Select Board - Regular Meeting

We will start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States

Town is looking for volunteers to fill vacancies on the Finance Committee. Only those residing in North Grafton or South Grafton zip codes may be considered for these seats. Letters of interest may be submitted to the Town Administrator's Office until noon on Friday, June 12th. Silver Lake Beach opens Saturday, June 13th. The beach will operate every day, weather permitting, on Saturdays through Thursdays from 11 to 6. Friday hours are 1 to 6. Please check Grafton Recreation's Facebook page for any last-minute weather updates throughout the season. Okay, we're going to take one item out of order, and that is our light equipment operator for our Parks and Cemeteries appointment.

Tyler, do you want to just come on up?

Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for coming in tonight. Appreciate it. We received your appointment letter from the town administrator. If you want to just tell us a little bit about yourself, what brought you to the role, that'd be great.

Yeah, I live in town, and I'm a firefighter on Station 3, and working in town has been a long-term goal.

Awesome. Thanks. Any questions or comments from the board?

Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. In another role.

Right.

I can take a motion. Thank you. From someone.

I move to appoint Tyler Gasco as the light equipment operator for Parks and Cemetery.

Second. Okay. Motion made. Seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor? Aye. Aye.

Okay.

Thank you, Tyler. Welcome aboard. You are welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting under no obligation. okay now we'll go back to the top um before we get to the reorganization uh we will uh welcome our two new select board members victoria duckworth and colleen roy thank you both for being here hi congratulations yeah super excited thank you guys so much um i just want to take a moment to thank everybody i've appreciated the opportunity to be chair this last year and appreciated your support and patience throughout the process. With that, we can reorganize, starting with the chair. Anybody have any discussion?

I think I would like to be considered for a couple of reasons. One, for continuity.

given that we have two new board members and you know length on the board at this point anybody else would like to be considered at all or I wouldn't say no to another another go like I said I've enjoyed the leadership opportunity and

know serving this last this last year and and everything that we focused on but yeah it's up to up to the board well I'm prepared to make a motion if anybody else's I have no interest in being chairs I've done it several times and it's uh I mean I enjoy doing it but know at this point I'd rather I'd rather see you know some of the other board members that have been here have you know continue that on I guess I would say you know if you know I get I get wanting to continue because the last time I was chair I didn't want to give it up at the end because we were there was some stuff going on that I you know obviously you're in the know and So you wanted to kind of continue that, but I didn't, which was totally fine. So I guess I would just throw it out, you know, if Anne Marie's willing to step in the role, I would support that. And Andy, unless somebody else wanted to be vice chair, you know, I'm vice chair. I know we're going to get to that, but if you wanted to be vice chair. I definitely want to be vice chair.

I want to go to those different meetings.

Okay. It was just a thought to keep Andy in the rhythm. So if Ann Marie wants it, I'll make a motion to appoint her as chair.

Anybody wish to second?

I can make an alternative motion, if that's all right. I'd like to make a motion to have Andy be chair. I'll second that motion. OK. Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Just to second what Craig said, that I think there'd be just some continuity with what's been going on over the past year. And to keep that rhythm going with two new board members on, it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, I agree.

Okay. Any additional discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor?

Aye. Opposed?

Okay. Vice Chair? I would like to be considerate for Vice Chair for the similar reasons as I stated previously. And having served as chair, I wouldn't have continued on another year. I think it's good to have some movement amongst the board. And so if not chair, then I'd like to be considered for vice chair.

I would also like to be considered for vice chair. I have some history being on the board, both being chair and vice chair. And I really like going to the prep meetings. I just love going to meetings in general. Yeah, I'd really like to be considered for vice chair.

I'm happy to make a motion then to nominate Colleen Roy as vice chair. I'll second that.

Okay.

Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay. And finally, clerk.

I know that that's an honor that's usually bestowed upon the newest member of the select board, so I'm happy to take on the clerk responsibility if no one else would like it.

Okay. There's only one thing I would hate more than being chair is being clerk. I hear that a lot.

You're not the first person that said that to me.

All right. I make a motion to make Victoria Duckworth the clerk. Second.

Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. Thank you for your vote again this year. Now we go through our select board representation on other boards and committees. Going down the list, first one is the Affordable Housing Trust. Ms. Roy, you are currently an at-large member. Yes. Would you be interested in moving into that representative role, and then we could post a new at-large? Absolutely, I would, yes.

Unless anybody else wants it, but... Anybody else wish to step into that role? Fantastic.

Okay. Ray was our previous ambulance committee representative, but he will be resigning at the end of June. Is there somebody that would like to take that position?

What does that really entail? I don't know much.

We meet infrequently. to review the ambulance contract and as well as some of the run data and talk about any problems or concerns we might have with the ambulance contract.

Is it a daytime meeting? When do you guys typically meet?

Usually during the day. Okay.

More like in the winter months?

I've only been to like three of them. They're not very frequent. Okay. We get the run data and then if there's something that needs to be looked at, if they're operating within their parameters, we don't do a heck of a lot. But if we start seeing outliers or different calls for service, then it picks up a bit.

Okay. I don't mind throwing my hat in if nobody else wants it, but if it ends up becoming a problem where they can't meet because I'm unavailable, I don't want to screw it up either. But I have some flexibility in the winter and summer. It's just the spring and fall I get a little more bogged down during the day.

Does anybody have an issue with that? It looks like the last time they met was June of 2025. Oh, okay. Yeah, that seems like I can handle that then.

Motion to appoint Colleen to the Ambulance Committee.

Second. Did we do that for the affordable housing? No. Do we need motions for this?

Yeah, I don't think we have, but I mean, it doesn't hurt either. I can...

I don't have to make a motion. I just thought we did.

For what component? I'm sorry. Committee assignments. No. Yeah. You can just not like that. Okay. CIPC?

Not to sound like a ball hog, but I definitely want to get back on CIPC and get that committee up and running again.

Okay. We did also receive one resignation from that committee as well. It's in our correspondence tonight. Does anybody else have an interest in the CIPC? Okay, we can take Colleen for that as well. We have one of the CMRPC seats up. Well, I guess we could technically do both of them. I'm one, Matt was the other. Again, this is usually a quarterly commitment. It's not a huge to-do. I'm happy to stay on. unless somebody else or two other people are emphatic about becoming our reps there.

I'd be happy to take Matt's place in the CRPC.

All right. Anybody else? OK, Victoria, we'll add you to that. The benefit of those meetings is for every one hour of meeting we attend, or every meeting we attend, we get one hour of additional CMRPC help on projects free of cost. Craig, do you still want to stay on EDC? Sure, I'll stay on it. Okay. I'm happy to stay on MBTA unless anybody else wants it. We have not met over the last year. Anne-Marie, would you like to stay on Open Space and Rec?

Yep, I'm happy to stay on the next three unless anyone else wants them.

That makes sense to me. Anybody have any objections with that or want to be considered? Great. Both of our Tricom reps have stepped off, so we could use two there.

I would be happy to be one of those Tricom reps.

Okay. I'll do it. Nobody else want to? Everybody okay with that? All right. Trustees of soldiers and sailors usually sticks with cheer. I can stay with that. And unless anybody wants waste reduction or recycling, I'm happy to stay there too. Okay, everybody's okay with that? And the last one, we need to choose one new representative for our Tufts pilot negotiations.

I'd be willing to do that, just because I've been involved.

Continuing with it, yeah, I think that definitely makes sense. Mark was our other rep, so we could use one more.

I would be happy to join that as well.

Okay.

Is everybody okay with that? Anybody else have an interest? Okay. Craig and Victoria moving forward.

Excellent.

Okay. We have no public hearings tonight, so we'll move into public comment. Is there anybody who wishes to offer something? We do normally limit them to two to three minutes, but Ms. Anderson has requested a little bit longer, and we have to grant that today.

Thank you. Good evening, members of the Select Board. My name is Dawn Anderson, 228 Brigham Hill Road, and I am the Grafton Town moderator. This year, we saw something in Grafton that hasn't happened in almost two decades. We saw record-breaking turnout of over 1,000 voters at town meeting. To put this in perspective, even during our most high-stakes sessions in the last 12 years, including two previous Prop 2 1⁄2 override contingency budgets, 2014 and 2020, and the 2017 meeting with two debt exclusions in a single night, attendance at Springtown meeting never exceeded 600 registered voters. In fact, digging deeper into the town of Grafton annual reports and the voter registration records, I learned that meetings of this magnitude are a true historical outliers. Over the last 20 years, we have only seen two comparable turnouts, both driven by the debate over building a new high school. and only one was at a spring town meeting. In 2008, the spring town meeting drew 755 registered voters. There was an article to approve a building feasibility study for a new high school alongside dozens of other articles. In 2010, a historic special town meeting was held on Saturday, February 6th, drawing 1,100 registered voters. This 2010 meeting was a true unicorn. called on a weekend with a warrant containing only two articles specifically for that school project. Our turnout on May 11th officially ranks among the largest legislative assemblies in Grafton's history. As we saw, that historic attendance brought immediate operational challenges. In preparation for this meeting, we planned for a large crowd. The Grafton High School auditorium seating capacity is 550, and we set up the Commons overflow area with an additional 250 seats, allowing for standing room if we exceeded the 800-seat threshold. We were not unprepared for a massive voter turnout. Historical data showed a 600-voter ceiling for a spring town meeting over the last 10 years. We purposefully set up 800 seats, clearing the historic 2008 threshold of 755. But we didn't stop there. Anticipating that our outreach efforts might actually break records, we secured 1,000 electronic voting handsets. We didn't just plan for a typical spring town meeting. We built an infrastructure designed to stretch. What we could not completely predict was the incredible volume of non-voting visitors and middle school students who came to experience the night alongside our registered voters. When the registered voters eclipsed our 1,000 handset threshold, we hit an unprecedented logistical peak. During a brief recess, I consulted with the town administrator, town council, and the select board. During this discussion, I was advised by Grafton Fire Chief Matthew that the sheer volume of attendees was rapidly approaching capacity in the commons area, as was the noise. Furthermore, because we were utilizing electronic voting for registered voters, we had not created a separate section for our non-voting visitors. When the electronic voting capacity peaked, this blend of voters and non-voters created a risk to our voter integrity. Based on that discussion, it was decided that the chair of the select board would make a motion to adjourn to May 13th and allow us to plan for the necessary capacity. Looking back, I take full accountability for how I communicated that to the floor. When I called the meeting back to order, I focused heavily on the immediate constraints of electronic voting. In my effort to explain the technical, I didn't fully articulate the broader public safety and voter integrity concerns I had, nor did I lay out the reset process required to switch back to traditional voting, halting the meeting, clearing the facility, resetting the poll pads, and re-registering voters. unfortunately many believed we were adjourning simply because the clickers broke ultimately after a debate on the floor the motion to adjourn was defeated town meeting is the master of its own game and the voters chose to stay To honor that vote, the town clerk and I immediately executed the operational pivot required to make the space secure. I called a recess to clear the facility, ensuring occupancy compliance and establishing a secure voters only session. We moved to voice voting for the remainder of the evening to ensure no resident was denied a vote. The body overwhelmingly approved a motion to move Articles 14, 15, 16, and 28 to the top of the warrant, ensuring our highest priority articles were decided while attendance was at its peak. And when 21 voters stood and requested a secret ballot for Article 15, the team was fully prepared. We transitioned to a manual ballot box process that was conducted with maximum efficiency. This unprecedented attendance did not happen by accident. It was a powerful intersection of two major forces. First, I recognize that this year's high-stakes Proposition 2 1⁄2 override contingency budget drew a deeply invested electorate to the floor. But a high-stakes warrant alone doesn't break attendance records. It requires a community ready to respond. Over the last five years, I have been intentionally building a robust outreach infrastructure to lower barriers and invite residents to engage in the legislative process. Since town meeting was dismissed, I have heard complaints from some residents about the pageantry and the opening ceremonies, which did indeed increase from 20 minutes last year to about 30 minutes this year. I want to address that directly. I stand by every single second of that additional time. Those 10 minutes were not fluff, nor are they part of a permanent standard agenda. Several of these elements were deliberate one-time reflection of the National America 250 celebration, specifically the inclusion of the high school pep band and the spark of a revolution presentation. These unique commemorative pieces will not be repeated. Instead, they served a distinct purpose for the historic milestone, weaving the fabric of our history into the mechanics of town meeting and ensuring that when residents show up, they feel connected to the deep civic traditions that they are actively participating in. While the high stakes budget brought people out, the opening ceremony is how we welcome them into the space and set the tone for town meeting. We set the stage for the historic America 250 milestone by reminding our residents that town meetings of the 1770s were the actual spark of a revolution, and we engaged families by bringing the Grafton High School pep band to play the national anthem, both unique elements specific to this year's celebration. We had our eighth grade poster contest winner lead the Pledge of Allegiance. We honored our history by continuing a tradition established by the select board at the 2023 Springtown meeting, reading the land acknowledgment, recognizing the Hassan Amisco Nipmuc tribe. We celebrated our neighbors with Veterans Advisory Committee plaque dedication to Jim Gallagher. Again, a one-time occurrence. We inaugurated a new tradition by presenting the first Outstanding Citizen Award to Andy Shelberg, a meaningful accolade established this year by the Select Board to be presented at Springtown meeting going forward. We mobilized our youth, seeing 137% increase in eighth grade participation. 128 students signed in this year compared to 54 last year. To support these attendees, we provide the same two tools we have included for our students every year since they were first invited. A town meeting bingo card to keep them engaged and a town meeting quick guide to help them navigate who is who and how the meeting works. We launched a targeted outreach campaign to the class of 2026, delivering a personal video invitation from me and an infographic that was distributed across all Grafton High School social media channels, actively guiding our 18-year-old students through the voter registration process so they could step onto the floor as voting members. We integrated our high school student leaders, partnering with the National Honor Society to embed student pages directly into the logistics on the floor. This initiative not only provides an opportunity for students to earn community service hours, but it also exposes them to the mechanics of local government before they even reach the age to vote. And lastly, we lowered the barrier to entry through consistent social media outreach, educational info sessions, babysitting provided by Grafton Rec and the Grafton Public Library, and a shuttle service offered by the Council on Aging. If you want proof that this outreach is working, you don't have to look any further than a conversation that I had at the final Grafton High School track meet two days after this meeting. A graduating senior approached me to compliment how the meeting was handled and to thank me for inviting her to register to vote and attend. That student represents the pipeline that I am building. The graduating class of 2026 was the very first group of Grafton Middle School eighth graders I invited to observe town meeting in 2022. This same student came back as a volunteer with the National Honor Society in 2025. And on May 11th, she walked through those doors, not as an observer, but as a fully registered active participant in her local government. She was not the only one. That outreach is making quantifiable differences. Over the last two weeks, one of my favorite Kenny Rogers songs has been popping into my head. It is titled, The Greatest. It is about a little boy who strikes out three times while playing baseball by himself. Yet he keeps calling himself the greatest every time he throws the ball into the air, swings, and misses. In the final verse, he looks down at the ball and he sings, I am the greatest, that is understood. But even I didn't know I could pitch that good. Since I was elected in 2021, my ultimate goal has been to make town meeting more accessible and to drive up civic participation. On May 11th, our logistical plans may have struck out against the sheer wave of people. But like that little boy in the song, when I look at the final results, I realize something incredible happened. We didn't fail at that. We just found out our outreach can pitch better than we ever dreamed. Grafton showed up and proved how beautifully this town can play when everyone is invited. I am incredibly proud of this town meeting, and I look forward to working alongside the town administrator and the town clerk to ensure that our future operational frameworks are prepared for this level of civic energy. Thank you for the additional time.

Mr. Chair, just so you know, you do have one hand on the phone.

All right, we'll go to them after Roger.

All right, thank you. All right. Thank you, Don. And I remember that the spring 2008 meeting and the February 2010 meeting, because I was moderator and ran those daunting meetings. And just so anyone who's in attendance at those meetings has no idea that standing on stage as moderator, not only running the meeting, but all of the work that goes on in advance of the meeting All that behind-the-scenes stuff is pretty daunting and a lot of work, and so that often goes unnoticed, but it doesn't go unnoticed on me, so thank you. All right, so moving on. Again, Roger Trahan, for Old Upton Road, Chair of Accessibility Advisory Commission. I will not be here next week when you do your annual appointments, so I'm hoping you rubber stamp mine and that I don't have to give you a sales pitch that I've been on for seven years and five years as chair. But the reason I'm here is that I think as much as I can put on my own Facebook wall or social media advertising what is now three vacancies, I figured on the heels of following the election and all the town meeting activities, I think a lot more people are paying attention to this venue. And so I'll use this as my soapbox, but for the betterment of the town. So ours is a seven-member commission, and we now have three vacancies. I was going to step off about a year ago. My bandwidth is kind of narrow, but I didn't want the commission to kind of falter. And I was one of the handful of anchor people over the years that if I had stepped down I think it would have slowly sort of gone by the wayside. I don't want to sound arrogant, but I know that to be a reality based on a lot of commissions and committees in town who can't even muster a quorum. And that's where we are at almost right now. So there is one of the four remaining members due to personal circumstances who has not been able to make regular meetings. So even next week, when you rubber stamp my reappointment, that may still only be three people. And the reason I mention that and why it's crucial here is that one of the prerequisites for Mass Office on Disability Municipal ADA annual grant opportunities is to have an active Accessibility Advisory Commission or Disability Commission, however named. and and this is a huge opportunity for the town just this one issue in that we it used to be two million dollars being vied for by the entire state and now it's about seven or more million and one of the neat things now and that grafton benefits from is that the state has now said that cities and towns that have not adopted the mbta communities act are no longer eligible for the Mass Office on Disability ADA annual grants. So because we've adopted the MBTA Communities Act, we stand a better chance of getting these grant opportunities and winning these grants. And William will tell you, we got a $75,000 grant last year for the reconstruction of the Senior Center ramp. So I think that You know, I can only do so much as far as advertising on social media, texting and messaging people within the community. And I think a neat challenge for this new board as it is now constituted, one focus would really be to get all the, as many people engaged as possible to fill all the vacancies on these boards and committees. There's some great committees out there that just not, they're not meeting on a regular basis. And I don't want Accessibility Advisory Commission to be one of them. I think we've come too far. And so the three vacancies are for June 30th of 27, 28 and 29. So make your pick one, two or three years. We meet approximately, we meet once a month for approximately 90 minutes. Via Zoom right now, our current schedule is the second Tuesday of the month. And if anyone would like to have get a flavor for what we do, and I mentioned this at town meeting that the annual town report. As recent as the current or the most recent 2025 report, that is now, our report has been extracted and is now on the Accessibility Advisor Commission webpage. So I would just invite people to check out what we do and really apply for what is a great commission that is very light lifting, very light lifting. And so that's really it. So, and you know I'm a talker, so. I knew this wasn't going to be just a minute, but does anyone have any questions about the commission or what we do or anything you folks could do to really muster up some support? I know that we're competing with a lot of other causes and committees, but I think this is the better among them. So if anyone has no questions, I'll just sit back.

I do have a quick question for you. It's been a while since I looked at your charge. Are there any other committee assignments? Like do we have a member of the school committee that has to be on that committee? Is there a way to bolster some by doing that?

All right. So a majority have to be someone with a disability or a family member with a disability. I don't know how you can really get personal and make sure that occurs. But of the seven members, one has to be either an elected or an appointed official okay and right now that is uh tracy sharkey as the building inspector and thus the uh municipal ada coordinator and so um i i would i would certainly welcome that but i'm just i'm just thinking we have 15 000 registered voters and over 3 900 people showed up uh to vote i i don't know if I think it's just a matter of tapping the right people. I think a lot of people don't even know about the various boards and committees in town. And there's so many new people that have a great amount of energy, time, and talent. But I think it's just a matter of getting some of the people in the fold.

Did you say it's a seven-member committee?

It's a seven-member committee, and I wouldn't, and I'm not sure if your next comment is maybe we can make it five. No, actually, I don't think that's the answer. What happened is that two of our prior chairs who were very involved. actually had to leave due to personal reasons. We were running very strong at seven, and that had not been a problem. And whenever we did have a vacancy, it was never more than one vacancy, and it was never more than a few months. And I'll say that the state law that constitutes disability commissions, however named, actually allows these commissions to be as many as 13 members. I think that's overkill. Maybe nine is overkill. We do have a nine-member FinCom. And that functions fine with nine people. So I'm not sure.

With CPC, that's where I was going, because five of the CPC members come from other boards and committees. So that's kind of where I was thinking with that.

I mean, it's not a bad idea. You'd have to redo the charge. I think it would be a good idea. But I mean, I would welcome a school committee member. I mean, this, I mean, or even someone from like CPAC or someone like that. Yeah. No, that's a good idea. So whatever you can do to help drum up support. And I just invite the public to read our annual report from 2025 and And on the accessibility webpage is a big ad, and I'll actually post that on some social media sites tonight that speak to how you can apply, and there's a link to the citizen activity form.

Rod, just two committees that I think of is Board of Health and DPW. Okay. I just think they align in different ways with maybe some of the topics that you're discussing here.

That's a pretty good idea.

DPW is dealing with all the crosswalks and all the egresses off of sidewalks into crosswalks. It would be nice to have somebody with their knowledge on the committee. Board of Health, they probably deal with some of the same things.

That's a good idea. I think that would bolster the regular membership. versus what I've seen as people coming on and off has been a really revolving door. And, and police, I mean, even public safety.

Yeah, the grant opportunities, they're going to be excited to try to for all those reasons that Craig just listed, there's a lot of, you know, getting people from other committees to join, I think might be a good solution.

I think that would be a good idea. And I think that it would actually guarantee a certain amount of perspectives that aren't just random, that they're focused and they have department heads and staff that really do this on a day-to-day basis. All right.

And one thing I know of at least 10 group homes in Grafton, serviced by or owned by an operated by say, Open Sky and Seven Hills, agencies that I service, right. And I know of individuals in those group homes that could potentially, you know, contribute to a committee like this might be an idea to

research where the group homes are i can pretty much tell you most of them if you want offline um but maybe send something out there and see if you got a couple of bites that way right and that's the individuals that you're targeting right awesome and i'm amenable to these hybrid meetings we just have with the exception of one meeting uh since covid we've met uh through zoom and so um you know, however people want to put forth their efforts, know that even though we currently meet only through zoom, that, you know, if there are people that can only make it in person, we have the equipment here to to make that happen. So. All right. Thank you so much, Roger.

Thank you for your leadership and your advocacy. You are always great about trying to recruit people to accessibility advisory and you guys are great about bringing plans and ideas back to the board or back to the town administrator for potential implementation. Yeah, why don't we plan to regroup on this? You know, come back after the annual appointments, see what we have for applicants. If you, if accessibility advisory meets in the interim, and you want to discuss the ideas, maybe that Miss Roy presented about, you know, which, you know, the possibility of dedicated seats and who you think might be appropriate for those positions. Yeah, and if Ms. Foley can get him the information so he can do some additional outreach, I think those would both be great measures, and we can regroup sometime in June.

Awesome. I appreciate all of your support, and thanks for those comments, Andy. I know that you've been on the receiving end of my bat phone, you know, on many occasions, and have been really amenable to helping out in any way possible. So anyway, thank you, and thank you all.

Thank you.

Good evening. I'm Kate DuBois and I'm sitting here with my sister Jackie Levens and we want to thank you for your time tonight. We are requesting approval for a mobile food truck license for an application that we had submitted through the town and we were asked to come tonight and speak on behalf of the Rolly Cannoli LLC. This is a locally owned small business focused on serving high quality food in a clean and safe environment. We are committed to following all the town regulations, health department requirements, fire safety standards, and any other requirements. We have put a lot of thought into operating responsibly, including waste removal, noise and any other things that could be a pest to the town of Grafton. So we do appreciate your consideration and we would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Okay.

Kate, I believe we have you on our agenda for our next meeting.

We have an email from, I believe it's Amber to for tonight.

It was never finalized, but we were shooting for tonight because we plan on our first event being June 6th. Okay.

We have a meeting before then, right?

I believe our meeting is before. Yes, we meet on the 2nd, so we could still, we meet next week and be able to.

Okay, we apologize. Yeah, the email we got said tonight at 7, so we do apologize. And there was no confirmation, so we just wanted to make sure we didn't miss our opportunity.

We are very sorry about that. Is Amber the only one with the drafts? agendas right now?

So I have the draft agenda pulled up. They are on for June 2nd. Okay, great.

Perfect. All right. So sorry to waste your time. No, no, no, no. You know, the apology is ours. Thank you for coming in and making a case. And we will see you roughly the same time next Tuesday, please.

Perfect. Thank you. Thank you.

Any additional public comment? Moving on to new business, we have the Alcoholic Beverages License for the Grafton Farmer's Market at the Common and Broken Creek Vineyard. Ms. Parmenter, I see you on Zoom. Can you hear us?

Hi.

Welcome.

Thanks. My name's Abby Scaff. I'm the owner of Broken Creek.

Oh, great. Do you want to just take a moment and promote Broken Creek and what you'll be offering at the farmer's market this summer?

Yeah, we are a 41-acre farm vineyard in Shrewsbury. We grow and make all of our own wine. This will be our third summer at Grafton Farmer's Market. We love it so much that we go every week. We give samples of like five different wines each week, and we sell it for bottles to go.

Amazing. Love to hear it. Any questions or comments from the board? Okay, hearing none, I can take a motion.

MR. CHAIR, I MOVE THE BOARD VOTE TO APPROVE A LICENSE FOR BROKEN CREEK VINEYARD TO SELL AT THE GRAFTON FARMERS MARKET IN 2026. SECOND.

OKAY. MUSHERMAN SECONDED. ANY DISCUSSION? HEARING NONE, ALL THOSE IN FAVOR? AYE. OKAY. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR COMING IN TONIGHT. THANK YOU. I APPRECIATE IT. THANK YOU. YEAH, LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU THERE.

HOPE SO. BYE.

OKAY. OVER TO EVAN FOR THIS NEXT ONE. CONTRACT FOR THE GEORGE HILL ROAD RECONSTRUCTION PROJECT.

much anticipated everybody's looking forward to to this update so it it's pretty self-explanatory um it's about a 5.9 million dollar contract which we've already discussed the amount of this has been vetted we went through the entire review process it's going to be awarded to lynch contracting which is the same company that we use for most of our asphalt paving so that works very well we have currently scheduled provided that the board votes to approve the contract tonight. A pre-construction meeting on June 4th with a mobilization on June 8th. So then we're off to the races.

Very exciting.

Very. Any questions or comments from the board?

have one question um what's the plan for outreach to the residents up there so as soon as i do the pre-construction meeting on june 4th we're going to talk through what that looks like because we don't even have the staging plan yet or any of their finite detail plans of where they're going to start and when and then what we'll do is we'll use our code red system to hit that the residents on that street directly and let them know precisely when things should start to who's going to be involved with the staging meeting because that's going to be challenging obviously so that's myself paul canoyer kevin gallagher brian suzerko uh and then the folks from lynch any idea any like where they're going to park all of this um heavy equipment I mean, I have thoughts, but I don't really know. That is a primary concern. We had talked about there was some land up off of Soap Hill that isn't town-owned, but we may be able to access. So we're going to finalize those details on the 4th.

Do we own the parking lot on Soap Hill?

We own the parking lot. We also own that down on Stowe Road, which is in that same area. There's a parking area there that is on the corner for Cider Mill Pond right by the overflow. Yeah. It's not great, but it's there. So we'll work through some of that, and I can report that back out.

Maybe they could make some improvements on those two areas for us if they're going to be parking excavators and, you know, haul trucks and things like that because they're not built to handle that. Right. They're definitely not going to support that. That's all farmland up there, yeah.

Yeah. I can report that back after we have that meeting on the 4th.

And erosion control.

Yep. All of that. Yeah, yeah. It's going to be busy.

Yeah. Once you have that information, I know you said you're going to do the Code Red, but can we do all the usual channels too, make sure it's on the website?

Yeah, social, all that. Yes, we've also been working on an upgraded asphalt management plan notification through Code Red. So Brian and I are due to talk about that in the morning because we have some work starting Thursday, Friday of this week. So using it for individual neighborhoods so that the folks that are going to be directly impacted at least get the direct message. although I am going to not do that robo voice call that went out on Mother's Day.

Really appreciate that.

Yeah, that was just because that was not intentional. We have a new system, and it wasn't until people were like, thanks for that call. I was like, what are you talking about?

That was unpopular.

Yeah, it was unpopular.

I think it was the time, too, probably.

Yeah, it was like 8.30 in the morning on Mother's Day. Yeah, well, I had other stuff to do, you know? Who sleeps on Mother's Day? I had Mother's Day stuff to take care of, you know? It's supposed to be just text and email, and that's what it'll be going forward now that we've worked out that little kink.

Just one more question, and I know, I'm sorry to be giving you questions you probably don't have answers to yet because you haven't met, but I would think that their schedule, their construction schedule, like what part of that hill they open up and how much of that hill they open up at one time, I hope that there's some containment and them not getting carried away and going there and tearing it up and then go back and, you know, because...

In our preliminary conversations, not with the contractors. We didn't know the contractors at the time. That was part of the discussion is, you know, there's some steep grades. There is a lot of water and not wanting to open everything up at one time, which I don't think they would propose anyways, but we weren't looking to do that either.

And they do this for a living. I mean, they know, but that hill is a little different.

It is. There's a lot of water up there. Thanks.

This is super exciting. I'm not even somebody who lives up there and has had to deal with this road for decades. I'm very excited to see this get underway. Okay. Take a motion.

All right. I move the board vote to approve and sign the contract with J.H. Lynch & Sons for the George Hill Road Reconstruction Project. Second.

Okay, motion is seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Sticking with Evan, we have the contract for Pine Street and Route 30 Intersection Improvement Project.

I'm going to pass that over to Will. Oh, no, we discussed that. I apologize.

We did that. I can assure you the procurement for this is legally sound and all above board. That's right. You did just say that. Over to you, Buff.

Okay. So this is, I mean, obviously what it says, Pine Street and Route 30. This was part of the UPS project. So as part of their planning board decision, they needed to upgrade this intersection. So we are doing the procurement and the construction oversight. However, they're paying for the entirety of the $481,000 contract.

Just answer my question.

Okay.

Any questions or comments from the board?

I have one. Yep. It speaks to a hot mix asphalt berm, you know, and our subdivision rules and regulations, we require concrete sidewalks and granite curb. And I think we should stay consistent with that. And if there's going to be a lot of truck traffic wheeling around that corner. I'm sure there's going to be times where they take a wide swing and they may go up in that curb and the asphalt berm is going to last about a week.

Okay.

So I would ask if they're willing to do a granite curb through that intersection. I think it's got a lot better chance of holding up based on the type of traffic that's going to be going up that road.

At least that central Island is currently granite curbing as well.

So, so they should, we can, yeah, we will reach out, um,

it's already gone through planning board it's already gone through the bid process and we're at the award stage you know I don't know how much of it is up there but it's obviously gonna cost a little bit more money to do that

There are some – Will and I will confer on how to try to get that to happen. Not to throw you a last-minute curveball. Nope, that's okay. I don't mean to be vague. I'm just trying to think about how to proceed on that. Yeah, we'll talk about it tomorrow. Should be likely to do that.

It looked like – The only thing missing in the checklist was their certificate of good faith.

We did receive that. We have that in hand. It just wasn't put into the packet. Okay, great.

And I just wanted to make sure I was reading it properly. Under the terms of the contract and the time for performance, it has the date of December 18th, 2026. Is that when we're expecting completion of the project?

Yes, I believe so. I haven't seen it anywhere else otherwise. Great. Given the speed at which UPS is building their building, I don't think that's a stretch at all. It's unbelievable. It just seems so foreign for a project of this size. We can certainly municipal it up and slow it down for you. No.

Aren't we doing that with the granite curbs? Because we are doing that.

We have granite hanging around. Move it around. It's a good idea. I'm not making that up.

Any other questions or comments? Okay, take a motion.

I move the board vote to approve and sign the contract with Morse Engineering and Construction Industries for the Pine Street and Route 30 Intersection Improvement Project.

Second. Okay, motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor?

Aye. Aye.

should go back to will on this one too for the uh... driver verification system employment policy yes i would go back to open outstanding uh... so we brought this policy back out with me included in the changes that were requested from the border uh... So Matt often asked for some clarification on what the process is. If somebody loses the license, we include the language that that would be handled in accordance with the town charter or relevant collective bargaining agreements so that we don't run the risk of creating a policy that doesn't jive with those other documents. Craig, you brought up some language about employees who are involved in accidents or things like that needing to self-report. So we've worked that in there. And Andy, you requested on the consent form that includes some reference to the fact that it is a town of corrective policy. So that is on there. Those updates have been made. I think that we're going to ask that the Board does not vote on this tonight just because we're still waiting to hear back from Labor Council about properly deploying this. So we want to do it all in one go as opposed to piecemealing it.

Did anybody have any comments, questions, feedback on the updates that were attached?

No, thank you for all those updates.

I do. Go for it. so under the um the reporting so accident is that we talked about accent i thought it was moving violations but accidents i guess the important part is if they lose their license if you get three speeding tickets in two years you lose your license right if you get picked up for dui you probably lose your list right those things i would just we need to have reported to us correct right um whether i mean WITH OR WITHOUT THE UNION CONTRACT. I MEAN, WE NEED TO DO THAT. I MEAN, IT CAN BE PART OF THE UNION CONTRACT, BUT THAT, YOU KNOW, WE HAVE MANAGEMENT RIGHTS CLAUSE, I'M SURE, IN OUR UNION CONTRACTS. IF SOMEBODY DOESN'T HAVE A VALID DRIVER'S LICENSE OR HOISTING LICENSE, THEN WE NEED TO KNOW THAT BECAUSE THEY CAN'T BE OPERATING A TOWN VEHICLE, PERIOD. I DON'T CARE IF IT'S A PICKUP TRUCK OR IF IT'S A FRONT END LOADER, YOU KNOW.

CORRECT. One of the things that we're waiting on from council is language that sort of solidifies the employee's requirement to disclose anything like that. So, that way, if there's any issues with, you know, deploying it under the collective bargaining agreement or somebody doesn't want to opt into this specific program through the RMV, we still have a policy covering that requirement.

Male Speaker 1 Yeah, okay, good. Because, like, you know, God forbid somebody gets in an accident and they don't have a driver's license and they're in a town vehicle. So, it's just, we can't do that. Thanks, Will.

Anything else?

Okay.

And we will bring that back in a future meeting once you have some confirmation. Okay. Sustainable purchasing policy. Do you want to take this one or do you want me to keep going?

Fantastic. So every year the town applies for a recycling dividends program grant, the RDP grant. That's what funds things like the backyard composters or the grain barrel program that we just ran. They used to require a buy recycled policy that the town had for many years. They've changed that to a sustainable purchasing policy. This matches what they're looking for as well as, you know, a couple of Grafton specific things like the way it's formatting, formatted, the inclusion of Appendix A so that way we can keep the resources up to date. Um, it is very similar to the bi-recycled policy, uh, that only focused on paper and office supplies. This focuses on those items as well as new pieces of technology and things like that. So this keeps us in compliance with what the state wants, uh, and keeps us eligible for that yearly grant.

Great. Any questions or comments from the board?

Fantastic.

Okay. I can take a motion.

I move the board vote to approve and sign the sustainable purchasing policy as presented. Second.

Okay, motion made and seconded. Any discussion?

I love that we're still doing policy.

With the government, we're always doing policy.

Yeah, good news.

Any additional discussion?

Okay, hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Okay. Town meeting recap. Mr.

Chair.

So I put together some slides kind of how just reviewing what happened and how we got there, although Dawn recapped most of it in her public comments. I don't know how deep you want to go into it. I've also created a draft report that is pretty comprehensive, I think, of how we got to – where we were and what we could do in the future to try to mitigate that from happening. So... Thank you. I just don't want to be super redundant. Could you go to the next... We'll include this in our packet, but keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Okay. I'm going to go right to future contingencies. Like I said, Don covered most of it, and I'll point out some of the, I think, specific issues that we identified, and I'm sure there are others, but these are kind of the more salient ones. One is that once we maxed out of the electronic voting system, we quickly realized that we had a room full of voters and non-voters, and they were all mixed together, which is problematic because that clicker is your ticket, let's say, and without it, we have no way to separate anybody. So what we did literally the next morning, I sat with the clerk's office. We have now ordered wristbands. So this is pretty prevalent in other town meetings that I've been a part of or attended. And so now when you are a registered voter and you get your clicker, you will also get a wristband. So therefore, if the clicker system ever went down or we exceeded the amount of clickers in the room, yes, we'll have to do a voice count or a hand count, but we will not have to re-register people because they're already identifiable another recommendation that I would make is that we maintain a clear physical separation of each voting area for separate voice or hand count contingency so what I mean by that is at many town meetings we have a specific area which you're going to put you know alien non-voting residents or that's what they used to call method You should call them just visitors. Visitors, yes. You could do visitors. It had a different context. We did it for a long time. It worked. Maybe five years ago. But anyways, so a visitor section that is clearly defined so that if we do have to go to voice, vote, or hand count, we know exactly where everybody is. So those are my two kind of operational changes. And then we did meet with Don, Will and I met with Don, and we talked about, and I think it's hard to do when you're standing in front of 1,000 people, but there's a lot of inputs coming into the moderator when we're having this issue. And so what we had discussed is calling a short recess, explaining this is a recess, we'll be back in five minutes, getting everything together so that we can have one cogent message to the people in the room especially the people in the room that might not have ever been to a town meeting before they don't understand parliamentary rule it's not robert's rules it's town meeting time it's there's a it's a complicated thing and massachusetts likes it complicated um but that misunderstanding leads to people not Knowing what they should be doing which I think you then saw people leave because they thought well when we said We're gonna have to adjourn. They didn't realize that well under town meeting rules When you're adjourning to a date and time certain that it's debate. It's debatable You need a motion and it requires a vote right and that's hard to do on the fly and so what we talked about was just kind of building in a little pause there to be able to say I here's what we got to do, especially when, you know, I was part of the conversation with Don and you've got fire chief saying that you're over fire code. You got town council giving advice. I'm giving my opinion, although it wasn't really asked for, but I give it anyways. And, you know, just trying to get your hands around that was, was complicated. So I think that that, um, you know, it's just a lesson learned from all of us that we got to slow that down a little bit. Um, and then, This last one is just in regards to the opening ceremonies of town meetings. So that is the domain of the moderator. However, the board has asked for announcements and awards from time to time. And so if that is a concern, the length of time at the beginning of the meeting, then I would recommend that the board review the request that they've made of the moderator and then augment their requests if they feel it's appropriate. And I'm not evaluating that one way or the other, but if that's a concern, I think that's your avenue. So lastly, Don spoke to kind of our metrics of how we came up with the capacity we had. And there's one component that I don't think Don mentioned that I would like to bring up. We talked about reviewing Previous town meetings, we did all of that. We looked specifically at override things. We looked at a lot of different factors to try to figure out how many people we thought would be there. And we thought 600 was a reasonable guess, but we'll plan for 800 and then said we're going to build in more contingency and we went to 1,000. The problem with going over 1,000 is that there's a cost associated with that. If we're going over 1,000, we're going to need to move into the gym, and the gym would require us to use, if we're going to use electronic voting, we would have to bring in our consultant for electronic voting. There's other audio concerns, and if we're going to do video, that's a cost. So our estimate is that it's roughly $10,000 to set up the gym properly the way you want it to. That doesn't mean there's not a cheaper way to do it if you weren't doing electronic voting and you had said the deputy moderator and there there's a lot of different ways you could do it, but there was a Reason why we went with the common and not the gym We also had tested those clickers throughout the building. They did not reliably work in the gym. They reliably worked in the Common area and we had gotten some feedback from our friends over in Upton who had a similar but different debacle with the clickers. And we tried to learn from that and went with the single base station. So there was a lot of work that went into that spectacular confusion. But it wasn't, you know, just throw a dart at the wall and hope. for the best like we i think we did our due diligence so um i'm not expecting any of you to read this this evening and if you want to come back to it i'm happy to take any comments that you may have on it i tried to just outline um you know how we got to where we were and what we could do in the future we did get some resident requests for a more formal review so that is the intent of this document and then we can put it out on the website and all that and people can have access to it.

The comments or questions from the board?

I have a couple. Sure. That $10,000 you talked about, is that each time we have a meeting or a one-time cost?

It would be each time because it's all stuff that is consultant-owned and operated and not us. Again, you could You could strip all of that back and go with, say, a deputy, and I'm not speaking for the moderator. Moderator runs the meeting. But you could, I've seen it happen where you've got a deputy moderator in another room, a walkie talkie, they do the count in there and they relay that back. There'd still be costs because we don't have the AV equipment to make sure. that everything is synced between the two rooms because you want that in real time. It was one of the problems we ran into even with the common is that our native infrastructure was, we were going to have about a 30 second delay, which is a mess, right? You can't have that. So there would still be a cost, but you would save $5,000-ish by not having the clicker consultant people come and set up. It's a, when you go to that, separate locations and different base stations it's not something that we would tackle ourselves you have to set up a local area network you got to do a lot of back room tech stuff that we're not we can we'll can do a lot of it and I'm not tech illiterate but I wouldn't even attempt that another question I have there was a post about the Groton clickers are we financially responsible for those to Groton if they don't return what is that cause

They're $50 a piece. Yeah, $50 or $50 a clicker. That's better.

Did we get them back yet?

No, not at all.

Just another shout-out to return those clickers, please.

Yeah, it would be nice to get them back. We've only lost, knock on wood, one clicker of our own. So, I mean, if you're going to lose clickers, let's lose the rotten ones. Because that's just the handshake deal.

You can't prove we ever had those. Exactly.

Exactly. No, we'll fix, we'll make them whole, but.

I have one more comment if you'll let me go. The pageantry opening ceremonies or whatever we want to call them, I will say I think that helped us this year because at one point during that time, it was mentioned we were at 880 people, and that's when I got nervous, and 200 more people roughly came in. And if we had started cracking off votes at like 715 that would have opened up a whole nother can of worms with people feeling like they didn't get an opportunity. So I can see it both ways, but I really think building in a little time for people who might not know you have to come in and register and have everything that they need is a good thing.

I think every town has that to a certain extent. Every town meeting I've ever been to has their own norms and traditions at the beginning. And those are, you know, evolving over time. Some of them are 200 years old and some of them are brand new, but. I don't think you'd want to get rid of everything. I don't think you'd want to strip that. I don't think any town really would. But it was a resident concern that was brought up, so we looked at it.

Anybody else?

Yeah.

Thank you for the quick turn on this. I'm sorry. I think it's impressive that you heard residents say that there were concerns and were able to lay out a document this quickly and concisely. So I appreciate it.

Sure.

Yeah, so you guys, between Don and you, addressed a number of the things I wanted to bring up this evening, so I appreciate that. I think the visitor's area in particular to me, I don't understand why we went away from that. So I really want to see that again and to make it clear and delineated, and I think that could have perhaps prevented a little bit of this because at the end of the day we were only over by like five or something. But anyways, it's there, so I appreciate that. And I guess the other – well, a couple of other things. When do the physical warrants need to be made available, like copies at the post office? I feel like I bring this up every year, and I still feel like we're behind on that.

So we've met all of our legal obligations. We've posted the warrant. I think what you're referring to is the warrant that has the – we put out a warrant. and it matches the legal definition of when the warrant has to be on.

So you wait, in terms of the post office and Bushnell and Peck, you wait until you get the finance committee.

Right. We want it to have all of the... The information, and we've added that over time. I think when I started it was separate. Recommendations from the finance committee were separate. There's no explanations. We've added some things that I think make the document more rich and more understandable for the public. But it does, you know, waiting for the finance committee's recommendation is not always...

yeah timely so i guess i just throw it out there again i'm trying to get that out earlier and then obviously we ran out of copies at the post office like within 48 hours so um over the weekend people weren't able to access it and um i guess just generally um the level of discourse that sometimes is um has been enabled in this room relative to how elected officials are treated spoken to i think kind of rolled over some of that into our town meeting and i know everyone doesn't feel this but i certainly do um and i heard from a lot of people about uh well first of all i want to commend peter adams for coming up and introducing the notion of doing the ballot vote um relative to one of the articles and i know he kind of got a little back and forth on that but what not maybe not everyone realizes is that there are a lot of folks in the audience who actually felt quite intimidated by their neighbors, you know, people next to them. That was happening in real time in that meeting. And so then to have to go to a vote by voice, which is what we always did. I've lived here for a long time. And, you know, we always had to stand up and you hope that your next door neighbor doesn't heckle you. It's just the level of acceptance of what some people allow to be said and how some people treat other people, I guess, has obviously changed. And I was really disappointed to hear from so many people in real time, particularly when we had to go to the vote, you know, yays and nays. And I actually heard people laugh at folks who said nay. And so I just think that that is entirely unacceptable. And I would challenge the moderator to just try to, and I know you've mentioned it at the beginning of the meeting, but maybe just for me personally, to push that home. wholly disappointing, and it really is a disservice to the notion of this being a truly democratic process when you sit there. And it's happened to me. So it happened to me at that meeting where a resident actually heckled me when I put my vote in. She was seated right at my right. And previously, I've had a member of another board take a photo of how I voted with my, you know, thumbs up or thumbs down. I'm a big girl. I've been around for a long time. I can handle it. But I heard that a lot, and I felt it in the front couple of rows. As I sat on the podium, it was very disconcerting. And when Mr. Glispin was speaking and two ladies were standing up and, you know, just a lot of that feeling. So I guess I will challenge and, again, just a shout out just to somehow get that out there. But I will continue to try to get that. I don't know. walk the walk I suppose but that was the most disappointing part of it to me in addition to the 300 people that you know obviously left and felt disenfranchised but I would challenge all of the voters in Grafton I appreciate that folks showed up we've had meetings that big before I've been at meetings that big before and the level of I don't even know how to put my finger on it but just I guess disrespect for officials that have been voted into office, in addition to your neighbors. It was really disconcerting.

Anybody else have anything they wish to add? Say, Andy, just one thing.

I guess I felt some of Ann Marie's. It seemed like people, a lot of people were there for the first time, and they wanted to go in and cast their vote and go home, and they didn't really care about anything else, which is um... not surprising i guess but we all put in a ton of work and you know preparing and all the work we do all year long so you i guess to ann marie's point you hope that people go there and they give up a night they respect all the work that we've done and we're all volunteers right know i'm not going to monday morning quarterback the other night dawn did you know and the team did a lot of prep work it's a lot of planning there's a lot of work there was a massive amount of people there there was a lot going on and um you know and it's not easy um the one i guess the one thing that i wanted to mention tonight and i think it was brought up but i'll just say it was some people that were in the cafeteria area When Don said that we were going to have to adjourn until Wednesday or, right, I think a lot of people just got up and walked out, right, like 300 or 400 people. And I don't think the deputy moderator out there DID ANYTHING TO STOP THEM. THAT'S WHAT I WASN'T IN THAT ROOM. THIS IS WHAT PEOPLE SAY. PEOPLE JUST THOUGHT WE WERE ADJOURNING, AND THEY GOT UP AND THEY WALKED OUT, AND THEY DIDN'T REALIZE THAT THERE WAS A VOTE. AND I THINK YOU TOUCHED ON THAT. I THINK YOU TOUCHED ON THAT. SO, YOU KNOW, AGAIN, IT WAS A UNIQUE SITUATION, AND IT WASN'T EASY, BUT THAT'S JUST THE FACTS, I THINK, OF WHAT HAPPENED THAT NIGHT. WE LOST LIKE 400 PEOPLE OUT OF THAT CROWD, AND I THINK THEY LEFT BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT THE MEETING WAS ADJOURNED.

so you know we can't reenact it it's over but i think that's what happened yeah i did hear similar feedback um so you know uh and and i think craig hit on a bunch of the good points there that this likely was the first town meeting for a lot of residents who came out um It's easy to say in hindsight that we should have been better with that communication. I'm glad to see that it's something that's up there. It is a complex thing that's happening. You know, I think part of what happens speaks to how difficult it is to get a thousand people to change the direction in which they're moving in a, both an orderly fashion and a relatively short amount of time. And that's if they all know what they're supposed to be doing. And obviously there was some, some disconnect there. You know, so it's, it's, I think we're all just trying to figure out what we're doing in the moment. And again, in hindsight, we could have done a better job communicating that. But I'm glad to see these contingencies in place. I think they hit a lot of the needs. The only other piece of feedback, two pieces of feedback, heard it was difficult to hear in the Commons area which I know you guys had tested the AV ahead of time but not with 300 plus people in that room so that you know that that became a logistical challenge that that you know was just a learning lesson at that point the other thing the other piece of feedback if we could have broadcast not just the slide presentations out in that area but also

you know what people were seeing on on the broadcast so they could see people at the mics and and those types of things that's part of that cost we don't have the native ability to do that we we talked about it we researched it we looked into it um and we wound up going the lower tech route that was available because it was better than it's not required under the law but it's better than not doing anything for folks um but we do not have the capability to to do that. We could have, you know, even if we looked at getting, you know, just even getting a stream from GCTV, there was delay issues in that that we had looked at. So I think that those are valid concerns. I think that if we're ever facing this again, which I'm sure we will be at some point, you know, they're part of the lesson learned and things that we need to, And it's not just we don't want to spend the money. There's a delta there, right? So if we had gotten 600 people and we spent $10,000, people would say that's a waste of money, you know? And so we have to walk that line a little bit. So, you know, it is – it's over. It's already happened. We all know, I think, where some of the failure points were. I think we all know – we need to go and you know I honestly I still think it looking at the data that we would not have anticipated more than there's gonna be a thousand people even just looking at what we what we had

Two other quick things. At the old high school gym, we used to have ghosts in that building because it was the microphones. They would test them 400 times, and then they would crap out during the meeting. It was inevitable, and it got to be kind of a joke. So I'm not surprised the common areas, they were having a hard time hearing. But you can't, to me, this is great ideas, right? It was like, this was, I think, an anomaly. I mean... you know, last fall we had 80 people there. And 50 of them are people that are on committees that had to be there. Right? So you had 30, say, residents that were there to vote on the articles that weren't part of a committee or the chief of police or the fire chief.

And how many of those are regulars that go to every town meeting, too? Right.

So this, so you, you know, one meeting you get 80, the next meeting you get 1,100. It's like, you can't You can't plan. I don't know. You guys know better. You can't plan. Right. It's hard to plan for 1,100 people when you get it once every 10 years, right? So it's tough.

I do want to take a moment just to thank the volunteers and the Honor Society. I mean, you know, the yes-no vote, I think, went as smoothly as it possibly could. And it was because we had a good turnout of volunteers, you know, and the amount of election workers that came to work registration was great, too. Thank you to everybody who came out.

Yeah. And Mr. Chair, like I said, so this is a draft document. There are still people involved in the process that we wanted to take their temperature on. We haven't had the time to do that because just the way everything fell. So I have not met with Amy really in any real way. And Amy Berry said, Some of the election workers from the common area have good insights. We haven't tapped them yet. So, again, trying to get this done for this meeting so you'd have something to review. The public can see that we're taking it seriously and working on it, but we will be augmenting this, I think, as we go. And if you certainly have any feedback or questions, I'd like to hear that too before we put this out to the public.

Great. Maybe we bring it back on a future agenda for review and feedback.

Yeah, if anybody has any. Like I said, we'll be tweaking it as we go. This was my over the weekend verbal diary onto the page. It's like five pages long. Mr.

Chair, I don't know if you're interested in public comment, but you do have one hand on Zoom.

Sure, we can take it.

Hello?

Can you hear us?

Yes, I can. Can you hear me? So I had actually taken my hand down because I heard Evan say that there's more people that you guys are going to talk to. But since I was here, Amy Marr, 36 Ferry Street, South Grafton, I was one of two wardens on duty that night in the commons. So I have information and perspectives to share whenever Evan and his people are ready. Some of it was pointed out tonight, but there's a lot that wasn't. And I'm looking forward to getting into that and making improvements for the future. So I will leave it there.

All right. Thank you, Amy. We didn't forget about you. We just haven't gotten all of our guys in a row yet.

Sure.

Thank you.

OK. Select board reports. It's been a few weeks. I have a couple. I was able to attend the wind waste innovations tour a couple weeks ago at the Wheeler Brainer facility. I put this on social, but they are incredibly proud of how they operate well beneath both state and federal maximums for things like carbon monoxide emissions and air particulates. They have recently taken over the facility and are very interested in being good neighbors. Working to improve outreach and education helps them avoid dealing with materials that shouldn't necessarily be in your trash or aren't the best place for that. So things like increasing focus on recycling and reclamation efforts upstream end up helping them at their facility. I was also able to attend the Rushford and Sons Beer Fest at the Woodhouse and Clock Museum, which was great. We've permitted that for the last three years. I bring that up because I had a chance to talk to the brewmaster from Slow Down Brewing, who was working on that facility on 122, where Pub 122 used to be. The progress is slow going, but they are very excited to move into that space. The Water District held their groundbreaking for the Worcester Street Wellhead facility this past week. It included reps from Ty and Bond, who did the engineering, and Winston Builders, who will handle the project. That should be done, I think, by the end of next summer. And yesterday, we were able to attend the annual Memorial Day Parade and Remembrance Ceremony on the Common. Rain stopped in time. It was a great turnout, so thank you to all the residents who attended yesterday, all the scouts and organizations, and also to the Veterans Advisory Committee and the American Legion for their time and efforts in organizing this event. Town Administrator Report.

So Metro West Regional 911 service update. We are in the process of pre-qualifying bidders, which is the next step on going out to full bid. So we're making great progress there. We are working on our borrowing, and I did have a one-on-one meeting with the director last week. I think it was Thursday. to start talking about Grafton's radio infrastructure needs and making sure that those stay at the top of the list to be done concurrently with building the center. So that was a very productive discussion and I'm excited to get some of those changes happening here sooner rather than later. So we have one opening, I believe admin for the planning and conservation departments. So we're going to be posting that, um, probably this week, if not that it's already posted, nevermind. We posted it earlier today. What was it last week? It was last week. Okay. Whatever. We'll take care of that. It's done. Um, and then just an update 95 north street. So we're, we're trying to move as quickly as we can. We want to get the concrete pad put in before we do a public opening of the park. Um, And I don't think we communicated this part very well, and we're gonna update the website to reflect this. But even though the park has got a substantial amount of completion, there's some erosion control and plantings that we needed to let stabilize the soil around the walkway. And then we do have a process by which we're compacting the walking trail a couple of times before it's fully open and people start kicking stones around and stuff. So that's the delay. It's an intentional delay. We needed spring to happen. We needed the stuff to grow. And we're going to push to get this pad put in, and then we should be able to soft launch it to the public. It is a great spot i've spent some time out there a couple times a lot of turkeys we've got a pollinator meadow planted that was another thing that we wanted to let pop before people started going through so it's going to be a really nice spot i think it's very well done so um and that's that's kind of it we've obviously cow meeting election i'm doing doing a lot of that kind of stuff um So we're now digging back into the things that we've backburnered while we go through that process.

Great. I did see a question about that on Facebook this week and when it would be opening. So, yeah, if you could get some updates up that, you know, just the residents are aware, that would be great. Yep. We are in the process. Awesome. Yeah, it's going to be a great spot. Any correspondence anybody wish to discuss?

I have.

Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Colleen. I'm not on the board, so you go first.

Were you going to call out anybody?

Yeah. Then you go for it. I just wanted to mention that sprinkled throughout correspondence was Bonnie from our billing department. She does a fantastic job, and I just want to make sure that she's recognized for all the good work that she does.

Absolutely. That was one of the best emails you can hope to receive in this position, and she made a resident very happy with that effort.

Not to take anything away from Bonnie, but that is consistently Bonnie. So she might not get all the accolades all the time, but I've watched her work with customers quite a bit, and she is very customer service oriented. So it goes out of her way to help people. Thank you, Bonnie.

Yeah.

I had just two things. I wanted to thank Dan Fiore for his time on the Trails Committee and he was one of the original people on that and it was a challenging committee to get going for a myriad of reasons and i really applaud the committee and him in particular for um you know for persevering and then i just had a question to you on miss ashworth on east street is that something that's being handled um i think it's like a zba maybe type oh yes it is it is being handled okay great yeah sorry i have three different things on each street right now and i

So, yes, I think she brought up two. Yep. Okay.

I can go, too, if you're ready. Sure. In addition to Bonnie, Tracy, Kevin, and George were all called out as well for awesome customer service. I didn't want to leave them out. And the gym rental, did somebody reach out to that person to get that squared away?

Oh, yeah, they're always. Yeah, they get put in there, but we. It's always. All right, because I won't even ask about that. Yeah, please don't. Amber's got that one down to a science. They are in constant communication.

And my last one is when people go to apply for alcohol permits, one day beer and wine or anything like that, where on the town website is that exactly? And could it be added? Because I was kind of searching for it and I couldn't find it. And could it be added under that area? Like how do I online permitting? There's a select board button. But then there's nothing when you open that. Can we add it there?

We're in process on that. So we're expanding our usage of that beyond what we're doing now. We have, I think, four different areas that we're going to expand into.

Because I did get an email from Rushford and Sons looking for that. And I went online, I found it, and I sent it to them. But I wanted to make it easier than what I did.

Okay.

I sent them to Amber and then she said it was all set.

We can circle back on that. We can take a look and figure out what to do. Okay. Thank you.

The only other one I wanted to highlight was to thank Jeremy Graves for his tenure on CIPC and his chair on that committee as well. Always appreciate the assistance. Okay. Meeting minutes.

I move the board vote to approve the meeting minutes for September 9th, September 23rd, and October 28th of 2025 as written.

Second. Okay. Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? None. All those in favor? Aye. Motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Second. Okay. All those in favor? Aye. We are adjourned.