Economic Development Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay, good evening, everyone. I'm Laura DiDio, the chairperson of the Grafton Economic Development Commission, and it is Wednesday, May 20th, 7 p.m., and I'm going to call the meeting to order and do a roll call.

Justin's here. Morton here.

Vanagir.

E.T. are here.

And, okay, I think that's it. That's it. Okay, thank you. And, of course, I'm here and present. So, what we were going to do is further discussion of the planned EDC business meet and greet and see where we're at with that. As I know, at the last meeting, we wanted to have it in early June, but as it turns out, that might not be feasible because, as Nicole found out, the Uncommon Cow, which was our first choice of venue, they're unable to accommodate us

at this time i'm not i'm not sure nicole do you were they saying that they could not accommodate us on that date or that they would never be able to accommodate us i think just this moment in time um from what i understood it was more of like a you know they just got their new location open and just kind of like getting used to doing business there and you know fearful that, like, they wouldn't have enough room for as many people as maybe we wanted to accommodate. But, you know, I said sometimes it varies. So I think it was more of a timing issue than it was anything. So I think, you know, let them catch their breath with opening their new business and their new location, and then maybe we can revisit with them down the road.

Okay. Now, and when I contacted the library, The only dates they had available were in late June, June 24th, and I think it was June 18th, which was later than we probably wanted.

So Townhouse Tavern also, I had inquired about the bed space for something else. So I had their updated details. They have a $250 room rental fee and then max up 100 people. And then a bartender fee of one hundred and fifty. And then based on the number of attendees, they said they would have a minimum spend at the cash bar and then you can bring in food, snacks, whatever it might be. So that was an option or post office pub. Could be an option as well, but I know we've already done one there. So I think we were trying to check out a new business. So townhouse could be available Sunday through Wednesday anytime. And then. Thursday through Saturday, it had to be before 4.

Okay, so, I mean, there are obviously practical considerations here. It sounds like the Tavern, Townhouse Tavern, was going to be more expensive than probably the other venues. And, of course, the Grafton Library would get to use that gratis because we're a town committee. So the question then becomes, and I'll just throw it out to everybody, it doesn't seem feasible for June. Obviously there are a lot of people who are on vacation in July and August, so what do we want to do here?

Based on this area, I think we probably should have to push it back to the fall.

I would agree with that. I also agree.

Yeah, I think pushing it back to the fall makes sense. We... We can touch base probably in the June, July span to see with Uncommon Cow one more time just to kind of validate, hey, we've got a little more leeway, more time between when we're thinking of holding it. And is that still something you don't want to do right now? Or do we want to do it? And if not, then we can... find a good venue as a committee and go from there.

Yeah. Now one, we're in a sort of a little bit of a conundrum and time crunch. If we try and go with the Grafton public library, which is, is gratis. The issue there is that that big meeting room with the kitchen and the AV equipment is terrific and, But it's also very popular, no surprise. So if we wait until a month out, it's gonna be booked. The other trick on the other end is that they only book, they will not book more than three months ahead. So there's that. We can try and reserve it for a date. as a backup, and then release it if we're not using it. That might make the most sense, and I would be transparent. I would advocate being transparent with the library people, just in case we can't get, you know.

Can I ask, what are we talking to that said can't book more than 20 missionary bands?

The new person who replaced Kim Lipinski. Okay. Now you're asking me and I'm... Christine. Yes, I had a very nice conversation with her. But it's just a really popular venue. And, of course, the best thing in its favor is that it has all of the AV equipment and it's free.

I mean, three months out, we would have to just probably reserve it, you know, the very beginning of August to do a November event if we still wanted, if we wanted the fall event to be in November. I mean, just going off of whatever last year's day was, which I believe was the fifth. Yeah, we were lucky to get that. Yeah. Yeah, and I didn't attend that one, so I'm not sure. Then a little bit later, then people would want, like if it's... Yeah, I lean toward October, but that's just me.

I would also lean towards October. I mean, September is a very busy month for everybody.

I'll back, I think October is the best month. I agree.

Yeah, I mean, so if we can try for October and reach out to... Kristen, I'd say, hey, here's the situation. I mean, they try and be very helpful at the library. That's not the issue. It's just that it's so popular. So ideally, as Justin said at the last meeting, you know, it would be great if we could do it at a place like the Uncommon Cow. You know, people tend to like those things. Yes. The Townhouse Tavern... is going to be more expensive now, and we have to go asking for funds. And I'm not sure this is a good time to be asking for funds. So I'm just trying to be practical here as well as what best serves us. The only other thing, and I'm not sure how this was done, back in, Carl, you might know this, because you were the chairperson back in 2022, 2023, when John Allen was here, when we had the Grafton is open for business luncheon over at Tufts. Right. How did that work? And that was, for those of you who weren't here... It was an all-out thing. It was very, very well attended. We had, well, Senator Moore was there. I know, Nicole, you were there. Carl was there. I was there. Dave Moradian was there. We had a lot of people. We had a lot of business people. And the whole idea was to try, this was really to spur new business for Grafton, new business owners. But how was that? Did we get a discount on that from Tufts?

I don't remember any discount. I know that at the time, the committee had a budget. So I imagine that some of the funds came from that. I don't have any other details other than that.

Yeah, because I think John got that lunch catered by a catering company, too. It was a big to-do.

It was a big to-do. It was my understanding, and I may... be wrong that the catering company was somehow affiliated with Tufts. But again, I might be mistaken because it looked like they, you know, I mean, they were using all the Tufts facilities, which I would expect them to do.

Well, that might be the only entity that will allow to do anything on campus as well, so you never know.

Yeah, so that's another option. Obviously, if we're doing this for Grafton meet and greet businesses, the closer to the center of town and using our own venues, the more convenient it is.

So I think for one, maybe choosing a date might help us narrow down what places we're looking at. You know, for one, in my mind, I was thinking, does it make sense to do it on a Monday? Because a lot of restaurants... of whom we would you know a lot of grassland businesses are restaurants especially the ones that we expect to attend you know they're generally closed or it's like an incredibly slow day so you know i'm just thinking in terms of like displacing revenue like yeah we wouldn't want to do it on like a friday night or something um yeah so to me i thought monday would maybe make sense but yeah maybe maybe not

I don't know. I think any time in the, you know, midweek, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, those four days. What date did we had January 26th in 2025? Let me just take a look at that. So actually, no, I'm wrong. It would be was probably the 20. January 26th of this year? No, 2025, when we did the one at the post office pub. Oh, that was a Sunday. Okay, or no, actually it was 2024, excuse me. So the 25th was a Thursday. Yeah, we did that in January 2024. John Allen was still with us, but that one was the best attended. We had people coming... All the time. So I think in the interest of planning so we don't get caught in a crunch, I would suggest that, Nicole, if you could go back, you want to handle going back to the uncommon cattle and asking them if they'll be able to accommodate us at a date in the fall.

OK, you know, I feel like that would probably work better for them because I think they were also anticipating like busy season with ice cream and all of that. So, well, I think we'll be better. OK, so, yeah, let me let me touch base and see if. A date in October works?

Yes, maybe like the 5th through the 7th.

Actually, yeah.

The Wednesday, because then the following week is Columbus Day. So we wouldn't want to do later in the week or obviously Monday, the following week. And then it's usually some trip. I think we do have enough time to do that. Maybe like the week of the 19th.

I guess we have enough time to make a finer decision on exactly which week. So even asking, did we want to do a Commodus in October? We're thinking the first week, but what days would you have available if we wanted to do it? Something like that.

Okay, sure. And I could go back to... the library and say, okay, at what date are you opening up things, you know, in October? Theoretically, if it's three months in advance, it would be sometime in July.

Madam Chair, I'm also more than happy to ask the library director if they would make an exception for a town committee.

Hey, I like that. I like that. I mean, they've been very, they've been very, very helpful to us, but it is, there's a lot of competition for that room.

And just one thing to the, just a potential date in October, Alina, I think you mentioned the 19th, that is the fall pound meeting date to start Monday in October. Go to now.

Yeah, so I'm thinking, you know, ideally, well, I mean, it's a beautiful time of year. It's In terms of weather, it shouldn't be too hot, too cold. The kids are back in school. Everybody's back into the rhythm of work after, you know, summer. But it's not September where everybody's still rushing around. So, I mean, I think that sweet spot is going to be the weeks between the 5th and the 12th. Not saying we couldn't do it, you know, like the 21st, something like that, or later in the week.

But if we hone in... If there's a town meeting two days before that, I feel like kind of pushing it. Yeah, I agree. Knowing that and then knowing Columbus Day is the 12th, I feel like we should definitely be trying to focus, if possible, obviously, October 5th through the 7th, I think would be ideal.

Okay. That makes sense. Carl, what do you think here?

I like it, and I think that date in October sounds perfect. I think October is a month that people are starting to get settled with the fact the school, et cetera, et cetera. So I do think that's the target date that we should be working on.

Okay, and then between now and then, What I'd also like to do is put more of a framework around it. One of the things that I've been working on is putting together that format, the template for the Q&A for existing Grafton businesses. We've talked about highlighting that on the Grafton EDC webpage. And I think we get a lot of response there. I'd also like to put together, if everybody agrees, another, and I'd like input from all of you, not just myself, I'm not doing this unilaterally, but I can start the process, is put together a Q&A template for potentially new businesses, what they would like to see From Grafton. That survey that we did at the time did not get a lot of traction. Either the town business survey, which you were asking about, Elena, or the one that we sent out to the Grafton businesses. We got like three or four responses. Can I ask how...

How they were sort of distributed or made available, each of those. You said one of them was mailed? Emailed. Emailed to the businesses.

It was emailed to Grafton businesses. And we did, I believe at the time, make an attempt to. to put it online, but we did not put it out to any of the Facebook groups. Yeah, where online exactly? On the town web page. But typically what happens when you're doing a survey, unless it's targeted where you actually bought a mailing list where it's a professional survey, and there's some incentive, you get low response rate. So if we sent it out to, say, 350 Grafton businesses via our email, we might only expect a 5% response rate anyway if we had multiple avenues of sending it out, too.

One other thought that comes to mind is the community advocate has really ramped up their coverage of Grafton recently. I met their actual Grafton journalists in person on Tuesday night at the poll location. He was there to get the results from our election last night.

Was that Evan? I'm sorry? Is that Evan Walsh?

Yeah, yes.

I know Evan pretty well as well.

Yeah, I was thinking where they're doing more coverage of Grafton lately, it probably would not hurt to share, once we have a date and location for our fall meeting that we're hosting, share not only the meeting and information for that, but our survey. They could put it out in one article and it could help get us some extra eyes for not only current businesses, but even potential people that might be looking to start a business.

Well, yes. And the other thing that we can do and that we have done before... we did this specifically at the Grafton is open for business, and it got us some good coverage. Carl, you'll remember this. We put out a press release, and you and John Allen were quoted in the press release, went out over the PR newswire, the business wire, et cetera. And we can invite local press, too.

Absolutely.

If we can get somebody, again, like... Senator Michael Moore, Congressman Jim McGovern, folks like that, you know, people, and see who else we can, you know, do outreach to. We'll get some coverage.

The other option, just sort of at a lower level, is you could invite the president of Blackstone Valley Chambers, who was just on the comment for the opening of the new hair salon. The CMRPC has an economic development bar. You could always reach out to their executive director, see if they wanted to come out.

Yeah, I would do a full court press, pun, pun, and with the local business bigwigs and also see who we can get from the press corps.

And I love the ambition of it. However, I feel like it might be possibly a little bit premature in that, you know, maybe once we've sort of gotten our legs under us in terms of like, hey, we've got a system that we've discovered works in terms of getting survey responses, in terms of publicizing the event, like we're very confident that we're going to have, you know, great attendance that then like once we've had a couple of those and it's like, yeah, let's bring in the governor, let's bring in, you know, whomever. But, you know, I feel like maybe we just get a couple of learnings and get a couple of things established first before we pull that trigger.

Well, that sounds good. And in theory, I agree with you. But in practice, here's the challenge, Alina, and that is that every time we get on our feet, something else happens and there's a disruption, right? Now, what we can do, we do have data, and I brought this along here, Justin, and here, and I will email this to everyone who's not here. I made printouts. This is the draft goals of the master plan working group from Grafton, and it has some key findings. We can crib from that, you know, about a number of things. This is just, it's just a guideline, but transportation, you know, what are the challenges, but what are, you know, town services and facilities, and We can adapt some of that to information that we already have. We can use some of this, some of the information that's in here that is pertinent. Not everything in the draft and the draft goals of the MP working group is pertinent to what we're doing.

Is this the draft of this year? Yeah, it was the draft.

Yeah, from 2025, actually.

What page are you looking at?

Well, the first page. Well, I printed it out. Land use, key findings. Maybe like what section only because they have that. Well, as I said, this is just to give us some ideas. of what we could do. Not everything in this is going to be pertinent to the EDC, but we do have certain things that we can put together, like how many businesses are here, what the makeup is, and also go to some of the key town officials here, like Evan, some of the planning commission, and talk to them and say, okay, well, how... what are we doing to entice businesses and get some good data around that to substantiate and bolster, if you will, the notion that Grafton is open to business, receptive to having new businesses, et cetera, as well as supporting our existing businesses, the majority of whom, over 90%, are going to be small businesses.

Yeah, I mean, I guess looking at the data that we do have, let's say, in the master plan, I mean, I'm looking at, I don't know, for me, when I'm looking at the PDF, it's, I think it's page 12. Mark to be as well. But there's that, like, tiny odd chance. It says, you know, survey responses on future development. You know, what kind of future development would you support in the Grafton Historic Commons, South Mill Village? Norsecraft in the village. I mean, like, what do you want to do with that data exactly?

Well, I'd like to pull out key points of the data. First of all, there's, I would segment it by, you know, backgrounder. So sort of what we did, we could basically call off, you know, the short presentation, some of the stats on the town of Grafton overview, how to connect with the EDC, et cetera, and build on that, the things that we had, some of the stats in the presentation for the EDC full business meeting from November 5th of 2025. We could then, in the interim, between now and October, put another survey together and really promote it more. So, you know, via Community Advocate, via the various Grafton Facebook pages, via the Town of Grafton website and our page on the town website, and then do some outreach to key businesses. Now, it's not feasible, but... to try and contact 350 or 300 businesses or even 200 businesses on our own. But if we could target certain ones... And just, you know, call them up, send them a direct email and say, hey, you've been chosen or could you give us some feedback? It'll only take five minutes, 10 minutes of your time, et cetera. So that we would have some.

One question I have about that as well is when you said you emailed a survey out previously, where did we get the email addresses from?

We got those from the town clerk's office from the list of businesses with a DBA certificate.

Awesome. Okay. So that should be pretty comprehensive and up-to-date, I would assume.

Yeah. But knowing, I mean, we would certainly do that again. However, the expectation is we might only get a 3% to 5% response rate. So what I'm suggesting here is that in order to augment that, If anybody who's willing could each take, say, three to five businesses and do specific outreach to them and say, hey, could you do me a favor? Could you spend five or ten minutes with me on the phone or via a Zoom call? Or just send me the completed form via email?

Yeah, I think promoting it... I think I would totally be down to do direct outreach to handbook businesses for sure. That's absolutely no problem. And I think I 100% agree with promoting it, you know, on popular Facebook groups, all things scratch and things like that. You know, more aggressively and also just like you can easily schedule email follow-ups. You don't even have to do it manually. You know, reminders to fill out the survey, you know, could even... had some sort of incentive or something, you know, something very inexpensive, like a raffle, you know, be entered into a raffle for like a free t-shirt or something. You know, at the meeting, shout out or I featured on the EEC homepage for a week or whatever.

Well, the other thing here, we shouldn't overlook ourselves. I mean, every one of us here is in business or has our own businesses. There's no reason that we can't say why we like, you know, doing business in Grafton, even though we are, you know, it's like a hair club for men. You know, I'm not just the owner, I'm a customer, you know, so we're all business people here.

Laura, was that directed at me?

No, no, not at all. Not at all.

I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

No, no. But I'm saying, Carl, you're, but since you call yourself out here, I'm going to call you out as like one of the most successful business people on our commission and in the town of Grafton. I mean, you're in finance, which is huge. And, you know, so what kind of, you know, I could do an easy Q&A with you.

and put it up there and talk about why, and I'm not trying to be self-serving about any of our... Well, for example, if you want to do a Q&A, the idea that the Crane Union is celebrating its 60th anniversary as a Crane Union, and there's probably, we have probably, there are about 7,000 members I think we could do a nice Q&A about the growth of the credit union and how it serves its community. I know that's self-serving, but it's also... It's one of the 7,000 people. It's quite a reach.

No, it's newsworthy, and it is pertinent, and it is core to what we're trying to do. I mean, the pillars of any community are going to be the school, the education, the religion, the businesses. And then when you look at businesses, finance, restaurants, what are the mixes? Industry. Industry. And I'd be happy to, you know, I mean, we can put a list together of targeted people. I mean, can you, we have the business list that you've sent out before. Williams.

Yes.

Okay. Now that, that mix changes a little bit. So for example, the new hair salon that opened on the common associated with Scarlett was, spa, that took over the spot for another business. What was it, pretty and gritty?

I don't know what was there before.

It was pretty and gritty. But we can target where we're seeing growth, where the demand is, and also highlight a lot of these businesses who I'm sure would like to be spotlighted

Do we have a process for ribbon cutting and new businesses? I did get some feedback from Lori from Uncommon Cow, I think because they're opening their new location and she said we want to do a ribbon cutting ceremony, which I think Steve reached out to you, right, William?

Yep, he was in the office. We talked about it.

But she brought up the fact that if you were a brand new business and hadn't already done business in Grafton before, how would you know who to contact or where to go about doing a ribbon cutting ceremony? Should that be part of our responsibility? Should we have some sort of... go to, you know, I'm a new business and I want to do a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Here's, let me fill out this JOT form and, like, get this on the books. And then the EDC shows up with some town officials and does the ribbon-cutting ceremony. Like, we haven't really been affected by it at all.

Does that make sense? Well, are you saying responsible? Well, I don't know if it would have to be Our responsibility as the first line respondent, I think it could still stay with the town, but we could actively work with them. I mean, up until now, I mean, what William has done is saying, hey, is anybody interested in coming?

Sure, but that wouldn't come in.

Is there a process from the outside? Like people who aren't involved in the town government, like, is it obvious that... The process you go through if you're a brand new business and you want to highlight or have a ribbon cutting ceremony on our website.

So in my opinion, no. And Nicole, I'm glad you brought this up. That ribbon cutting, the town didn't organize. That was the Blackstone Valley Chamber.

Okay.

They organized all of it. So something I spoke to and Jefferson did the select board about at that. And then... Steve, when he came into the office, one for Uncommon Cow was exactly what you're suggesting. We could easily make a form on the website that just says request a ribbon cutting and it goes to the EEC.

Yeah, I think that would be great.

That's good visibility to the committee right there and something to do.

Yeah, I think it would be awesome because I haven't been able to participate just out of schedules and stuff like the Scarlet Spa one, for example. I thought, oh, that would be fun to go to, but I just didn't get a chance to. But if we had a little bit more of a process and it laid out on our calendars and stuff like that, we could all make a bigger to-do list.

Also gives us an excuse to buy big gold scissors.

Yeah. And we could do like a welcome wagon thing, you know, with like a little package of things. You know, graft and mud, what have you. That would be awesome.

My only suggestion, William, on that form is to have it CC the select board at least, considering some businesses may be like, Okay, I'm working to getting ready to open. Oh, I just got my CO. Okay, now I want to open next week. And that timeframe of trying to submit for a ribbon-cutting is not necessarily going to meet this committee's timeline in general because of... how often we meet, but if it at least goes to, you know, general our emails and the select board, the separate has a way to also champion it on behalf of the talent because they typically meet more often than we do.

Yeah, we can definitely have to go to the select board too, but I think part of the idea would be to get it to such a stage where if you get that request, You know, two members of the board show up and you know what to do. You've got that procedure down. We've got a big roll of ribbon and big scissors and we make up a little proclamation and people go and they do the thing.

Yeah, and you should also have a minimum, you know, saying you can't request it the day before. You know, you can say those are certain minimum terms of lead time to expect it. You know, we can always try to accommodate other requests. The only thing I was going to say is, and you brought up a very, well, like with the scissors, is because there is a certain, there should be a certain amount of, you know, pomp and circumstance with a ribbon cutting, which might be difficult to achieve if we have no budget. I'm just wondering, like, and I'm all for doing things on a budget, 100%. And, like, I think there's a lot of crafty ways that we could get around that. I mean, like, you know, a ribbon, I'm thinking, like, well, if there's a craft store in Grafton, maybe we could get them to, like, sponsor these, you know, if we have, like, a little thing, you know. that we hand out or that we make visible in the background or I don't know, whatever it is. But since I'm assuming like Blackstone Chamber of Commerce has one, I would feel badly taking it over and then making it not as good as the one that they would do. So yeah, I guess that's just something I'm throwing back into the ether to see if people are like, no, there's a great, we can definitely get stuff donated. It's not a big deal. Or we can get money from something to do that and recycle some stuff.

My 10, 11-year-old could easily make a pair of scissors out of cardboard.

Yeah.

I want to figure out a way to work in that golden shovel that's in the municipal center for groundbreaking.

I would just say to that point, I think that if we're buying things that can be used over and over again for the same purpose, that expense is more palatable, and I'm happy to bring that to the town administrator and pitch that idea. I like it.

Yep. Yeah, and again, I think we can probably tap on some local businesses. I don't know if there's any printers or I don't know. I'd have to look at the list. What would the name of that list be that you sent out? I don't want to bother you to send it out again. It's just the list of businesses in Grafton, DBA.

I mean, it's not a problem.

More than happy to send that to you again. Or not again, because you weren't on the committee the first time it went around. Sent it to you for the first time.

Okay, that would be great. And also, I think another thing that would be great about this form that Nicole suggested about the ribbon cutting is that it would be sort of a way we could almost, there might be a way to somehow like automatically do it, but it would be difficult to just add it manually. Like a cue for us to add that business to the online business directory, which I believe is also a thing that the EDC wants to maintain and own. I don't really know the current state of it. I would just, I reminded myself of it looking at it. I was actually looking, William, for your, to see if you'd already sent the, if I already had the business list and I saw the 2025 EDC report, it's not mentioned in there. But yeah, it might be a good way to sort of help keep that up to date as well.

Anybody else have any other thoughts?

This is Angela. I would recommend that we look into this and submit a recommendation to the select board. It seems important enough to bring to the select board's attention and rather than the EDC being the first line of response, it seems like it's something that would be well-suited if agreed to by the select board to have a talent employee to set this up so that there's a staffed person who can respond during daytime hours. And I could see the EDC offering to participate, having a member attend. But it seems like it's important enough that it all shouldn't fall on a volunteer, you know, volunteers trying to pull this together. It seems like it's a worthwhile cause to bring to the select board for review and for it to be incorporated if they agree. And to a job responsibility within the town. Agreed. Agreed.

So, William, would you bring this to the attention of the select board or? How do we want to handle this?

I don't think it's really up to William. I'm sorry to interrupt. I think it's up to us because it's in our mission statement that we're responsible for making recommendations to the Slack board. I think... you know, not speak for William, but my understanding is that if we had a request for him to go to the TA, but I think if we're following through with what we're tasked with, it's making a recommendation from our ivory in the Slack board. Okay. I would like to... I'm willing to take on the responsibility of following up with the Blackstone Chamber of Commerce, and I'd like to understand it better, you know, what's involved, what they have for forms, what do they have on an expense budget that they assign to this. It's an excellent idea. I think it just needs to be vetted out more so that we can make a recommendation for consideration by the select board. Agreed. Okay.

I like that idea.

I like the idea.

That's almost exactly what I was going to say.

By the way, this is all sort of new territory for us going forward and doing things like this. In that we haven't done it for, you know, done any initiatives like this for a while. So... Carl, what do you think?

I'm with Angela. I love that idea.

Okay. So I think that we're all in accord here.

If I can just say one more thing. Absolutely. Angela, I have the contact information for the chair of the Blackstone Valley. I've been meaning to reach out to her. So I'm happy to send an email and CC you and we can all sort of open that line of communication if you'd like.

Sure, that would be great. And then I'll report back to our committee at our next meeting. And I'll draft up the information that we have. And then I would think that we'd be able to formulate a recommendation from my group that could go to the select board.

Okay. Actually, would it be possible to CC me as well and anyone else who would be interested? Just because I would be interested in, you know,

I think for that initial conversation, you would probably run into issues with Corey if you're seeing too many people, and then you need to post a meeting for that conversation. I think if the committee designates it to one or two people, that's probably the easier way to go.

Yeah. I mean, we don't want to be at cross-purposes and tripping over ourselves and get to a communication staff vote. So if Angela takes lead on it... Elena, do you want to be her second? Or does anybody else?

I don't know if there even needs to be a second to your point. Angela already volunteered to sort of disperse and distill the information across. So I think that makes sense. You know, if Yeah, though, if if Angela, if something comes up, and it's like, I don't want to deal with this, I'm happy to take over it should you want to delegate, but I don't think I don't think two people need to be on point. To your point, it would just be confusing.

Okay. If we just add it as an agenda item for the next meeting, then I can prepare, I can do a write-up and I can prepare it for the group. And it'll just be materials to go with an agenda item that we can discuss in open session. And then that way everybody will have the information, but it'll be on the agenda. It'll be a known topic. And the information can be openly discussed.

Okay. So, yeah, no, that's fine.

And I'll follow up with you, Laura, to give you, like, the topic name. Sure. I can just do that as a one-off. And that fills in just what William was saying, that we're staying compliant with the Open Meeting Law and we're not engaging in deliberations. outside of an open meeting. Okay.

Okay.

So I think we're pretty good on that topic. I didn't load up the agenda with a lot of different items here because the main thing was the meet and greet, and some of these other things. Now, so if everybody is agreed, we could go on to the other business if we have any other business here.

I did see the email from Angela for two of our draft meeting minutes, which I reviewed. So Given that we have them, I would like to make a motion that this committee approve the meeting minutes for I think February 25th, 2026 and for March 18th, 2026 with any edits to be determined during discussion. Second.

Third. I also agree.

Matt and Cher, since you wrote the hybrid meeting, you have to do a roll call vote.

Okay.

Yeah.

In that point, the vote, yeah, just to talk. So I didn't see anything that I feel needs to be adjusted in these two. I didn't see they were very well put together. I didn't catch any even grammatical errors, though I may just have missed them, but I did catch them. I don't know if anyone else has any comments.

No, I mean, you were pretty thorough there, Angelus, so...

I was just going to say, from our last meeting, I looked over the minutes and Alina had kindly offered to put it into a document that we could all edit from. I didn't use that forum just because I'm concerned about it being viewed as a deliberation, but I did review three of the minutes and I keep an eye toward what was discussed, just seeing if I found any stray grammar or anything like that. So I kept an eye toward that.

Yeah, I will say I agree with the deliberation concern. So I appreciate what you did, Angela, and I think Elaine, I don't disagree that it's more efficient to have a shared editing document, but I think it has that chance of being an issue with CELAW personally. But, yes.

Yeah, no, I mean, it was very thorough. But, yes, when you're doing a shared editing, it can get confusing if we're not all working on it within a deadline. That's just been my experience. Not that it can't be.

I think my other concern was if we're picking up on Justin's point, if we're making comments or writing questions, I would interpret that as a deliberation. So that's the only reason why I appreciate the efficiency that Alina was offering. It was just that really taking a fine-tuned look at... keeping it more simple in the sense of what Justin was saying. If we have edits, just discuss them. If there's questions, just discuss them in open session. Easy enough to incorporate those edits and have a final document. Agreed.

And I think I am just like tiny, non-essential grammatical things anyway that were in that one that I looked at. You did an excellent job. I am fine with proceeding just with them as is. I think they're great.

So shall we do a roll call?

Would I? Motion, aye.

Melina, aye. Angela, H-U-I.

Laura DiDio, aye. Nicole Ezier, aye. Okay, that passes unanimously.

And then just an update that I have, I took notes for our last session and I just had a little bit of difficulty today getting online to our meeting. So when I jumped on, it was 7.20 p.m. And I do have our meeting minutes from our April 15th meeting. So I will advance those after this and We could look at those to vote on at the next meeting.

Okay, terrific. And I will hope to have minutes from this meeting ready for our next meeting, too, but I hope.

Yeah, and just one point on that. I have had a problem. There's something when I am trying to send out the agenda to you folks going through the Grafton server. And apparently I'm not the only one who's had this.

Nope. So this is an issue with a new software we deployed called Proofpoint, which is a spam filter. So our IT consultant has opened a ticket with them to try to resolve the issue.

And it's horrendous. So I keep getting this Proofpoint Essentials, the quarantine thing, is sending me quarantine notifications. from people that I don't think have necessarily anything to do with the town, but every time, the issue that I've had is every time I'm sending out the agenda to the EDC group, not to anybody who's in town of Grafton, like who has a town of Grafton address, no problem there. But for the five of you who have Gmail addresses, I'm getting the bounce back. So the only people on the EDC committee that don't have Gmail addresses are myself and Craig Dauphiné. He has an AOL account, which supersedes or predates.

But the distribution list goes to all of us anyway, doesn't it, William? Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. So you don't even need to put our personal emails on it. You can just send it to the distro and it should go.

The issue with the distribution list, when the email is going through the graph and distribution list, that's where it's hitting that block with proof point.

I got the agenda from Laura this last time.

That's because I went back and sent it to you directly from my Outlook email to your Gmail email. And I couldn't figure out what the problem was, and it was driving me crazy. So I wasn't anybody who was sending me something that went through the Grafton server. Any of the five of you, Justin, Angela, Alina, Nicole, Carl... It was bounce back. And I'm like, what is going on? And I went and got my web master person for my own ITIC website now saying, is this coming? Did these things somehow get convoluted? No. And one thing we did do was check something. But I'm like, what is this? I keep getting this proof point. What is this? I didn't sign up for this. Quarantine essential. So it took me the longest time to figure out what was going on. Now, I also have no problem getting through on my Verizon email account to any of you folks on Gmail from my iPhone. But go figure. So at first, William and I made William aware of this a couple of weeks ago. And because we only send out the agenda on a monthly basis, I wasn't sure what was going on. But when it kept happening, so William said at first, I haven't heard of anybody else who had the problem. But then I was talking to Amber. And the town administrator's office, she says, no, other people have had that issue, too. And I couldn't figure out what to the life of me. What is this proof point essentials? I've never heard this before. So but I was getting bounced back. So hopefully this will be resolved. So if you if you haven't heard, if you send something to me and you haven't heard back. It's not because I'm ignoring you, because I know. Alina, you were reaching out to me and it looked like there was a lag and I did get back to you, you know, when I received, finally received something. So hopefully it will be resolved soon.

Okay. That's it.

I'll get to adjourn.

Okay.

May I just, I'm sorry, I know I joined late at 7.20 p.m., but I missed the earlier part of the conversation. Is our next meeting, do we have a date scheduled for June?

The June meeting, I think we were waiting to see if our meet and greet was going to come off, and that's not the issue. So the next meeting would be the 17th, June 17th. Does that work for everyone right now?

Yes.

Okay. Now, the only other point of business is do we want to decide now? Typically, for the last couple of years, we have not had an EDC meeting in July. How does everybody feel about skipping that?

I'll say I'm not opposed, but I think we might want to see where we are with regards to the fall meeting before we decide for sure that we'll skip July.

Okay. So we can table that until the June 17th meetings.

Yeah.

Yeah.

My preference would be personally just to try to meet in July if possible, just because to Dustin's point, you know, we would have to, you know, like if we did want to do the library or maybe other places we want to do it three months in advance, we just sort of need to make sure that we're agreed on the venue and the date at the very least. Yeah, that's fine. A good idea about the survey if we want to use the survey results to inform the agenda and content of the event itself.

Yeah, that's fine. What I would suggest, and again, we can firm this up next month at the June 17th meeting, is that we would make it an all Zoom meeting. Just in case anybody's away or... Make it an all Zoom meeting instead of a hybrid meeting and an in-person meeting. Make it an all Zoom meeting.

The July meeting?

Yeah.

That works. Yeah, I'm not opposed. We can figure that out next month anyway.

I just want something to food for thought.

Yep.

That makes sense.

Yeah, the June meeting, I will need to be hybrid. So I don't know if other people know what their status might be, but I appreciate the consideration there. Thanksgiving to, if we know in advance, to basically share that information so that people know how many might be in person or if we should just have an all Zoom. Yeah. And I know for 17th, I will need to return via Zoom.

Yeah. As I said at our last meeting when I accepted clerk, I accepted clerk on the provision that we continue to have at least Zoom for all our meetings.

Yes, yes. Thank you. Yeah.

Yep.

Okay. So motion to adjourn.

So moved. Second.

Okay. We are adjourned. Thanks, everybody.