Town Council - Regular Meeting

Note to residents, all citizens are welcome to attend public meetings in person or remotely by using one of the options listed below. Meetings are recorded and archived by Franklin TV on Franklin Town Hall TV YouTube channel and shown repeatedly on Comcast Channel 9 and Verizon Channel 29. Watching remotely, Franklin Town Hall TV YouTube channel or Comcast Channel 9 or Verizon Channel 29. Participants who are Zooming, meeting ID number is 829-8209-4040. In order to speak, Zoom attendants must select a raised hand to request to be unmuted. All speakers will be required to state their full name and street address before commenting. The Zoom number is 1-929-205-6099, then hit the pound sign. Announcements from the chair. Can we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance? I thought about that. What do I do in this?

To the flag of the United States of America.

JAMIE, WE NEED MORE MEETINGS IN THE SUMMER SO I DON'T FORGET STUFF. ALL RIGHT. ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM THE CHAIR. COUNSELOR BLANK AND COUNSELOR GRIFFIN WILL BE PARTICIPATING THROUGH ZOOM. AND THE THE EVALUATION TEAM FOR THE TA, JAMIE, WILL BE COUNCILOR GRIFFIN, COUNCILOR MARANGELLO, AND COUNCILOR GRELLA. AND COUNCILOR GRELLA WILL CHAIR THAT COMMITTEE, SO YOU CAN GET TOGETHER WITH THEM AND JAMIE AND FIGURE OUT WHAT'S GOING ON. UPCOMING TOWN SPONSOR EVENTS. A reminder that the town office will be closed on Monday, September 7th to observe Labor Day. Normal hours will resume on Tuesday, September 8th. Trash and recycle collections will also be delayed by one day due to the holiday. Tune It Out Guitar for the Vets open house is taking place at the Senior Center on Tuesday, September 15th at 5.30. This class is free for all vets and guitars are provided for the participants. The Franklin Health Department is holding a free flu clinic for all Franklin residents at the Senior Center Tuesday, September 22nd from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The next Town Council office hours will be held on Thursday, September 17th from 8.30 a.m. to 9.30 a.m. at the Franklin Senior Center. All residents are welcome. The Franklin Farmers Market takes place every Friday through October 23rd from 2 to 6 p.m. at the Franklin Common. That's it for upcoming events. Citizens' comments. Citizens are welcome to express their view for up to three minutes on a matter that is not on the agenda. 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 ANYBODY IN THE AUDIENCE? COME ON UP. JUST STATE YOUR NAME, RICKY, AND YOUR ADDRESS.

My name's Rick Ciccone. I live at Chestnut Street, 185. Anything I'll say tonight will be my opinion, so let the council know that's the case. My concern is on a property on 122 Chestnut Street, a property that was once owned by my godparents. It now houses a apartment building, which was specifically put there on a one-house property. residential lot many years ago, we as neighbors were asked to side with this rezone because it's on now what was a residential lot. It now has a 10-unit building sitting on it. One of the reasons we, the neighborhood, and others like us, and folks on the advisory committee, which was a committee prior to this board and was 10 years ago now, were in favor of this, because this building was going to house two units in perpetuity for veterans or veterans' families. It's the main, the biggest reason a lot of us thought this would be suitable. Now it appears, 10 years later or close to that, we have a building that's, well, half built, three and a half feet of grass in front of it, no units for anyone to live in, whether they be veterans or not, and it seems They have us, to use a term that I was given at the vote on Monday by an old high-ranking town official, they seem to have us over a barrel. Now, I hope the council or our attorney or our department, whatever it takes, we... should have the right to see this place built, and built properly for those that it was intended to, and not be told we have no rights in any of this. To continue on in this, because some of us in this town have been labeled as anti-apartment, And I've been one of those, and probably rightly so, because of things such as this, and now, 30 seconds down the road from this, on the opposite side of the street, we have a 30 or 40 unit, which is down in a very questionable location, but I think we got that because of 40B, that apparently can't be finished because, again, some explanation one of these days might be good news to us because nothing's happening there. And I think we have the right to know because when we allow this in our community and then not either make the developer or builder accountable, we end up with a lesser community. The third one on my radar is Alpine Place. Another, which used to house the Bullock and Oil tanks. Now we have an apartment building there, if you drive down it, and I ask anyone who hasn't seen it to drive down and visually look at it, up against the roadway, no grass strip, no place for anything other than a wall up against our road. Don't we, as a town, deserve better? Don't we as a town, and I apologize because I have said this before to any of you I've talked to and everybody who listened. I may not be around here long enough to pay for these mistakes, but someone will. And when the town comes forward with other projects and other things that are going to cost this next generation money, Don't forget there's still some of us old folks that are still here looking at it and wondering what the heck we're doing and trying to get folks to say, if they're going to build it here, make them accountable and make them build what they say they're going to build. Thank you.

Thank you, Ricky. Is there anybody else in council chambers? Go ahead, Mark.

Mark Minicheli, 31 Longfellow Drive.

I don't have to tell you.

Sorry, Jamie, to put you on the spot here tonight. I'm just going to read a couple of lines from a recent press release. On Wednesday, August 12th, the Franklin Town Council voted five to four to approve a new employment contract for town administrator Jamie Helen. Helen's contract is extended through June 30, 2030. As required by law, the contract negotiations were conducted in executive session before the Council voted on the resolution to approve an open session. So when I first read that, I thought that vote was a slap in the face of Jamie Helen. I've read the full press release, as I'm sure many people have. I'm not satisfied with the explanation of four no votes due to process, timing, and approach. I don't believe that executive session requirements limit you from sharing more details about why you voted the way you did, rather than just say process, timing, and approach on the no votes. I think Franklin citizens have a right to know more details about your concerns and who, if anyone, is responsible for those concerns and how these concerns can be avoided in the future. for votes such as this. I encourage you all to use your counselor comments to explain your votes on this important topic. I think you all want transparency, and I think some of you've ran on transparency. Now's your chance to show it. Thank you.

Thanks, Mark. Anybody else? Hold on there. You can stand there. Go ahead. You go. I'm sorry. No, that's okay.

My name is Eddie Emerson, 98 Partridge Street, and I'm here to request taking down the two flaw cameras that are up in our town and ending our contract with them. We have one of the safest towns in the state. And I don't think it's worth taking everybody's information that drives by. you know, when we have the safest town in the state, or one of them. Several towns in Mass have taken down their contract recently. Southbridge, Ayer, Abington, Cambridge, Framingham, Littleton, Salem, Grafton, East Bridgewater, New Bedford, Auburn, Douglas, Stoughton, Easton, Bellingham, and Hopkinton, and Milford has about 500 signatures on a petition. So there's a lot of public support to take these down. And they're a violation of Fourth Amendment and privacy of data. So I'm encouraging you guys to take those cameras down and end the contract like a lot of towns in Mass are doing. Thank you.

Good evening, Mr. Chairman and council members. I'm Nancy Dinello, your town clerk. And we had this little thing called an election last night, yesterday. And I'm here to report the official results. They were certified today, and I submitted them to the Secretary of State this afternoon. Currently, we have 25,457 registered voters. We had a total of 6,298 votes cast. That number represents vote by mail, in-person early voting, absentee voting, as well as same-day voting. So that equates to about 24% in line with previous years, so not so bad, I guess. Running an election involves many, many different departments throughout the town hall, and I just want to thank the police department, DPW, the school department, facilities department, all of the election workers, and the wardens, of course, my staff as well. And I would also like to thank all of you that stopped by the town clerk's table to see how we were doing, just to check in. I appreciate that. Thank you. So the results are posted on my website, so check them out. And that's it. Thank you. Have a good night.

Go ahead, Dave.

All right, and Dave Callahan, 30 Plain Street, here with another update from the school committee. So today marked the first day of school for the new school year, and from all accounts, a smashing success. One of the big ones that came out was just a little while ago, the superintendent sent out an email to the public schools kind of community talking about the improvements for arrival and dismissal times. I know that was something that was a big conversation last year and at each of the schools it was a significant improvement. There's going to be more as we kind of continue on but it was it was a great little indicator of some amazing stuff to come. And speaking of with the return to school we also had the return of Ben and Frankie, but also Officer Gove and Officer Ayer, our school resource officers, the first time back in over a year, which was absolutely amazing to kind of see them back in the school committee. They are fantastic school resource officers, and that's all thanks to the votes from the town council during last budget season to bring them back into the school. So thank you very much from a school committee perspective, but most importantly just from a dad to have them back in the schools was fantastic. I also want to highlight, so one of the subcommittees on the school committee, it's a Horace Mann legacy subcommittee, which Chairman DeLorco is part of as well. It's a group, we've got about 15 folks that are here to educate and advocate for Horace Mann, the father of public education, who was born here in Franklin, a stone's throw, really right that away. A lot of great stuff that's happening. A couple of weeks ago, we were over at the farmer's market where we were able to kind of go and talk to a lot of folks about some ideas that we're looking at, including building out a Horace Mann campus, like if we can kind of, some ideas about a walking museum, opportunities to kind of help show the kids how they grow with Horace as they kind of continue to grow themselves in the Franklin Public Schools, what Horace was doing around those same times. And so a lot of really fun stuff through the Horace Mann legacy, some amazing folks kind of behind it, and you'll just continue to see more of us throughout the next year. And lastly, See myself in a little screenshot over here. Quick shout out to Franklin 250 for some amazing polos. I got this at the farmer's market a couple of weeks ago. So if you like what you see here, find them at the next farmer's market. Thank you, guys.

Go ahead.

Kim Michelle, 4 Briarwood Road. On behalf of the Pan Mass Challenge, I wanted to thank the town for being one of the many towns and cities that... we rode through and that we are north of $61 million raised this year, which is really cool. But what you probably don't realize is that we were, the Pan Mash Challenge actually works with food pantries as well. So my husband and I were able to get all the fresh produce and snacks from the Medfield water stop on Sunday. Tina opened up the Franklin food pantry, and we brought 450 pounds of food back to Franklin that were given out to the residents.

And so we thank you for all that.

Okay. Anybody else? At the top of your throat, too.

Hello, Steven Balcom, 9 Independence Way. It's nice to know I'm not alone here. I spoke at the town council on June 17th, 2026 regarding the flock surveillance cameras. I stated that I would send an email at a later date in the hopes that we could have a deeper conversation about this issue. I sent that email and I got a response from a single council member. While I appreciate the response I got, I feel I must once again push for an opportunity to have a deeper conversation about this issue. I want to update the council also on the record that flock has been in the headlines recently and not in a positive light. Communities from across the United States have come together to demand an end to warrantless surveillance. Last time I spoke to you, we had about 90 communities rejecting flock surveillance. I'm happy to report that number has doubled since the last time I was here. To make matters even better, both Governor Shapiro and Governor DeSantis, who are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, have said that they don't really like these things, that they have gone too far. This has caused the state of Florida to issue an order to remove flock cameras from state highways and other state-maintained roads. Governor Shapiro has said that he would support a total ban within his state. This is a result of people pushing back, which makes me confident to say the following. Flock is a hated company. The public understands their business practices and they're less than enthusiastic about being tracked in real time without any suspicion of a crime. So being that I feel this way, I feel that I need to reiterate my desire to have a deeper conversation about this. So after we're done here today, you can find me sitting right there, right next to the Franklin PD making new friends. And I would love to have a lovely conversation about this. You have my phone number. You have my email address. Zoom call on your schedule. How about dinner on my dime? If you guys are willing to make a poor dietary choice, I'm willing to make a poor financial decision. Anything that needs to be done in order to push this forward so we can do the right thing. Thank you very much.

We're on it. Anybody else? No. Anybody on Zoom? Okay. Nobody, right?

There's two on Zoom, Bob.

Hold on, there's one. Hold on. Oh, there is one. Oh, there's two. Ali, Rayum. Hold on, we're going to let Ali and Roberta Trahannon. Okay. They're going to, they got to look at let in. Yep. Allie?

Hi, yes, am I up? Yep.

We can hear you, Allie.

All right. Awesome. Well, great to see all of you. And I definitely want to start by thanking all of you for everything you do. I feel like I've seen such an increase of presence of town council members at events and things going on in town. And I wanted to say thank you for that and being so present. Also want to give a shout out to Liz. Since she's come on with communications, I feel like as a resident. Oh, by the way, Allie Ray on 47 Summer Street. Sorry, forgot about that part. Since Liz has come on, it's really helped to increase the residents' awareness of when meetings are, when agendas are coming out, and communication between town council and everything. So thank you to Liz as well, and for town council and Liz working together on that. I can see the results of it, and I appreciate it. So thank you. And then lastly, I just want to let everybody know that given this time where helmet and bikes and e-bike safety is very prevalent, myself and Rep Roy have gotten together along with the Franklin Police Department to host a free public event on September 12th, a bike and helmet safety event. So September 12th from 930 a.m. to 11 a.m. That will be in the Franklin High School parking lot. And we are going to have other organizations join us as well. The fire department will be there with their truck and handing out fire helmets. DPW is helping us set up and shout out to them for that. Other organizations related to either bikes, helmets or brain injury. We're giving away free helmets for people that need them as long as supplies last. We have a free bike raffle, a whole bike course that kids and adults can ride through, other activities like coloring, a story walk of my book buddy, The Brain. People can decorate their helmets. We have a whole lot of stuff going on. So anyone's welcome to come. It is free. And we look forward to seeing everybody there. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Robin?

Roberta Trahan. Hi, Roberta.

Roberta?

Hi, folks. Hi, folks. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Great. Good evening. Roberta Trahan, 1 Green Street, Franklin, Mass. Two very quick things. I know you have a busy agenda. First, September 26th, the Franklin Downtown Partnership will host their 24th Harvest Festival, 12 to 5 p.m. You know where it is. Rain date is Sunday, September 27th. Second thing, that on October 16th, the Franklin Performing Arts Company at the Black Box will open their 2026-2027 season with Frozen. Check out the website. Get your tickets. Thank you for all you do. Have a great night. I'll be watching you.

Good night. SO THAT'S IT. NO MORE COMMENTS. COUNSELOR, COMMENTS? COUNSELOR KEN, WE'LL START WITH YOU.

JUST A COUPLE OF THINGS I, YOU KNOW, Just to respond to some of the citizens' comments, which I think we can do, right?

Yeah, we can.

We had a couple comments on the flock cameras. I do just want to make sure it's clear that we're having meetings with police chief to talk more about it. We will continue to share information about police about the flock cameras and how we choose to move forward based on what makes sense. We are absolutely taking information from everyone who shares it so that we have that, and that will all be considered as we look to make our decision. I will also call out for, it sounded like there was a bit of concern that only one counselor responded to a comment. Just so people are aware, It will often be just one counselor copying the rest of us so that you know that we're responding in that way. It avoids a lot of just cross conversations. But we are looking at every comment that comes through. Finally, I did want to speak to, there are a couple things on apartments that I think are worthwhile and will continue to be part of our discussion, I think, as a town for a while, including tonight. I did want to touch on I think Mr. McKellie had a question about the executive session, which I do understand where the question comes from and some of the concerns, but I don't believe that we can speak on it yet, not until the minutes come out, at which point you'll certainly hear more from us.

thank you thank you sir my only comment well two comments for tonight I'm happy to be back and get back into regular cadence of our meetings and kind of pick up steam again after a nice restful summer but given that and given the experience we've had the past year I'm a learner I'm a slow learner I admit but I am a learner and I did learn from last year just how fast time goes and how quickly it's going to be November and then December and then into next year and then into budget time again and so forth so just trying to anticipate some of that and thinking ahead a little bit just more of a request to you Jamie to maybe consider at one of our October meetings kind of a budget recap synopsis where we are through the first quarter you know kind of how that looks And as you were able to do for the Joint Budget Subcommittee, kind of forecasting ahead what you kind of see in the next year, five years looks like. I'd like to set kind of a process around that so it's not just budget time where we're kind of focusing on that. Set aside a few minutes for that topic, get maybe monthly, even 15, 20 minutes if that's okay. No, that's fine. Just so we have some idea where we kind of project where we might be going and start some conversations without the stress of the whole budget process being on top of it.

That's it for me, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This past month I was busy working on behalf of Franklin residents in the downtown community. I have 35 hours I put in in the month of August to the town council responsibilities and a good chunk of that was direct constituent access. I participated in two sets of office hours, one at the library, one at the senior center, along with my fellow counselors. And I also got to spend time at the senior center discussion group and getting to hear directly from residents there. I made a real effort to be out in the community. I stopped by two farmers markets toward the Franklin Federated Church and the new PFAS water treatment facility. I also got to attend one of the fallen hero ceremonies. I also had a great time at two cookouts this month, the Franklin TV Community Cookout and the United Methodist Church Cookout, both great events, good socializing, networking with fellow people. I want to acknowledge some things I heard repeatedly at office hours, as well as hear public comment and frustration with unfinished vacant properties, specifically 122 Chestnut Street. And I hear that concern and I share it. I followed up directly with the town administrator's office on the status of that property. What I can share is that the building has changed hands and the current developer has stepped away from completing the project. Staff maintains an annual check-in with the developer. Unfortunately, we don't have a legal mechanism to compel completion. I did ask the town administrator whether the affordable housing trust could pursue acquisition using CPA funds, but given that the value of the property is 2 to 2.5 million, that path isn't realistic without a third party manager or willing seller. I don't have a quick fix to offer tonight, but I want residents to know that this is being tracked and not ignored, and I'll keep pushing for updates. To the two commenters tonight who raised issues with the flock camera system, I hear you. I want to acknowledge that this will be on a future council agenda. We'll have more opportunity to discuss it then, and I'm happy to take anyone up on dinner to discuss the issue as long as it's not a conflict of interest. I also want to give a shout out to the bike safety event that Ally is hosting, along with Brooke Roy and the Franklin Police Department. I want to especially recognize the police department for that kind of community policing, officers engaging directly with families and kids. That's exactly the kind of model I want to see more of, and I appreciate the department's involvement. I also want to respond to Mark Minichielli's comment tonight about the Town Administrator's Conference Tract and how the Council voted. That vote took place in open session on August 13th, 5 to 4. I was one of the five who voted in favor, and I thought that this is a good transition plan. We have a new hire today, and I think that while Jamie may have a few weaknesses here and there, I believe his strengths outweigh that. So beyond my own schedule, there's a lot happening in Franklin worth celebrating. The public library's ESOL program was just recognized as exemplary by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners, a real credit to our librarians and volunteer tutors. The Riverbend Conservation Area earns tree farm certification for its stewardship work, and the Conservation Commission approved new improvements to the town forest, including pedestrian bridges and stream restoration along Uncas Brook. One more note, September is Library Card Sign-up Month. If you don't have a library card yet, now is the time. And finally, I'd like to welcome our new Assistant Town Administrator, Michelle Monsegar, to the team. I'm sure she'll make a great addition to the Franklin family. Thank you.

We'll go to Mike on Zoom. Councilman Wright.

Okay. Well, I'm going to keep my comments brief since I'm not really in the room tonight and being 500 miles away. So I will leave comments until the next time I'm in the room, and I'll leave it at that for tonight. So thank you.

Thanks, Mike. Councilman Griffin.

All right, I am not 500 miles away. I am just across town, but my kids are home and my husband's traveling, so I'm here with them so they don't burn the house down while I'm gone. But I wanted to say, first of all, congratulations and thank you again to the town clerk's office and the Office of Elections, because I know that the work that they do when we have an election is lot and it doesn't stop when the polls close and I know I stopped in to see them today and they were still working hard even at five o'clock so thanks and congratulations to them on a successful election and I also I should have known that Dave Callahan would take some of my comments because he does every time he's here but I wanted to give a really really well-deserved kudos to the schools to our teachers to our staff and to our administrators On a really successful first day of school today I know that I had kids who came home from the first day of middle school first day of sixth grade and Couldn't stop talking about how amazing the day was and how they loved their school and they loved their teachers and everything went really well and You know, I know it's been a crazy year getting to a point where things are running really smoothly after all the changes last summer but they've just they've done an amazing job getting through all the bumps of last year and they did great then too but then um just really wonderful job um today and you know and all that lead up to the first day of school so um kudos to the schools as well And I think that's all I have. I just want to say, Allie, I didn't know about your bike, the bike safety thing. I'm delighted to hear that. I know there has been a lot of concern. People are seeing kids riding around town recently without helmets on. As a parent of now middle schoolers, I share that concern when you see that because it is SO DANGEROUS, AND I'M DELIGHTED TO SEE THAT OUR COMMUNITY AND DEPARTMENT ARE COMING TOGETHER TO CREATE A BIKE AND HELMET SAFETY EVENT, AND I PLAN TO HAVE MY KIDS THERE TO HELP REINFORCE THE LESSONS ABOUT BIKE SAFETY, AND I HOPE THAT OTHER PEOPLE BRING THEIR CHILDREN AS WELL. AND THAT'S ALL I HAVE. THANKS.

THANKS, KALE. JANE? I HAVE A FEW THINGS. First, with the comments from Rick, I just would like to find out at some point why these things are not being finished.

I'll answer those in a few minutes.

Okay. Then that will be a quick answer. As far as the people who have been reaching out about the flock cameras, your concerns are being heard. And like Councilor Ojukwu had stated, we did set up something so if one councilor does reply all, we're not, so we're not violating open meeting laws. But it is a genuine concern. You do not share it alone. We are doing our due diligence to figure out what's going on and all of that. And like it was said, once we know more, we will definitely make sure that you are all aware. I have my own concerns with the flock cameras too. So again, you are not alone. to Mark's comment because I have no problem answering. I just want to make sure that I'm legally allowed to.

Until at least a minute, sir.

So I can't say why until after the minutes are released? Why I voted no?

Well, if the vote was an open session, you can talk about that.

The issue's complete. Yeah, the issue's complete. Wouldn't that mean that it was done in open?

That's what you said. Yeah. Correct.

Not discussing what was discussed in executive session because we haven't done those minutes yet. Correct. Gotcha. Okay. So I voted no. Before I ran, It was very clear that this town was extremely broken and divided for multiple reasons, partly the previous council, partly people were having a problem with the town administrator, we had multiple projects going on, town people were against it, things were getting put past. It was broken. When I ran for election, I ran on transparency, I ran on honesty, truth, and following the protocols that are put in place by town charter, bylaws, town council rules, regulations, you name it. I am not a rule breaker, okay? I can't. It goes against everything that I believe in. I voted no because the protocols, we should have done a review prior to doing a contract negotiation. We should have given residents a chance to come to that microphone and say what they feel were needed to say before that was decided. Whether those comments would have altered the vote, I couldn't tell you. Some people who voted yes might have voted no. Some people who voted no could have voted yes. I can't tell you. But to not have that happen and do the contract the way it was done is exactly why prior to me sitting here, everyone out there yelled, everything's done behind closed doors. I am trying my hardest to bridge the gap and fix the break that's happened in this town because this is my home. And I care about this town very, very much and the residents that live here. If we cannot fix that break and that divide, this town is not going to succeed. Because we are always going to be at a divide fighting each other. Are we going to please everybody 100% of the time? No. But if we follow the rules and follow the protocol, It becomes transparent, and we give the voice to the people that they deserve to have. By not doing that, we take that voice away. I will never vote to approve anything that takes the voice away from the residents who fund everything within this town. You may not agree with my vote, and I did explain to Jamie this was not a personal thing, and I meant it. I butt heads with Jamie many times in the past. I am dealing with Jamie now based on from November when I was elected to now, not previous. But we have protocols that we have to follow. And if we don't, that's how the divide gets bigger. My only goal in this town is to fix it so it's not broken. and make it so the residents can live here comfortably and not struggle. And I will never vote with the majority just because it's the majority. I will always vote for what I believe and what I know residents feel. And if I stand alone and I am the only person standing here voting no, I will stand here and I will stand alone and I will vote no. But I will go home at night and I will put my head on my pillow and I will sleep because I did exactly what I swore to do when I ran for this position. And I hope that that makes sense and you can understand that vote now. I'm not hiding behind a protocol. It is the reason. And I yield. You all set, James?

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll echo a few of the comments that have already been shared. Certainly want to welcome aboard our new Deputy TA. Got to meet her tonight. We're excited to have her. Super excited at her finance background and everything that she's going to bring to help give some new ideas. Certainly wanted to throw a shout out to Nancy Dinello and the entire team for another great election yesterday. Smooth results got in early. towns all over the state were crying that they couldn't get their act together and get results in and franklin was in nice and early and certified so that's once again a testament to your leadership so and to your whole crew I also want to say thank you to our incredible DPW department, the recent sidewalk improvements that are intended to bring us into ADA compliance. I think that's fantastic. I'm sorry that some residents were upset thinking that it wasn't a necessary expense. Maybe they don't have wheelchairs. Maybe they don't have people that use wheelchairs. But I think it's a step in the right direction for the town. And I wanted to clear up, there seemed to be a little rumor going around that somehow because we did that, we didn't have the money anymore for the theater facility project going on at the middle school that we promised and committed back in June. That is 100% false. I verified that with Jamie in his office. That money is intact. That project is moving forward and those funds are there. So please, if you have any questions, rather than get on your type and start the rumor mill at midnight in your pajamas, just give us a call and we'll be happy to dispel any of that stuff before things get carried away. I would, along those lines, Jamie, Mr. Ciccone's comments don't fall on deaf ears. Whether it's change of ownership with 122 Chestnut Street or some of those other buildings, I don't know if maybe we can there's a mechanism through eminent domain like they did with Norwood Hospital but maybe there's something that can be done with some of those buildings that have been sitting vacant for such a long time but it is their eyesores at this point their safety concerns and we should do everything we can to try to push those developers to either get it done or allow someone else to get it done to my fellow counselors and to all of the people that serve on town boards i would strongly encourage you we pay these nice people an awful lot of money to give us advice whether it's the school department, whether it's the police department, the fire department, Jamie, our attorney, use them. Use their wisdom. If you have questions, if you're on a board, if you're on a subcommittee, you're putting together an agenda, you're putting together some document, don't fly by that alone. Don't publish something without checking with staff first. That's why they're here. Please, you put everybody in jeopardy when those documents get put out and released in agendas and online if they haven't been vetted by legal and by town staff. And I guess lastly, I will say, Jamie or to our DPW guys, please, please, please talk to the state about the weeds. My God, if I have to get one more complaint about the weeds on 140 or the weeds by the overpasses that aren't town property but they're state property and state DPW, Mass Highway has to come out. I don't care. Just somebody get out there with a weed whacker. I don't know, just get it done. Spray something for God's sakes and just let people. It's literally like 300 comments on Facebook at this point about weeds. And I think people are missing the point. We have a wonderful town, folks. We have a beautiful town. We have a safe town. We have great, great staff. They don't need to hear comments on Facebook about this place being a dump. That's not fair. And they deserve better. So before you type that stuff, maybe just think a little bit about how hard people work here and the volunteers and the staff that work really, really hard to make Franklin a great place to live and work. And with that, I yield.

Thank you.

Well, maybe we should put together a group of people, weed whackers, you know, town weed whacking group and go out there and do it ourselves if we need to do it. I want to address Mark. Thank you for asking that question. That's what we want. We want transparency. I'll speak a little bit to this. I think Jane did a great job speaking to it. I think that the four people who voted were pretty much on the same page. What we felt was that we could follow a process, and we felt that that process, I felt anyway, that that process would probably get us to a 9-0 vote. for that contract. We wondered why we needed to do it that night and that because the contract wasn't expired for over a year and that we had some time to actually feel like we could do it the right way. So that's really why we voted the way we did. If you want, we can have a conversation about it. but i think it would have been better if we had followed a process like jane had said there's an evaluation needs to be done that's something we haven't done for for a year that should have come first then we should have been able to vote on it i think it like i said i think the evaluation would come out well i think it would have been nine oh but um you know we chose to do a different way and then there was one other council who commented we'll say who but they said Why are we doing it so late? Because we're just coming out of session, and it's like we're doing this at 11 o'clock. No one's paying attention. Why don't we come back at the next session and do a separate session? And I thought, gee, that's not a bad idea either. So at the end of the day, we didn't know how the vote was going to turn out, but it did the way it did. So that's the explanation there. And like I said, I'll give you more time if you need to. The second thing that's on the plot cameras, I definitely want to look into that and the privacy concerns that people have. And I think we need to be very mindful of that. We see what's going on in the news. We see what's happening. The citizen who spoke was very eloquent in the way that they spoke to it. And I have... like I said, major concerns about it myself. So we're going to do some work on that. But I think at some point there should be, you know, kind of an open public hearing for that where the public can speak out to it and we can make a decision that's in line with what the people of Franklin want. And I'll yield at that point.

THANK YOU, JEAN. I JUST GOT A COUPLE THINGS. YEAH, THE FLOOR CAM, IT'S DEFINITELY GOING TO BE ON THE AGENDA. I MEAN, I KNOW YOU GUYS ARE ALL MEETING WITH THE CHIEF AT DIFFERENT TIMES, SO WE DON'T BREAK THE OPEN MEETING LAW, SO WE ALL CAN'T GO DOWN THERE AT THE SAME TIME. SO WE DO HAVE MEETINGS SET UP FOR THE CHIEF TO GO OVER EVERYTHING WITH US, AND THEN, OF COURSE, WE'LL COME BACK. A couple things. Jamie, 122 Chestnut Street, it's funny that Ricky brought that up tonight because I drove by it, and the weeds in the grass are so high. At least can we tell Gus to go down there and tell him they've got to cut it? Yeah. Can we do that anyway? Sure.

So, I mean, you can, but I mean, I guess I'll just speak to it. We're all feel the same way that everybody does about 122 Chestnut Street. The building was sold off a bunch of years ago. I can't remember the exact, you know, I can't remember the exact dates. I know it was approved before the pandemic. I think it's sold over. But just globally. It is very hard to force projects that have been permitted to force developers to just build them right now when other people want them. I totally understand the sentiments from people. The two projects that were mentioned on Chestnut Street are not the only projects that are permitted in this community that have not been built. So there are things that have been lingering for a very long time. What we found in the past is trying to work with the builder, trying to work with the property owner, and trying to communicate with them to, you know, come out, do that maintenance at least on the outside. I'm sure somewhere in this room, Gus is somewhere. There he is. You know, we do as I think Councilor Morangelo articulated what I would say actually quite well because we did have a conversation. I have a conversation with a few of you. We do our annual check-in with the builder. We try to get them to come out to do more maintenance. you know, for whatever reasons, they're just not coming out to finish the project. And I totally understand the sentiments that people have. Mr. Ciccone's right. I've talked to him before about this. There's just only so many tools in the toolbox. Just to address, like, abandoned properties or eminent domain or these other things. I know politically and, you know, throughout the community, people just want to hurry everything up, right? And I totally, I want them built. Like, it's no, this is not something we're thrilled of.

Yeah.

Not just this project, but other ones, right? But sometimes other factors come into play. It's not exactly the best time to be buying wood, steel, hiring labor, inflation, tariffs, uncertain economic conditions. The only certainty right now in this industry is uncertainty. And so incentivizing a developer that may not have deep pockets, that may not have their own equipment, they've got to lease it. Some builders are just mom and pop builders. They run kind of on the skin of their own teeth. So I think it's very, very hard. I know this particular project has other sensitivity because there's a couple units that are dedicated to veterans housing. But at the same time, if there was an issue with veterans housing, I think Shannon would bring that forward to us if there was a real emergency. So I just think, unfortunately, there's not a lot we can do. I think Gus is in the audience. We'll try to touch base with the developer again, see if he can come out and deal with at least the lawn and at least the site of it. I just want everybody to know, just because a project's permitted doesn't mean that they have to come build it right away. The planning board may listen to this, or the ZBA, and maybe there's some way they can put a condition into future building that says if the shovel's not in the ground within a certain amount of time, they've got to come back to the board and give an update. Those types of things are things that planning boards and ZBAs have done in the past. I think Conservation Commission has done that type of stuff. So there are maybe some light mechanisms, but the stuff that's already permitted that's there is going to be very challenging to the community. Eminent domain and abandoned properties only make this stuff actually take way longer time. You end up having to go through the Attorney General's office. You have to do all this coordination. You have to compensate those people for eminent domain. You don't just take it. Fair market value. Fair market value. So then there's a financial element to it. There's an entire legal ecosystem that revolves around this. Getting involved in an eminent domain is not something that is advantageous. Building relationships with the landowners, the builders, and the community around there is far better avenue. And I know that this one has been a disappointing one like it is for me. I'll address a couple of the other stuff under TA report, but I thought I could at least answer your question, Mr. Chairman.

Just a quick question, Jamie, through the Chair. There's a vacant bylaw, vacant property bylaw in the town. Can we use that to clean it up like Bobby was asking, you know, mow the lawn, et cetera?

Yeah, I don't believe that bylaw is actually – The vacant property bylaw is not what you're thinking. It's a completely different, separate situation. And there's a whole legal, what's that?

That's for abandoned properties.

Right. That's for abandoned properties where the property owner and the developer are no longer known. They've taken off. We can't find them. The bond doesn't, you know, we've taken the bond maybe. But if that was the case, who would you find? Go ahead, Mark. I just want to be careful. This is a whole other discussion.

That bylaw was passed in the context of the last bad real estate downturn when there were a lot of properties underwater. Banks were taking them back because the property owners couldn't afford the mortgages. They were underwater, and they took off. So in that case... as I said, banks then had possession of the properties, and so that was a requirement that they register with the town so we were aware of where they were. And I don't know if there's some minimum maintenance involved or not, but otherwise, we don't have a general maintenance bylaw. We can't require anybody to maintain their property exterior.

Okay, so... WAIT FOR THE TA'S REPORT. YEAH. WAIT FOR THE TA'S REPORT. NO, IT'S NOT THERE YET. I'LL GET YOU, ALL RIGHT? MY LAST THING IS I JUST WANT TO GIVE MY CONDOLENCES TO THE CATALOG BECAUSE PAUL PASSED AWAY TWO OR THREE WEEKS AGO, BUT HE DID A LOT FOR THE TOWN. HE WAS ON THE TOWN COUNCIL FOR YEARS. HE WAS A STATE REP. HE DID A LOT FOR THIS TOWN TO MAKE IT WHAT IT IS TODAY. HE WAS IN HIS 90s, BUT MAY HE REST IN PEACE, HE DID A LOT IN HIS TIME. SO I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE WE DIDN'T FORGET HIM. ALL RIGHT, MOVING ON. SUBCOMMITTEE AND AD HOC COMMITTEE REPORTS. JOINT SUBCOMMITTEE.

We got closer to outlining our goals and defining it. We're in the process now of starting an educational approach for the town on exactly where we are from a financial standpoint and thinking through what our next three to five years is going to look like from a budgetary perspective. We're also looking at ways to improve our approach to determining our budgets and making sure we're separating operating capital expenses, recognizing that that's not a change that we can fix overnight, but is a process. So we've started that process. As I said, the first piece is going to be the educational piece, just so we better understand in a simple way what what the truth is about where our taxes go and where funds are being spent in the town. I think that's going to be, that has the potential to be a fairly powerful tool for helping residents of Franklin understand what they're paying for, what they're getting, and what they're not. Right now we don't have the next JBSC meeting on the calendar yet because we'd like to get a first pass at that educational piece.

Thank you. Thank you. Excellent. EDC, the next meeting is September 17th at 6 p.m. Mike, do you have anything or just wait for the next meeting?

Yeah, no, I'll just add to that. So our next meeting is the 17th. It's actually an interesting meeting. lot of the other boards in town the planning board CBA conservation will be in attendance we're asking them to come forward and provide suggestions on again ways to enhance economic development in town to Streamline the process I hear all the time that our processes is one of the fastest in the in the East But we want to confirm that and see if there's opportunities and even to Jamie's point that he just brought up To to how do we put in stipulations for developers to complete a project potentially could be in that discussion so it'll be an interesting conversation and I'm very thankful for our the other boards to take time out of their schedule to actually come in front of us on the 17th to talk about that. So tune in, and as I heard Bricolai say, it's kind of like permitting 101 for novices. So it'll be a good conversation.

Thanks, Mike. That's excellent. Communication subcommittee, no meeting scheduled. Caroline?

Yeah, no meeting scheduled yet. We're hoping to get together in September, so hopefully we'll have a date set for that soon. We did have our first off regular office hours a couple weeks ago in the library on a Saturday morning. And it was, I thought, really well attended. We had, I believe, six counselors who were there. quite a few um a good handful of residents who came to talk to us as well so um several you know different conversations i didn't have a chance to talk to everyone obviously since we were all broken up into into separate conversations but um seemed like there were a lot of um good things that were brought up. I think the minutes for that are part of this, so you'll see. So in the future, we're hoping to have another one. I think we're going to try to do the next one at the library again and then bring in the schools once we get past the beginning of school season.

THAT'S WHAT WE'VE GOT. THANK YOU. TOWN CHAIR, AD HOC COMMITTEE, WE WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE A MEETING TOMORROW NIGHT, BUT UNFORTUNATELY, THERE WAS A DEATH OF A FAMILY, AND SOMEONE HAS TO GO TO A WAKE, SO WE HAVE TO CANCEL THAT. SO WE WILL GET ANOTHER MEETING SCHEDULED IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS OR SO. AND POLICE STATION BUILDING COMMITTEE, THERE'S NO MEETING SCHEDULED. SO THAT'S TO BE DETERMINED LATER. TOWN ADMINISTRATOR'S REPORT.

Sure, so through Mr. Chairman to the council and the community and everybody here, I'll answer a few questions and make a couple quick points before we get to the staff introductions of Michelle and Sophie. One, I just want to really highlight, regardless of what people may think of the legislation that was signed in the library, and their personal opinions. It was an extraordinary attendance. It was so filled. It was very hot. But it was really a proud moment for this community to be able to have such a landmark moment happen in the nation's first public lending library. And I thank the governor and all of our legislative delegation. There were school committee members there, counselors there. And it was just a special moment to show what a beautiful building that is. It's such a pride and joy for our community. And the good news was is I know the meals taxed that day was pretty good because there were a lot of people that went out to eat right after that. And so, you know, that is what our library does do in addition to all the incredible programming They bring people here from everywhere to see where the story started. And on the way out, I think I had two senators, I had a couple reps, the board of library commissioners from the state. I mean, they oversee the whole Commonwealth. I mean, they said, we had no idea how beautiful your downtown was. And, you know, I just think when you hear people say that from other parts of the state, from the Berkshires, I mean, they meant it. They went through that building, and I think this community knows what a special place that is. And so I think as we move forward on anything, just remind ourselves how lucky this community is to have that library and thank the governor for coming out. Huge shout out to the Franklin Conservation Commission. They have now started at River Bend Conservation Area a tree farm. This is the seventh one in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to educate kids and families on forestry stewardship. And if anybody does not know where River Bend Park is, it's over near Fairmont Fruit Farm. There's a little road that goes down and a lot. And if you like to be outdoors, it's a really, really one of the quietest, most beautiful places in all of Franklin. It's an amazing spot. So thanks to the Conservation Commission for that. I echo Ted's comments for our election. Incredible job by Nancy, Melissa, Stephanie, Diane, the wardens, the election workers. We have come a tremendously long way in the last six or seven years, and that is because we have an incredible group of election workers. So great job again. MBTA communities, I sent a note out to you. The law that was passed a few years ago, we got our formal compliance letter this week from the state, which was really great news. And so it puts us in the category to be able to still be competitive for those multi-million dollar grants like MassWorks. If people don't know what MassWorks is, Grove Street was largely rebuilt on the southern half from a state MassWorks grant. The Lieutenant Governor Pulido came out for that. It was a great public-private partnership. So this isn't just something that's a small deal. This was actually a really big deal for our planning office. I already talked a little bit about 122 Chestnut Street. I know the building commissioner's here. We will do another phone call to the developer and try to see if we can't take care of the weeds and the overgrown grass. I do want to highlight the other comment about the other development behind Franklin Ford and off of Chestnut Street. That project that people are unhappy with, rightfully so, it is a tough project. I want to highlight that project was like Madeline Village, up off of Cottage Street. Those two projects are the result of the town of Franklin being under the 10% on 40B. So it's just highlights that when you are not above that 10%, which Franklin is right now, when you're not above that 10%, those types of projects end up happening that the community is really against. So I just wanted to make sure people were very clear that project was what we call an unfriendly 40B. And it was because we were below 10%. We were below 10% in like 2018-ish, 2019. And that's when those two projects were actually permitted. And when those go through, when you're under 10%, the local community has no say in any of it. They go to the state to get approval. So that project was approved by the state. Really quickly, just for a plug, on flock cameras, because they came up, I'm sure the folks that spoke are well aware that our police department website has an entire portal with our policy. and all of the data that's there. But just to the public that's concerned about this issue, I would encourage you to go to the police department web page. The flock cameras have been installed for three or four years now. We are all very much aware of what's going on in other cities and towns, and I've been working with the chair to try to figure out when the right time for that discussion is. You guys have a lot of business to do. You have a lot of goals to get through. A bit of this is also time management, but I understand there's a lot of comments from residents. In the meantime, while we're setting up that meeting, I just hope anybody that's interested in this issue, please take a look at the policy. You can also contact the police department and try to sit down with the chief or the deputy chief. All of them are willing to talk to any resident about our policy, how the policy can be improved, how we got to that place, and what we do with our data. And I would just encourage every resident to do the best they can to focus on what we have jurisdictionally in Franklin. This town council and everybody here can only focus on Franklin. I know that there are stories out there online about other states and other places, and I'm not trying to defend the company or the flock cameras. But our business here is obviously Franklin, and if eventually the council decides that they don't want to have the flock cameras, we certainly respond. respect that decision, but I also encourage everybody to take a look at the police department website. They've put a ton of work into this for a long time, and I'd just like to make sure the residents are aware of that. I also want to echo what Councilor Cormier-Ledger said about the schools and the theater funding. He's 100% correct. Sidewalks or other projects in town that are going on that people see have no bearing on that $75,000 that the council restored into the budget. My recommendation would be instead of conflating different things going on in town, please email the superintendent and assistant superintendent. They have, I think, an educational packet or materials. And it's not just on the lights. I know that working with the facilities department as well as Colin on the school department, there's been a lot of different pieces of funding that have been cobbled together. And the superintendent at least presented to me, and I think the school community as well, a game plan for restoration of the entire theater, not just the reinstallation of the lights, but the entire Mercer Auditorium, because I know he's somewhere in this room, but I think it's the Mercer Auditorium, just to maybe, yep. but in all seriousness they've put together an incredible plan on how to redo the entire auditorium and I just think this misinformation gets out there that money is still there and is part of the superintendent's plan on being able to renovate that facility and then finally The executive session minutes regarding the contract negotiations were intended to be tonight, but I think in working with the chair, the executive session, just because it's going to end up being late and there's a couple members not physically present, that executive session will be continued to the next meeting, I think, Mr. Chairman. So we hope that at the next meeting the minutes will be all approved from last year as well as this year, and then people can read for themselves some of the dynamics. and whatnot. So hopefully that answers a bunch of the questions that have come up tonight. Which brings me to the marquee moment. Got to exhale, pretty excited. So obviously on the agenda we have two new staff hires in our office. I'm going to read a quick introduction and then I'm going to ask them to say a few words. There's been a lot of transitions before I get started. It's been a very long year. As everybody knows, the people that you see up here, myself and Julie McCann and Mark Sorrell, for the better part of the last year have been the only three people that have been in my office. And as I look back, I'm extraordinarily proud to work with these folks and can't commend Julie and Mark enough for their incredible teamwork and valuable work that they've done in our office to keep the ship afloat. And I sit here and say on this moment where both Sophie and Michelle are coming on board, where Liz also came on board six months ago, and I appreciate Ali Rehum's comments a lot about the incredible work. If you don't know what's going on at Franklin, by the way, you're obviously not on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, signed up for our newsletters, because if you don't know what's going on, you are not watching what Liz is putting out, the incredible amount of information that she's getting out there. At some point, I don't know how we did it, But I feel like after the last year we are as strong as we've ever been and I'm extremely proud and want to thank Julie and Mark very much for sticking with this over the last year for their incredible teamwork and just their incredible spirit to keep everything going during this difficult time where there are people We're not in my office other than just the three of us. You look at the comparables and the Needhams and the Naveks, they've got two assistant town managers, they've got three Julies in the office, and somehow we were able to run this town and it's really due to the remarkable talent that we have on this staff. With that being said, this is an incredible, incredible moment for me and all of us, but I have formally appointed Michelle Monsegar, who's right over here, as Franklin's new Deputy Town Administrator, effective September 14th. She is going to leave a little early tonight because she's cramming in one more vacation before she takes over, and I think she's getting a good vibe of how much work this will be. But Michelle comes to Franklin with extensive public administration experience and municipal finance experience. She served as the assistant town administrator for all town departments in Hingham. until the addition of a second assistant town administrator was hired. I'm not asking for one, by the way. I'm not asking for one. Good. When her role shifted to focus on finance. She has well over a decade of financial experience at the local level in Hingham and in the city of Cambridge, and five years of experience at the federal government level. Michelle is originally from the beautiful town of Harvard, Massachusetts, and holds a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University. and a master's degree in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. I'd ask you to come up to the mic and welcome Michelle to the town of Franklin.

thank you so much jamie good evening can everyone hear me yeah okay good evening my name is michelle montague i'm your new deputy town administrator it's so exciting to be here tonight um jamie mentioned a little bit of my background but i just wanted to say you know i started my career at the federal level and i felt really far from the ground i decided to pivot and and i really enjoy working in local government where i can get to know folks i'm excited to get to know people in franklin to learn the culture and character of this community i got a chance to meet many of the counselors this evening i've met almost all of the department heads through the interview process and this afternoon and franklin has a fantastic team it's such an honor to be a part of it i really want to thank jamie and the entire town of franklin for the warm welcome and for giving me your trust and confidence in this position. I'm excited to get to work. I officially start on September 14th. I'm looking forward to working with the Joint Budget Subcommittee in particular and trying to address some of the budget challenges. I have a couple ideas, and you can shoot them down, but I thought even just for the educational series, maybe we could call it All About the Benjamins. I don't know what that is. The Ben Franklin stuff's been overdone here or not, but anyways, I'm excited to get started, and I look forward to working with each and every one of you in the coming years. Thank you.

Michelle, enjoy that vacation.

Thanks, Michelle. And then because things have been so crazy, I never really got to formally introduce our new administrative assistant. So this past summer, we hired Sophie Smith as a part-time administrative assistant in our office. Sophie comes to us as a recent graduate of UMass Boston, which is also my alma mater from where I got my master's degree, with a bachelor's degree in political science. She wanted to be in politics, and she's ready to go. So she's going to get a good taste of politics in Franklin. Sophie held leadership roles in student government and also worked part-time throughout college. She worked as a data analyst intern at BW Research and also completed an internship in the United States House of Representatives in Washington, D.C., and also with a good friend of Consul DiLocco and I, the state senator in South Boston. Sophie is a lifelong resident of Rentham and a graduate of King Phillip High School, and I don't want to hear anybody in this room give her a hard time on that, okay? This is her first college career job and is an ambitious career in public service. And I had to make a plug, and I'm gonna make another plug, but she also hosts the uber cool, 22 years old by the way, the uber cool Civics with Sophie series at the Rentham Public Library to try to help residents of the town of Rentham understand their systems and understand elections and their ballots. And so if you go click on the link in the memo, you can go sign up on our Instagram page and follow the cool stuff. She's doing erythema, so I just want to introduce Sylvie Smith to everybody and have her come up and say a couple words.

Thank you, Jamie. That was super nice. I mean, he pretty much regurgitated my resume right there, so I don't need to say much on that. But I'm super excited to be here. I kind of share the same sentiment that Michelle does where, you know, I come with federal and state experience, but what I was lacking there was community. And so I'm really excited to be able to work at the municipal level and to get that community. So I'm excited for this opportunity. I'm excited to work with a great team and to learn from you as well. So thank you so much, and I look forward to getting to know you more.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, just as I close out really quickly, I just want to acknowledge my little tiny staff upstairs. We realized this last week. We have one of our employees who's in, and I'll get to this in a minute. One of our employees is in their 70s. Our senior workers were largely in their 60s. I'm in my 50s. We now have two employees in our 40s. We have one employee in their 30s. Sophie joins us in her 20s. Our interns over the summer, who you're gonna get a presentation from on October 14th, three Franklin High School students, sophomore, junior, and senior, are in their teens. We've legally covered it all in our department across the board from an age demographic perspective. And so we are gonna actually, because we just realized this, we're actually gonna set up a photo with our entire team to just document at one moment in time I think seven decades of generations that are in the town administrator's office right now, which is actually really, really cool. So I appreciate you listening to me say that because we realized it when we were all sitting in the office the other day and we said, what do you guys think about AI? And everybody had a different opinion. And I was like, that's kind of neat. So thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the council. I can't do any of this without all of you. You can't do a lot of it without me, but for all of your support, whether you voted yes on my contract, voted yes on the Deputy Town Administrator, voted no, yes, it doesn't matter. I know all of you wanted the best for us, and I think I greatly appreciate ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT IN GETTING THIS TEAM UP AND GOING. AND I THINK AS YOU CAN SEE, YOU KNOW, WE HAVE A REAL ALL-STAR STAFF AND, YOU KNOW, WITH COMMENTS TONIGHT, LIKE ALI'S COMMENTS ABOUT LIZ AND EVERYBODY'S, EVERYBODY HOPEFULLY WILL GROW INTO THESE POSITIONS AND JUST WANT TO THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT. SO THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

BEFORE YOU GO, RICKY HAS ONE QUESTION FOR US.

I thought that mic drop was like the moment.

I'm coming back to be contentious with the administrator. I am not. And I will only take but a second. And it is to bring up a concern that a lot of seniors hold and a lot of everyone feels, I think. We all know we had a tragedy in this community within a month ago. And what gets talked about by the coffee shop bunch and the senior bunch and others is the speed of these electric scooters, bicycles. And while we have our police department here, thank you so much for your service, I think one of these days we need to shine. Maybe we can be ahead of the curve. We can be more proactive. Let's be the town that figures out a way to make these things safer and slower. And I really want to piggyback on the lady's talk about the helmets and, you know, keeping these kids safe because these things are unsafe. And I see them go by my home. I see them come up the sidewalk. I see them... We see them everywhere. All of us do. And someone is going to... And I hope I'm wrong. But somebody's going to get hurt on one of these things. And maybe our hands are tied. Maybe there's federal laws. I don't know. State laws that allow these things and allow the speeds that some of them are going. But I... I took enough of your time, but really I just think it's something that if it's not our town, it's somebody else's town, someone has to try to figure out a way to make these things slower or safer, or maybe it's age limits. Pick a number, but thank you for your time.

NO, HE'S RIGHT. OKAY, MOVING ON. WE HAVE NO PROCLAMATIONS OR RECOGNITIONS. MOVING ON, APPROVAL OF MINUTES. I'LL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO APPROVE THE MINUTES OF JULY 22, 2026. SO MOVED. SECOND. SECOND. ALL RIGHT, I HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. ADDITIONS, DELETIONS? We have to do a roll call, do we have to do a roll call on this? Yeah, everything.

This is July 22nd. Okay, Mr. Chairman, this is for the approval of minutes stated July 22nd, 2026. We'll do a roll call. Councilor Ajuku? Yes. Councilor Morangelo? Yes. Councilor Molloy? Yes. Councilor Callaway-Tripp?

Yes.

Councilor Grella? Yes. Chairman? Yes. Myself, yes. Going to our folks online. Councilor Griffith?

Yes.

And Councilor LeBlanc? Yes. 9-0, SIR.

MOTION PASSED. I'LL ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO APPROVE THE MINUTES OF AUGUST 15, 2026. SO MOVED. SECOND. I HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. ADDITIONS, DELETIONS?

Mr. Chairman, I just have a clarification. Should only members present for that meeting vote?

I was just going to say that.

Would that be standard?

It's fine. It's not legally. You can vote either way. Correct. I was going to ask that question.

It seems weird to vote on a meeting that some of us weren't at.

As bizarre as it is, you can vote on minutes even if you weren't at a meeting.

Well.

All right. It's your own choice.

Right. I think typically they abstain. People that didn't, they usually abstain.

This is for the meeting on August 15th. Okay, ready?

Yeah.

Okay, Mr. Chairman, this is going to be a roll call vote for the approval of minutes for the meeting held at the office hours August 15th, 2026. Councillor Ajuku? I'll abstain. Abstain. Councillor Morangelo?

Yes.

Councillor Malloy? Abstain. Councillor Calloway-Tripp?

Yes.

Myself as an abstain. Councillor Grillo? Yes. Chairman? Yes. Our folks online, Councilor Griffith?

Yes.

And Councilor LeBlanc?

Yes.

So that is the vote of six yeses, no, and three abstentions.

Motion passed. Moving on, appointments. Here is the big one, chief of police, James West. Where is he?

Mr. Chairman, formally, I think the memo speaks for itself. I hope everybody had an opportunity to look at it, but obviously I'm nominating Deputy Chief, I can't call you James, Jimmy West, to be ratified by the Town Council as the next Chief of Police for the Franklin Police Department. I just want to make sure the public is aware. of a couple things. One, you know, kudos to Chief Lynch and the entire police department. You know, we've got an unbelievable police department and we've got succession planning and leadership going on, I think, for a long time. So I think Councilor DeLarco remembers many many years ago when we did these reforms in the contracts we were looking at trying to make sure we had proper uh leadership for a long period of time and we what did i tell you we're going to try to hire from internally for a long long time right so we're fulfilling the commitments of the previous council for many years I just want to make sure the public knows in our town charter, I do the formal nomination. The town council ratifies my nomination for the chief of police. There's, I think, six or seven jobs that y'all ratify, the fire chief, DPW director, etc. This isn't just out of nowhere. There is a competitive process. We did do an internal posting with leadership positions as the only ones that were eligible. And we do a full assessment center. We do a full interview with a panel of other department heads. It took all summer. This isn't something that just, you know, we do in a week or two. The assessment center, just for the new folks, is actually a firm that we hire independently to come in. They bring in ex-police chiefs, maybe a fire chief, sometimes maybe a former town administrator, but they bring in people with, you know, probably between the assessors, maybe they have five, four or five. I mean, you're talking about 100, 150 years of law enforcement or public safety experience that are actually asking them role play questions on media relations and dealing with culture and dealing with budgets. They have to write essays. I mean, it's a fairly extensive process. So I just want to make sure for the new folks here, but also the folks at home, it's not like this is a rubber stamp. We go through a pretty extensive process. And so, you know, with the training that Jimmy has, with the leadership that he's had, it's all laid out in the memo. I won't rehash it. the decades he's had, I think 20 plus years as a sergeant and moving up the totem pole. It's my honor and privilege to nominate Jimmy as the next Chief of Police.

You're up.

Well, I appreciate it. First of all, Mr. Chairman, council members, thank you very much. And to Jamie, first of all, thank you for the confidence you have in me and for your nomination. This department, this town, this community has been a big part of my life for a long time. I've been a police officer here for over 25 years and almost close to 30 total in law enforcement. The responsibilities that come with this position aren't lost on me. I appreciate them. I'd like to thank Chief Lynch, of course, for his leadership, his mentorship, and for the basis and the foundation that he's laid out for the department. And so I really look forward to continuing with the men and women of the department and continuing that into the future. Just want to thank my family, who's here, my wife Lisa, my son Robbie, and my daughter Krista, for all the years of late nights and call-outs and missing birthdays and parties. It's hard work. And buckle up, because I think as chief, it doesn't get easier. And finally, my commitment to the community is very simple. I'm going to work hard. I'm going to lead with fairness and compassion and transparency, which has been talked about today. So I'm really excited for the opportunity. And again, thank you very much for the nomination. I appreciate it. Thank you.

THERE'S A FEW THERE. SO AT THIS POINT, WE WILL MOVE TO... GOT TO READ IT, AND THEN WE'LL DO A ROLL CALL, OKAY?

It's my honor to read this appointment. This is for the Town of Franklin Police Chief per Town Charter Section 4-2-5. The Town Administrator has appointed James West to serve as Police Chief of the Town of Franklin, subject to ratification of the Town Council. The motion is to ratify the appointment by the town administrator of James West to serve as police chief of the town of Franklin effective November 6th, 2026, pending successful completion of pre-employment physical and background check. And I will do a roll call, Mr. Chairman.

Roll call vote. Do you want to second that?

Yeah, would someone like to second the motion? I second the motion. Okay, that's great. You wouldn't want to not do it. So, Councilor Ajuku. Yes. Councilor Morangelo. Yes. Councilor Malloy. Yes. Councilor Calloway-Tripp.

Yes.

Vice Chair, Councilor Garland. Yes. Myself, yes. Chairman DeLarco. Yes. Online, Councilor Griffith.

Yes.

And online, Councilor LeBlanc. Yes. That's 9-0. 9-0. Thank you.

Appreciate it.

I'm going to call a recess for a few minutes. Five minutes? Five minutes. Photo? Photo.

Recording stopped.

I call the meeting back to order.

Recording in progress.

The new appointments of the board and committee members. The clerk will read the appointments.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is dated September 2nd, 2026, entitled Committee Appointments. The town administrator has appointed the following individuals to serve on town boards and committees with terms effective September 2nd, 2026. To the Agricultural Commission, Jennifer Sweeney of 131 Stone Ridge Road with a term to expire June 30th of 2029. The Community Preservation Committee, John Shaughnessy of 58 Stone Hedge Road to expire June 30th, 2028. To the Finance Committee, John Lopresti of 109 Jefferson Road, term to expire June 30th, 2029. To the Municipal Affordable Housing Trust, Amon Cohen of 9 Independence Way, term to expire June 30th, 2027. The motion is to ratify the appointments by the town administrator of the above listed individuals to serve as members of town boards and committees as described above.

I HAVE A MOTION. DO I HAVE A SECOND? SECOND. DO I HAVE A SECOND? ANY OF THESE PEOPLE HERE? YEP. JOHN.

AND JOHN IS ON ZOOM. AND AMAN IS ALSO ON ZOOM.

Do you have any comments or discussions that you guys want to bring up?

No, thank you. I'm happy to serve.

You're happy to serve. Same. Any discussion with the council? Just thank you. Thank you very much.

Appreciate you stepping up.

Just thank you. It's hard enough to get people. We're just happy that you're here.

Okay, ready for a roll call vote, sir?

Ready for the roll call vote.

Okay, this will be a roll call vote for the approval of committee appointments.

Councillor Ajuku? Sorry, confirming all of them. Confirming all of them, yes.

Yes. Councillor Morangelo? Yes. Councillor Malloy?

Yes.

Councillor Callaway-Tripp? Yes. Myself, yes. Vice Chair, Councillor Grillo? Yes. Chairman DeLarco? Yes. On line, Councillor Griffith? Yes. Online Consular Blank. Yes. 9-0, sir.

Welcome aboard. Thank you for serving. Okay, moving on. No public hearings. No license transaction. Presentation and discussion. Update on the sewer capacity transfer to Medway and Millis. Jamie?

Yeah, through you, Mr. Chairman, so great news. We, you and Council LeBlanc may, you know, add a few more comments if you want. The folks that negotiated this did meet a couple weeks ago or a few weeks ago. And it was a very productive meeting. I think it was only about an hour. And so the agreement between the representatives from Franklin as well as Millis and Medway, they would transfer 150,000 gallons to each community at a rate of $10.50 per gallon. In the agreements, we put some of the suggested changes from the last agreements in yellow. AND I JUST WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE AND THANK DOUG MARTIN. I KNOW HE'S AROUND. THERE HE IS. JUST FOR GETTING THE DATA SETS THAT THE COUNCIL HAD ASKED FOR FROM THE LAST MEETING, ALL THE PERMITTED DEVELOPMENT CHART IS IN THERE. AS YOU CAN SEE FROM ALL OF THE HOUSING AND COMMERCIAL PROJECTS THAT ARE PERMITTED BUT NOT YET BUILT, That's a lot of housing and a lot of commercial industrial, and it only really hits about 100,000 gallons of sewer capacity. So even with the 150,000, 300,000 transfer, the town of Franklin's still going to have plenty of sewer capacity. And in the meeting, they made a comment, and you may want to say it.

Yes, I'm just going to bring this.

Why don't you say it? The entire town of Medway.

Because that's what really, because I didn't want to, at first I was like, yeah, Medway made a mistake by selling it to Millis years ago. I said, now you want us to sell it. But they said that we would have to sell, I mean, we would have to use all of what Medway has for sewer capacity, and we'd still have some left over. So that's a lot of capacity that we still got left over. So that kind of flipped it from Council LeBlanc, too. He agreed with me on that, too, because we are saving so much. We're saving $3.15.

hundred fifty oh yeah three million yeah again you know you're certainly covering the cost and then a little additional after that as you can see in the memo there's about a hundred thousand dollar savings in the budget that will phase in over time and the assessment will go down so I think this is actually if you look back 25 years from when mr. Nutting got here and some of the counselors back then I mean I hope people appreciate, I wish this was on Facebook. For 25 years, you guys on the council and your predecessors, Mr. Mercer, many others, have been investing in your infrastructure like no other community, and you now have a surplus amount. You could absorb the entire town of Medway. So if you're concerned about development, Picture the entire town of Medway being in Franklin. I don't think that's going to happen ever, if not anytime soon. But because the system is so strong and tight, and it improves all the time, Mike Maglio, Brutus, has been an invaluable person. But again, the councilors have voted and prioritized this stuff for decades. The planning board has done a really good job on a lot of projects to make sure that developers are improving these pipes. One of the members even told us at the end, they looked at the chart of the million gallons per day and they go, how the hell did you guys go from 3 million down to 2.1 million? I mean, they're just looking at it. That's because of the work that the DPW has been doing for decades on your sewer and water pipes.

We sleeved a lot.

you did and you know so it wouldn't escape to the ground doesn't go into the ground yeah so you know really kudos to the town yes we've done a lot there's very few if any communities in Massachusetts that are on their own system right except for the MWRA in Boston and stuff like that there's very few communities that have anywhere near this kind of excess capacity it sets the town up to be in a position right now but also in the future it still allows for plenty of growth in the commercial industrial sector industrial parks or elsewhere so i don't know if you have anything else to add Mr. Chairman or Mr. LeBlanc it's going to save the public and we probably can pay some of the interceptor with some of this money

I don't know. Counsel LeBlanc, do you have anything to say? It was kind of a tough meeting. We tried to go to 15, but we came down a little bit to be friendly. They wanted four. Go ahead, Counsel LeBlanc. I'm sorry.

I want to reiterate what everyone has said. I certainly went into the meeting on that day focused on the $15 and And even I expressed to them that day when it came up back in July, I probably wouldn't even have voted even if it was $15 back then because I didn't know the capacity numbers, whether or not we really wanted to understand that. And I do appreciate the effort that was put in by Doug and everyone in explaining and projecting out what's out there. And as Jamie just alluded to, all those projects are only $100,000, 100,000 gallons, and there's still capacity beyond that. I mean, to the other point, for those who are, I'm not gonna say anti-development, this technically takes 300,000 of capacity, which is development. But at the same time, folks like myself who are, I guess, pros on when I say smart development, there's still capacity out there for us to continue to grow the commercial, potential residential, but continue to try and grow the tax base within town. The numbers are a little bit different, but that's what a negotiation is, and I think everyone left um and any good negotiation everyone doesn't get what they want out of it and um and quite frankly it's it's more gallons than what was originally proposed but at the same time this takes care of pretty much everybody for the foreseeable future i don't think this will ever come up again yeah and maybe in 50 years but i'll be dead in 50 years and it'll be some other council's problem at that point but i i think this is a win-win um for it's a win for franklin It's $3-plus million of money. It's a reduction of ongoing expenses every year. And it sets up Millicent and Franklin, who are our neighbors, our friends, and to continue to develop as well. So I definitely will be voting in the affirmative for this tonight. So thank you.

Thank you, Mike. And Mike hit the nail on the head. We are helping Medway and Millis, and they are our neighbors. So, you know, maybe someday we might need them, and they can return the favor. I'll go to the council. Is there any council?

I got a couple quick questions. So, clarification. The title, I guess it's Title V sewer projected. It has at 253,765. Actual is 100,339. So, but I'm assuming that the Title V projected is what they assumed we would be using versus the actual. That would be...

That's correct. Yeah, Doug Martin, Town of Franklin, Water and Sewers. Yeah, that is correct. So when we go through the planning stage, we look at Title V flows so that we can assess kind of what the projected uh, capacity wouldn't be needed for our system. Um, so that's what we have to go on. That's, you know, they were developed, I don't know, early 2000s, um, those total five flows based on old plumbing codes and whatnot. So then when we actually go back and look at what those facilities are actually using today, it's consistently less. So that's what, that's the difference. Does that make sense?

Yes, it does. Um, then while you're still standing there, I have another question. Sure. Um, Okay, max flow at 2007 we had 3.11. From what I just think I heard is we reduced that because of putting the sleeves and all that stuff. My concern is if we actually, and I get that if we put down a medway in Franklin we'd still have more, but I get nervous because At 3.11 is our highest max flow, and our total capacity is 3.64. That's not a big difference.

Correct. Yeah, so, I mean, as you can see on this table, the flows fluctuate every year. Obviously, growth is increasing, so we're going to get more flow from that. as well as weather patterns. So you can see by the stars, those are the dry or drought years. 2018 was the one with that high, 3.11. That was not a drought year. I think that was a really wet year. So we did have a lot of that infiltration and inflow. which we're continuing to invest in our system to remove that. So that's the groundwater, that's the leaky manhole seeping in. We don't want to send that water to get treated because we have to pay for it. We just want to send the wastewater to get treated. So we're going to continue to invest in our system like you have done over the last 10 plus years. To prevent that number from getting up that high.

And the interceptor will help too.

The interceptor will help too. Yeah, drastically.

That's all new. Yeah.

Okay. Those are the only questions that I have.

Yeah, so I just want some clarification. When we had the last meeting, we had the rate was 15, and I was under the impression that that was already agreed to before the meeting, and I just wanted to make sure to clarify that was not agreed to before the meeting.

That was definitely not agreed to before the meeting. Okay.

So it was just sort of a placeholder for negotiations?

Yeah.

It was a placeholder from a staff perspective, talking to Millis, talking to Medway for years, talking to Pollution Control District, former councilors, current councilors, staff, around the board. It's really hard. It was just a recommended starting place that was reasonable depending on how everybody felt about it. And I recognize, by the way, and I said this at multiple meetings, but I'll say it again, you have a semi-valuable asset here, right? So if you were to build new sewer, Those rates that were in that report from Arcadis would show if you want to add sewer in your municipality, those are what the rates are that you're going to be paying per gallon for new capacity. Millis and Medway really don't have any ability to go build new sewer capacity. It was just trying to say on one side of the spectrum, here's a perspective. But I also acknowledge and completely did with the other towns, there was a formula that was used for a long time before that I think we all agreed is maybe a little antiquated, but it's very hard to negotiate those new types of agreements and systems. So I was just trying to aim somewhere in the middle to start the conversation. And you guys did a great job. Honestly, within, we've been talking with them for five, six, seven, eight years. But kudos to you guys. You had a meeting in July. You had another meeting offline. And here you are within a month and a half. I mean, that's very, very productive.

Do you feel like this rate is the best rate that we could agree to if we had, you know, negotiations?

I do, because I think they recognize the position we're in. We recognize the position they're in. You know, I think to someone, I think to Councilor DiLocco's comment a minute ago, you know, you have to kind of be neighborly in some of this, too. We all have to work together as communities on a myriad of issues, right? So, you know, they're going to have some feelings about Franklin on Tri-County or this or that. And don't forget, all of our towns work together on mutual aid for police and fire. I mean, we're inextricably linked, right? I mean, we all have to work together. And so I think everybody felt like this was a number that they could pass here, but also get approved in Millis and Medway by their boards. And then they have to go get them approved via town meeting. So I think all three communities feel like this is a good place to be.

And finally, I guess I'd like, you know, because the public's like, we're getting this money, where is it going? I know it can only be used in the sewer line item. Is it going to be used to lower rates, invest in the infrastructure, invest in conservation? Or is that for us to decide later?

I would never say lower rates. I would say stabilize rates. I think to Doug's point a minute ago, I think your decisions in the future are going to be whether you want to save that money and maybe talk to the finance folks about a high yield capital account, different ways to invest the money. On the other hand, it'll go into retained earnings and you'll come out with a surplus a year and three or four months from now. So when you go into 2027, it'll get certified in the free cash cycle for probably the fall of 2027, probably right around November. And then when we go through capital, if you want to reinvest that into the system, like Doug's saying, so you make the system better, you could do that. You could just sit on the money for a rainy day. We could analyze whether or not y'all want to pay off some of the debt from the Beaver Street Interceptor. But those decisions are pretty far down the line because in the agreement, they have to go to town meeting in November and they have a deadline to pay the money by the end of January. They're going to write us a check and send us money. We'll go in through the treasurer collector, but then that doesn't get certified until the end of next calendar year. So it's still a couple years away from when you guys would have a decision on how to spend it or not spend it.

If we were to invest in conservation of water and sewer, we'd easily have more capacity to sell to other towns in the future? Or is that sort of not, can't conserve that much?

I don't think you're gonna, yeah, it's gonna be tough to be conservation that much, but maybe toilet, I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, we're already doing the, you know, provide rebates for toilets, for washing machines. There are some more other rebate programs that I do want to look into, but it definitely won't need to fall through to do those programs. So, yeah, it'll be a decision that we'll have to talk about when that comes up.

Thank you. Thank you very much. YEAH, MAX, WE WERE STUCK AT 11. THEY WERE STUCK AT 10. WE ARGUED FOR A WHILE. WE JUST SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE.

AS LONG AS WE KEEP FRANKLIN FLOWING.

YEAH. SO ANY OTHER COUNSELORS? THAT'S GOOD.

GIVE THEM A STICKER.

QUICK QUESTIONS? SO I THINK Most of the questions I had were answered, especially with Medway.

They've agreed to this now because I remember the last meeting they said that they would not accept that rate.

Couldn't understand why we were having the meeting if they weren't going to accept this rate.

Yeah, well, that was only one of them. Right. Okay, but they're going to agree. That's true. That's true. I met with the managers after their meeting finalize the agreements, and they said that they both would get them approved by their boards. Obviously, town meeting is a different thing, but I think... But they're going to do the right process. But I think when you have that much support, you can hope that those things would pass town meeting. And they need the sewer capacity. It sounds like they do.

I just wanted to make sure that, based on the last meeting, that they were okay with doing that. So that's good. The other question was really about where the benefit financially would be to the town, but again, through the sewer enterprise funds, there'd be a surplus in there at some point, which would be retained earnings, which eventually comes back to us as free cash.

Only for sewer, but exactly. Right. Exactly.

So we have the choice down the road in terms of what we want to do with the public store.

That's it for me. I'm glad we waited. I'm glad we actually kind of deferred after the last meeting. I had a chance to kind of do this and get the data that Doug and his team pulled together. So I think that was great. Well done.

Anybody else? Caroline? Anybody online? I can't see if Caroline is there.

I don't see a hand. Julie, do we have hands raised? No.

No. WELL, JAMIE, I THINK WE SHOULD JUST MOVE TO THE RESOLUTION AND GET THIS PASSED RIGHT NOW. SO WE'LL MOVE TO RESOLUTION 2639. 2639. THAT'S MILLES. MILLES. DO THAT ONE FIRST. YEAH, THE CLERK WILL READ THE RESOLUTION.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is Resolution 26-39, authorization to transfer or sell a portion of Franklin's excess sewer capacity at the Charles River Treatment Plant to the town of Millis. Whereas the Charles River Pollution Control District, hereinafter district, owns and operates a regional wastewater treatment facility, hereinafter known as facility, for the benefit of member municipalities, and whereas district assesses each member municipality for both the annual cost of maintaining an operating facility and any capital improvements thereto based upon its allocated capacity and whereas town of Franklin is a member municipality of the district and has determined that it has unneeded excess capacity and whereas the town of Millis is a member municipality of the district and has determined that it is in need of of additional capacity. Now therefore be it resolved by the Town of Franklin acting by and through its Town Council that the Franklin Town Administrator is hereby authorized to execute the authorization to transfer or sell a portion of Franklin's excess sewer capacity at the Charles River Treatment Plant to the Town of Millis in substantially the form attached hereto as Exhibit 1, which I won't read but is in your packet, provided that the provisions of said agreement may be revised and or said agreement may contain such other terms and conditions as the Town Administrator determines to be in the Town's best interest. This resolution shall become effective according to the provisions of the Town of Franklin Home Rule Charter.

Motion to approve resolution 2639. Second.

I have a motion and a second to correct the discussion. The discussion clerk will read the roll call.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a roll call vote for the sale of excess sewer capacity to the town of Millis bylaw 26-39. Councillor Ajuku? Yes. Councillor Morangelo? Yes. Councillor Malloy? Yes. Councillor Callaway-Tripp? Yes. Myself is a yes. Vice Chair Grella? Yes. Chairman? Yes. Online, Councillor Griffith? Yes. Online, Councillor LeBlanc? Yes. YES. PASSES 9-0, SIR.

MOTION PASSED. MOVING TO RESOLUTION 26-40.

WE'RE JUST CHANGING THE TOWN NAME. IT'S THE EXACT SAME THING, RIGHT? CORRECT.

YEAH, JUST EXACTLY.

Motion to waive the reading.

I was waiting for something. Yeah, I still have the roll call, but the reading. I'm fine with that.

We have to vote on waiving the reading.

Okay, we have to vote. Clerk will read the roll call for waiving the reading.

This is a roll call vote to waive the reading for resolution 26-40, which is the sale of excess sewer capacity to the town of Medway. Councilor Ajuku. Yes. Councilor Morangelo. Yes. Councilor Mulloy. Yes. Councilor Callaway-Tripp. Yes. Myself, yes. Vice Chair Gawa. Yes. Chairman. Yes. Online, Councilor LeBlanc.

Yes.

And online, Councilor Griffith. Yes. So the motion passes to waive the meeting, sir.

Motion passes. Motion to approve resolution 26-40. Second. Second.

All right, I have a motion and a second. We'll read the roll call.

Mr. Chairman, this will be a roll call vote on bylaw 26-40, which is the sale of excess sewer capacity to Medway. Resolution 26-40. And this will be a roll call to approve that, sir. Councilor Juco. Yes. Councilor Morangelo. Yes. Councilor Malloy. Yes. Councilor Callaway-Tripp.

Yes.

Myself, yes. Vice Chair Greller. Yes. Chairman. Yes. Online, Councilor Griffith. Yes. Online, Councilor LeBlanc.

Yes.

Motion passes 9-0, sir. Motion passes. 41.

All right. All right. We have to do CND, right? We have to do CND. We have to do the third amendment. 26-41.

That's just for the regional. It's for the whole district. It has to be done because we have to report this. Well, you have to report, too. It's a formality vote.

Yeah, so we'll move to Resolution 26-41, an authorization to execute third amendment to the agreement between Charles River Pollution Control District and the Town of Franklin. What will we do?

Can we wait to waive the reading? Seconded.

So we need a roll call vote to waive the reading?

We need a roll call vote to waive the reading.

Killing a lot of trees tonight. Mr. Chairman, this is to waive the reading for resolution 26-41. Councilor Rajuku? Yes. Councilor Margella? Yes. Councilor Malloy? Yes. Councilor Callaway-Tripp? Yes. Myself, yes. Vice-Chair Grella? Yes. Chairman? Yes. Online, Councilor LeBlanc? Yes. Online, Councilor Griffith?

Yes.

9-0, sir.

Motion to approve Resolution 26-41. Second.

I have a motion and a second. We'll take roll call. Give me one second. Mm-hmm.

Mr. Chairman, this will be a roll call vote for Resolution 26-41, which is the approval of the Charles River Pollution Control District Agreement with the Town of Franklin. Councillor Ajuku? Yes. Councillor Morangelo? Yes. Councillor Molloy? Yes. Councillor Callaway-Tripp? Yes. Myself, yes. Vice-Chair Grella? Yes. Chairman? Yes. Online, Councillor LeBlanc?

Yes.

Online, Councillor Griffith? Yes. Yes. Moving to D, right?

Yes. Yeah, I would say those three additional votes

ARE PRETTY ROUTINE VOTES, AND THEN AT LEAST THE REST OF THE MEETING WILL BE TOWN OWN PROPERTIES. I WAS THINKING OF DOING THE SAME THING. WHY DON'T WE JUST GO THROUGH THE REMAINING THREE?

WE'LL DO THE REMAINING THREE, AND THEN WE CAN DO THE DISCUSSIONS.

IT'LL BE EASY.

WE'RE IN A RHYTHM RIGHT NOW. RIGHT, RIGHT. SO MOVING ON, RESOLUTION 26-50. 26-50, MY LOCALIZATION FOR THE TOWN OF FRANKLIN TO ENTER INTO AN INTERMUNICIPALITY AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE TOWN OF WALCO AND VARIOUS MUNICIPALITIES FOR THE JOINT LEGAL SERVICES FOR SOLID WASTE CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS.

the resolution since this is new sir do we want jamie to explain jamie what's this this is new to us oh the derek's coming up so this is for our wheel vibrator contract um and we're doing basically like a bj style bulk purchasing to work out an agreement among however many towns there are 30 right now how many

Dark Adams, Environmental Affairs Coordinator. Right now, 30 towns are signed up out of the 35 that we invited to be in the group. We're not in yet. So what we did was we had a couple subcommittee meetings to put together. What we want to do is collectively bargain amongst our municipalities. I can go through them right now. Auburn, Blackstone, Dedham, Dover, East Brookfield, Franklin, if we sign up, Grafton, Holden, Holliston, Hopedale, Hopkinton, Maynard, Medfield. Medway, Menden, Milford, Millis, Natick, Needham, Newton, Northborough, Paxton did not sign up as the only one that I know of. Princeton, Rutland, Sherbourne, Shrewsbury, Southborough, Spencer, Upton, Walpole, Westboro, Weston, Wellesley, Westwood, and Worcester. 29 of those have signed up. We would be number 30. We're all contributing $2,500 to... Walpole is going to be the host community. They have KP Law that they've signed up for. All those other communities that I just named are signed up. We'd be contributing $2,500 to be a part of a collective negotiation team to get the best deal we all can for hopefully a 10-year contract. We'll do longer if we can. We won't accept five. We're not expecting to accept five. That wouldn't be worth it for us. For 2,500 bucks, we get into this group where I'm on the subcommittee, so me, so it's Franklin on the subcommittee, Mendon, Milford, Needham, Newton, Spencer, and Walpole. We are going to be a little more involved with the negotiations. And then we'll report back to the other communities about what we think is the best we can do. And then we'll collectively vote on it. So for short money, $2,500 in my opinion, it's the best deal. If we did it on our own, it would be at least quadruple that amount even just to get started.

Okay. It is cheap money if it all works out. Yeah.

I had a question. Is the negotiations based on lowest cost or is it quality of service, you know, the environmental impact, anything? Are there any other factors that you're allowed to look at when you do these negotiations or is it pretty much just lowest cost? Because I don't, when are you left with, you know, a low cost, you know, provider that's falling apart and always late, you know?

The only option for us right now that's feasible in my mind is Waste Innovations, also known as Wheelabrator. It's a permitted facility by the state, air quality control. There's a whole set of regulations that they have for their waste-to-energy facility. So this doesn't have to do with the hauling, really. We're not going to send it to a landfill. It's not replacing waste management. Correct.

Okay.

This is where waste management brings all of the material for solid waste. Recycling is not part of this. That goes to Avon.

It's actually used to generate electricity.

Yes, correct.

So it's basically, there's not other options that kind of puts us in a bad spot.

The other options would be maybe bringing it down to Cape, putting it on a rail car and having the rail go to Pennsylvania so they can put it in the ground.

Okay.

Perhaps.

Perhaps. Because they are the only practical option, that's why a consortium was formed in the first place the last time around. Because that way you have that number of communities and it kind of levels the playing field. I get it, yeah.

Makes sense.

Ultimately, each community will get their own contract with Wind Waste based on the prototype that's negotiated.

Yeah, Yilt.

So if we're negotiating and we end up getting a cheaper price than what we're doing now, does this mean that, because you know I have to ask this, is there a potential of reducing trash costs for residential?

Highly unlikely. The whole point of the consortium is to try to make sure that the cost doesn't go up to a place where you have to increase it. I mean, like Mark said, I mean, it's their one-stop shop. The alternatives are perhaps, to Derek's term, You start shipping this stuff to other parts of the country, waste management is going to come back and say our costs have just gone up. You're doing this in an environment where oil, petroleum, tariffs and everything else are already driving the costs up. The reason why this consortium is happening is to try to actually stabilize the cost. I can't guarantee that the cost wouldn't come down because we haven't started a negotiation. But I think what you're doing here is trying to prevent a significant rate hike in the trash fee by making sure that the wheelabrator system is sustainable and that we all of these communities can afford you know what is expected to be a sizable you know if we individually negotiated you know each town could end up escalating costs somewhere and it could have to end up driving up cost much higher and this is also for like the recycling Just give a quick sentence on the wheelbarrow.

The wheelbarrow is strictly so the trucks that come to collect on your collection day will collect your trash in one truck and your recycling in a different truck. The trash goes to Millberry by I-90 at their facility that takes the trash, it gets dumped on the ground and they incinerate it and they have a process that turns that into electricity. Recycling goes in the opposite direction. That truck goes that way and gets put into what they call a materials recovery facility. And that facility is conveyor belts and people picking stuff off, and those things don't get burned. They get bailed, more or less, and then once a month people come in and say, I want that bail, I want that. It's free market rate for what they're going to get.

Okay. If you ever drive down to Mass Pike, you'll see a big stack. Yeah.

If our trash is turning into electricity, how come we're not getting a break?

It's a very expensive facility to run.

I don't know about you, but... I think Millberry gets a break. Yeah. Millberry might. I don't know of rates getting cheaper. Yeah, it's just... You're trying to prevent major cuts.

Yeah, it's just not going up as quickly because everything's getting more expensive. Yeah.

You all set, Jane? I am. They don't have their hands up. I think you're good, Derek.

All right, thank you.

All right, so Clark will read the resolution.

Mr. Chairman, this is the resolution 26-50, which is the authorization for the town of Franklin to enter into an inter-municipal agreement between the town of Walpole and various municipalities for joint legal services for solid waste contract negotiations. whereas the town of Walpole currently utilizes the solid waste cogeneration and processing facility located in Millbury, Mass., formerly known as the Wheelabrator, and currently owned by Wind Waste Innovations, Inc., hereinafter referred to as Wind Waste. along with multiple other municipalities, including Franklin, pursuant to individual but uniform agreements. And whereas those agreements are set to expire, and the town of Walpole has proposed that it, together with all similarly situated municipalities, including Franklin, collectively negotiate a single form of agreement with Wind Waste and retain the legal services of a single law firm, KP Law, for the continued utilization of wind waste facility and whereas Walpole has proposed that it and other municipalities enter into an inter-municipal agreement to accomplish the foregoing and an inter-municipal agreement is governed by the provisions of general law chapter 40 section 4A which requires that each municipality authorize the agreement by vote of its respective governing body. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Town Council of the Town of Franklin hereby authorizes the Town Administrator, pursuant to General Law Chapter 40, Section 4A, to execute an intermunicipal agreement with the Town of Walpole, and substantially the form attached hereto as Exhibit 1, which I will not read, but is in the packet, which agreement will provide for town to participate in collective negotiations with Wind Waste Innovations Inc. for a single form of agreement for named municipalities, including Franklin, to continue to utilize its Millberry Mass facility and to retain the legal services of a single law firm, KP Law, PC, for set purposes. This resolution shall become effective according to the provisions of the Town of Franklin Home Rule Chart.

Motion to approve Resolution 26-50. Second.

I have a motion and a second. Clerk will take the roll call. Since we haven't had discussion. Yeah.

Three, two, one. THANK YOU.

This is a roll call vote, Mr. Chairman, for bylaw number 2650, which is the authorization for the town of Franklin to enter into an inter-municipal agreement between the town of Waupo and various municipalities for joint legal services for solid waste contract negotiations. Councilor Ajuku? Yes. Councilor Morangelo? Yes. Councilor Maloy? Yes. Councilor Calaway-Tripp? Yes. Myself is a yes. Vice Chair Grella? Yes. Chairman DeLarco? Yes. Online, Councilor Griffith?

Yes.

Online, Councilor LeBlanc.

Yes.

Passes 9-0, sir.

Motion passes. Moving on, Resolution 26-51, Exceptions of Private Road, Grillo Estates. Give me a second, sir.

I messed up on that one.

One second.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is resolution 26-51, acceptance of private road covenant with owner developer of Grillo Estates, a two lot subdivision. Whereas the Franklin Planning Board on June 1st, 2026 voted to approve with conditions a definitive subdivision plan for a two lot subdivision known as Grillo Estates, which subdivision plan was recorded at the Norfolk County Register of Deeds in plan book 743, plan number 77 through 86. and whereas said vote included conditions that the unnamed roadway shown on the above described subdivision plan together with related drainage and utilities be and remain private and that the private property owner have the exclusive obligation to maintain and repair the same as well as to remove snow therefrom. And whereas Daniel R. Grillo and Alicia M. Grillo are the owners of the subject property and have executed a covenant incorporating the foregoing conditions, a true copy of which is attached as Exhibit 1, which I will not read but is in your packet. Now, therefore, be it ordered that the Town of Franklin, acting by and through its Town Council, hereby authorizes the Town Administrator to execute the covenant, a copy of which is attached here to as Exhibit 1, on behalf of the Town of Franklin. This resolution shall become effective according to the provisions of the Town of Franklin Home Rule Chart.

Motion to approve Resolution 26-51.

SECOND. WE HAVE A MOTION AND A SECOND. JAMIE, A LITTLE DESCRIPTION HERE.

MARK MIGHT BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN IT BETTER THAN ME. IT'S A PLANNING BOARD THING, AND SO IT'S JUST A REQUIRED COVENANT THAT WE HAVE TO DO BASED ON A PLANNING BOARD DECISION. GRILLO ESTATES IS A TWO-LOT SUBDIVISION OFF DANIELS STREET. IT WAS FORMER COUNSELOR HAMILTON'S PROPERTY WHEN SHE SOLD IT, AND THE PEOPLE WHO BOUGHT IT WENT IN AND JUST, AND FOR SOME, MARK CAN EXPLAIN IT, THERE'S A COVENANT THAT'S NEEDED BASED ON THE ROAD THAT'S BEING BUILT THERE TO MAKE SURE THAT IT STAYS A PRIVATE WAY FOREVER. IS THAT THE SUMMARY, MARK?

SO YOU DID ONE OF THESE AT THE LAST MEETING. THEY'RE USUALLY SMALL LOTS, TWO, MAYBE THREE. AS A RESULT, THE PLANNING BOARD HAS WAIVED DOWN A LOT OF THE BUILD OUT CONSTRUCTION REQUIREMENTS FOR ROADWAYS AND INFRASTRUCTURES, AND THE TRADE-OFF IS THE TOWN DOESN'T WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THOSE ROADWAYS. in terms of access and equipment and everything else so we put this on record it's a trade-off and basically it's in the town's benefit that the road stay that way stay private stay private go to the council nobody out there all right good luck we'll read the roll call

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a roll call on bylaw 26-51, which is the acceptance of private road covenant with owner-developer of Grillo Estates, a two lot subdivision. Councilor Rajuku? Yes. Councilor Morangelo? Yes. Councilor Malloy? Yes. Councilor Callaway-Tripp? Yes. Myself, yes. Vice Chair Grillo? Yes. Chairman DeLarco? Yes. Online Councilor LeBlanc? Yes. And online Councilor Griffith?

YES.

PASSES 9-0, SIR.

MOTION PASSES. NOW RESOLUTION 26-49, GIFT ACCEPTANCY, VETERAN SERVICE, SERVICES SENIOR CENTER, AND FRANKLIN FIRE DEPARTMENT. COURT WILL READ THE RESOLUTION. IT'S A CHANCE.

WORKING OVERTIME HERE TONIGHT, SIR. YEAH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is Resolution 26-49, acceptance of gifts for the Franklin Senior Center Fire Department and Veterans Services Department. Whereas the Franklin Senior Center, Franklin Veterans Department, and Franklin Fire Department have received generous donations in the total amount of $685 to be used at the discretion of each department as follows. Donation summary. Franklin Senior Center, $85, donations to be used at the discretion of the Senior Center through its Council of Aging gift fund to provide services and programs to senior citizens in the Franklin community. The Franklin Fire Department received a gift of $100, donations to be used at the discretion of the Franklin Fire Department towards the purchase of safety and other related equipment and to fund departmental programs. Franklin's Veterans Department received $500 donation to be applied at the discretion of the department toward the Franklin Municipal Veterans Assistance Fund in support of local veterans and their families. List of all donors is included in tonight's packet dated September 2nd to the town council. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Town Council of the Town of Franklin, on behalf of the Franklin Senior Center, Franklin Fire Department, and Veterans Services Department, gratefully accepts these generous donations to be used at the discretion of each department for the purposes noted above. This resolution shall become effective according to the provisions of the Town of Franklin Home Rule Charter.

Motion to approve Resolution 26-49.

Second. I have a motion and a second.

I just wanted to thank the donors. Sharon Ames, Maureen and Steven Gordon, Brenda Hutchinson, Mary Guinevan, and Marcia and Steven Rothenberg. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you to everybody. It's always a pleasure to take on the generosity. Yeah, very, very great. What will be the roll call?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a roll call vote for bylaw 26-49, which is the acceptance of gifts for the Franklin Senior Center Fire Department and Veterans Services Department. Councilor Ajuka? Yes. Councilor Morangelo? Yes. Councilor Malloy? Yes. Councilor Calaway-Tripp? Yes. Myself, yes. Vice Chair Grella? Yes. Chairman DeLarco? Yes. Online, Councilor Griffith?

Yes.

And online, Councilor LeBlanc? Yes. 9-0, sir.

Motion passes. Thank you. Wow, that's the first time. I think that's the first time the old chairman would never let us do legislation like that. He was a bit of a stickler. Moving on, Town Administrator, this is the Town Hall property.

Yeah, through you, Mr. Chairman. So really quickly, Going to invite up Kate Hinkley. Also, can the members of the police station building committee and then the- We do have a quorum. You do have a quorum, so you've got to open a meeting, Mr. Chairman?

Yeah, I can do it from here.

Yep, can you just, the other members stand up? And thanks, Andrew, TJ, Jimmy. Kevin. Jane. Jane, Bobby.

I'd just like to open the September 2nd at 8.30.

meeting to water yep excellent thanks tom um so the goal tonight um kate has done an entire presentation hopefully people have looked at it she's going to rummage through it quick to make sure that everybody has discussion but a few people have asked me with sighting of the police station you know are there other properties out there what is the town owned so this is now the definitive gold collection, if you will, of greatest hits of all town-owned property and breaking it down. And you'll see we don't have very much property remaining. But obviously tonight's meeting also has on here, we have KBA and CHA representatives in this row right over here. These three, you guys want to stand up real quick? These are the folks that are consultants that have gone through the design of the police station, have gone through the entire process with the building committee. The building committee obviously recommended Parmenter as the site for the police station. There's a whole website I included here with the renderings and the cost and all the other documents. They're available for anybody to ask questions about Davis Thayer. What about the building? We've studied Davis Thayer now not once, not twice, but three times. We have more than enough information to talk to people about Davis Thayer. Kevin has also included a brief memo on the Parmenter school condition. Kate has done a memo on all of the town-owned land on a page or two to summarize it for the public. Our planning director, Marina, has also done a memo here with the RFP on Davis Thayer. In working with the chair, we fully understand these are enormous decisions for the community. This is why there's no legislation for action tonight. I think in working with the chair, it's the intention that each month here, you're going to continue to follow up with another discussion on siting of the police station, what to do with Davis there, what to do with Parmenter, what to do with 275 Beaver Street. I think as I mentioned to one councilor offline earlier too, I think you know, I hope the community can focus away sometimes from some of the other issues that they're focused on and really get out there and talk to people about what they want to see visually somewhere. How do people feel about all this? And you'll see at the end of Kate's presentation there's some kind of planted questions that I think all of you will have some opinions on and then hopefully this is just the start of a discussion. We recognize that Most people don't know what an RFP is until they get into the seat. You know, there's a lot of policy decisions even within the RFP of Davis there. You know, the exterior, do you want to sell it? What's the zoning you're going to be? Do you want to get rid of the land? Do you not want to get rid of the land? Do you want to put the police station there? There's a lot. And so we all recognize, I think Council DeLarco has been dealing with this the longest, we all recognize You go back really since the first study of Davis there in 2013, 14. So what we're trying to get tonight is direction, feedback, just comments, what everybody's feelings are. how you want to move forward. Do you want to have public hearings? I mean, there's a lot to unpackage. So we tried to provide, the staff tried to provide you with as much information as possible to review. These will probably be the exhibits we'll have for a while unless we get more direction from the council. But given the fact that in an executive session in February or April or whatever it was, you know you you basically gave us the direction on what to do with these buildings but i also fundamentally understand and i think we all do and i think you do that there's going to be a lot of public feedback and a lot of public opinions on what to do particularly with the recognition that Depot Plaza has been applied for. And there have been some other things downtown and other places that may have changed or maybe people's sentiments have changed, which is completely fine. But I think what you are gonna also see is you've got facilities at Parmenter that at some point need to be invested in if we're gonna keep that building as something, and Davis there, as you certainly know, Council DeLoco and Council Cormier-Ledger know, the building's not getting better just sitting there doing nothing. So at some point, I think in the next year or two or something, we've gotta figure out what direction. And the last thing I'll say really quickly is, If the decision from the council or the community is to reallocate the police station somewhere or do something else or look at other private property or whatever, we just need that direction because I think the feeling among most of us is we've studied Davis there. We know it well. We're spending a lot of money. These guys are happy because they're making good money. But we're spending a lot of taxpayer money studying everything. And at some point, you can only study it so much before you have to finally be the ones that have to make the decision on what to do. And there's a lot of options out there and we're here to assist you. And that's why all the staff are here tonight. We're happy to answer any question on any buildings, but hopefully this will give you a nice hour, hour and a half to really talk about what the dynamics are. So with that as a background, I'll ask Kate to go through all town owns properties. She summarized it really well. And as you can definitely expect the most advantageous properties that you own. are mostly Parmenter Davis there and a few other parcels. And Kate's also going to make a nice cheap plug for our incredible GIS team. And for all of you on the council, I know realtors use it, and I know many other people are on the GIS system. I mean, there's an unbelievable amount of information in AccessGIS that people should be taking advantage of in the community. So Kate, do you want to take it away?

Yeah. I will try to go through this as quickly as I can. I know it's late. We still have a lot to talk about. My name is Kay Hinkley. I'm the director of GIS. I've been with Franklin for almost 14 years. And I'm usually here as part of the Public Works Department or Stormwater. I don't ever get to talk about GIS. So please indulge me just for like two slides on GIS. I'm also going to talk about some very fundamental kind of ideas. And this is... for everyone here, everyone in the audience, everyone watching at home. So I'm going to use basic terms and start from the beginning like nobody knows, even though I know you all pretty much know. But again, for folks watching at home and folks here, I just want to make sure everyone's on the same level. So to start, what is GIS? GIS is a geographic information system. It's a framework you can use to gather, analyze, and view data. And this is spatial data. So things that would go on a map. Points, lines, polygons. A point can be a tree. It can be a manhole. It can be a street light. Lines are pipes, parcel lines, streams. Polygon is a building or a lake or the ocean. You can bring all of these layers together into one place. You can add in aerial imagery. You can add in LIDAR. It's a way to show what our environment looks like in a visual manner. I don't know about you all, but I have a very visual brain, so if I have a spreadsheet, that doesn't really mean much to me. I need to have it in a different form. There's a lot of data that goes with your spatial data. If you can kind of imagine a manhole has a bunch of data that goes with it. So it kind of holds hands with an Excel spreadsheet, which we call the attribute table. So there's a plethora of information that kind of all comes together into a map, which is part of a GIS system. The Franklin GIS department, we are under the public works department, but we do serve all town departments. We work very closely with the assessing department, with planning, with the town clerk's office, with fire, police, schools. We work across the town with everybody. We also create a lot of products for the public. We have a lot of thematic maps, which is basically just like a map of one thing, a zoning map. We create a lot of story maps and experiences, which are can be on any number of topics on the current projects going on from the DPW department to farms in Franklin. There's a wide variety of tools that are out there on the Franklin GIS website. We work with consultants. They consume our data so that we can have kind of a streamlined process with all the people that need to consume our data. We have a bunch of applications in town that use our data. The fire department, their program is first due. They consume our infrastructure data so they have the most up-to-date information. OpenGov, which is our online permitting and licensing system, that uses all of our address information, our DPW work order system, and a whole plethora of other ESRI tools that other departments use. So we're pretty much We're involved in many, many things, but always in the background. So not everybody knows that we exist, but we are there. Next thing that I want to talk about is AccessGIS, which is our assessor database. Now this is the database that is maintained by a consultant. It's maintained by CAI. And they work heavily with the assessing department. They work hand in hand. This is like your one stop shop for anything parcel related. any information. You can access town and state data layers. If you need to have a map made for something, that's very simple. You can do that here. We do have internal data that's also here, so our staff uses this very heavily. This is a great resource for residents to use. Anything they might want to learn about their property or about a property in Franklin, they can get it here. I'm just going to, the next slide is just kind of blowing up a little bit so you can see exactly what's there. So in this slide I've got the Public Works Department, 257 Fisher is highlighted. When you click on a parcel, You get all these options of things to look at. You can look at the plot plans. You can look at the property card. You can look at the most recent two Registry of Deeds documents. This is all publicly available information. This brings you to the Norfolk County Registry of Deeds. And you can go through and you can look. You can see the last time that the property was sold. You can see when the mortgage was paid off. You can look at... Anything that's at the registry is publicly available. You can look at everything. So it's a massive, massive resource that is, I know many people use it. I wish more people used it. It's really, really helpful. It's a valuable tool for everybody, for real staff and for residents. Okay, this is where I just want to make sure that everybody is kind of on the same level with parcels and the parcel map. Because when you go into Access GIS, it can be a little overwhelming because there's a lot of numbers. Some are superfluous and you don't really need to know what they are. You might be very curious and want to know, but you don't always need to know. So when you look at a parcel, you're going to have a bunch of different numbers showing up. The red number is the address. Now, not every parcel has an address. If there isn't a building, there isn't going to be an address associated with it. There's always going to be a bold number, which is the lot number, which is assigned internally by the assessing department. You'll see a number that has a circle around it. That's the lot number that was original to the approved plan. You'll also find the acreage or the square footage. If it's over a certain size, it'll show you the acreage. You'll also find the meets and bounds, which is the system of basically how you lay out a parcel. Where a line starts, how long it is, how far it goes, and you can see exactly where your parcel line is. So that's kind of the basics of the parcel map. Again, there's a lot of information that you may not ever need, but that's what it all means. Overview of parcels in general. So parcels literally make up the fabric of Franklin. There are approximately 12,000 parcels in town. They're a distinct and defined unit of land. They could be empty. They could have buildings on it. It could have some structures, all impervious area. It could be whatever. It can be anything. I think Beaver Pond is its own parcel. Each parcel has a unique identifier. It's the parcel ID. It's a 12-digit number, and I know this is kind of a dry concept of, you know, thinking about numbers related to land, but our parcel numbers are our identifier for our land. I know most people always want to think about addresses, but addresses can change, and some parcels don't have addresses. So we always want to think about parcel ID when we're thinking about property. The only time a parcel number is ever going to change is if something is merged or divided. And even then when it changes, there's still similarities that happen and it kind of tells a story, which I will not get into unless there was a request later down the line about getting into the nitty-gritty of the parcel numbers, which we can do, but we don't have to right now. But the parcel ID is the best way to identify a location. not the address. That's one thing that's I think a little difficult sometimes to, especially residents will call sometimes and it's difficult to always understand exactly where they're going because some addresses are very similar to each other so we always want the parcel ID number. So you always want to try to think in terms of parcel IDs. um those are the basics of just parcels and gis i just want to pause because we're about to get into a lot of information so i want to see if anybody has any questions on just those two concepts first before i move on and is everybody still with me okay i know there's a lot of information All right, so we're going to dive into our town-owned parcels. So Franklin owns 342 parcels, the town. That's about 3% of the total number of parcels, and it's about 13% of our land mass is town-owned. Now each parcel is designated with a land use code. A land use code is a classification that designates the use of the land. For example, a 939 land use code is for water sewer. All of our wells have a 939 land use code. That's important for the next slide. So we have, of the 342 parcels, 202 are classified by the town council as having an official use or restriction, an official land use code. It could be conservation, it could be education, it could be public safety, cemeteries, recreation, they've all been assigned a specific land use code. We have 97 parcels that do not have a specific land use code associated with them of a specific use. It's like a holding land use code. It's 930 is what the land use code is. Now these parcels, these 97 parcels, have either existing municipal services. They have public works infrastructure on them. They have an existing park. or an open space resource. They have significant wetland and stream crossing jurisdiction, but they've not been assigned a use. Why, I don't know. I've got some examples here. So there's a lot of drainage lots that have drainage basins on them that are the 930 code. They just haven't been reassigned to stormwater yet. King Street Park, the town common, they're not assigned an official land use code. It's something that can be looked at in the future as kind of a house cleaning exercise to kind of organize these 97 parcels and make them a bit more official as to what they are. But these 97 and 202 are kind of in their own little groups of we're not going to delve into those tonight because there's a lot of other parcels also to look at. And they already have things going on on them. They're not viable for any kind of other use than what is already happening on them. So our numbers are going to go down and then we're going to get to the individual parcels that we're going to look at. We also have 14 parcels that we own that are considered access or two small parcels. They're typically narrow and unbuildable. They're used currently for access to open space, to shopping areas. You can see up here we have one that goes to BJ's. Some of them are very small slivers that are left over from road realignments, which happens, I didn't realize it happened, but we've got a lot of those. These are unrealistic to really do anything with. They're very, very, very small, or they are providing a use already. Then we have a collection of six parcels that could potentially be of interest to an abutter, but also probably not because in 2017 we went through an auction process and tried to get rid of a bunch of parcels and there weren't any takers. Many of these were on that list. They're either just too small, no one has an interest, there's not much use for them, so they just kind of continue to hang out. Some of them are landlocked. It's a very long, arduous process to go through the auction. kind of realm. I have linked the MGL chapters if you're interested in looking at that. It is a very long process. It costs a lot of money. These are such small properties that aren't of a lot of interest. So whether anything would come of that is highly unlikely. There are challenges on them. Again, wetlands, infrastructure that's already there, limited use, what can you do with them? So again, we kind of took these off the table. I'm about to get into the individual parcels that we can look at more closely. There's 23 of them. And I do just want to say that this entire exercise that we did, this analysis, these recommendations, they're based on what we know currently with our current housing statutes and regulations. We're not thinking about what may happen down the line. All we can do is make decisions based on the best information that we have now, which is how we approach this. We did group them into three tiers, tier one, tier two, and tier three. I'm going to start with tier three. We kind of asked the question, is this worth the effort to go through a process? The tier three groups, the answer is not really. They'd be very impractical and challenging parcels to sell. They'd require a significant amount of time and resources to accomplish. There could be potential future municipal use that we might want to hang on to them to kind of look at in the future. They could potentially be highly political. If these want to be reexamined again in 10, 15 years, that might be a good option. But that's our tier three group. Our tier two group, Again, is it worth the effort to go through trying to sell them? Potentially, it could be feasible to sell them with a moderate amount of time and resources. They might not be considered super high value, but we could potentially look at them in maybe five to seven years. Tier one, worth the effort? Yes. These are realistically the parcels that could likely be sold within a few years with a range of values.

One question to the chair. So I love the approach, the tier one, tier two, tier three. I think it makes a lot of sense. I am curious. Did you create that for this as we were summarizing, or do you maintain those tiers, you know, typically? How does that work?

No, this was, you know, I'm sure you can appreciate 342 parcels is a lot. We own a lot of land. And getting down when you can kind of filter out the things that are just already being used, already have a use associated for them, you come down to the leftovers, the 23. you've kind of got to organize them in some way. And some make much more sense than others. And so it's purely for this exercise.

I think that's fantastic. But what I am, part of me is thinking, okay, it might not be a bad idea to maintain, now that we have what's in those tiers, to maintain it on a go-forward basis. I don't, it'd be interesting to look at what that would take.

And that's, we'll go in whatever direction is possible. This is just a way to present. We're presenting information to you.

But it's also a way for us to help manage and maintain and understand what we're doing.

Absolutely. And they can be changed, they can be shifted, priorities, whatever the discussion reveals.

The bottom line is I think it's an excellent approach, so I appreciate it. Thank you.

As we continue to go through, I do just want to kind of highlight a few things to make sure we continue to keep in mind. Again, the current housing statutes and regulations. If you're going to dispose of a property, it does require a two-thirds vote. Any money from the sale of land, It can't be used in the operating budget. It goes to projects eligible for long-term borrowing. And I can't emphasize this enough, additional research would have to be done for every single parcel if there is going to be a sale. We did this overview. I'm not a tax title attorney, so that kind of research to do a full tax title search would have to be done. And that's not something that comes inexpensively. We do have a tax title attorney and their rate is about $200 an hour. So I just want to make sure that's out there. As we go through each map, there is a legend on each one, but I do just kind of want to call out the things that you're going to see. So the purple, that's going to be your 200 foot stream buffer. Those blues, that's the wetlands. You're going to see the 25 foot buffer, the 50 foot buffer, and the 100 foot buffers. The Slash lines, that means those parcels have an official use. If you see dots, it means it's one of those housekeeping properties, one of those 97 properties. I've got aerial imagery on every one. That is from April of 2026, so it's new imagery. Each property includes, the analysis includes the parcel ID as well as the zoning districts. I know you guys all know what the zoning abbreviations are, but I have included them here just in case you need a reference. Okay, so we're gonna start with tier three. And again, this is the very, very, very challenging group of tier threes. Whether or not they're worth the effort, very, very difficult to kind of approach these. All right, the first one we're going to start with is on Washington Street. It's 8.9 acres. Potentially, it could be a residential area. The reason this is so challenging is because this is currently the public works snow storage parcel. I don't know how many of you remember, but our old snow storage was the old sewer beds, which is now Brookview. Now, that was on Pond Street, pretty convenient center of town. This is exceptionally inconvenient. This is on Washington Street. The reason it's here is because we had no other option. So if this were to be sold, we'd have to find a different option, and we had a very difficult time finding one however many years ago that was, seven years, eight years ago when that happened. So we need a place to put snow, and this is where we put it. Another aspect of this parcel is there is a USGS observation well that's present, so that would have to be dealt with. That's a whole other layer of complexity because that well would have to be decommissioned if this parcel was redeveloped. All right, this next parcel is on Grove Street. This is 9.2 acres. This is a potential for a commercial development. It's also strategically a very interesting location because it's right next to Beaver Pond, and it's just down the street from the recycling center. So is this something that we'd want to use for future municipal needs? That's something to think about. There are significant wetland barriers on this. There's also a sewer station, which means there'd have to be an easement if this was not maintained as a town parcel. This parcel's on Cross Street. This is 1.65 acres, a potential for residential development. There's also significant egress issues with this parcel. Developing it would be very challenging. Additional lots would need to be purchased. There's a long political history that goes along with this lot prior to my tenure, but I have heard of this parcel and some of the challenges. This is why this is in Tier 3. Cochise Street, which is two acres, this is a potential residential development. What makes this so challenging is the fact that it would have to be accessed via paper roads. Paper roads are... Mark could explain more than I could about paper roads, but there is a legal process that has to go through to determine rights to the roadway. This is an older part of town, so it would be a very challenging exercise to be able to do that. Again, that's why this is put into Tier 3. This is a collection of three parcels on Partridge Street. This is a very interesting piece. This has historically been considered open space for a really long time. It was listed in the 2008 open space plan as open space, and it's never officially been The land use code has never officially been changed on these. I'm going to start counterclockwise. I'll start with the one in the top, 213001. That's 15 acres. Again, possible residential development. There's no access. It would require purchasing additional lots to develop it. I will say for all three of these, there is a highly used unofficial trail network. It's maintained by the residents in the area. So that's another challenge in that. The central parcel is 25 acres. It's a very, very wet area. Wet. Very wet. Again, would require purchasing additional lots to develop. Again, the trail network's there. The lower parcel, 221013... This could potentially be a future recreation use for the town. When this was sold to the town, the stipulation in the deed was no residential, just a school or municipal use. So it could potentially be something in the future if we wanted to have a park in that part of the town off of Partridge Street, that could potentially be an option. This next collection, it's actually just the bottom parcel, the top parcel. Again, it has those hash marks. That's a recreation parcel. The middle one is, almost that entire parcel is wet. So that's more of a conservation parcel. And the bottom portion, which is 30 acres, again, possible residential area, It is also similar to the previous slide. This area has also historically been considered open space with a trail network that's already there. Again, it's unofficial, but it's used by the neighborhood. A major challenge here are the points of access. They're unaccepted roadways, which creates a challenge in being able to access that parcel. They're not town accepted roads. Okay, that wraps up tier three. Tier two, these are the parcels that are sort of worth the effort. Potential to sell these with a moderate amount of time and resources, five to seven year kind of timeframe is what we've looked at. This would be a single family home at the end of Musket Way. Now this is the only map that I've included the contour lines because this parcel is exceptionally steep. So there'd be massive topography challenges on this site. Now the reason we put it in tier two is because I don't have to tell any of you how expensive things are. So if this were to be developed, it would require a lot of site work, either retaining walls or fill something. It would be very challenging to build a house here, which is why we've kind of put this in Tier 2. But it is an option. This is kind of an interesting lot on Upper Union Street. It's potential for an industrial development. It is just under half an acre. There's no sewer available, which does create challenges for development, and it's a relatively small lot. This is another small lot. This is on Jordan Road. It's a potential for maybe an ADU. This was also attempted to be auctioned in 2017. There were no takers for any of the abutters. So it would be the same situation where maybe an abutter would be interested, but also potentially not. Again, this is why this is tier two. It's quite a small piece of land. Okay, Tier 1, this is kind of our nitty-gritty. Okay, this is a parcel at the corner of Iroquois and Oak Street. This is a site of the water booster station that was just... It was decommissioned and demolished, so there's nothing on the site anymore. There is, you know, will always be an abandoned water line present and there would, if this were to be sold, it would require an easement for a check valve. The check valve is not that far off the road. I believe it's only about 20 feet, I think is what I was told. So this is something that could potentially be sold. These are two parcels off of Squire Street, possible for residential. There are water and sewer services present for this. Stubs were left. They're not very large. One is 0.37, one is 0.16. They could be sold together. Historically, this parcel was looked at by the Franklin Housing Authority, as well as Habitat for Humanity. And there were challenges with the parcel for the 268 It was 6-5 for access, so those challenges would still exist, but maybe it might be of interest now. These are two parcels off of Charles Drive and the Cooper Drive area. Again, possible residential development, possibly for a 40Y. Challenges on these. The northernmost parcel is about 12 acres. It was deeded for municipal purposes, including but not limited to recreation. There is an existing 40-foot drainage easement on the northern side. There's a drainage pipe that goes up there, so that would have to be maintained. The lower... parcels about two acres and it was deeded for municipal purposes historically these have kind of been viewed as future open space to provide connectivity just south of it there's another large collection of parcels that are town-owned that have trails on them so the thought was that maybe there could be more of a trail network that goes up to this part of town Okay, this is a small parcel off of Crocker Ave. This is .19 acres. Again, potential for an ADU. The square footage is too small for a single family home. It's possible that an abutter might be interested in purchasing that. These are two parcels off of Parliament Drive. This is kind of an interesting history. The larger parcel used to be owned and maintained by the HOA of this neighborhood, and they sold it to the town. There is an existing water stub and paved access going into this parcel. When the HOA had it, there was a basketball court. It was a small recreation area. Whether that could be done in the future, for municipal use. I don't know. That's up to, you know, how we want to approach these. It is a very narrow lot, so it would limit development quite a bit, likely to only one house. This is Grove Street. This is the new style property. It's currently a brownfield cleanup site, although there is grant funding has been secured for this. So it's a commercial development opportunity. Clearly there's wetland and perennial stream challenges, but once it is cleaned up, it will be suitable for sale. This is 275 Beaver Street. So this is our old site for the recreation department. And this is, I guess, when things get a little more interesting. Potential for a possible commercial property. This is only a 10-year-old building. So we kind of look at this as like a, we use the phrase a stable municipal asset. It's a new building. It's in good shape. Do we want to use it for something in the future? Do we want to lease it? Do we want to sell it? If it is sold, there is a new sewer pump station there which would have to have an easement not only for the building but for access to get to the building. That brings us to Parmenter, 235 Wachusett Street, which is 20 acres. Outside of the perennial stream buffer, it is 13.8 acres. Possible redevelopment area, police station site, permanent recreation center, other municipal uses. There's a lot of opportunities here. The stream and the wetland restrictions would be in place. There is a required code review analysis that would need to happen. As of 2025, the cost of that was $62,000. So that is still something that would have to happen as part of that process. And then last but certainly not least is Davis Thayer at 137 West Central Street, which is 3.5 acres. There's a lot of potential here. Mixed use or residential, historic preservation, police station. There was a lot of reuse recommendations in the report, which I've linked here from 2024. We all know there's a lot of challenges with Davis there. CO-COMPLIANCE, CONDITIONS, STRUCTURAL ISSUES, WHATEVER RE-ZONING MIGHT HAVE TO HAPPEN. THIS IS IN A SINGLE FAMILY FOUR ZONING DISTRICT. AND WE ALL KNOW IT'S A PRETTY HIGH-PROFILE DECISION WITH DAVIS THERE. IT'S A BELOVED LANDMARK IN TOWN, SO IT'S CHALLENGING. WITH THAT, brings us to our kind of big questions um to kind of decide on the police station what to do with davis thayer what's the permanent solution for the recreation department what do we do with the remaining town owned parcels do we want to maintain add more open space development how do we want to see it going THAT'S WHERE WE ARE.

THANK YOU.

I'M SORRY, I KNOW THAT'S A MAJOR DATA DUMP. THAT WAS A LOT.

THAT DEFINITELY WAS A LOT. I'M SORRY.

I DID THAT IN 30 MINUTES, THOUGH, SO I'M REALLY PROUD OF THAT.

VERY GOOD, BUT A LOT. SO I GUESS I WILL GO TO THE COUNCIL FOR QUESTIONS. I'M NOT GOING TO LET KATE OFF THAT EASY. I'M NOT GOING TO LET KATE OFF THAT EASY. I'M NOT GOING TO LET KATE OFF THAT EASY.

I'M NOT GOING TO LET KATE OFF THAT EASY. Kate, question, I do appreciate the effort that you put in. I was, I think, probably one of the leading people looking for something like this. Going back to the 202 properties and looking on my iPad right now, the 202 and the 97, could you, as a takeaway, Could you put those 202 properties in on that? Well, you don't know where the 97 are going to go, but at least for the 202, put them into the respective nine categories and say, like, of the 202, how many are conservation and how much land that represents? Same for education, public works, and whatnot. Yes. Because that would be helpful to know those numbers and acreage that is in those buckets. Yeah, I can absolutely do that. For the 97... Yeah, for the 97 that you talked about, I guess I agree with you. Why do you think the history has been that they haven't been classified and or then what are the steps to get them classified? Is it something that the council does or is it something that the assessors do? How do those 97 properties get put into one of those respective nine buckets or

So to answer that question, you need to know the historical context of how we acquired them in the first place. And a large number of these properties were acquired during peak development or just following peak development because There was no follow-up where there were requirements for developers to deed over lots as part of infrastructure or open space at the time of the approval. And it just went to the side. The assessing department at the time, had a separate, had a different mapping system than it does now. So it ended up, first of all, the developers, in many cases, did the development and moved on. The assessing department was treating these as separate lots. The developer's attitude was, they're supposed to go to town anyway, I'm not gonna pay taxes on them. So they ended up going through tax time. Land with large parcels was supposed to be open space for that type of a subdivision or drainage lots or whatever. Also, by the way, land was frankly unbuildable for one reason or another, large wetlands or whatever. And again, rather than pay taxes, they just walked away from it and it came to the town through the tax. title process that used to exist. That's been dramatically changed now by raising the United States Supreme Court decision and the state legislature enacting remedial legislation in response. But before, even if you just ignored tax bills, eventually, even if you only owed a little amount, you could lose the entire parcel. and the town would acquire the parcel and had options whether to treat it as its own at that point, sell it off, whatever. But that has ceased going forward, but we're still living with the consequences of a lot of this that happened in the late 1990s to 2000 or so.

Yeah, that was actually going to be one of the questions I did ask Mark around kind of the smaller properties that Kate put into Tier 3, which were, I was kind of confused as to with some of those, how we ended up with, like on Maple Street, that sliver of land that's behind an already developed residential piece of property.

That was a street, do you mean... We have several street relocations where the town actually owned the underlying land that the road was on, and when they relocated the road, the road in its old location doesn't exist anymore, but the underlying land of the town had acquired it outright, wasn't just using it right away, still remains on the town's property list.

Yeah, okay. So, but going back to my original question on the 97, so for example, like Schmidt's Farm and King Street Park in Town Common, Why would those that have not already been classified put into open, into recreation space or I guess recreation space would be the place that those, why wouldn't they have already been placed in those categories? I know what you're talking about when it's land sales, but like Schmitt's Farm.

Well, the more recent one, Schmitt's Farm and Maple Hill both have restrictions in the deeds because community preservation funds were used, and it was indicated that those are going to be open space recreation.

The Ciara. The Ciara. Right.

Even without those, the deed itself recites the purpose, which restricts it. So it may be if the assessors don't show that, they may just not have the most current updates.

Yeah, and I guess my question is, who is responsible? Because actually it didn't note in here, you put, Kate, requires two-third majority vote to move. So it would require the council to put it into an LUC category?

So there's a number of things going on here and systems that different departments are using. So you've got the real estate title and statutory requirements. Then you've got the internal things that the assessors have come up with, which largely includes identification of parcels and what they're used for for their purposes. Then on top of that is land acquired and whether a restriction is contained in the deed by which we acquired it. Whether there is a, if there were a tax taking, that's an initial process and there's then further processes to transfer the property internally and that has been done. But by statute, if you are holding the land for a particular purpose and it's no longer needed for that purpose, that requires a two-thirds vote of the legislative body to change that purpose. And by case law, disposition is also considered a change in municipal purpose, so that's also a two-thirds vote. So when one of those, for instance, one of the school properties like Davis Stair, the school department whose care custody control the property was under, determined they no longer needed it. They did a notice to the council that they no longer needed it for that purpose and the council took a two-thirds vote to transfer that purpose. So that's where that sits and Palmetto as well.

Yeah, Palmetto.

Okay. To sell a piece of property, does it, it goes out to public, it goes out to public bid and like, for example, I was looking at the Jordan Road property that Kate mentioned, which would be a great ADU opportunity for, I was looking at the map, there are basically four abutters that surround that piece of land. Could, in theory, they bid a dollar for it and then build an ADU unit on it and we would accept the bid? If that was the bid we got was a dollar and we were willing to sell it so that someone could put an ADU and therefore generate $250,000 of value in tax revenue, is that? Is that the process that we would do?

It all depends on the value of the property. If it's depending, I think the present floor is $35,000. If it's worth that or more, you have to go through a formal statutory disposition process. However, if it's worth less than that or more, If it was acquired to a tax title, there are separate simplified processes for disposing of the property. And there's been several efforts through the then treasurer collector to dispose of properties, which is called land of low value, which you're kind of alluding to, was offered to abutters in addition to the proposed auction, et cetera. And frankly, if you're living at a property, you know this little piece of property is next to you that nobody can use for anything else, it's not costing you anything to use it. Incidentally, why would you put out money to buy it unless you had perhaps this opportunity to put up an ADU or something like that? But without a particular rationale, no driving reason.

But then you're paying property taxes on that parcel, where right now you're dumping your lawn clippings on there for free. Right.

And if a tree falls, you have to then pay to have it dealt with, whereas if it falls and the town owns it, then DPW gets to go deal with it. Right.

Yeah, obviously someone wouldn't want to, if they didn't have a purpose for that, and I'm specifically talking about that Jordan Road, if they didn't specifically have a purpose to put an ADU, you can... Why would you say, just give me 0.9 acres and add more value? But if there was an interest, I mean, ADUs are popular now. So if any of those folks that are but that, I guess I'm putting a plea out there, if they're interested, come forward and we'll start talking about it. I guess that's my point there. But again, Kate, I appreciate you putting this together. I mean, it's certainly a lot of questions, and I won't take up the meeting's time with kind of the non-Big Three that you talked about. The Grove Street one is interesting. I mean, there's a lot of interesting, and from an economic development standpoint, and I'll certainly work with With Jamie on this, I think that there's some opportunity out there to do some practical things with this, with the land, with some of this excess land. And yeah, and anything you can do about getting a little bit more detail on the 202 or even the 97, that would be great. I'd appreciate that.

Yep, that's not difficult data to get together. I'll get that together for you, that breakdown. Okay, thank you.

All set, Mike. Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Max, go ahead.

I had a question about the Cooper Drive area. You said it's 12 bankers. I was curious, is that it's for municipal purposes, including but not limited to recreation?

That's the language of the deed.

So could a police station be feasibly cited there?

It's a municipal purpose and not limited to recreation, including but not limited to recreation. It's a municipal purpose.

Okay. And is there any, like, it's in a residential community, obviously. You don't want police cars going through that. Is there a way to get, to connect that to, how do you say it? Populatic? Populatic? Populatic. That's a tough street.

You're also surrounded by privately owned, by non-town properties. Mm-hmm.

You're also geographically in no man's land. Yeah, you're in the northern part of the town. But you're not putting a police station in Populatic. These guys are going to step up and go, that's... It's not going to happen. Yeah, it's just not going to happen.

You're not... We currently have no radio communications in Populatic. It should be done soon. Yeah.

Okay, thank you.

Anybody else?

Mr. Chairman, just a fast question on just in general the town-owned property. The town owns 13% of the land mass.

3% of the lots. Of the numbers. There's 11,917 parcels in Franklin.

Right. So 13% compared to other towns, average, big, small? Do we have a lot of land?

We're pretty much on par. It depends on the community, though. I mean, some communities are so focused on open space and preserving their open space that they own a lot more. I can get those specific numbers for you if you're interested.

Yeah, 13% of what? Just kind of curious to know what the overall, you know, volume of that would be. That would be good.

Compared to other communities?

Yeah, just even by itself, just kind of what that is.

Oh, like acreage?

Yeah.

Okay.

Whatever you use for the land mass calculation, probably acreage. Just how big is our holding?

I don't have my calculator, but Franklin has 27 square acres. 13% of that.

That helps. Thank you. I actually have a question. The one on Parliament, you said it has HOA?

It used to be owned by the HOA of that neighborhood.

Oh, okay. Which was long gone. Long gone. Dissolved. Long gone.

Yeah.

But that property there, how many acres is that?

That, I believe, is two. The larger one is two, and then the small little one, which I'm not sure what the history of that one is, that is quaint.

Do we have access to that?

So there, yes, there's a paved access, like, road. You could drive in there.

Okay.

If you want to.

No, I'm just thinking a recreational, you know, maybe, you know, I don't know how much they have down there.

There is still remnants of the basketball.

I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW THERE WAS ONE.

I THINK IT'S...

I THINK RYAN KNOWS.

WAS IT BASKETBALL OR WAS IT BASEBALL?

IT WAS A BASEBALL, A SMALL BASEBALL FIELD IN THE BACK.

IT WAS A SMALL BASKETBALL COURT WITH A DRIVEWAY THAT GOES IN.

RIGHT, I DIDN'T KNOW THAT.

IT'S A BIG FIELD, BUT IT'S SURROUNDED BY A NEIGHBORHOOD. OKAY.

LIKE KING STREET?

IT'S NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THAT SIDE.

OH, NO, BUT I MEAN SURROUNDED BY NEIGHBORHOODS.

I mean, it's really, it's in the backyard.

Oh, okay, all right.

You wouldn't know this was there unless, just driving by, you wouldn't notice it.

Okay, all right, all right. That answers my question, then. Yeah. Okay, all right. That's it.

So, could you go to the last slide? Yep. Okay, just, anybody have any thoughts on some of these questions?

We're going to have a police station presentation. No. No.

No.

Oh, I thought they were coming up.

They're here for if you have questions on why they recommended the police station to be a parmenter. I mean, I'm assuming that people may have questions for the committee about why they chose that. I mean, I know this is a little bit outside that, but I also knew the questions were going to come up. do we own any other land other than Parmenter and Davis there? So I wanted to make sure that there was a definitive set of data out there to show that these guys that have been our OPM and Kate have scoured every piece of public property And then if you're going to get into the private market of buying real estate for any future municipal use or a police station, we all know what that's going to cost. It's going to be very, very expensive to buy and find a piece of property. So I think we're trying to have everybody in the room that in case you all had questions on where to site the police station or I respect the fact that some people may not be ready to support it and maybe don't know enough about it. i will say this like costs for building construction are certainly not going down i don't think you have to rush to make a decision but i think the council has to make a decision at some point if they're going to put this on the back burner that's okay but you're going to need a station in two three four five six years if people are not supporting the 39 million dollar price tag you know, in 10 years, it's going to be 50, 60, 70, you know, you're just going to be, you know, at some point, right? So I think we're trying to get a conversation going here about, There is no other municipally owned land that you can use for a police station or really probably many other municipal uses. You've got two or three parcels left.

Sorry, I just wanted to clarify that because that was the question that I had. As you said, you did this exercise just so we have... Just to help us get a better view on what the parsons were, what the availability was. Question. This speaks exactly to where you're going, which is why I wanted to hop in. The police station committee, how much of this has been cross-referenced with them? Did you do the same exercise? Recognize that they have a proposal. I think it would be helpful for... Franklin residents just to understand how much that overlaps with the GIS study analysis that you did. recognizing that they have their opinion, where does it overlap? What other opportunities exist here?

So that's a great question. And I don't know if it was a year ago when we all sat in a room together and we had a criteria of parcels to look at based on size. And we went through every parcel that met that criteria in the DPW conference room. We were there for several hours. We did this exact same exercise, but had different criteria of what to look at. We looked at things that weren't town owned. We looked at everything that met the criteria of what would be needed for a police station. We did this exact same exercise all together. I was in the room. We had a map. We were clicking through each one, each parcel.

I think it's just helpful to clarify that in this meeting for folks who are listening. And just to be explicit, that's why the recommendation is Parmenter, and that honestly is the most realistic, that's probably the best parcel that we have for that potential use, with a second far less desirable, as I understand it, parcel being Davis Thayer.

I WOULD LET THE COMMITTEE SPEAK TO WHAT THEIR SPECIFIC THINGS ARE. SORRY.

YOU GUYS WANT TO COME UP SPECIFICALLY IF WE COULD HAVE SOMEONE SPEAK TO IT.

ONE OF YOU, SOME OF YOU GUYS. PLEASE, PLEASE.

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE TOM.

IT CAN'T BE. WE'VE BEEN AT THIS FOR A WHILE.

I THINK WHEN WE LOOKED AT all of the different parcels and I believe there were over 200, Sean, that were looked at as possible options. As they said, some we own the land, some we didn't. Obviously we kind of looked at the ones we didn't and said we don't have the money to buy parcels at this point so let's look at the land that we do own that could possibly house the police station or a new police station. And I'll let Sean speak to it because they did most of the work in going through each and every parcel and what the pros and cons were to each, not the least of which Correct me if I'm wrong, Sean, but I think the discussion over Davis Dale was the size and was it really big enough. And if we did put one there, it would have to be three stories. The room for expansion was going to be minimal at best, which is exactly why we're not looking at the current police station to add to that. because there's no space and there's no room. Apartment site has much more room, many more options, and they showed the committee three different options of utilizing some of the school changing the field from one end to the other end. The entrances and exits for the police station would be onto King Street, not onto Wachusett, where the recreation department. But I think it looked to be a great site to be able to combine all the recreation needs as well as the police station needs. And when the committee saw the presentation that Sean made, and again, I think you should listen to Sean as well, it was, you know, the entire committee felt very strongly that Parmenter was the right place and the right recommendation to make.

So that's... We also added a field house, too. Yeah, absolutely. On the backside, a field house.

We're going to take the gym. One of the options takes the gym at Parmenter and moves it down to the other end of the building and we use that end as part of the police station that goes out a wing towards where the baseball field is now and then taking that baseball field and moving it down to the other end so the recreation end would all be down at further down on Wachusett Street. I'm talking like I'm from Franklin.

Just to be frank, I've seen the proposal and I think it's a very interesting one that's certainly worth discussion.

I'm going to ask Sorry to put you on the spot here, Steve, but Mr. Mercer already started it. So if you could just give us a brief synopsis of how you came to the conclusion. Sean. Sorry, Sean. I'm Sean. This is Joe. If one of you could just give us a brief synopsis of how you got to the recommendation that you did. We'd love to know kind of where you started, why this is the recommendation.

Sure. So similar to what you've all just seen, we started the 202 property. Oh, I'm sorry. So Sean Schmiegel, project architect at Castle Blues Associates, KBA Architects. So we started, as everyone has noted, 202 sites, had our own matrix, had our own qualifications, and narrowed it down to two or three sites. We looked at the existing property, existing police station property. Davis Thayer, as well as Parmenter, looking at that matrix, going through different scenarios, looking at the program, working with the police department, understanding what their current needs are, looking at some future needs. The Davis Thayer site, yes, it's available, but as it was just noted, you know, the access points are very challenging. The grading is tough. The parking would have been constrained, and then it would be a three-story type structure, so an expansion was challenged as well. So looking at the Parmenter site, we were kind of tasked to look at more of a master plan, as the chair was just noting, looking at... more fields, more basketball courts, how the potential existing parliamentary school could be renovated into other municipal needs. And then lastly, the location of the police station with possible expansion. So whether some of the parliamentary school was demolished to allow for a larger station or locating the station practically on top of that softball field to leave the whole parliamentary school intact. And that's kind of where we had left off. But again, out of all of these conversations sitting in the DPW building a year and a half ago or so, looking almost exactly like this. But like I said, our needs, I think our parameters were a minimum two and a half, three acre property, access points, you know, other... Is that where we were? Sorry, it's been a while. But that's kind of where we landed today. Then there was a couple of the proposals to kind of proceed, more master plan scenarios, what other options could be done at parliamentary school outside of a police station. Similarly, what we did with Davis there, I think we did it twice, maybe three times. Over the course of about a year and a half. We spent a lot of effort getting to us a recommendation to the committee for a future, a potential future police station.

To that point about the committee, and this might not be the question for you, this might be back to the committee. While this was going on, I know there was a lot of, but there were questions from Franklin residents around how comfortable are we with this use for Parmenter? What's the impact going to be on residents who live near there. There are a lot of concerns. I'd love to hear a little bit of how you, some of the concerns that you heard, that you captured, that you're trying to incorporate. How are you trying to address this?

Well, I think a lot of it is what you just said, talking about how does it affect the neighborhood on Wachusett Street. And with the police station more on the King Street side, Department of School, the building itself, is going to block the police station, a lot of the police station, from being seen. On top of that, there was a lot of discussion from residents about the use of the Parmenter parcel, parcel, the entire parcel. And we met with the Department of Family. The Department of Family came to a council meeting. We had a discussion. We talked about it. We talked about renaming the site. AS THE PARMENTER CAMPUS. SO THAT IT HAD MULTIPLE USE. THEY CAME BEFORE THE COUNCIL. THEY WERE VERY MUCH BEHIND THAT. AND THAT'S KIND OF WHERE WE'VE LEFT IT. I DON'T KNOW, JOE, IF THERE'S ANYTHING MORE YOU WANT TO ADD

I'll just speak on behalf of everything. Sorry. Our biggest concern, if you want to introduce myself, Joe Lynch, owner's project manager of CHA Consulting. I've been working alongside the team here over the last year and a half, two years. Our biggest concern with Davis there is you're going to be right back in the same spot you are right now with your current police station. not too far down the road and you're going to be in a spot. To Jamie's point, we don't even know what that cost is going to be 20, 30 plus years from now. We understand there's a lot of sensitivity to these areas and properties and names and everything so we made sure to do our due diligence and hear everyone out. Prime location for the police station is key, so it's going to have to go somewhere. I think by kind of burying it back towards where that baseball field is right now to this point, that's kind of setting it back as much as possible so it's not as road front and as... much nicer where the department building is right now, when you drive past it, that's all that takes up your space. Our idea is to kind of tuck away the police station into a spot where it's surrounded mostly by trees on one end, you have buildings and parking lots around it, like therein to get in and out and go about their business. There's also a lot of feedback that if you put recreation area there, if you put basketball courts, pickleball courts is what everyone wanted to see last year because that was the biggest rave, right? If you do that, there's also value to having the police right there. You know they're right there. You have an area where people are hanging out, they have their kids hanging out, meeting up and going about their business. So there was a lot of comfort found in the community with that. Some people don't want a police station right next to their house or in their neighborhood, but there's certain concessions that may need to be made by the community in order for the whole community to get what it needs. But Davis there, it's too small. We have to go up three floors, like we said, that didn't include any outdoor storage or any other space for some of the limitations the current police already have. They have things stored in places you would not believe, including cars, cruisers, and everything that are up and down the street. Davis there, a lot of the feedback, specifically from members of the police department too, was the log jam it was going to create with parking, cruisers, everything around, no storage, nowhere to put anything. intake getting people safely in and out it's just a very highly congested area it's below what we had on like our matrix and what we wanted for the entire space um but you need a police station so we're entertaining it and seen as an option because we think at the end of the day the police station there is still better than where we currently are working with limitations that chief lynch and his team currently have so in our mind parmenter was a hands down winner and that's why we recommended it with all the data and information we had. But we're definitely open to, you know, David's there and any other questions or concerns that are there as well.

Appreciate that. So my, sorry, my one other question, which is broader and maybe Chief West may speak to it, is what happens if we don't do this? I mean, Parliamentary makes sense for the reasons you just talked about, like you explained it. Davis-Thayers is less viable and is a challenge. I mean, costs for either one are not insignificant. But the longer we wait, the higher the costs are going to be. So we're aware of that. And at some point, we need to do something. But I want to get a sense from you, Chief, If we do nothing, what happens?

First of all, I got to get used to that, Chief. I'm not used to that yet, but thank you. Sorry, people.

I know, I know, but I'm just...

But great question. For those of you who toured the police station, you've seen how small it is. And we hopefully will continue to grow in the future. Some of the spaces we have, for example, locker rooms, we don't have lockers big enough to even store the gear and the equipment that we have. The female locker room, we don't have enough lockers for female officers. And that's... Certain things, we're just outgrown that space. If we don't have a police station soon... We're just gonna be out of room. We've expanded every space we have. We've done the best we can by reallocating spaces and reorganizing what we could, but we're just simply out of room, if that answers your question. We need someplace we can go that's safe and viable for the officers for the future.

Yeah. Please, no, I've taken up your time. I appreciate the answers to the questions, but please.

If I could, you asked about the neighborhood in that area. One thing, the egress, and King Street's right there, one of the major roads, and we've had, the design has roadways and access to the police station from King Street, which will have very little impact on the community. We can come in and out. right on the Waukesha Street side. So King Street would be our primary egress from the station. And secondly, our officers, they should be out on the road and in the beats. We work from our sectors. We don't respond primarily from the police station like the fire department does. They're in the station, they get a call, they go. Our officers are already out on the street, so it limits the amount of officers and cruisers coming and going throughout the day. It's going to happen at certain times, but most of the time they'll be out on the road.

Thank you. Chief, how many complaints have we had from what we do?

None that I know of. None that I know of.

Right.

That's because there's nobody there.

Yeah, but it's way up there.

Just a second.

May I? Sure, please. To anybody, I remember taking the tour Last year, remember the proposal? I think the incumbent chief came to one of our meetings earlier on in our term to talk about the apartment or site. So I've been following this along a little bit. But just to refresh my memory, the existing police station is approximately 10,000 square feet. And the proposed new one is?

Just under 30.

I'm sorry?

Just under $30,000.

Just under $30,000. I thought it was higher than that. Was it one of the original proposals to push it closer to $40,000, $37,000, $38,000?

I think the price tag was up there.

No, no, no. I was talking square footage. No, I know.

Yeah, it's $37,000 square feet.

I thought the new one was $37,000.

Okay. So not quite four times as big, but pretty significant. And I'm sure you had the reasons for it and we talked about the training center and we talked about extra parking for other officers that would come from other departments to be trained here in Franklin and the benefits of all of that. I'm just not sure in your search or your evaluations of other sites have you looked at a 25,000 square foot police department instead of 37 or close to 40 or 22,000 or what have you.

The gentlemen from CHA and KBA basically take what it is that we need. We did an entire whole thing where we basically, like, what are we lacking, where are we short on something for square footage, et cetera, et cetera, and then created what it was that we said that we would need to be able to not only function today but in the future. And that's what they did, and that's what they came up with. And when you look at a place like Needham and its square footage and Shrewsbury, similar-sized agencies that we went to who have buildings that they designed or somebody else did and basically just come online, and that's what they have. And they have similar-sized departments, or they're going to grow, like Shrewsbury was looking to put on more offices. And Chief West is correct, yes. We're hiring two more female officers. We're out of lockers. And we lost the classroom because we turned it into the sergeant's office. Because we're starting to deal with issues. You're talking about existing. Councilor Juco was asking what would happen in the future. It's already happening. We can't keep going the way we are. It's inefficient. They're on top of one another. So we said, enough. We're getting rid of the classroom. We'll find another place. So we're going to have to either go to region two headquarters. We'll have to go up to the EOC at the fire station or something like that to do training. It's not the end of the world, but it's not optimum. And the classroom was never big enough for all of us to be in there at the same time anyway. So there's kind of the answer to the question as to what it is. And the reason that Dave is there is, look, nobody knew whatever the police station building committee was way back when, when they finally decided to build the building in 91. I can't remember their names, but they're on the wall up front in the lobby. I don't think they knew what was going to happen in only a few short years where we were the fastest growing town in Massachusetts for five years in a row. There was no place to expand, and I think we'd be doing a disservice if we ended up putting a new police station onto a site that would not allow for us to basically build what we need today, let alone what we might need in the future, and give us those options to be able to add on to it if we had to.

I get it. A lot of work and a lot of history and everything went into it. I'm just kind of looking at the raw numbers saying it seems like a pretty big leap over and above what we have now. And I just want to make sure that the purpose and use of all of that space is entirely appropriate and right. I'm thinking training room in particular. I know there was a lot of discussion in some of our meetings about the size of the parking lot needed to be sized to accommodate high volumes of traffic for people who would come for training. how often that happens, how regular that is, what's that real need. I want to make sure that we've looked at scaling the size of it and the use functions of it. Maximum or optimum versus, you know, what would be an improvement and better for the next period of time. If not 30 years, then 15 or 20. Because underlying all of this, and I've been to the police station, I understand that it's not an optimal facility and we need to do something. But walking away with $40 and $50 million numbers for Parmenter and the other projects, it's just really hard to get my head around in terms of what that's worth. And maybe I'm just too much of a dinosaur at this point. But my god, that's a lot of money.

And I tell you, yeah, it is a lot of money, but we're not asking for something more than what we basically need. And we're thinking in the future, like you said, having a range, a firearms range indoors in the basement, which is going to, you know, basically we're going to be able to have departments come and they would pay to be able to use it. There are a lot of places. We're not over in Bellingham anymore because our residents complained, you know, that live on the border of Bellingham and you know, off of South Maple Street, they would complain due to the fact that we were there and so forth. So we're now in Hopkinton. That range has been there for over 100-plus years, but everybody's become nimby, and they want it gone. And it's going to be very difficult to find a place to be able to go. And the reason we ended up going to Hopkinton was so that we could shoot lead, because when you're shooting frangible ammunition, one, it was so expensive that when we got rid of it and we went from Bellingham to Hopkinton, I was able to hire another officer. Because of how short we were and we couldn't get anything, so we had to come up with our own, how are we going to do this? And it dirties your gun something awful. And then the classroom and the way that we train and our training staff so that we would be able to host a class, get free seats out of it, not having to pay for them. And then having people come from other departments to attend. We'd be doing that and would have been doing that for the last 10 years if we had the space to do it. Because we have the ability to do it. But we can't because there's no place to park. We don't have enough parking for ourselves. Being close to the recreation would be great. We were just able to restore our two SROs. They're not just in the schools. They're community service officers. They're the ones that will be at the bike event and everything else. Having that would be able to enhance that relationship. We're a huge community policing department, but we can't host anything in our department because we don't have the room.

I get it. I know there's challenges, so I just wanted to make sure we're colorful. I'm just trying to self as best I can. You only got two months left.

We're still going to be living in this town.

I still care about the PD.

First of all, thank you to all of the various committees that have worked on this because I feel like these discussions, we just keep kind of going around and around and around about Davis there, and it's an old building, and it's got asbestos, it's got mold, it's got all kinds of issues that haven't even been talked about tonight that would cost millions of dollars to remediate. So in my mind, that is absolutely part of the discussion, because that particular building, though somewhat beloved by a certain generation, I guess, At some point, we have to dispose of that asset and make good use of it. It's a valuable piece of property. It's valuable. The building itself isn't really valuable in its current condition. It's the location. We had a Davis there reuse committee that had proposals that came in, and they talked about all sorts of great stuff that could be done there. And I, for one, would love to see that happen and finally move on because what the public isn't hearing is that that building's costing us over $100,000 a year just to sit there with insurance and heat and other issues just to sit there unused doing nothing. I can think of a ton of things I'd rather do with 100 grand. I could probably name 50 of them sitting up here right now, right? Police Committee, that group's been meeting. You guys have been going through this now for, I feel like forever. I know you looked at a ton of sites, you evaluated. Yes, I think the proposed, I keep hearing the public call it the Taj Mahal of police stations, right? Because it's just going to be so massive and so expensive. But we also have to be able to say to people, yes, that's a good use of money, right? The recreation facility and the police station combined on that large parcel, and here's the benefits, right? Jamie, do we know just round numbers? Let's say it's $40 million, and that goes out to the public for a vote. What does that mean to the average taxpayer?

I mean, I have to calculate it, but, you know, I wouldn't know.

Because we're going to get asked.

I think the first thing is to decide on what what are you going to do and where are you going to locate it? If there's concerns from the council of saying, hey, instead of 37,000 square feet, can you scale it back to 32,000 square feet or something like that? We give these guys the direction to go do that. They scale the building down, changes the numbers. And then you're right, Councilor Cormier-Ledger, we would go to our CFO and our finance people, and just like we did for the override, put out a fact sheet on exactly what that debt exclusion would do. And I think to Councilor Molloy's point, The council also has to be aware that we're just hiring an OPM to do the Remington Jefferson School, Washington Street School, which we know needs all that stuff. The Parmenter building is definitely going to need a zhuzh, a renovation of some sort. It doesn't need to be the greatest renovation ever, but I think the facilities director laid out some issues in there that just after 78 years you've got to – fix some things. So I think to Councillor Molloy's point, everybody, you know, you're probably at some point looking at, you know, if you do 40 million for this, if you scale the building back, the costs have already gone up since they did that estimate. Costs are getting brutally bad. Government bonds, I don't need to tell any of you where that market's going right now. localities are not borrowing money because of the financial costs. But you also want to be ready someday, which is the idea behind the Washington Street School. At some point, you're going to start degrading these buildings to a point where you're going to lose more money over time. So you'd probably be looking at a $50, $60 million number because you've got to go out for Parmenter and Remington Jefferson because there's no capacity for any of those projects to be done within the operating budget. There's no capital money from free cash. I know you know this, but just for everybody else. So at some point, you're going to be looking at a likely debt exclusion. And we have to cost that out. I mean, I could certainly ask the finance team for like one of the future meetings to say, if you did a $60 million debt exclusion, what would that be? If you did a $40 million, we can do that math pretty easy over the next month to at least give you guys a ballpark of what that would be per household.

Yeah, I think it's helpful just because we've been having these discussions now for several years. So to just be able to say to people with a little bit of certainty, You know, here's the benefit, here's the cost, you know, because it all comes down to money for the residents, right? They're all going to ask us, well, what's the impact to my checkbook? I think the other thing that hasn't been mentioned, Jamie, is that some of the parcels can be sold and those sales figures can be applied to this project, right? Absolutely. So you can sell. The Beaver Street thing, I don't even know what to call it anymore, the old recreation department building, and you can sell Davis there. Let's say those two bring us $5 million. I'm just going to throw a number out. Well, that $5 million can go toward this project, which brings that cost down.

Or the Washington Street.

Or it could go toward any building use that we deem necessary, but I think people have to sort of wrap their heads around that there is a benefit to the sale of some of these assets because it's going to improve other things that we're trying to do, right?

And both parcels, if you sold them or one of them, would then go on the tax rolls if it was a commercial building or a residential building. Right now, they're not being charged property taxes. So we could cost out. We could also do that general math for you as to what you would bring in then in property taxes to offset.

And I would say, you know, for me, And I know you're kind of looking for the straw poll opinion up here of trying to get some direction, and we're kind of beating this around for a while. You have my support to liquidate the asset for Davis there. I know that's not going to be popular with some people, but I'm sorry. We just can't save every old building in town. I'm just going to be the mean guy here and say it. It's just the reality. the Beaver Street parcel to me is not an asset. You're not going to put a school there. You're not going to put the police station there. It's just in this sort of weird part of town, right, especially with the train tracks and stuff there. But if it can be sold for a commercial industrial possible use and make some money and put it on the tax rolls, I think that's great. And then I think the conversation about Parmenter, which is longer and more complicated would be if we're just in agreement that that's where the new police police station is going to be so we just stop that conversation going going further we get we got to just say as a group that that's where it's going to be we're just not sure when and we're not sure how to pay for it then that at least gives some direction, right? Because then at least we're not talking about 50 different sites anymore. It's like, no, no, no, we've determined. That's where it's going to go. And now we have to figure out exactly what the community can afford and what it's going to look like and how that ties into recreation use, right? For me, that just seems really smart to... just move forward with those three things, you know, put the RFP out for Davis there, put the RFP out for Beaver, and Permanente is going to take some time because we don't have $40 million right now. RIGHT THERE? THERE. OKAY. I SAID MY PIECE.

NO, I AGREE WITH TED TOTALLY. JAMIE, I DON'T KNOW IF YOU CAN OR YOU GUYS FIGURE IT OUT AT, SAY, 32 SQUARE FEET AND AT 37 SQUARE FEET, SEE WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE IN MONEY? IF IT'S 50 BUCKS, WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? I THINK IT'S GOING TO BE MILLIONS. YEAH, IT'S GOING TO BE

Well, it means per household. If the price tag is 40, what's that look like? If the price tag is 35, what does that look like? If it's 60, what does that look like? If we have a sense of that, it's just helpful to give us a baseline.

I was talking about households. Yeah, I get that.

I agree. So what's the impact to a household on a 40 versus a 60 versus a 30? That's what I want to see.

It's also worthwhile, Councillor Ajuku, to say, sorry to interrupt, but debt exclusions are different than home rights. Yes, it comes off. Debt exclusion sunset. So the price tag to the taxpayer is usually... but it's still going to be an impact obviously to folks' wallet. It's kind of like thinking about the tri-county you know, beautiful megaplex at $300 million, right? Like, we all were like, oh my God, that's such a huge amount of money. But broken down amongst everybody, divided by 10 communities, that turned out to be pretty minimal.

And then ultimately, I think it's also just a recognition that the option to do nothing is irresponsible. for doing nothing and not having a plan is not the right answer.

No, correct. All right, Caroline or Mike,

I feel like I don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said tonight and in previous conversations. I would agree with Ted, actually. I'm fine with selling Davis there. I think we can get a lot for it. I would love to see it, whatever it become, be something that's an important piece of that kind of gateway to Franklin. I mean, I have a feeling we'll probably get more for it if it's housing, but I would love to see it be something that's more community based. I would also like to see Parmenter kind of keep what it is right now with the, while adding a police station if that's if the town votes for that i think but i think making that a community center would be what my preference but i you know i'm i know these conversations are going to continue on but i have nothing else to add i just i feel like we have some really valuable pieces but a lot of that value is also in what we can you know bring the community into as well so that's what i like to see there but i look forward to kind of you know continuing to go through this

thanks Mike okay so this is Mike so there was question one on the list it says the first question is where to locate the police station I think the first thing we have to decide on is what the size of the police station is right and as counselor Malloy mentioned I'll be honest with you, I'm gonna find it really hard. I know that we went through a process, and it's part of any process of developing a building, this is what we want, there's a need, there's a size, yada yada yada, and it comes out to be 38,000 feet. I did that with my house, and I realized that it was going to cost $2.5 million, and guess what? I didn't build that house. I built a $1.5 million house. The fact of the matter is, I can't say it enough. In my opinion, we cannot afford a 38,000 square foot police station. It has to be smaller. I know that's what the needs are, but as part of that process, we also, and I know it's about the future, there is, we keep on having conversations, there's not a lot of places to build in Franklin anymore. So we're not talking going from 20,000 people to 35,000. We're not going from 35,000 to 50,000 people. We're not going to have that kind of growth. But we may need to have a substation or something. So we need to kind of plan that out. But my point is, I don't think that we need a 38,000 square foot building. So I think that's the first thing we have to kind of decide when it comes to police, because there are a bunch of dominoes here. So I think that's actually the first question. As it relates to really our three sites that we're talking about, Parmenter, Davis there, and Beaver Street, to me, I think all three properties should go out to RFP. Because I think we're, because, and you know my, I've shared this before, Parmenter is 20 acres, 13 1⁄2 acres. I know there's some stipulations to it, but that is a valuable piece of property from a residential standpoint, from an affordable housing standpoint. And I know, again, there are stipulations with the Parmenters. I understand that, but that is a valuable piece of residential land in a residential area. So if you're looking for a straw poll, I would never vote to put the police station at Parmenter. I would never vote to continue to expand the Parmenter school for the recreation site. I think there should be a new building for the rec department at King Street or Schmitz Farm. We have other land to do that. That should be part of the proposal. What Davis there is, do I think the police station, if it's smaller, will now fit on Davis there. It's a great gateway to the community. But I will also, if you put it out for an RFP, we'll find out where the most value is. Someone may pay $10 million for Parmenter to put affordable houses there. Why wouldn't we sell... why wouldn't we sell that property for 10 million dollars to put affordable housing in there so i think we're selling ourselves short by only putting two of the properties for it's an rfp it's a it's about what someone thinks they can do with it and what the value that we don't even know what the value of parmenter is beyond what's on it today so i do think that we need to to look beyond it but i think the first question is and it is a domino is the police station and the size of it personally i cannot i i would I would not be voting for a 38,000 square foot, $40 million police station. And then when we were talking about apartment, it grew beyond that. Now it grew into $20 million to add fields and build a field house and blah, blah. That to me is going beyond the scope where we want it to be. So that's my two cents right now on the subject. So I'll give my time.

ALL RIGHT, THANKS, MIKE. YEAH, I JUST, WE ALSO STILL HAVE TO REMEMBER, WE STILL GOT TO TAKE IN CONSIDERATION THE PARMENTA FAMILY. THEY DID DONATE THAT LAND, AND HE DID DIE IN WORLD WAR II. SO WE STILL HAVE TO, I MEAN, I WOULD ALWAYS THINK OF THAT.

THANK YOU, MR. CHAIRMAN. Yeah, I'll be direct. I think, you know, I did listen to a lot of constituents. I had a nice conversation with my former neighbor, Rick Ciccone, who filled my ear with a lot of stuff around his views on the police station being at Davis there. I listened to the police committee report, and I think they put a lot of work into, a lot of time and effort into this. And so I think it's, you know, as someone who's taken all that information, I think that, you know, in terms of number one, I do think that the parliamentary is the best site just because Davis there is too small. It, you know, if we, you know, we're in a situation now where the current building is too small and to have that happen again would be a big, I think, financially irresponsible. As well as to keep the current building running, not making a decision, I think that's financially irresponsible. So I think it's time to make a decision. I think, you know, I support it being a parliamenter. The question is, you know, how to get there. I think I am concerned about it interfering with sort of getting our operational budget in order. So I would not want to see it, you know, interfere with that. You know, so I think it has to be carefully planned out as to how, you know, we would make that ask to the public. I think, you know, we need people before buildings. In terms of where the Davis Thayer property, you know, I respect the history of that building. But at the same time, I think that we, you know, to rehab that building is going to cost more. And that would be fiscally irresponsible because we'd have to put more money in than we get out. And I think that, you know, looking at affordable housing or mixed-use development would make the most sense. I do think that when we do put out the RFP, I did look at that rubric. I do think there could be more things around there about, like, third spaces having a sort of community space. around deep affordability, making sure that that RFP isn't just about how much money we get, but also what goes there, and making sure it fits the character of the town. So I think a lot of people are concerned they don't want a big monstrosity. I think making sure that it fits into the character of the town should be a top priority for that RFP. You know, in terms of the recreation department, well, first off, let's talk about the old building. You know, we're talking about selling the place on Beaver Street. I actually think we should lease it, and here's why. So when we sell a building, it goes into capital, and we could use that for other buildings, other physical items. But if we were to get rents from it, you know, every year recurring, that could go into our operating budget, and that's even harder to get. So unless I'm, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it would be a better asset to use as a rental property to be able to get that money to put into our operating budget, because that's where we're really struggling right now. In terms of the operating department located currently, I'm fine with it being next to the police station, having that synergy. If we could sort of bundle things with the building. I'm not tied to the current building. If we could bundle things together so that, you know, you know, we could get sort of more bang for the buck in building something together. I floated the idea, I don't think it's feasible if, you know, what if you have a town hall there and sell this building, but I don't think that's feasible. So how could we, you know, if we're building this project, how do we get the most bang for the buck for it? And then what do we, you know, I think remaining town properties, I don't know, I think that was a reference to Beaver Street, correct? Or was that, was there something else I'm missing? For number four?

Just some of the, I mean, mainly with Beaver Street, but I think, you know, as Kate outlined, there may be a few more that you might be able to at least just plop off and get 50 grand for the Sheridan Street parcel or something, you know, something like that.

I did have a question about this idea of having departments come in and how much revenue that might generate for the police department so we could maybe use that to find an officer. Is there an estimate as to how much you're looking to get each year? I know it's kind of a dream right now.

From the station, from some of the rentals that the chief mentioned? Yeah. Yeah, we haven't done a lot of that. There's only a couple of departments that do that. Needham was one as a matter of fact. We could check with Needham maybe and just see what their revenue streams are and just at least get a ballpark. So we can get that for you. We'll talk to Needham and just see what they're bringing in. Because they're kind of a regional hub now for training and stuff.

And I think some of the things is that, you know, there is capital, there is cost to making that center happen, but in the long run it helps us balance the operating budget, which would be, you know, it's one of those trickier things to sort of, to get in there. So, you know, I think I support our police officers and making sure they have the resources they do to what they do. I know we might have disagreed on some of the budget stuff, but I think that was more about, you know, the process rather than, you know, the support of our officers. But I think that making sure that we, I don't think we should keep dancing around this and putting things off. I think we need to make a decision. And I think that, you know, that decision is in the best interest of the community. And I know that a lot of people are tied to history. And I think it's important to be tied to our history, but I also think we want to make sure that we're able to move forward as a town and serve the best interest of the community. So I yield.

My turn. Finally. And I bet you all know what I'm going to say. I do not agree with the police station being put on Parmenter. I do believe that we need one. I was taken on a tour with Chief Lynch, and it is crowded. It is chaos. I don't like that, and I know I'm going to screw this whole thing up. The detectives who do that gas thing for fingerprints, I don't know what you call it. It's late and I'm tired. They should not be doing that in your cafeteria. where you eat your food. So that right there, that alone bothered me that they're using these chemicals where you eat. Okay, that being said, I will never in any way, shape, or form vote to sell the Parmenter land. That was gifted to this town. That would be an ultimate slap in the face to the family that donated and gave it to our town. And if it was something that you would want to do, it would have to go to a vote to the residents because it's not our land to sell. It is the land of the entire town. That today is over 34,000 people. So we can cross that right off the block because I will fight that one to the death. I believe the police station needs to be at Davis there. That is what I've always said. In the last two years, and I have talked to a lot of people between being at the meeting, being at that microphone, sitting here at the farmer's market, at every grocery store, in any place, shape and form, I have not met one person yet that said I think it should be at Parmenter. It should be, it's always Davis there. Why? Davis there is centrally located in the middle, in the heart of the town. It should be easily able to be seen and found by anybody who's driving through this town. Over at Parmenter, it's not as gonna be easily seen if you're a newcomer coming into our town. It took me a while to find it when it first moved over to where it is now. I kept going to the ice skating rink. Couldn't find the police station anywhere. I just ended up at the Franklin ice skating rink. It shouldn't be hidden. It needs to be visual. It needs to be out there for everyone to see because that is what makes people feel safe when they can see the police station. Putting an apartment, and I get it that the men and women are out in the patrol cars. I understand that. But everything is always on this side of town. We are forgetting that there is another entire demographic on the other side of town that literally has nothing over there. And we have to come through all this way to get wherever we want to go. And trust me, going through the center of town now, it takes me over 25 minutes to do so. So I'm okay with the rec center being on Parmenter. I think that's great. It's supposed to be for children. That's what the rec center is. Let it be there. I think we could, one of your five year plans, I can't remember if it was last year or the year before, but it was stated when we were doing the redistricting stuff. By 2030, we're going to need another school. We just closed two of them. It was one. It was stated. I will pull it up. I will show you.

It's okay. I'm just trying to correct that you're not going to need a new school in four years.

It was just that it was one of those.

It may have been somewhere in the ether. I just want to make sure it's clear you're not building a new school in four years.

No, I'm not saying we are. I'm saying it was a thought that it could happen. But the fact is kids go up and down. It's been said through the school committee. It's been said at these meetings. I can't think of the technical words because, again, my brain hurts. But kids go up, cylindrical, that's it, goes up and down. So at some point in time, we could actually need another school. How many have we just said, there's no more land? So to sell Parmenter, that would be where we would build another school to get rid of that land or build on it now for other things. would take that option away. That land should stay as is. It should be with the rec center 150% and the community center and all that stuff. I think that's great. But I really do, my heart of hearts is Davis there is where the police station should be. And I think that if we could downsize it a little bit, it could be an economical thing that could work. The other option is we have an election in this town every two years. I mean, sorry, every year. Town councils every two years. Okay? At some point in time, we could put a question on a November ballot and ask the residents where they would like the police station and give them the options. Okay? and say we can do it here, or we can do it here, where would you like it to be? Because you're going to pay for it when we do it, whether it's in your property taxes, in a debt exclusion, if the town has to borrow, it doesn't matter where the money's coming from, because it's coming out of our pockets. So why not put the question on a ballot and let the people decide? I yield.

I'll be quick. From a location perspective, in my mind, the more central location is definitely Davis there. If you had to, you know, If it met all your criteria, if you didn't have that building there that you had to deal with, I mean, those are some shortcomings, but it's in the best place just because of where it's accessed. It's centralized in town, close to the downtown, close to Dean, right on some major roads, as opposed to... which is more in a residential area. So, you know, you're going to have some potential issues with residents who live in that area versus the, you know, the day-to-stay area, which is already, I think, considered part of the, you know, part of the downtown. So that's my thoughts on that. Like I said, I'd be quick. I think that definitely when we... The reason I think that the committee has gone towards is because the requirements that you had that you put together probably makes more sense, but let's look at the requirements. I don't understand how that site is too small. I mean, definitely if you consider it without the baseball field, but when I look at the baseball field behind it and I look at the size of that, I don't see that as being too small, but I know the committee looked at that. Anyway, those are my thoughts. I think that what we should probably do is let's look seriously at Davis there and how would you maybe design it differently to fit on that spot versus trying to, you know, I think push Parliament. And Jane brings up also kind of the use that it's meant for and also the future need for schools in the town that I think that it makes more sense to put a Davis there. I'm done.

I GOT A QUICK QUESTION. HOW MANY ACRES ARE AT DAVIS THERE? 3.5. 3.5. AND YOU'RE SAYING WE NEED FOUR ACRES TO DO THE POLICE STATION? IT WAS FOUR ACRES, IF I REMEMBER. 3.5, BUT THREE DOWNSIDES.

I THOUGHT IT WAS FIVE. IT MIGHT BE FOUR OR FIVE. HUH? FOUR OR FIVE. FOUR OR FIVE.

We're in that range of four to five, depending on when and the use and where you can get it out and everything else. Okay.

Yeah, I just got curious. I mean, Davis Dare is a nice place for it. I mean, the commenter is a good place for it, too. He'd do everything else, too. So it is a hard decision to make. I don't think it's an easy one. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, Davis Dare has to come down. It's a disgrace. It has to come down. I know... Wayne Samaria is going to kill me because he wants to keep it. It's got to come down. Ryan, you went to Franklin High, and my son went to Franklin High. They graduated. They can't walk in the field house. Your son can't walk in the field house anymore. It happens. It's life. You know what I mean? So, yeah.

Thank you for all the feedback. This has been very, very helpful and productive. I hope it doesn't feel like it's been unproductive. I think given the change in the council, but also the Davis Thayer Reuse Committee, the Police Station Committee, I think all of this is really helpful.

Yeah, Ricky, whoever. Go ahead, Joe. All right, thanks. I'll wait.

Joel Dorico, 72 Deerview Way, Franklin. Thanks to the counselors and the committee of the police station. Just this past week, I saw six different moms pushing baby carriages in different places in this community. And I went on my desktop at home and asked, Are Massachusetts school enrollments cyclical for the last 75 years? And the answer in AI is yes. School enrollments are cyclical. We may not need a school in four years, but we're going to need a school in 15 years or 12 years. We have a school. Now I spoke with Mike D'Angelo, before he got through, and I asked him, how many square feet, Mike, in the Davis Thayer? And he said that the Davis Thayer had 40,000 square feet, including the lower level. Okay? So everybody's in love with the facade of the Davis Thayer. I love it. It's a 100-year-old building. The facade is gorgeous. But the building's got to come down, right? The bricks are valuable, you can sell the bricks, and we can save the pediments around the doorways. And I was talking to Greg Rondo, and he'd like to bring the building a little closer to West Central Street, and it'll leave a little more room in the back. So, Alan Earls, who owns the Franklin Observer, in February of 25, produced a credible survey on where should the police station go. and I'm just going to give you one page and the page that I'm going to give you and I'd ask the council to pass it to your colleagues 85% of the 462 respondents said no to Parmenter that's 400 people said no in that survey so You know, Jane brought up a very important part, put it on a ballot. Well, we had a survey done, and Alan Earle said he'd do another survey, and it gives you an idea how people feel. When I was on the council in the 90s, we voted to buy daisies, 115 acres for recreation, and then a committee was formed in the 90s to put a school way out there. It came to vote twice. It was turned down at Dacey's because it was too far out. It wasn't near other residential neighborhoods and there was a problem with the site. So I asked, I was at the end of my term, my fifth term, and I said, I'd like to serve on that committee. And we served on the third building committee for Lincoln Street School. And we found where it's situated now on the Zanino property and the Hockey property. So you don't want to get into a problem with a vote that's going to get turned down where you already kind of know the people don't want it there. It's the truth. He did a survey, and thank God he did the survey. Maybe he should do another one, and maybe it'll help you. That's my piece. I love the facade of Davis there, but it's just the way it is. It's got to come down.

My father went there.

All my DeBadges, DeRico, Brunellis, they all went there.

My father went there for three days. He didn't make it too long. Thank you. Had to go to work, the depression.

So many questions. First, I'll ask if anybody remembers when we tried to put the fire station where our beautiful senior center is now.

Do you remember that? Any of you folks in this room? I remember.

Well, the outrage was incredible. And we never could... The good news was, well, the fire station ended up out on King Street, Fire Station 2, and we have our beautiful senior center on Don McHale. To Jane's point... Let the voters decide. Because I, for one, can assure you the voters of this town will never, on the souls of my parents, vote for a police station on Parmenter for $40 million. Never. Now, you want to continue this go around and around and around, we can do that. One of my questions would be to the gentleman who want to build this site. Why does it have to be one floor? Does every police station that we build have to be one floor? It's going to be two floors for our 37,000 square feet. Two floors in its entirety? Two floors in its entirety? In the outbuilding, is that going to be two floors?

It'd be a variation of one floor and two stories, but the footprint is probably in a range around 20,000 square feet, maybe 25. So full disclosure, too, the building has not been designed. This is a feasibility study. We went through the program and analysis. You know, the wants, the needs. You know, we've built 250-plus stations, public safety facilities over the last 60 years. So, you know, we know what goes in these buildings. So we're just utilizing that matrix, that datums all across the board to understand what size of these buildings need to go on these properties. So roughly 20,000, 25,000 footprint with a second story.

I remember, I think I asked the same question during the building committee hearings. You folks built North Attleboro Police Station, didn't you? In the center, in the downtown, in an old mill? Because North Attleboro didn't want to spend outrageous amounts of money. Am I correct? Does North Attleboro have a good police station?

Multiple floors?

Again, I don't want anyone to think that I'm only saying we should save the Davis there. You want to knock down the Davis there, we'll level it. The argument that most people have, the people that Joel and Mr. Earls looked into, the people who speak up, have told you 75% of the people in this town want it on Davis Theatre. Now throw away the old building, knock down everything, every brick, make it flat. and then try to convince me that we can't put a police station on three and three-quarters acres. To your point, Bobby, you brought it up at one of the hearings. There's police stations in Boston, in the city of Boston, on corner lots. But we, in the town of Franklin, always want to be... on the cutting edge. We want to be Needham. I've heard Jamie say the word Needham so many times, I'm sick of hearing Needham. We are not Needham. Sometimes the traffic feels like Needham when you can't get from point A to point B to Jane's point, but we're not Needham. And a lot of us can't always afford Cadillacs, even though we wish we could have them. Frugality, fiscal responsibility in this town always becomes paramount, and especially, Will, when you try to get this money. So my... I get you.

You've got it. Thank you.

All right, we beat this up pretty good.

I'll just do a quick review. I mean, look, we're going to look at downsizing the number, downsizing square footage. We're going to make sure it's clear that you all understand the requirements of a modern day police station of what has to deal with code. You know, we're going to look at the Davis there site. I think there's a, I think, to be honest, I mean, obviously, if there's fracture on the elected boards and their views, there's going to be continual fracture in the community. There's nothing wrong with that. That's not a criticism. It's just simply what happens. I think these folks here tonight and other folks are going to see it that way. You know, I think I'm going to talk to the superintendent about the new school. I don't want there to be this idea that there's a school coming in the next 10 years. I understand that Mr. Jericho looked it up on AI, but we've also done, I know the schools have done a lot of demographics analysis over the last several years, both pre-redistricting, post-redistricting. I can tell you student enrollment is not skyrocketing in the state of Massachusetts. But to his point, I do agree with Joel. At some point, 15 years, 20 years, or 25 years, You're going to have other municipal needs, not just a school. You're going to need another ball field somewhere. You're going to need something else here or there, right? We heard from Councilor Griffith, and I agree, and many people have spoken about an arts center or a community center or just some additional space. Councilor Cormier-Ledger, you've spoken to that. and you know we'll take a look at the king street site right i mean that's another option if you want to build a new building which again is going to be expensive right that site at king street memorial might be able to facilitate a small facility but with the competition for space at king street memorial you know you know you're starting you know you're starting to get to a point where you don't have a lot i also think The last thing I'll say, we'll try to pull all this together and try to come back at a time in November and try to, based on the most comments from people, we'll try to bring some of that information forward. And I also hear a desire across the board for revenue. If you sell a parcel or you're able to get rid of some parcels, maybe some of that money that comes in can offset some of these costs. I mean, even if you disagreed where to put the station, I think across the board, I'm generally hearing that if there's a way to make some money off some of these properties, you know like 275 beaver maybe that's some low-hanging fruit to at least get something started uh although selling 275 beaver is probably probably just going to be able to pay your design fee right seriously so um you know i don't think it's going to go very far but it's certainly something and then we will look at model i will have the finance team model out you know 30 40 50 60 70 million i think that's going to help the joint budget committee and others deal with not only the police station, but again, I'm just reminding you that if you renovate and keep Parmenter, if you keep Parmenter as a building, you're gonna have to renovate something. You can't just let it sit there or else that building will be a money pit and it'll turn into the next Davis there. That's gonna cost a fortune. The Remington Jefferson School, that's another rehab. So I think getting some numbers out there, household costs of what a debt exclusion would look like, we'll get those numbers together. So this has actually been very helpful. I think this gives us a lot of things and direction to get you the information you all need to hopefully make a better decision. So I think this is really, really good. All right.

I THINK WE'RE DONE. WE'RE DONE. FUTURE AGENDA, RIGHT? MOTION TO ADJOURN. MOTION TO ADJOURN. I WOULD JUST ADJOURN. OKAY, I'LL ATTAIN THE MOTION TO ADJOURN. SO MOVED. Councilor Margello? Yes. Councilor Callaway-Tripp? Yep.

Vice Chair Griller? Yes. Mr. Chairman? Yes. Myself? Yes. Or you can just call these people. Yes. All potential applicants. Anybody still online? Councilor Blank?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.