Select Board - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

is 706. I apologize for the delay. We'll call tonight's meeting to order and start with the Pledge of Allegiance. The summer concert series hosted by Grafton Recreation begins next Thursday, July 16th with Hit the Bus. Remember, the location changes week to week. This concert will be held at Ferry Street Park starting at 6 p.m. Grafton Recreation is receiving a floating beach wheelchair from the grant they are awarded by Smile Mass. Join them for the ribbon cutting ceremony at Silver Lake Beach on Tuesday, August 4th at 11 a.m. We are going to pause briefly. Before we begin our hearings tonight, we would like to acknowledge the passing of longtime Grafton resident Paul Letourneau. Paul served as a dedicated member of our Accessibility Advisory Commission for the past three years, and we would like to acknowledge and appreciate his service to the town and extend our condolences. to his family and friends and take a moment to honor him. In addition, we also wish to honor the memory of Massachusetts State Trooper Jacob Mick, who tragically lost his life in an off-duty accident here in Grafton. We offer our deepest sympathies to his family and his fellow troopers during their time of unfathomable grief. So please join me in a moment of silence. Okay. We have three public hearings tonight. We'll start with a poll petition by National Grid for Keith Hill Road. Read the legal notice, please.

The select board will hold a public hearing on the request of National Grid and Verizon New England Inc. for permission to locate poles, wires, and fixtures, including the necessary sustaining and protecting fixtures along and across the following public way. Keith Hill Road. National grid to install one J.O. pole on Keith Hill Road beginning at a point approximately 45 feet southwest of the center line of the intersection of Old Upton Road and Keith Hill Road. National grid to relocate P57 approximately 32 feet northwest of existing P57 on east side of Keith Hill Road. Public hearing will be held on July 7th, 2026 in conference room A of the Grafton Memorial Municipal Center located 30 Providence Road starting at 7 p.m. Remote participation will be available using Zoom webinar. Interested citizens are invited to attend this public hearing and offer comments in writing, in person, or via Zoom. Written comments must be received by noon on Thursday, July 2nd, 2026. I move the board vote to open the public hearing.

Second. Okay, motion made. Seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, by roll call, Ms. Roy. Aye. Ms. Dauphiné. Dauphiné, aye. Stockworth. Aye. Ms. Foley.

Foley, aye.

Jefferson, aye. Let's see, Michael Iberger on there.

Hello, how's it going?

Good evening. Thank you for coming in tonight. Could you just walk us through the first proposed relocation?

Sure. Hello, I can jump in here because I did this this time. Basically, we want to relocate this bowl because we are relocating bowl 36 too to get that out of the intersection.

I'm sorry, Mrs. O, can I interrupt you for a moment? Yeah. Is there a way that you could get possibly closer to your microphone? I'm sorry. You're very quiet on our end.

Can you hear me better now?

Not really.

Let's see. Hello?

Maybe.

Oh, no. Strange. I've never had this before. That's better.

Whatever you're doing now is much better.

Okay, glad to hear that. Thank you. So basically, we are also relocating Pole 36 because it's in the middle of the intersection. We want to get out of the way. And so Pole 57 is to support that relocation. It will help remove any kind of issues we would have if we didn't relocate Pole 57.

That makes sense. Does anybody have any questions? Okay, any questions or comments from the audience? Hearing none. This first one is, I know two polls were mentioned. This first one is just for P57. The next hearing after that will be for, is that P36? So right now we're just the one poll, but we'll need to do both. So I can take a motion.

I move the board vote to approve and sign the poll petition by National Grid for Keith Hill Road as presented. Second.

Okay, motion being seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Ms. Roy?

Aye.

Ms. Dauphiné? Aye. Ms. Duckworth?

Aye.

Ms. Foley?

Foley, aye.

Jefferson, aye. Let's pass unanimous. Close the hearing. Yes. Do we have to close each of these hearings before? Yeah.

I move the board close the public hearing. Second.

Okay. Motion made. Seconded by roll call. Ms. Roy?

Aye.

Ms. Dauphiné? Aye. Ms. Duckworth?

Aye.

Ms. Foley?

Foley, aye.

Jefferson, aye.

The select board will hold a public hearing on the request of National Grid and Verizon New England Inc. for permission to locate poles, wires, and fixtures, including the necessary sustaining and protecting fixtures along and across the following public way. Old Upton Road. National Grid to install one J.O. pole on Old Upton Road beginning at a point approximately 50 feet east of the center line of the intersection of Old Upton Road and Keith Hill Road. National Grid to relocate P36 approximately 50 feet east of existing P36 on south side of Old Upton Road. The public hearing will be held on July 7th, 2026 in conference room A at the Grafton Memorial Municipal Center located at 30 Providence Road starting at 7 p.m. Remote participation will be available using the Zoom webinar. Interested citizens are invited to attend this public hearing and offer comments in writing, in person, or via Zoom. Written comments must be received by noon on Thursday, July 2nd, 2026.

I move the board vote to open the public hearing.

Second.

Okay, seconded. By roll call, Ms. Rooney?

Aye.

Mr. Dauphiné? Dauphiné, aye. Ms. Duckworth?

Aye.

Ms. Foley?

Foley, aye.

Jefferson, aye. Okay, does anybody have any additional questions on this? It was just covered in the last description, but anything from anybody?

Motion to close the public hearing.

Second. Anybody in the audience, any questions? I move the board vote to approve and sign the poll petition by National Grid for Old Upton Road as presented. Second.

Okay.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, Ms. Bray? Aye. Ms. Duffin? Aye. Ms. Duffin? Aye. Ms. Duffin? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Duffin? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Duffin? Aye. Ms. Foley?

Aye. Ms. Duffin? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley?

Aye.

Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye.

Ms. Foley?

Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Foley? Aye. Ms. Fo

The select board will hold a public hearing on the request of National Grid and Verizon New England Inc. for permission to locate poles, wires, and fixtures, including the necessary sustaining and protecting fixtures along and across the following public way. Wesson Street. National Grid to relocate one J.O. pole on Wesson Street beginning at a point approximately 830 feet southeast of the center line of the intersection of Willard Street. National Grid to relocate 145-foot Class II pole number P33 on Wesson Street. P33 has a history of being in motor vehicle accidents since it was placed on a tight corner. This pole will feed a new riser pole, P33-2, on the property of 82 Wesson Street. The public hearing will be held on July 7, 2026, in Conference Room A of the Grafton Memorial Municipal Center, located at 30 Providence Road, starting at 7 p.m. Remote participation will be available using Zoom. Interested citizens are invited to attend this public hearing and offer comments in writing, in person, or via Zoom. Written comments must be received by noon on Thursday, July 2, 2026. I move the board vote to open the public hearing. Second.

Okay, motion being seconded. Ms. Roy? Aye. Ms. Dauphiney? Dauphiney, aye. Ms. Duckworth? Aye. Ms. Foley? Foley, aye. Jefferson, aye. Okay, Abigail, do you want to walk us through this poll placement?

I could talk about this one. I actually did the design for this. Yeah, so it's pretty straightforward. It's similar to the other ones where it just keeps getting hit. So I met up there with operations and we agree that across the street will be a much better location for it and should significantly reduce the motor vehicle accidents in that area in terms of poles being hit.

Any questions, comments, concerns from the board? It is in a bit of a precarious place. Do we have any questions or comments from the public? Okay, seeing none.

I move the board vote to close the public hearing. Second.

Okay. Motion made and seconded. Ms. Roy?

Aye.

Mr. Dauphiné? Dauphiné, aye. Ms. Duckworth?

Aye.

Ms. Foley?

Foley, aye.

Jefferson, aye.

I move the board vote to approve and sign the poll petition by National Grid for Western Street as presented. Second.

Okay, that's made it seconded. Ms. Roy? Aye. Ms. Dauphiney? Dauphiney, aye. Ms. Duckworth?

Aye.

Ms. Foley?

Foley, aye.

Jefferson, aye. All right. I don't think we've ever done three back-to-back-to-back public hearings in a night. Last time.

We moved not to do that.

It was just one, wasn't it?

No.

Okay. I'm going to say one. um any public comment tonight for anything that's not on the agenda nothing okay great uh we have no appointments from this the select board uh or the town administrator so we can move right into new business and uh into our joint meeting with the planning board if you guys want to call yourselves to order sure i'll call this meeting of the grafton planning board to order i believe we're all here so no need for a roll call okay great um So, we will start off with appointing the associate member for your team. We have two applicants tonight. Just going by the order they are on the paper. Sean Tatum, do you want to come up?

Hi, my name is Sean Tatum. Some of you might remember me from the last meeting. I bought a house in Grafton a couple years ago. My husband's from town. My whole family lives here. I love Grafton. I'm very much trying to get involved. I saw the planning board opening and, you know, just from living here, some things I've noticed, you know, like 97 land I have on my street that I feel like is in disarray and There's invasive plants going on. You know, Institute Road, I see all the development happening there, and so I'm just kind of concerned about environmental issues in the town, how we can grow business sustainably, and just looking forward to the future of Grafton.

Okay. Any questions?

Any questions from the planning board? What background do you have in any town government functions?

I don't, this would be new for me. Like I said, I'm just trying to get involved somewhere and I think that this would be a great opportunity for me to also learn the processes.

You then haven't looked particularly at the laws we operate under.

I have, I read the master plan.

Wow.

Love that.

Thinking of Chapter 40A and our zoning and whatnot.

I'll just say welcome back. Thanks for coming back. You're going to go from the From the frying pan into the fire here. So if you get appointed, it is a great place to learn. That's where I started. Learned a lot from this gentleman right over here. I'm not going to tell you the year because it was a long time ago, but you touch so many different departments and so many projects and interact with so many other boards. It's a great place to start. So I appreciate you coming up again and giving another try here. Of course. Yeah.

Thank you. Next up, we have Marlon Mahendra.

Good evening, everyone. My name is Marlon Mahendra.

My wife and I moved to Grafton a few years ago because, you know, we believed everything this town has to offer, and honestly, it's delivered. The schools, the trails along Blackstone, the diversity in the community, the fact that you can be on the commuter rail to Boston in under an hour and then also come back to something that still, you know, feels like a real community, I believed in all of that, and I still do. I have a 10 month old, and when I look at him, I think about what Grafton looks like in 10, 15, 20 years. Whether the opportunities that brought us here are still gonna be here for my kids, and that's why I'm standing in front of you guys tonight. We have plans for the Transit Village overlay district that's been on the books for years. We have routes 30 and 140 corridors that feel like they have real commercial potential. We have so many commuters to Boston that live in Grafton but aren't really benefiting from some of the same advantages that most of the Boston suburbs receive. I come from a background in business and finance. I spend my professional life evaluating whether investments make sense from the return, what it looks like in 10 years, what are the risks, what the picture looks like, you know, a decade out. And I'm hoping that skill set is valuable to the planning committee. More commercial development done right means lower pressure on residential taxpayers. It means more jobs, more services, more reasons for businesses and families to choose Grafton over the town down the road and more reason for families to stay here. Grafton has the bones to be not only one of the strongest towns in Worcester County, but also in Massachusetts. And I want to help build that future for my family and yours. So thank you for your consideration.

Any questions from the planning board? Again, have you had any other involvement in town government?

This was also my first time doing this. I wanted to put my feet in and get kind of like how you were, Craig, just starting out, and I think it's a great place to learn. But I am pretty heavily involved in the Worcester community as well. I work with my wife in the Worcester Free Clinic and volunteer there. So I've always been about community development and kind of just want to do it in Grafton.

familiarity with the laws that we have to work with. Yeah, I have the same answer.

I read through, but other than that, not really.

You know, financial visibility. A little later we're going to be talking about data centers and how financially viable they are for us.

Okay, thank you. I think one thing I'll add, because in your letter to the town, you said, or is it that, that the one that's a good commercial tax base, you want to be a part of making those decisions and The only thing to really add is the planning board is primarily responsible for enforcing the zoning laws and the laws of town passes around zoning, which any business that comes before us that has a right to do their work under the rules we set, that's basically a yes, whether we think it's a good business, whether we think it's a... going to give the town more financial stability or anything like that. So that part of the decision making is not really in that part so much.

Dave, did you have something? I didn't get a chance to ask Sean the same question, which was quite quick and a trigger. But anyway, the question is, a lot of the work the planning board does, and Bob sort of alluded to it, is reviewing and approving permits and reviewing and proposing amendments to zoning bylaws. So how good are you at reading legalese, state laws, town bylaws, rules and regulations?

Yeah, I work, so my day job is I work for an AI company, and I work, they do AI for credit unions and small banks, and I basically am on the customer relationship side. I have to review all the contracts with those clients, so I get all the good, bad, and ugly, so pretty familiar with that.

What kind of company did you say?

An AI company. AI. Yeah.

Is it a name we would know? It's called Interface.

You probably would recognize the clients. We have Webster 5, Western Community, Crite Union, all those ones. AI is kind of on our agenda tonight.

Maybe even you know that.

Yeah, I saw it on the agenda.

Well, it's a popular subject this week. Yeah.

Any others? Select board.

Anything from the select board?

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you. We can give Sean the opportunity to come back up and answer that question for you, Dave, if he's willing. Okay.

Sorry, can you ask the question again, please?

Yeah, so a lot of what the planning board deals with are things, rules and regulations and laws. So the question is, how good are you at reading legalese, which is a language of its own, if you've ever had any contact with it?

Well, I'm certainly not a lawyer, but I am a learned man, and I am a great reader, and there's nothing that I can't learn. So I am not, that doesn't intimidate me. I can learn whatever you guys need me to learn.

Yes, and as others have noted, there's a lot to learn. You've got experienced people here that would be happy to help out. But yeah, the desire to learn and the ability to learn is key.

I do have one follow-up question for you, Sean. because you did express interest in a number of other boards and committees. Would this be your top choice, or is there something else here a little bit? Because this just happens to be the one we're appointing this week. We have to post for two weeks, but we will be appointing others at upcoming meetings.

This is my top choice, but if I've demonstrated anything tonight, it's that I'm not going to give up until I'm in something. I love that.

Thank you. Anybody else have any additional questions?

The cable committee is looking for people.

Unfortunately, that wasn't on the list. That was not on his list, unfortunately. Oh, well. Don't do that.

I know that's the top of your list, but.

No, it's the chair's list, so.

All right. We should probably remind the applicants that the associate member is typically a non-voting member.

sure so unless designated by the chair the associate member is not a voting member and it's usually designation happens during a special permit where we need a certain number of votes but it is as people mentioned that's how I started you know it's a great way to learn the ropes you can speak freely in the meeting and ask questions right so there's a lot that you can bring to it yeah it's specifically the one place that the associate has

a chance to vote is on a special permit when we're short someone who's eligible to vote. You don't get to vote on the other stuff, but you get to be there with us and participate as far as all the chairs I've ever known. Most definitely.

All right, any other questions or discussion? This is my first joint meeting, so we're essentially waiting for a motion. Is that how we feel about it? Yeah. All right. So we'll be entertaining a motion.

I'll say these both seem very capable and strong candidates to join us on the planning board. I'd be thrilled to have either one on us. for the first time of holding these meetings with myself, I don't have opinion that sways me to make a motion for one of them, because they're both...

They are.

They're very good candidates. They're very good candidates. It's a good problem to have.

Mr. Chair?

Ms. Foley.

I move that we appoint Marlin Mahindra as the associate member of the planning board.

Second. OK. Motion made and seconded. Any discussion?

Any from our end? Hearing none.

We do. Forgive me, because it's been a minute. We do the whole group by roll call?

OK.

um so uh hearing no additional comment or discussion uh mr hasinger mr dalamole aye miss roy aye mr duffin definitely miss duckworth aye mr robbins aye mr wood aye mr rock aye jefferson's eye uh miss foley foley aye thank you okay um well congratulations mr mahendra um Again, Sean, please do come back. I'm sure we will see you with some of these other committees in the coming weeks. I'm sure you'll get on one of those. Thank you both for coming in tonight. You are welcome to stay, but under no obligation. Thank you both. Thank you. OK. So next up, we have a discussion relative to zoning for data centers. Did they receive a copy, I should have asked you this before, of the municipalities that you shared with the select board and... It's in the packet. I know it's in our packet. We did get an explicit email about that.

Yeah, we were all... For those of us who might not regularly check the meeting packet, staff did email to all of the board members the...

link to the packet great um so i believe in you know anybody jump in correct me if i'm wrong but from a select board perspective this is something that we would like the planning department and and the planning board to explore and and um you know draft some language come up with some ideas so that we um you know get started in a a very pressing topic that's happening now across several municipalities. So, um, you know, really, I think that's, that was our expectation at this point was that we would just kick off the discussion. So I'm happy to turn it over to you and, and, um, you know, if, if you have thoughts or if it's something that I believe that your last meeting, you guys started kicking it around a little bit. So,

yeah Christian maybe it's Christian put together a nice memo for us we had from our last conversation said there was a couple areas that we wanted to dig into Christian I don't know if you want to give kind of just a short flyover of that work that you did in sort of looking at examples from other towns and then also you know with no changes where could it enter Center actually land up in the existing zoning so I think that's helpful context for everybody so maybe you can just give us a little bit of a backdrop there and then we can open up the conversation does that work for everybody yeah that'd be great yeah sure

so i i just did a high-level review and memo nothing comprehensive just to prepare for this meeting but some things we looked at uh... word some of the towns locally that have uh... made attempts to prepare for potential large-scale uh... projects uh... mansfield is a great example that we looked at a couple other uh... towns and cities have uh... looked at moratorium, so just looking at what's already happening. A recent development I think is important, especially for this conversation just a couple weeks ago, is that the state paused their tax incentive program. uh... making building large-scale density much less competitive in massachusetts now massachusetts with the pause is one of about ten states that does not have any incentive program that's intended to allow time for towns and cities to prepare for uh... deceptive conversations and implement something uh... without having a s firm legal uh... interpretation of where a data center may fall into our bylaws. Where I believe it could happen is in our light industrial or business building. The light industrial use would require a special permit. That's probably the most likely example, but again, it would take some legal assistance and interpretation to determine if that is allowable. That's what other towns have also identified where that would fall into. But just with that high-level view, I think we're prepared to go over questions, concerns, or what an approach for Grafton might look like.

thanks Christian yeah and I'll just add that I think some of the discussion we had last time was really it was you know first about that where could it end up today hypothetically and that includes some of the village mixed-use so there's discussion there about this is that appropriate or not and then in that light industrial designation there's no real limit on the power use or the use of municipal water right so these are also concerns right where it seems like the existing language is not specific enough to deal with this particular case, right? So, and then the last thing I'll say, and I'll open up to the rest of the Board, some of the context here would be trying to do something for town meeting in the fall and so if you look at what other towns have done there are more it's like their time time caps moratoriums and then there are folks for like the example that was included here where they came up with something much more specific so I think that's one of the other things that factors in for us is is there enough time between now and town meeting to come up with something specific enough that's going to hold the test of time, or are we really talking about potentially a, you know, kind of time-limited moratorium? But I guess that's my broad backdrop. I don't know if there are other folks on the planning board that want to add.

As I quipped at the last planning board meeting we discussed, I could probably talk for several hours on the subject, so I'm not going to go into that much detail for sure. I am in a career where my current company does benefit from AI boom right now, so there is some benefit for that, but it wouldn't really affect me directly, so it's not really any conflict to say that out loud. But the aspects is I'm generally not opposed to data centers, even in Grafton. I think the one that is on the news in Massachusetts, the giant building that's, you know, what, 10 stories tall or something, I have no idea, is... probably outside the limits of what I would like in this town for both the size, you know, I would, I would have shows up and still the water and electrical use would be a big concern and how it impacts both the town and neighbors. So there's a lot to figure out in that space. I would be personally in favor of doing a moratorium for one or two years even and we can, if the town feels like we're ready to enact an appropriate bylaw even before the moratorium is lifted, we can still lift it early. So that's kind of where I'm at right now and as a brief. Okay.

I've been thinking about this for who knows how much. Christiane, do you think I'd be right to say that all of the possible places that this would fall in the zoning would require a special permit?

It's possible that it could fall under a more standard business use, potentially, being conservative, and there are some buy-right uses, I believe, of that. Okay. Sorry, go ahead. No, go ahead. Depending on the size, there's buy-right use of business offices in the industrial zone and the community business zone and a couple other smaller zones.

Yeah, is there an upper limit on the size that? That would be very small, so. Just very small. 5,000, well, 5,000 feet. Yeah, that's what I'm, we're talking, what, 300,000 square feet up at Wyman Gordon, or 200,000 square feet, depending on how many floors. This is a very dynamic situation right now. I don't totally have where the legislature is, but I understand that they're developing legislation that will speak to a lot of the concerns and cover a lot of this ground. At the same time, the ground is moving fast. The technology moves fast. By the time one of these things gets built, we'll be in the next generation of computers. And then three years from then, we'll be on the next generation of computers and what they want and how they do it. So it's really a moving target. In Grafton's case, and with the places where there could be significant impacts, significantly sized developments. I think that being under special permit and being subject to a lot of negotiation about taxes You know, there's TIFs and there's, I don't know, all of them. I just looked it up, and you've got ones I don't even know about. But there's a lot of negotiation that you can do to get what you want, and apparently that's been going on a lot. So I'm a little more sanguine about what we need to do. I think what Christian has in his... memo is good for us to go forward looking into. But about the only thing that I'd look at is to see if there's anything we want to do in the bylaw in general about special permits. I've been a little bit bothered about few of the items in 1.5.5 of the CBO, which is where, I think that's where we list the, there's a list of a dozen or so findings that the board must make. But as far as I know, there's nothing to stop the board from making other findings also. So we have a fair amount of flexibility ability to cover the ground in the near term and I would say Let's let's do basically look at it and Particularly as far as I'm concerned see if there's anything we want to Strengthen for now, but don't try to write comprehensive laws because by the time we got them written The problem is going to be different keeps moving and the state's changing the ground under us a lot. And the little bit I've been able to get from the House and then the Senate and the House and whatever, they're putting, they're looking at some pretty strong measures to address the concerns that everybody has.

So to that point, in some of the examples that were given, Would you consider, like, Mansfield or Northborough to be too comprehensive at this point?

I don't think it's a... No, if they want to do it, okay. But we wouldn't mind the financial benefits that might come from it. Even the folks up on Worcester Street might not mind not having hundreds of trucks every day, and instead having a quiet, closed-up building over there that we could get set further back and heavily sound isolated, as an example. That site has an interesting advantage. The High Lines, the electric company's High Lines, run right past, and in fact, Wyman Gordon pulls a lot of power off those lines already. And so the challenges for someone to get the power they need here at that site would be much, much less of a problem for them and for the community and for the cost than many other places where the power company has to run

lines or these heavy heavy distribution so just to clarify what I was hearing you say earlier is that we're aiming for October town meeting for either go for a moratorium or a more comprehensive language and that's

That's the next chance to do it.

Right. And that's kind of what this discussion is here tonight is to task you guys with deciding which lever to pull, go with the moratorium or more comprehensive language for October. And I just wanted to recap that. That's what we're doing right now.

Yeah, you know, again, my opinion of the conversation was kind of looking to them for guidance. Is a moratorium something you'd want to explore to give yourselves the time to, you know, further investigate what potential, you know, disruptions this could cause or wouldn't cause? Or, you know, because just seeing that other towns, you know, so many towns have done it differently. There are other towns that have skipped the moratorium phase and

know fairly quickly decided what it is they want to they want to allocate for the zoning yeah i think you know we need a little more time to do some research like when you read the examples here you know they make sense right but we don't know exactly how all of it's going to play out i mean and i don't know if anybody else shares this but i also in the in the next year or two i personally am concerned about the water because we've got both sides of town with them well down and we have facilities being built but If they're delayed or until those facilities are online, it's hard to predict what kind of draw can come for a facility like this.

They're not going to have water. The water district will tell them if they have the water. And when the water district says no way, they don't build. But the data centers that are getting built now aren't using public water, just flowing it through and dumping it out. They're using refrigeration electricity to do the cooling which brings you to my thing about sound you need to put the the fans for that air conditioning where they're isolated from noise we might want to look at whether it's time finally to have any kind of sound bylaws generally for the town. But I think those would be folded into whatever negotiations we have going on if someone was showing up in the near term. But the water, both the power and the water, to me are not, don't look to me like major problems for us. because of our particular circumstances and the way it's going. What's the third thing? Well, understanding how the taxes go, because the personal property apparently decreases in value fairly rapidly. So, you know, you have personal property tax and you have this, that, and that type of thing.

Yeah, I mean, I understand that they're going to try to be as efficient as possible in their facility, but what I'm getting at is in the current bylaw, there's nothing that limits their use of the water or the power, right? So that's my concern is how do you address that so that we know we have something to point to if somebody decides to take an approach? I think Dave had something.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of details that we can talk about, but I think in my opinion right now, There is so much change, so much movement. A lot of communities are starting to figure out how to face this. Several communities have passed or are proposing to pass zoning bylaws dealing specifically with data centers. The state has just instituted sort of a temporary pause on a tax benefit. You know, the papers, the document that the state just came out kind of covers a lot of the territory. But I think for Grafton, I would be more comfortable dealing with creating a zoning bylaw or whatever else we need after we know more and we see other folks' experience with this. I don't feel a need for Grafton to invent the wheel for this. And so... For the purpose of incorporating data centers into our zoning bylaw, I'd like to defer consideration of that until we see more about what's going on in the communities around us, what the state is doing to regulate it, because we run the risk of regulating the wrong thing if we just jump into it like some towns have. they do what they want to do. But for me, it seems like a moratorium for a year or two, basically, what that would mean was in our zoning umbrella, we create a definition of data centers so we know what we're putting a moratorium on. But beyond that, we continue to do research on it. We continue to do some investigation on that. find a way that we think works best for us in the longer term. But I'm not generally a fan of jumping into something as soon as it becomes a hot topic, with the exception of kind of putting a hold on any potential data center development within Grafton. But to me, I think we would want to If the planning boards are going to come up with something, we would want to discuss this further. Because not only would we potentially put a moratorium on it now, we would also have to map out a path for what are we ultimately aiming for. Because a moratorium is generally time limited, one or two years. And it's specifically for the purpose of addressing the zoning issues that need to be addressed. That's basically the purpose of a zoning moratorium. We are constrained in what we can do with a moratorium to begin with. But if we take that route, then we can buy ourselves a year or two to continue to watch what other communities are doing, continue to watch what's changing in the industry, and get a better sense of how we want to address the topic in our zoning. And I think how we want to address it sort of depends upon the size and the resource requirements of any proposed data center. But those are details that I think I could come up with some ideas looking at what other towns have done. But I prefer that we take however much time we need to figure out how best to accommodate this in Grafton.

Yeah, I got just a couple questions. So just so for everybody's edification, including my own. So kind of the characteristics or concerns of these data centers are the size of the structure, the noise, what traffic, use of utilities. I think the water question would obviously be Solved in a pre-planning meeting with the water district and they you know, they're probably before they even got to you You know to file an application, but those are the concerns of these facilities. It's like Like, you know, I understand creating as a bylaw form like we do it though. I'm totally for that I think we need to do that like you did for the marijuana so we allow it but it's it's in a location that we feel is you know appropriate, right and

Traffic is not a problem. They have a very small number of people typically in the building. Okay, so not a lot of employees.

Not a lot of employees. Very few. A small part of them. Sometimes if they're setting up certain equipment, they may have a bunch come out once for a little while. These things just run.

Security people. But it's really just rooms full solid of computers doing their thing. And there's somebody probably somewhere with a typewriter with a terminal. I try away from moratorium. It's been a long time since we tried to do a moratorium. Do you remember? It didn't go well. It didn't. And so I, that encourages me to look at more sublime ways to, you know, just,

if we're if we don't have big exposures that we're worried about that we can't cover under our current situation then right you do something well that's one of my questions like what if we look at if it's OLI and it's industrial right Wyman is straight industrial or is that OLI both the Wyman Gordon property yeah but I mean that's where I initially you know I thought that's what came to mind that parcel which would be great right we get limited to that But we have a couple of months, right, before fall town meetings, so it's a development by-law, unless we're tapping into other communities and seeing what they're, if they have these centers, what they would maybe do differently, or the towns that have a bylaw, you know, if there's something that, you know, maybe we have AI write a bylaw for us, right? So, but, you know, with a couple-a-month window, that's a pretty tight time window. Now, do we even consider, like, a six-month moratorium and then extend it for another six months if we have to? Because we don't want to lose that window with a potential facility right because you want we can the revenue like we want to you know we want to generate new tax revenue we want to generate business you know if we do a one or two year we're going to lose a window yeah i don't know that's part of why i want to come up with something i think do what i've been saying the the length of it and then also as they brought up the definition of what the moratorium covers or is aimed at right needs a little bit more thought in terms of

Yeah, I would point out that maybe 10 or so years ago, we put a two-year moratorium on, I think it was recreational marijuana, adult use marijuana. We used that time to build a zoning bylaw for that and put it in place.

But there wasn't any other control there. There wasn't a special permit that... would give us a buffer. That was, the state passed a law, and unless we do something, you know, we're out of luck.

Part of what you're talking about is maybe just, you know, if you don't think you can get it by fall, Tom, meaning give yourself enough time to try to get to spring, or, you know, and then if you're not there, you extend it. Right, we could extend it another six months.

Yeah, so I think easily what we could do, easily, he said, Things are never as easy as you think they're going to be. But take a closer look. Before I give up on the moratorium idea, I want to satisfy myself that it's adequately covered in the zoning bylaw, and I'm not yet sure about that. Well, what's our exposure, right? With parcels, do we know that? What could be done under the current bylaw that we might be uncomfortable with? So that's where you might decide that a temporary moratorium gives you more time to write things into the bylaw that we're confident will work. And on that part, writing things into the bylaw that we're confident would work, I think it would be helpful to draw on what other communities have done and maybe even in the best of all possible worlds, have already been shown to work. I'm not sure we'd get that far.

So is our philosophy that we're not against this industry, right? Kind of like marijuana. We're not against the industry, but we want to carve out, we want to craft a bylaw so that if it is going to come to Grafton, it's in the program.

Yeah, I think we want to make sure that if it comes to us sometime in the next year or two, we would like to be sure that it's going to be handled, we can handle it in a way that we're comfortable with.

Yeah, I'd agree with that. I mean, I think my thing is, I don't want a lot of a situation where somebody comes in with a lot of resources and they're like, well, you didn't cover it in this way, so we kind of get to do what we want, right? And so, and I'm not saying I know that, but I'm looking at it and saying, it doesn't really speak specifically to it.

The risk is real. AI will find our holes.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Special permit is the key. the powers of a special permit are the key.

Ms. Foley's had her hand up for a minute. If we could just take her question quick.

Yeah, not a question, just so much as a comment. It sounds to me like the planning board needs more time to look at our current zoning, what we might need to beef up there. Do we need some sort of separate zoning verbiage or bylaw? And then looking at a moratorium, again, they would also need time to create the language as to you know, the definition of what we're putting a moratorium on. So I guess I'm just trying to sort out like where this conversation is going. To me, it just sounds like the planning board fortunately is looking into this and then the new planner brought some information and it sounds like that board, you know, needs to meet on this and put it on your agenda obviously and see where we wanna go forward.

Correct, but I think part of the purpose of tonight is to give this board an opportunity to share any concerns that we may have, you know, from a town perspective, you know, that they can consider as they have these discussions as well.

Okay, so for me, I feel comfortable with the planning board proceeding as they see fit.

We're definitely not looking to come to, you know, any sort of final determination or anything tonight. It's really just, you know, group discussion.

I did see Ms. Duckworth's hand earlier. I don't know if she wanted to. I'll let her go before I speak if she wants to.

I appreciate that. I guess from my perspective, I would like to... there's enough unknowns and and to mr. chair's point there's enough potential holes where someone might be able to come in without a moratorium and place a facility that the town of Grafton itself might not be comfortable with but that we would have no remediation over so we state that perhaps the air conditioning might not take additional water resources that we might not have but noise pollution at the facility might be so cumbersome we have no bylaw today about noise restrictions in Grafton right the state does but perhaps they get right in under that particular decibel level and the neighbors are uncomfortable with it there's nothing to negotiate because we have right like these are just things that we don't know yet and that's that's an example I'd also state again from from my perspective that You know, as I've said many times, I'm a big fan of open spaces. I'm a big fan of ensuring that Grafton maintains its balance of being a very green, environmentally conscious community, as well as a community that is open to businesses and increasing our economic development. But I see us increasing business and economic development as also Really wanting to focus on bringing the kinds of businesses into town that also bring in a lot of employment that give the opportunity for Graftonites and surrounding communities to come here and get jobs Not just big noisy boxes that are potentially Hazardous in terms of the waste that they provide or create and that also are just monoliths that don't bring people or community or in those sorts of benefits and But that is just kind of my personal view but I've also heard this sort of ad nauseum from a lot of the people that do speak to me about the ways that we want to see that the town the town grow and So, I personally would be very much so in favor of a moratorium for six months to 12 months to ensure where we might have holes that could leave us vulnerable for the community to be open to a facility like this coming in that could negatively impact both our community and our environment. That's my perspective.

All right. I was just going to add a few things. Number one, to Mr. Dauphiney's point that we have several months until we need to have a bylaw ready for town meeting. Town meeting is in several months. We have probably just over a month to have a warrant article ready for presentation at town for town meeting. I said a couple of months, which I meant was a short amount. It's very, very short. It's kind of my point. The other thing is I'm not as confident that our special permit process today, even if every potential place for a data center would fall under special permit, would be enough to cover some of the current very real concerns that people that have data centers pop up in their neighborhoods face every day. The power strain, power costs go up because of delivery costs. Water access, even if they have self-sustaining water, some data centers do, self-sustaining cooling systems that don't require outside water, does exist. It's more expensive, but it does exist. so things like that and then we have a gap in our current bylaws where right now a data center which only requires a few parking spots because there's no traffic if it's large it could require 100 200 300 parking spots so there's a lot of impact on on the actual like amount of paid impervious space that would happen on a on a property and if we can reduce that a number of parking in a bylaw it could also attract them better because they don't have as much extra cost just to pay where they're not going to use and they can make a bigger building in theory. So that would be a benefit to everyone. I'd also be interested in finding out would we be allowed by law or petition the state legislature to allow for community host agreements for data centers like we had at one point for cannabis shops? So, you know, things like that that could provide an outsized benefit to Grafton in and of itself. I think waiting to do nothing and waiting and not doing anything at town meeting in October and try and have a bylaw that suitable is not viable for me. I think doing a moratorium, like I said, to me, a minimum of one year moratorium, I don't think we're going to have the answers we need for a spring town meeting. We should still continue to work on it. I don't want to wait until next year to be working on this, but I want to take a year's minimum for a moratorium on this, assuming we can make that happen reasonably. There's a lot of things here.

There's a good point there that we require parking based on square feet in this case. And we need a way, we may need a way to reduce, be allowed to reduce the parking a lot more than we currently are. Somebody wants to do this though. We could have a town, do it at a town meeting and make a change to allow it. There was, oh, well, okay, everybody, doesn't know anywhere near enough, right? I'm a little, as I say, more sanguine because I'm an electrical engineer, I'm a computer engineer, I'm familiar with the planning board and the town government, and I've looked into it a good bit and looked at kilowatt hours and megawatt hours and so on, and I feel in our situation, you know, what I've said, that I'm reasonably comfortable for now. If we need to, let's see, October, September, we have to, we only have well into August. We only have, what, a month and a half? Roughly a month and a half. Maybe a month and a half. to have an article nailed down. That's, you know, if we need it. It's not like we're going to spend the whole summer thinking about it and doing something in the middle of September. How many times have you heard me say, it's getting too late? You know, we've got to start on this zoning now. We should have started on it, you know, three months ago. And

I just wanted to point out that our current zoning bylaws not equipped to handle data centers either for or against I think that when we do change the law we need to be very careful We would probably want to incorporate things like megawatts and million cubic feet of water, which are currently not parts of the zoning bylaw or things that we have domain over to regulate this because we don't want to regulate out, you know, some small company needs a server farm for their own, you know, medical health care records. I don't have any objection to that. We don't want, you know, massive multi-acre, you know, 20-megawatt facility going in. I don't think we have space for that, and I don't think we're in the right electrical ISO for that.

But look at what the state legislation that they're working on does. It does it on a statewide basis more effectively than we can. That's a good point.

I believe that we should proceed as if the state regulations may never come to light.

And then we have one more comment here. Yeah, just to wrap this up, I do feel like from hearing from everybody that there is a little bit between a moratorium or trying to get language put into place. I've never been as part of a moratorium before, but can the language be a moratorium for a year or until the planning board votes on such an item, whichever comes first?

Yeah, that I think is the customary approach Okay.

So we're not tied in and we have to wait. No, we're not tied in.

I think what we did for the marijuana, and I don't remember if it was one or two years, but we set that up. And then when we were ready to go with the zoning, part of enacting that zoning was to repeal the moratorium.

Okay. Perfect. So it's not like we're sewn into that time period, but it's a buffer that builds the safety. So it's good.

Right. So the only limit on a moratorium is you can't do it for more than, I think, two years. AG will not approve a moratorium longer than two years. And we don't have to go with a full two years, but... I think what we can do between now and toward the end of August, which is where we have to fish or cut bait on a Fall Town Meeting warrant article, is between now and mid-August, the Board ought to be able to satisfy itself that either one We basically don't need to do anything at all in zoning that we're adequately covered. Or two, there's a couple of minor tweaks to zoning, and we can be recovered. Three, it's going to take more work to really fit this into zoning, so we propose a motorium. But we have until the middle of August to decide whether to put something on town meeting in the fall and what to put on town meeting in the fall. And we probably have, you know, we've between our previous discussion and what we discussed, we've got, I think, a lot of food for thought, a lot of work, a lot of things to chew on. It seems like we ought to be able to make that much of a decision by mid-August. It's helpful for us to know You mentioned this earlier, and for us to get a better idea from you guys as to what your concerns are, first of all, and any sense you might have of a preferred direction. But I think ultimately, between now and mid-August, we should be able to decide what, if anything, we put on town meeting for the fall. And beyond that, what other work needs to be done

I think I'll take as a discrete next step for us and you've got some space in the next meeting is to work on the definition of what actually is kind of above the line of concern right what needs special attention so maybe that's that's the first thing we should work on and then once we could define that we'd say all right does that influence a change or some other action

at the next planning board meeting. I'd say let's do what Dave said and move on and declare victory.

So moved.

Yeah, I think you guys clearly have a plan of attack for how you're already into your discussions. I think we all seem to be aligned on the direction in which you're heading. We would definitely take your recommendation as to whether, as Dave said, come mid-August, you guys decide We want to, you know, implement a moratorium and how long that is, whatever that may be. Um, but just, you know, you definitely increase the comfort level here and with residents that this is a topic that, you know, is top of mind and we're taking action on. Um, you know put the my last little bit of feedback um in in the zoning articles uh that the examples that we were given um i did appreciate some of the things that were touched on tonight like the setbacks the screening um and you know my general concern is is also the drawn resources you know electricity and water in particular so you guys you know definitely have that top of mind so you know it's i mean i'm i feel more comfortable i don't speak for the rest of the board but

So maybe individuals who have, send an individual, send us their concerns, because you have different ones. We can be looking at those.

Let me just make one observation, that with all the publicity about data centers floating around, The image I think the public generally has of data centers are what's often called the hyperscale data centers, like the one I read about the other day. The data center all by itself is big enough to cover about half or two thirds of the island of Manhattan.

The Death Star data center, yeah.

And frankly, that's the scale of data center I think we are least likely to have to deal with here in Grafton, just from the point of view of the lack of availability of land. But there are smaller scale data centers where it becomes more interesting, more likely to come to us in Grafton, but also likely to have less of an impact than these hyperscale data centers do. So it helps to keep in mind the different sizes. You alluded to this, Mike, too, that it helps to keep in mind, sort of categorize the data centers in different elements of scale, however you want to measure it. The stuff I've read measures it in megawatts of power consumption, which may or may not be the best measurement from our point of view, but that's something to think about. Yeah, just to point out that data centers come in many different sizes.

There are many who are great neighbors. There are a few who are terrible neighbors. Like anything else.

And there's also only so much land that Grafton has left that is commercially viable and on. roots that make sense for it to be a commercial or business. And we do just want to think about the sorts of businesses and, you know, the way we want to build our community and what we want to prioritize, right?

Male Speaker 1 Yeah. Male Speaker 2 Okay. Male Speaker 1 All right. Male Speaker 2 Is economic development at all interested in this? Female Speaker 1 Let's start with planning first.

Male Speaker 2 It should be.

Yeah, it hasn't been on our agenda, to my knowledge, but we should be, you know what I mean?

I'm really interested in an analysis of the economics to the town. Having just done the override, we have a lot of attention about that.

Well, the infrastructure inside these facilities, the value of those, you know, has to be pretty high. So I would think the tax revenue would be significant.

personal property tax for that but the value goes down quickly of computers and I've heard that some of these places just walk away when their computer you know it's cheaper to go build a new building than it is to change out everything for the next round of technology

Again, you know, that was something that Shrewsbury put in their specific bylaw was the decommissioning and abandonment.

We have that on. We try to have that on solar. Some of the reasons here.

Yep.

Okay.

Are we? Well, again, thank you all for coming in tonight for both topics. You know, appreciate all your insight on this. If any of the select board members have any additional concerns or anything they want to reach out to you about, they will do so and Um, thank you. All right.

I moved the planning board adjourn.

Go ahead. Any discussion in the motion? Hearing none, all in favor?

Aye. It's not debatable. Thanks, everyone. Not debatable. If there's anything we can do, you know what I mean, resource-wise or like even discussions, I mean, I think this is important.

Let me and everybody know the particular questions because, for example, people are concerned about the power of the water. We can talk, you know, there are answers to those. Okay. Thanks, guys.

next up we're going to review mobility management and the elimination of routes A and B with the WRTA I do have my laptop here so I'll let you share my screen from here sure I think I have to be a legend of the meeting do that yeah well we'll have to bring you you know thank you podium desk wherever you want to be totally up to you i'll take the desk if that's okay what are you doing i'm sorry what is your name josh working under it might be our tom coin as well

Just sent a request to share if I could. Yep, just accepted it. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. Welcome. So this is introductions. I'm Josh Rickman. I'm the administrator for the Worcester Regional Transit Authority. Joining me here tonight is Robert Spang, who is our vice chair for the WRTA advisory board, as well as Nick Burnham, who is our director of operations and planning. Just thank you for having us here tonight. So we do have about 22 slides, should take me less than 22 minutes, I promise. But right, go through basically the background of the routes A and B which operate here in town, some costs and changes of those services, do a review of the study we've been conducting since December, the reason of the study, the timeline, some onboard observation, the graph and COE review, talk about some alternative service approaches identified through the study, and then follow up with some summary, then open up for questions. So a little bit of background on Roots A and B. So Roots A and B operate on weekdays in Northbridge and Grafton. The service was introduced in 2013, and the service was initiated by flexing MBTA community assessment funds to fully fund the operations. Basically, back then, Governor Deval Patrick put some legislation in to allow basic communities to flex the MBTA community assessment funds to be spent locally by the RTA. The service basically operates where it can deviate up to three quarters of a mile off of the route. So you see here route A in the red dashed line and route B in the blue dashed line. So basically three quarter mile off that route an individual can be requested to be picked up, basically flexed on and off the route by making a reservation the day before. The buses do operate as flagstops, and this is something that's not unique to Roots A and B, the system we use across the service area. We do have physical bus stop signs in the city of Worcester, but beyond there, we largely use flagstops. A flagstop is when someone walks up basically to the corridor, they put their hand up and the bus will pull over, pick up the passenger, when on board, the individual says where they want to get off, and the driver will stop safely where they can. A little more detail on Route A. And again, this is the red dashed line you see here. That operates between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. between Northbridge and Millbury via Grafton. And it operates for 7.6 revenue hours. And basically revenue hour is how many hours is available to the public or what's on the public-facing timetable or schedule. So basically 9 to 5. It does operate closed door in Sutton and Millbury, basically saying it doesn't operate service in those towns except for its connection at the Blackstone Valley shops where it can connect to our fixed route, WRTA Route 4. This route serves approximately 12 riders per day, so it's about 1.6 riders per revenue hour. Route B operates on weekdays from 5.20 a.m. to 7.35 p.m. between Northbridge and Grafton. A little bit more service on this one, 12.9 revenue hours per day. The one early trip and all trips are 5.15 to operate closed door between Northbridge, New Village, and Grafton. And because a little bit larger span of service, there's a little bit more ridership on that one of 22 riders per day at 1.7 riders per revenue hour. So I keep using that term, riders per revenue hour, And that's the metric we use in transit. And typically speaking, it's the way we measure how effective or efficient a route is. So what you see here in the graph is all of the WRTA services that we operate. And on average, we operate about 27.4 past revenue hour. So seeing 1.5, 1.7 is rather low in terms of productivity. To be fair, you know, we don't expect a route like route A or route B to compete against the route that's operating It's all in the city of Worcester. The built environment is dramatically different. However, I would say that two pass revenue hour is what we usually assess to our demand response services, like the Grafton COA service. That's something that we should see about two pass revenue hour. And since we're below that on a shuttle route, that certainly does raise a red flag to us internally. There have been some, you know, beyond the low productivity, the study was also informed due to increased costs. WRTA's fixed-route contractors' costs increased considerably as they entered a new agreement with their workforce on September 1st of 2025. For slightly more background, the enabling legislation for the WRTA is Chapter 161B, which requires... No, I'm just...

Motion, I'm sorry. It's a private joke.

Basically under Chapter 161B. So basically that requires us to contract out all of our rubber tire services, whether it's a bus, a van, you know, we can't be the ones that operate the service. So they employ the mechanics, the drivers, and other staff. So you see right here on the sheet to the right, the cherry sheet assessment. And municipal assessments reflected in the cherry sheet are usually based on data from basically two years in arrears. So at the conclusion of each state fiscal year on June 30, the WRTA completes its annual reporting using actual operating statistics, including service miles, passenger trips, and operating costs. So for example, the FY27 assessment is based on actual FY25 costs. So we're about two years removed in terms of the overall process. So as the cost increased during fiscal year 26, those costs were absorbed via existing budget, so there's not something for the town to be concerned about, but FY26 assessments. However, for FY27, that is kind of why we're here today, because we are seeing these increased costs. There is no really additional funding in the MBTA assessment, which was intended to fully fund the services, and there's just not a lot of productivity of these routes. So just jumping into the study overview, basically we're doing this because the ridership hasn't been very strong. It's been out there for 13 years. The costs are going up. We want to come to the community and talk about how we can kind of make some adjustments prior to any cherry sheet impacts. And the combination of low ridership and higher costs make the continuation of these shuttles unsustainable. So we did task our on-call planning consultant, Nelson Nygaard, to basically assess all the transportation services and graph their North Bridge routes A and B, the COA program, volunteer bus driver programs, identify any type of other alternatives, and align those resources with the community needs. So in terms of study timeline, we kicked this off in December of 2025. Some initial coordination, kind of seeing the impacts of the new CBA with our fixture contractor. The scope of work and kickoff meeting was provided to the towns. We did a project launch in February, updated the website. We did field work. We put flyers on board all the vehicles, comments back to the WRTA. In February, March, we did some more data analysis, identified alternatives, went back to the towns in April and May. At our May advisory meeting with WRTA, we did receive approval of public meetings. We hosted public meetings in June of 2026. In July 1st, we did meet back with the town. We're here today. And then July 16th, there might be action items taken by the WRTA advisory board relating to the service. In terms of the field observations that we saw, it really fell in line with what we've seen historically. So Route A, about 12 passengers were observed on board those vehicles. And as you can see in the map, largely the ridership was concentrated well within North Bridge. On Route B, we did see 24 riders. And again, ridership north of the shahs in North Bridge was relatively low. So most of the trips were very much concentrated well within the town of North Bridge. In terms of the Grafton COA, and I'm sure town staff do a better job presenting this than I can, but service is reverence for 60 plus orthodontic disability. So basically the town has one town owned van and they have one hybrid minivan. They also have access to one WRTA owned and maintained van. The town has three part-time drivers and one full-time transportation coordinator. The service operates 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and serves out of time medical on different days. Reservations are required 48 hours in advance. Ridership in 2025 was 7,200 passengers total and the WRTA ban provided about 3,100 passengers or 43% of the ridership. The current contract between WRTA and the town is for $44,000 and about 75%, 80% of that cost comes from state contract assistance. In terms of the alternative service approaches that were identified in the study, The first was to operate reduced WRTA shuttle in Northbridge and eliminate the Grafton service. And the main reason for this was just ridership on the AMB experienced demonstrated growth and need in Northbridge over 13 years while ridership really hasn't developed in Grafton over that time. So while this is Northbridge, let's give you a quick overview of what this would look like. It was basically a single route in Northbridge with no service to Grafton. We'd be applying all the MBTA assessments towards that service that Northbridge has access to. It operates a reduced schedule of four days a week at six hours per day. Main benefit is it targets where the ridership is today. The drawbacks are certainly it's not as robust of a schedule. There are certainly cost escalation concerns, and there's no connection to Grafton, MBTA Station, or the WRTA network. The other alternative identified was to potentially implement WRTA's mobility management model to Grafton and Northbridge COA services. The reason we identified this one is largely to provide additional financial support for service to seniors and individuals with disabilities that have demonstrated a strong need for the service. So the Grafton COA, again, provided 7,200 passenger trips in FY25, and that's two and a half times more ridership than individuals that use the Grafton shuttle buses. So in this situation, the program basically is WRT assumes responsibility for all of the pair transit trip reservations, scheduling, dispatch, and we own and maintain the fleet of the vehicles. The town would hire and compensate the drivers, the wages and fringe, cover fuel, and obtain vehicle insurance. And then the vehicle would largely service residents in town and provide out of town medical like they do today. The benefits of the town is that the town's financial contribution to the COA transportation budget would lower dramatically. As WRCA reimburses the town for wages, fuel and insurance, there'd be no vehicle maintenance or need to handle reservations and scheduling. And customers, again, can travel regularly to medical appointments in Worcester. Some of the drawbacks we've certainly heard from the new COA director as well as the other town staff is that this does remove the trip reservation process from COA staff. And oftentimes, you know, that's a way that COA staff can check in and talk to seniors, those with disabilities, almost like a health check. It's a way to talk to those that have come to the senior center. And losing that is certainly a concern, and we've heard that from other communities that have joined the mobility management model. Certainly, there's also some concern about how the trips are handled. Let's say an example that Northbridge and Grafton both joined the model, and there was a Northbridge and a Grafton resident at the UMass Medical Center in Worcester. Well, the Northbridge van very well could take that Grafton resident home because it's kind of making the service more efficient and more accessible and lowering costs. But for some, that might be a challenge as they might know all the drivers and they have a relationship with the drivers. So we've heard that feedback as well. And lastly, it's limited customers with disabilities and or those that are 60 plus years old. So in summary, you know, routes A and B are the lowest performing routes in the WRCA. The cost of these routes are doubling and will increase by 5% more per year. Due to low performance and cost increases, we initiated the study to kind of be proactive instead of reactive to everything. The options on the table were to lift that limited fixed-route service in Northbridge or to initiate the mobility management model, and we do have a potential vote at the discretion of the advisory board on July 16th. And before I turn it over to questions, you know, if the WRTA advisory board would vote to eliminate routes A and B, that would be no impact to the Grafton COA contract with WRTA. That would have no impact to it. And the assessment that Graft initially pays today would not actually decrease. Basically, those funds would revert back to the MBTA portion of the charity sheet, which would be seen the fiscal year of 2029 as its two years in arrears.

And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

OK. Questions, comments, concerns?

Is there anything that this board can do to influence the decision of the WRTA, or is this exercise really just

it a nice letting us know what's going on sure so the the town of grafson certainly has a vote on the wrta advisory board and that's that's one way that which they can advocate for the service they need they can discuss service decisions are not made by wrta administration decisions are made by the wrta board themselves um so service decisions public meetings all that stuff is outside of you know wrta administration's hands but you know certainly we have a responsibility to kind of Look at service holistically. We have a lot of needs across our 37 member communities, and we just haven't seen a strong response to this in the 13 years it's been operating. So that's kind of why we're here before I came to you guys in 2029 with why it was so expensive.

How long until we can apply to restore those roots? We do have some growth coming in some of those areas on the root. If you guys vote to remove them, is there a time period before we can request to restore them?

You can always make the request to put back in services, maybe services that are more aligned with what those needs actually are. Certainly have some conversations with the new town planner about some of those identified projects that are coming on board, and maybe different service models that could solve that. So certainly it's a conversation we could have. The MBTA assessment funds are for new services, so if there's a new thing, a new need, that is something that we could certainly talk about leveraging.

um could you back to the um that shortfall um because i just i had a copy of the june 15th uh version of this deck i think and those shortfall numbers were were much different in in mid-june or at least in this copy it had Grafton shortfall, you know, based on operating costs of 108,370 at 6,467, whereas that one has it as 123,000.

Sure. So that was the FY25 costs. That's kind of what we were comparing. This is FY27. So it's more reflective of the new CBA that our third-party contractor has. So that's the difference between those two.

Mr.

Chair, Ms. Foley does have her hand up.

I don't think you can see it.

Yeah, we can. Yep, Ms. Foley.

Hi there. While I appreciate the very low ridership numbers, I mean, that's pretty compelling and hard to argue. I guess I'll just comment that, and I appreciate you went through some ways that you guys tried to market include, including putting flyers on the buses that people weren't riding on anyways. But I guess my comment, having lived here for a long time and certainly through the whole duration that you've been offering the service is that There are very few people, I believe, in our town that are aware of this, which have kind of been putting feelers out. And I guess, you know, my comment would just be in terms of marketing this route and how it works with the flag only and whatnot, I just think that we perhaps, we or WRTA did a disservice in terms of letting folks know that this is available. I know that the Senior Center and various, a couple of other sites that I am on, like on Facebook, where folks are, you know, desperate for a ride, almost on that route, and we're not aware of this occurring. So just some feedback. Again, I understand the numbers compelling in terms of the low ridership, but I'm not sure if the effort was effective in terms of letting folks know that this was available.

Yeah, you know, piggybacking off that, I know you said this is at the discretion of your board. know I generally felt like even seeing some of the dates here that the outreach sessions weren't terribly well published or you know public knowledge I know locally there was one person who posted about it and one of the major Facebook groups on town I think it was one to two days before they were set to occur it didn't seem like anybody was you know terribly aware that that this was coming I know outreach like that can be difficult and helping to schedule but I you know yet from from our perspective i i think it felt you know like a bit of a shock and um i i you know i think i'm in a similar boat um i don't think it's uh necessarily a service that the town can afford to continue to fund you know to to make up that delta um but it also you know in an ideal scenario it hurts because i'm sure that the few riders that you do have you know really rely on on the service so You know, I think we're all just kind of rocking a hard place here.

Yeah. If I could, you know, certainly the last thing I want to do as a trans professional is cut service. This isn't what I do. This is what I aspire to do as a trans professional. That's not why I got into this as my career. And as you said, this is a service that people depend upon. And I very much appreciate the challenge that that might impose on some individuals.

Mr. Chair, if I might. I'm Bob Spain. I'm from Millbury. I'm the vice chair of the Worcester Regional Transit Authority. The hardest thing we do is allocate our resources. It's no different than towns. I mean, I was town manager in Millbury, so I fully know his problem. No. And your problem, of course. So the hardest thing is we have so few resources and so many. The problem is Worcester takes up, I mean, I don't think it's going to shock anybody. Worcester takes up the vast majority of our resources. Worcester also has almost 50% of the voting rights of the Worcester Regional Transit Authority. So it's a kind of an uphill fight. Several years ago, this same problem came to Millbury. And we ended up losing some of our service because of it, because of the lines. And I was on the board at the time. So try explaining that one to your... And I was the town manager. Try explaining that one. But anyway, it's... I'm saying, you know, we'd love to continue more. We'd like to increase service. And the point about... The advertising was well taken, but again, we don't have that large an advertising budget. We try to utilize those funds as best we can. And the board takes all this stuff very seriously. We look at all, we have disabled people that are represented on the board. There's seats that are specifically for them. One of our board members, Auburn members is a blind individual hearing sight impaired he forever keeps us on that route there so we do look at this stuff and look at it long and hard we don't make decisions lightly we'd love to increase every town's roots and but we got to be practical and we got to be rational and that's why it is and I am absolutely a voting member so one way or the other I'm one of the good or bad guys depending on how you look at it so

We know that it's an incredibly difficult position that you're in here. And I think everybody here understands it. And it is what it is at this point. We do understand that it's a business. And that in an ideal world, it wouldn't be going away.

It's even harder now that we've gone to a non-fair operation where we don't charge fares, that tends to sometimes boost up ridership, in which case they want more service. Well, we don't have any more money. We're trying to fund that. And it's a square corner. Airplanes can't go around square corners. So we're kind of round corners. So that's in the future, though. But it's going to get worse before it gets better. And hopefully we'll still be able to figure out how to do it. And the legislature has stepped up to the plate a little bit and provided some more funds, which I was mildly surprised that they did that. It's good. I mean, it is a great thing. It is a good thing. But again, most of the fairs, most of the riderships in Worcester and most of the votes are in Worcester. They're one person. Okay, I vote 48%, what do you got? And that's across 37 towns. There's probably 15 or 20 towns in the city that show up at any one time. Not only can we, it almost takes all the towns to come and vote to vote something that might be in favor of the towns versus not the cities.

I appreciate that further explanation and totally agree. And I think you pointed to another good lever there, that if this is something that is that important to us,

know we can we can attempt to put pressure on our legislatures as well for increased funding to return the service exactly and go after it that way so we do appreciate the uh opportunity to come before anytime the board has questions would be josh would be glad to come and myself i just live in milbury so it's not that far away to come i'd be glad to come anytime thank you thank you any additional questions comments

Just one more about the public outreach meetings. Did you guys offer rides to those riders to get to the public outreach meeting?

We always put our public meetings along during service hours and along publicly accessible locations. We also had a virtual meeting as well.

Okay, awesome. Thank you.

And if I could just share one other thing. If there is interest or future interest in the mobility management model, we are always open for that future conversation. That's not something that necessarily is... needed to make today, but if that's more of an interest, happy to come back and have more conversations about that.

Perfect, thank you.

Appreciate that, thank you. Thank you all for coming in tonight. It was an informative presentation. I appreciate you waiting patiently through all the agenda items that came before you. I know it took a few minutes, but.

Poll petitions, my favorite. Me too.

Okay, yeah, that would be good. Everybody's good. you guys can call it a night.

Thank you.

Thank you again. Okay. So next up, we have create a list of earmarks for federal, federal funding slash grant funding. When Congressman McGovern was here, I don't know, a month, month and a half ago at this point, Um, we had the opportunity to talk with him briefly afterwards and he made the suggestion that we, you know, come up with a list of potential earmarks, things that he could help Grafton with specifically. Um, so this was something we agreed, you know, we felt would, would be a great topic of discussion for the board and something that we should definitely try to take advantage of. Um, I don't know if, uh, Again, this is the first part of the discussion. If people brought ideas with them tonight, I brought a few that we can kind of bandy about. But I'll just, I guess, open it up for general discussion at this point. I have an idea. Sure.

I would love to get an earmark for sidewalks. We've had a lot of residents reach out. We even had a big discussion at town meeting. Sidewalks are expensive, so if we get some federal money to

for sidewalks that would be awesome i think i think you know that's a that's a viable thing to ask for um you know my kind of approach in this is is or my my line of thinking anyways was you know it's gonna we also have to essentially get the congressman to to buy into it you know and it's got to be something that that he feels is worth promoting and, and, you know, um, he's, he's going to get a little play out of it too. So, um, you know, I think, I think that fits in there. Um, he did that night talk a lot about, um, you know, infrastructure needs, things like a portable housing, clean water, um, stuff like that. So just throwing those out as some other, uh, thought starters as Foley.

Yeah, so for those of us that were not in the room, I didn't know that he was in town or that we were meeting with him or whoever it was, so maybe can you give us a little bit more, or me, a little bit more background and where you got to this with him and who met with him, etc.?

Sure. I believe it was Grafton Indivisible inviting him for a speaking engagement at the library. They put out some notifications and sign-up forms. You know, it was a I'm not sure what the capacity is on that conference room at the library, but it was fully open. It was well attended.

Across multiple towns, too. I think residents from Upton and just whoever he was covering kind of thing.

Yep. It just kind of seemed to be a stop on the tour. He gave some updates as to some of the legislation that he's pursuing and some of his priorities for the future. And that was basically it. We were able to, I say we, I was there, Ms. Roy was able to attend, Ms. Duckworth attended. We were able to get his ear for a minute afterwards just to you know, again, thank him for coming. And, you know, note that a lot of the things that he talked about were problems that we see locally in Grafton as well. And that's that was when he made the suggestion that we try and come up with a list of things he could he could help the town with.

Okay, so three board members were in attendance, and you guys spoke with him afterwards?

Briefly, yes. So, um, Some of the things I was thinking of as well, I like the sidewalks idea. This isn't specific to the town of Grafton, but I think if we could pursue any additional funding for the water treatment facilities or perhaps maybe some general water infrastructure updates for some of our more problematic areas where the pipes are older, we have uh, you know, consistent water main breaks, things like that, um, would, you know, again, not town specific, but would benefit the residents greatly. Uh, it's something we could discuss with the water district, um, maybe focusing on some of the higher cost road incorporations that we're, that we're facing. Um, some of the newer roads that we've taken over the last several years, um, Faulkner, um, uh, junk is terrorists, you know, things like that, things that are engineering intensive. And then, um, you know, where, where reworking easements and, and things like that, um, school roofing projects potentially to, you know, I know, uh, we've discussed pursuing state grants, but you know, uh, if we could get some federal funding for that as well and, and reduce the cost there, um, We have a couple of these topics coming up, but invasives in general are something we deal with, primarily aquatic, but I don't think there's any reason why we couldn't focus some of that on terrestrial. And this is admittedly a little premature, but in the coming weeks, Evan will be discussing with us. He's working through some general traffic safety ideas. I think there could potentially be some things involved in that that we may wish to seek some funding for. I don't know if that sparked any additional ideas with anybody. And again, we certainly don't have to, this isn't something we have to wrap tonight. You know, there's plenty of time for people to continue to think and brainstorm on this, but those were some of the directions I was thinking initially.

I like the idea of sort of striking while the iron is hot, and from sort of the list that both you and Colleen have spoken through, to stick out to me as large projects that we already have prioritized quantified scored lists for and that's municipal roofs not just schools but the the whole roof inventory totally and sidewalks because we've done surveying about who wants sidewalks and where correct and sort of have that sort of prioritized And so I think that if we are going to go to the congressman with any particular ask, having as much data and as quantified as possible is going to be the most impactful and the easiest thing to say yes to, not only because there'll be a specific dollar amount, but because it'll be easiest for his office to point and say, look at how together, put together we all are as a collective. So my first reaction is to go in those directions. Number one, obviously the town has prioritized them enough to put in those resources to make those lists and to quantify them and do studies in the first place. And second of all, they're going to be the easiest to probably justify for both ourselves and him because he's going to have to do some of that lug work to get the earmark in as well.

Yep.

And can I just clarifying make sure we're on the same page you know when he said list I I did expect that we would send him several options you know it would be his choice which he feels are the strongest or the most likely to move forward with I do want to push gently push for um the water treatment facilities i know if you know we if an earmark were say a million um that's that's kind of a drop in the bucket you know when when we're talking about multi-million dollar facilities that need to be built but i would love to see anything we could do to reduce the the burden on um the the the residents who you know rely on um water districts and and clean drinking water at this point you know I think that's a pretty noble cause I know we're not you know talking about like heavy pollutants heavy metals that types of things it's naturally occurring but you know I just I think that's that's one of our more important topics in town so I I do want to I personally want to push for that a little bit but you know as long as the the rest of the boards I'm just making my case

No, no, it's a very, very fair point, and I don't disagree with it at all. And you're right, sorry, I kind of fixated on the two things that from a town perspective we've sort of quantified. But you're right, that's also very easily defensible and quantifiable. I do sort of want to push back on the idea of offering options, though. When I think about, you know, if I'm at my day job and I'm presenting a business case to my executive leadership team, I'm not really giving them options. I have a very strong business case for something that I don't want them to yay or nay or have to hem and haw or come back to me with, like, this is the thing, right? So I would... Advocate for us making the decision as a board as to which thing we wanted to present in Can I build off that To that point what is everybody's feeling about?

Taking a list and doing like a survey monkey for the town like when rec does surveys and then see what the town Finds to be the most attractive one and go from there Like we, the select board come up with a list, which we're well on our way, and then we push it out for a couple weeks with people, give us feedback, and then everybody has a little skin in the game, and it's, you know, we've gotten some public input, and, you know, it's an earmark, so it's not guaranteed at all anyway, but it's at least getting everybody involved.

Love it. Yeah. Or even like an outreach session where we just, a listening session, I guess, would be more accurate, where we're,

residents can come in and share opinions those surveys everybody like those get good responses so yeah they're easy and fast yep okay sorry william uh emory you have your no problem yeah i guess um you know andy you mentioned like just so we're all on the same page i don't feel that i'm on the same page given that three select board members attended a meeting or a an open forum with uh James McGovern and discuss town business and now are kind of deliberating on some ideas. I'm not sure what you might have talked about or deliberated on that evening. So I'm not ready to contribute much given that I don't really know kind of where we're going with this. But I have some concerns about what occurred and how this came on our agenda.

You know, I don't I don't love the implication there. But, you know, I guess I would say if you had questions about an agenda item, you can reach out beforehand and seek some sort of clarification on that. So we could have had a conversation.

I didn't have any questions until this evening until I heard you guys speak. It was clear, or clear, I guess what I thought this was we were talking about.

But what did you think we were talking about tonight? To that point?

The agenda item is create a list of earmarks for federal funding slash grant funding, which, you know, comes a bit out of the blue. But I figure there's some sort of discussion in terms of as a board that we might want to collaborate on this and present something. Again, three board members were at a function and had discussions with McGovern. And if... I guess I'm just going to leave it there.

No, I'm sorry. If you don't understand where I'm coming from, then you don't understand.

I think anything I say is, if you don't get it, you don't get it, in my opinion.

What you're asking, you know, the idea that we would... I'm not asking anything. Excuse me. I'm simply stating my fact. Okay, fine. What you've stated is that we would brainstorm some ideas for some federal funding, and that's exactly what we're trying to do tonight. How we got to this point, you know, you agree or disagree, that's fine. Um, but the focus of the discussion has not changed.

Can I just add, just, just to alleviate, it sounds like you have, um, some concerns. It was a public, um, forum, like you indicated, multiple towns were invited. And at the end, while we were putting chairs away, um, there was kind of just like a photo opportunity and the, the discussion lasted probably three minutes. It wasn't anything, um, that went into great detail. It was just, we were all, you know, talking about the things he was mentioning. And like Andy said, the similarities we see here in Grafton, and again, like a three-minute conversation, and he suggested coming up with a list of earmarks. And it was as innocent as that. It wasn't a sit down with McGovern that you weren't invited to. It was a public forum anyone could have attended, and we took the opportunity to do so.

well, anyone could have attended if they knew about it. It was on a Facebook group, I guess, in town. Um, but yeah, you know, that's correct. Yep. Yep. Definitely concerns about it.

Is there anything else anybody would like to discuss tonight on this? Uh, or are we just keen to continue to think about it and we will circle back at a future meeting and, and, um,

come up with with a list that we can then you know either discuss or send out a survey and whittle it down yep i would like to bring it back and then push out a survey and an outreach meeting if i mean outreach meeting might feel like a little overkill but a survey seems like um to get some good feedback from the community on on what they would like to see how prioritize it for us and then send you know one good option over based off that i have one comment um

One of the things I think we should focus on is our waterways, you know, our lakes, streams. We've got Fisherville Pond that's overgrown, you know, with not lily pads, but whatever they call it. Water chestnuts? Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, water chestnuts. And, you know, we have, you know, every lake, it seems, in town has issues with vegetation growth. And, you know, there's a lot of causes for that, but I think that's something. And even dams, right? There was a... Years ago, there was a regulation that was passed by the state. We had to have our dams inspected. We had to get, you know, and it was mandatory. If you didn't, they'd find you. It was another, you know, unfunded mandate from the state of Massachusetts. And we had to do some dam repairs and had to take it out of our own pocket. So they make you inspect them, and, of course, engineers are going to find problems, and then we had to fund it or the state would find us. So I would throw dams in there, but lakes and streams and, you know, even, you know... you know, the pond off of E Street. You know, a lot of these have a lot of overgrown. So I think that would be something that may resonate with our federal government.

It's a dam too.

So sidewalks are great, but, you know, we definitely have heard that cry for more sidewalks. It's a long process because you've got to do land takings for every homeowner along that property. So it's a long process.

And they're expensive, so it just never gets done.

Yeah. So I think the waterway might resonate, so I would ask you to put that on there.

I like that a lot. Yeah, that was what I was thinking with the invasives, because Senator Moore typically gets us an earmark that covers some of the costs of that remediation, but we've talked about it here. 12 years, seven years. I'm forgetting the number that you, that you have to do water chestnuts. Yeah. They have that 12 year incubation period. So you have to do it every year for 12 years in order to make a dent in that problem. Um, you know, so yeah, securing some additional funding for that, you know, and whatever we can do, I, I, I agree. I think it's a worthwhile.

Yeah. And then we got problems there. We don't really talk about it much, but they're there. Yeah. You know,

The pictures in correspondence for this packet even.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Great. Um, we're gonna pass over allocating funds for the school roof project tonight and move to establishing a Grafton common traffic study committee. This was something that we had discussed a little while back following the results of the grant study that was done on traffic around the common. We talked about bringing this, I think we talked about it earlier in the year and decided we'd bring the idea back after budget season and come up with a charge and start exploring the idea of common traffic study committee. Um, Kevin, do you want to speak to that a little bit or is, I mean, is that pretty well summarize it?

Pretty well summarize it. We put together a draft charge. Um, the basics of the draft charge are it's a five voting member committee, one member of the select board, one member of the planning board, three members at large with relevant experience as appointed by the select board, two ex officio, non-voting members, uh, much to my chagrin me and. the director of planning, uh, which will be Christian. Um, so review the, the mission and general goals are review the traffic study. All right. Obviously, um, analyze the recommendations and then put in place kind of the priorities for implementing those, um, those strategies and recommendations from the study. Well, at least two public hearings prior to submitting the final report to the select board. Um, and then, include public comment sections on each agenda to allow residents to provide input, which is generally what we do, and then present back to the select board.

Looks good.

I like the charge. I like the five members. I think we can get something done with that. It would be great to have the police chief there even as an invited guest for his input for some of the meetings. I guess for me, I live down the street, I spend a lot of time up there, I know the traffic patterns, and I'd be willing to, other than EDC, I don't have a lot, so I'd be willing to just serve on the committee. It's a lot. It's a good project, and the traffic up there is only gonna increase, so it's good that we're doing this.

Yeah, I agree.

think the charges is clear and and well written um i'm honestly excited to see what uh what that final report will entail and and what the findings will be so i think there's some potential up there too not just on the you know we know the busy part of the common but even on the other side of the common there's there's um i think there's some potential for real improvements on that side there's a lot of pavement over there a lot of unnecessary pavement and i think we can pick up some green space, some parking on that side. You know, we don't think about that side too much because it doesn't see as much traffic, but there's definitely some potential for improvement there. Agreed.

Okay. Does anybody have any issues with the charges it's written, or do you feel like we're ready to adopt it and get this thing moving?

Ready to adopt. Alright, I move the board vote to approve and sign the Grafton Common Traffic Study Committee charge as presented. Second.

Okay, motion being seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, Ms. Roy?

Aye.

Ms. Dauphiné? Dauphiné, aye. Ms. Duckworth? Aye. Ms. Foley?

Foley, aye.

Jefferson, aye. Okay, we should pass unanimously.

Do we want to appoint our select board member now or wait until we do that at a later date?

I'm comfortable with that. Okay.

Okay, I move the board vote to appoint Craig Dauphiné as the select board representative to the newly created Grafton Common Traffic Study Committee.

Second.

Okay, much man seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Ms. Roy?

Aye.

Mr. Dauphiné?

Dauphiné, aye.

Okay, Ms. Duckworth? Aye. Ms. Foley?

Foley, aye.

Jefferson, aye. Thank you for stepping up for that. Great, thank you.

Okay.

Next on the agenda tonight, we have the collective bargaining agreement with the Grafton Public Library Union. This was reviewed and voted on in executive session, so now we can take the vote to approve and sign the agreement.

I move the board vote to approve and sign the collective bargaining agreement with the Grafton Public Library Union as presented. Second.

Okay, motion made and seconded. Any additional discussion? Hearing none, Ms. Roy?

Aye.

Ms. Davine? Davine, no. Ms. Duckworth? Aye. Ms. Foley? Foley, aye. Jefferson, aye. Motion passes 4-1. Consider deed in lieu of taxes for 27 Snow Road.

Yes, over to you. Yep. So 27 Snow Road is right about where we just redid the Snow Road culvert. So it's between... Great Meadow and Cider Mill Pond. So if you're heading up towards George Hill on Stowe, on the right is Cider Mill, on the left is the property that we're talking about here tonight. So the property is essentially just a continuation of Great Meadow, right? It's got a lot of wildlife activity there. It's predominantly wetland and doesn't have, as far as I can tell, any development potential. So this is a property that appears to have been, and we have other properties like this around town as well, so I don't want to paint this in any particular way, but this is a property that got handed down over generations and nobody particularly wants to pay the taxes on it because you can't do anything with it. It's just a pond and a wetland. And so currently the tax title on that property is about $45,000. We are unlikely to recoup any of those dollars, right? This is not something that we could take and sell and make the taxpayers' money back in any monetary value, although there is a great deal of conservation value as it, like I said, directly abuts Great Meadow. And then if you look at that in a broader sense, we own Great Meadow and then potentially this as a continuation of Broad Meadow, I'm sorry, Great Meadow. And then with the exception of Cider Mill Pond, we then own everything down all the way down Silver Lake and across the street there. So we would have a pretty good conservation corridor being formed there. What a deed in lieu of taxes is, basically it allows the landowner to sign over their property to the town in exchange for us clearing that tax title debt. It's less expensive than us going through the tax title process and needing to go to court and doing all of those other processes. And it still requires town meeting approval, so even if we do this whole deed in lieu process and the residents don't agree that we should own this parcel, then it doesn't go through. there are two bites of the apple in my opinion for the select board here. The first one is to, um, give your assent that, um, I should move forward with this project. And if so, then I would order a title search and start doing all the background work that needs to happen beforehand. Um, we would then draft the deed in lieu of taxes, which the select board would vote, uh, to accept. And then it would go to town meeting, um, for, for final vote. So that's essentially the project or the process. Um, It's pretty straightforward, thanks Will. It's pretty straightforward. If you look at the map here, the blue is what we're talking about right now, and the yellow is the current property we own, known as Great Meadow. So it's a good chunk. It's about 10.3 acres. And as you can see, it's pretty wet.

Who owns the little hook that goes into the yellow from the blue?

The little hook that goes into the yellow from the blue, it's just water, I think. Oh. You're talking about like on the right-hand picture, it goes in, kind of looks like a fork?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's just water. That's just the way our map did it. Yeah, yeah. Just, you know, always keep in mind when you're looking at GIS, it's just a cartoon floated over a satellite image. So it's not representative 100% all the time.

Okay.

But, yeah. If you're looking for input, which no one has asked for, I think it's a good project and I think it's a good process for the town to get some nice conservation property with some really high value flowing downstream.

Perfect.

And the current owner doesn't live on that property?

No, there's no dwellings, no anything. Okay. So I, I, I spoke to the owner's daughter. The owner is an elderly woman. I think she's in her nineties. Um, again, no real means or motivation to pay back taxes on land that you can't use for anything. The other problem that this property has is that even the section that appears dry, it's not super dry, but it also has no real means of access. So, um, you know, again,

no real monetary value but high conservation value yeah my my only concern again not having like walked the parcel was if there was a residence on there you know not wanting to remove them prematurely but that's clearly not the case so yeah and just to be clear if it had a residence on it i would not be bringing it to you for a deed in lieu of taxes

So I'm going to be wearing my Open Space and Recreation Committee hat for these remarks. And basically two things. One, this parcel ranked pretty high on our open space or our parcel prioritization project that we did a couple of years back. So that speaks consistent with how Evan has described the value. It speaks to the value of this property. And I think, you know, As open space people, I'm sure we'd love to see this acquired. And the other nitpicky detail to make sure you probably already know this, but either on the deed or the town meeting or both, it should specify that this is controlled by the Conservation Commission. That makes it Article 97 land, not that there would ever be any question of selling it. But put it under conservation control to get the maximum protection as open space.

Yep. Very good.

Thank you, Dave. Do you need a motion or anything from us tonight or just a general opinion?

I really don't. If there's no objections, then I'll move forward with the title search. Any objections?

Nope. I think it's a great idea.

Yeah.

Go for it. Okay, Colleen, the flag policy was something of yours. Do you mind if we pass over that tonight?

Pass over it. It's fine.

Great. Okay, select board reports.

I attended the 4th of July parade. I thought it was a phenomenal turnout. It felt like half the town was in the parade, half the town was at the parade. I thought it was absolutely wonderful. that the farmers market had been moved to that Saturday so that once everyone had finished the route they had a place to go and it was great that all the vendors could attend. It was just a wonderful town and community building event and I was so happy to see so many smiling faces.

It was. Piggybacking on that, I wanted to congratulate our new doggy mare Figaro Figgy Massey and his human Anna.

His human.

Anybody else? Okay. I was also invited to the Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton and Upton to participate in their reading of Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass' What is a Slave to the Fourth of July. On this past Sunday, it was, it was great. You know, just a really powerful presentation. The library was one of the event partners here, and Katrina, the library director, was also one of the readers. Peg Ferraro and Ken Crater from the Grafton Historical Society were there, and the other readers were other residents and members of the congregation. Um, I also, I found it interesting. Um, I learned that night that, uh, Grafton is specifically mentioned in Frederick Douglass's autobiography. Um, and not in a great way. It was one of the towns that was not terribly inviting. Um, But he borrowed a bell from one of the local inns, walked the streets, invited people to the common, and then found residents were much more hospitable and agreeable. So it ended well. But, you know, just felt an interesting little tidbit to that. TA report.

You got it. uh... so fisherville pond spring begins on thursday this is a this is an aerial photo of uh... all of the water chestnut there's some other species in there too but it's predominantly chestnut uh... so we're gonna take some uh... during photos just have those on record and then we'll do you know a month from now we'll do another aerial and and see what the what the process looks like but it is extremely thick This is from that Riverside Park side. If you head down there, you wind up at Fisherville Mill and the dam, and there's that section right behind where Fisherville Mill used to be. It's more of a rectangle-looking thing, where the lock was and all of that. And so, not lock, it's a gate of some kind, but you know what I'm talking about.

Waterfall?

Yeah. Well, there's a waterfall, but on the other side, there's still the mechanical gates, though. Oh, right. So anyways, long story short, we're going to treat that as well. I could have just gone right into that. But we're very excited to see some progress on this and try to make a dent in this issue. It's pretty bad. Oh, Will just added this. This is a surprise to me. So we have the Smile Grant, as Andy mentioned earlier. So we're one of six communities to receive that grant and so we'll be floating the wheelchair to increase accessibility or provide the town with a floating wheelchair. So the unveiling ceremony will be August 4th at 11 a.m. at Silver Lake. So come on out and check that out.

Very cool.

Yeah, it's a very good get from our rec department. So I'm just going to give a brief update on Route 122. So as we... Again, did our moment of silence at the beginning of the meeting. We had a fatal accident at the corner of Milford Road and 122. So we had a meeting with Rep. Moradian, Senator Moore, representatives of MassDOT, GPD, GFD, Town Engineer, DPW Director. There was a lot of us out there. Our new planner was there as well. Chair of the Select Board was there. I was there. Will was there. There was a lot of us. And so the general takeaway is that one, we're looking at the entirety of 122 and all of the intersections along it for potential improvements that could be made because they are paving that section in spring of 2027. So now is the time for us to make adjustments. Specifically, we already have in the works some adjustments to be made at Pleasant Street. We have some likely realignment and changes that will happen at Milford Road and probably some other intersections that require some more minor tweaking than Pleasant and Milford. Specific to Milford, we talked to the state about doing some short-term changes, which are electronic speed signs, the flashing slowdown type of things, updating some signage, and then starting a speed study in that area. Longer term, they're talking about adding a flashing beacon there, which is a traffic light that doesn't change, right? So it's just, Milford Road gets a flashing red, 122 gets a flashing yellow, Some other signage on the approach that would probably draw some more awareness to that intersection coming up. Realigning that intersection so that it discourages people cutting the lane when they're heading up the hill or waving people out at the bottom of the hill because that's what's causing a lot of these issues. People are going to make a left up Milford. They wave somebody out of Milford, and that person is paying attention to the person waving them out and pulls out in front of somebody. We've had a number of accidents along those lines. And they're also talking about narrowing lane widths on the way to and from, along with some other kind of minor tweaks that they talked about. And we'll be getting more information from the state as we go here in the next several weeks. But all in all, good meeting. Thanks to Representative Moradian for pulling it together on pretty short notice. And it was nice to see, although a tragic event, everybody come together and kind of start to look at cohesive solutions to the whole stretch. Paving update, we are done with Laura, Danielle, Alana, Blanchard, Patricia, that whole area. There's some minor work, but I would call it substantially complete. All the fixtures have been reset and replaced, and so now we just have a little cleanup work to do, but it came out pretty nice. George Hill Road tree work starts tomorrow. They are starting at the Leland Street end and working their way towards Fay Mountain. I did put out a code red. to the residents in that area to let them know that tree work starts tomorrow morning. Great. And I did not put in, Colleen's looking at me. I forgot entirely to add a control group for people that wanted the, for the board to know the message. I will do that. But yeah, otherwise business as usual.

Thank you.

Great. Okay.

Thank you. Is there an update on the website, too, Evan, relative to George Hill?

There will be by the morning. There is not one currently because we just found out right before coming in here at about 4 o'clock. Okay, thanks. It's in the works. But everybody, I hit like 28 residents, individual households along the street that have signed up for alerts. Okay. And we'll push that out again tomorrow.

Okay. Any correspondence anybody wish to discuss? Okay. We have meeting minutes for the Municipal Solid Waste Advisory Committee that are outstanding that we're being asked to approve today.

I move the board vote to approve the meeting minutes of the Municipal Solid Waste Advisory Committee for January 21st and February 3rd of 2026 as written. Second.

Okay, seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, Ms. Roy?

Aye.

Ms. Dauphiné? Dauphiné, aye. Ms. Duckworth?

Aye.

Ms. Foley?

Foley, aye.

Jefferson, aye. Motion passes. We'll take a meeting to adjourn. So motion to adjourn.

Second.

Okay, by roll call, Ms. Roy?

Aye.

Ms. Dauphiné? Dauphiné, aye. Ms. Duckworth?

Aye.

Ms. Foley?

Foley, aye.

Jefferson, aye. We are adjourned.