Economic Development Commission - Regular Meeting

What I'd like to do at this point is to um call the meeting to order. I'm Laura Dio, the chairperson of the EDC. It is Wednesday, February 25th, 2026. And uh we are here except for two members. So we we do have a quorum. Um, we'll do a roll call, Laura. Yes, we'll do the roll call first. Yes. Okay. All right. I'm just I'm gonna read out the role and just ask people to acknowledge since we're um fully remote. So, I'll just just go through the list here. Um Nicole Aier present. Justin Wood,

present. Angela, present. Alina Ammano, present. Okay. Okay. And Laura Dio. Yes. Present. Okay. Thank you. And William Blake, our assistant town administrator, is also here. Good evening.

Good to see you. So, um again, we uh just uh opening remarks. We missed last month's meeting because we did not have a uh quorum. So, it had to be cancelled. Although Angela, William, and myself were there, and we did talk about a couple of um interest, you know, items that we wanted to um address. Um Angela, did you want to speak about

Yeah. So, I thought we should start and just go in order that you have on the agenda for tonight. I think it will just be easier if we just do that. So, if we start um we start with the agenda and I'm just I have a frozen page right now. So, I'm just trying to pull up. Okay. Item one, if you want to read out item one that we have.

Yes. Item one is the opening remarks and um obviously uh thanks everybody for being here. Um it's been very challenging with the weather here over the last month or so. So we very much appreciate it and uh lot of things to discuss because we didn't have the January meeting. Um one of the first orders of business on um item number two is let's all welcome our new EDC uh board member Elena. Do you say Elena or Elena? Alina. Elena. Elena.

Alina. Okay. Alina Amano. So, Alina, welcome. We're a very friendly group. We are very uh interactive as well. Um maybe you could tell us a little bit about yourself and um what you why the EDC uh interested you and you know just give us some of your ideas briefly, what you'd like to see.

Yeah. Um, so, uh, as Laura said, my name is Alina Amano. Uh, I was born and raised in Grafton. Um, spent spent about 10 years, um, in New York City. Uh, came back actually during CO and have sort of stayed here on and off ever since and then full-time for the last few years. Um, and I think one of the things that struck me was I was sort of surprised that I hadn't seen sort of more changes in terms of the number and makeup of businesses in Grafton um, in the sort of ensuing years that I was in New York. Um, and now that work is a little bit lighter for me, now that I'm doing consulting work and sort of setting my own schedule, um, you know, it seemed like a great opportunity to get more involved in the community and leverage some of my past experience, um, you know, to try to help recognize some of the change that I wish I had seen, um, you know, happening and better understand the issues. And of course, I'm sure the, you know, the commission has already done a lot of work and research um into what issues are present and what's working, what's not. And I'm very I'm very interested in hearing and reading and catching up on all the stuff that you guys have been doing. Um yeah, my background is mostly in uh mostly in digital marketing. Um, but also just a lot of general sort of general things. More recently, I've been a chief of staff at a couple of startups and I'm still sort of in that role. So, a lot of general communications, a lot of P&L management, a lot of internal and external comms work, um, forecasting, you know, pretty much pretty much anything. um uh but still of course have a lot of my the

majority of my background is in is in marketing. So any of those and and a lot of creative uh sort of work along with that um working with those teams. So yeah,

well that will dovetail nicely with a lot of things on our mission statement and some of the initiatives we hope to pursue this year. So, you know, we're really happy to have you aboard and, you know, always feel free to reach out if you have any questions, you know, um, concerns, ideas, because, you know, we we welcome we welcome all of that. Um so the third item on our agenda is and we didn't get to this uh discuss the 2026 EDC meeting dates. Now, what we've been doing and we can continue to do if the majority agrees is stick with the third Wednesday of the month for our meeting uh our meeting dates. uh which would then if we're looking at the upcoming calendar, we'd look at the next meeting being March um 18th.

Yes.

Uh after that, we would be looking at April 15th. Now, that's income tax day. Um, I don't know if that affects anybody, but um, April 15th. After that, we'd be looking at May 20th. Then we've got June 17th. Now, typically what, well, not typically, but what we did last year was skip the meeting in July, mainly because it's vacation time. a lot of people are out of town. So, um I don't know would you know one of the things we can discuss is do we want to continue to do that um this year because if we were going with the July meeting it would be July 15th. Um, the August meeting on the third Wednesday of the month falls on August 19th, which is I think the week before the kids start school. So, I I don't know if people are still going to be out of town or what have you. Um, and then we would be looking at September 16th, October 21st, uh, November 18th, which is the week before Thanksgiving, and then the last meeting would be held on December 16th. Thoughts? So, just getting to March, maybe if we could just get consensus on Wednesday, March 18th. Anyone have any conflicts?

No. Okay. All right. So, we should be good for March March 18th. And then the following um month, maybe if we're just two months out, is that Wednesday, April 15th. Does anyone have any conflicts? Doesn't look like there's any. Everyone's shaking their heads now. So, I think if we could work with those two dates so that we know that we have a quorum that that'll we can work from there, Laura, and maybe just start moving it forward in two-month increments. Um, but basically, does anyone have any disagreement regarding the established third Wednesday of the month? Generally, that's what we try to work with. I only comment on that Angela is where different members of like the planning board or any select board for example Craig isn't going to stay on this committee after the election. We may have a sit situation where Wednesday may not be good for people. So, I would lean toward at least going through the the May election, possibly even the June nomination, you know, um appointments by the select board.

Mhm. And then having this committee revisit on what makes sense for all the current appointees for the EDC.

Got it. Okay. So my only comment about that Justin is that um it's always number one it's always going to be tough. We used to meet on Mondays but then there were conflicts with different committees. That's that's the problem because there are so many different committees. So and of course we don't have any of the meetings on Fridays. So that leaves Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And I think the reason we switched from Monday was because there were too many conflicts whether it was with planning board, finet limited options, but it's also in my mind is the day of the week plus time. Like Monday at 6 might be good for some people where planning board starts at seven, select board starts at seven typically on Tuesdays. So, you know, select board Tuesdays at 6:00 if we don't go a long meeting and and plan to be done by 7 for whoever's a select board member. You know, those are options that we could visit when it comes time to to look beyond these few months. That's that's basically what I'm saying. I think we don't have a we don't have many options, but we have options.

Yeah. Well, it's it's going to be tricky. It's going to be tricky because I think at one point we did try and do um the six o'clock meeting, but then because we're all volunteers, I mean, people weren't getting out of work, you know. I mean, that might be tough for somebody like Angela who's commuting from Boston, but yeah, I mean, we can certainly see what we're going to work with. All I'm saying is it's it's going to be tricky no matter what we do.

Got it. So, we've got March 18th and April 15th secured so far that we should be able to have a quorum on those Wednesdays, the third Wednesdays of the month. And then the next item on the agenda number four is further discussion of 2026 potential EDC initiatives. Laura?

Yes. Um so I think one of the things that people would like to um see and we have this let's Nicole had come up with a suggestion on conducting a survey similar to what the town of Shrewsbury has done that will query businesses and residents which is something we haven't done before on the EDC. We've done things with businesses and we're looking at let's getting let's get feedback on what are the top challenges and issues facing the town that potentially impede economic you know or spur economic growth. Um so Nicole would you like to talk about that a little bit more? So, I was more focused on on the event that Shbury held for um community members. And then if you couldn't make the event, then they had like an online survey you could take. Um, but then as I was thinking about it a little bit more, if you look in, which I don't know if anybody utilizes this often, but our master plan, which has an EDC section, actually did ask community members when we did all of these master plan um, community events when we were building the plan. So we it's we essentially like have that information from the community already. Um so I don't I don't know if we should spend our efforts in that direction anymore. Um now that I've thought it about it a little bit more. I I feel like we

spin our wheels for lack of a better word. Um, I don't feel like we've been able to make a lot of headway and I would really like to just con concentrate efforts on us like moving forward and trying to get either some of these empty storefronts um, populated or, you know, some of these larger developments, you know, something going on with them. It just feels like we're at a standstill. And actually, I just want to double check when you say the master plan, is that the thing that um included asking residents, you know, what type of businesses would you most like to see? And I I believe the number one answer by far was restaurants.

Yes.

Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Then I agree. I agree with you on that point. Um I don't know what I don't know if we have the information about the top issues and challenges facing current businesses. Is that something that we have? Is that in that master plan or is that in another thing? Um, I we we tried we did try to have an event and a survey built asking business owners what their challenges were. Um, I we didn't get a lot of feedback to be honest with you. A lot of people just don't take the time to like answer the survey. But I think one of the biggest um factors was that people overall I think from a town perspective and municipal town perspective thought that it was Grafton has a reputation of being kind of more difficult to to deal with

in terms of getting like things started and done. Like if you need a permit to build out something, it's it's more difficult. I don't know if that's like Grafton specific or it's just like small town, you know, a generalization. Exists everywhere. Yep. Try try the cities. It exists everywhere. It's um it's just challenging, right? Like it's it's um it's all for good all for good reasons usually, right? You've got to you can't just say I'm showing up and here's what I'm going to build. So, yeah, it's not meant to be easy. It's meant to be robust. And

I don't I don't look at Grafton and see Grafton as as um somehow being an outlier. That's just my personal take in the construction industry. And

no, I would I would totally agree with that. That was just really the kind of only thing that we were able to grab as far as feedback came to us. If I may, I think that there were spec there was a very specific reason for that because over the last 10 years that reputation came to Grafton specifically and I heard it because I conducted interviews with that survey that I did. I actually went out and met with people. Um, and a lot of it did specifically have to do with the former buildings inspector who had a terrible reputation. So I don't I don't want to get into disparity.

I'm just saying I just want to stay focused. Yeah,

it might be, you know, I mean, we have not tried to poll any of the residents in town and we don't we don't have to do that. But yeah, I'd like to see what we can do. But that said, I guess my question is um to Nicole and everybody else here, how can we help facilitate bringing businesses into town. You know, what can we do to spur, you know, to see about empty, you know, getting empty storefronts filled? Because to a large degree, we are ministers without portfolio.

We are not a line item on the budget. We uh and while William is great and he does yman's work for us, he's supporting us in an administrative capacity. When we lost John Allen, who was a consultant for the town, John had a budget. He was able to uh set things, go out, you know, etc. And we don't have we lost some of that with John. That's not to say we haven't if we approach um Evan that we haven't gotten the green light, you know, for some of our events, but how could in practical terms, how can we how can we help

to realize some of what you're saying is what I'm asking. So it it does seem to me like a lot of our effort in the past several years, past few years has been focused on existing graten residents. What do they want? Yeah, we're not build we're not creating businesses ourselves, but what do we want the master plan? We got some data there. We also have a few existing business owners that you're you're not going to have bread guy breads open but a second bread guy breads necessarily in Gratton. if he opens another business, it'll probably be in another town. You just use that as an example. And Grafton does have a desire for food, but we have quite a few places that sell pizza, for example. We don't have a lot of variety on that. One thing that is in my mind is maybe there is an opportunity for us to find or create a listing of central mass business owners in some way and send them a you know kind of a marketing thing from from Grafton saying you know the Grafton EDC is interested in your thoughts what might help you come to Grafton here's some data what type of businesses that the folks have said they want. Here's, you know, some contact information for our planning department, you know, etc. And say, you know, here is some open, you know, open business zoned locations that might be conducive for a business and try to get that interest. Like I've had I've seen many businesses that may have started in place like Sulbridge and open up in Worcester or open up in Shrewsbury you to use that you know so there's a wide range but generally a existing business is more likely to have an opportunity or desire to expand to a town like Grafton than

something that's a brand new just random random resident saying hey what do you what do you need and even a business that might exist in Milbury may not feel there's a need to open in Grafton. So if we are focusing too too small on our town or immediate neighboring towns, we may not be getting that that reach we could benefit from. one thing that's I don't know how to I don't know how to how to effectuate those ideas but the

one thing that John Allen was keen uh to work on we had that meeting back in 2022 Grafton is open for business and we still have all the collateral the marketing collateral on that which we can certainly update uh John was big on promoting the idea A that we should try and attract larger businesses that could populate a 50,000 square foot or 100,000 square foot uh facility either to be built or something that we might be a I don't think we have any empty spaces that are that large but you know new buildings but in order to as you said effectuate that we would have to get buy in we would have to have a commitment for at least 25 to 30,000 square ft for any of those things. And at the time, um there was a big focus on clean, you know, bio

bio life sciences,

life sciences. And as I think we've discussed before, some of that some of that has shifted. So I think what Justin what you've just said that's a good starting point if we could get some marketing collateral out there for you know small businesses but also as um Kevin Koros discussed uh Elena for uh Kevin Koros was he is the regional director for the central Massachusetts office of business development. velment and he was at our November 5th event at the library and had a wonderful presentation um on some of the things that you know and resources that we could businesses can can get. So that might be a good starting point. I mean, perhaps we want to have Kevin come back and address us again and do maybe a workshop. We could do a workshop with him.

Is it possible to see the is there a recording of the the November 5th uh presentation or do we have a copy of the presentation that he gave? Uh there is we did have it recorded. Okay. Even though it was an event and not a meeting. So, um, that should be available from Grafton TV. We recorded What channel is it? And for some, I was checking the the YouTube channel for Grafton TV, but it I couldn't find the playlist that it the EDC meetings live in. I've never tried to research them like that before. I can. It was at the library.

Yeah. So they have like the there's like a planning board playlist and a select board playlist. And William, do you know not everything gets added to a specific playlist, so it might just be kind of a loose video in there. H Okay. Okay. Maybe maybe if you um search the date, would that come up? Yeah. November 5th. Well, we can we can we can send an email out to uh Bill Robu and uh Bob Dtoma because they were they were the ones recording it so I can fish around too um and see if I can find it.

Yeah, I'll just well I can just send them an email after this meeting and you know copy copy everyone on it like I I think the Go ahead, William. Sorry. I just I was able to find it on the YouTube page. Um I can send out the link to the whole committee or just to you. Great. Whatever people need. Awesome. And actually to that end, I was going to ask about um because in another agenda item, not to skip ahead, but was um excellent information we received from our December guest speakers um on December 17th, uh the members of the Marboral EDC.

Yes. Um, if if you happen to have that handy, that would be great as well, cuz that's why that's actually why I was in there looking for it in the beginning. Yes. Um, you're looking for that meeting recording or the material? Okay. Oh, both. Both. Yeah, both. Uh, actually, I have Yeah, I have I have copies of the um the meeting uh the presentation that Meredith sent us. She sent it to us in January. You know, that was the last thing we did at the end of the year. And then of course, you know, you're in a black hole for a few weeks. So, yeah, I can send that around as well.

That would be great.

So, I think like one of our goals could be targeting the new development as Laura was talking about. So the biolife sciences developing you know some of the plots of land um for Fiserville Mill um the state did award award us a $100,000 um house choicing housing sorry housing choice grant for a development feasibility study. Um, I don't know if you guys knew that or not, but um, we're doing so through the affordable housing trust, we're doing a sitewalk on Monday at 10:30 if anyone is interested in going to that. But so we'll we'll actually be at Fiserville Mill um doing a sitewalk for that feasibility study. Um cuz I think there has to be a lot of cleanup done there before anybody can even attempt to develop it.

Could you just clarify one point which is when you said uh we got a $100,000 grant, who is the Wii? Is that the town of Fiona? Fiona applied for it and got it for the town of Grafton. So, we're working the town of Grafton is working with the owner of that property through this this grant. Okay, good to know.

Mhm. So, I'm going to be there on Monday, but I'm sure anyone's welcome if you guys want want to come and check it out. Um, so I think that could be one great goal for us, you know, to keep that um, in the back of our minds and try to um, conceptualize some events around that to try and, you know, get the right people on the room. But I also think it would be a good idea to um, somehow highlight some of the empty storefronts, for a lack of a better word. things like the Grafton Inn, that old Burger King. Um there's a couple of churches for sale that people are trying to, you know, sell on the commercial real estate um MLS, things like that. I think those things I think are a little bit overlooked. like unless you're searching for them online, you wouldn't really know that, you know, it's available for a business to come here and search out.

Well, one thing that's that's prime, I mean, I think we would have a hard time with the former Burger King and pepperoni express thing because of the flooding concerns. And there's also issues with the former um gas station next door to it. Um just in terms of you know environmental things. But to your point, one thing that could be prime is the site of the discerned the cannabis place. Are they going out of business?

I think they're they're pretty much closed. I think that happened within the last month or so. I mean, I haven't seen that they're in business, but there's never anybody. Were they ever open? I was always wondering that cuz I've passed it a 100 times. I've never seen a single car there. No, they, you know, they were open, but I guess they just did not get the traffic that they thought they were going to get and then they reduced their hours. But it pretty much looks like it's deserted now. I don't even see, you know, I haven't even seen cars in the back. So, yeah,

I think that they might be closed. But, you know, don't quote me on that. Um, there's just been no activity there. But that has been for for whatever reason that was a very hard luck location. How however the fact is it was a new building. it was up, you know, updated and it has been un you know it hasn't been it wasn't in business for that long. So be fairly time that might be easy to get somebody to occupy like the Marboral EDC. I know they keep a list of of open opportunities in Marboro.

I was just about to ask that exact question. How many do we know how many vacant storefronts we have? Uh, no. I don't think we'd know unless we kind of comb through and and figure it out. I I did like a quick kind of MLS search um and pulled like those ones that I called out like um 1315 Depot Street was on the market. Um 912 West Street, which is like a contemporary style church. Um, right off the common was on the market.

Um, the Grafton Inn was on for a while, but now it was withdrawn, so I don't know what's going on there.

Um, 10 Overlook Street was expired listing. Also, a church, but it has a fully equipped kitchen. Like, I mean, stuff like that. Like, might be kind of a cool venue or place for someone to open like a really unique restaurant or something like that. I don't know. I'm not a developer, but just I'm just trying to like think of any kind of ideas where we could help get more eyeballs on this stuff. Yeah, the buggy whip at 122 in 122A in South Grafton. The owner's retired, but the building is there. And they had, you know, they were a catering uh very popular catering organization. And I don't know if they've sold off their equipment, but you know, that's another potential. Yeah. I don't think we've ever had like besides again like going to the MLS, we've never had like a centralized sort of list of things opportunities in Grafton. Um, and sort of combining what you're saying, Nicole, also with what Justin mentioned earlier, I think an interesting thing to do would be a to your point, compile like a comprehensive list of the sort of opportunities, come up with maybe some sort of like criteria, ranking system to sort of come up with like a short list of like priority locations or even with, you know, going to other restaurants that are successful in the area that might be thinking of coming up with, you know, a secondary location in a neighboring town, like a reverse bread guy type of a situation. Um, one possible thing that we could maybe go to them with would be one,

one thing that might be interesting is coming up with sort of like a success portfolio for like the few businesses like the few restaurants that are successful in Grafton like I would say like Cancun or you know, Grafton Grill with Uncommon Cow and how they're expanding.

Yeah, exactly. and you know and and the bread guy and what have you sort of say, hey, you know, these ones these places are doing well. And then the other thing being there is a Massachusetts vacant storefront program, the MVSP, and they have a it's called the one-stop portal. The deadline is early June, but you can access up to $50,000 in refundable tax credits. So that might be a hook that we could go to those places with and say, "Hey, you know, we could offer you this." Like, so that way it wouldn't I know we don't have a budget as you said, Laura, which is obviously kind of a big a big, you know, difficult thing to work with or without. Um, but that might be sort of a way around that maybe if if we could get that.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think Kevin Curo's his programs through the state, there were opportunities we could take advantage of. Yes. Advantage of too. It was just it's a lot of when you watch that it's a lot of information that he like dives into. It's it was overwhelming. I mean, it was all good stuff. It was just a lot. and we just now have to find a way to leverage it because Kevin's job to be very specific is to assist us in business development. Mhm.

So that's what that's what he's there for. And there was a lot of great stuff. I'd love to have him come back again. And um we should also uh give a second look at what Meredith did uh sent us from the Marlboro EDC. Now they have a different they're in a different situation, Alina, which is they actually are their own business. They have 10 to 12 employees. They have their own building. Um and of course Marlboro uh is a is a totally different situation from from Grafton. So um but yeah they have budget they have employees etc. So they are a business concern, but we were hoping to sort of, you know, leverage a lot of the things that Meredith uh talked to us about. And the other person who was on um her committee lives in he's a Grafton resident, so he was also present at the thing. His family has a business in Milbury.

Nice. You know, well established. So, um, we can leverage leverage that and really start to, you know, dig down into some of these things so that we're not, as has been pointed out, you know, just spinning our wheels and doing and going nowhere. It's not for lack of effort though on our part, you know. Um, so

we don't It's not an easy thing to do. That's for sure. No, I mean the other thing just to give you some background, Elena, of course, COVID wre havoc with certain things and then it took us a while to get back on track and then we did have some changes in the in the board and then in uh we only had about four meetings in 2024 because in the middle of the year we lost John Allen and nobody informed us of that. I got curious. I I found out when I called John to say when is our next meeting and was told his last day was going to be June 30th. So after that uh I met with Evan Brousard, the town administrator, and then reached out to the rest of the board and then we reconvened, you know, in September. So you know, it's there's been a lot of start, stop, start, stop. So now we're trying to get back in the swing of things and really, you know, do something meaningful with with initiatives that we can dig our teeth into. And we've got a great foundation and basis, I think, for doing so. Now we just have to implement, you know, some of this stuff. And maybe we come back. I mean, I like the idea myself and let uh let me know who else agrees or disagrees, you know, with having Kevin come back after, you know, we review some of his things so we can ask him for specific pointers and things that might be available and also reviewing what we had from Meredith. So maybe that's something we can do in our next meeting.

So, one of the other items we have on here is whether we're going to be planning a potential spring business meet and greet event. Just just to get a sense from the committee here, if there's desire to work on a spring business meet and greet, anybody? I mean, I know people like them, the people that come. Um, I don't know, could that be an opportunity? Could we have a list compiled of opportunities in Grafton by then and use it as a I don't know, sounding board for helping to start start get the word to get the word out. I don't know.

Yeah. Just as a background question, um, how how many of these have we had and and how has how has the attendance been and how how have there been what was the feedback I guess from from those events? How do we think they went? Uh the first one we did was in um January uh 204 was at the end of on a very cold night and it was held at the post office pub. We had phenomenal attendance. I think probably there were at least a hundred people who came in which was surprising considering that it was you know the end of January very cold etc. The second one we did uh was at reunion tap and table un and that was in May 2025. Unfortunately, what happened was that was the night where we had a big um uh torrential downpour and storms. So, a lot of people literally couldn't get there. I know Angela was stuck on uh the mass turnpike for a while. Uh but you got there, Angela. But so, we had about 25 businesses that came to that. And then the last one we did was November 5th at the library which worked out very well because um we can use the libraryies event room and that's free as part of the town. So in terms of being costconscious and we had about 37 or 38 attendees. The issue that we have is that we we do a lot of marketing and outreach. We put the things up on the different uh Grafton sites on Facebook.

We put it on the website or you know the town website on our our page on the town website and we've sent I I know William did put a lot of effort behind sending out we have about 353 businesses in town give or take and I mean that will that number will fluctuate somewhat and I've even done outreach where we've gone I've gone into the businesses. We've given flyers, but we don't get a lot of feedback. So, the short answer to your question is it varies and we never know until the night of the actual event what kind of a turnout we're going to get. Got it. Um, so it's not like a there's not like an evite or something.

No, we did we we did we did do the evite. We did we did a fullcourt press on um putting it up on the website, sending out emails, sending out um you know the Yeah. the event over Eventbrite. Nicole took care of that. Excellent. Yeah. So, we kind of have a general idea, but I guess we're always like hoping more people will show up, especially the last two events where we didn't have as many people. Um, I don't know what it was about that January event that we got so many attendees. Was it that the first one? Yeah, the first one. Yeah, it was the first one in a long in a long time, I think.

Wait, did you say there's How many businesses did you say we have in town? Roughly. Just say 350, give or take. Now, again, it might it might it might fluctuate. We also have um collateral information on who the largest businesses are. Obviously something like Wyman Gordon, Washington Mills, Stop and Shop. Mainly though, a lot of the the businesses, you know, are smaller smaller businesses, but small businesses make up 90% of the businesses nationwide. Totally.

So, um yeah. And then is the what is like just roughly the agenda for for those events?

Well, we had um the one we had presentations at the last one, but the first two were more um free form where we worked the room, introduced ourselves, especially going back to 2024. Um, and we were asking people informally, "How can we help? What would you like to to see us do?" We did some of the same at the um reunion tap and table event and we were able to actually because we didn't have as good a turnout, frankly, we were able to spend more time with, you know, each, you know, individual business. there were about 25 there and they would really like help especially you know marketing their businesses and helping to raise the profile. One thing we did say and we we are going to initiate this is um give people the opportunity we can send them a questionnaire that they can fill out about their business so that they can put up many bios about their business on the EDC web page on the town website. They also have the option if they didn't want to fill that out if they just wanted to say, you know, I'd say, "Hey, get on the phone with me or what have you or we can do a Zoom meeting myself or anybody from EDC and tell us about your business?" And and we can we can put a framework around it. So, it's simple. How long have you been in business? How many employees? What is your main line of business? What do you like about Grafton? what would you like to you know you know why should you know people come here what would you like to see I mean you

know freef fall so they can it's a marketing tool for them yeah I can see that being really cool like even like you know what's the top selling thing at your place like you know whether it's like oh everyone loves our our gel our express gel manicure everyone loves our like you know blueberry muffin scone things or whatever it is you know then I'd be like oh okay like if I go I go try that out. I like that old school. Yeah.

So, before we move on to the next topic, Laura, um William, did you have anything that you wanted to touch on regarding trade and industry development? Anything about advertising? Um just didn't want to move on if if you had something that you wanted to share with us tonight. Uh well, so since you brought it up, uh yep, just sort of going along with the topic of talking to businesses more, finding out what we can do. Um I want to say in December, Carl had asked for an update on what was going on in North Grafton and I sent out an email that those parcels had been sold and most of them are in the phase where they're looking for tenants before they start building. And so it seems like EDC's role there would be helping with advertising.

So I got a call from this company called uh Trade and Industry. They are a basically a site selection magazine. They do four issues a year. They send them out to various uh industries. Each issue is a different industry. So like Q3 in 2025 was biotech. They only went to biotech firms. It does cost money to advertise there obviously, but one of the ideas that I was thinking of that Angela and I discussed was potentially approaching the owners of those parcels in North Grafton and seeing what they need help with in terms of advertisement and seeing if they would be interested in a partnership for something like this.

And I didn't know if that was something EDC was interested in potentially pursuing or what the thoughts on that were. So, I figured I would speak to the entire commission before starting anything on that.

I I think it's worth I think it's worth a shot. Just so everybody knows who might not have been on the um EDC back in 2020 2021, we when we did have a budget, we did vote at the time uh to use what was left in the budget to advertise in the Worcester Business Journal. um this would be what what you're discussing here a partnership would be much more targeted and on our part. So I think it might be worthwhile assuming we could get the funds.

So just to back up so I understand what we're talking about here. Um what are the partials that that you're referring to in North Grafton? There were five or six I think somewhere around there. I can pull up the email and I can include it in what I send out later on that were just in various stages of being sold or being developed uh recently. They've all been sold off. They've all gone through and Justin correct me if I'm wrong here. They've gone through the pre-permitting. Yes. No.

I depends on what parcels you're talking about. I think most of the ones I know of have. Okay. But they're all sort of in this or most of them are in this stage where they're ready to start building, but they don't want to build until they know they're going to have a tenant in there when they build it. Got it. Got it. And these are So, if they don't find the right people to be the tenant, they potentially could just still sit vacant. Yep. And and it's also entirely possible that we approach the owners and they say, "Nope, we're not interested in doing something like that, but I figured it never hurts to ask."

Mhm. And once they come before planning board and get an approved plan and the conditions and everything like that, that can sit for 10, 20 years and still be a valid order of conditions and a valid plan that they can still develop on. Mhm. Yeah. I mean, UPS sat for seven or eight years before they started. It was I actually thought it was closer to 10 the way it dragged on. Yeah. UPS didn't have an approved plan though for that long. Gotcha.

But I have a follow-up call with the Trade Industry magazine next week so I can get some additional information and we can talk again in March and see which way we want to go. Can you ask them too if there when people run ads like this if there's ever someone who like finds someone to be a sponsor like a lender or something of that nature. Someone to help these owners with the cost. cuz if they potentially say no, I don't think we're going to find the money in the budget because we don't we don't have enough money.

Correct. Um the other side of this in my opinion is so the magazine would advertise sort of Grafton as a whole and then point them to the EDC website. So, even if the owners of these partials aren't interested in going in monetarily on the magazine, I think it would be a good way to get information on what they're looking for to then put on the EDC website and sort of start building that inventory on our end of what is Greg and have what are we looking for? Yeah, because I think that is very important, too.

Yeah, for sure. just yeah, ask a few questions of the magazine and see if there's anybody that has gotten really creative with the the advertising piece of it and paying for it. Can do. Um, just in the interest of time, I know we try to keep the meetings to about an hour at 7:54 p.m. Um, the other item that we have on here, Laura, was your update regarding the EDC's final input to the town of Grafton. We have an annual report that gets filed each year. So, thank you for putting that together and you noted on the agenda a couple highlights of information that went into the report and you shared the report with all of us via email. Um,

so I don't know if there's just anything that you want to touch on briefly regarding the report because it has been submitted to Cindy on February 11th of 2026.

Yeah, I mean, so you have copies. I I I included the PDF of the report in the meeting invitation and we have it here. So unless anybody has any questions. I mean the big the big thing is we are not a line item on the we don't have a budget but our expenses for 2025 were minimal $136752 and that's well below you know the threshold that they were asking for if expenses exceeded $2500. So, and um Carl, as you can see, Moyes, who's president of Homefield Credit Union, he generously they generously picked up the tab. So, um that would have been close to, you know, onethird of the if we if we had to pick it if we had to spend that extra 625. that would have increased our costs, our expenditures to the town by about onethird, 30%. So anyway, we're cheap dates is what it is. We're inexpensive. We're not, you know, we're not costing the town much. My only thought that I just had looking at this and I apologize for only thinking of it now which might be too late to do anything about it is it might be useful since we putting in the note that we don't have our own separate line item for a budget. Where did this money come from? Like which line item did it come from? Because that people are at least this year especially are looking a little bit more closely at information about the budget. So when they see that we spent money but they don't know where it came from that's some some people may look at that as a red flag but if it's too late to change it's not a big deal I had

well no I mean that chem's that was green lit by Evan Brousard Craig went to him Craig Dolphane went to him and said okay because what what Evan said to me dating back to my meeting with him in August of 2024 was there. Just because you're not a line item in the budget with a separate budget of your own if you were that doesn't mean there isn't anything you know there isn't money from you from the general town budget. Yes, I understand that. My my point was if someone is reading the town book, which I don't think that many people actually read every single page in there, but if someone if someone is and they look at this goes,

well, they got money, you know, where did it come out of a hat? You know, like what what section of the budget did it come from? Cuz it there's not normally a line item. That's just my uh Justin, I do want to say it has gone to print, so it is too late to change it. Okay, then that's that negates any further discussion as far as I'm concerned. Well, William, one one question because you had to you used the town's credit card to sign for the reunion tap and table tab that night. So, where did where does that come from? Is that the general slush fund for the town or is there if there is such a thing? Town does not have a slush slush fund. I do just want to say that for the record. Okay. Yeah. Do you want a general budget or is there you know

miscellaneous whatever you want to call it? It would have come out of a line item. I don't know which one off the top of my head. Okay. So, it came from somebody's line item. Correct. Just not ours because we don't have we're not a line item. Correct. Okay. So, I guess maybe could you clarify that with Evan? Uh yeah. I'm not even sure we need to unless somebody ask actually asks us or well just for future reference it's it's it's good to know where it was for this year could be different than where it is next year if we spend money. Okay,

that is very true. So the only thing we could say if asked is that we approached the town administrator to get approval.

So it was limited funds for two meet and greet events and um that's that's definitely what's noted here for the agenda and on the items. So, with that said, Laura, I think um I think what we're all aware of is that going forward, if we have any other meet and greet events, the fact that we don't have a budget, we'll continue to make inquiries to see if there's any funds available and we can we can find out further if there are funds available, uh what line item those funds would come from. So, we could do that going forward. Um, for other EDC business, does anyone have anything else for other EDC business tonight?

I just have one thing that we did get a citizen comment about the lack of minutes for the past several years. I Oh, yeah. I that extended past the point where I joined the EDC. So I don't know the state of most of that, but I think in whatever way possible we should try to achieve having minutes available for us to vote on and get published for several reasons.

Yes. So thank you because that's that's the only item here I talked to Laura about oneonone. So I don't um I myself too I think it predates me before the earlier years the citizen inquiry identified uh time frame of 2021 to the present. So, I have minutes. I've been taking minutes, notes from the end of 2024 through the present. And I have those. I have some that we've brought up to discuss to approve. And what I'd like to do is bring to the next meeting, have a matrix of what we have for minutes and draft form, get those approved as to form so we can upload them. All of our meetings have been recorded. So, we do have recordings of all of the meetings. Um, but to Justin's point, we want to make sure that we have a um a written document for the minutes.

The earlier ones, I don't know if anybody here I don't know if anyone um with us tonight or if it predates folks that are with us here regarding going back earlier than 2024. So, I'm not sure where to go to get those documents. I know that we've had other people possibly Carl Moyes might be a reference that could help um understand where minutes may may be kept but I myself don't I do not have any knowledge um before my time with the with our econ with our EDC. If those are all recorded, they could be in theory someone could watch those meetings and make minutes for from that.

And we don't have to have been in the meeting to to a vote to approve a minutes. That's number. And then the other just brief comment is if there's in-person meetings that we've had like for example when we did the library thing recently if there's a quorum especially you do want to have minutes of the of that quorum meeting which could simply just be members of the EDC attended this and talked about general whatever and it could be very brief for those kind of things but

well I have a few minutes of meetings Um but to your point, one of the things that we you know in our response is that during co there was very you know sporadic meetings y you know going back to 2020 and even 2021 we didn't have monthly meetings or 10 meetings out of the year and then in 20 any post meeting minutes those

so I have some me some minutes for a couple of those months. But you know the answer to the question is that you know during the COVID years there was probably you know there wasn't there's very little. So, I will do my best. I'll work with Angela to send her what I have, you know, for any other meetings, you know, prior to 20124.

And the clerk's office, Amy Barry, and and them can also give us a can pull out a list of what meetings that we've had posted that we don't that they don't have minutes on file for. that can be that's something they can also do for us is to kind of give us a list of that. I will say the website is up to date in that regard, the agenda center. So if there's a meeting that doesn't have minutes on it, the clerk's office doesn't have them to the best of my understanding. Okay, thanks.

Uh and just one question on this. Does somebody from the EDC intend to respond to the citizens inquiry or how would the committee like that handled? Well, I mean, Angela and I can handle that. I mean, I think, you know, we'll just be very straightforward. You know,

we'll identify what we have um for minutes and then to Justin's point here, be able to come back to the next meeting um with an update for the group, trying to transcribe minutes over a series of of years. I don't right now know of how many other prior meetings there were. Um, so that's something that would have to be discussed with the group since we're all volunteers and that without knowing how many meetings there are. I I don't know how heavy of a lift that will be. So it's um it's it's definitely I I agree with what Justin's saying is it can be done. It needs to be done. Um so I think it's just trying to understand the past before um before we can commit to to housing. I have I have the thumbnail drive that I asked um Cindy and Fiona to give me, you know, from the John Allen years. So, there may be um minutes on there. There was an Excel spreadsheet. I'll go back and look at it and see if we can if there are any and I'll add them to it if there are. But I mean presumably that guy should be you know the person who inquired would be I think probably realistically happy to know that there's a plan going forward and that there will be some backfilling for the most you know since like at least you said partially through 2024 because I mean is is he or anyone else going to go through you know six years of of minutes? I mean I'm guessing probably not. I mean, it would be it would be nice to have, but I think it'll be good that it's you're we're back filling most relevant recent years. That's that sounds reasonable.

Y I do know at least two people who absolutely would go through and read all the minutes, but I don't think it's got many people, Justin. No, I'm not. I am not. Okay, I stand corrected on that then. Yeah. Nicole, do you have any information from prior years? Would you know who was uh responsible for taking minutes?

I'm not I'm not exactly sure. I I think Sean was the secretary at one point, but I'm not positive about that. I feel like Carl would probably know better than me because he was the chair. And I I'll say officially it officially the responsibility is the is the clerk secretary of the committee. A lot of times when there is a staff member helping or overseeing the committee that sometimes falls on the staff to do I you for many committees that happens that way but so John would have taken minutes. John maybe again I wasn't here when John was on the committee so I don't know if he

No, he wouldn't have taken the minutes. I know that Shawn did for a while. See, we had a lot of upheaval on the board and there were a lot of times especially during COVID where we weren't meeting at all and it wasn't as frequent. You know, we've been more on track with the meeting since, you know, 2025, but there was a black hole. I think we probably only had four meetings in 2024. I'll go back and check because I have the I have the list. Um, and Carl resigned as president probably back in around 200 212 and he turned it over to Ray me was the president. So there's there's been a lot of changeover on the board and so that adds to some of the confusion and hence when that was going on um we weren't always getting the minutes posted. I have a couple that I've done that I can send to Angela.

I feel like we talked this to Well past the point of necessary for tonight. Yeah. Okay. That's Yeah. So if no one has anything else um I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. So moved. Second. Okay. Third. Okay. So we are adjourned and we will meet again on March 18th.