Select Board - Regular Meeting

We call tonight's meeting to order and start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Feels like a while since we've been here. I hope everybody had a chance to stretch and warm up. The town is looking for volunteers to serve as community liaisons and to help shape Grafton's future. The Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness 2.0 core team will help identify and address climate impacts in Grafton and to make our community more resilient. Visit tinyurl.com slash GraftonMVP to apply. Grafton Rec is hosting a Grafton Day celebration starting at 4.30 p.m. on Friday, August 21st at the high school. The event will include a car show, inflatables, giveaways, fireworks, and much more. The Select Board will be sending a list of ideas for federal earmarks to Congressman McGovern and would like your feedback. Visit www.grafton-ma.gov to participate in our survey, and you can select up to three items that you feel are a priority for Grafton. You can also add your own ideas. The survey will close on Sunday, August 23, so be sure to make your submission by then. We have no public hearings tonight. Do we have anybody here for public comment? We are gonna move just a little bit out of order tonight and start with our town administrator appointments. First up, we have our administrative assistant at the Grafton Public Library, Corinne Castano. Are you on Zoom?

I am, hello. Can you hear me okay?

We can, yes.

Great.

Would you mind just sharing a little bit about your background and what brought you to the role?

Oh, sure. Thank you so much. First of all, I just wanted to say thank you so much for having me here tonight. I'm just so thrilled to become part of the team at the Grafton Public Library. I've been looking forward to collaborating with the library director, Katrina, not sure if she's there tonight, and her talented and creative staff. What can I tell you about myself? Let's see. I've spent my career devoted to literacy learning, mostly in educational publishing. I've worked in both marketing and production. And now I'm really excited about becoming part of Katrina's team to help serve the local community. The library has always been just one of my favorite places to be. So I'm really excited that I'll now be able to spend my days working there.

Awesome. That sounds like such a good fit. Does anybody have any comments or questions?

Just one, is this a replacement for a vacancy that? Yes, we're filling a vacancy. Okay.

Anybody else? Okay, take a motion.

I move the board vote to affirm the appointment of Corinne Castano to the position of administrative assistant at the Grafton Public Library. Second.

Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor?

Aye.

Thank you for coming in tonight, Corinne. Enjoy the rest of your night and congratulations.

Thank you so much to everyone there. I really appreciate it.

Excuse me. Okay. Uh, and next we have Tanner crew, uh, was being appointed to the Grafton police department.

Good evening. It seems like we're here a little more frequently lately, which is a good thing. Thank you for setting some time aside for us. I'm going to introduce our newest police officer, Tanner crew. Tanner's 27 years old. He grew up and lives in Worcester. He became interested in policing, so he tells us at a young age. He attended West Boylston High School. He did private security for a few years after high school and came to us in 2024, January of 2024, for a dispatch position. He did remarkably well in that position for a couple of years. We liked him quite a bit. He showed an aptitude for the job and was a good fit for our police department, so we offered him a full-time police officer's position. And he started the Holyoke Police Academy in March of 26. Did very well in the academy and graduated just recently, July 31st, from that Holyoke Academy. So, Tanner Crew. Thank you, Chief.

Appreciate it. So I prepared a little something here just about myself to the select board. So as the chief said, my name is Tanner Crow and I've been working as a dispatch for the town for the last two years. Throughout my time working for the town of Grafton, I've been able to build meaningful relationships and I've gained so many valuable experiences working with the police officers, firefighters, and EMTs of the town, as well as having the opportunity to help many of the members of the community during some of their most difficult times. The past two years working in the public safety field for this great town has only strengthened my desire to serve the community in this new role. And as the Chief said, becoming a police officer has been a goal of mine since I was a little kid. I'm very lucky and very grateful to be here today. I look forward to building relationships with the people I serve, to continue learning from the experienced members of the department, and to continue to keeping the community safe and protected. I would like to thank the Select Board, for allowing me to be here tonight. I'd like to thank Chief Minardi for supporting me these last two and a half years and for allowing me this great opportunity. I would also like to thank all the members of the Grafton Police Department, specifically Lieutenant Crosby and Lieutenant O'Rourke, who couldn't be here tonight, for their unwavering support and belief in me. I've never worked somewhere so tight-knit, somewhere every coworker cares so much, and somewhere that I feel like I can ask anyone for anything and they wouldn't hesitate to help. Lastly, I would like to thank the community for their support as I begin this next chapter in my career, and I look forward to serving the town of Grafton and its residents for many years to come. Thank you.

That's a great statement. Thank you. Someone might have pushed him in the direction of... It was a good direction.

I'm sure that will continue, that practice, right?

I enjoyed the part about being interested in law enforcement at a young age because you are still a young age.

It doesn't feel that way for me, but I can see how you'd say that, so thank you.

Well, after that, I guess I'll ask.

I heard you might be doing a demonstration for the Police Academy this week.

Is that true? No, I think we already did that at the... Well, maybe, if you guys still need it, of course.

I'm not involved.

Okay. All right. Taser demonstration.

I was going to ask.

Well, we did do the taser training last week. But if we need it again, we can.

That's dedication. That makes up for the comment.

We can make that up.

But he was looking at me when he said it.

I'm not going to apologize.

Not for that one. I'll just say congratulations and welcome. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

It is great to have you aboard. I think we've done well. bringing people on board in the dispatcher capacity with, you know, leaving that door open for future advancement. I think it's, you know, great that we're moving up from within. So congratulations on your work at the Academy.

And thank you very much. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah.

Well said. Your speech was great.

So almost hit all the highlights. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure you'll do well. You got a good team here, as you said, and it's good to to listen to these men and women that you've got to be working with. It's important.

So good luck. Yes, sir. Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Okay. Take a motion.

I move the board vote to affirm the appointment of Tanner Crew as an officer at the Grafton Police Department.

Second. Okay, much better. Seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor?

Aye.

Congratulations.

Thank you very much.

Thank you all for coming in tonight. Okay, now we can jump back to the beginning of our agenda here and get into appointments for the Grafton Common Traffic Study Committee. We have four seats tonight. We have a couple applicants that weren't able to make it, one that's not able to make it until about 8. to make the suggestion that we interview the folks that are here ask them our questions allow the other member a chance to be interviewed at 8 and hold on any motions until after that last interview in about an hour does that sound acceptable to the rest of the board works for me yeah okay so to everybody who is in the audience that just heard that We'll call you up one at a time, give you a few minutes to introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about what brought you here. While you're welcome to stick around if you have someplace you have to be and can't wait until we take the vote later, we will be sending you a letter one way or another letting you know if you've been selected or not. I don't see Myra Arroyo on Zoom. more in person.

Cool.

Chris Marino.

Sit here?

Wherever you're comfortable. Stand up.

All right. Good evening, everybody. My name's Chris Marino. I've been a Grafton resident for over 16 years now. My wife Katie and I have been married for 21 years. We've got two teenage boys. We have Ryan, who's 20 and going to be a junior at UMass Amherst in the fall, and Braden, who is going to be a freshman at UMass Amherst this fall as well. So they're both going to be going off to college. Because we've got two teenage boys, we've got some experience with inexperienced drivers in our house, drivers learning to drive. And so very familiar with the common and their experiences with that. One of the reasons I wanted to get involved was because the common is such a vibrant and important part of our community. I was very interested in collaborating with the board and with other people to try to make the necessary improvements that we can working collaboratively together on that. And having taken some time to review the report, the 2025 report that came out, there's a lot there to digest. And so just really interested in being able to volunteer and to give back to the community that's given me so much since we've been here. One personal note about myself, back during COVID, my son has a rare genetic disease and We have been doing quite a bit of fundraising over the years for that particular disease. And one of the things I did during COVID when the Boston Marathon was canceled is I actually ran every street in Grafton to raise money. So I'm very familiar with the town. That was a way for me to get out and become even more familiar. So that's why I'm here. Just really want to give back and you know, that's, that's my reason.

Okay. Any questions from the board?

Just one thing. First of all, thanks for coming in, Chris. Sure. Do you have any any experience that would kind of lend to the charge of the committee, like professional experience or life experience other than training, you know, trying to get your boys through the common without having any, you know, yeah, no, it's a good question.

Um, Short of working, so I come, I'm actually recently retired. I worked in the healthcare IT field for a number of years. And my job, my previous life before I was retired was working within teams and collaboratively with folks to come up with processes and, you know, So I'm very familiar with that sort of aspect of it. But as far as traffic and things like that, other than, you know, driving and reviewing that report, I don't have a lot of experience. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else?

Yeah. You know, one of the harder decisions we made the last time we were sitting up here together was expanding the amount of sort of open seats for the public here. And so our primary concern, or one of our primary concerns, It's just ensuring that everyone has the bandwidth to attend all of the meetings and ensure that there's quorum every single time. So can you commit to attending each and every one of these meetings going forward?

Absolutely. I can. I'm not traveling. I'm not doing the things that I used to do. I've got a lot more time on my hands, so I absolutely can do that.

Perfect.

Yep.

Anybody else?

I mean, I do like the idea that you've worked with coming up with processes and having just a lot of different perspectives on this committee is going to be important. So, you know, how to tackle going through the report. It sounds like you could offer some assistance in that. So, that's good.

Yes. Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you. Okay. Next up, Chuck Chalupa.

Thank you all. My name is Chuck Chalupka. I first came to Grafton in about 19... 82, not as a resident, but as a business owner. My family bought a couple businesses on Worcester Street in the early 1980s. A couple of institutions that probably only Craig and Dave Glispin and a few others might remember. Pat Fleming's Package Store, K&P, and across the street was Paul's Produce. And I still own the building at 78 Worcester Street where Paul's Produce used to be. That's where, well, there's a dentist, Pepperoni Express, King Jade, and Santander has an ATM there. So a few years later, I bought a lot on Merriam Road from Rita Martin, who was another an institution and built a house. And so as a small business owner, I think I bring maybe a different perspective than some other people to this position. I didn't stay as a small business owner my entire career. In 1997, I went to law school and had a career for another 25 years as a lawyer. Part of that time was spent at Mass Highway, which then became MassDOT, and then at the Turnpike Authority. I was the Deputy General Counsel at the Turnpike Authority for part of the Central Artery Tunnel Project, otherwise known as the Big Dig. And after leaving there, I worked in labor relations at UMass Memorial Health and finished up my career at the Department of Correction as a labor attorney there. One of the things that I think needs to be part of the advocacy process in whatever redesign there is, the common, are the businesses that are there. As somebody who spent years as a small businessman, I can remember when they dug up Worcester Street in the 1980s, put in I think it was sewers at the time and they had absolutely no regard for the fact that they completely closed off access at two entrances to my business and it went on for weeks so I think one of the things I would bring to this committee is is a pledge to the small businesses who are on the common that I would take their parking situation into account and advocate for that. I read through the study and some of the ideas are think problematic to say the least changing the head-in parking to parallel parking I mean I think anybody who has tried to or anybody who has watched people try to parallel park I think that would create more of a traffic problem up there like for example in front of Craig's building somebody was trying to parallel park there just would be a nightmare So that's one of the things that I would advocate for. The second thing is I think it didn't get discussed in great detail, but if you're up on North Street, at 4 to 6 p.m. in an afternoon trying to get across Worcester Street to go down Millbury Street. It's a nightmare. They backed up to Norcross Park. And I didn't see that that problem was really addressed very well in that study. I know there was mention of traffic lights but said it would require further study and I absolutely agree that it does require further study because to me that's the biggest problem. I think it was a big improvement to put the flashing lights at the crosswalk. I just wish more people would use them. I wish everyone would use them. I see people who do and people who don't. When you know they're there and you see them, you stop. But sometimes people will try to run across without pressing the button. So that has helped, but I think there needs to be considerably more work done to make that crossing of Worcester Street easier and safer for people. One of the other things that was mentioned in the study, reducing the size of lanes. The Common is a very attractive area. It's what Grafton is known for. It's one of the things that makes it so appealing. And I would not want to see MassDOT coming in there with lines painted and making a mess of that. I don't think they did a great job on 140 heading down towards Meadowbrook Road, which is the route I take to go home to Merriam Road. I understand why they did it, but when you're coming down towards, if you're headed to Upton, going down 140, and you're gonna take a left onto Meadowbrook, way they have those dashed lines if you don't cross into those dashed lines which you're not supposed to you could get rear-ended I was going that way once and behind me was an oversized load on 45 miles an hour carrying an excavator And if I hadn't pulled into that dashed line area to make that left turn, the guy couldn't have stopped. So I don't want to see that happen to the common. I don't want to see yellow lines all over the place. So these are some of the things that I would advocate for as a member of that committee or commission. Make sure that the businesses are satisfied with the result because a lot of people put, you know, their entire life savings into establishing a business. And if you're going to take away their parking, you might as well hang a closed sign on the door because it's hard enough for people to navigate that area without trying to find a place to park. over near the church or whatever. I mean, people already parked there. So I understand that that that is part of the solution, but it's already taking place. But I really don't think that reducing parking is is fair to the businesses that are up there. That's where I stand.

Because you mentioned it, I'm going to throw it out there. At our meeting with the DOT at the Millbury Street intersection a month and a half or so ago, the DPW director gave the DOT officials an earful about exactly what you're describing on 140 on that side, that they took out the climb lane, but then didn't really do any engineering to reduce the amount of impermeable or anything like that. Just throwing that out there. Maybe that's something we can get to, you know, send them a suggestion. Excuse me. You know, for like a dedicated left turn lane or something like that. Anyways, does anybody have any questions or comments that they'd like to ask Chuck about the committee?

If you want to know anything about my family, also I can tell you that. I'm sorry, call me.

No, no, that was very detailed and enlightening, so that's helpful.

Yes, similar comment. I appreciate that you've come with opinions and clearly you've read the report, processed it, analyzed it. That's phenomenal. same question as before you feel as though you have the time to serve the committee and ensure the quorum is made.

Yes. I don't know if I mentioned, but I am retired now other than being a property owner. Um, so yeah, I have time to attend meetings during the day at night. It doesn't matter. One of the reasons why I'm interested in doing this, um, I'd like to get involved in something again, you know, now that post COVID I retired in, in 2020 and, um, moved out to Minnesota for a short time temporarily to help my son who had just moved out there to work at the Mayo Clinic and his wife had a baby shortly thereafter so my wife and I moved out there to help them for a couple years and then they subsequently moved back here my son is building a house right next to mine on Miriam Road And so that's the story. But yes, I have time.

No, I mean... I've known Chuck a long time, and he's always had an interest in the comm, and I'll say that. I was working out behind my building years ago, and he swung in, and he goes, hey, can we do something about all those signs on the comm? They look like crap. And you did? We did, and then it kind of came back, and then we... I did it again about a year ago and cleaned it up, and it looks better. And it's definitely a public safety issue, too. There's enough to be watching for other than sign up for this club. So it was a good thing to do.

So you remember that. One thing I neglected to mention, I did serve two terms on the school committee back in the 1990s. He's got some experience. Well, I have experience in a lot of areas. I don't know if the school committee experience is going to translate very well into this, but I have interest and I have time, and so I think I would be a valuable member.

No, it's great. I mean, just because you're dealing with very different topics, you know, we do get people who come in who are new to this experience and don't have a lot of knowledge of you know, kind of the structure of committee meetings and how they run. So, yeah, there's definitely benefit to that. Thank you very much.

Thanks, sir. Thanks, Jack.

Okay. Michael Gladstone.

All right. Good evening. My name is Michael Gladstone. I reside at 74 Adams Road, and I'm here to speak on my behalf on why you should consider me as a volunteer for the Grafton Common Traffic Study Committee. I moved to Grafton in 2009. I am married with two children, which are both in high school. The Grafton Common is our most visible attraction in town. As many residents and visitors come to shop, take classes, grab a bite, or just relax. I've watched evolution since 2009, but I do see opportunities for improvement, especially when it comes to the flow of traffic in the area. I believe I can bring a unique perspective that will provide continued safety to both the pedestrians and our drivers. I have a degree in electronic engineering, and I am currently employed with McKenzie Engineering, which is a structural and architectural design firm located in Lemonster as their business manager. In addition, I have a successful career in the hospitality industry in all capacities, including assistant general manager, general manager, and owner. I also started my own company called MyHelp, Inc., and we provided business services to small businesses, including bookkeeping, marketing, and human resources in and around the central Mass area. When my family first moved to Grafton, I volunteered for the borough's Jewish Community Center, which I know is not in Grafton. It's in Westboro, but my kids were going to preschool there, so I wanted to give back to where I could, and I was in the role of treasurer. I was instrumental with their largest fundraising event called the Taste of the Boroughs. We raised between $30,000 and $35,000 a year for their preschool. That actually led to an employment opportunity at the Boroughs JCC within my company as their managing director of both the preschool and the community center. This would be my first volunteer position for the town of Grafton unless you consider coaching softball and basketball. I feel my experiences can be an asset to the committee, the problem solving skills of an engineer, taking data and making appropriate suggestions to better current situations, financial understanding, taking budgeting into an account for all possible solutions, and the ability to communicate at all levels to promote better outcomes. Well, that pretty much encapsulates me in a nutshell. I've covered the hows and whys. You should consider me as a strong candidate to join the Grafton Common Traffic Study Committee. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to introduce myself. I'm open for questions.

Do you want to kick it off this time?

Sure. I'm going to be very repetitive. Do you have the capability to commit to every or almost every meeting as we go forward?

Yep, I do.

Perfect.

Anybody else?

Very detailed again. Yeah.

All good?

I think so.

Yeah, I'll just comment that the structural engineering firm experience is very attractive and I think directly applicable to the work that this committee will be faced with and need to be able to do.

With the budgeting and finance stuff, yeah.

100%, yeah. Very relevant experience, so thank you.

Me too.

That's why you're here. Yep.

One question, when you mentioned that you'd done some marketing work, was that kind of like, I hesitate to say PR, but communications-based, where you're doing some of the outreach or guiding some of that outreach as opposed to?

No, I had somebody on my team do that, but I did a lot of the website opportunities and provided website opportunities for small businesses who were looking to upgrade their websites. So I would do the website piece, but, you know, you can't do everything. I did all the bookkeeping, a lot of the human resources piece, which is, you know, benefits, all that, you know, I think. But to answer your question, no.

None of the marketing piece. All the other aspects are great.

Social media, you know, yeah. I'm better at engineering.

The communication part can be tough, but I didn't know if I had a comms professional out there.

No.

Awesome. Okay, I think we're all set. Thank you so much.

Kayleen Foley. I'll speak for Kayleen. The historical district is meeting at the same time. That's where she is right now, so she'll either withdraw or have been after, potentially.

Did we ever hear back from Jesse Miller? Not that I'm aware of. Okay. You're not in the audience, right? Brian Hull.

Good evening, everyone. Thanks for inviting me. Give you a little history of myself. 33 years in Grafton. Moved here in 1993. Seen a lot of changes, a lot of growth within Grafton. I have two boys. Both went to Grafton schools. Ben went to PBT, and then Liam went on to St. John's. My wife is working currently as a business manager for a school system, and right now I'm retired, so I've got time. That's why I'm here. I do want to give back to the community. I've been here for 33 years and enjoyed what it's given me, so I'll do that as much as I can when I can. And I've always encouraged other people to do the same thing. My involvement with the community has been more recently with the Master Planning Committee and spent time with that, I think, maybe a couple years. I forget exactly how long it was. I did that. Part of that, I had most of my time in West Springfield. I had a business for 20 years. That business was recruiting and staffing. And A lot of my time on the road has shown me a lot of different things. For instance, If you go to Westfield, Westfield has a downtown with Route 20. So does West Springfield. What Springfield had to do, because of a couple fatalities, some of the same things you're talking about in the plan, you know, in terms of the curbs and the narrowing of the street and so forth. And if you go down Westfield, you'll notice they have the raised sidewalks. And you can't really speed through downtown. You know, it is Route 20, so it did require some work with the state, I would assume. Also, on the side streets, you do have the pedestrian islands that are required so that people can cross reduced crosswalks. So you don't have that problem. And so I've seen a lot in terms of just travel and being in sales. While on the committee itself, the master plan committee, I know we had to meet with some of the constituents, some of the people. We had some meetings and so forth. So that was kind of an ambassador role, I guess, to talk with people, find out what their concerns were, and work in that respect. I kind of see it very similar. What's important, too, is I'm a business owner. To me... The livelihood of the businesses in downtown is critical. They have that subsistence. You don't want to take that away from them. Looking at the plan, there's so many options. You know, I don't have any preconceived notions, but things I do like. But I'd have to ask the business owners and find out, is that something that they can utilize, especially with the parking? You know, the... And I agree with some of the statements that have been said, you know, that North Street and Millbury Road 140 is crazy. I've been out there when people are just trying to, during rush hour, trying to figure things out, and it's absolutely crazy. So, to me, you know, we talk about putting lights there and also possibly near South Street, but... It seems like it might be a good idea for a T intersection, but again, that's just without talking with anybody. I think that overall, looking at the plan, one of the things I think they could have added that they didn't have there was rumble, slots on the street prior to the actual speed limit signs. So, for instance, when I was traveling through Barry and Paxton, there's where you have trails that come out onto a 50-mile-an-hour road. So they put in rumble slots on the streets a couple of times before you get to that point to kind of warn people. Also, there's a sign. But let, hey, you know, just wake up. You know, you're not just driving. Because when we drive and you know, we're doing it for a long time, we don't really see the signs sometimes. So that was an idea I thought maybe they missed in the plan that they could add. So I guess my strength is gonna be talking with people, trying to figure out what they want, looking at the plan and getting some feedback and delivering that feedback. That's my thoughts.

To reiterate, you have the availability for these meetings.

Yeah, I'm retired. Anybody else?

I'll add another strength. By serving on the master plan committee, you are, you know, experienced with working with a larger group, which this is going to be. So I think that's a strength you should, you know, tout.

Yeah, and I'm not worried about the commitment because you were one of the few, the proud, that made it all the way to the end. We dwindled that master plan review.

Right, there was a lot of people that left.

You stuck around the entire time, and you always, I thought, added a lot of valuable comments and thoughts. Thank you.

Anybody else?

Okay, thanks again.

Thank you, Brian. I don't believe Bill Cook is here. Cook. Dave Glissman.

John.

John is the one who won't be here until 8.

Dave Glissman, 5 Stratton Road. I'm... By way of introduction, first I had a degree in engineering, so I think that's certainly helpful. I was a police officer from 1974 to 87 in the town. I've lived in the town for 76 years. My father was the fire chief for 45 years. And I was the business owner at the Sunshine Sign Corporation in North Grafton, previously at 122 Worcester Street and now at 121 Westboro Road. And living at 5 Stratton Road, I'm very aware of the issues at the Common on a daily basis. multi-times, regular basis, daily. So I'll try to be brief because I know you probably got a stronger agenda. But I do think I have the qualifications that would be extremely helpful to the committee. And I think I have the background with law enforcement and the fact that the Sunshine Sign Company does regularly general contractor jobs in public work that involves traffic flow and regulatory signage lastly i would tell you that i have always said this at every meeting i've attended and spoken at that i have a lot of respect for the will and evan and for the select board and certainly welcome the opportunity to work in conjunction with you folks and maintain what I think is our most important, one of our most important assets being the Grafton Common. And other than that, I would just like the opportunity to continue to help the town in whatever capacity I can. And yes, I will attend every meeting.

Good. I'm glad we could check that one off first. Anybody have any questions for Mr. Glist? Comments?

I'll just say this. I appreciate you coming forward and volunteering and being willing to give your time. And I think the public service and public safety experience is huge. And obviously driving through that common for 70 something years is important too. And it's been a lot of changes up there, both with the volume of traffic and with how the traffic flows up there. So I think some institutional knowledge is always a good thing, so I appreciate you coming forward.

I was so friendly with the chief, so maybe that'll help. Thanks.

Okay, so we will pause on the remaining interviews for now and come back to that a little bit later.

Moving on. Is William coming? Do we know anything? He's not going to be able to attend.

Okay. Billy? Yeah. We have a couple of election worker appointments. We could just take a motion on that.

Sure. I move the board vote to appoint Doris Medivier and Melissa Paquin as election workers. Second.

Okay. Motion made. Seconded. Any discussion? Metivier.

Metivier. Thank you.

Any additional discussion? Did Doris leave for a while and she's coming back?

Yeah. She's been an election worker forever, right?

Yeah. I don't know the period of time.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, all those in favor?

Aye.

Motion passes. Okay, we did our appointments so we can skip down to new business and start with recommendations from the Traffic Safety Committee.

So the Traffic Safety Advisory Committee met for its biannual meeting on June 25th, 2026, and we had several requests for the previous probably six months or so. One of the requests was from a resident of Suzanne Terrace for speed limit signs and enforcement in that area. So we had some limited discussion about the traffic, and it was a cul-de-sac neighborhood. Not exactly a lot of cut-through traffic, but nonetheless, The committee agreed to approve 25 mile per hour advisory signs near the entrances of Suzanne Terrace and Christmas Tree Lane at the discretion of the DPW. We also had a request for Oak Street sidewalk and crosswalk extensions near the Brigham Hill sidewalk. So after detailed discussion that included a discussion about the current sidewalks being non-compliant that would need to be brought up to code for accessibility and poor sight lines. in order to do any of this work that was requested, that would have to be done. So no action was taken on on that request. There was also a request for speed bumps on Kessel Street, and we focused on mass general law, manual uniform traffic control devices that don't allow installation of speed bumps without traffic study by a registered engineer. So no action was taken on that request either. And there was a further request from the same individual for crosswalks at Brigham Hill, Oak Street and Brigham Hill. And again, due to the non-compliant current structures there, no action was taken on that request. We had a request for thickly settled 25-mile-per-hour advisory signs in the area of 111 Merriam Road. down closer towards Brigham Hill after you go to Adams, after you pass Adams Road. So we thought the committee thought that was a good idea. So we went ahead and approved for a thickly settled 25 mile per hour advisory sign there in both directions at the discretion of the DPW. I think we also discussed that, you know, the George Hill project moving forward, that speed would likely be increased on that road once its improvements are done. We had a request for speed bumps on Prospect Street. And again, no action taken on that request for the same reasons. And then there was our final request for a sight-impaired person signage on Carroll Road. After discussion about the petitioner and his spouse, a motion was made to install a sight-impaired person sign in the vicinity of 70 Carroll Road at the discretion of the DPW. And that was the extent of that meeting for the minutes.

Great.

everything was pretty straightforward does anybody have any comments questions a couple I guess chief number two so is that North Brigham Hill Road says Oak Street no that would be the Brigham Hill that when oak and Brigham Hill meet where Brigham Hill crosses Providence Road that section where okay

So Oak comes down from the center and then you're left on Brigham Hill. Right. North Brigham Hill. Right. And then you go to the, you hit 122 and then, so they're asking for a crosswalk there. Right. There's no crosswalk at the bottom of North Brigham Hill. That leads over to.

There is there, but where the sidewalk coming up, I think it would be the north side of Brigham Hill Road. There's a sidewalk coming up there and.

It comes down oak on one side, and then you'd have to transition over and come down. The sidewalk does.

Oh, that's right, because it's on the right side.

I think what the chief is saying, if we were going to put a crosswalk there, now you've got a crosswalk in the middle of the radius of the corner on noncompliant sidewalks anyways. Okay. Now I know. It's that curve.

That is that curve. That's exactly what she was talking about.

Yeah, yeah.

Yep. It's an area of concern, no doubt, but from what some of the members on the committee that have 40 years of DOT experience and traffic engineers explained, that you couldn't go and create sidewalks and do those crosswalk without making the proper approach, ADA-compliant approaches and things like that.

Yeah. And the only stop sign there is coming up Oak.

Coming up Oak. Right. Right. And, of course, that's a, you know, cut through, again, leading to the traffic in the Common and, you know, extensive...

issues with that is are any of these you know you said that there needs to be a study to put in you know for the town to consider putting in a speed bump to any of these warrant us have you know hiring an engineer to look at look at it the committee would be open to that or no

I don't want to speak on behalf of everybody on the committee. I think when you look at it from a perspective of plowing the roads, that the highway department is not a big fan of having speed bumps on the public way. Prospect Street was one of those. I can understand it's a small neighborhood there. There's probably a lot of cut-through traffic there as well. So I think that might be something that makes sense there. Well, they're coming down. Prospect where they would cut over from St. Mary's, the church right there on Waterville Street. Right. So you'd cut through that parking lot, cut through Prospect to get. Never done that before. No. Yeah. So, yeah. So that's, you know, to get over to E Street. So that's a complaint. That's a common.

But Kessel Street, I mean, that's a pretty steep hill coming down. I don't know if people must be going fast going down that hill or.

It's hard to say. I mean, a study would help. It's difficult to say whether I think Kessel Street's probably not a real common cutover road. But I don't know without a study. I wouldn't know where would that... Well, with the common getting the way it is, it... It could be. Yeah. Right.

It could be. And Sartell, too, you know, because people go try and go around.

Right.

I just wanted to know if the committee wanted us to, if there was anything the committee thought we should investigate further other than just we can't do it because we need to study, you know what I mean?

Well, I think we could investigate it further. I intend to have a meeting, probably another meeting in late September. I've had several more requests for other intersections in town, quite a few on like Axtell Corner. where North Street meets.

Hey, I've been talking about that intersection, yes. That is not right over there.

It's a difficult intersection. And there's a lot of, well, not a lot, but there's varying theories on how that should be done and handled. So I intend to have another meeting in September and add that to the agenda. We can revisit some of these with the speed bump issues. I'm happy to do that.

Great. If you could keep me posted. I will. Maybe I'll try and come to that one. I'm going to talk about Axtellan. Certainly. I'm thinking the same. Yeah.

Colleen? So the streets where speed and speed bumps are a concern, are those signs that, like, tell you how fast you're going, are there kind of mobile ones or temporary ones you can put up for six or 12 months so people kind of get the message, like, oh, I am going a little bit quicker? Or are they permanent when you put them in?

What we have is permanent, and the reason why they became permanent, we started with the temporary ones. And the problem we ran into was where they were battery operated. So you would have to either swap them out, or if they were on the roadway, and a lot of those roads, you can't put a trailer there without creating a further problem. So the other part of them is the newer signs that we have now that are permanently mounted, when we were getting traffic grants to purchase those, they would only allow us to use pole-mounted solar. They wouldn't fund trailer or temporary devices anymore. They wouldn't fund those with the grants. So the answer to your question is they're available. We don't have any. Another problem is that when there's solar, we have to consider where we put them because if there's not enough sun, they don't stay charged. So I think they're effective. It's just whether or not we can get one there. And then once it's gone, the speeds go back up. You know, I tell people typically when they request like traffic enforcement in their neighborhoods, I tell them three things I can guarantee. I'll probably stop you or your neighbors for speeding in that neighborhood. We will slow traffic down. And then when we're gone, the traffic will go back to the way it was before we got there. It's difficult. In some of these smaller streets and neighborhoods, if you stand in your front yard and someone drives by you at 30 miles an hour, that seems very fast. But most of the neighborhoods, it's a 30-mile-per-hour zone. Admittedly, most people don't follow the 30. It's 35, and that does seem very fast in those neighborhoods, but it's a difficult problem.

Unless you're on Milby Street, and 30 seems really slow.

Right, or Route 30.

That road is like a mass bike, and it must be.

Trust me, when you drive a Mark Cruiser, you can do 40. I mean, 35. It's okay. Let's move along a little bit. It's a growing problem in town. It's a common concern of folks, and I understand it. It's resources and it's awareness. I think traffic calming measures are very effective. I always point to downtown Millbury when you go through that section of Main Street in Millbury where all the businesses are. And they did a nice job at closing that area in so you just don't feel like it can go fast. So I'm interested to see what happens with the common.

Any additional questions or feedback?

Okay. I move the board vote to accept the recommendations from the Traffic Safety Committee as presented. Second.

Second. Any discussion? None. All those in favor?

Aye.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, next one is an easy one. There is a draft of the proclamation for India Independence Day in the packet. We won't go through that tonight. It's in preparation for the celebration this Saturday, August 15th at 1030 here at the Municipal Center. Anybody have any questions or comments, concerns?

Should we post just in case all of us go there or is it not a big deal?

It's probably not a bad idea.

I'm planning on attending. Yep.

Yeah, it's a nice ceremony. It's not particularly long. Just a fun way to kick off your Saturday. So if nobody else has any feedback, we can take a motion to sign.

I move the board vote to sign the proclamation to be presented on August 15th for India's Independence Day. Second.

Okay, motion made second. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Okay. Next up. Jessica, welcome.

Good evening. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. We have two alcohol permits up. They're both back-to-school student club events. We have Elm's Cafe as the bartender. Their TIP certification is on file. And we have police details for both events.

Great. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none, we can take a motion.

I move the board vote to approve a one-day all-alcoholic beverage license for Tufts University on Monday, August 17th, and Friday, August 28th of 2026. Second.

Motion being seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye.

Okay, great.

Thanks for coming in tonight.

Thank you.

Have a good night.

You too.

Okay. Next up, we have allocation of funds for the uh, Grafton public schools roof project. Um, not sure how you'd like to kick this off.

Uh, I thought we had talked about, but I can go over kind of the basics of it and not go beyond my knowledge. Um, so we don't have to, well, you don't have to make a decision tonight, but it's something I wanted to put on everyone's radar. So If you recall, when we were talking about the roof heading into town meeting, the roof project at the Grafton Middle School is projected to be around $5.5 million. Town meeting, the finance committee amended the appropriation for the roof project and increased the available funds up to $2,446,000. That's broken down as free cash $1,450,000, capital stabilization $496,000, and municipal stabilization $500,000. We then went to town meeting and got an authorization to borrow for $4 million, which then increases the amount of funding for the project to $6.446 million with a excess capacity of $946,000. So the select board will need to decide whether it is going to proceed with borrowing the full $4 million and returning that $946,000 delta to the capital plan or if you will spend the available funds first or some combination thereof. So we'll need direction heading into know it'll be down the road because we we're not anywhere near needing to borrow money but we'll need to know by the time we're gonna borrow money where we want to which which way you want to slice that thank you does this give us an opportunity to sort of fix maybe some of the bond issues

that over-borrowing would have presented, if you recall, you were concerned about the bond ratings.

Yeah, if you, let's say, returned the $946,000 into available funds, that would certainly be more favorable in the bond market. I don't think it solves the problem, and I'm not quite sure that it makes a difference. I think if the problem exists, the problem exists. Okay. What it would do is allow us to continue the trajectory of our current capital plan more. But neither way is catastrophic, and I think that we just need to think of, or you folks need to think about how you want to approach that.

So I have a question. Can you just remind me, going into town meeting, we had a different plan than what

ended up being voted on and how does that compare to so the the only the major difference is that more capital money we we didn't fund some of the projects that I had intended to fund and shifted that money towards the roof yep so it didn't spend it didn't change the total amount spent it just changed what we were spending it on. So, like, we got rid of a, we didn't buy a dump truck. We didn't buy two dump trucks. What's that?

Was one a loader, too?

Yeah, I'd have to, I could pull that back up. But we pushed some stuff off until the next fiscal year.

And so, this number in this capital stabilization, that 496. Yep. How does that compare to the number that

or is it not that we um so i i can get out yes i do i think that maybe the best way to answer that i can come back to that we had kind of a different i think vision of how this was going to play out so i could come back and show you the comparisons of the capital plan okay because what i had to do essentially was take the capital plan that i have presented and then back into it after the amendment right to make it match this yes so it doesn't It was hard to get everything to correlate exactly which pot we're taking things out of. But, I mean, I was able to get it to work. So if the board thinks that's helpful information, then I can… That would be helpful for me. Okay. I can come back to the next meeting with that comparison broken apart in a different way.

It's been a while since we talked about this, so I think the refresh would be generally beneficial.

In hindsight, yes. I mean, I have it all in…

clear gov but me pulling it up here is probably going to be messier than me just yeah pulling it out and presenting it next time as you said yeah just I know that going into it I felt comfortable with that plan and then got shifted so I'm just trying to see yeah where it ended up yeah absolutely that's fair we were also the part of the intent was to reduce the amount of free cash being used because we were using what like 70% of the available it yeah the way we had it previously correct which would impact our bond rating.

Correct. Yeah, I think it's helpful, but as I said before, I think we're going to be over no matter what, so it's just a degree, a matter of degrees. But let me put that together as far as a comparison side-by-side of what we didn't fund and what was moved, and I'll come back with that.

so one of the other concerns was I think was in the packet about them finding some asbestos in that roof which they didn't that the the the study that they did on that roof did not include that which is unfortunate so now the school departments considering doing this roof in two different bid processes which is a major concern for me because we're going to lose our volume discount by doing it all together, which was one of the reasons why we decided to do the whole thing at once so we could have one contractor, one bid. There's efficiency with volume. And now because they found this and the original inspection did not, so now they're talking about doing two because I understand they want to get that one fixed because it's terrible. But now we're going to have to go out to bid twice, two sets of bid documents, two bid processes, two different contractors, and ultimately a higher price to do the total job.

And I don't know how they intend to bid this because there's two possible ways. You can bid it in two different projects or you can bid it as one project with a construction delay in the middle to try to preserve your savings because now the The contractor has work lined up for next year, which is beneficial sometimes. But I don't have an answer for that.

No, I don't expect you to. But it's just when I saw that, I'm like, geez, now we're going to have to go out to bid twice. So if we can do, depending on the window of time, if we could do it as one bid package and have a different start date, I think there'd be advantage to do that. Do we have anybody... Whoever generated the bid documents must be helping us through this bid process, I'm assuming, right? Yes. And who was that, Evan? Do you know the name of the company?

GRLA.

GLA, yep.

GRLA. GRLA, yep. Sorry.

Is there going to be any discussions with us about how that goes down, or that will just be with the school department and their...

um our architecture engine no we're i think part of the process is bringing asking jay to come in and have that conversation with you folks yeah it'd be great to see us if we could package it just yep i agree it also helps us dial in on the financing you know we're dealing yeah yeah exactly well that's we'll know where we're going to end up right yep so we'll get one number next time

Mr. Treasurer, you do it one hand on Zoom. Is it changing? It is not changing. No.

Let's take it. Sorry to not be Jay. This is Dan Cusher, 79 Keith Hill Road, and member of the Finance Committee. I just wanted to, as a kind of refresher, the reason that the Finance Committee proposed that change on town meeting floor to increase the funds for the roof was concern about the possibility that the debt exclusion might not pass. And so increasing those funds would allow at least that one critical chunk to get replaced. But now that the debt exclusion has passed, that's no longer a concern. So I just want to add that little bit of context to the conversation. And so those extra funds that have been allocated the capital funds that have been allocated for the roof could, I think, potentially be reallocated in October to other capital needs that got bumped. But that's up to the select board. Thank you.

Thanks for that clarification, Dan. That was a good one. Any additional questions, concerns that anybody wishes to share?

There's no vote on that.

No, we don't have to take any action on it tonight. We'll reconvene again. I don't know. We can talk or I guess if we want to figure it out now about whether you want to bring the funding discussion back and we'll clear that up moving into the and then do the discussion with Jay another time.

I think just roll right into it while we're all still thinking about it and talking about it. Okay, great.

All right, so then there'll be at least two more discussions. John Bouchard is here. I don't know if you saw that. I did not. Okay. Do we want to go back to wrap that little bit of business up?

Okay.

Where is John? We want to wait for Kayleen. Do we want to wait for Kayleen?

Yeah, I'm just seeing what she's... Well, go ahead, John.

John, can you hear us?

I can hear you. Can you hear me?

We can.

Okay. Sorry, I'm running late for the meeting. I know you probably already took care of all of them.

No, we're glad you could make it. We have interviewed the applicants who were here. We had a couple that were unable to make it as well, but we're excited to hear from you. For the people who aren't familiar, if you want to just tell us a little bit about your past history and why you'd be a good fit here, that'd probably be beneficial. John, do you hear me?

It did kind of sound like he cut out there when he started saying, like, it sounds like you might already...

John, if you can hear us, we're having trouble hearing you. You certainly can. He's not there. There we go. He's back.

I'm sorry.

I got disconnected. I came back on. I'm not sure if you guys can hear me.

We can. We can. I don't know what the last part you heard was, but if you just want to, for the people who don't know, give us a brief background and why you'd be a good fit.

Sorry. Do you have any traffic experience and engineering experience, John?

40 years of civil engineering highway traffic bridge experience for a combination between Mass Highway, subsequently Mass DOT, and engineering consultant VHB for 26 years. I've been working, I was working in town, you know, for VHB on various projects and my qualifications and background working with the town, you know, as a volunteer, I've been on the Traffic Safety Committee since I moved to town almost 30 years and on the Public Works Advisory Committee to the town for about 29 years. My, you know, my specific experience in highway and traffic is, uh i think would be a uh you know huge benefit to the community uh for this for this uh you know coming up with a strategy for uh the town common it's something i've looked at uh on the traffic safety committee uh many many and i can't exaggerate by many many times and the only thing that i've offered you know on the traffic safety committee in representing uh recommendations to the board is that we can't do it piecemeal. I think we needed a larger scale view of the common and then think of it as, you know, I don't want to say master plan, but think of it as a big picture for the entire common. And then if we need to look at capital improvements, we would look at them in various quadrants because it might be a very costly, you know, you know, strategy to, to incorporate and modify parking and circulation and things. So having a big picture view, and then just because of cost constraints that we might attack it in different, different quadrants, etc. It's what I was thinking.

I think you're saying all the right things. Does anybody have any questions, comments?

To be fair, I'll ask my usual question. John, you feel as though you have the time to commit in order to make quorum in this unusually large committee?

It's unusually large? How large are we talking?

It's not that big. It's not that big. It's not that big. It's seven folks.

It's not that big. OK. Okay, it's not. Yes, I'm actually retired from MassDOT. I'm retired from MassDOT earlier this year. So I'm, you know, I do have, I do have time and availability to dedicate, make recommendations, and participate in open discussion and stuff like that. I would, I'd be happy to offer my expertise and experience in this area because I think it's something that's desperately needed big picture for the town.

Okay, anybody else? Craig's not twisting your arm too hard on this?

Craig is not twisting my arm. I was traveling when this first was published, and so my inquiry, or I guess my email to the town administrator was right at the end of July. I had just gotten back from a trip to an immaterial, but to Alaska. So I was gone for several weeks and came back and I had a reminder. I said, this Friday, I have to do one, two, three things. And one of them is I have to decide if I have the time and volunteer to the town to participate in the town commons. you know, kind of study committee. And I made sure, you know, it might've been late in the day, but I said, I made sure that I at least sent an email to the town administrator's office expressing my, my desire and ability to participate.

Appreciate that. Thank you. Okay, if nobody has any other questions, we can cut you loose.

Yeah, I'll just say thank you, John, for stepping forward. And you've worked probably with everybody on this board at one point or another. And, you know, from heading up the new DPW facility to the roads committee to, you know, public works. I mean, everything that you've done. So, appreciate you stepping up. I think you'll bring...

some reason to a committee that's going to have a lot of ideas and you'll be able to tell us if any of them are any good so um or whether they'll work up there so I appreciate your uh you're stepping forward no I appreciate doing it I mean hopefully uh my involvement might also give us some opportunity to seek uh some state grants to uh implement some uh options that have been uh you know have been discussed as part of the uh the study that in 2025 and you know I think that I think that a robust discussion will be you know will be a benefit to the community and engage not only the committee but also with those that may not be they might be a little shy don't want to participate at a at certain level but they would participate and Tell us how they're feeling about the common area and see if we can gather that input and build consensus and come up with a strategy for safety improvements and circulation.

Excellent. DPW still holds the record for the coolest ribbon cutting too.

100%.

And the chainsaw cutting? Yep. Yeah, that was unique for me. And, you know, just as an aside, I'm left-handed, and they handed me this chainsaw. They said, you can't use it left-handed. I said, well, we're going to try something unique then. Yeah, but it was unique for, you know, ribbon cutting. I've been involved in many in my 40-plus years. Thank you.

Well, thank you for coming in tonight. We are going to hold off on our vote. We have one more member, one more applicant that we'd like to speak to, but we will be in touch one way or another. You are welcome to stay. Sounds great.

I wish you best of luck. No, I don't need to. I don't want to take up any of your time. I'm sure you have many, many things to discuss, and I'll step aside and step away and that you guys do that and look forward to hearing back from from the town administrators office or or Amber, however, and if there's anything else I can help with, I'd be happy to help.

Awesome. Thank you so much, John.

Actually, so killing is going to be the Thank you. Sorry, district commission's rep. So she'll remove herself as the the at large.

Great.

So shall we take a motion?

Yeah, I don't know if we want to have a little bit of discussion first or go right to a motion. Whatever the board's pleasure. So I guess I'll start it off.

It was great to get this many people to submit their names. It's obviously something that's caught a lot of people's eye, and it's an important committee. I think, like I said before, this is going to be, has the potential to be, committee that has a significant impact on the town center which is obviously an important part of town so and there was a lot of great comments I thought from all the applicants that that you know again thank you for stepping forward you know the collaboration piece that talking to local businesses to you know to people that had a lot of history and public safety and So it was a bunch of different, I think, experiences that I think will lend to this. And we're going to need all of it. And the other thing is the outreach to not just businesses, but to residents and people that have been driving through the center of town and have seen things up there that have worked through the years and some things that have not. I was part of you know we've done some work up there in the last probably 15 or 20 years um kind of band-aids to to try and help and I think some of it has some of it hasn't but I think this committee with the study that we have I think it's I think we're prepared to make a significant one-time change that hopefully will serve the town for for decades and decades at least that's how I view charge of the committee because we're where I think we're done trying to tweak this and tweak that I think with with four major residential projects coming coming up in that area plus just the just the overall growth of the town and in the region I think we really need to do something so that's the kind of how I look at it I'm prepared to make a motion unless somebody else has comments about that

do that unless anybody else wants to share that anybody else have any comments I'll just add that you know thank you so much to everyone who came out I agree Craig you know really wide breadth of experience and you know reasoning as to why people want to be a part of this committee so just really appreciate that and then just to note that the committee will be open to the public, right? All of the meetings will be open to the public, and certainly the public, as happens here, actually will be more participatory than here, that the public can certainly participate in these meetings quite extensively. So don't feel that just if you don't get on the committee that that's that. I would encourage all of you folks who put your names in to really actually engage in the committee.

I think that's such an excellent point, right? Just if you don't make the committee, because again, this is such a phenomenal large group of folks with a lot of varied experience and a lot of unique perspectives that I imagine that the charge for the committee will involve a fair amount of outreach and conversations and that folks here, not here, should absolutely avail themselves of those conversations and to ensure that they show up, they attend. And I agree with you, Craig, I think that we're going to touch the common it should be a one-and-done at least for the foreseeable future so there are real wide-ranging implications and repercussions for for the decisions that that will be made here so I I'd like to make a motion and I'll move the board vote to appoint Chuck Chaluka Michael Gladstone Brian Hul and John Bouchard to the Grafton common traffic study committee second

any discussion so yeah yeah first of all I said I would I was gonna make a motion so why you jumped in there she offered at the start all right so I'll just say this you know I I want some people that, you know, obviously I'm thinking about a couple of different people just because of their, you know, we have a lifelong resident who's in public safety for a dozen years and owned a business in town for 40, and he lives up in the center. I don't think we should, you know, that to me he's a valuable piece. John Bichard was obviously a valuable piece to this. You know, Chris Mariano, I thought, brought, his collaborative approach, I thought, would be something that would be of value to the committee. And Chuck being, you know, kind of having interest in the common, going back decades and being a business owner, and I think his outreach would be important. So for me, it's John Bouchard, it's Dave Glissman, it's Chris Mariano, and it's Chuck Chuluka. Those are the four that I think would bring kind of wide range of living in town for decades you know Davis whole life and public safety Chuck for 35 plus years whatever it is and having a business there Chris with his I think demeanor and intellect I picked up on that I thought that was great and then John just because he's you know he's the professional that we really need so that's where I would be my recommendation to the committee back out and at least do the two that well I agree with both of you certainly on John and Chuck or do we just keep discussing it yeah and I would say this I'm gonna be serving on the you know as our rep so I would just respectfully ask the board to to put the people on there that you know that I think are gonna be the best ones to work with

So if I can chime in with discussion on the motion that's on the floor, I agree with, obviously, John Bichard with his experience and Chuck with coming at it from a business perspective. I really, as a small business owner, Appreciated that and then your long varied history So I agree on those two and I would have leaned toward mr. Clifton Primarily because I thought mr. Cut was going to be here in terms of like law enforcement and obviously knowing those types of Part pieces of the puzzle so I would lean towards David relative to that background

don't know i mean i feel comfortable with the motion that was made that's why i seconded it so i think we're leaving people that have a lot to offer off the table that's what i think but like as we said that these meetings are going to be open to the public they're more than welcome to attend and there'll be outreach meetings that they can participate in so that they're not being shut out

I think the two names also that I included in my list are just as qualified. A gentleman who works for a structural engineering firm and has worked there as a capacity as both an engineer and a head of finance. Mr. Houle has extensive experience in the town working with the administration of the town on large-scale plans. These gentlemen are just as qualified. I mean, everyone that came before us, in my opinion, was qualified.

So it's just different opinions as to what each of us might feel has a little bit of an edge for whatever reason. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I think, listen, Mr. Gladstone's a gentleman, and I'm sure he's a smart guy. He's an electrical engineer. That's got nothing to do with public safety or traffic, and we have a police officer for a dozen years who's been driving through the town for 76 years, and we're not going to put him on it. It just seems like very short-sighted on that, and I thought Chris would be a nice addition, too. those are my picks again I'd ask the board to respect that and that I'm going to be on this and I think they're the best choices for and and and nothing against Brian too he's great too I'm just trying to pick the four that I think would serve the town the best and this isn't about me or any of us this is about what's best for the town and that's what I'm trying to do

Well, I mean, if that's all set, can we just take a vote?

Yeah, we have a motion and a second. We could vote it. There's no additional discussion. For my part, I agree with a lot that has been said. I'm also unanimous on Chuck and John. I thought Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Marino both had good interviews. I thought Mr. Houle did well as well. I thought Dave did fine. Yeah, I'm in the same camp, but I think we have a lot of qualified people to choose from.

It's a good problem to have.

Yep. Okay, so, I mean, We may as well vote on the motion at hand. Current motion, just to recap, is for Mr. Chalupka, Mr. Bichard, Mr. Houle, and Mr. Gladstone. Yes?

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Aye. Motion passes 3-2.

And me being opposed has, again, nothing to do with just a different way I was going to go. That's all. Okay.

Again, thank you to everybody who came out. Um, okay. You know, I, um, I hesitated on this part. Um, but I'm going to share that, uh, One of these members left what I would call a borderline threatening message for a member of this board. And that is why I do not feel comfortable moving them forward into this next round. And I would have sat on that had there not been that level of frustration that was just expressed for the way that vote went down. I'm going to leave it there. And I'm going to suggest that we move on to the master plan implementation committee charge.

Come on up, Christian.

Mr. Chair. Thank you for coming tonight, Christian. Thank you for having me. So I picked up some work that was done out of the department previously to initiate the master implementation committee. So there's some research done on other models of this around the state. and has been culminated into this chart. So the idea is that this would be a joint initiative between the planning board and the select board to track the progress of the implementation of the master plan over a long period of time as it's active. It would involve nine members total, five from BOARDS AND COMMITTEES THAT ARE CURRENTLY ACTIVE FOR AT LARGE MEMBERS, THE DIRECTOR OF PLANNING AND THE TOWN ADMINISTRATOR WOULD BE REPRESENTED. IT WOULD ALSO INVOLVE LOOKING AT THE IMPLEMENTATION MATRIX THAT WAS CREATED AS PART OF THE MASTER PLAN. AN ANNUAL REPORT WOULD BE PRESENTED TO THE SELECT BOARD AND PLANNING BOARD. And yeah, we're excited to get this started. One important piece of the charge that was discussed with the planning board is the term of each of the members. So when that was discussed, it was for the board and committee members, they serve one-year terms, and the four at-large members would serve two-year terms. The idea would be to stagger the ending of the terms. And the at-large members would be appointed at a joint vote by the select board and planning board. So that should be added into the charge. So I don't know if this is approved or any other amendments need to be made, if that could be part of the motion. But otherwise, open to any feedback on this.

That's great that you highlighted that, because when I read it, I thought it was a 10-year obligation, so. Yeah. If we can make sure that that's added in for sure. Yeah.

We can do that as amended.

Can I just ask a clarifying question on that? If it's a one-year term, is the spirit to try to have different members from each year, or would you care if the same member served multiple years in a row?

It would be a renewable term, so no term limit. They could continue on. Okay. Correct. to end a term staggered from other members so that there's some continuity.

Okay. Anybody else?

No, I'm excited to see this committee get its charge and get off the ground running. We've talked about the master plan working group a few times tonight. Three of the select board members were members of the master plan working group, and so it's just nice to see that those ideas will have a place to actually be implemented and

enacted and excited to work with the planning board to do so mr. chair this will I move the board vote to approve and sign the charge for the master plan implementation committee is presented with the amendment the only thing I had wanted to ask because we have representation from other groups and there is a potential for a financial aspect I know we'll have the town administrator as part of this but if we wanted to consider representative from the Finance Committee as one of the one of the dedicated seats or if we I would vote to leave it as is I think so too I think having already five folks that are already elected or appointed

That's good enough.

OK. You OK with that?

Yeah. We could always pick one as our representative down the line if that's something that they start going that direction of conversation.

That's a fair point. OK. Motion as amended. Seconded. Seconded, yep. All those in favor? Aye. off the board next up we are going you are going to walk us through yeah it's gonna briefly walk us through yes local government representative authority for the new small clean energy infrastructure facility citing and permitting law so I try to be as concise as I can it's a lot of changes what it is is a

new permitting process that is required to be offered by every municipality in the state for most likely solar arrays and battery energy storage. Those are both protected uses. But there's a requirement to offer a 12-month permitting process with a consolidated permit issued. So all permits that are already required would all be delivered at the same time. Why I'm here is because by default, the chief executive officer of every municipality is assigned the local government representative, which requires administrative and minimization and mitigation responsibility. That could be kept with the default assignee, but there's also the option to delegate those tasks to other entities within the town. The way I recommended it was to, and it's also recommended within the guidance, and one scenario would be to delegate the administrative tasks to the planning department and the minimization and mitigation assignment and decision writing to the planning board. Reason being is typically that's how we operate already. Um, these types of projects are subject to special permit as it is. Um, so it's, it's open to the board, uh, the select boards. Um, however they like to delegate that, but that's just how I recommended it.

Any questions or comments? I will say reading through it, it did seem like, you know, you as the director of planning and the planning board would be best suited to go through all these things. Um, it, it made sense to me that, that,

we defer that responsibility to you unless the you know the rest of the board has other feelings sounds good to me yeah I agree particularly for timing issues right some of its sensitive to time and and also I think just the general consolidation and and cat herding happy to help you do that okay let's make it real and I move the board vote to delegate all administrative duties of the consolidated permit process to the planning department and delegate the ability to assign minimization and mitigation measures to the planning board. Second.

Okay. Much made and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor?

Aye.

Thank you.

Thank you, Christian.

Okay, so next up, we have the vote of intent for roadway layout and referral to the planning board, Woodland Hill subdivision, Adrena Lane, Brook Street, and Dillon Way. I mean, this is very procedural. At the planning board meeting last night, they agreed to the certificate of completion for these three areas. roadways we now have to agree to send this back to the planning board for their road acceptance review and then eventually it'll go to town meeting

Good evening. That's our Essex Petrie with Pulte Homes. I'm just here to answer any questions you stated exactly. The planning board approved it last night. We've filed our determination of completeness package with all the required letters and sign-offs from the necessary departments, and we're looking forward to having this at town meeting this fall. Any questions from the board at this point?

No.

appreciate you coming in tonight.

Sure. All right. Great. Thank you.

I move the board vote to intend to lay out the roadways of the Woodland Hill subdivision and refer this road acceptance to the planning board for their review. Second.

Okay.

Watch me in second in any discussion. Hearing none. All those in favor.

Aye.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate your time. Have a good night. okay next up we're bringing back the select boards letter of commitment regarding municipal spending quick refresh this was something that we drafted up prior to Springtown meeting and the spring elections we are still in the process of discussing the road stabilization optimization with the traffic safety I mean not traffic safety DPW advisory tonight we figured we'd focus on one of the first things that's on there the financial review committee as it's listed here we mentioned establishing a neutral independent committee to study spending trends and cost drivers I believe when we initially had the discussion we thought we it may be something we want to go external for see if there was some sort of consultant or agency that that did these types of things that we can engage depending on you know the cost for that so that's that's where we're at tonight I don't know if you do you have stuff you want to add before we kick off the discussion no great all right Yeah, so Mr.

Chair, I've done a lot of thinking about this and some research, and quite frankly, I've kind of landed, particularly after going through the last two budget cycles and seeing the personal things that occur, boards with and people with different backgrounds and what they want to kind of get out of this or that, I really am leaning towards a full independent operational audit. And so I've looked into it a little bit. There may be funding out there through, I don't know if it's DLS, is it what it's called? There's a lot of acronyms, right? Community Compact Cabinet. It's unclear to me. We'd have to do a little digging or the town administrator's office would have to do a little digging to see if there's actually money there. But it seems that depending on how we worded it, that there might be some grant funds. There's other communities that have done this effectively. THE OPERATIONAL AUDIT, I'M LOOKING AT IT NOT SO MUCH THAT WE MIGHT NOT FIND MONEY OUT OF IT, RIGHT? OR WE MIGHT. HOPEFULLY WE WILL. WE MIGHT FIND POTENTIALLY REVENUE SOURCES. BUT AT THE VERY LEAST FOR THE TAXPAYERS, IT WILL BE A, YOU KNOW, INDEPENDENT, OBJECTIVE, OUTSIDE LOOK AT OUR TOWN AND HOW IT'S FUNCTIONING ENTIRELY. AND I THINK IT COULD BE, YOU KNOW, USED FOR MANY YEARS, YOU KNOW, AS A ROAD MAP. take all the recommendations and be able to implement them, or we'll have to see what they come up with. But I think it, again, particularly after going through the last two springs, I think really having an objective outside look is really the way we should go. Pardon me. It will cost some money. Maybe there's, you know, funding out there. I saw numbers anywhere between like $27,000 and $100,000, kind of depending on how deep you dive. And my recommendation would be it's money well spent to dive relatively deep so that the taxpayers can see that. Yes. Okay. The school department is operating efficiently or no, they are not. We do need more police or maybe we do not, but it's not coming from board member and Marie who is for or against, you know, this, that, the other thing. So while initially I thought this financial review committee that we could kind of do it in house. But as we all know, we kind of end up pulling from similar people anyways. And I just think it would be in the town's interest to look at this completely objectively.

Yeah, I agree with all points. I think the best benefit, if we are able to do so, would be to keep it as an independent third party for all the same reasons you listed there.

I mean just sorry one other thing you have to look at this as an investment rather than an expense right this will be an investment in our town and how it functions yes there will be an upset upside or upfront cost but I think for us to be able to move forward sustainably we need some more like real data points that don't come with any skews like a better word hmm

anybody else yeah I agree with that perspective as well and is that something that you guys could pull together maybe even potentially show us like an example of what one would look like from another community when and I can throw out a couple of communities on Manchester by the sea did one in 2024 they were able to utilize a community compact compact grant Freetown Dedham Hanson Sheffield

there's a number of them Hamilton well when them they did it just specifically to their regional school district so I've done some background on this what is a little unclear is this community compact grant and if it's still funded right now yep so we've gotten three of those okay but there as of June of 26 yes so I'll have to look into it because there's there's some funding mechanism discussion but there's also

It's an every-other-year grant. Okay, that's it. So I think that our last grant round was not this past fiscal year but the fiscal year before, so we should be eligible in this year.

I believe so.

So we can certainly look into that further. We'll hone in on the funding too.

And I can share just some of the background that I did with you, obviously, but they also indicate, or I don't know who they are, some of the research that I did, indicated that you know perhaps DLS if there isn't monies there they can help provide some sort of technical support and or shoot us in a right direction for grants that might not be that might fall under a different category yep absolutely we utilize the DLS technical assistance grant program when I first got here to redo all of our financial management plans okay and they're they're a good group to to work with

so we'll see what they have available as well.

They have a great tool that exists already where you can compare yourself to any or all of the other communities in Massachusetts by various categories and various years, and it is bookmarked on my phone.

I love it. It's good to DLS community, or the Review 351 or whatever it's called, is a very good tool. I use it throughout the budget process. but we're in contact with DLS probably monthly, if not more frequently, so we can certainly pick their brains on that as well.

Awesome.

So is the plan to bring that back for the next meeting?

I don't know that we need to bring it back for the next meeting, but if you could, in a timely fashion, start to assemble some ideas, maybe some pricing, that would be great.

Can I ask a question? If we wanted to fund it at October town meeting, when would you want us to make that decision by?

Well, we'd have to do an RFP. Okay.

So it wouldn't be, so October's out. You're not going to hit October.

Okay, cool. All right. I don't think so. All right. And then, like, some of them that I looked at, sorry, the RFP. In the RFP, we can be quite specific in terms of what we want them to look at, what the deliverables are, et cetera.

I think you're going to want to drill down on that further because we might pull from a whole bunch of different ones. We have a relationship with a group. already and i'm not saying that this is how this would go but they're called capital strategic solutions we use them for arpo we've used them for a couple other consulting things and they do um this type of work um and since we already have the relationship i was thinking of reaching out to them and seeing what they had for um you know maybe models that they've worked with other communities and and might give us an idea of price you know you still have to we still have to do the full procurement process but leverage the relationships that we already have.

I think just, you know, for taxpayers to show them, you know, hopefully they're getting the most that they can for their tax dollars, right? And if there are some ways that we can find efficiencies or, you know, revenue sources, et cetera, if there's anything like that out there, if this could glean even a nugget, it would be great.

Agreed. Okay. Mr. Chair, you do have a hand on Zoom. Sure.

Hello.

Bob, we can hear you.

Hi, how you doing? Bob Carroll, Summit to East Duke. Just wanted to offer my support. And I think this is a great idea for the board to look outside and get these perspectives. You know, the things that, you know, this is fairly common in the private sector, especially, you know, with Fortune 100 companies. We're comparing ourselves all the time, doing benchmarking, you know, with our competition. In the case of Grafton, of course, it would be with similar communities, communities of same size. So that would be something that an outside consultant, they would have that information. And then they would also have some metrics, you know, what we would refer to as key performance indicators, right? You know, like percentage of spend for IT, say of the total budget, and they'd be very comfortable and familiar with these ratios. So I think there's a super idea and I'm all in.

Okay. We can move on. Consider updates to the flag policy. This was, do you want to speak to this, Colleen? Sure.

So we have an existing flag policy and this spring we kind of ran into a little bit of a hiccup when a group wanted to raise the flag. We hadn't really gone through the policy and it really highlighted that we could make it a little more efficient by adding additional language for groups like, say, India's Independence Day that comes every year, and make a little carve-out for, you know, veterans and sailors and soldiers and any groups like that that, you know, we all agree would benefit from having their flags, you know, celebrated during their, you know, respective holidays, and so they wouldn't have to, if we don't have a meeting before and they miss the timeline or something like that. So I don't have a great... example to give for that language. I just have the idea of if everybody's excited about it, maybe ask William to come up with language for that? Sure. If everybody's excited about it, which maybe not. I hope they are, though.

So to Colleen's example, I'm not, I don't, I'm not, I think it was veterans advisory.

Yeah. Gold star mother's day.

Right. They, they had requested that, um, the town fly the gold star families flag, which we re they received last year at the, at the, um, gold star families event in, uh, September. Um, they wanted to fly that on Memorial Day, but we were not, the select board was not meeting between when the request was made and Memorial Day, you know, so they unfortunately were denied, but you know, in that instance, it's something that we have approved and supported in the past. So should we provide an opportunity for organizations that have come before us that have already received approval to be able to offer them a little bit of flexibility to not have to come back every time they want to do something like that.

I guess I can see that instance, but just the last part of that, I have a little concern in terms of them not coming back. I guess, are we looking for a carve out such that the TA's office would be able to say, oh, yes, by the way, you fall under this?

yeah the well the way i'm thinking about it is that you would approve the flag right in this policy yeah in the so that the policy denotes that the flag is what's being approved and maybe not the specific date right and then we can we can navigate that through our office of when they're available and all that yeah um but it would also give our office a little not discretion but we would you know we would still have our finger on the pulse and then also know when we need to bring something back to the board and say this is different. The real key to the flag policy is making sure that you're tying the flag to a specific proclamation. So once that flag is accepted and the proclamation has been issued, I think there's some wiggle room there. But it wouldn't be the Veterans Advisory Committee gets a blanket, any flag that they want to fly on any day. It still has to be that flag as approved.

Okay.

I like it framed that way, yeah. I think we could work with that. I mean, and again, you know, this is – I know – There wasn't an explanation as to what we'd be discussing in particular on this tonight, so I understand if people aren't comfortable, we don't have to take a motion on this now. We can bring it back at a future date. Oh, yeah, I want to see the language. We'll workshop language and then bring it back.

That sounds good. I'm sure Will's going to do a great job, but we should read it first.

We're back on a policy kick. I love it.

I love it.

All right, well, we'll update our draft and we'll bring that back.

Okay, next up, the opioid litigation withdrawal from claims is recommended by special counsel. We'll take that over to Abbott.

Yeah, so most of these pharmacy benefit manager claims are not moving forward, so we're just going to withdraw from that program at this time. We can always return to it if that comes back to be a class action suit.

Do we have any comments, questions?

Is it costing us money?

Not currently.

Why are we withdrawing?

I think that the entire, the way I understand it, is the entire pharmacy benefit manager class action suit is falling apart. I see. So they're just saying let's let everybody withdraw, and then I think that preserves our right to sue again in the future, should that be something that needs to be pursued. This was just another angle of that opioid settlement money that we were pursuing. But special counsel is telling us now that this isn't a good avenue for us to be going down.

Okay.

It did seem like from that letter, they were trying to focus on larger towns where there would be more of an impact for those funds directly, that type of thing, and kind of seeking... Tons of our size to withdraw. I think it was under 50,000 residents or something like that. Didn't really seem like we had much of a choice. No, not really.

Maybe that was a better way to frame my question.

Well, I try not to.

Any other questions, comments, concerns?

Mr. Chair, I move the board vote to withdraw our prior consent to join the Pharmacy Benefit Manager Amendment process and not pursue separate claims against the pharmacy benefit managers at this time.

Second.

Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor?

Aye.

Okay. Next up, approve and sign the warrant for the 2026 state primary. Is there anything, anybody have any questions with this? Or can we just...

I move the board vote to approve and sign the warrant for the 2026 state primary. Second.

Motion made and seconded. Any discussion? Evan, was there something you wanted to throw out there? You don't have a choice. Just vote it. Yeah. Same thing. I'm going to do a victorious. Okay. Motion made and seconded. All those in favor?

Aye.

Great. Any select board reports tonight? Okay. TA report.

One of them normally has something to say. That caught me completely off guard.

All right. So just wanted to give you an update on Fisherville Pond, the before and after. Before is on the left. It's about, I think we're at week seven. And we've done two rounds of spraying. And so you can see it's quite a. Quite a difference there. So lots of open water. The residuals that you see there floating around, I took a closer look at those today. It's mostly really algae that's clinging on to the dying, not Japanese knotweed.

Water chestnut.

Japanese water chestnut. So I would anticipate in the next couple of weeks you'll probably see that gone as well. And then you can already see in the distance there, that's the pond directly behind Fresherville Mill. That's probably 85% to 90% open water again, which it hasn't been for a very long time. And we still have one more round of spraying to come through and clean up anything that hasn't been affected or damaged.

Can we post this? I find it's very dramatic. And having those yellow placard signs that went up, also dramatic. But this is phenomenal.

Yeah, I just took that picture today before this meeting.

Phenomenal.

So we can put a post up with the befores and afters. Thank you. Yeah, it's great. Route 122, I'm just going to leave this slide in here because I think we should continue to talk about this as we make progress. The only major changes that have happened since last time we meet is they shifted the center lines to make it more of a T to intersection at that intersection. So we did do a post on that. Got quite a bit of feedback.

Can I ask a question about that? Are there plans to do more out there or no?

Honestly, we don't really know. We didn't do any of that.

I don't get it. I know there's been a couple accidents there, but I don't get if there's brush to cut or something like that.

All of that's done. It's really... When they pave it next year, they tee up that intersection. But this is a mitigation in the meantime, was to shift the lines to make it an artificial tee.

They should put a sign at the top of that hill saying that there's a long, steep grade there for trucks.

I mean, so that there might already be one. I think there is one there, and there's also a stop ahead that's right when you're coming over that.

Yeah.

Because someone had reached out to my office.

But to dump money into that, I mean, I think would be a waste of money. I mean, serious money.

Yeah, I think that the crux of the accidents that we've seen there have been people waving other people out, people cutting the corner coming up the hill. We've had a couple trucks lose their brakes and end up in the cemetery. But the, I don't want to say the worst accidents, but the ones that have had more injuries and fatality have been Generally from people getting waved out or people cutting that corner coming in So I think that's what the state was looking to do with their relining But we'll have more updates as we go along Paving so since we last met we have paved Waterville and Faulkner Those are both done Those are both private ways up until the last three years. So I think that we haven't had any negative feedback, so I think folks are happy that those roads got paved. George Hill Road, the tree work is mostly complete. I only say mostly is that we did all the pre-planning trees. There may be more trees that come as we go, so I don't want to say it's 100% done. And right now we're going into the widening portion of the project. So we went up there today from Leland until about 100, 150 feet short of Soap Hill. They've widened all the way up there. So they're moving very rapidly, up to about 600 feet a day they're doing. So I would anticipate by tomorrow or the day after, I don't know exactly what they're planning in that intersection to do now, or if they're just going to move to the other side and keep widening, but they're going to be on the other side and, and headed to Fay mountain in pretty short order. So, um, like I said, I was up there. I've been up there a lot, obviously, but we are up there today and, uh, plenty of room to pull off to the side when there's another car coming in. Um, So I think that's going to be just in itself during the construction process. Part of the reason that we're doing the widening now, even though we're going to have to come back and re-dig some of that stuff to add drainage, is so that when construction's ongoing, there's a place for people to go. We'll be able to keep the road open because it'll be wide enough to do that. So we've got hard pack in there already. I saw today they added some three-quarter inch stone to ward off any damage. Erosion, all the erosion control seems to be up and in place, so seeing some progress. Other updates, the town meeting after action report is on the website. Property acquisitions, 66 North Street, we continue to have discussions with that landowner. That is with town council right now, creating a tentative purchase and sale agreement that we can then sit down and negotiate with the landowner. So that will be forthcoming. I don't know if we're going to get that be done with this before October, but that's in process. 27 Stowe Road, that's the deed in lieu of taxes process. So I have been in touch with the owner of that property's daughter. The owner unfortunately passed away I think two weeks ago. So, um, we're going to continue with the title search project, uh, get that wrapped up. And, um, there's some, a little, little ambiguity over what the step after that will be. Cause I think it's gotta go through probate, but we're gonna, uh, work with the landowner to, uh, or the landowner's daughter to get this wrapped up. So, um, continuing to work on that. The REC, we're still making progress. Pre-qualification of all bidders is complete, so the next thing now is to get that bid package out, which is a very big bid package. So we're wrapping up some finishing touches on that, and then we're going to be doing a more site-specific look at grafting communications in August and September. So we've already done all the radio studies, but... Those are based on computer modeling. That's how that works. So now we'll go, you know, boots on the ground and visit some additional sites and try to figure out how to close some of our communication gaps. So that'll be exciting. And I think that's it as far as what I have to update.

Is that something we may expect, like some future balloon work?

Yeah, but not for quite a while. We would put something out if we were going to be doing balloon work. Most of it, no. The short answer is yes, but not for a while.

Yeah, just curious. Okay, great. Any correspondence anybody wish to discuss?

I don't know if it's in this packet or would be in the next packet, but we had a lady reach out to us about or the board about tree work. So that was taken care of on Monday.

Great.

I think that was the only thing in here for me to... I don't think that made this packet.

It didn't.

Okay. Well, I won't talk about it in the next packet.

You've already been warned. Thank you for catching us up. Anything else? Okay. We have no meeting minutes tonight, so... To adjourn.

Second.

Okay. Wish me a second. All those in favor? Aye. We are adjourned.