Riverbend Conservation Area sounds like a little bit of money, but it's certainly better than us having to pay the bill. So thank you very much to Bricolai and Sarah and Marina and the rest of the staff for doing those things. Appreciate the time.

Thank you.

YEAH, JAMIE, IF YOU RUN INTO A LITTLE BIT OF A, YOU KNOW, SNAG WITH THE MBTA, LET ME KNOW, BECAUSE MY BOSS IS THE EX... HE'S THE EX-GENERAL MANAGER, RICK DAVIES, AND HE GLADLY... MEDIATED THE LOCO. NO, WE'LL DO THAT. JUST LET ME KNOW. I DEFINITELY WILL. I DEFINITELY WILL.

I HAVE COFFEE WITH HIM EVERY DAY, SO... YOU CAN FIGURE THAT OUT. MAYBE I CAN COME TO COFFEE.

YEAH. HE'S A GOOD GUY. OKAY, MOVING ON. Proclamation of recognition of the fire department. We have a swearing of a new firefighter, a paramedic.

Good evening. Members of the council, it gives us great pleasure to introduce to you and present for swearing in the newest member of the Franklin Fire Department, firefighter paramedic William Santa Fe. Born and raised in the town of Millis, William is a graduate of Millis High School and began his fire service career in 2015 as a qualified firefighter with the Millis Fire Department. He completed his EMT paramedic training in 2018 and in 2019 he joined the Wayland Fire Department as a full-time firefighter before returning to Millis in 2020 where he continued to serve the community that he grew up in. He brings to Franklin 11 years of fire service experience, including the past seven years as a full-time firefighter. He's an avid Boston sports fan and enjoys spending time with his wife, Leah, supporting her passion for horseback riding. This evening, William will be attended by his wife, Leah.

After he's sworn in.

William, I'm going to ask you to raise your right hand and repeat after me. I, William Santa Fe. I, William Santa Fe. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear. To faithfully execute the duties.

To faithfully execute the duties.

As a firefighter of paramedic. As a firefighter of paramedic. For the town of Franklin. For the town of Franklin. With respect. With respect. Integrity. Integrity. And excellence. And excellence. And to uphold the mission of the department. And uphold the mission of the department.

The constitution.

The Constitution.

Statutes and regulations of the United States of America.

Statutes and regulations of the United States of America. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And the Charter and Bylaws. And the Charter and Bylaws. Of the Town of Franklin. Of the Town of Franklin. So help me God. So help me God. Congratulations. Thank you very much.

Now you can go.

All right, moving on.

GET APPROVAL OF MINUTES. WE ATTAIN A MOTION TO APPROVE THE MINUTES OF JUNE 10, 2026. SO MOVED. SECOND. ALL RIGHT, I HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. DELETIONS, ADDITIONS. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. MOTION PASSED. I'll obtain a motion to approve the minutes of June 17th, 2026. So moved. Second. All right. I have a motion and a second. Additions, deletions? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passed. OK, APPOINTMENTS. ANNUAL REAPPOINTMENTS AND NEW APPOINTMENTS OF BOARD AND COMMITTEE MEMBERS. So we'll leave the appointments.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is committee appointments dated July 22nd, 2026. The town administrator has appointed the following individuals to serve on town boards and committees with terms effective July 22nd, 2026. I'll read the committee name and the member. To the Agricultural Commission, Robert Archie Acevedo, 64 Maple Street. His term will expire June 30th, 2027. For the Community Preservation Committee, these are all renewals. Chris Feely is also on the Housing Authority from 17 Tuscany Drive to end June 30th, 2027. Richard Johnson from the Conservation Commission, 394 Coronation Drive, will end June 30th, 2027. Phyllis Malcolm from the Historical Commission, she lives at 37 Uncas Avenue, June 30th, 2027. Jay Mello from the Planning Board, he lives at 15 North Park Street, that term will end June 30th, 2027. And Wayne Samarian from the Recreation Advisory Board, he lives at 204 Jordan Road, that term will end June 30th, 2027. For the Design Review Commission, these are both new. Tahani Al-Ghalani lives at 29 Saxon Street. That term will end June 30, 2029. And Andrew LaCroix, 225 Prospect Street. That term will end June 30, 2029. A Metropolitan Area Planning Council representative. This is a new appointment. Marina Zelaya, who is a town employee. So we're using town address 355 East Central Street. That term will end June 30th, 2029. This is a new appointment replacing a former council member with a new council member for the police station building committee, Jane Calloway-Tripp, who resides at 607 Maple Street. This will be upon substantial completion of the project. This is a motion to ratify the appointments by the town administrator of the above listed individuals to serve as members of these town boards and committees as described above.

Second.

I HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. DISCUSSION?

QUESTION. ARE WE VOTING ON THESE INDIVIDUALLY? BECAUSE I TECHNICALLY CAN'T VOTE FOR MYSELF. YES, YOU CAN.

HUH? YOU CAN VOTE FOR YOURSELF. WHAT?

YOU CAN VOTE FOR YOURSELF. I CAN? OKAY. UNLESS YOU DON'T WANT TO VOTE FOR YOURSELF. IT'S A CONFLICT OF INTERESTS.

YOU MAY NOT BE THE ONLY ONE. AND IT'S ALL ONE VOTE.

IT'S AN UNPAID VOLUNTARY POSITION. JUST LIKE THIS ONE.

YEAH.

JUST CLEAR FINE.

ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. OPPOSED? MOTION PASSED. ALL RIGHT, NEXT APPOINTMENT ARE ELECTION WORKERS FOR SEPTEMBER 1, 2026 STATE PRIMARY ELECTION. What will we need?

Appointments? Yes, Mr. Chairman, and I am required to read all the names, so this does take a few minutes.

It's okay, and it cannot be waived.

So this is appointments for election workers that will be dated for September 1st, 2026 for the state primary election. The town clerk has recommended the individuals listed below to the town administrator and the town administrator has then appointed these individuals listed below to serve as election workers for the September 1st, 2026 mass state primary election. Gina Alessi, Judith Ann Anderson, Ann Basanti, Sandy Brandon Von Brenner, Colin Kass, Sue Kass, Carl Cederquist, Alyssa Checkaway, Stephen Checkaway, Barbara Cohen, Elizabeth Cook, Stephen Cook, Francis Coughlin, Dennis Sir, Jim Dacey, Carol Dacey, Janice D'Alessandro, Lois D'Amico, Nick DiCiocco, Mary Beth DiRico, Mary Ellen DiPietro, Robert Doherty, Deidre Donovan, Collette Ferguson, Dennis Ferguson, Mary Ellen Fico, Sharon Filosa, Georgiana Fitzgerald, Laurie Forbes, Jean Gentile, Sandy Golubowski, Patricia Gorham, Linda Grant, Janet Halterman, Mary Harrigan, Patricia Hurley, Vincent otherwise known as Joe Hurley, Carla Kasabian, Kevin Kearns, Karen Kearns, Linda Kelleher, and Eileen Kelleher. Linda Kelly, Barbara Ann Kelly, Mary Kinney, Marilyn Klauber, Nancy Klokson, Diane Lind, Sharon Lindstrom, Marianne Lenati, John Lepresti. Maria Lucier, Paulette Mabardi, Elizabeth McMillan, Phyllis Malcolm, John Manz, Andrea Marseglia, Heather Martin, Gail Matanas, Leslie McCaffrey, Andy McKim, Russ Merriam. Maureen Malloy-Gallaire, Patricia Morrison, Marissa O'Donnell, Joanne Osborn, Martha Pepe, Patty Phillips, Christina Pino, Kimberly Pratko, Nancy Rapa, Jim Santoro, Teresa Zborden, Steven Schultheis, Joanne Shanahan, Roberta Trahan, Gail Vieira, Lois Welch, Sharon Whalen, Nancy Whitehouse, Marissa Weitsch, and Patty Wiley. This is a motion to ratify the annual appointments by the town administrator of the individuals named above to serve as election workers for September 1st, 2026 masked state primary election.

Second.

I have a motion and a second. Discussion?

Questions?

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Nice job, Ted. Nice job, Ted. All right. Public hearing now, Jamie? You're going to go to the public hearing? Yeah, just got to open the hearing. Got to open the hearing. It's supposed to be 7, but... ALL RIGHT, PUBLIC HEARING IS NOW OPEN. THE ORDER OF LAYOUT ACCEPTANCE AND TAKING OF J. VICTORY LANE AND DRAINAGE LOT PARCEL 1. GO AHEAD.

THANK YOU, MR. CHAIRMAN, TO THE COUNCIL. JUST AS A QUICK BACKGROUND BEFORE YOU TAKE PUBLIC COMMENT, THE TOWN ENGINEERS HERE, THE TOWN ATTORNEY WILL BE MORE EQUIPPED TO ANSWER ANY SPECIFIC QUESTIONS. BUT AS YOU KNOW, COUNCIL LADORCO, FOR MOST, I MEAN, I THINK WE'VE DONE A FEW STREET ACCEPTANCES WHILE COUNCIL CORMIER LEDGER'S BEEN HERE, BUT WE TRY TO CHIP AWAY. WE'VE GOT OVER 100 NOT PUBLICLY ACCEPTED STREETS THROUGHOUT FRANKLIN. there's a long history in metro west of why this is but what we try to do is every year or two take you know check off another one except one here one there one there right now the proposal is to accept the victor lane section off of acorn street and just so folks are briefly aware we can't accept streets easily they have to be up to a certain code but the benefit of this is now the town maintains those roads The town now adds that mileage onto the Chapter 90 formula. So from the state, we get a little bit extra money to do maintenance. And now we can legally also do snow removal and maintenance of those streets. These are very complicated. Some of them are extremely complicated. Some of them are so complicated legally and engineering-wise, they may never get accepted. But I think what the town engineer and town attorney have tried to do every year is just take one or two of them and try to get done with what we can. It does require planning board approval. AND SO THE PLANNING BOARD HAS RECOMMENDED TO THE COUNCIL TO ACCEPT THIS SECTION OF VICTOR LANE. IT'S ONLY ABOUT FOUR HOUSE SLOTS. I'LL END IT THERE AND JUST ALLOW YOU TO HAVE THE PUBLIC HEARING IN CASE THERE ARE ANY QUESTIONS. AND THEN THE TOWN ENGINEER MIKE MAGLIO AND MARK CIRRELL, WHO REALLY ARE THE TWO THAT LEAD THIS PROGRAM, CAN PROBABLY MORE ADEQUATELY ANSWER SPECIFIC QUESTIONS. SO THANK YOU.

I'LL GO TO THE PUBLIC. IS THERE ANYBODY OUT IN THE PUBLIC THAT HAS ANY COMMENTS OR discussions.

I'm a resident at 1J Victor Lane.

My name is... Just go over to the mic and just... My name is Deepak Kapoor.

I'm a resident at 1J Victor Lane in Franklin. And my vote is in favor of for the town to accept the street as well as the drainage lot that is parcel one. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there anybody else? Mike, you had anything to add or...

Thank you. Mike Maglio, Town Engineer. This is one of the newer subdivision that was started probably around 2018 or so. Developer built it all out. Everything's been done and approved by the planning board. So this is just part of the normal progress to actually have it accepted. It was always intended to be accepted when it was originally approved. So just a matter of course.

And there's nobody on Zoom, right? Nope. There's nobody on Zoom. So I'll declare the public hearing closed. NOW WE'RE GOING TO GO TO THE NEXT PUBLIC HEARING. DO YOU WANT TO JUST ACCEPT THE... DO YOU WANT TO GO RIGHT TO THE LEGISLATIONS OR ACTIONS, AND THEN WE CAN GO HOME? All right, we'll move to resolution 26-38, order of layout, acceptance and taking of J. Victoria Lane and drainage lot parcel number one. It takes a two-thirds vote, majority vote. Clerk will read the resolution.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And you can't move to waive the meeting.

I was just going to say that. I make a motion to waive the reading. Second. I have a motion and a second. Discussion? Any opposition? All in favor? Aye.

Opposed? Go ahead. Motion to approve Resolution 2638. Second.

Discussion?

All in favor? Aye. Opposed? All right. All right, now I'll open up the public hearing for transfer of pledge of license, pledge of inventory, and approval of manager of section 15 all-alcohol beverages package store license to Franklin Georgias LLC, doing business as Georgios Liquor, located at 60 Franklin Village Drive, Franklin, Mass. Jamie?

I think the attorney and the clients are here. Oh, I didn't see you guys yet. Sorry about that. Go ahead.

Good evening, Mr. Chair and council members. My name is John Aida, McDermott, Quilty, Miller, and Hanley, 28th Street, Boston, representing the applicant, Franklin Giorgio's LLC, that's doing business as Giorgio's Liquors. Joining me is George Mounis. George, along with his brothers, Anis Mounis, are the operators and owners. In addition, George will be the proposed manager of record. This is a corp to corp transfer from Village Mall Liquors. Just briefly by way of experience, George has been in the industry for 14 years. They own two other package stores, one in Billerica, one in Waltham, both under the Georgios Liquors name. So he does have quite substantial experience along with his family members. This is going to be family owned and operated. This is the store. They're looking and excited to get in there, do some remodeling, refreshing, and excited to join and become part of the town. George is TIP certified. All the staff members will be TIP certified. He's familiar with the rules and regulations of this council, the ABCC, and the laws of the Commonwealth as it pertains to sale and services of alcohol. In addition to the straight transfer of this alcohol license, he'll be financing part of the purchase of the assets, which include the license, borrowing money from Rockland Trust. So part of the vote tonight is a request for a pledge of the license as well as inventory to secure that collateral as a request from the bank. Other than that, it is pretty straightforward, change of ownership here. You'll see new faces hopefully in the next month or so. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have and join us here as well and answer any questions. Do we have any questions?

I just want to confirm, the locations remain the same?

Same location, absolutely. Yep, same footprint. We're going to have the same hours of operation, so it'll just be new ownership and you'll see a new name on the sign. I have a question.

Go ahead. So, George, you have multiple package stores. Are you going to be managing this one personally?

Yes, that is the plan, that most of my time for the week is going to be on Franklin.

And are the family members managing the other stores? Yes, my brother.

His brother, Zanese, is, yeah, the manager, and the Wall family.

Any other questions? So how about to the audience? Is there anybody in the audience that has any questions? Or on Zoom, please raise your hand. Nobody? All right, I declare the public hearing closed. Clerk will read like transaction.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a license transaction for transfer of license pledge, a license pledge of inventory and approval of manager for Franklin Georgios LLC, doing business as Georgios Liquors, located at 60 Village Drive in Franklin, Mass. 02038. Franklin Georgios LLC, DBA Georgios Liquors, located at 60 Village Drive, Franklin, Mass. 02038, is seeking the approval for a transfer To it of section 15, all alcohol beverage package store license from Village Mall Liquors Inc, DBA Village Mall Liquors Inc. To be exercised by it at the same location as well as a pledge of license and pledge of inventory and approval of George Mamounis as manager. All departments have approved this application. The motion this evening is to approve the request by Franklin Georgios LLC, DBA Georgios Liquors, located at 60 Village Drive, Franklin, Mass. 02038, for a transfer of license, pledge of license, pledge of inventory, and approval of George Mamounis as manager.

I have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Second. I have a motion to discussion. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE.

OPPOSED? MOTION PASSED. GOOD LUCK. THANK YOU VERY MUCH. APPRECIATE YOUR TIME.

MOVING ON TO ANOTHER PUBLIC. SO I'M OPENING UP THE PUBLIC HEARING FOR TRANSFER OF PLEDGE OF LICENSE, PLEDGE OF INVENTORY AND APPROVAL OF MANAGER OF SECTION 15 ALL ALCOHOL BEVERAGE, PACKAGE STORE LICENSE, CONTRACTORS, FAMILY MARKET, DOING BUSINESS AS DAISY'S MARKET, LOCATED AT 353 LINCOLN STREET. FOR MASS, I WILL DECLARE THAT OPEN. I WILL GO TO YOU GUYS.

Thank you. Good evening. Can you hear me okay? Sydney Prokos, an attorney from Vera and DJ in Philippo, and I represent Contractors Family Market Inc., which is purchasing Dacey's Market, located at 353 Lincoln Street. I'm here tonight with Mr. Krunal, contractor, and his wife, Harald, who are two of the buyers of Dacey's. They are buying the store and the real estate. Krunal is the proposed license manager as well. Krunal owns several liquor license stores across Massachusetts, so he is an experienced buyer for sure. He has more than 10 years of experience responsibly selling alcohol throughout Mass. Once approved by the ABCC and this transaction is closed, Krunal will be the on-site full-time manager at this particular location. He has been alcohol tip certified for several years, making sure they're constantly updated for best practices. And he has that ideal blend of experience and education, which is what the ABCC likes to see in its buyers. As an additional safeguard though, they're investing in a state of the art ID scanner because they take underage sales so seriously. And education goes so far, but the IDs are getting more and more advanced. and kids look like kids even though they're 21 and born in the 2000s so i always recommend id scanners and that will be in place at this uh daisy's market for sure um and finally as part of this transfer we're requesting uh like the previous transaction a pledge of license and inventory to the lender rockland trust you may already know this but just to say it pledges are per section 11 of the application you receive they just give the bank some security similar to a mortgage um where god forbid if they defaulted on their loan um the rockland trust would have an interest in this but any subsequent purchaser would need to come before you the board for before any sale could happen so you for sure maintain control and knowledge of anything that happens um AFTER THIS APPROVAL. FAIRLY STRAIGHTFORWARD. ANY QUESTIONS?

ANY QUESTIONS FROM THE COUNCIL? QUESTIONS FROM THE PUBLIC? SEEING THAT IT'S A PUBLIC HEARING. ZOOMLAND? I GUESS NOT. SO I WILL DECLARE THE PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED. THE PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED. THE PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED. GO UP AND READ THE LICENSE GO UP AND READ THE LICENSE GO UP AND READ THE LICENSE TRANSACTION. GO UP AND READ THE LICENSE TRANSACTION. GO UP AND READ THE LICENSE TRANSACTION. YOU READ THE READING ON THIS? TRANSACTION. YOU READ THE READING ON THIS? TRANSACTION. YOU READ THE READING ON THIS? CAN YOU WAVE THE READING ON YOU READ THE READING ON THIS?

CAN YOU WAVE THE READING ON YOU READ THE READING ON THIS?

CAN YOU WAVE THE READING ON THIS? CAN YOU WAVE THE READING ON THIS? NO? OKAY. CAN YOU WAVE THE READING ON THIS?

NO? OKAY. CAN YOU WAVE THE

I'll try to make it fast. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a license transaction for the transfer of license pledge of license pledge of inventory and approval of manager. Contractors Family Market Inc. doing business as Daisy's Market located at 353 Lincoln Street in Franklin 02038. Contractors Family Market Inc., DBA Dacey's Market, located at 353 Lincoln Street, Franklin, Mass. 02038, is seeking the approval for a transfer to it of a section 15 all alcoholic beverages package store license from Shikshapatri Corporation, DBA Daisies Market in Delhi, to be exercised by it at the same location, as well as a pledge of license and pledge of inventory and approval of Kurnal P. Contractor as the manager. Issuance of license will be withheld until all departments have approved this application. Tonight's motion is to approve the request by Contractors Family Market Inc., DBA Daisies Market, located at 353 Lincoln Street, Franklin, Mass. 02038, for a transfer of license, pledge of license, pledge of inventory, and the approval of Cornell P. Contractor as manager.

It's a motion, right? Yes. Do I have a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Discussion? Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passed. Thank you. Good luck.

We're also here for the second one.

Don't move. Okay. I will be opening up the public hearing for modification... of section 15 all alcohol beverages package store license change of offices directors llc managers and change of stock interest contractors and sun incorporated doing business as lincoln street market located at 465 lincoln street i declare the public hearing open

You're welcome. Thank you. Again, Sidney Prokos, attorney from VR&T Gianfilippo, representing Contractors & Sons, Inc., doing business at Lincoln Street Market, located at 465 Lincoln Street. This could not be more straightforward. Here tonight with Mr. Kurnal, a contractor who is selling his 50% to his brother, Kunjun, who's right here. Kunjun will replace Kurnal as president, treasurer, and secretary. And that is it. A simply internal movement, which was sparked by Cronal's opportunity to purchase Daisy's. No other changes. Any questions?

The manager all tip-shift certified and everything? No change in manager. No change.

Yep.

Everything all the same. I'll go to the public. Is there anybody in the public? Orange on Zoom land. Okay. Okay. I'll declare this public hearing closed. Clerk will read license transaction.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a license transaction for multiple modifications of a Section 15 all-alcoholic beverage package store license, change of officers, directors, LLC, managers, and change of stock interest. Contractors and Sons, Inc., DBA, Lincoln Street Market, located at 465 Lincoln Street, Franklin, Mass. 02038. Contractor and Sons, Inc., DBA Lincoln Street Market, located at 465 Lincoln Street, Franklin, Mass., 02038, is seeking the approval for multiple modifications of a Section 15 all-alcoholic beverages package to our license to include a change of officers, directors, LLC managers, and change of stock interest. All departments have approved this application. The motion is to approve the request by Contractor and Sons, Inc., Inc., DBA Lincoln Street Market, located at 465 Lincoln Street, Franklin, Mass. 02038, for multiple modifications of the Section 15 all-alcohol beverage package store license as described above.

So motion. Do I have a second? Second. Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Good luck. Thank you. Thank you. all right moving on presentations and discussions thank you presentation fy 25 audit ed ben wilkinson senior manager cbiz good evening everyone terry bertoni cfo ben wilkinson is on zoom and he has a 10-page slide presentation for all of you

I'm just getting linked up on Zoom.

Thank you.

Ben, as you're presenting, Kerry's going to move the slides. So just acknowledge when you want the slide moved, OK?

Sure, sounds good.

Can everyone hear me? Yep. Yep.

Perfect. Good evening, everybody. My name is Ben Wilkinson. I was the senior manager on the town's audit for the year ended June 30th, 2025. First, I want to send a big thank you out to the town staff for their assistance with the audit. Carrie Linda, the school side as well, town administrator, making the audit go as smoothly as possible without any hiccups. So big thank you to them. Next slide, please. Tonight tonight my presentation will largely cover the audit results as well as the required communications to governance I'll then take you through sort of high level the format of the financial statements and where to find Certain relevant information for yourself as the council and for the public next slide So we issued two audit opinions, both on April 6th, 2026. The first was for the town's financial statements that covers the entire financial ecosystem of the town. The second report was the audit of the town's federal award programs, otherwise known as the single audit. So testing over major federal expenditures and reporting to the federal government. Both opinions were unmodified or clean, which means there were no deviations. A clean opinion is the gold standard in the audit world, so the town achieved that ultimate goal. Next slide, please. In terms of our required communications, there were no instances of fraud or illegal acts. There were no material uncertainties. At the beginning of our audit process, we go through a robust planning and risk assessment process. Throughout planning and our field work, all the way through issuance, there were no significant changes or deviations to that plan. Otherwise known as there were no surprises, there were no 11th hour surprises or hiccups. So the audit went according to plan. You will notice in the financial statements, there is required supplementary information in both the front and the back. In the front is management's discussion and analysis, which is about 10 pages that lays out management's snapshot of operating results, budgetary results, goes over the debt landscape, any major capital projects, and kind of goes over, you know, for the next fiscal year and the fiscal 26, you know, any changes that are upcoming. In the back of the statements, you will find the general fund budgetary to actual budget to actual, as well as various pension and OPEB schedules. Those schedules lay out the funding statuses, the contributions the town has made to both pension and OPEB, and lays out what those liabilities are for the town as of June 30th, 2025. I will say in terms of our responsibilities to that RSI, we're required to make inquiries of management regarding the methods that went into preparing it. We read them for consistency. We read the MD&A for consistency against the basic statements and the footnotes to make sure everything is in sync. But I will say in terms of the RSI, that is not in the purview of our opinion over the financial statements. It's a very limited approach and really just looking for consistency, but we do not express an opinion over that information.

Next slide, please.

Next, because of the government, there is, under Yellow Book as well, there is the reporting under government auditing standards. There were no instances of noncompliance or other matters. There were no reportable material weaknesses or significant deficiencies. I'll put one asterisk on that item. Under our audit, internal control is for limited purposes for us to gain an understanding. As part of our audit, we do not test the operating effectiveness. So while no material weaknesses or significant deficiencies arose, I can't definitively say that they don't exist. Just in the terms of our scope of audit, nothing came to our attention that rose to that level of reporting to you. Next slide. In terms of accounting changes this year, there were two standard implementations from the folks over at the GASB. The first, GASB 101, was the significant and material impact of statement this year under compensated absences. It essentially changed the measurement of comp absences, so the town now has to take a holistic approach and not just consider what may be paid out at termination or retirement. It has to take into consideration all time that has been earned by current employees and may be used in the future as well as those potential payouts down the road. You will notice in note 21 and on the government wide financial statements, there was a restatement of about $4 million to opening that position as a result of this standard implementation. But because this is one of those necessary evils from the folks at the GASB, this does not result in any internal control finding or anything of that nature. Every town, every city, school, town, state across the country had to implement this standard last year. The second statement, GASB 102, really just falls under, you know, if the town were to lose a material taxpayer or a material revenue stream, disclosing that to the readers and what management's plan is to sort of recoup, you know, any of that funding that was lost. This did not have an impact on the town's financial statements this year, but it still was implemented in case anything may arise in the future. In terms of our audit throughout the planning and the field work, there were no significant or unusual transactions noted. Based on our audit, there were no alternative accounting practices discussed with management. So everything went to plan, nothing major to report there. Next slide, please. Again, in terms of any material audit adjustments, there were none. In terms of financial statement disclosures, I would point you to notes 17, 18, and 19 regarding those pension and OPEB liabilities. It discloses the assumptions, the discount rates, and provides more clarity into the arithmetic behind those figures. There were no conflict of interest or related party matters noted. We did not have any disagreements with management at any phase of the audit. To our knowledge, there were no management consultations with other accountants. We as the auditors didn't have any other consultations. And again, no significant difficulties were encountered throughout from planning all the way through issuance. Next slide, please. So I'll just take you high level through the financial statements. I'm not gonna get into too much of the nuts and bolts. Just the general form. The first pages is the audit opinion that lays out the responsibilities of ourselves, management, and ultimately that opinion that was unmodified or clean. Next, we go into the management discussion and analysis, which I mentioned earlier, followed by the basic statements. Of note, the general fund is always a major fund, so that's standing out there. Goes through the operating results of all the funds and the opinion units of the town. Followed by those statements, you have your enterprise funds, sewer, water, stormwater, trash, going through the results of those funds and operations. And then the largest chunk really is the notes, which gives more of the backstory and more of the clarity to the reader about what's behind the numbers that are in the front. And again, as mentioned at the end, is those RSI items related to pension OPEB and the general fund budget to actual. So that's just high level kind of where to find you know, find key details from the statements in terms of navigating them to learn more. Next slide, please. And with that, I'll open it for questions and discussion.

Questions? Thank you, Ben. Ben, on the $4 million adjustment that one time, I'm assuming it probably was predominantly sick time. Is that correct?

Correct. Okay.

Correct. For the – when did the 2025 audit start?

We started at the beginning of November.

Okay. And it closed in April?

Correct.

Any way – and this is for Kerry as well – any way we can tighten that up, it is July – whatever of twenty twenty six and we're talking about twenty twenty five june so it is for coming up on thirteen months how do we tighten this up so that it's a little closer to the close of the fiscal year uh... well this is an item was moved it was scheduled sooner to be presented to the council

but it was moved to this date.

I'm not even talking presentation to the council, but even to have it done before April. I mean, it's still nine months post a period. That's pretty long. So how do we close that gap, I guess?

So I'm going to refer back to Ben from CBIS on that because I have to wait for the draft of the final until statement, and then it goes through many quality control with the partners at CBIS.

Correct. Ben, any suggestions on how to tighten the gap up?

Yes, I mean, we can definitely look at the timeline in terms of, I mean, the town is pretty ready at the November. You know, there's some odds and ends that may come later, maybe an OPEC report or something that pushes us into the new year. Historically, the job has issued in the middle of March, early March. But that's always something that we can commit to working on moving that, accelerating that timeline forward. There's no reason that we can't tighten that. Great. I'd appreciate that.

I mean, obviously there's nothing material here, but if there ever was something material, it'd be great to know that sooner rather than later. There were a couple of comments in the package that I wanted to just highlight or talk about. On page 31 in deposits, There's a sentence in there that says, as of June 30, 2025, none of the town's bank balance of $53 million, comma, $12.7 million was exposed to custodial risk as uninsured and uncollateralized. I don't know if you have the document up, Ben, but my question is, is that just a wrong typing and that $12 million shouldn't be in there, or do we have $12.8 million that's exposed to custodial risk as such as uninsured and uncollateralized.

To my knowledge, that $12 million is an accurate figure, but I'll refer back to Carrie on that one.

Yes, and I'll get back to you on that.

Okay, because, yeah, I just, as I read that sentence, it looks like that 12 million, that number shouldn't be in there, because it's saying none of the bank balance of 50 was exposed to custodial risk, or is there really, that just, the wording doesn't sound right.

Correct.

Ultimately, is there $13 million to custodial risk, then I would have an issue, then we do have a $13 million risk out there.

Understood. So we'll get back to you. All right.

Thank you. And the other thing I noted was in the long-term, what was it under? Property taxes and excises receivable. There is tax liens. Almost 90% of our tax liens are long-term. So Kerry, can you talk a little bit more about the $700,000 of tax liens that are in a long-term position How do we go about potentially collecting those past taxes? What's the process to that?

So what page are you referring to?

That's on page 35 of the document.

Of the financial statement?

Yeah.

I just want to make sure before I go to answer this.

It's under the property tax and excise receivable section. I apologize for not sending it to you ahead of time.

That's okay. I might not be able to fully answer your question, but I am going to say it's because of the outstanding property tax bills or the tax liens.

Correct.

Yes. So the liens on the property tax that have not their liens and we haven't gone for closure. And they're with Land Court. I mean, each individual parcel will probably have an explanation, which I can get.

That'd be great. That'd be wonderful. Thank you. For now, that's all I have for questions. Not to say I may not have more if you guys take me down a different direction. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So let me just get to that. I guess, you know, we've had a lot of citizens who've claimed baselessly that the town's finances are mismanaged. Could you say definitively that, you know, at least in terms of the audit, can you attest to the management of our town's finances? Yeah.

So, I mean, in terms of our audit scoping, you know, nothing material came about, you know, that would rise to being reported to you. Based on our, you know, work of internal controls, our walkthroughs, you know, no, there didn't appear to be any systemic issues in the accounting finance office. From our view, they have the necessary skills, knowledge, and experience to be in those positions and to ultimately take responsibility for the financial statements. Nothing came to our attention throughout any of our testing that there was anything that was within our reasonable assurance standard that was out of whack.

So there's no evidence of any mismanagement?

Not based on our audit procedures and our audit scoping, no.

That's what I like to hear. In terms of other towns that you've audited, how does Franklin compare to the audit that has come up?

I think the town is in line with the majority of the towns that issue clean opinions. Again, no systemic issues, no major issues in internal controls, no questions of management ethics. From our perspective as the independent outside auditor, the town is, you know, obviously the town is a large town in Massachusetts, but in comparison to the other towns, I even audit towns in Maine and Rhode Island, the town is on solid footing from our view if we're taking a look at New England as a whole and in Massachusetts.

Thank you very much. That's all I got for you. Thank you.

Steve? I don't really have any detailed questions. I went through it. I'm glad you had the opinion that you did. I'm glad everything kind of tied out and looks right. I'll need some more time to go through this and refer back to this during the course of the year as we start talking about budgets and everything else again, but I'm satisfied that we're okay. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Apologies if I miss it. How long have you been auditing our results?

So the firm through merged in firms has been the auditor for over a decade. I have been on the account for two years now.

All right. Yeah, it looked like there was nothing new or surprising that came up, which is great. I just wanted to have a sense of how familiar you and your firm were with the results. It seems fairly standard. It seems like in good shape, so no questions. Thank you.

Thank you. I just wanted to comment that I think this is pretty impressive that there are no audit adjustments, which means I think that everything was correct by the time the auditors got to it, which I thought was impressive. And then no significant or unusual transactions means but there's no like accounting maneuvers that concern anyone. So I think those are really good signs. Ben, you said there's nothing that was significant enough to become a finding that was presented to us, but was there anything that you noticed that maybe we should be keeping our eye on for the next few years?

I mean, I think in general, you know, seeing my view of governments across the region and, you know, we see in the news all the time about cybersecurity information technology, the rise of AI, definitely keeping a pulse on those items, making sure that, you know, training continues at the town. just so you don't get into situations where you may be hacked or anything like that. I think that's the biggest area we as auditors see as potential weaknesses for a large amount of municipalities, whether that's through budget restraints or other things like that. But I think that would be my biggest critical thing. As we move more into the digital world than we already have in the rise of AI, just ensuring that those bad actors, the town doesn't fall suspect to any of those potential hacks. So definitely I would take a look at that. Based on our audit, the town has sufficient policies, procedures, training in place for all of that stuff. But just always, my biggest recommendation is to continue to be vigilant about those rises.

excellent thank you very much yeah just going down that path of cybersecurity have you seen in some of the towns you audit where they've taken maybe a different tact on that as far as maybe hiring outside consultants or do you have any recommendations to make enough yeah

So the biggest thing, and I think one of the weaknesses that I see in other clients is the ability for the town to produce a risk assessment, to have an assessment of any potential vulnerabilities that may be out there, just to get a basic survey of, you know, hey, we think we're doing a good job, you know, but where can we improve? I have some clients that work with DHS at the federal level to come in and do screenings. You know, there are many vendors, CBiz as one of them can come in and do an IT assessment based on, you know, you know what we see the industry moving towards and having those appropriate safeguards in place the other thing i think also the rise of cyber insurance taking a look if you know making sure that insurance policies are uh up to you know up to date up to you know any potential um exposure taking a look at all that kind of stuff do we have cyber insurance we do yep

We also have a training program that's been going on for about six years, mandatory for all school and town employees, where we put out what's called Know Before. Some of you may be familiar with the company. But they do surprise emails and test everybody. You get a score. We see where areas are. And our staff have been improving significantly. And I think that's probably not from the training, too, but also just seeing things in the news. and being more aware of stuff. So we do a lot on this issue.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ben, I don't remember you presenting to us last year. So were you new as the team lead?

So this is my second year on the team. Scott McIntyre, the shareholder, has done the presentation the last many, many years. So I was tagged in for tonight.

No, I think it's great because I remember in the past it was reported to us that you, to keep fresh eyes on the process, you guys kind of moved around with who was going to be the lead and I see Carrie kind of nodding her head, right? I think that's great. It's impressive once again to not have a management letter and to get a clean audit report. I think it's important to note to the public, Jamie, correct me if I'm wrong, but we're not required to do this. Right? No. No, we choose to do this.

Yeah, this was I think a thing, yeah.

Which I think is important for the public to see that this council and this administration for years has chosen that this is a priority to make sure that our finances are clean and that there aren't any issues. You can go through audit reports online going back many, many years, you won't find a management letter. praise to the staff and to all of the boards that contribute to making sure that that happens and to our friends on the school side for managing the money correctly and accounting for it correctly. It's very, very impressive. So thank you for your presentation.

You good? Yeah. Yeah, thanks, Ben. The cybersecurity stuff is very important, as we know. Carrie, we know. But that's awesome. And I have talked to a couple of employees. They do get the funny emails, and they pick up on it right away from their training. So that's excellent to know. You know what I mean? Yeah. YOU KNOW, THEY GET TESTED AND IT DOES WORK OUT GOOD. SO BEN, THANK YOU, BECAUSE YOU TALK A LOT FASTER THAN THE OTHER GUY DID. I do appreciate that, so I hope to see you back next year.

Awesome. Thank you, everybody. Hold on. I didn't know if the Finance Committee members had any questions because this is their first fight at the Apple.

What's that?

You're good? I thought I didn't raise a hand. You're all nodding. You're all nodding. Okay. Thanks, Ben. Thank you, guys. Have a good night. Thank you.

Thank you, Ben. Kerry, can you just get the 300 up? Sure.

So we're going to, yeah, 300 Fisher Street, the presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So as Kerry's transitioning out of that presentation and the EPA folks, Dan's here. Dan, you want to come on up? We get ready to do a short slideshow. Just a quick background for everybody that may be watching at home. But in the packet tonight, there was Dan's presentation. And the EP's coming up too. So there's a memo with a history of this. I tried to make it down to a couple pages. There's a very, very long history of this parcel. But the good news then, I want to just focus the discussion quickly. There's no decision by the council tonight. But as Dan and Pete are going to mention, soon there's going to be a public input, probably later this fall or in the winter. And so the EPA had recommended or requested just a little bit of time on a council agenda to help get the word out, give a little bit of history. And obviously, with many of you being new to the council, just giving a little bit of a background, even for Councilor Cormier-Ledger, this may be some new information because I don't think since the pandemic There's been a tremendous amount of activity on 300 Fisher prior to the pandemic council at Deloco will remember the structure on the property was taken down. A lot of earth material was taken away and it was actually really good progress happening. And like we say about everything with 2020 and the pandemic changed everything. I appreciate the folks from the EPA coming out. They'll introduce themselves and give a little slideshow, and then people can ask questions about 300 fishers. So I appreciate that.

Thanks for coming here. Yeah, so my name is Dan LaFrance. I'm a remedial project manager with the EPA Superfund program. To my left is of MassDEP. My counterpart at the DEP and joining remotely is who is from the EPA Office of Public Affairs. Her role in this process is, as you alluded, there's going to be a public involvement activity that's going to be, we're looking for feedback from the public and so Liz is going to be largely involved in coordinating that. So my goal tonight was just to give sort of a brief update of where we are in the process and some of the kind of upcoming timeline, what you're likely to see, just so that it's not news to you when we drop a document and say you have 30 days to issue comments. It's not the first time you hear it. This photo on the front page was the building the day it caught fire in 2015. It has since been taken down and slabbed. But I'll skip the executive summary and just get to the good stuff. So the 300 Fisher Street property is the one in orange right against the railroad tracks and 495 at the south end of this image. The black line is the area the EPA has been studying within that whole boundary. going back over the last 10 years and COVID definitely derailed some of the work and getting reset but also PFAS is a big issue of this site if you've heard of one environmental contaminant in the last 10 years is PFAS we have it here the science is constantly evolving we've had to go back through multiple times add sampling programs, add reanalysis of the data sets as new regulations have come online. We've had to reevaluate our math and make sure that things are, you know, that we have a good understanding of kind of where we're at. But what we've done is basically broken the site into two, what we call operable units, large phases of work. The first being the factory property itself. We're calling that Operable Unit 1, so it's tagged that way on the drawing. The second is the wetland system, and it's Mine Brook, Beaver Pond. Spring Pond is kind of our background location. So we've studied it. There's not really anything there. It's our clean source for what flows through the setting. We're looking at how contaminants get picked up in the river as it passes the site. But, so, Operable Unit 1 is kind of the main subject right now of, you know, we can take action. We now know enough and are able to do a feasibility study. We're almost to the point of publishing that, saying this is what we're looking to do. to remedy the contamination issues here and i have a couple of slides that will get into what those are and then the wetland system is kind of on the receiving end of everything that starts at the factory site so we have to address the factory site first just to kind of cut off the bleeding and then deal with the rest of the problem So skipping to the factory site itself, I'm not going to dwell too much on exactly what this map means, but all of those data points are lead, and you can tell from kind of the color here, warmer colors, higher concentrations of lead. If they're red and purple, those are levels that are you know, above the cleanup standards of the establishment site. The greenish and yellowish kind of colors on the left-hand side of the map are wetland areas. You can see there's upland and going into the wetlands, fairly high amounts of lead kind of throughout. There are a lot of other drawings in some of the files that you flip through that all kind of tell the same story, different metals, different other contaminants, but generally it's the same thing. We're seeing a lot of this getting down toward wetlands, getting out in the wetland system and going to points downstream. The reason why there's nothing flagged in the middle of the drawing is that this is a zero to one foot sample presentation here. The building slab is a foot and a half thick. There's an area that was covered with a foot of clean soil. It's that we don't have samples of contaminated material there. You go a few inches deeper and you find it. But bringing that on a drawing makes it even more confusing. So just trying to get sort of the basic sense of sort of what's going on. So a lot of this came from rubber and plastics manufacturing, and they made land for themselves over time. The first industrial activity here was the 1880s. And as the factory got built out more and more, they moved. you know, further and further away from the tracks. And in order to do that, they made land out of solid waste. And so that's why we're seeing a lot of that kind of around the edges, kind of up against the wetlands. If you've ever been out there, the land is very steep, kind of right up to the wetlands and dead flat at the slab because they built land, they put buildings on it, and where they stopped was the edge. You didn't say they filled it in. Yeah. Absolutely. We have a couple of areas where PFAS was apparently disposed in wastewater and has started migrating from the site. This is important because the town drinking water supply, one of the town's supply wells, is just along 495, about 1,000 feet away. very appreciative that the town is actually building a filtration plant for that we are at some point going to need to come to some sort of understanding of you know just information sharing because part of what i have to do in the long term of the site is verify whether the public is you know ever at risk issues on the site as long as that plant is operating the way we think it is it'll probably be fine if i have to take further actions i need to know that So no immediate action on that, but just something to think about. This is Superfund in the same slide. It's kind of a lot to process, but for the last 10 years or so, we've been in this kind of bottom arrow going from include the site on the national priorities list on the right. We did that in 2015. That makes it part of our docket that we investigate and develop a cleanup plan. As I said, we had to do the investigation. We had to reevaluate our findings several times because PFAS repeat a bunch of field exercises, do things like that. came to in 2024 2025 a remedial investigation and health risk assessment that said this is what the issue really is from there we went into what we call a feasibility study which goes to these are methods we may use to be able to deal with that and looking at what techniques are available how you know can we just put up fences and throw a lock on the door and now there's no access for people and people can't be exposed that doesn't really achieve anything it is in theory an option but we discarded it because of a lot of other reasons that are in the report but once we go through that kind of exercise we focus in on something that we decide we think is the right approach to to deal with the contamination. And then we issue what we call a proposed plan. And that's what the talk bubble thing is right in the middle there. That is a public document that is for public response. And so the idea would be that the public has the opportunity to read that, to provide feedback to the EPA, say, you know, I like this idea, I hate this idea, have you considered this other thing? And we use all that information to finalize what the plan actually needs to be. If we came in and said we were going to, you know, propose an incinerator and I get, you know, vegetables thrown at me and I have to leave, you know, running away from a room, we'll scrap the cleanup plan and propose something else. If the community is generally on board, you know, we might finalize it more or less as is but taking, you know, feedback into consideration. And it's anywhere on that continuum. A lot of words here, but this basically says a lot of the same things I just did. But the current timing is I just got a redraft of the feasibility study today. I've got to go through some internal process controls. But somewhere late summer or fall, I'll be publishing the proposed plan. So that'll be a public document. Typically, when we issue the proposed plan, there's a 30-day initial public comment period. If people want more time, we are happy to grant it, but you have to ask.

No, it's good to know.

Yeah, so we are happy to grant that. And on top of that, because this is a complex, dense topic, and 10 minutes here is not enough to dive into the weeds, Liz can talk a little bit about some of the opportunities that we have for kind of demystifying the process. We have ways of trying to help make it a more accessible document. The way that it works is there's a public hearing where I can't really say anything other than thank you for your time. The next person to speak is, as you're all familiar, we are thinking about doing some sort of more accessible post up at a coffee shop or the library or something. Just have an informal meeting with whoever wants to show up and ask whatever questions. So Liz is going to work on trying to sort of set that up. So these are some of the things that we looked at in terms of what we are likely to be doing at the site. The high-level issues are we've got, as I showed on the earlier slide, we've got soil, high levels of metals, that's a direct contact risk. If people are walking around in it, if somebody's doing utility work and trying to sink utilities in it, they're down in the trench, they're breathing in dust, that's one of the major risks that's here. The soil's all shallow, it's accessible, we can excavate it. We can send it off to a landfill. We can consolidate it on site and cover it. Different activities cost different amounts. They leave different giant holes in the site that may need to be dealt with in different ways. They may present other opportunities for building a parking lot on top of the cover and various reuse options. So we're looking at different combinations of things there. PFAS is tricky. I am leaning in the direction of just trying to get rid of the soil containing PFAS from the site altogether because sequestering it isn't really a proven technique at this point in the long term scale of our program. And then finding a way to treat it on site so that it stops seeping into the groundwater and stops getting away and stops going to work as well. but we've got a couple of different methods for looking at that that we're working through so kind of the key things for the board to to be considering and that i'm happy to take you know any feedback whether now or during the public comment period or anywhere between future land use it's privately owned the reason we call it bj is that's the name of the holding company that owns the property don't know that they have a plan for you know reuse i don't know that the town has you know really looked at anything to do with it uh i know you know jamie the tech review folks have looked at it a lot lately but you know anything that deals with the future use kind of affects how the cleanup needs to proceed so any any comments on that would be appreciated and then you know anything we can do to establish eventually an understanding of the water treatment plant and the operations there. Data sharing, I have an open line with DBW on that so I don't think it's going to be an issue. And then the last closing point is what we call technical assistance grants and these are, EPA can do one of two things. One is, and the tag is, we give you a check and you hire your own consultant to get involved in the process. I know the town has done Brownfield's work in the past. You probably have engineering consultants you've used. So you could hire somebody that you trust to speak to the public on matters like this so the public feels informed. Or we have a program where we can hire one of our contractors to do that as well. But I don't even have control over kind of who we get. It's luck to draw who we wind up with. I find sometimes towns are more likely to want to use people right now. So there's something to throw out there. And so I will open it up for questions.

Actually, I got one. Do you know if we start digging down there? HOW FAR DOWN WE HAVE TO GO. DO WE KNOW THAT? BECAUSE I JUST... I KNOW FROM WHERE I GREW UP, WE WENT IN AND STARTED DIGGING UP And the further they went down, the worse the PCPs were, and they ended up just putting a rock wall. It's in Hypoch, and then the parts of River River. Oh, yeah.

That's one of ours, too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, so actually, this is... I kind of flashed ahead to this slide anyway, but this is from the forthcoming feasibility study. Basically... Within that document, we've kind of narrowed this down. A lot of these areas are four or five feet deep. There are some areas where it does penetrate more like 15 feet in a couple of spots. It's mostly kind of along the edge of the building. The northwest edge, where it's got the steepest drop to the wetlands, that whole thickness is fill. But yeah, a lot of it's four or five feet. Okay.

No, that's fine. I just remember, because I'm on that committee, and the further they went down, the worse it got. And they haven't even got into the real bad part, as you know.

Yeah, next thing is the river. We're working on that. No, this one is a lot more kind of shallower, superficial continuation. It's really sort of ends at the elevation of the wetlands. And it was just they built on top of the wetland block and built their way out.

Okay, good. No, that was just a question I had. Anybody else?

So is this in the Zone 2 area for the well? It is, yes. And that's our concern is that it's part of that aquifer that... So we need to basically figure out a way to eliminate PFAS in the groundwater. You want to speak?

Yeah. Doug Martin, town of Franklin, water and sewer superintendent. Like you said, it is within our zone two. Those wells are currently offline. end of last summer for the upgrade of our Haywood water treatment plant. And that plant, once it goes back online, will have a PFAS filtration capability where we'll have the vessels in there. So we'll be producing water with zero PFAS.

Did you test the water and find that the contaminants from the site are in the water?

I don't think that we've targeted that it's totally coming from that site so our testing prior to even i think even you guys looking at pfos at the site per se never went over or triggered anything from the state level state or federal level at the time that we needed to do treatment But we did, obviously, the samples did come back and we did find some there. And it's like you said too, the proximity to 495, where those wells are, I wasn't too surprised from that. But that was kind of, you know, a driver as well as the other filtration that we needed to do at that site to kind of, you know, make the push to add PFAS filtration as well.

Yeah, and I understand about PFAS, but my question is more about the specific contaminants that are at the site outside of PFAS, right, metals. Was the water tested for those as well to determine if any of the ones that you're seeing at the site and that contamination had made it into the groundwater?

Yeah, I can take the first cut on that. So we do have some localized areas, and they generally overlap with some of these, you know, purple and red edges in here where we have, metals in groundwater are slightly above the drinking water standard. But metals in a wetland system, particularly lead in a wetland system, when it gets exposed to air, it falls out. So it doesn't have the ability to migrate the 1,200 feet to wind up in the well. There is lead in, you know, In soil, it's a natural mineral component of soil, so it's kind of everywhere. But we haven't seen large-scale bulk migration of any of the metals. And a lot of what we're proposing to do would remove the sources from the wetlands, potentially do some onsite stabilization treatment that would prevent any of these from ever dissolving again. So we are looking at ways to further bring those levels down, but we're not as concerned about migration from that. But to Doug's point, they've never tripped the PFAS MCLs at the drinking water plant, but the levels that we have on site are significantly higher with some of the same compounds detected at both ends. So our interpretation is that there's some component of it that we've got to stop while we are contributing, whether that's the whole problem or not. There are a lot of sources of PFAS There's a site in New Hampshire where it literally rained down from the air from an industrial use 10 miles away. We've seen things like that all over the place. So I can't say that it's everything, but we are looking at how we control what we know that we can control within our program.

And I'll just add, too, from a heavy metal perspective, none of our testing has ever tripped any MCLs or SMCLs from a water quality center.

Okay. Any concern that the work you do to mitigate the situation or clean it up might make it worse?

So one of the things we have to look at in the feasibility study is the short-term impacts of whether some of those things could happen. We're not going to select a remedy that we think is likely to have major negative impacts in the short term. And the idea is that once we clean up and finish up and are done, we're restoring wetlands. We're putting the landforms back together in a way that are physically stable. So we're trying really to select a remedy that doesn't do that. There certainly are ones when we start getting into chemical treatment in the groundwater. There are ways to break down PFAS, but they involve a lot of heat and very low pH to turn your groundwater acidic. We don't want to do that. There are a lot of different technologies that start to get into those. you know you could be doing more harm than good things and so that's why the feasibility study takes as long as it does we have to start looking at all of those conditions in totality I think what we're going to come away with is really unlikely to have those kind of knock-on effects beyond the end of the project

Last question. Are you looking for the council to eventually approve a plan that you recommend?

So, I mean, some sort of community support would be appreciated. One of the last two, so when we do our process, there are a couple of what we call balancing criteria for selecting a remedy. And two of the final ones that we don't get any insight into until we publish the plan are state acceptance, which I should be... Pete and I get along, so I shouldn't be blowing them away with what I propose. And then community acceptance. And as I said, we've had sites where, you know, we propose an incinerator and we get chased out of the room. If the community is in support of the remedy, that helps us to finalize a remedy. If you don't like it, say so. It doesn't help anyone for you to smile and not actually dislike what we're doing. But honest feedback. But if you do support it, we would appreciate hearing that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess my first question is in regards to there was a thing in the memo about housing versus commercial use and that housing would require more cleanup than commercial. And I just wanted to get some clarification on that. If the council wanted housing, would there be any more cost to the town? Or I know there would be cost to you probably and diminishing returns. So I just wanted to get some clarification as to future use of the project and how that impacts the clean-out.

That's a good question. So, the, we did look at whether or not, you know, housing might be viable as a use for the site. And this is more just, you know, we kind of default to the assumptions of, you know, the site was industrial, it's owned industrial, it's kind of locked off by the railroad tracks. And I understand there were some interesting covenants written into the railroad land transfer that you can't actually build a road across it or anything like that. So it's a tough parcel to actually set up for housing. If you can get enough housing in there and the The numbers work and things like that. We're not opposed to it. But in terms of does it require more cleanup, the answer is typically yes. The reason being in simple terms, I have gardens at my house. This time of year, I am digging things up by hand every single day. If that's contaminated soil, I'm breathing that in. I'm getting exposed to that. Whereas something like an office building, you might park in the parking lot and walk over soil that's buried underneath asphalt and there's a lot less contact there. So it's a less sensitive use and so we can be a little bit more relaxed in how much we clean up because there are other ways to manage the rest of the exposure that go along with it. So yes, if it is residential, we would have to do more cleanup. But the reality is that there's a lot to do here either way. And I wouldn't say that that is a reason to right off housing. It was just when we met with Tech Review, we talked about that a little bit and just the amount of available space, the amount of wetlands in the area, the slopes, the access issues, things like that. It just wasn't on its face a very easy place to stick a lot of homes. So if you can only get five or six homes in there, it's a lot of money to do that. But if it could be a major housing development, yeah, we're not opposed.

Okay. And the other question I had was, you know, in terms of the federal government's support of the Superfund program, is there anything, has their support been stable or has it been a little jumpy?

So in 2021, there was a law passed called Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. And one of the items in that bill was the reinstatement of Superfund tax. So in the past, Superfund has, for the last 25, 30 years, been mostly supported by corporations. Now we actually have tax revenue again. The original, the name Superfund is there's a trust that was capitalized by a tax on the special chemicals industry. That went away for a long time. Now it's back. So we have a stable source of funding. we have to share it with the national program. So it's not all going to my projects and I can do whatever I want with it, but it is a relatively stable source of money.

Finally, I'd just like to thank all of you for this collaboration. We have federal, state, and local all sitting at the same table. So I just want to acknowledge that it's kind of the marble federalism approach, but I'm glad to see it working. So thank you.

Thank you. Mike.

During the public comment period, what are you looking for during that period, I guess? how to use the property. What's the intent of the public comment period?

So sometimes we'll get comments from the guy who lived in the neighborhood for the first 50 years of his life and remembers the factory and says, if you looked at this pipe that goes off someplace that we've never been able to find, if that guy's out there, we'd love to hear from him. We're looking at, you know, Anything that people want to say about reuse of the property and kind of how that might factor into what the cleanup is. Just a reaction to the cleanup. If we're coming in and saying we want to consolidate some of our own site because it presents certain reuse opportunities and it's compatible with a lot of different uses, There are some people who react to that as you're leaving contaminants on the site. I don't like that idea. Here's what I think you should do about it. That's feedback we need to hear.

Can I jump in here too? Sorry, also to introduce myself. Hi, everyone. I'm the woman who's the floating head online. My name is Liz. I'm the community involvement coordinator for this site. I am newish to this site, but that's okay because I have experience with 30 other Superfund sites throughout New England. To answer your question for the public comment period, it can literally be anything. It can be anything at all really, kind of like Dan was saying, anecdotal histories about it, things that residents might be more akin to that we in our office in Boston aren't necessarily because we don't live in the community. It can be, as he said, expressing support or concerns for any parts that we have laid out. The cool thing about the public comment period, as you might know as well, is that EPA is required to provide a responsiveness summary that literally addresses every single comment.

But in that process, Dan, are you putting forth a recommendation, i.e., we're going to keep some contaminants and we're going to cap it? Is that before you even release it, are you making what I call a straw model? You're saying this is what we're proposing to do right now. Well, you don't know the future uses, which is kind of like the cart before the horse. But are you proposing putting that forth saying, oh, we're going to just cap the site with four yards of dirt or something? Is that what you're putting forth? And then you're getting comment off of that?

Yeah, that's the idea behind the proposed plan. We would come forward and say, on the basis of our feasibility study, which is going to be posted on our website, and on the basis of our remedial investigation, our health risk assessments, and all that that are posted. And that's where demystifying this process comes in. There's a lot for people to sort out with that. But the proposed plan is, on the basis of all that information, we believe that the best path forward is to do this. And then we open it up for the community to say, we actually disagree, we think you should do this other thing, or we support this, or... If, you know, we want to see the property used this way, is this compatible? And I can say, yes, it is. Or, no, if that's really the direction we want to go, we'd have to do something different. You know, whatever that kind of give and take is. But, yeah, we put forward our position that, you know, this is what we think is the best answer. And then we take feedback from the public saying we agree or we don't or whatever. you know, some combination.

Okay. One other point you brought up is that this is privately owned land right now. It is. So if we, in the community, comes out and says, let's make it a recreational space, I think it was even pointed out, it's on the SNET trail, you turn into parking lots, yada, yada, yada, what's to say that the current owner says, I don't want to do that? I want to turn it into housing. I want to put a 400-unit complex in there. I mean, the fact that it's private, how do we govern what's going to end up there?

Well, so you still have, you know, all of your usual tools. It's zoned for certain uses. You've got the ability to say this is what you can and can't do with it. So I threw recordational on there as something that is for people to imagine a little bit bigger than what it is now. But yeah, I mean, what we want to do is develop a remedy that is potentially flexible. We put together a regular decision that says this is what we're going to do. Once we get the design, we can tweak that. That is a relatively bare bones document as far as, you know, it doesn't get into the full final design of a remedy. It's not us saying, you know, okay, this is absolutely, this is the last thing that we're doing. It's now we start design toward, you know, whatever that goal is. And there's like often a year or more of design work to do. So there's time to work something out. but getting people thinking of it before we say, this is how we're going to generally approach it, is where it's helpful. And the property owner can comment, too. If he wants to call me up and tell me I'm insane for even thinking that you would ever do something with the property, that's his business as well.

And actually, that was going to be my last question, is how much has the property owner been involved in this whole process at this point? Been hands-off?

I mean, he takes my calls. He's been working on... fencing and signage and trying to keep the site secure. I don't think there's any real immediate plan from him. I certainly haven't heard anything that they're drawing up plans right now. They're going to be in for review next month or anything like that.

All right. Thank you. Appreciate it.

I'm going to kind of piggyback off of them. So basically, cleaning up can look one way if it's going to stay commercial, and it would look another way if we're going residential. My concern is this. If the input and the private owner decides we're going to keep commercial and we do this type of a cleanup, and 10 years from now they decide they want to sell that property and ask the town for a rezone to do private, like housing, whether it's a single family or two, it can't be done now legally because it's not cleaned up for residential. And Then we gotta go through the process of doing, they're gonna be required to doing test soils and stuff like that and it's gonna end up, could be end up wreaking more havoc in the long run. So why wouldn't it just be cleaned up to cover all areas because otherwise, If we're doing it on a commercial basis, then there's going to have to be something that is put down legally that it can never be rezoned commercial without XYZ being done because it's not fully uncontaminated. Does that make sense to you, what I'm saying? I get what you're saying.

And, you know, a couple of thoughts. First is that, you know, any cleanup that we do here is likely to end up with what we call late use controls. These are, you know, deed notices that are legally binding and saying these are things you can and cannot undo with the property. And generally the first things to go are residential, daycare, school kind of activities. So for somebody to come in and propose a use that is outside of those boundaries, that land use control lays out very specifically what they would have to do to get to a point where that's allowable. We do have sites. where there is contamination at depth that is allowed to remain in place and residential construction on top of it with certain types of improvements that actually allow for the site to be used safely for residential use. I used the example earlier of me being in my gardens. If you bring in enough fill and you create a thick enough cover over contaminated soil, it's unlikely that a person gardening is going to run into that contaminated soil. And that is a relatively common for developing in contaminated areas. Inside of 128, it's hard to find uncontaminated land for residential development. Any large residential development is probably doing a lot of that kind of work. So it is possible, it just requires and understanding kind of what that looks like. We would have to work with the developer to figure out how they're going to do it. It's going to be a cost. They're going to have to factor that into their performance. But, you know, that's not saying no to it. We can amend RODS. We can go back later and do other actions on sites that we've otherwise closed the book on. We never really let go of our sites. you know if down the road it becomes more amenable to residential development there is a way to make it happen it's just it's going to require a little bit of rework if that day comes but it's a question of do we spend an extra 20 million dollars now on the possibility that maybe this comes down the road someday or do we say figure it out down the road if if and when the time comes and we can figure out kind of how to structure that but that's that's kind of those are the scale of the numbers that we're talking about is you know full blanket removal i want to say came in somewhere around 25 million i haven't looked at the revised numbers today no which i understand that i guess my concern is though but i think you said if it was cleaned up based on a commercial there would be something that stated that

Because of the way it was cleaned up, you could only do this. But if you want to go this way, this is what needs to be done.

Yes.

So they can't just sell, the private owner can't just sell it, come to council, say I want a zone change, or whatever it is, and then try to build a house on it.

Yeah, they could do that, and then they'd have to deal with me.

Okay, as long as they have to deal with someone, that's all I want to make sure it's happening because I just don't want to see it be done one way and then something changes because zoning changes all the time and now there's something being built and there's people being harmed.

Yep. And that's why we use a deed notice for this. It's actually recorded with the deed and binding on any future owner. Okay. So if somebody tries to pull title on a property that, you know, they're going to buy this land, they go through the whole process, that's going to get flagged in the title review. And any bank that's looking at it is going to say, hey, wait a minute. Yeah. You need a plan to deal with this. So that's part of our kind of protocol on that. Okay. Chad?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is actually going to be through you to the town administrator. Jamie, how does this property differ from the Superfund site on Grove Street? Is it simply a matter of Grove Street, sort of the town inherited it because it got abandoned and then we had to deal with the ramifications, but this site is private?

New style. He's talking about new style. I don't know if they're, I mean, maybe somewhere linked between the waterways, but I don't believe they were linked in terms of this issue. This is a strictly identifiable site. Yeah, the town did inherit that property. YOU KNOW, YOU CAN LOOK BACK ON IT, GOOD DECISION, BAD DECISION, BUT OBVIOUSLY THE PROGRESS WE'VE MADE ON THAT SITE IS A FAIRLY VALUABLE ASSET FOR THE TOWN NOW THAT WE'VE STARTED THE REMEDIATION AND WE WORKED WITH THE EPA AND HAVE GOTTEN A LOT OF GRANT MONEY AND CONTRIBUTED ARPA MONEY. SO I THINK THEY'RE JUST TWO SEPARATE PARCELS THAT HAVE GONE TO TWO SEPARATE processes, if you will, even if they somehow maybe are linked through MindBrook or something like that.

Okay. So I just want to make sure I understand, and I think for the public, too. So with New Style, the company was there forever, did a whole bunch of bad stuff. ended up not paying taxes, the town inherited it, and now has had to work with a whole bunch of agencies, a whole bunch of money. These same three folks. To try to fix it. I actually worked on that. But this site, still company was there for a long time, did a whole bunch of bad stuff, right, and did a bunch of stuff that ended up contaminating the ground, made it a Superfund site, but it remains privately owned.

Correct.

So the government is involved in the cleanup process, but the town has limited purview because it's private.

Limited purview because it's private. The only real purview, I think, to maybe one of the questions earlier is you called to the zoning.

So my question to you guys, are there penalties to the landowners that caused the problem to begin with?

So the rubber company and the plastics company that were involved here have both been, you know, they both went bankrupt decades ago and were forcibly liquidated by the state. So there is no party responsible on that kind of basis. I mentioned that there's a real estate holding company that owns the property. The only asset they have is the property and, you know, That asset is worth negative millions based on just this finding. So on paper, they're . So that's kind of where we get involved is sites that have been abandoned. We call them orphan sites. There's nobody still around that can pay for the cleanup. We don't even know where the company's assets got sold off to. We can't find anybody to hold accountable for it, but it rises to a certain level of you know, danger to the public in terms of, you know, this is threatening the water supply and that sort of thing. So that becomes a case of the federal government's backstop.

Okay. So the company that owns it bought it from the companies that had to dissolve and did all the damage.

That's my understanding. The title is complicated here, but that's the truth of it.

It seems like a weird process. You'd think that if the companies dissolved that did the damage that it wouldn't be available for sale to another Company, but I guess that's out of our purview, but this is bad news Yeah, a lot of things happen all kinds of crazy stuff happened to me There was no EP EPA was not Yeah, no, I mean I I Appreciate the fact that we even have an agency that's trying to look out for this stuff and that it just it maddens me that we I It's now the second time that we're talking about a Superfund site that the town has to deal with and that the EPA has to deal with, with companies that face no penalties whatsoever for doing these egregious things, right? It's just, it's maddening. But I appreciate all that you're doing and all that you're going to propose to us in the future. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think a lot of my questions are answered by the prior questions from the council. I guess I'm left with, who pays for all the remediation?

So right now, what we've been doing is a fund-lead remedy. So this is financed out of the Hazardous Substances Trust Fund. So that was the fund that I mentioned earlier that was capitalized by the tax on the chemicals industry. So basically, the thinking behind that was that, today's chemical industry is paying the top line revenue directly to this fund that is paying for the sins of the past. Makes sense, yeah. So that, thus far, that's where it goes. If we find out that, you know, a rubber company ended up being sold to, you know, Goodyear or Firestone or something like that, we do have the ability to then hold those companies potentially responsible. But at this point, we don't have any information about the assets being sold. And those names are just for household names in reference. I get it. We've tried to look at what happened in bankruptcy. And as best we can tell, these companies felt like they needed to be sold or scrapped.

No, that's good. And Ted's questions kind of brought that out because that was my first question. Well, who owns this? What do they want to do? Like, what's their role in all this? So the EPA somehow will pay. Is there a budget? If we say we want $60 million to fix it and you guys say you'll have three, I mean, how does that work?

So what we end up doing is, in the record of decision, we identify a remedy. And we've gone through a feasibility study cost-estimating exercise. So if you ever read one of the press releases on one of these, and we issue a few over the year, you'll see EPA is committed to an $80 million remedy at such and such Superfund site. a number that comes straight out of the regular decision that, you know, we've selected this revenue with these components that our cost estimate is this.

And that's after the public hearing, and you've addressed the responses from the public, and you publish a report and say, in our opinion, we think the right way to treat this site is by doing X, Y, and Z, and the cost for that is $80 million, and that's what we're going to contribute. The town or the county that's impacted might say we want 90 or 100, but you're going to call the shot on that.

The EPA is. The payment part comes from EPA and to an extent the EPA as well. And that's part of Pete's role is to hold me honest on the cost of things. And then anything that ultimately goes to some sort of long-term maintenance, DP picks that part of it up. And that's all directly out of the statute. So it's not, you know, if we come in and say, you know, we're going to commit to an $80 million remedy to do X, Y, and Z, we're going to do X, Y, and Z. If it ends up costing $90 million, it is what it is. It's not that we're going to sit there and say, well, we only had $80 million, so this is...

You'll complete what you're committed to do? I got it. That's the way we operate. Okay. No, that's all fine. I appreciate that. Thank you.

And just to be totally clear, there is a certain amount of cost sharing with the state throughout the process to keep us involved. We're going to be seeing the plan before it goes out for public comment. That's the way the state operates. We work very well with Region 1. We're not always in lockstep, but we work well together. As far as costs go, EPA will commit to doing a cleanup to get this site into a certain amount of shape, as Dan was saying. If, following that period of time, they just have completed their cleanup, needing a certain amount of groundwater monitoring, whether that's for 5, 10, 100 years afterwards to make sure that their remedy is working, that is on the state's menu. not the city and not the private owner.

Thank you. I'm good, Bobby. Thanks.

Any other questions? So just one question. Apologies if I missed it or just didn't hear it. And I know that the remediation plan is, you know, you haven't made the recommendation yet. How long does remediation actually take?

What would be the timing on this? I am assuming based on the fact that we have groundwater revenue, it's going to take probably about a year and a half to design because there's going to be some level of field work that needs to happen that will probably be next baseball season, call it. You know, spring to fall is the time when a lot of that field work gets done. And then, you know, the rest of the design takes another year from there. And then it'll probably take, you know, six months or so to go through procurement, hire our contractors to do it, and ideally it's the following construction season, which is again from March or April through roughly the end of the year. We can build the kinds of things that we're looking at here in roughly a year. The thing that's going to be the very, very long part to the whole thing is groundwater recovery. So we can put in, if we are putting in some sort of groundwater treatment system, it only takes a couple of weeks to install that component. There are two different ones that we're kind of looking at. One is extracting the water and treating it and recirculating it. I have a site that's been doing that for 30 years now and is not much closer to done than they started. So we're looking at other alternatives. One of the things that we're looking at here with PFAS is putting basically an underground wall in place of activated carbon. It's a carbon filter much the same as the town is putting in. But it catches the groundwater as it moves through and it stirs the PFAS off of it. That's going to just stay in place until the groundwater source is exhausted, and that can take decades. And it requires sort of long-term monitoring to verify it. But actually building it is a matter of a couple of years.

That is a long timeline.

It will be even longer.

Yeah.

Now, every single one of my questions was answered.

All right. Well, thank you. Thank you for all you do, too, because that's a good job. I appreciate it. Because I know that. Thank you.

And if someone gets on the wrong side of the environment, we'll send them to you.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, Dan. Thanks, Pete. Thank you. Thank you. Doug? Just throw up the Charles Trevor on that.

Yeah, can we take a two-minute break? Sure, yeah.

BACK ON. OKAY. THE NEXT IS THE CHARLES RIVER POLLUTION CONTROL DISTRICT. CHARLES RIVER POLLUTION CONTROL DISTRICT OVERVIEW PRESENTATION ON ADMINISTRATOR MEMO AND SEWER TRANSFER.

GO AHEAD. LET ME JUST GIVE A QUICK OVERVIEW HERE. GO AHEAD. Through you, Mr. Chairman. So tonight's discussion, I just want to make sure we've done presentations on the Pollution Control District before. We don't need to go through all the slides. I think hopefully everybody had an opportunity to review them. The website for the Pollution Control District is there. I'll let Liz introduce herself in a second. She's here because she's the Executive Director at the Pollution Control District. The reason why this isn't a broader discussion are the action items on tonight's agenda. And just because many of you are new or many people at home may not know, just give me a few minutes to give a background on this. We're in a pollution control district with other municipalities. As many people know, Medway is the host facility. And so Millis and Medway have approached the town for many, many years. This is not new. This dates to before the pandemic, as a matter of fact. And there's a report in there from Liz that cites that Millis is at about 73% of their capacity for sewerage in their community, and Medway is about 92%.

Was it the?

No, Medway is 92, right? And Millis is 73. Sorry, it's okay. SO THERE IS SOME URGENCY FROM THE OTHER COMMUNITIES. WE'VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS, THE THREE TOWN MANAGERS, EVEN JEFF WAS A PART OF THIS AT ONE POINT FOR MANY YEARS, AND AS ALWAYS, THERE ARE NEGOTIATIONS AND THERE ARE STICKING POINTS WITH PRICE. I WANT TO BE CLEAR WITH EVERYBODY TONIGHT, EVEN THOUGH THERE'S LEGISLATION ACTION FOR MILLEST, FOR MEDWAY, AND THEN A CEREMONIAL VOTE THAT HAS TO HAPPEN FOR THE DISTRICTWIDE AGREEMENT, THE COUNCIL HAS FINAL AUTHORITY ON THESE DECISIONS. So as I've written in the memo, just to tee this up, Franklin has a pretty sizable number of excess sewer capacity that we are permitted for through the Department of Environmental Protection, Peter, who was just over there. And both communities have asked for different amounts of gallonage at different rates, but both communities and all of us believe that, just my personal opinion, that we should be selling, if you choose to sell this extra sewer capacity, you should charge towns the same rate. I do respect the fact, I do respect the fact, and I'm not saying that my opinion is correct or wrong, but I do respect the fact that the Millis Board of Select Board and also the Medway representatives are here, and they may have different opinions than I do, and that is okay. But I want to make sure the council is clear that the two draft agreements that are in there, particularly with Millis, Millis has generally agreed. I know their select board has not taken a firm action on this, and I know they have a little bit more, and they're happy to get up tonight and speak, and that's the reason why we're having this meeting. But I want to be clear with all of you. You do not have to take action tonight. You can take action tonight. You can approve both agreements as drafted. YOU ALSO HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO CHARGE MORE THAN THE $15.07 PER GALLON WE'RE RECOMMENDING. YOU ALSO COULD HEAR FROM THE OTHER BOARDS OR THE OTHER MANAGERS AND THE OTHER REPRESENTATIVES OF THE OTHER COMMUNITY, AND YOU COULD CHARGE LESS PER GALLON AGE. ALL OF THESE DECISIONS ARE WITHIN THE PURVIEW OF THE TOWN COUNCIL. SO YOU CAN AMEND THEM TONIGHT. YOU CAN LEAVE THEM AS IS, BUT I THINK THEY'RE GOING TO WANT TO COME UP AND JUST PRESENT TO YOU SOME FEEDBACK FROM THEIR COMMUNITIES, AND THEN YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO LISTEN TO THEM. WE HAVE HAD BOTH OF THESE REVIEWED BY OUR TOWN ATTORNEY, AND I ALSO WANT TO MAKE SURE IT'S CLEAR THAT WHEN MR. NUTTING WAS TOWN ADMINISTRATOR, I THINK IT WAS IN 2010 OR 2011, THERE WAS ANOTHER, THERE HAVE BEEN TRANSFERS OF SEWER CAPACITY IN THE PAST, these agreements mirror what has been done previously so this wasn't something that was just made up yesterday these were agreements that have been done with all of the other communities in the past and so they these agreements that are here come from sound judgment sound legal expertise sound professional expertise from the pollution control district as well as our water sewer department and we have tried to do the best we can to try to thread the needle on something As you can see in here, and Doug's here to answer any questions, Franklin currently has 3.642 million gallons a day, which is what's under the Department of Environmental Protection. I will also say, and these questions may come out a little bit later too, It is highly unlikely that the town of Franklin or any other community, by the way, is going to get a larger permitted amount of sewer capacity anytime soon from DEP. In fact, there has been correspondence from DEP to Charles River Pollution Control saying, that's it. This is it. This is the number. And this is what you have for at least a really long time and probably within most of our lifespans at least. What happens 50 years from now, we don't know. In our view, being good partners with other communities, particularly Medway that's at 92%, You know, we are trying to make sure that the rest of the district has sewer capacity so their communities can grow as well. But I want to make sure it's clear. The town council tonight does not need to approve these as is. And if the councilors believe that you want to maintain your sewer capacity for future growth in Franklin, you have that right. But I also want to acknowledge down the line When Medway or maybe Millis or another community in the district does run up against those numbers, we are going to get into additional sticking points with DEP. There may be other alternatives the other towns have to deal with their sewer capacity in 5, 10, 15, 20 years, but those may be at a costlier level for those communities. It also may not be approved by DEP. Those are items that are way out of our control. We can't predict those, and it's certainly too far in the future to predict. anything that might be there. I would like to Liz to just give an opening and introduce herself and maybe the other board members that are in attendance and just kind of give a quick overview of the pollution control and then we can open it up for maybe the other boards to come up and the other communities to speak as well.

Absolutely. Thank you. Go ahead. So my name is Liz Taglieri. I'm the executive director at the Charles River Pollution Control District. I've been here for about 16 years, director for 12 years. And we're, like James said, a regional wastewater treatment plant that treats wastewater from the towns of Medway, Millis, Franklin, and Bellingham. So four communities are sewered into the facility. We're rated for 5.7 million gallons per day. We're an advanced treatment facility regulated by both EPA and DEP, and we discharge into the Charles River. So eventually our treated wastewater makes its way to Boston. So pretty stringent limits. Our biggest one is phosphorus. That's the one that we're, you know, everything else is great. Our phosphorus is great. We're meeting permit. I KNOW IN THE PACKAGES THERE'S A LOT OF PICTURES THAT SHOW DIFFERENT TREATMENT PROCESSES. WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO GO THROUGH THE PRESENTATION OR?

In the interest of time, can you just do it short? Absolutely, yes.

So we have a number of tanks, a lot of big tanks that are at the facility that allow the wastewater and the solids and the organics to settle. We have microbiology that happens in the activated sludge for the small microorganisms. Thank you. Yeah, this is the overview. Some number of tanks, but we have biological phosphorus removal that, and the microorganisms will remove those organics. More settling tanks, and then we do have filtration, chlorination to deactivate any of the viruses and pathogens, and then we dechlorinate prior to going into the Trout River. We have sludge handling from what's settled in those tanks. And then, so these are some of the clarifiers, aeration tanks, the secondaries. And then this is the treated wastewater. So very clean, very clear, and that goes into the river. You can see the stairs there are to add some dissolved oxygen so that way we have enough for the fish life. That's just some of the solids. This was in the handout for the whatnot. And then look ahead. This is just big picture stuff for the district. We need to talk about that tonight. But what I do want to say is that I'd love to host you all for a tour. If you'd like to come to the facility, we can do a group tour. We can do individual tours, however that fits out with everyone's schedule. But it's a really great place to see and

Can I just have you add some of the... So I think what we're talking about tonight is, you know, our frequent cost share of the district, right? And by relieving some of that capacity, we kind of reduce our cost share. And I think there's some bigger items that would be coming up that would, you know,

Absolutely, yes, so the biggest thing is there is one piece of pipe that goes from basically the BJ's and Franklin Underneath 495 under the mine Brook into the Brookview condos area. That is a what's called a force main So that is actually pressurized pipe where we have a pump station and we have to pump on like under the all those things and over to our probably fed sewer there's one line there so if anything would have happened to that line i was just going to say it's going to be it's not good yep so we're in the process we're in 60 design right now looking at alternatives to run a redundant line there that pump station and that crossing what we The pipe there is owned by both Franklin and Bellingham, and so that is something we're working with the towns on to work on designing, and then ultimately will be construction at some point in time. Yep, and then on the operational side, we have our 10-year contract is up for renewal in July 1 of 2027, so we'll be going up for bid on that. The sludge monies to dispose of sludge, so that's what we settle on the bottom of the tank. That accounts for almost a quarter of our operational costs, so it's quite a bit of money, over a million dollars. So if there's a large increase in that in this bid, that would increase our operational budget. We are, that has been increasing based off the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, so we're hopeful that we have kept up with the times and price increases, but that is just a big unknown that we don't have yet.

Just through you, Chair DeLauro, so I think really quickly, Both of these transfers tonight represent being good neighbors. Both of these transfers tonight, if approved as is, would bring 3 million in one-time revenue to our sewer enterprise fund. Both of these transfers tonight would save about $65,000 in our sewer budget operating costs because we're reducing that share. And for those, I think one of the questions that you'll all debate is about development. We've heard a lot of concerns about growth. BUT THIS IS A TOUGH DECISION BECAUSE YOU HAVE A LOT OF SEWER CAPACITY FOR A LOT OF GROWTH. SO WE'RE HEARING MESSAGES ABOUT WE NEED MORE NEW GROWTH. WE NEED MORE NEW GROWTH. But then we're hearing messages, I think, in the last election, which is very clear, about no growth and that people are frustrated with growth. I think unfortunately embedded in part of this question is a debate about that. And that's why all of you are here. I also would note that I think it may be advantageous to get representatives from both Millis and Medway to just come up and talk about their perspectives of this. I think technically the Millis Select Board has to open up their meeting, right? Because I think you have a forum here. So maybe if Millis could just open their meeting and then they could come up to the mic and give Millis' perspective.

I'LL MAKE A MOTION TO OPEN THE MILLER SELECT BOARD MEETING. SECOND. SO MOVE TO SECOND. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. ALL RIGHT, WE'RE OPEN. WE'RE OPEN. THANK YOU. WELCOME. SO WE'RE LEGAL NOW. WELCOME, YEAH. FIRST, I WANT TO THANK YOU FOR INVITING US IN. THIS IS A BEAUTIFUL ROOM. WE MEET IN MY WIFE'S SECOND GRADE CLASSROOM IN THE RENOVATED MEMORIAL SCHOOL, SO IT'S NICE, BUT IT'S NOT THIS NICE. AND I THINK ELLEN WENT THERE TOO.

YES, IT'S MY SEVENTH GRADE ENGLISH CLASS THAT WE MEET IN.

yeah so it's a nice uh it's a nice place but this is spectacular and uh and you don't have a guy you have actually a guy working your ev which is phenomenal for us um we have mike so anyway um thank you for inviting us we've called the meeting to order um As you've heard, we're at 72% of our capacity, and that sounds reasonable, but the problem is we have a lot of homes that haven't connected, that when they do connect, that's going to drive us into the 90% range. We have a lot of pending construction that's going to happen. I mean, it's permitted. It's ready to go. We're not over 100 yet, so we're fine where we are right now, but we are in the opposite position here. We're absolutely limited on new growth. And we have Millis Affordable Housing is trying to come in and put affordable housing in. A lot of concern about whether that's going to push us over the capacity on our sewer. We have another whip coming in, 40B, that's coming in that is 100% affordable. There's a lot of concern about that pushing us over our limit. So we're at a position where we're going to have to start saying no to commercial development and to housing development in our town. So that's why we're looking for some additional capacity. So the exact opposite position you're in. There's three towns that all have different needs, and I can't speak for Medway. I'll let them come up after us and speak for us. But that's where we are as our town. Anybody else have anything?

Yeah, just quickly, Jim McKay. So Millis is a good partner, you know, in the collaborative of Bellingham, Medway, Franklin, and Millis. We've invested one point, so I'd say about $130,000, $140,000 a year in I&I removal, which I'm sure you're all aware of, that you approve every single year as a town of Franklin. It's a 10-year plan, and we're just finishing up on our 10th year, and we're starting all over again. We did our camber. We cambered the entire system. We removed house laterals that were leaking, manhole covers, and anything that the district... Although we don't have a board member sitting at the table, my colleague attends every single meeting every single month at the Charles River District to show that Millis is still interested in participating in making sure everything is going properly.

If you can't tell, Jim's our newest member on the board. He was our former DPW director until last year, so he really knows this. He talks about it.

It's not like me talking about it. And I was here when Mr. Nutting and Mr. Aspinwall negotiated the last, and it was done for sure. Mike was the attorney who did it back then in 2011. So everything went smoothly then, and we hope that it would go as the same this year.

So I have a question. We approved this tonight. How... How long will this get you? Like, how many years is this going to, you know, take care of you?

Without saying, I would say almost forever. I mean, it's just so much. Millis is a lot smaller than Franklin, and most of it's wet. So there's only a certain amount of properties that are still left open. This 100,000 gallon would give us enough to...

Yeah, and we have homes that can tie in that may never tie in because they have a 400-foot driveway and they're not running in the street.

We have a significant amount of homes that pay the betterment. So we have pulled that out of, when you say 72%. We calculated higher because we're holding that for them because they paid a better amount.

And they may never hook up, but we'll see. They may never.

We have to hold it.

So this will get us at least until I'm off the board and probably much, much further. I get you. That's all we care about. I get you. All right. So, yeah, and again, it's because we really have developments we want to push through. And not crazy developments either. We want to do some commercial, some mixed use, and affordable. We've got these large parcels we want to put affordable housing onto. But without a sewer capacity, it gets very difficult to do that. And there's such a need for all of that right now. Yeah, we're looking over the price. And we can't sign anything tonight. We haven't even talked about it in our town. So if anybody's watching from the list, we'll be having this our next agenda item. But we want to come in with a proposed contract. The price is the only part that concerns us, and we're not going to negotiate that tonight. You do what you have to do, and we'll see where that comes out. But we're eager to come up with a number, and we're eager to buy. So we can work through that. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. So I'm all in favor of helping out a neighbor. You clearly need the supply. My question more is I'm trying to figure out the pros and cons of the approach of doing half now, half later. So if we were to give you half now and then you come back to us when you need more, is that something that would be harmful to you, or would it, what are the pros and cons of that from your perspective?

The pros, I don't think that, I'm speaking for myself, we haven't discussed this as a board, but my, no one's nodding because there's two of us that think it's probably okay. Okay, so having pulled the bar board, we believe that, I believe that would work well. As long as we didn't have I'm going to use probably the wrong word, price gouging on the second half. If we could come up with an agreement that locked the price, half now, half later, it might even be better for us, yeah, cash flow-wise.

yeah that's all I got thank you okay well actually maybe I'll ask Jamie is there any pros and cons or any of the UW staff to that approach I would say I would say I mean I was just I don't know pro con but I would just say in my view you know these are these are these are difficult issues right and we've been working with Millis and Medway for years now, and 2011 wasn't too long ago. From my standpoint, doing it all now sets them up to be, quite frankly, I know the rate right now is a little more inflated than maybe some would want. The price is always going to be a point. But 10 years from now, it's going to be more. Sewer capacity is not going to become less valuable in the future. It's only going to become more. If I were everybody tonight, that's why we're here, By doing both of these, I think you set up obviously Millis for a long time, and we'll hear from Medway soon, but I think this gives them enough capacity for a long foreseeable future, probably time for all of us to be off the board or out of these jobs, right? And so I think, you know, I would just say the pro of doing this all at once avoids us having to spend more time having to go back and renegotiate something again. So if you want 50,000 gallons, We'd have to come back at a certain amount of time and do another 50,000 gallons. But that's just my quick take on it.

Yeah, I will speak just for me. I don't see a big pro to that. I just don't, to splitting it. Because it's hard enough to get everybody together. I don't want to put this on somebody else. We know we need at least 100 now.

Yeah, and my only way that we would do it is if there was guaranteed price lock and there was a time specified in the contract.

And if there's a price lock, why not just do it now? Exactly.

Cash flow, but that's the only reason. I'm not too concerned about that. I'm a CFO in the real world.

All yields. Thank you. Anybody else? Go ahead.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the three of you for being here, but my question really goes to our town administrator. So, Jamie, I remember the Pollution Control District presentation from years ago, and I remember hearing that Franklin anticipated THIS VERY MOMENT AND BOUGHT THAT ADDITIONAL CAPACITY AGES AGO, RIGHT? SO IN RESPECT TO OUR FOREFATHERS, BECAUSE I THINK THEY WERE ALL MEN AT THE TIME, LIKE, WERE THEY JUST THINKING ABOUT THE POTENTIAL FOR GROWTH AND THEY BOUGHT UP THIS GIGANTIC AMOUNT OR WAS THERE ANOTHER REASON THAT WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT THAT WE MIGHT SHOOT OURSELVES IN THE FOOT IF WE GET RID OF THIS?

YEAH, I THINK IT WAS When this started, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, please.

That was done when the plant was upgraded in 2000 from 4.54 million gallons per day to 5.7, and at that time Medway and Franklin got that additional capacity. So it wasn't something where Franklin bought it from someone else.

It was just added.

Yeah, it was added, yeah.

Right, but it did cost us more money.

It did, yep, it cost to put in that upgrade and those improvements, yeah.

Okay, thank you. So Jamie might.

So the sewer rate payers in town paid for that. Yes. And that's, we're now at a point where that's the decision. Do rate payers get some money back for all of that? I think that's part of the question.

So my second part, Jamie, then to you is we sell this to Millis and Medway. It obviously limits our future capacity, but to what end? How much of a whack is this to our, you know, potential growth as a town?

I mean, Doug can give you the percentage because he's probably going to calculate it in his head, but if you look at 2023 to 2025, the average flow in Franklin is 2.43 million gallons per day. So even if you sell them 100,000 apiece, these are just based on average numbers of the last three years, the town will still have 1.012 million gallons per day remaining. I would also argue, and Doug can speak a little more specifically to this, you're also going to be breaking the ribbon cutting on the Beaver Street Interceptor, which was the oldest infrastructure improvement we needed to make, but that's going to be complete by the end of the year. I don't know what the percentage of sewer pipe that we've replaced in the last 20 years has been, but it's been fairly significant. We've done a lot of upgrades to our system. I think these other towns would agree that we've invested a lot. The sewer ratepayers in this town have paid a lot to have a very, very good system. It's a very tight system. I can't speak with certainty, obviously, but I wouldn't be here if we didn't believe this wasn't doable through both Doug and Liz at the Charles River Pollution Control. If we didn't think this was doable while sustaining our future, we wouldn't be here. That being said, this is a conversation about growth. Is that one million gallons per day going to get used up in the next two years? No. It's going to take a long time to build a lot of Franklin to use that capacity. Is there anything else that you want to add, Doug?

No, I would just add, I think historically, it wasn't shown on one of the figures, but if you look historically, the flow that we've been sending to the district has come down drastically. I think that's twofold. or two reasons for it is the town has invested a lot of money in removing the groundwater from the sewer, right? So we've been doing a lot of infiltration and inflow work to remove that water so it doesn't get treated. We don't have to pay for it. And two is just plumbing code in general, right? So water usage has come way down. just based on plumbing codes. So a lot of those two factors I think are really bringing that number down. And so having an extra million gallons in capacity I think is more than enough for Franklin now and into the future.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess my questions are all about, I mean, on the surface, it sort of makes sense. It doesn't look like it's a lot of water based on our capacity. I think you just mentioned, you know, how we got the capacity to begin with, because I'm thinking to myself, well, we have all this capacity. We're paying for it somehow. Why are we paying for all this capacity we're not using? Does it make sense to sell? Maybe. I'll be perfectly honest, though. I don't feel like I know enough to say yes or no tonight. And I don't know what more I would need to consider that, but my concern is I just don't know how to quantify 200,000 gallons now over a period of how many years. Like, what's that equivalent to? Like, how much does a Taj across the street, what's the million gallon, you know? I just don't feel like I understand how much we're actually giving up. I know the statistics and the numbers, but I don't know how to relate that to potential growth

If I can, I can try to answer that. We just built 324 units at the Glen Ellen. It's over 55 development. We actually permitted them originally for 85,000 gallons. We know that they're pumping on an average of daily, depending on winter, summer, because most of them are snowbirds, so they're not there for the winter. So during the summer, Dave, I believe it's like 50-something thousand gallons at the most. So, I mean, if you take like a unit like you just asked over there, so it's not that it's half, but it's, you know, it's originally permanent. Because when we first filed with the Charles River District, we have to use 110 gallons per bedroom. I think 55 is 70, 80-something gallons because it's a senior development. So what's permitted at the beginning is the 110 gallons per bedroom. but then actual usage is usually either almost half that because, like Doug just stated, new plumbing codes, toilets, faucets, things like that. It's much less, and they haven't changed their rates.

Yeah, those numbers that you were talking about, that just comes right from Title V regulations. I don't remember the last time those were updated, but it's always very conservative, and we're never going to use all of that.

But just in the aggregate, I don't know what that kind of means or what that translates into, or does that prohibit us from even a larger commercial development one day? How much Taco Bell do you need to fill that capacity? Not as much as . I'm sorry? No. Oh, okay. So I just don't know that I really know well enough to understand how to value this.

I would add, too, to the commercial aspects. A lot of commercial properties that are going to be big users of water and sewer are going to look for ways to recycle within their process. Because that comes off their bottom line, right?

I've seen these closed loop systems.

Yeah, we see it with some of the growth facilities, even Grelick. They kind of do some of those processes because they don't want to have to pay for it. It's a hard question to answer because every commercial property is going to be different. I think from a residential or that kind of standpoint, we know what that number is based on Title V. and we can assume it's almost gonna be like about 50% of what Title V's is, but commercial is different.

I mean, intuitively, it feels like we have enough. I just don't know how to make that more than an intuition. And the other question I would have, maybe it's more for Jamie, is how did we arrive at the $3 million?

So we arrived at it because it's 100,000 gallons per agreement at $15.07 per gallon, which is the 1.507 amount. So each town under each of these agreements, if they were agreed to by the council and agreed by their select boards, In the agreement, there's a payment schedule, and so they would make that one-time payment. And then the operating costs would be, I think, probably through our assessment, annual assessment through Charles River Pollution Control. So that assessment for us would go down a little bit, and we wouldn't be obligated for that

And more so over time, based on what you said in the memo, the operational costs continue to go down.

Right away, we would come down, I think it was $65,000. That's our capital assessment, right? That's right off top. And then the O&M, which is based on the flow that gets sent to the district, would come down over time as the other communities started flowing more. Right.

And I do want to ask, too, because I did read in the attachment that the $15 price was based on a survey that one of our consultants did six years ago. Is that $15?

Well, the one they did in this one was done earlier this year. It was done in June or April. April or May.

Was the pricing done in 2000?

Were they different years depending on the municipalities?

As you can imagine, this is not something that happens every day from a capacity sale standpoint. I remember really in Massachusetts alone, I don't think it happens that often. So what they looked at was really the cost to... build a nutrient plant or add capacity. So that's kind of how we really get to that number.

More... As I read through it, it was based on a region-wide kind of a survey of different municipalities and what they would charge.

Yeah.

But I thought it was produced in 2020. My only question is that that's six years ago.

They also looked at the connection fees from the different communities as well to kind of ballpark and kind of get. I get it. It makes sense.

I'm just saying is that the current number? It's a six-year-old number.

Yeah, I would say it is. Are we sure?

I guess that's my question. Maybe. I don't know. Not to hurt our friends and neighbors, but, you know.

Mr. Chair, just be clear. There are two different agreements. There's a Millis agreement and a Medway. So they're independent of one another, just so we don't get confused on that one.

But in the Millis agreement that's drafted with the request, which I understand, Millis basically said if somebody else is given a lower rate... they would want to have that same rate. Now, y'all could instruct me to take that out, right, if you want to have two different rates. It's all within your bailiwick. But I think that's why this stuff takes years to negotiate. And again, I just want to make sure it's clear. I fully understand and respect that it's very hard to find apples to apples out there in this stuff. You cannot go to other adjacent communities and say, go pull all their numbers, because having excess sewer capacity of this magnitude is so rare. It is hard to find another community that has this much permanent sewer capacity. The last quick thing I'll say is we currently use 2.4 million gallons for all of the public sewer in town. So if you think about what that would mean conceptually, you're basically, that's like another, to use that additional million gallons is almost like 30% more of what you have here. And I think that's a question for everybody, right? Like do you want Franklin in the long term to grow at 30% more than what you have here roughly, right? Because if you're using 2.4 right now and you add another million to 3.4, YOU'RE ADDING ABOUT ANOTHER 25%, 30%, 35% OF DEVELOPMENT THAT YOU HAVE HERE IN FRANKLIN. I MEAN, RIGHT. SO I THINK THAT'S, YOU KNOW, WE DO HAVE VACANCIES IN INDUSTRIAL PARKS. WE HAVE AN INTERN RIGHT NOW DOING A REPORT. and going and checking the vacancy ratio, it's not that exorbitantly high. Most of the buildings are reasonably filled or have it. So I think when you're conceptualizing in your head, it is hard to understand. What does that development mean? What if we got another big industrial park to come in? How much gallons would that be? And I do understand, and I don't think any of us other than maybe Doug and Liz are really full experts in this. But if you're using 2.4 today with the footprint in Franklin, add another million to that, that's a lot of development. That's a fair amount of development. I agree.

I just try to wrap my head around what's the right way to go.

I can answer you on the, so the 15.07 was an ICADIS that was done June 2nd, 2026. It wasn't 2020.

Yes, I knew there was a June memo from this year, and you referred to a memo that was prepared in 2020.

Correct, August of 2020. Some of it was referred to some of that memo, because we had asked Arcadis to do this. This is how long this has been going on. It predates that. I mean, I think we've asked them multiple times through the years. You know, other factors, just throwing in here, like, you know, when we got into this agreement, it was a couple dollars a gallon, right? In the last six years, I don't think I need to tell anybody here, costs aren't getting cheaper. That's why I'm concerned. Right, so it may be, but I also recognize in a negotiation, again, it's the council's authority here to instruct me to do, if you want to charge people $25 a gallon, we can talk to Millis and Medway about that, but I'm sure they'll also say there's limitations on their end to buy, So it's a really hard, I think you can see I tried to just try to give something Right down the middle as possible that could try to at least gain some sort of consensus. So I could get some feedback from all of you on where you want to go on these things. I do think at some point later this fall, even if you don't vote tonight, I do think giving some sort of indication to Medway and Millis of where they stand by September-ish, I think we need to at least as a town say to them, kind of yay or nay on something so that they can at least go look at alternatives.

Yeah, and I'd just like to address the price for just a moment of $15. In 2011, it was sold at $1.17 per gallon, not $15 per gallon. In 2019, it was sold at $2.44 a gallon. Again, not $15 a gallon. In 2021, it was sold at $3.17 a gallon. And in 2022, it was sold at $4.33 a gallon. So $15. is on a very, very high markup from where it has been, which may be acceptable because you're the sellers. You have to decide what you need to make off of it. But to call $15 possibly on the low end, I'd sprenuously object to that.

I just don't know, and that's what I think we should try to find out.

If I could, I started the conversation, Councilor Mulloy and I were speaking because I was on the same page. Am I ready to make a decision? It just feels like there's a lot that we needed to know. So I do appreciate the information. I know we've done all the reading, but just the context has been very helpful. Now, from my perspective, from a purely Franklin perspective, let me put it, I had a couple of concerns. One was what happens if we sell this? How does that really impact our growth, our development? Because I think economic growth, we'd all agree, is a key portion to how this town can remain stable from a financial perspective. So that caused me some concern. And, you know, and thinking about what the impact is to our ability to grow is also worth considering. Now, I was doing the same calculation that our town administrator was doing was, you know, if Based on the discussion we've had today, for us to truly hit the max, even post-sale, we'd have to grow an additional 30, 40%. I would take a step back and recognize that that's not something that this town wants to do. I don't think anyone's looking for that type of growth in any near-term perspective. So if we don't consider moving forward with this, we're spending a lot of time paying for capacity that we're not anywhere close to using. In sports terms, it's kind of, what is it, guarding grass instead of the person? And I don't like guarding grass. So my thinking here is that if there's an opportunity for us to help benefit, help our neighbor towns as well as help our residents from a balance sheet standpoint. It's something we have to strongly consider. So that... I am with Councillor Malloy. This is opaque to some extent. Like, none of us have done this before. This isn't the type of transaction that happens often. But I think as we scale back and kind of look at the bones of it from a, you know, what are the benefits and costs to Franklin, which, frankly, is the way we have to approach it, I think in this case it feels to me as though the benefits outweigh the costs, at least on the surface. That said, I'm willing to hear more if any of the other council members feel strongly or if we hear more from the people of Franklin who have a particular perspective here.

All right. So first of all, I'd like to say thank you all for the context on what your actual capacity is right now, because I was looking at this chart where it said you're at 73% and calculating what our capacity would be at if we took out 200,000, that would put us at 71%. So I couldn't quite figure out why you all were at the limit and we're not. So I appreciate knowing that it's because you have a lot of places that have commitments to getting on the sewer system. That makes me wonder, Jamie, do we have things that we have permitted that we have, what about developments that have been approved but haven't been built yet? What is the capacity that we could be at or does the 71% already factor that in?

So the 71% does not factor that in, but the developments that are outstanding that haven't fully been permitted yet aren't much at all from a flow standpoint. I don't have the total number off the top of my head, but it's like a percentage.

Yeah, hopefully, I mean, not getting close to 80%. No, yeah.

And I think to reiterate what Jamie said, I don't think we would have ever approached the council here tonight if we thought we were anywhere close to our capacity.

Okay.

Thank you. I think that was my biggest concern was knowing what we have planned, do we have the room for that plus whatever growth we anticipate to have. I agree with what we have said many times now, not to beat this dead horse, but we need to make sure that we are balancing future growth. We've all said that development, whether that's commercial, industrial, or homes, is a priority for getting Franklin out of a tough financial situation. And so knowing that that will come with a sewage requirement. At the same time, I agree very much with Ken that I think this is a, I think it's a good option. I have two questions for Jamie. And one is, and I don't even know if this is possible, but is leasing that, does that change anything if we're leasing it? No, okay. I'm seeing no's. I mean, I guess, okay. So, never mind. That was an easy question, thank you. Once you connect the house to it, you can't tell them they can no longer use it. I'm sorry.

Correct. Yes, I realize.

and then my um other question for jamie was if if things have i understand that we're got the 15.07 number from this um but if we're if they things have been sold for four dollars recently what is the discrepancy in that number like what is the if it's being sold for four where did this fifteen point oh seven dollar fifteen dollar and seven cent um that you're coming from

It's really a middle ground of what generally, and again, I think there could be critique and I understand those opinions, but Arcadis is an extraordinarily reputable firm. The town's been using them for decades, certainly a lot longer than myself or even other employees been here. And it's just looking at a general market basket from around the country and east coast and saying, okay, And I think Doug explained it earlier, maybe Liz did, when you're looking at new development now and you're looking at new capacity, you're generally getting up around that number. Those numbers that are in there. And the 1507 is just smack dab in the middle of the data points from on that spectrum of 907 to 2348, it's just right in the middle. And it was just a place for me to start where I could get support from at least conceptually to start talking to Millis and Medway without having other public input from the council and others. And it was just a starting point to say, there it is. Also, Part of this is, as one of the select board members just mentioned, we're in the seller capacity. We have a responsibility to do the best we can for Franklin residents. And the sewer rate payers have paid a lot of money into this system over a long period of time for, quite frankly, a near A plus system. If we've got additional capacity and we can sell a little bit off to help our neighbors and help their issues, I think the ratepayers of Franklin should be reinvested in some sort of way, and I think that money coming back to Franklin will help alleviate. You'll have a chunk of money in a sewer enterprise fund that will grow with interest, and if there are repairs down the line or we need to pay debt exclusion payments or we need to do other things, we're now taking that money from other communities and now putting it back into the system and hopefully stabilizing sewer rates for a while. If we have another capital improvement or another emergency, we can use this money without having to go to rate payers for an increase. So honestly, I've probably heard 150 different opinions in the last seven years from people in... everywhere about this issue. And as you can imagine, someone in my shoes, it's really hard to thread the needle on those hundred opinions of where everything is. And I still feel like I have to do the best I can for the sewer rate payers, but not also put other communities in a position where it's just like almost insulting to say $25 a gallon, $30 a gallon. I also think that this number of 1507 is affordable for Medway and Millis. You know, and I say that because the way Medway and Millis, and we should ask Medway to maybe come up and do a short presentation as well, you know, I think the way, you know, they'll have, you know, a plan on how they're going to deal with these issues in their own communities, right? And so if you're going down to 907, it kind of, Selling it a little too cheap? Maybe. Also, since 2020, the cost of this stuff has gone way up. So to build a new sewer plant or get new capacity through DEP today, good luck. You ain't paying anywhere near this. You're paying way more money. per gallon to build a new plant to build more capacity to do more. You're going to pay way more than this. And I think that's what this study looks at is if you're looking at other modernized plants like ours around the East Coast and some of these other cities that are referenced, you're going to see that they're paying a lot more money than 1507 per gallon. So it's an imperfect thing. I'm not going to sit here and not admit that. But out of all of this negotiation for the past seven years, I personally felt, I think the DPW also, I think Doug and Liz, we just feel like this is doing the best we can given all of the factors here. This is a doable number for both towns. It's a good reinvestment for our rate payers. Whatever the analogy Ken used about the grass on the field, I don't know exactly what it was, but it's kind of perfect because we are paying a lot more money and our rate payers are paying money into a system where they're not really getting that money. I hope that's a little bit helpful.

Yeah, I'm just looking for clarity, so I appreciate that. And where did... Where were the $4 and something, where was that figure coming from? So if we know...

The other, I'm sorry, the dollars I quoted? Yeah. Prior contracts that were signed by the town to other towns. And I think Medway, the people from Medway can explain how those were arrived at better than we can because a lot of these are their contracts. We've been to the well once.

I think you've got to close your meeting so we can get Medway up there.

Trust me, I know that. We're going to recess. I declare the meeting. I don't have a gavel. That is going to change by Monday night. I declare us to recess. Thank you.

Why not, Medway? Three-way meeting. AND THEY ONLY BROUGHT ONE SELECT BOARD MEMBER, AND EVERYBODY PROBABLY KNOWS MIKE, THE TOWN MANAGER MEMBER. HE GREW UP IN FRANKLIN. SO YOU'RE GOING TO GET A HISTORY LESSON, RIGHT, MIKE? YOU'VE GOT IT. FORMER TOWN COUNCILOR MIKE BOYD. OH, BOY.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chair, members of the council, thank you very much. As Jamie said, I'm Michael Boynton. I'm the town manager in Medway. To my left, and the person that was kind enough to hand out that packet of information for you, is Select Board Chairman Dennis Crowley. By the way, I work for Michael.

And one other thing before we start, I want to make a comment to Michael. We need to upgrade our select board. This is really nice looking.

We're working on that. So we're actually in design for a new town hall now. Thank you very much, and I'll try to be as brief as possible. This is a, I'm extremely passionate about this topic, and part of it is because, as Jamie said, I grew up here. I grew up in Franklin. I remember when the sewer plant, I actually remember when the sewer beds were on Pond Street, and I remember why the sewer facility was brought about. Now, mind you, I was in, I don't know, seventh grade, sixth grade, but nevertheless, Uh, we spent a lot of time understanding this plant and as an elected member of the council, we are sitting now 30 some odd years ago. Uh, we had issues relative to sewer here in Franklin and, uh, behind me, it's like reunion time. Um, the former town administrator, Mr. Bauer sitting back there and Wolfgang had actually negotiated some, uh, uh, some, uh, upgrades and assess, uh, necessity, uh, changes. for the town of Franklin and working with the town of Medway. So just a real quick trip down memory lane, and I know Jamie goes crazy when I do this, but essentially here's what you have. You have a facility that, as Liz said, was built in 1979. It went online in 1979. There are four individual district agreements. There is an agreement with the district FOR THE TOWN OF FRANKLIN, AN AGREEMENT WITH THE DISTRICT FOR THE TOWN OF MEDWAY. WE WERE THE FIRST TWO. WE WERE THE OWNERS OF THAT FACILITY, AND WE CONTINUE TO BE THE OWNERS OF THAT FACILITY. BUT MILLES AND BELLINGHAM ALSO HAVE AGREEMENTS. Each of those agreements are virtually identical. There are certain capacity load changes and differences in there, but one of the things I'll call out to your attention, which is one of the documents that we handed to you, is each one of those documents has a Section 308. Section 308 in the district agreement actually stipulates how sewer capacity would be transferred to new municipalities, but four different times since that plant went online, that formula has been utilized. And that formula does exactly what you folks were asking questions about tonight. It recovers the cost, in this case for the town of Franklin, for the ability to pay back the costs with interest interest that the town of Franklin has sunk into that facility since 1979. And I think back to why that facility went in Medway in 1979, because Franklin didn't have the space for it. There was no place in the town of Franklin to discharge to the Charles River, but in Medway there was. So what does that mean? In terms of the neighborly approach, in Medway, we get the complaints about the odor, we roll the fire department down there when the alarm goes off, we send the police down there when there's a burglar alarm, and we plow the streets to make sure that the staff can get there. So in terms of a partnership, there is more of a partnership to this than strictly what the capacity numbers are. And the original capacity numbers were arrived at way back in 1979 based upon the population ratios for both towns. So Franklin was about 17,000, 18,000 people. Medway was about 6,000 or 7,000 people. And here you are at, what, 35 today, and we're at 14, almost 14 1⁄2 today. So Franklin certainly has grown, and Franklin has... made improvements to its sewer system along the way. Minebrook was first, Shepard's Brook came along, and now you're doing the Beaver Street upgrade to those old pipes. Those are definitely upgrades that were necessary for the town of Franklin, and we recognize that Franklin has a cost to that, directly to Franklin. In 1995, Wolfgang brought to the town council, and I was sitting on the council to vote this, brought to the town council a resolution to enter into a partnership with the town of Medway once again to provide for sewer for the homes up off of Skyline, off of Populatic, et cetera, to get sewer from Franklin to the Charles River District. You know where that sewer goes? Right through Medway's pipes. Do you know what Medway got from the town of Franklin in 1995? Not a dime. Do you know what Medway gets today? Not a dime. But we service with our pipes between the town line and the district, we service that sewer line. So why are we here tonight? Well, Medway certainly is at 92%, but we are, as we continue to monitor our numbers on a monthly basis, we look and see where we are in terms of inflow and infiltration I&I. And we've been working very hard, like Millis has, and certainly like Franklin has for decades, to improve our INI flow, reduce it, so that we are not paying to treat clean water. When we do that, and when you look at the numbers during the dry seasons, we are well below our 955,000 gallon capacity. So Medway is the second largest capacity holder to Franklin, but clearly over the years, development has extended the, or challenged that capacity limit. And that's why we're looking to this. In 2019, before Jeff had retired, We approached the town of Franklin and said, you know, we want to do this. We would like to purchase additional capacity. The number went from 33,000. We were ranging from 33,000 gallons to 100,000 gallons. Jeff looked and said, you know what, we have a formula. Let's get CDM involved. And CDM came to, at Franklin's dime, did a look and said, okay, based upon the agreement, Medway's agreement, Franklin's agreement, based upon the agreement, and that's in your packet. The 2019 cost was just about $250 a gallon. I forget what it was. $240. $240 a gallon. COVID hit. Jeff retired, COVID hit, and started working with Jamie on the same process. And we tried to regroup, and Franklin had, not we had, Franklin had. CDM, again, looked specifically at the agreement. Again, keep in mind this facility was 90% paid for with federal funds back in the 1970s. And when you had federal funds back in the day, there was a requirement that communities, individual recipients of federal dollars couldn't profit from those dollars. So I would suggest to you that the crafters of those original agreements actually contemplated that scenario where somebody's going to have more capacity someday. And on four different occasions, in 1983, capacity was sold to the town of Millis. In 1985, capacity was sold to the town of Bellingham. And in both of those circumstances, Medway and Franklin contributed excess capacity at the time to those towns. So we partnered together and contributed excess capacity. And in 2011, Franklin sold capacity both to Millis and again to Bellingham. In all four of those circumstances, the district agreement was utilized to make the determination as to what the payment would be back to the town of Franklin. Essentially, to recover the cost with interest of what Franklin has paid since 1979, and more specifically, since they started incurring debt in 1999.

At Section 308, that first document, Section 308 is the formula for calculating. And that's exactly what CDM did when they went back and did it in 2019.

In 2021, we did, again, see the results of CDM's analysis. And CDM said, listen, you know, you've added a couple more years of payments on there. The interest has gone up. So the new cost is $3,000. $3.17 a gallon. If you're going to buy 100,000 gallons, it's $3.17 a gallon. And the price per gallon actually fluctuates based upon the amount that you buy.

Let me roll, please. There's something that was put in after the first EDM. So

We've kind of gone silent. Jamie and I have had some conversations over the years. There's a document in there that was a draft agreement that we thought we had after the 2021 report that was actually the same format. So to Jamie's point, the format that you see, and he made this point, that the format of the proposed agreements for Millis and Medway that are in your packet are identical to what was done in the past. It's true in terms of the wording, but the formula that's proposed to be used that got you to $15.07 is drastically different than what was done in any prior sale of sewer capacity. Make no mistake. I believe Millis recognizes this and Medway certainly recognizes this. Franklin is under no obligation to sell anybody sewer capacity. We get that. We totally understand that. But we also know that we've worked together in the past on things to try to bring this together. The Arcadis report and our position from the town of Medway is flawed because the Arcadis report that was done just recently, I believe it was May or June of this year, referred back to that letter that Dennis talks about from 2020. And that was talking about sewer connection fees, i.e., you're an individual customer that wants to connect to the Franklin public sewer system. What should the town of Franklin be properly charging those individual users that want to tie into the system? And there's so much that goes into that because you've got infrastructure fees, you've got cost factors. DBW's time, all of that goes into that. Those are apples and oranges, in our opinion, because in the grand scheme of things, first off, all of those survey numbers came from different parts of the country. I think New Haven might have been the closest. Minneapolis, St. Paul was in there, but there was nothing that was in there in terms of Massachusetts sewer connection charges. So again, we would make the argument that the sewer connection charges are not the same as selling capacity within the existing sewer facility. We really appreciate the fact that we have an opportunity to work with Jamie and I appreciate the fact that Jamie is doing what he needs to do to try to support the town of Franklin. That's his job. My job is to try to support and recognize the challenges that Medway would have. I can tell you 1.5 million dollars for 100,000 gallons of sewer capacity is really, really exorbitant. It is not something that we are in a position to do. I understand the Miller situation. We had a brief conversation before the meeting started. I think that there is a great suggestion that perhaps there is more work that needs to be done on this. I think that there would be a great opportunity for a representative, and I'm going to steal an idea that was presented to me, a representative from the council as well as each of the select boards and the three administrators getting together to continue to work on this. Because as drafted right now, the Medway select board, and I'm going to look to him, would not support the agreement. We really would like to continue to partner together. And my closing statement would be really simple. Right now, Franklin's in the driver's seat. There will come a point in time where Franklin might not be in the driver's seat. And if you're not in that driver's seat, you would not want to be sitting where I'm sitting today trying to understand how another community, who we have partnered with since the early 1970s, 50 years of partnership, actually wants this much money on a formula that is not consistent with the agreement. I appreciate your time.

Let me just close with one thing. If you are sitting in this position and you're representing your residents in your town, You'll be reading these documents and looking at it the same way that I am looking at it, because I need to protect my residents and the taxpayers in the town. I'm not an expert at this. I've been on the select board for 21 years. I look at the rates. I don't look at this stuff. But I can look at documents, and I can read documents. And if you read these documents in Section 308 that we talked to, that we gave you a package, it's been utilized four times. It's ever not been utilized. It's selling capacity. So when we look at these documents, we look at the outlay that came from this other company that we've always used CDM. You've used CDM. You hired CDM to come up with these other rates, not us. You paid them. You went out and we don't even know who this company is. I don't want to speak for the authority, but I don't think the authorities ever used this company before. They've always used CDM or another consultant. But when I look at this and it says a sewer connection, I went to Michael and I said, what is a sewer connection? Why are they doing it this way? For the love of us, I honestly can't figure out why they're using the 17.5 based upon the average price of sewer connections in five cities and towns outside of Massachusetts. So just closing is, you do the same thing I would be doing right here, trying to protect your residents as well. And Michael says, it's your capacity. We want to be friendly neighbors. We all want to work together. But we always want to be fair and reasonable as well. So I like Michael's suggestion, and hopefully the council will consider it, and we can come to a solution and get a group together to see if we can solve this issue. Thank you. Mike, you had a question.

Yeah. Through you to Liz. Liz, I think you made the statement that the 5.7 is the max, correct? We do not see that number changing in the near future, correct?

That's correct, yeah.

Okay. If Medway's capacity is just under a million gallons a day, they're at 92%. Tell me what happens when they get to a million one and we haven't done this agreement. What happens if they bust their ceiling and we haven't sold them the 100,000 gallons? What happens in the agreement?

Yeah, we would have a lot of discussions before we'd even get there. We'd have a lot of discussions on removing I&I. I would say that the DEP and EPA would be asking the district questions about that, and then they would be asking Medway how would they come down under their capacity.

Okay. Yeah. So you'd be talking about how to do that, but in theory... Medway's response to that probably would be, we have to stop all development.

Yes. Yep. So there would probably be discussions on moratoriums and that no sewer connections can be put in until they're under capacity. And those would be things that DEP would be looking at.

Has the board itself agreed or are they in agreement with selling the $100,000 to each of the municipalities? Have they weighed in on that?

No, the board obviously supports this. We think that it would be great to see the towns be able to grow and be within their capacity. As far as the mechanisms, that's for the towns to decide upon.

But the board does agree that Millis needs 100,000 and Medway needs 100,000.

we really do push that back to the towns of the each town's responsible for maintaining their capacity and being under it and doing what they need to do to stay under so the board's taking no stance as to the amount of what should be transferred between the two that's correct yep that's for the town's planning um yeah for their sewer

But wouldn't that be part of the privy of the board to make a suggestion that you need to be at? You cannot exceed any more than 90% capacity. So, yeah, I would think that the board would be giving a recommendation as to what they believe the amount should be. To almost the Council of Morangelo's, And in fact, I'm kind of hesitant with Millis selling 100,000 because it changes the equation. They actually end up having, when you took about percent, granted it's much smaller numbers, but their capacity goes to 63, ours goes to 70.

Yeah, I know.

It changes the form. Now granted, we're talking 2.6 million versus 4.46. It's a different capacity. But that's a pretty big swing. I'm surprised that the board doesn't have a recommendation to what that amount should be. Just more of a comment than anything else. I'm going to say it publicly tonight. I'm certainly, as a good neighbor... We'll figure a way to sell something to them. I don't think I'm in a position to Councilman Malloy's point, and actually to the three council over there, to make that decision to do it absolutely tonight, because Councilman Malloy brought up a good thing, and it is always my pet peeve with this stuff. We don't have all the facts. Meaning, and it's very easy to get, Doug, which is we can look at over the last year what the average commercial building uses for uses for sewer capacity, what the average home uses for sewer capacity, because you said that you don't expect much. Well, a couple things jump out to me. If you look at the high point, we actually got the 3.11 eight years ago. 3.11, if we drop down to 3.11, means we get to 90% capacity, and that's with no growth. It hasn't taken into account the Crow Street. It hasn't taken into account East Central Street. It hasn't taken into other. So there is going to be 500 new homes, apartments, whatever bedrooms, however we have to calculate it, there is a way to project out what we need for capacity here. If we say we have the potential to build 2,000 more bedrooms, what does 2,000 bedrooms use for capacity? So there's a way for us to, I believe we're going to have enough, but I do think we need some more facts before we just willy-nilly sell 100,000 here and then. But I will promise you, my promise to you as an individual, it's just my promise, that we will come up with something to sell you. Now, I agree with Jamie. And I understand what your methodology used, but we have an asset. If you are a man striving to thirst in the desert, you'll pay whatever you need to get that water. And I agree with you, Jamie. I would hope that the intention of doing this, of bringing in $3 million, we could then promise, again, very similar to what we talked about, but we could then promise the residents of Franklin, you're not going to see a rate increase on your water and sewer bill, or your sewer bill, for three years. So in some ways, we're giving it back to the community. for all the time, all that investment, so we're giving it. So there is a value. But we are in the driver's seat, and I will say this. 1507, I hate 07. I hate cockamamie. Round it up. Make it 15 bucks for . But my point is, we're in the driver's seat. And I know you mentioned section 308, and I was reading that section. That section talks about selling to municipalities outside the plan, not in the plan. So it is if someone else wants to buy in, that's what they pay. It has nothing, that may have been what we used in the past, but I can tell you that agreement, that wording is only for someone else who wants to buy in. If you're in it, there's a completely, show me in the document, and that's actually poorly on the design of this agreement. It should have already had that outlined. If you have to sell it, what the price is. But this is only for outside, not inside. So... As it relates to the price, we'll figure that out. But my point is, we're going to sell you something because we don't want you to stop development. But also at the same time, as you've heard, I'm a pro-development guy. Within reason. I'm looking at Mark over here. We're not going to build... A 70-story building, blah, blah, blah. But we do need new growth to pay for taxes. So I need to make sure that if I'm going to sell 200,000 gallons, that I'm not going to be in the same position 10 years from now coming back to you to buy 25,000 gallons back. So as it relates to the med weight, My comment is we'll figure it out for Millis, kind of like your suggestion, Max. 50-50, blah, blah, blah, but we'll figure that out. But with that, for now, I'll yield my time.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I prefer to decide something tonight, whether it's I think that, you know, we have a limited capacity as a council, and the more we kick this around, the less we have time for other things. I'm also concerned about, you know, sometimes you have to make decisions with the information you have, even if you don't have all the information and you've just got to make a decision. That's just the reality of things. In terms of how we, you know, negotiate things, I think we should let Jamie take the lead. I think we should let Jamie take the lead as our lead negotiator. We pass this as is, let him negotiate. I think to have too many cooks in the room, we just negotiate off of each other and negotiate down, and I don't think that's a good thing. So I'd prefer to pass this either as is. If you can't pass as is, pass half. But I think we should pass something tonight because, like I said, we can't just keep going back and forth over this over and over again. It's just not going to be good for us. So I yield.

I got a question. With your building in Medway, how fast are you going to get to that?

That's a great point, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. Right now, we believe that continuing to reduce I&I is going to keep us pretty constant. We will not get to that immediate threshold for at least another 10 years, 5 to 10 years. 5 to 10 years. And that's a fair belief right now. I mean, it's not like next week you're going to be over 100. The reason we saw a substantial growth is because we hit our 10% 40B number. So we saw some development that came in with a couple of large housing complexes. There's another one that's proposed now. Aside from that, there's not a ton of growth that's sitting on the table. We've done a lot of work locally for that. I think that what we will continue to do, because the question was, what do you do if you get to your capacity? We're going to continue to take INI out. We have a substantial amount of rainwater, clean water that gets into the system. So we're going to continue to try to take that out. So removing that gives us probably another 50,000 to 100,000 gallons that we estimate we should be able to fix. I think the challenge, though, again, if I may, the issue with that 308, Councilor LeBlanc is absolutely correct. That's the way it's worked. It's been used four times in the past. And I think the problem gets to, and Jamie alluded to this earlier, that if there's an ultimate dispute as to somebody that has to come in from a legal framework, legal minds that get together to have to weigh in on this, That's the only thing we can go back to and point to, is that that's been the process. We would be willing to have, again, we would be willing to have another engineering firm. If you want CDM to do it again, we'll chip in on the cost and have another firm come to the table and continue to take a look at, hey, what does this document mean? How do we do this? Because, again, there is a legal document that each of the four towns has, and that's the piece that we're so hung up on.

Mike, to your point, though, those four, you are absolutely correct. Two of them were new buyers, Millard's and Bellingham, but two of them were additional buyers afterwards that they used the small mill for. So the precedence was set for those two as well. The way the document is written, Norfolk could come to you, and you would have to sell, if you wanted to sell Norfolk capacity, being a good neighbor, you would be selling Norfolk capacity at probably $4, $5. and you're turning around and saying, Medway, whose plant is in the facility providing all the services, no, you're not going to get that. The other thing is we're spending an awful lot of extra money on I&I. So that keeps our sewer rates. We'd love to be able to reduce the sewer rates as you would like to reduce sewer rates, but we keep pumping money into the I&I system to try to keep our capacity up and down.

I have just a quick question because Mike brought it up and I'm glad you had your time to talk. But it was, Doug was going to answer and he didn't really get a chance to answer, which was around the projects that are on the table right now. Did you factor those other projects in to the numbers that you, that you're presenting for our percentage? Yes.

So I think Carolyn kind of asked it before. So the percentages that are laid out on the paper that you have in front of you are just current day, right? But didn't account for that. And back to Mr. LeBanc's point, we can look at the developments that we know that are coming down the line and get you a number based on Title V of what that additional capacity is going to need. And like I said before, those Title V numbers are going to be way higher, more conservative than what we'll actually realize once those developments are put in. For instance, I looked on while I was sitting over there, 121 Grove Street, I think there's 556 bedrooms from right. And there's some other criteria for Title V. They're projecting 61,000 gallons per day. So if that kind of gives you a frame of reference. Yeah.

Yeah. But I would like to understand those numbers. Yeah.

I understand that.

Can I just, a real quick follow-up? Sorry, Jane. That's fine. Real quick follow-up on that. You said, so it's permitted, right, the Title V is at a certain, but the usage comes in lower. But we still have to permit at that higher number, right? So even if... we had more things come on. We'd still have to be factoring in that higher usage, right? Correct.

Yes, so we permit out that number, but what we actually realized, and I think Mr. Blank indicated, like I can actually pull data of what different developments are actually producing. You know, we have data from the Taj, so that would be a good, more relevant, newer construction. We have data from commercial developments, so I can pull that in and present that to you so you have a better idea of There's the Title V number, and then there's what actually happens.

Reality. Reality. Thank you. And I appreciate that. I just feel like I'm just, it's just.

They're two different things.

Right. I just feel like we have to be, we would limit our permitting capabilities, right, if we have to permit at a higher rate? No? Thoroughly. Okay.

Because you're dealing with, this is where this stuff gets a little sloppy. It's just, you're permitting at one thing, but in reality, you're using less, and I think even Mike said this for Medway, out of all the INI work that's been going in, all technology that's going in, we're using less capacity today than we were several years ago. So even though you're permitting more, and you theoretically are having more sewerage, but rate payers in Franklin are using less, it's really because the system has become far more tight, technology's gotten better, and I think when you look over 10 or 20 years, Obviously, engineering and technology is just going to get that much stronger. So in reality, even if it's permitted at $61,000, they're not using anywhere near that. So Doug's numbers in the memo are based on actual usage.

Yeah, excellent use of the term.

But we can get, we can pull, I'm not arguing by the way, we can pull all those numbers together, we can get a list of the at least permanent developments and we can try to at least, you know, do some sort of scoping out to see what that is. And we're happy to also get some trends over the last 15 years and say on average each year what is it? So we can show, you know, that even over a 10 or 15 year timeframe, and I'm sure the numbers in Millis and Medway are probably the same because all systems are getting stronger and investing a lot more money and time into these things. So everybody's systems are getting tighter and more efficient, right? So they're going to ask, that's how Millis is saying, well, we only need a hundred thousand for almost forever because their system is going to tighten up much more as well. And they're not really going to need, you know, far more than that within some sort of timeframe that's reasonable of 20 years or so. Right after that, I mean, YOU KNOW, THE WORLD'S GOING TO BE DIFFERENT, AND WHO KNOWS WHAT THAT COMES. BUT AT LEAST THE NEXT COUPLE DECADES.

PLUS, JUST TO JUMP ON THAT, IF YOU THINK ABOUT WHAT WE'VE DONE AS A COMMONWEALTH OVER THE LAST PROBABLY 10 TO 15, 20 YEARS WITH THE INFRASTRUCTURE THAT'S GOING INTO PEOPLE'S HOMES, THE NEW CODE REQUIREMENTS THAT ARE IN THERE, YOU'RE NOT SELLING AS MUCH WATER AS YOU USED TO SELL BECAUSE THE TOILETS ARE LOW FLUSH, YOU HAVE BETTER FLOSSED SYSTEMS. SO CONSEQUENTLY, YOU'RE NOT ACTUALLY HAVING AS MUCH SEWER FLOWING DOWN THE STREET, TOO.

But what I'm saying, did you, did Medway sell Millis Sewer. In 1983, yes. So how many gallons did you sell them?

I think both, I think Franklin and Bedway sold them.

Yeah, that's when we came online, so it was each of you sold us sewer at that point. It was equal amount, I believe, or maybe proportional. 400,000 miles.

Franklin gave, and I think Medway gave $100,000. $128,000, yeah.

$120,000. $100,000, yes. So Bill has got $500,000 on the first go-around, $400,000 from Franklin, $100,000 from Medway. I wish I had it back. Mr. Chair, I'd like to make a motion regarding adjournment.

I'd like to make a motion regarding adjournment. Not because it's coming up, so I'd like to make a motion. Well, we get to finish this. Well, I'm going to prevent that. I think it's at the end of the topic. We haven't voted on anything. When this topic gets, then we can finish. Okay, good.

If I could just make one comment because Mr. LeBlanc said that maybe we don't need it because we're at 72%. Unlike Medway, we're in a rapid growth stage right now. We have permitted projects that are going to put us into the 90% range as soon as they build. And we're trying to be proactive so we don't hit that 90%. So right, today I'm at 72. Three years from now, I'm close to 90 if we don't get this extra capacity. And we are taking our capacity number very seriously. We're not planning to exceed it. We want to hit it. And that's part of being proactive today. So we may not need it on paper today, but as soon as shovels hit the ground, we're going to absolutely need it. So don't cut us back to 50.

Quickly, I sympathize with both of you, and you're right.

Your job is to represent the residents of your town, and I have complete respect that that is what you guys are trying to do.

and we have to represent ours. I think yes as neighbors we will need to help you out because we would want the same help. The price point I think is something we need to start talking about a little bit more. I'm not sure I'm comfortable on all of it for that. And I do agree with everybody else that is saying we need more detail because ultimately, once we give this up, anything happens, we're not getting it back. So before we can say yes or no, I think we need to be very clear on where we will sit when all of the pending projects that have already been approved are up and running, and even taking into consideration some of the ones that maybe not have been approved yet, but potentially could, because that is a big change, and I think once we do that, then we can figure it out and come up with a number. I do think that we should help, and I'm not against that at all. I just, like again, I'm not comfortable making a decision to vote for it tonight. I agree. And I yield.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I'll be quick. This is a question to you guys. You mentioned in the initial part of your presentation that there were costs that you were incurring as a town because the plant falls in your town. You mentioned police fire, plowing the roads. Do you know what that cost is on an annual basis? I don't know off the top of my head. Okay. My suggestion would be to quantify that number and pass that on to the pollution control district with a bill that we're all paying into because you guys shouldn't have that burden simply because the facility is in your town. If it's a facility that's benefiting four towns and there's real costs to running that facility, which I would include police, fire, and plowing, then that should be quantified and that should be spread out because at no point should you bear that burden.

I think the biggest cost that would be out there, and this is a difficult one because Franklin's also in the same situation with a regional institution, meaning Tri-County, is what's the property tax loss? That's ultimately the big one. You have a facility of this size and the value of it. That's difficult. I mean, I can quantify it. I can have the assessors do it and say what's the value. I know what you're saying. I think that our forefathers made a decision about the location of the facility being at Medway for a reason and it makes sense and to date no one's made a complaint about those services that we provided. That being said, we need to actually factor that into this discussion and this negotiation.

Yeah, no, and I only bring it up because Maybe you're not complaining about it, but you brought it up, right? So if it's going to be factored into the conversation of what these rates are going to be or what these future agreements are going to be, then in my opinion, take it off the table and let's all share that so that we're all making, we're all doing the same exact thing to help support that facility, right? Jamie's writing a note to North Attleboro tomorrow for Tri-County. And as he rightfully should, but thank you.

Just to follow up, what you were talking about is We always have a problem with sewer rates. Water and sewer rates are constantly going up. By the way, there's only one select board member that complains about them. Except for the residents complaining about water and sewer rates all the time. Enterprise accounts, we want to eliminate the enterprise accounts and roll it into the tax rates. We get it all the time. When Michael's point was yes and the other point was why aren't they paying taxes? There's no real estate taxes coming into that property. It's always been like that since 1977. And we've never brought it up. Nobody's even brought it up at all in the past. We have to dance around it when a resident asks why aren't they paying taxes. Yeah, Tri-County doesn't pay any taxes.

You have Bedway people come in there too, so we're in the same boat. All right. Go ahead. Bobby. Go ahead, Jim.

Would it be, could I ask the council if the September 2nd meeting is right after Labor Day? Yeah. Once you get past that, you're getting into the facilities, the tax workshops, is a couple more months worth it is that a date that i we can maybe aim for to come back and revisit these or does the council want to punt this out a little further towards the holidays just because your schedule gets really really junked up i do think counselor marangelo does bring up a fairly good point i think we can pull together the data sets that requested and maybe represent them on the second but

Can you share them in advance?

Yeah, absolutely. I would say, why don't we do that on the second? And we'll share the data sets we get with Medway and Millis as well.

If Millis and Medway want to get together, I'm willing to get together with a couple of the other people and we can work together and see if we can come up with anything. Dennis, you got my number, so just call me and we can figure it out, and we'll get together and we can talk and see what's going on. Sure. Why don't we do that? Is there a second? What's up?

Go ahead. Thanks for the time tonight. Appreciate it. All right.

Thank you, Chairman. Mark Minikelly, 31 Longfellow Drive. I just have a couple of questions. I don't have a particular view on this one way or the other. I think you all have to represent the town of Franklin more so than anybody else, right? But my two questions have to do with, first, One of the justifications that was brought up was that there's a number of residents that are on private septic that might want to hook up. Do we know what that percentage is in Franklin? Do we have any idea how many people are on private septic right now that might need to hook up?

30% of the town is on septic. Not all of them would have the ability to hook up just because there's no sewer in front of their house.

Right, so what percentage is likely to hook up? If I had to just take a guess. You don't have to. You could come back to it later. I can give you that number. Not to me, but to them.

That would be part of the, that's a good point.

And then secondly, we have excess capacity in sewage, right? We have excess capacity in water supply. Which, if we have more excess capacity in sewage than we have in water, to me that would signal that we have enough to give some away, right? Because our limiting factor then would be water rather than sewage. So can somebody look at that calculation as well? I mean, are we matched up well so that we're going to lose, we're going to run out of sewage when we run out of water? Or is one going to go before the other?

They're pretty equal, but, yeah, I think we could make that part of the presentation.

Well, that would be kind of hard for me because I'm on well, but I have sewer. Yeah. How are you going to justify what I do? Yeah.

But, I mean, on average, it might be.

And on average, too, I think a single-family home uses more water because of irrigation, other uses that don't go down the sewer. Right, right, right. Or just personal consumption, too.

Okay. Bobby, excuse me, Mr. Chairman. Yeah. That gentleman sitting there, did you have a question before?

I think, I don't know if his... Two minutes. Go ahead. I thought your question would have been answered. With everything that was said.

It pretty much has. It's just a refresh. I'm Franny Niskiewicz. I live at 445 Beverly Road. I've been on public sewer since 1980 when I moved to Franklin. And I know a little bit about this stuff. I actually worked with John J. McKayhill and Norm Restano when they were original board members for the Charles River District. So I know a little bit about it. But the reason I'm here is that I looked, I saw this even yesterday on the Franklin Observer, whatever it is, that the meeting was going to happen. And I started putting off some documentation. And what I found, and it's pretty obvious, and I think Stephen pointed it out, some of the data that was used to justify the $15 seems a little bit... not right. It's data from all over the country rather than data from Massachusetts, and the costs here are higher. Also, you don't know how big the plants are. The bigger the plant is, the lower the cost per gallon per day. It just makes sense. Smaller plants cost more. So all that information and then averaging them all probably doesn't make sense, plus the calculations were a little bit off. I thought maybe what happened is that maybe this $15 was like discussed among all these people and they came up with it. But I think to hold that as the basis doesn't make sense. And I get a lot of respect from Mike and his work in Medway. Not that I don't respect the folks from Millis, but he knows a lot about this town. And he's got some really good points about the original agreements that were signed. That was then. This is now. We've invested a lot of money in upgrades to the plant, the expansion of the plant. Those numbers need to be factored in as to costs that have been sunk. And that's how typically these costs are generated. Cost expended, cost to be shared. So rather than using average numbers of something that's basically connections of houses versus somebody buying capacity, and there's been capacity bought in Massachusetts. It's not a lot, but there's some data out there, and I think that information would be more useful to you, more relevant for you, and figure out does $15 make sense, does something higher make sense, and you can justify it. So that's my point.

Thank you. I just want to say, Millis still has to adjourn. I just wanted to make a quick comment.

I'm generally in favor of this. I wouldn't vote for it now.

I think we need more information. We need the numbers. Generally in favor of helping other towns out. I think there's a win-win that we can come up with for a price. We just have to work on that negotiation. The other thing, no one said this yet, but this will give us time to hear from the townspeople, too, for our residents. We haven't really, you know, they're not hearing this for the first time. Maybe they've seen it. But I'd like to understand, you know, get their feedback, too, so we know how they feel about it because this is really their asset. That's all I have to say.

All right. Thanks. Right now, we have to take a vote to extend the meeting.

I make a motion to extend the meeting. Second.

Discussion? Till what time?

11.

Till 11?

It won't go more than an hour. All in favor? Aye.

SO JAMIE, DO WE TABLE THESE RESOLUTIONS? OR DO WE JUST TAKE NO ACTION?

JUST DON'T TAKE ANY ACTION OR YOU CAN CONTINUE THEM TO SEPTEMBER 2ND, WHATEVER. JUST LEAVE THEM WITHOUT ACTION.

IT'S FINE IF WE DO THAT.

YOU DON'T NEED TO GET THAT ON UP ON PROCEDURE.

YEAH, YOU'VE ALREADY AGREED TO SEPTEMBER 2ND, SO I THINK THAT'S GOOD.

Do you want us to formally vote on it? Should we open it? Okay.

Should we open the motion? No, no. Ignore it. B, C, and D. B, C, and D. So B, C, and D, and we'll go right to E. Go right to E. So just note for the record,

It's a consensus not to act upon.

All right. Is everybody in agreement, Carl? Everybody in agreement that we're going to do this September 2nd? Yes. So... So we will... Just taking no action on the same date. Taking no action on resolutions 26-39, 26-40, and 26-41 until September 7th. Second. Second. September 2nd.

Okay.

So now we go to... Bylaw amendment 25-953. Bylaw... To amend the code of the town of Franklin at chapter 170, article 10, winter storm overnight parking ban. Second reading. Majority roll call voters. Clerk will read the bylaw.

I would make a motion to waive the reading since it's the second reading, Mr. Chairman.

Second. Second.

I have a motion and a second. Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Motion passed. Motion to approve bylaw amendment 26, is it 953?

Yeah. Second.

I have a motion and a second. Discussion?

Go ahead, Max. I still think it's punitive. I think I would prefer 75. I yield. I think it's punitive. I think 100 is too high. I would prefer 75. It was voted down last time. All in favor?

Sorry. I do still support this. I just want to say I think since we waived the reading, I think we just need to clarify. We were talking about increasing it from 100, 200, 300 for those just to say it. I also... um i want to make sure that we are providing clear and timely accessible notice to residents before this happens i know we always do i'm just saying that because again we are increasing this by a significant amount so i just want to make sure that we are communicating that very very clearly before anyone gets out there and doesn't move their car and is hit with a fine that is four times what they were anticipating it to be um and then i also just want to make sure that like do you have like data on how many, I think we do, I think we talked about this last time, but like baseline data of how many violations that we had fined last time, just that we can tell that this is an effective thing. I'd like to just know.

I forget what he said. The chief did tell us. I can't remember, though. I had it incorrect.

I thought it was only a few tickets, but it was only a few tows. Yeah. And I think he was up in the, I want to. I can't remember the number. He's in the 40s or 50s.

He said 40 or 50 tickets, I thought he said last time.

I think that's what he said, too.

Okay, great.

We can ask them to bake in, like, each year what the tickets are.

Yeah, exactly. I'd like to see that after this upcoming winter so we know whether this is effective or not. Yeah. Okay, thank you. That's all I had.

Okay. Roll call vote.

Okay, Mr. Chairman, this is a roll call vote on bylaw amendment 26-953, which was a bylaw to amend the code of the town of Franklin at chapter 170, article 10, winter storm overnight parking ban fees. Councilor Ajuku? Yes. Councilor Morangelo?

No.

Councilor Maloy? Yes. Councilor LeBlanc? Yes. Councilor Griffith?

Yes.

Councilor Callaway-Tripp?

Yes.

Myself, yes. Vice Chair? Yes. Chairman? Yes. That is an approval with an 8 to 1, sir.

Moving on. Resolution 26-42, acceptance of private road.

Covenant.

Oh, covenant. Majority vote.

We're on 2642. Yes. 2642. Do you need me to read it?

You have to, or it makes a motion. All right.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Second.

I have a motion and a second. Discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

Motion passed. Motion to approve Resolution 2652. 42.

I do have a question on this. More for Jamie.

2642. 2642. We need to second it. Oh, I'll second it.

Discussion. Discussion. Okay, thanks. Oh, I'm sorry.

I thought I said... Go ahead. Sorry. Oh, I thought...

Earlier tonight we took a road and made a public way. Now we're doing a private road covenant.

Yeah.

Why?

Yeah, go ahead, Mark. This is a planning board.

Yeah. Okay. These are small subdivisions, two or three lots generally. And because of that, the planning board typically has waived a lot of infrastructure, so they're not built up to the general road standards. So the flip side is the town doesn't want responsibility for it. So in order, as a condition to getting the waivers, the developer agrees that the road will remain private and will be the people he sells to's responsibility is to maintain the roads. Snow plowing, it actually specifically says snow plowing, main maintenance, whatever. So it's to ensure that sometime in the future, some subsequent group of owners doesn't come forward and try to get substandard roads off their plate as their responsibility and turned over to the town.

Okay, and that makes sense. So I guess what I'm just, it's ironic. It's on the same meeting, same night.

Some of these aren't even built up. Some of them look like driveways.

Yeah, I saw that it's like a proposed development there for two houses, right? So that makes sense. But J. Victor Way was four houses.

But it was built out. It was a full build-up because it was an extension of an existing subject.

But it was built to road to standards, and we want to accept that as opposed to... Right. Okay. Thank you. I just wasn't sure why we were doing one and the opposite. Thank you. Sorry.

A really quick question. Are these always worded that strongly, that it's like they'll never be allowed to petition for it to be? That just seems like, I mean, I guess I would think that if they wanted to, they could eventually build it up and then petition, but this is like... No, they're worded, because policy-wise, the...

They need to be very selective. It's not something you wanted to do, first of all, because most buyers coming in don't look at these specifics. They kind of anticipate that the road's going to become public if it's not already, and it's not their responsibility. So this way, it's right in the title. It couldn't be clearer at the time that they acquire, if they buy the house, that it's right there. Okay, thank you.

okay this is majority vote so all in favor aye opposed resolution 26-43 the option of social media engagement guidelines for elected and appointed officials clerk will read the resolution motion to waive the reading I have a motion and a second. Discussion?

Mr. Chairman, I think we should hear from the communications subcommittee chair before we have any further discussion. It's my own opinion.

Sure.

Yeah. She put these forth to us.

I know, but we're just going to waive the reading and then we'll go. And then you can discuss. Motion to waive the reading. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Now you say.

Yeah, motion to approve resolution 2643. Second.

Second. Discussion.

All right.

So Liz actually made this. This was her document. She sent it to the communication subcommittee to have us look it over. I think it's a really good document. We all agreed. We decided to meet it. I think, did we amend anything? There's maybe something that we changed, but we all decided that this was very clear. It is guidelines. It is not rules. It is recommendations for how elected officials and appointed officials should engage on social media to prevent misinformation or debate online. You all read it. I think it does a really good job. establishing those practices, as it says, to promote transparency, consistency, professionalism, accessibility, and compliance. My one comment on it, which I didn't think of until tonight, and I wish those were here, is that it doesn't really address accessibility, actually, and I would like to maybe see that in another iteration. But for the rest of it, I think it's pretty straightforward, and I think it's really well written. So that's my two cents.

Anybody else?

Agree. That was well done.

Very well done.

Yeah, Liz. Oh, thank you on her behalf. She did that.

Okay, majority vote is required. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion passed. Resolution 26-44, adoption of town council email guidelines. What will be the... resolution motion away seconded i have a second please discussion All in favor? Aye.