Parks & Recreation Commission - Regular Meeting

I'm the current chair of the park and recck commission. I'm calling the meeting to order at 6:31. Our first item on the agenda is our open forum. This is an opportunity for members of the public to ask the commission questions or bring up points of order that are not on the agenda. So, do we have anybody here for open forum this evening? Okay. Just uh some housekeeping. We are recording this meeting via Zoom and it is also being recorded on Westford Cat, so it will be available for view later. Um our first item on the agenda this evening is a discussion on the Nutting Road Fields project. We have a analysis of the costs associated with keeping the fields artificial turf as well as the costs associated with converting the fields to natural grass. The presentation will be provided by the head of our department of public works, Kyle Fox. I'm going to ask that we hold questions till the end of the presentation and then we'll open up the floor for questions both for people in the audience, members of the commission as well as folks who are on Zoom. And if you are on Zoom watching us this evening uh and you would like to write like to um ask a question can use the raise hand feature or you can type a question in the Q&A section of the webinar. All right, with that, Kyle, we'll turn it over to you. And if Mike, if you could bring the presentation up on the screen, that would be great. And can people see that? Okay. From the back of the room when it comes up, turn some of these lights off. Or do we need to We need to turn the front lights off. Is that visible? Yeah, everybody's good. Okay. All right, Kyle. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair, commissioners. Um, I appreciate the opportunity to present

uh some information on the Nutting Community Fields uh turf replacement project. Uh, next slide, please. Tonight, I'm going to follow uh an agenda. We'll briefly go over the history of the uh the property, talk about the current conditions, then go over the project scope uh from two standpoints, turf replacement or convert the to grass fields. Uh we'll talk about some environmental considerations, space considerations, um a little cost analysis uh between the two options and then we'll chat just briefly about some other considerations. So the uh community fields were constructed in 2012 at a cost of 1.28 million. Uh 1.21 21 million of that came from CPC funds and the remaining 70,000 uh were raised through donations. The playing surface is 4.6 acres. Um and it originally had an estimated life of 8 to 10 years and this year currently we've started our 14th season um on this field. So, one of the uh ways to tell how your field is performing over time is to do what's called a GMAX test. And what that measures is the shock attenuation of a synthetic turf or a natural grass surface to assess player safety. Uh basically, the lower the number the better. And generally, readings on a new surface are around 130. And if you get up to 200, you're failing. uh where the the GMAX test is uh it's a prescribed methodology depending on what kind of field you have. Uh for our fields they

used the soccer layout which you can see in the picture up here and there's 10 spots that they test and what that allows for is repeatability and basically not cherrypicking uh results. So when we tested back in December um a few months ago, our our readings on field one ranged from 171 to 210 um with an average of 193. The on field two it was um basically about the same range. The average was a little bit higher about 196. Uh so we knew we had to do some remediation work. So we contracted with a a vendor uh it was someone who worked for the company who originally installed the field. He has his own company now but um he came in and he had given us some recommendations some of which we took. So uh basically they cut out four areas uh which were the uh worst scoring areas and those being the goal mouth of the lacrosse fields. So, they cut out those four areas to uh put in some new turf. Uh the issue being the turf was so worn, it started at about 2 in when it was brand new, and as it wears from use, the the grass gets shorter and shorter. And what that does is it lowers its ability to hold the infill. And the infill is what gives it its uh safety for the for the users. Uh so, they were down in that area. it was down to about 3/4 of an inch of of turf left. So, replaced four areas, added a bunch of uh crumb rubber, and um performed other additional maintenance while we're out there. Uh that all happened this spring. Um you probably saw us out there

removing snow. That was an effort to to get the uh contractor out onto the field prior to the season. So post uh post repairs we retested in March and uh on field one our readings were much improved. Now they were 156 to 205. Uh we did still have two readings that were over 200. Uh but the average dropped down to 179. Field 2's results were even better uh with no readings over 200. So that was really great news um with an average of 175. given that we still had two areas that that did fail and um we did have a a residual recommendation from the vendor to add crumb rubber to the middle third of both fields because those were still the the worst areas of the whole field because it's the highest use. U so our parks maintenance crew uh we purchased 20,000 pounds of crumb rubber and we spread it over the two fields to further improve the results. We did not test after that uh because it's about 1,500 bucks to retest and based on the March results, we knew that additional material would make it safe for our players this year. Next slide, please. Y uh so going forward, uh one of the primary focuses of this meeting is to hopefully make a determination of what direction we want to go. Uh so one option is replace the turf uh field in kind as it is today. Um this is an option that was endorsed last year by the park and recck commission, by the finance committee, by the capital committee, the select board, and almost 65% of the voters at town meeting. Um it did not pass at town meeting because uh bonded uh spending requires twothirds uh

to pass. Uh the estimated cost of the project was $2 million uh which includes about $80,000 for engineering and plan development. Um it would require a closure of the fields for approximately 6 to 8 weeks. Uh it proposed to add a shock pad which would increase the warranty from 8 years to 12 years. And uh the budget mount was set to allow optional choices on the infill material. On the low end is the um chrome rubber that we use today. Um and that was around a million and a half. On the high end, there were some options uh coated sand, walnut shells, those kind of options, which brought it up to about 2 million. And the plan had been to uh bid the project with three different infill materials and then make the decision after that as to which option we would choose. uh based on the the results of the bids. Um I should note that in this analysis um I I I took it as there's no impact on future um operating budgets over the current budget for this option because we're already maintaining this field as it is. Uh so there's no delta in work effort for a replacement in kind. Next slide please. Uh going uh to the another option of Can you speak up so there's nothing in the Yes. I'm sorry. I will try. Yep. Uh so the second option we're going to discuss tonight is replacing the turf fields with a grass field. Uh this estimated cost is about 2.1 million and includes

about 114,000 for engineering and plan development. It would require the closure of fields for approximately a year if we used sod as the uh the the grass uh perhaps even two years if we used seed and waited for for natural growth. Um it would require the removal of the turf field subbase and infrastructure. We would need to increase the cross slope of the field. Uh the grass fields require an increased cross slope over the turf field to get the water off of the field uh quicker. Uh that could increase uh uh additional sight work on the project. The sidewalk all the way around it would probably need to be changed and probably some of the fencing to accommodate that increase in cross slip. uh we would add well- draining soils and drainage infrastructure. We'd add an irrigation system and we would expect an operating budget increase of approximately 110,000. Um and that's primarily from one laborer position in our our parks maintenance group. Paint, seed, fertilizer, water, and all those kind of incidental items that um a grass field requires over a turf field. Next slide. Uh, next up is some environmental considerations that we looked at prior to town meeting and our our park and recck commission meetings and um even more so afterwards. Uh just a comparison of natural grass field on the left, synthetic dirt field on the right uh for the various uh considerations. So water use obviously it's higher for natural grass fields. Um, synthetic turf doesn't require watering, chemical use. Um,

grass field has fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides. Um, synthetic turf may require, um, occasional antimicrobial treatments or cleaning, though I will say we've not had to do it on our field. Um, the the research I've done uh promotes uh the disinfection more so on uh on an in inside the building turf where it's not getting cleansed by the natural sunlight uh versus um ours being outside gets that natural benefit. uh storm water management. Uh the grass field promotes infiltration and reduces runoff whereas the uh synthetic turf field is considered impervious. Although there is a water collection system in there that infiltrates all of the uh storm water onto the field into a a subsurface infiltration system with an overflow. Uh there's heat island effect um that can be seen with turf field over grass fields. Uh carbon footprint. Uh obviously the grass sequesters CO2. Uh but there are motor fuel emission issues to consider. Um and turf field has a high embodied energy from plastic production and installation as grass fields support biodiversity habitat u through birds. soil organisms. I will say it also supports um geese and geese poop which we see in a lot of our other fields of the turf field eliminates that habitat. Kyle, can you guys still hear Kyle in the back? Just want to do a sound check. Everybody's good. Okay, thanks Kyle. Thanks Chris. Um back a slide

mic. Yeah, thanks. Air quality uh with grass field generally positive emissions from mowers like I said are a concern. Uh there is potential off offging from plastics and infills to to consider as well. Uh grass fields maintain soil biology and structure and um on the turf field the soils are covered so there's no soil benefits. maintenance requirements. Uh obviously that's higher again with the grass field requiring frequent mowing, watering, fertilizing, striping, and aeration. Uh just for example, striping alone. Uh the the surfaces, it's it's two full-size fields that we stripe for three sports on each. Women's lacrosse, men's lacrosse, and soccer. And currently we do those probably twice a year. uh with grass fields, we'd have to do that sometimes twice a week depending on the grass growth. So, it really is a significant effort difference, usability and durability. Uh grass has seasonal limits, could become muddy or dormant in cold weather, high durability for turf fields. Um end of life disposable disposal, sorry. Um grass fields are biodegradable. no special um disposal requirements. Disposal of turf and infill is difficult and costly um and it may contain non-recyclable plastics or PAS. So space considerations um obviously with our grass fields they require a lot more downtime uh to recover from use especially after wet weather. Uh this spring has been tough on the sports teams and believe me we hear you. Uh there are uses limitations. Uh

we can typically support 20 to 24 hours a week per of programming without damaging a grass turf. Uh we're generally limited to spring through fall and often uh closed during rainy conditions. And just uh for the record, we opened the grass fields this year on April 14th. Uh but they have been closed periodically since then due to the amount of rain we've received. And again, maintenance requirements for grass fields are high. Um turf fields on the other hand, uh they can handle about 60 to 80 hours a week of programming with minimal wear. It's an all-weather surface, playable shortly after rain. Um, it is usable year round. Um, even in the winter if we remove the snow, which we typically don't do. Um, this year we did open on March 15th following the repairs to the turf and the maintenance requirements are lower. Um, now getting into some cost numbers. This was a challenging exercise. U so I tried to do it a couple different ways and um I'm sure there'll be plenty of questions on the the methodology. So hopefully at least one of the two ways makes sense to most people. So just based on the estimates we've received u Turfield uh $2 million. I did just receive updated estimates from the vendor we've been working with uh at the end of April. And again, the estimates range from a million and a half to 1.8 depending on the three infill choices. Uh the grass field was uh 2.1 million. That was an estimate from Gail Associates uh last

fall. Um I'm sorry, that was in March. Excuse me. Um tried to figure out a useful life for each product. the useful life for the if we go with the shock pad option which I would recommend if we go turf we do the shock pad one because it increases the warranty period from 8 years to 12 years and it gives us a useful life of 15 years. Uh for grass, uh the number I found was 25 years. And I took that from a presentation that one of our uh community members uh sent us a link to a presentation that the Lexington Lexan folks had done, a nice video on give grass a chance. Um and they had said in that video uh to use 25 years for uh life of a grass field. Additional operating costs per year above budget. Again, this is that figure that I noted in the previous slide. And again, we're talking change from current operations to post construction operations. So the delta for the turf field I'm calling zero because it's essentially the same as what we have uh for the grass field again it's at 110,000 which includes one labor position and the extra materials uh needed to to maintain the surface. So in this scenario, the total cost per year uh taking the 2 million divided by 15 uh gets 133,000 a year. Um on the grass side, you take the 2.1 million divide by 25 years, add the 110,000 per year, that gives you a cost estimate of 194,000 per year. But that's kind of a shortsighted um analysis. So I wanted to do it a a

second way. Next slide. And kind of kind of look out, you know, at these at these useful lives for each of the the options over I chose to do 51 years, which equates to two replacements of the grass field. Uh so you can see the blue line um in the in the graph represents the turf field. So you can see every 15 years you see a jump and all of these numbers are inflated by 2% per year. So you see a jump at 15 years, jump at 30 years and a jump at 45 years. So the expected cost over um to that 51st year is about 13.2 million. Conversely, with the grass option, um the first replacement doesn't happen until year 25. then it takes a jump and then the second replacement at year 50. Uh so definitively over the long term it could be said uh acre per acre the grass field longterm is cheaper. So that's what I was trying to show here. Uh some other considerations to think about um surface consistency uh is is better with turf. It's consistent flat uniform. Uh grass can become uneven due to wear, weather, um overuse, particularly the higher use areas, gold mouths, uh the center of the fields. Uh traction and footing, it's more predictable on the turf. It can be variable. Uh kids like to dig holes with their their cleats into grass fields. Uh we see that on our baseball, softball fields, and and our other grass fields. Uh the ball rolls better on turf, more predictable bounce and faster ball speed. Um obviously slower on grass

fields. One of the uh biggest complaints we get u from our users uh from say Jack Walsh is the slow speed of the um of the ball due to the turf length. And I'll grass length and I'll get to that little more in a second. Uh weather resilience. Um synthetic dwarf drains quickly. The grass is susceptible to mud and puddling. Limited use in wet conditions. Seasonal availability. We've talked about that. Injury considerations. Uh you know, you can find a study on either side as to which is better, which is worse. Um, in general, grass can offer a softer surface, lower abrasion risk if you're sliding. Um, synthetic derf may increase joint stress or surface related injuries. And policy guidance, I wanted to throw a bit in about that because, um, it partially came up at our last meeting last month. Um, and it goes to the slower ball roll. Uh, one of the things uh that Westford is um passionate about is trying to reduce chemical use, fertilizer use, uh, pesticide use. And many years ago, the select board adopted a policy of integrated pest management and and limited fertilizers. So, we follow those policies. Um, in order to do that and achieve a long lasting surface, we need to often have the grass length longer than some of our users would prefer. Uh, but it's a result of policies that we're trying to follow in town and presumably would need to be followed on nutting. Um, another consideration is field space. uh grass fields require two to four times number of fields to provide

the same use allowance uh for turf fields. Again, this was another stat I got from that uh really good video from our from the Lexan folks. Um West Westford doesn't currently have available land for future grass fields. And of course to uh do that development of additional fields one you'd have to find and locate the land possibly pay for it but you'd also have to pay for the development of the field. Uh so those cost charts like I said that I did before were based on acre per acre. If you go even on the low end of equivalent space, two times grass per one time of turf, then the costs are really going to be noticeably different in the comparison. So, uh, that's my presentation to the commission. I'd be happy to entertain any questions. Thank you. Thank you, Kyle. All right, commission. Uh, at this time, I'll entertain questions from you or would you like to hear from the audience members first? This is your choice. I audience here for them audience. Okay. If anybody in the audience has a question, I'm going to ask that they come up to this mic. Is that the one that's hot? The one that's standing, I guess. So, okay. So, the mic that's hot. Then, if you would just please identify yourself, full name and your address for our recordeping. Hi, Christy Bates Pierce Avenue. Um, quick question. Kyle, when you looked at this, you mentioned the Lexington study that they just did. They looked at high performance graphs as well. Did you consider looking at that? I didn't. Um, one because I couldn't find much information about it. Um, and in their presentation, they noted that it would be a contracted service because even the Lexington staff uh evidently didn't have the capacity or wasn't capable of it. So, I didn't really get that in depth in it. Uh, mostly because I couldn't find a

lot of information on it. Okay. Thanks. And um when you're calculating the cost, are you taking into account um how it's funded? I mean, part of the reason that we're here is because I think is because um uh people were talking about look at grass and CPC would cover grass and I think CPC has gotten back to you and saying that it not that they would necessarily approve it, but funds CPC funds could be used for grass fields where they could not be used for synthetic. Correct. And so, so no, I did not factor that in. Okay. So, that that's a that's a policy decision of the residents of of Westford. So, I'm just trying to compare equal to equal. Thank you. And one last question. Um, are you also taking into consideration the Westford Academy field which was which was put in at the exact same time. Correct. I did not take that into account. And has the park and rec commission considered that? It's not under our oposes unfortunately. So our understanding is that the school has been made aware that they have two more years of useful life left on that field, but we're not aware of what they're planning to do for replacement. Thank you. Any other questions from the audience? Yes. Uh yeah, you're kind of in the back. Yeah, we'll give it a shot. Just wanted to clarify. I had a question. If I could just get your name, ma'am, and your address. Yep. To um at 5 Sunny Meadow. Can you say that again? We didn't catch that. Sorry. Lauren Sajima for Five Sunny Meadow. Um, I just wanted to kind of ask or clarify when you uh spelled out the cost and the potential extension of grass field time that if you looked again like over 25 years, it could potentially be less cost at the end of the day. But that's not taking into consideration the fact that we'd need that's only taking into consideration acre. Not that we would need basically

double the space to have the same usability as the netting fields currently have. Correct. That's correct. So in the long run if you wanted that usability that ends up actually being significantly more expensive because you'd need to double that. Am I If that was the decision the town made to go that direction. Yes. Any other questions? Uh Julie Oliver, uh Morning Glory Circle. First question I have is with CPC funds. When these uh fields were done 2012, you showed that CPC funds were used plus 70,000 of donations. So are you saying that's off the table now? Because there was legislation passed by the state that prohibited the use of CPA money for turf fields. Okay. My second question is why are we even considering grass fields? It was a question that came up uh during our previous deliberate deliberations or I should say the commission's deliberations prior to town meeting and there was a a discussion at town meeting that asked for that analysis. Okay? Because the analysis that I'm looking at, I don't know why we're spending time talking about grass fields, there's so many reasons why it's not beneficial to why we have these fields and how long it's going to take to construct them and we're not going to have enough space. So personally, I think why aren't we just throwing that out and saying how can we do the turf fields in a financially affordable way? Thank you for your feedback. Uh, as Kyle pointed out, we did have a robust conversation at the floor of town meeting and there were people who made who raised questions about why a

grass alternative wasn't looked at, particularly from a cost perspective, and that's one of the reasons why we're here tonight doing this. But you made some very good points. Any other questions? Yes. Uh, Noel Almeida, 41 West Street. Uh, two questions. The first one is the reason one of the biggest reasons turf is good is because the se the seasons right can start in April or March whenever um have you done an analysis on how many hours the turf field could be is used during the year compared to grass. I did not do that analysis roughly is it like you already know that what's it 60 hours a week you can use as opposed to 20 to 24. Yeah, the the data that I found online and and through the Lexan report uh was about 60 to 80 hours a week on a turf field versus 20 to 24 on a grass field times plus you'll add some weeks on the shoulders, right? Yes. Okay. Correct. All right. So, it's roughly four or five times as much used, right? or usable the the available uh usability uh from all the research I did one from the Lexan um video but from other sources uh all generally a agreed with that two to four times okay um stat all right uh second question is do you charge money for use of the fields at all because I've seen people use it who are not students or town residents y is there a is a revolving fund. Is that a budget? Yeah. So, the funds raised through uh the permit fees uh for all of our fields go into revolving fund. Okay. And those fees are used to support the materials that that parks maintenance uses to maintain the fields. I see. How much is it about a year? Oh boy. Um I have that

somewhere. In other words, it's not enough to to put into some kind of a It is not. the fund is not not increasing by leaps and bounds. All right. I think it's about 125,000 a year. Okay. Is is kind of the balance of where we're at. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. I I'm We probably won't. Uh yeah, if you really Sorry. Is that my portal? I I don't know. I don't Diane Wood 122 depot. Can you hear me back there? Okay, you can hear me back there. Um, two questions. Just um, one comment and one question. Point out that um, there are two bills at the state level and legis legislature, a house bill and a senate bill that you may or may not be aware of. They're currently in the process of um disallowing any turf for any municipal fields. It has not passed yet, but that's the direction that it looks as though the state is going in. So, it would preclude artificial turf for any municipal, not private lots, but any municipal lots. Um, and then the the other comment was, did we talk about CPC funds? Did we talk about how this would be funded? And I can go over that again. Sure. So the way that this project would typically go through the fund the budget funding process is if this commission decided to recommend it to move forward, it would go on to the capital planning committee. The capital planning committee regularly meets in the fall in preparation for setting the budget for annual town meeting. And during those deliberations in which they hear from all the town departments and also boards and committees about their capital

requests for that year, they look at what we have available in terms of monies from the general funds that be used to pay for capital. Uh generally there may not be enough funds. Uh so that committee then tries to prioritize what should be moved forward as a recommendation to the town manager when she's developing her budget. They also look at what projects that come forward that may be eligible for funding using community preservation act funds. And for those of you who are not aware of what that means is we have a search charge on our taxes that pay into this community preservation act um funds and we have a committee called the community preservation commission whose responsibility is to review projects that come forward for funding through CPA and determine one if those projects are eligible for funding. The CPA only allows for funding projects that are related to open space, affordable housing, historic preservation, and as a later add-on to the initial legislation, recreation. And within recreation, there are some limitations to what CPA money can be used. We noted earlier that we can no longer use CPA funds for artificial turf fields. So that committee would then review a request if it came before them and then make a recommendation to bring it forward to town meeting. Similarly, the town manager would form her budget. It would go in front of the fincom. Uh it would go in front of the select board. It would eventually go to town meeting. And there either if it came if this project came through from CPC side or from the general fund town meeting voters have the ultimate decision makers in terms of whether or not the project goes forward for funding. Does that answer your question? No.

Well, yes, but and is the thinking at this point uh that we're looking at annual town meeting because if we're looking at special town meeting um things need to start moving now and the research and the data need to start moving now. That's why we're having these meetings. So, yes. So, October is what you're thinking. That is potentially on the table. It really depends on what happens tonight. Okay. Yeah. And then the the other comment was I think um there there may be misinformation or lots of information regarding the use of CPC funds for artificial turf because I've read and actually spoken to to the state regarding the law regarding CPC that you cannot use it CPC funds for the actual turf itself. But you can use CPC monies for the peripheral um tasks that would be related to establishing that field. So, I'm just going to throw that out. It's not black and white. It's not simple, but you could get money. And then my last question. Well, hold on. So, just to address that and and to maybe make it clear that if this project would forward with an inind replacement turf for turf, we would not be able to use CPA money for any of that. Okay? Because we're not really changing the footprint of the fields. We're not installing anything new that might be eligible for CPA money. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. as a replacement. Last but not least, has has there been discussion about fundraising at all? Because when the fields were initially put in, as Kyle pointed out, there there was fundraising that was done for a substantial amount of money. I I haven't heard anybody even suggest anything like that. So, you can ask the community for for funds and to fund it. um maybe via CPC, maybe not, but is there going to be a fundraising component that would reduce the impact to the community? And I'll leave it at that. Thank you for your questions. There has been no discussion at this point with this

commission regarding any fundraising activities by any of the users of the fields. Any other questions? Yes, sir. All right. Chris Phillips, Phillips Drive. Uh just a comment on Kyle's presentation. Just so the public is aware, the Lex can may have inherent bias with some numbers. It is the Lexington Climate Action Network and Zero Waste Collaborative. So they have one goal and one goal only to promote grass fields. and Lexington actually in response to this approved a turf field kind and kind and they're working on another turf project right now. Thank you. Yes. Thanks uh Liz Braston uh Stone View Drive. Um just a couple things to clarify or ask regarding the presentation. Um, so the 51-year projection of the grass versus turf, we spoke about the rental a little bit. Someone asked about that. Was that put into consideration with those numbers in comparison? It was not. Okay. And from what I heard your reply to the other gentleman who asked that it goes into kind of like one bucket, not specific for turf, but it goes to the maintenance of all of the wreck department fields. Is that correct? Yeah. So, all of the permit fees that Michelle's team collects uh for the through through the permits go into a revolving fund. Okay. Uh the town collects those funds and we charge um against that for things like the crumb rubber we bought, fertilizer, paint, anything related to athletic fields. We do not use those funds for the maintenance work we do on town properties like town hall, uh town common. It's strictly for athletic field use, but turf revenue goes to grass and

turf maintenance. It does. Okay. Yep. Um, sorry, my screen just shut off for a second. Um, uh, the injury consideration comparison, was there um, does the additional added cushion or I forget the terminology that you used um, the shock pad. Thank you. Was that put into consideration with the injury um, comparison? I didn't factor it because it's sort of anecdotal from my knowledge level. Sure. But what the vendor has told us is the shock bad does give you a better Gmax value. Okay. So lower number with the statement that you would have I'm I'm not quoting directly but uh more um injury per se from turf that that gap between turf and field would lessen with the shock pad. As I said, I've seen studies both ways that turf is more hazardous, grass is more hazardous. I think pick the study to to fit your argument, frankly. Okay. Um my last question, I'm sorry. Uh at the last rec department meeting, we discussed um or someone brought up if it was possible for you to look at um potentially a bubble over the turf so that way we don't have to worry about snow removal and it could be used 247. Was that looked at? So, briefly, I I used uh that wonderful new tool chat GPT. Yeah. and kind of to ask some questions and it came up to a price tag of 14.8 million. So, okay, I discounted that without any additional research. Reasonable. Okay, thank you. Yes. Doug Fchonne, eight star circle. Uh just a point of clarification in your presentation you noted that uh uh grass fields have about a 25-y year lifespan. So, if I understand correctly, if a turf uh sorry, if a grass field was put in at

nutting, not only would it be a two-year potentially down period, but that usage factor that you mentioned about a four time more potential use on the turf field would have to be transferred to other fields within the community that are reaching, if I'm assuming correctly, way beyond the 25 year usage life of those grass fields. Is that a correct understanding of the math? I'm not sure I followed 100%. If nutting field was tr became a grass field, yes, the reduction in the amount of usage time would have to be transferred to other fields within the community in order to maintain the amount of use that's currently they're currently being asked to do would be transferred to other grass fields within the community that have long reached their 25 year lifespan. Is that I can't Okay, so I I do understand the question. I can't give you the answer. Um, you know, a number of things could happen. Nutting, the new nutting field could be overused. Some of the programs could be moved to other fields. Um, programs could be scaled back. But it's fair to say there would be an impact to the amount of usage time available on that in the given acreage. Yes, that's correct. Green in the You might let the young man go. Yeah. Come on up. All right. Uh Brad and Caldwell 7 Cold Spring Road. So as you said in your graph, you said that one turf field is equal to two to four uh grass fields. So I was wondering if you took that into account that gra that grass may be more expensive if you had two uh four grass fields compared to one turf field. That's a very astute observation and yeah, we did not call that out specifically in the in the budget analysis, but yes, in order to support the same amount of usage that we currently support with Nutting Road, we would have to have not just the Nutting

Road fields replaced with grass, but two more fullsize soccer fields put in place, which we don't have the space for currently. We don't have the money for. So, it is almost a non-starter. So what would end up happening is if we went to grass, we would not be able to support the same amount of playing time that we currently are able to support with Nutting Road, which means we either have to leverage other grass fields that this commission, this town, this commission does not have the authority over or cut the amount of time or opportunity for youth players to and and adult players to use at uh Nutting Road if it was grass. Thank you. to your question. And I guess very good question. I I would also add my point of view is that unfortunately as far as I know the town meeting that point was not emphasized even may not even be brought up to people to understand that you're not replacing one for one if you're going to keep the same usage you're replacing maybe two one or three to one. And we don't have the capacity for those other two or one or two fields. And had the town meeting known that clearly the vote may have been different. I don't know. But I don't think in my opinion was emphasized enough. All right. Uh yeah, over there. Uh Mitch Butler, 77 Carile Road. Furthermore, on on on that point, uh to triple the field, a lot of that usage is actually spring and autumn when a grass field may not be available at all. I found a a study uh relatively local Brookline 2020 did a study that said for them synthetic fields can provide three times the usage of natural grass fields and they have so that's kind of in your range up up and below that other studies I found were very interesting um many of which uh summarized by this dozens of government public health agencies and peer-reviewed studies that have evaluated exposure risks related to

artificial turf and recycled crumb rubber infill in the past decade have found that there is no evidence that the levels of chemicals in these products present a public health concern. So these these are studies from the EPA from Agency for Toxic Substances, National Toxicology Program, European Chemicals Agencies. A lot of these places probably don't have the same staff that they did a month or two ago from the layoffs. Um but I'd be happy to share this with uh anyone if you want to give me your email address. I can give you this collection of studies that talk about the um you know the environmental concerns um with turf fields. Uh it seems to me that uh that our children who drink out of plastic water bottles and who uh hold plastic iPhone cases in their hands who were raised in plastic car seats in our car uh have lived a lot around plastic as we are now with plastic tables and plastic chairs that we're sitting on. uh it may be a little bit of selective environmentalism to channel this energy into uh into the turf um field and the and the problems that there may be with turf. Just out of curiosity, how many people here today are in support of the turf fields? How many people came to to support this uh this notion? Thank Thank you to the members of the council for giving us this time to express what we feel so strongly about. Thank you for your comments. Sure. If you can be loud, that that's fine. All right. Michael Thatcher, Missy Lane. Uh, a question kind of a followup to Doug's is what would the effect on you sports be if Nutting Field was closed for a year or two to switch to grass given that I don't know that the rest of the fields of town could accommodate the number of teams

practices and games? Uh, it's very difficult to say. It's a great question uh because it's not just the youth sports, right? We also have WA makes heavy use of Nutting Road for their sports programs and we have a number of adult programs that use uh nutting. Um, we have not done that analysis, but I would say it would be very difficult to support the level of activity uh that those two fields currently support. If we were to use all the fields that the town has and when I say all the fields, the park and rec commission only has authority over town fields. We do have additional fields, but those are under the authority of the schools and they use them for school related programming. So, it's not like we have a surfet of fields running around and it would really be up to that uh that group to to I think take up the bulk of the load because we simply just don't have those fields. We have cap captain Hamilton and that's basically it outside of Jack Walsh of course. So, it's fair to assume that the number of teams that we would allow would go down, the number of kids that would be able to play would go down and that's be a big cut. Yes, sir. Hi, Jonathan Ash 13 Depot Street. Uh to to echo on that point, um I imagine we would use other fields that are either, you know, owned by the school or operated by the school. We might be renting fields um from other organizations at a cost. Um and I think that cost would be significant. Also, just want to ask a question to you, Mr. Fox. um the the sort of I understood the the $2 millionish sort of cost for for a like kind placement replacement whether that be for turf or for grass but given that we would need two or three grass fields was that $2 million or 20 or $2.1 million for one grass field or was that for that was for equivalent space 4.6 6 acres which matches the current. Okay. So, so 2.1 million for for the existing

four acres of grass, but we would need eight or 12 acres of grass to replace. So, it would be more like a $6 million event if the space was available and we wanted to have that much grass. That's correct. Correct. Thank you. All right. Just uh Thank you. Uh do you mind if I just take I have some questions online. So, just in for the fairness of folks that are all right. So, uh, Sue Thomas asks, uh, "Does this slide include disposal costs of turf field, the 50-year analysis?" Yes. Yes, it does. Uh, Donna Deoni says, "I think you said that a negative of Turfield." Hey, folks, if you're leaving, um, I don't I just want you to be aware. Does everybody understand what sort of might be happening next? because it's phenomenal that everybody is here this evening, but this is only one step and I think I talked a little bit about it when I answered Diane's question along the way to getting this done. So, and I'm not forcing you to stay. If you if you have to go, I get it. But I just want to let everybody here know that the outcome tonight will hopefully be the commission will decide they've had enough information to make a take a vote. And that vote on I don't know what they're going to vote. I I don't know. But let's just say they decide to move this forward. It will go on to the capital planning committee. Like I mentioned earlier, hopefully it will pass the capital planning committee's review and then and this is most important. It will go on to special town meeting. Special town meeting takes place in October on a Monday. You if you are interested in this project, what it seems like you all are, and I congratulate you on taking the time out of your very busy schedules. I get it everybody here. I've seen lots of kids and you know parents who probably have kids in sports. Tremendous on your part to come but you must come to town meeting. This is just one stop guys. Okay. So just want to make sure everybody knows that. Let your

fans and family members know because we want to have as many people there to make their voices heard either in support or in opposition of this project. All right with that I'm sorry you guys are free to go. So all right thank you for coming. Um, so I think you said that a negative of turf was expensive disposal, but I'm not sure I saw it in the financial analysis after 15 years. Was it included? We answered that question. And then while we're discussing, Sue says, "While we are discussing not being able to use grass in some sorts of weather, I think the field users are going to find that turf fields are increasingly unusable during heat. We hit the 80s last week. We will be hitting 90s routinely before the spring season is over and at the start of the fall season. Given the life of either field, we need to consider these new constraints in the analysis and the number of non-playable days on turf due to heat. Okay, we also have a hand up from Pete Dipmars. Could you promote him so we could hear him speak, please? Mike, can you have a second? Go ahead. Stop sharing if you don't see him. Uh Pete, can you hear us? You're on mute currently. There you are. Do you have a question? Hi. Sorry. Can you hear me? Uh you're gonna have to speak up. Hi. Can you hear me now? A little bit. Yep. A little bit. Okay. Sorry. Yeah. I I think some of my questions I I sent them in. I was trying I was waiting for the the chat to open up. I think it was the Q&A I should have been typing into all along. Oh, thank you, M. Anyways, um I have a I have a question. Um do we have statistics on how many hours per week we are using the nutting fields presently? I don't have that with me. We don't have that with you right now, Pete. I will tell you during the the main seasons, so spring and fall, they're typically in

use from when WA gets out of school until there's no longer light. And that's on the weekdays. And on the weekends, they're usually used from 8:00 a.m. all the way till 5:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sundays for games. Yeah, because I know a lot of the comparison between, you know, how many turf fields or how many grass fields you need for a tur turf field placement, it centers around that hours per use. So, if we know what our hours per use are, then we can maybe have a a more realistic comparison of them. Um, on the question of the 110,000 per year additional cost for grass, I had a question. I I see that it includes a full 65k for an additional senior senior laborer. How many labor hours per week are we projecting just for the nut and field uh maintenance? So, I I didn't get to that level of detail. The the analysis I took uh was kind of twofold. Um our crews are at capacity now. Uh we we currently do not meet the level of demand that um our users expect of us. And so to add um any amount extra and uh 4.6 acres of of grass field would be quite a bit extra automatically pushes us pushes us over the top where we would need an additional uh support. Um taking that a step further although I didn't include it in the financial analysis um for the cost of the field um itself the two to four times uh if we did expand uh to say two three or four times the grass space that additional employee would be able to help out with that additional grass space. Uh so hour per hour I didn't do that level of analysis. Uh but but you can see my I get the

concept. I wondered I figured you're probably close to capacity and that's why you needed just an extra person. It's an extra person you pay for them. Correct. I know that. Yeah. And I was thinking also of like your Jack Walsh and the field behind Robinson and people are complaining oh you don't have enough. Maybe it would be a beneficial thing from that perspective of turf management across the whole town would m would benefit from an additional person. It's just just one aspect to to to take into mind. You're you're fading on us, Pete. Oh, I'm sorry about that. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Okay. Um, so the um my watch Okay. Um, you did mention one of the cons was also sort of the the fumes and whatnot. Just a thing to throw out there. Um, a lot of the electric mowers now they're getting to the contractor grade. I didn't know if the town in general during their sort of um, capital equipment management has has thought about perhaps transitioning to an electric mower fleet. They have them now that can run for eight hours. They're big, you know, five foot wide things. So, uh, Pete, sorry Pete, on the interest of time, uh, we we are past. Let's just keep it on. I don't think that's within the Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. So, the one last thing that I would say is that, you know, I know people were were uh mentioning the Lexam and um there is another uh uh body out there uh the toxics use reduction institute right here in UMass Bo. They have a couple of case studies out there about towns that are doing management and did did make comparisons between turf and grass. They did end up going grass. Um so, there are examples out there. We've got Marblehead and Springfield as two two towns that have uh sort of made this decision themselves and they did end up choosing grass. Um I'm not sure it's the right choice for Westford at this point, but there are other communities that are picking grass over. So, thank you. Thanks, Pete. And I

did note that you had a question regarding uh the select board's policy on IPM. Have we considered an an organic approach for any of our fields? I would say so we do use organic whenever we can. Okay, thank you. Okay. Yes, you in the back. Thank you for your patience. Come on. If you can make your way up or that's all right. Go ahead. You can you can spring road. So, was any survey done to find out how many of the neighboring towns has grass field versus the the reason for asking that is because we want our players to have a fair chance of winning. Was the question are any qu survey? Yeah, the the question was, if I heard you correctly, have we done a comparison of Westford versus other towns and how many grass fields versus turf fields Westford has versus other towns? No. No. So, how many towns where our players go out and play has turf fields or grass fields? Because if our players practice and train on turf field and if they go out and play on grass fields, it's completely a different experience. So, we want to provide them fair chance of winning. Got it. Uh we did not do a formal analysis of that. Uh I will say as a as a former Westford Youth Soccer Association coach uh you know when I been coaching for three years most of the the you know the communities that we play against have turf fields. So I completely agree with you and I know from my past coaching I would have kids practice on grass and on turf for that very situation. So thank you for raising that point. All right we are kind of getting past uh our our we're getting a little bit past our budgeted time. So, if you have any other questions, let's just be very quick. You've already spoken, so could you mind? Well, I think it'd be fair if we let other people who haven't spoken. That's what I want to Sorry, Chris. I just want to ask that there's a lot of people here who support the fields, which I think is great. And maybe you're going to come up. I'd love to hear from the people who currently play on them and coach them and find out why they enjoy the turf so much. We can we can do that. So, the young gentleman in the back there, why don't you guys come up,

both of you, at the same time, if you don't mind. We have one more. Okay. offer. Do you want to join them? You can all you can come in too if you want. Go ahead, guys. Um, uh, did you take into consideration like the 100 Got to throw the tea here. Oh, yeah. If you could just identify yourself, your name and address, please. Owen Millet and I live on 97 Grten Road. Thank you, sir. Uh, did you ever consider the fact of the $125,000 they'd lose for each year they would switch it to grass? C can I just add we we actually did vote to move forward with uh the the the turf fields to go to town meetings. So, we're not we're not in opposition of it. The reason we're talking tonight is because there was a discussion at town meeting where folks wanted more information about the pros and cons, but this is the second time we're going to be uh we're going to be voting on this. first time we did vote to move forward with the turf field. So, we're we're not we're not on any real side of the argument. Uh we're just we're just here to provide more information. So, to your your question, the 125 number, what what is that you're referring to? Uh like they pay to use the turf, and I was just wondering, would they still pay to use the turf in the two years that we'd be switching it to grass? No. Well, so the way that the field fees are assessed, so we currently assess a flat fee per year to the youth sports groups, and that's for both the usage of grass and turf fields. So there might be a modification of that fee amount if there weren't as many fields for the teams to use. We would certainly meet with the team's leadership, the youth sports group's leaderships, and negotiate potentially a reduction in the amount that we would charge him for a field permit fee for those years that nothing would be offline. Yes, sir. Thank you for your question. Uh I'm Jack Troy from 10 Orion Way and I was just

curious on like how much the uh difference in like timing would be like between the like fields and how much if we were to switch it from to replace the turf versus to switch it to grass like after we like switch it like how much more time it would cost like to be difference between like all the other like different sports teams trying to play and like the timing in between each forced usage. What would the timing differential be? But to go back to my question, if you're reducing the amount of playing opportunities, what would be the forced time difference between in other words, five minutes between practices in order for get the usage out of the field. So that's sort of his question is like what is that differential going to be between turnover team to team in order to keep the same amount of usage that he's got today? But we t we currently run, you know, Jack W I mean Jack Walsh and Nutting pretty much back toback, right? Anybody who's been a member of those sports groups and have, you know, been on those fields, you have field, you have teams queuing up on the sidelines waiting to get on to the to the turf or onto their section of the grass. And in many cases, these teams aren't even enjoying an entire field. They're getting, say, a third of a field for their practice time because these fields are so overs subscribed. So if we were to move to grass, that situation would get worse because we can't support the same amount of usage. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Hi, I'm Ava Kenny and I live at 313 Pine Road. Um, and I was just wondering what the current conditions of the grass field like we have after the weather we've been having. I would defer to the players. Uh I mean obviously the grass fields have been closed number of days this year. Um seems to rain every

weekend unfortunately uh which is has impacted um the when we open them or close them. Uh that said, we're protective of the fields and part of the reason we didn't open them till late April 15th was to make sure that when the players did get on the fields, they were going to survive. So I would say the fields are in good condition at this point. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for your question. Uh okay, a couple more questions from uh remote folks. Uh it says Jacob is asking are towns considered today more attractive to live in whether the playing fields are grass or turf. I don't know if we can that's beyond the perview of we can answer that but thank you for the question. Uh Tim Swanson should we multiply by two the usability time per acre for turf over grass? So the net would be more like six to eight times the usage opportunity for turf per acre, 20 hours for grass versus 60 to 80 hours for turf. I think we've I think we've addressed that. Thank you for the question. And uh we have one from Sean Troy. Goose droppings are common carriers of disease, EC coli, and other dangerous to human compounds. Turf, since geese don't like it, can reduce this. Have you looked at these situations? Kyle, any thoughts on that? Yeah, I spoke to that during the presentation. Okay, thank you. All right, so we answered those questions. So, okay, with that in mind, unless there's any other further comments? Yes, Craig Burgess Drive. Um, it seems to me like there is strong support in the town for the turf field. 65% I would consider strong support. We unfortunately didn't get to that 2/3 threshold, but having a meeting of for that type of vote on a Saturday morning for youth families is the equivalent of holding a meeting and a vote in the middle of the night. We

just can't get there. And I know anecdotally there are a lot of people who would have gone and voted, but they had conflicts. So I'm just asking for your help to get it to a meeting where the youth families can participate. Thank you very much for that. Yes, as I mentioned earlier, it's my personal hope and I, you know, not speaking for the commission is that we continue to move this conversation forward in the hopes of bringing it to special town meeting which will be in October which is held on a Monday night at 7 p.m. So, it is a little easier for for folks to get to who have busy weekends. So, that would be potentially the next step. Um, with that in mind, I'm going to turn it over to commission. Commissioners, do you have any questions at this point for our DPW director? No. Yes. I have a question about the snow removal on the artificial turf. Was that just done in an emergency fashion to conduct the GMAX? So the no the scope of the removal we did this year uh because of the late snowfalls we had um the the scope we did which was the entire field surface for both fields was to allow for the maintenance of of the fields. Um the contractor had a window to to get our work done before he got busy with other uh previously scheduled commitments. Um, normally the uh the snow removal we've done is in limited areas uh particularly in that back far corner on field 2 where it gets a lot more shade. Typically we do uh smaller scale snow removal simply to quicken the process. Uh this year was unusual because of the nature of needing to get the repairs done um to facilitate the playability. Uh but normally we would not do the widescale removal unless it was

something the programs demanded and and you folks told us to. How exactly is the snow removal done? So typically again we would do it with a snowthrower. Uh we'd leave the the uh machine up a fair bit above the turf and just blow off the uh the snow. This year we again because we wanted to get the surface ready for the contractor, we were a little more aggressive with loaders and uh and did scrape more of the surface than we normally would. I'm generally in favor of this inkind replacement. Um, I just would hope there could be some consideration to maybe not throwing some of that material over the fence and kind of down over that retaining wall. Thank you. Thanks, D. Okay, any other questions from commissioners? Yeah, we um I just want to say thank you all for coming out tonight because I know, you know, time is, you know, very valuable and to be here on a Monday night is a lot. So, we appreciate you guys coming. Um, and I've I just kind of soak things up like a sponge. And I think what I'm gathering from your feedback as um town members as well as the commissioners points of view is we want to keep the users of the fields active and safe. We want to keep the fields in use and running so programs can run. Um, but we want to avoid injuries and potential contamination to users based on the materials that are used. So after all this, there was a slide, I believe, Kyle, that talked about organic options. I think there's a lot to be said about making sure that we use materials that are not harmful in the future. Like, have there been any longevity studies on the materials that have been used like the rubber or the little pellets? Um, I

looked at Envirroill. It is a little pricier, but there's been studies that show that it's a it's a, you know, a good alternative to using the rubber, which could contain PAS materials. So, I am I know a town member mentioned a concern about that. So, we want to make sure we're sensitive to that, but I also hear everything that you guys have said. So, we want to keep the programs running, keep everybody safe. Um, we just want to make sure we're doing it the right way. So, that's all I wanted to say. I think we can be in agreement with that. Um, so that's kind of what I had to say about that. Thank you. Yep. And just just to close out on that, we did hear from some concerns like that. Our original budget was $1.5 million. The commission recommended an additional $500,000 so that we could look at more environmentally sustainable or safe, if you will, infill material. So that was taken into account and is part of our current budget process or budget proposal, I should say. All right. Um, so commissioners, any other questions, comments, uh, next steps? motion. A motion would be nice. Yes. Uh I I'll make a motion to uh approve this uh this plan to go with the inind replacement and uh leave it to the town town special town meeting vote in October. So you motion to move forward with the replacement of the fields with artificial turf. Correct. Subject to the budget that we previously uh recommended. Yes. I'll second the motion. I second. All right, we have a motion on the table. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, I'll call for the vote. Uh, just because we're remote, I'm just going to we'll call it. Well, actually, no, we we're not remote. We're here, so we're good. All right. All right. All those in favor say I. I. And it looks like the motion carries unanimously. Thank you very much this evening for all the folks that came and we look forward to seeing you

October. Uh, please stay aware of what's going on. October special town meeting Monday night. Thank you so much. It should be very early on the agenda if it does make it that far. Thank you, Kyle. All right, so you seem happy. Yeah, I need is our next person. Why did he not join the chat? So far, I haven't seen him. He sent me an email saying we still shooting for 710 7:15. Um, just replied to him. I might have his number. I sent him my number. No. So the funding that they approved prior to generating is three levels. Crumb rubber which is what we use now. EPDM rubber which is a better quality of rubber or the pill which was just talking about the previous unfortunately it's yeah it's the turf that the CBA is about contracting. Good thought though. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much. So I think if we have the budget for it, we still have a meeting going on. I'm happy to take questions by email afterwards. My email is on the town website. If you go to the park commission's web page, you can get my email there. It's c barrett westm.go. All right. No, thank you. Happy to do I mean, it's ironic because it's like stay listen to our

review of the minutes. That's a good point. Like if we were at this stage like you know what I mean? Not by them probably. Yeah, we're going to do that. Not by the people. Okay, guys. We're still waiting for our 7:15 um item, but I think we're far enough along. We're going to move to our third 7:30 agenda item, which is a review of the American Legion equipment building refur refurbishment request. Uh we sent a proposal out to you. This is coming to us uh from Westford Youth Softball and Baseball Association. They have worked with a contractor who is willing to do a fair amount of renovation of the equipment facility that is at the American Legion Fields or Granitefield Fields. If you enter the complex, uh go past the basketball courts, it's the building on your left. Um it would be no cost to the town. Uh this would be if we endorse it. Um it would go then to the select board for approval. Um so I'll take any questions. The proposal has gone to our DPW director. Um and I also think it would have to be approved by the building commissioner if I is that correct? Y it'd have to meet their requirements. Their requirements. So yeah, clarify. I thought the request had that the the donators would be able to put a banner of something coming up recognizing their their input of their donation. That is absolutely right. Thank you for bringing that up, Mike. That is correct. In lie of of receiving remnumeration, they were asking to put banners up. Yes. Okay. Which the Westford Youth Softball Baseball Association are in favor of doing. Okay. But that say that's the only request that Okay. Approving the them to do it. There's no funding. No funding. It's just uh and no work. No, you Kyle, you would not have to use any people to do

this work. Nope. I think it would be appropriate if you if the commission thought to uh to make a recommendation to the select board that may help them in their um decision- making process. Okay. Um so, a motion Dan or a question? I'm curious. This building, is it going to have the same use? No, we're not. Are they trying to make it like a food thing? No, it'd be the same use and storage. And And one thing I would add, the uh we went through quite a bit of work the last year plus on the Graniteville um Chris Rosenberg, he's he's been watching the whole meeting on on the Graniteville upgrade project. And this building was not included. Oh, he was in that. So, okay. Uh to me, this is a right pretty great um opportunity uh for the town. Was there all right a bathroom in that building or there is bathroom that's going to be improved or made it they'll still be usable? They said they were going to improve them. Yeah. In the proposal. We don't do anything with this building um parks maintenance wise, right? Uh we view it as a program building. Okay. Any other questions? I make a motion to approve the request to have the renovation done by these vendors and allow the banners to be appropriately hung. I'll second it. I'm sorry. Can we second? I'll second. Oh, thanks Deon. All right. Okay. Do we have enough votes if I because I didn't hear the conversation of that. So if I recuse myself, you can recuse yourself. You're you're fine. There's a quorum. So even if you do, thank you for that though. Um I mean we're happy to catch you up. No, I I think people's time. Okay. Um Okay. So we have a motion. Any discussion on the

motion? All right. Seeing none, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor of Mike's motion, please say I. I. Any in abstension? I. One. And none uh in not abstension. Did I do it wrong? No. Abstension. Yeah. Okay. So, we're 501. 501. 501. Yes. Thank you. Okay. We're going to swing back to our 7:15 agenda item, which is we're very behind. Um behind. We're on regular schedule. Yeah. This is normal. This is nor Come on, guys. Give me a break. See, this is what's confusing me is because Oh, he signed in as me. That's why. All right. Chris, can you hear us? Yes. Chris, thank you. I I um I guess the link that I clicked on just made me made me you. Um so living a day in the life here. So thank you for for welcoming me. And I guess everyone left. I guess I'm not the main event here. Um but that was a very spirited conversation. So you guys got some cool things going on. Um I will keep this um extremely brief um and happy to come back to answer any questions or or anything uh like that moving forward. Um, I've been working with Matt um uh over the last year now to bring self-service kayak stations um to to the state um and in this case specifically Westford. Can you guys see my screen uh by chance? Yep. Okay, cool. So, um th this is what we do. We make your waterway. make your park system more accessible uh by uh providing uh selfservice uh recreational opportunities, right? And so um again, we'll keep this extremely high level. We started off seven years ago um the founder of our company created the technology that provides and allows for self-service equipment rentals. So, you

guys have seemingly heard of um uh Bird Scooters, um Segways. This is our technology that we've licensed out to other companies, right? And so, we've been doing bike share, bike rentals for seven years. Um over the over that time, we've, you know, heard from from folks in similar seats to you, how do we make our lake, our river, uh more accessible? And so, we developed a self-service kayak station. Fast forward and you go over to the right side of the screen here. Um we work with park uh with parks to make recreational um equipment accessible, right? And so um you know we constantly see ping pong um courts or cornhole courts in in parks. The bottom line is uh cities all over the country are paying for these things and nobody is playing them, right? uh let's not sugarcoat it, you know, rhetorical, but even if everyone who left the room is back in the room, I'm I'm fairly certain not one person had a ping pong paddle in their pocket or or bean bags when they go into a park. And as a result, nobody really interacts with your existing amenities. The same goes with um items like disc golf um and and basketball and volleyball and so on and so forth. So I will stay focused here as I know uh this is meant to discuss kayaks but just wanted to paint the picture here right we are not just a kayak company right we are in over 300 if you factor in bike locations 300 locations in the country um many of the people who who were just in the room have probably interacted with rent fund we are in Maynard Massachusetts um you guys are double plus the population of of Maynard uh Um, I'm going to try to share my screen here again. I don't know. The Zoom is a little weird here.

Okay. Maynard. And again, you guys are the experts. I live uh, you know, somewhat near you over in kind of right over the border from Great Barington. Um, so I don't know all the local rivies or politics, but I know that Maynard has half the population as you guys um and services your community as it relates to providing people a chance to get out on the water. Um, Maynard um, in their first year working with us put a self-service kayak uh, rental station in town. They did 478 rentals. If you do 300 a year over five years, you recoup your initial investment all while offering this amenity to your community. 2023 they did 478. 2024 they did 724. Uh all right, so that's a 52% increase in their first two years. They are one of our top performers in the country. Um especially for a town of their size. So I guess if you go pound-forpound, they're probably the strongest. um partner in the country when you factor in population. Um yeah, so um again, I'll just share this picture real quick. Again, we are not just kayak people. We go into towns and cities, partner, build courts, um and allow for people to rent the equipment needed to play said amenities. Uh you do not need us to build the court. We can activate your current amenity with the rental kiosk. Um, and now I will get back to a fully focused presentation here on why you brought me in, which are is the kayaks. Um, so just wanted to paint that picture for us here. This is never easy sharing between screens. Okay, cool. So the way we partner is um by again activating your waterway. We do all the work. You guys

pay Chris, you're still on the uh the uh cornhole picture. Cornhole picture. Okay. Thank you. Um awesome. So, bottom line is we do the work on this. This is not um here I'm not here to scare the crap out of the parks team. You guys are not picking up um you know your 1 million and and third uh to-do list item this summer. Um, this is something that we as the operators handle and do all the work on. So, we work together to find a spot that works best for you guys and we um install something like you see on the right side of my screen here. We handle everything. So, after we follow your approval process, everything goes how you want it to go. I answer questions. You beat me up by asking questions. We get you answers. At the end of the day, as soon as an agreement is signed, we take over. We handle the delivery and installation. We handle equipment replacement as equipment naturally wears and tears. We resupply you with brand new equipment, no fee to the city. We also handle all of the maintenance. So, we hire we bring a commun a job, a part-time job to the community. We hire a part-time uh maintenance technician. They live within 30 minutes of town. Could be somebody on staff, an intern, a cousin, a neighbor. We interview people. We train them um and then we hire them. Uh they meet our install our head of install um on site, put together your station and build it on site. Uh meet meet the team um and we go from there. This person is on call. They handle any issue that may arise within 48 hours. They also come twice a month to service the station. They inspect all the equipment. They clean everything. Um, when people go end their rental, um, they need to through the app, and I'll explain how that works in a quick second, they need to submit a photo of

all the equipment back inside the locker. Included in that locker is a a two seat kayak, a single kayak, andor a standup paddle board. You guys get to choose the variation. We can always swap out based on word of mouth or data what your community needs and wants. Um, they need to submit a photo to end the rental. The photo shows all the equipment back inside the locker. The technology reads that, ends the rental um and and charges the renter for the time that they use the equipment for. If let's say um Chris loses his life vest out on the lake, um that return will end. Chris will be as the user charged for that missing life vest and then this top right locker, let's say, will be moved to out of service. We don't want the next person obviously coming to rent without a life vest. The technology will then again lock that locker and notify and dispatch that full service maintenance technician immediately. Uh they have 48 hours to replenish your locker with brand new replacement equipment. We keep spare equipment in market so that we can turn this around as quickly as possible. The bottom line guys, I'm I'm an entrepreneur. I've worked in other fields. Uh vendors stink. Um I think we can all be self-aware. Most vendors we all have trouble with. uh whether it's someone coming to fix something in your house or or in recreation, cities have time and time again left have been left holding the bag. What we've done at Rent Fund and and why I took this job and continue to work here is kind of the mission that we're on. By sh flipping the script and sharing um a a strong percentage of the revenue that comes in on these, we have considerable uh skin in the game. This isn't, hey, drop off a kayak locker. uh Westford gets it, they're excited, and now all of a sudden they can't reach Rent Fund anymore. Um because Rent Fund has transitioned and move on, moved on to something else. That's the current system. And no vendor does that on purpose. It's just how their company is

built. What we do is we flip the script. I'm I'm the saleserson, but I'm also your account manager. Uh I get CC whenever whenever a piece of equipment broke it gets broken. Just to cut this short, the most extreme point on the scale is rent fund is losing revenue when you guys are out of equipment. And so my CEO, me, my head of operations again get CCD on that note. Um the whole goal here is to keep this at 100% health um as frequently as possible because we're all letting down the community if so. So, this is something that we own. Um, and you're not gonna be looking where the heck is Chris uh when we have a question type of thing. So, I'm happy to answer any questions on that. But I I will cover the the the basics real quick. We also do the local marketing. We create a website for your program. If anyone goes to rent.fund and click on Maynard or any of our other uh 300 uh partners and you see the micro website that we create for you guys, bottom line is uh you guys would link out to this um from your government website and your community would know exactly how this works uh before ever stepping foot in the park from pricing GPS coordinates a Google map how to find the station to a video on how to rent and return. We have an FAQs section. Nobody is meant to be calling Chris's office, the parks department, and asking questions. Uh, our signage directs people to contact us for any reason, right? We can open and lock this locker from afar. Again, help people with billing issues, not being able to access the app, whatever it is. Um, again, that customer service is 20 hours a day, seven days a week. Uh, we do it all. Most importantly, potentially, we handle the liability insurance on this. So you guys are added as additionally insured um covering you as it relates to this program. The city is entirely indemnified. Excuse me. The

town is indemnified. Um if we were to get sued and we haven't been sued once in seven years, but if we were, you know, we know how the world works, you guys would probably get dragged into that lawsuit. We would cover the town's legal fees. Again, you guys would be indemnified. Uh we work with towns as small as 800. We are uh on the truck going right now. We are installing in Myrtle Beach, um Virginia Beach, um 36 units there and in the inner harbor in Baltimore. So, a wide range all to say that this uh insurance plan fits um just about basically every all 300 of those towns use this exact same insurance plan. Happy to answer any questions and and take this where you guys want. Just for the sake of time, just want to give the highest level of overviews. All right, Chris, thank you so much. and appreciate your time this evening and again apologize for getting to you late in the evening. So, uh, this was a great presentation. We'll take questions from the commission at this point. Any questions? Just raise your hand, please. Oh, we got Mike. Go ahead, Chris. Two, two. Great presentation, by the way. Um, two questions. The number of kayaks available that would depending on what the agreement is with the town in terms of what what our needs might be. Yeah. Abs. Absolutely. So we we do things in in um in numbers of four, right? So a four kayak station is kind of, you know, your dipping the toe type of, you know, um uh offering. Listen, I I you're not going to hear me say 12 if you don't need to. We want to fit your community. The issue that I have with the four is if somebody loses a life vest, you're out 25% of your fleet for two days, right? I typically promote the eight unit station. eight unit, you're never really going to have an issue with inventory. Um, if you have all eight kayaks out at one time, that's that's a that's a decent problem to have. Um, and at the eight unit mark, you can mi mix

and match. You could have four single kayaks, two tandem kayaks, and two standup paddle boards. All of a sudden, your office is getting, you know, hit with, you know, we're always running out of those standup paddle boards. We can always swap out. You don't pay, you would pay for expedited shipping if you wanted to swap out. Again, the value here is that when you we're making money when you guys make money. So, we charge the the least we could possibly charge. You know, full disclosure here, we make $2,800 on an install. So, thank you. Where we make our money is on the rental revenue. What What is the typical cost of the rental? Is it per hour? Per and how much per and what is it cost per hour? Exactly. So, we do twohour pricing. We do $25 for the first two hours. Uh, hours three through four, your total would be $40. Okay. We do also have a membership program. And so, with some some, you know, locations near you, the the benefit of the the the membership program is to make this super affordable. So, what that looks like is a member signs up, they can sign up at the station itself or online. It's $99 a year. And that entitles the user to all you can play or in this case all you can paddle for an entire year. So if Chris goes kaying and he introduces Mike to to this Mike's never even seen this station before. Uh Chris every time he goes to rent as a member gets two kayaks at a time. We want this to be social. We want this to to to basically make help people get outside again. Right. I'm not going to go into the whole spiel. I coach youth baseball. My my kids are arguing at 10 a.m. on a summer Saturday, you know, whether it's grass or turf fields. Um, you know, who's playing and Xbox baseball uh at 11 o'clock in the summer, right? You know, what's going on? Let's, you know, let's help people. Let's make

uh uh park amenities modern so that kids, adults, you know, an open spot of grass isn't, you know, and some imagination isn't enough anymore. And so, uh, yeah. So again, $99 a year all you can paddle and that goes for not only your station but any of our station across the country. So that entitles people to drive up to Maynard, drive down to um Denim if that's how you pronounce it. Um apologies if not Plymouth, Connecticut. I know these are, you know, maybe an hour or two away. Uh, but if you find yourself in the inner harbor going to, as much as this hates pains me to say as an Yankees fan, go to see the Red Sox pound on the the Baltimore Orioles, you're probably staying in the inner harbor. You guys get to uh your your members would get to borrow a kayak for no added cost. That includes our disc golf, our basketball, wherever we have a station, uh, that member would be able to use unlimited amount of times throughout the year. Um each time a member uses a piece of equipment uh $5 to $8 gets kicked back to the town. Okay. Is there an age limit for making There is um for the kayaks it is 18 plus. So you are signing a waiver as part of the rental. The waiver releases the town from any liability. Um you're clicking a box that you were 18 plus. It's an insurance thing. We tried to do this for 13 plus a $35,000 station turned into 70,000. Insurance is um as as many of you know is is not uh trying to um they like 18 plus. So again, that's what insurance covers you on as a parent. Of course, you can allow your kid to go on out on the kayak when you rent for them. You know, I'm not saying that, of course. Um but that that can happen. The insurance is covering the user when they're 18 plus. See, Chris,

you said each rental gives the town between five and $8 revenue. Uh that is for the membership if we are working together, right? Um and uh Mike goes out for a rental and he pays $25 for the two-hour rental and he returns it at the two hour mark, he pays $25. In that case, uh the city would receive 30% of the revenue. So 30% of the revenue on the standard rental um a a smaller portion on the membership. So they pay $99 and you get a small cut every time they use even if they you went to use in Baltimore you would get like $3. If they use your station you get like $6 or $7 type of thing. Hopefully that makes sense. Do you with the tandem kayak rental uh does that allow for a parent to take their kid out or is it all users have to be over 18? Same question. The ins I I do last thing I want to do is is tote the insurance uh person line. Um yes I have to say you have to be 18 years old to rent. Now, each parent can choose to to to disregard that and bring a minor on with them if the, you know, not if the worst were to happen, the insurance doesn't cover someone who's less than 18 years old, right? You're you're clicking a box saying that you're 18 years old. Um, again, I don't want to sugarcoat it. More times than not, nothing happens and nothing, you know, it's all good. um for lack of the the best term, but uh again highlighting the the the insurance line is you are covered if you're 18 plus and that's you know the bird scooters

virtually anything recreational is 18 plus for insurance purposes that we're aware of. So Chris, for a typical installation like you're showing on the screen here, what does that run the municipality? This the pricing. Sorry, the question I had was for the typical for an installation like you have showing on your screen. What is that? What's the cost to the town to have that set up and installed? Yeah, absolutely. Let's let's discuss. So this is all just showing the the tutorial screen, right? When you when you show up to the station, you download the rent fund app, you add your credit card for secure payment, uh you sign that liability waiver, you watch a tutori a safety tutorial um as as as documented here. Um before the the app screen turns to a camera screen, that's where you scan the QR code and take out the equipment. Again, you use it for as long or short as you'd like. You pay for the time that you use it for. You're not on any type of set clock for return. for pricing. Uh this is what the pricing looks like. It's a little unique but pretty straightforward. We we'll stay with that eight-unit example. This price here is a onetime fee. Uh just to be, you know, uh corny. If we are in partner partnership for a hundred years, you paid us one time $35,000. Our uh agreements run on a five-year uh term. We are committed to you for those five years. We're not leaving. We're not we're changing service levels no matter what. At the end of those five years, there is no cost to renew virtually. We need a location license. We need your permission to continue to operate this on your land. Um you want to renew, we just keep doing what we're doing again. You would never pay us again uh to operate this station. This 8 unit and the 12 unit are can be split up. So a 12 unit can be a one single 12 unit in a

spot. It could be an eight in one location, a four in another. It could be three fours scattered around town. Same with the eight unit. So again, onetime fee of 35,000. Uh we share 30% of the rental revenue. It's a fiveyear term and at the end of those five years, there's no cost to renew. Um we handle all of the logistics um and supply all the equipment. Any questions on that? Happy to clarify anything. So h having been in a similar situation if uh we went forward and this would have to get approved and funded through various mechanisms in town and we wouldn't be we probably wouldn't be talking about an install until spring of 2026. Is there a way to lock in these prices? Because uh that the approval to do so would be tied to the quoted prices and if those changed between now and the installation, it would make it difficult to uh to move forward. Absolutely. So listen, prices will go up, right? Um prices went up $6,000 last year. We doubled in size, right? Um, in terms of sheer number of partners, uh, rental revenue, uh, we we launched in Virginia Beach. They started off with 24 kayaks. Um, again, we're bringing another 36 uh just a 3 months after they launched, right? And so the the short answer is yes, we could lock in this pricing. Uh, we would need a contract to do so. Um how we would structure that is you know listen we I I can be we can be very um uh nimble I guess on this we would uh lock in pricing for let's say the 35 and I would structure the payment terms in

which you would not pay until the station is installed. So that would be something along the lines of, okay, we sign a contract in May uh or possibly June at the 35,000 rate. Um and you make zero payments until we eventually um install. Listen, if you guys are worried because it's a whole year out, I can make it uh dependent on board and funding approval where if for some reason this falls through, I know it's not, you know, you know, listen, it's it's government. you guys pay when when you buy something. If something falls through and you need the 35 for something else, it's all good. You don't owe any any money, right? So, um we can help you out here by having a signed contract and again not making anything due until it's installed as well as give you that that clause where if you don't get again quote unquote board approval or we can choose a different term. If you don't actually get that, you you have an out in the contract where you pay zero dollars. You're you're tied to us 0%. Chris, I have two other questions. One, in Massachusetts, are you aware of any of the communities using CPC money for that or is that something you're not aware of? If you know what the CPC is, haven't haven't encountered that. Haven't encountered CPC money. um ARPA funds, TIFF um have been to two um other kind of ways people have paid for this grants. Um there there are some very cool uh nonprofits um in the state doing cool things to activate and make getting out on on rivers and lakes uh a lot more accessible. Um stuff like that. Um yeah, so not CPC specifically. Okay. My other question was you said two hours is

$25. If someone comes back in two hours and 20 minutes, do they pay the entire three hour $40 price or is it prrated for that 20 minutes? They they would then pay $40 um between you and me, we are in the business of building loyal members, right? We want the the the grand picture here. And we have several uh park systems that do this. They have bikes, they have kayaks, they have uh cornhole boards and ping pong tables, and you have the whole park system operating via rent fund. We want to build a membership base. If anybody, literally anybody responds via customer service, why did I get paid get charged, excuse me, three hours? I only went for we're refunding them every single time. We we're not stick with we're not trying to make an extra $622 or $15. We want that person to come back, have a great time, and come back and bring friends with them. So, um, you know, you you would pay uh either 25 or 40. Um, but again, if anyone chats our customer support, we're going to refund them every time that that extra money that they were charged. Uh, question for you. Do you know the percentage of users who rent like on a one-time basis versus the number of members that you have? Yeah, it's much more um one time, right? Um the the membership is kind of the grand goal here. Um I would say it's probably 955 95 allocart rental. um where the members we launched them we launched the membership this year right so and we're in May right so I I with the weather not even sure a lot of the northeast locations are actually turned on right now and

active because of the weather right um so it infancy stages here uh the bottom line is the membership tends to work for the enthused local who's now using this five, six, seven times and starts to to do the obvious math, right? Put yourself in the situation of, well, wait a second. Should I just buy my own kayak, right? And this $99 fee instead of you losing that person, that $5 to 8 per rental is a lot more than zero because that person is going to continue to rent from your site. uh you're going to get people from Maynard coming in into Westford to to try your station. The we see the the data shows that the more stations uh are not competition. They just fuel and increase kayaking in the area. You know, again, I eat lunch. I I play golf. I I do a few other things, but those two specifically, you're not always trying to do the same thing every day. Pick your favorite hobby, right? uh one day you're going to go sit in the lake and not paddle and listen to music with friends. Other time you're going to you're going to go down the creek on an exercise paddle type of thing, right? And so um again, you're going to see a lot of influx uh from folks in Maynard. They've proven that this is uh something that is um that they love. Um again, 780 774 rentals is is no joke. Um they kayak. They're going to come try your kayaking before a lot of your locals even realize that you guys have put this in town. Right. So, Chris, can you tell us what is the season for Maynard so far? When does it open and close? Yeah, Maynard has has historically o historically over the

last two years. Um, started in May. Um, started in May. I'm I'm going to save you all from trying to re try to share all those screens again. And I'm looking at it myself to spare you. Um the first year in 2023, they launched in July and had 478 rentals. That's when we installed them. Um in in 2024, they opened their station in May and did 12 rentals. In June, they did 208. In July, they did 206. August 177. September 144. October 49. Okay. So seasons May through October essentially. Yeah. Can I I have a question. So Maynard it's not it's kind of apples and oranges. So there's not a lot of parking at Ice House Landing and you can't swim there. So the the amount of people who show up there for recreation is far lower than what we typically would get at Forge. Do you have any communities that have a a pond or a lake approximately a mile across that's uh that has ample parking that's uh already an existing recreation spot as uh an apples to apples comparison because I think Mayor's great and it's great they're doing so well but that it's uh far less the only benefit they have that we don't have is that it's on the rail trail so they get bicycle traffic but I don't think that's a significant draw compared to what we typically get. Yeah. Well, I I I guess what I'm trying to do is is answer your very question by flipping it by saying like you guys are I've looked at the parks. You guys are in a way better position to succeed using this program than Maynard. And Maynard is one of our best performing partners. Right. So Maynard has, again, you said it, Matt, uh no parking or very limited parking.

you know, it's a I'm not going to say not a nice lake. It's decent, right? And it's doing this, right? So, I can by by all means go crack some data, look over um some more like pertinent sites that are more directly um similar uh to Westford's, but I think this story is almost more compelling. you're within a 20 minute radius. You have a town that as far has half the population than you has not nearly as nice uh you know I use the term gen uh broadly as nice um not equipped to serve um recreation as well as you guys are and they did 724 rentals last year. So even if your community doesn't embrace this to the levels that Maynard's does, you're still going to get traffic from Maynard from folks who are going to come. They're not going to 724. They have 382 unique users. They're not just going to stay in Maynard and kayak. They're going to want to see what's going on in in Westford and they're going to come kayak in in your region. you guys as the second launcher of this in the you know in that general sphere um are going to pick up their traffic. It's a Burger King opening up next to a McDonald's type of scenario. Totally. So Matt Chris, what happens if at the end of the five years we decide to you know move on? Who how does this unit get removed? We come and pick it up. Okay. And there's no cost at that point. There's no what? Sorry. No additional cost to the town for removal. No, you guys can. You've already paid. So, I mean, you can keep this out there for a again, I I know you're I understand the question. You can keep this out for a hundred years. You can keep this out for 5 years. We'll come pick it up whenever you want. Um, but again, you have the right, you have the option to keep this out there as long as you want. That $35,000 fee, um, you know, you have the ability to keep it

out there forever. What What happens if it turns out It's grossly underperforming in terms of the amount of rentals. Is there any point where you guys would say we no longer want to have to support this facility? Short answer, no. We're never going to come pick this up. We want to grow regionality. Again, the bottom line is you I'm zooming out because you guys I know you're not privy to data and how this works as closely as I am. the fact that your neighbor has 724 rentals, Maynard's population is going to automatically keep your station in good standing because they're going to have at least 100 uses if not 200 uses per year from Maynard residents alone based on uh you know how people use nearby stations once we install in in a town, right? um not worried at all about your your guys' station based on what we're seeing in in in around your area. But to more specifically answer the question, um the only thing that we would not in the business we're in the business of kind of creating networks because those perform better. So we would never come and just say, "Hey, you're you're not doing well. We're coming to pick up our station." What would happen is we would come to the table at the end of five years and ask you to renegotiate the revenue split. All we're going to do is want to break even. So if we're if you're getting again, we're talking about if you're getting less than 100 rentals a year, we would want to say, "Hey, we're losing money on operating this. If we shifted to 80% 20% revenue split instead of 7030, we break even and don't lose money on this. Are you amendable to that new revenue split? You could say f off, kick rocks. Um, but there's a good chance you say, "Yeah, that that's fine. We're still servicing

a small percentage of our population." Um, and we would keep it there. Again, I I'm a far Matt knows I I've worked with him uh in the past. I I'm not here to overpromise whatsoever. Um I I wouldn't be as confident or telling you as strongly if you didn't have a neighbor 20 minutes away doing 724 rentals in their second year. Chris, we got another question for you. Do you? Shoot. Hi Chris. Um I'm glad you're not worried about our town. That makes me feel a little better. Um but I love the premise of this company because the main goal is to keep people active and get them out and enjoying nature. Um I have two questions. The first question is when it comes to the service um it says standard marketing package. Would that include you marketing Westford as a um what what like a a sendoff location to other towns that have the rentals already installed like Maynard. Would you you know advertise to Maynard and say hey Westward's now a part of this. you can now go enjoy Forge Village or whatever wherever we end up putting this kayak rental. Does does that include like this version of like just telling people about it? Because I think one thing people often miss when it comes to a new opportunity is it's not marketed properly. So people don't even know it exists. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? Absolutely. So that was my first question. Yeah, thank you. I'll answer that one first. Um well and then I'll listen to the second one. Um we market this um in terms of building that website, right? Um where I agree with everything you just said. You know, time and time again I hear from parks directors during this process, you know, we have to spend taxpayer dollars

responsibly, you know, so on and so forth. But then when we go to install it there that that sentiment seems to disappear. This is about awareness. This is somewhat unique, right? It's not automatic that people are going to drive by and know exactly what it is. It's an awareness campaign. All we see that leads to success is some organic social post. You don't have to spend money. You don't have to go crazy. um let your community know that this exists and what it is. A simple video um I can share examples at some point of what other communities do. It's not that much um nor is it that much um needed to uh make the community um aware of this. Um so we create that website, you guys link out to it. Um we can send promo codes to you guys. We can we can work with you can work with our design team to create things if you wanted to. I have a a program where they wanted to print out cards, little postcards with the QR code linking to that website and they went kind of you know like you guys um uh you know um you know go to local businesses for the baseball fence kind of advertising right at the local hotel. You put this card in the lobby, right? can you put this at the deli um counter, right? And just make people aware of it. Um that's kind of the key. Um that that that's kind of the answer in in a nutshell. Uh we're not doing the SEO or anything like that, but we also uh that's because we don't we don't see success tied to that. It's really simplistically down to just do people know that this is here and do they know what it is? It's very clear on the instructions how to use it. Again, we we do the customer support. that we've learned over time where people get have gotten tripped up and and we make it as

simple as possible. Okay. No, that makes sense. So, it's it's kind of a marriage of what we do as a community and how we kind of push the information out there and then you work on your end to make the website, you know, aesthetically pleasing and whatnot. That that makes sense. So, um yeah, and and just to interrupt, sorry, ju go to if anyone later go to rent.fund fund and you'll see exactly what other what we've built for other cities. You guys can have some say in the content that you put in there, right? Um Yeah. Yeah. Um the other thing is if if you do have a tourism department, they love this, right? I mean, it's not uncommon for, you know, the Main Street Business Alliance to bring this to the town manager and say, "Hey, this helps bring hyper it helps improve hyper local tourism. or getting people countywide or the next town over a town 20 minutes away. People are coming here obviously not just because they can rent a kayak, but you can rent a kayak. Oh yeah, that bookstore is there. Oh yeah, that restaurant. And it just spurs uh more more, you know, hyper local tourism to say to say the least. Okay, sorry for cutting you. No, that that answered my question. Thank you, Chris. And then the second question I had, you mentioned something about um disc golf and basketball. Yeah. Uh it I mean disc golf ranges. I'm only aware of a couple within a 30 mile radius of here. I've played on one of them. Um, is that service is it like you scan the code and you get the discs out of a locked thing or is it um I I I kind of want to hear because if people are really interested in lifetime activities like that's table tennis lawn games disc. Yeah, like that picture right there. Oh, they are in a little box. Yep. So, we've applied the same technology. You know, listen, there's like two other kayak companies

out there. I'm not going to speak negatively uh on any of them. One of them has 13 locations. They they it's a YouTube company. They've got 13 locations. They do kayaks. We do we we've been doing this for seven years. We have over 300 partners. We are growing. We build things. The city of Sedona, Arizona has a big putting green. We found two-piece putters that screw on. Um you know, you wouldn't bring it out to the course. Um, not that it would affect my putting, uh, um, but, uh, you know, they they are recreationally approved and and and solid, um, and are two-piece putters that go in here. I have people who have, um, uh, binoculars and trail maps. They have a bird watching tourism that that flocks to to their community. I have a campground offering small, uh, you know, the mini tailgate propane tanks in here. Anything that could fit in a 12 by 12 inch box that your community would be interested in renting out, we can service. Um, disc golf jumps out because you can't just show up to the disc golf course with a with a Dick Sporting Goods Frisbee, right? It doesn't work like that. So, you know, if we start to think about it, you know, if you have a disc golf course, what percentage of the community is that serving? Small a very small percentage. But I think if if you put it out there like I mean a lot of people don't even know you need three discs, you need a driver, a mid, and a putter. So it's like but at the end of the day, I think if we can offer these opportunities to our community members, not only will it bolster the opportunities of people maybe even coming to live in this town, like, oh, this town has these opportunities. I have kids growing up, yada yada. Or say you're old, you can't play soccer or football or lacrosse anymore. you might that might be a selling point to even, you know, moving closer to Westford or living in Westford. So, I I I like this idea and I think it's, you know, there's a lot of good that can come of it. Have

you figured out how to do a two-piece tennis racket? Not yet, but um it will get loud in Westford if you guys want to do a pickle ball um one. Mike, you got comments on that? Good luck with that. But yes, I mean, pickle ball, disc golf, um, you know, th those are the the two or three most popular. Um, again, I showed you like the the cornhole and and those tailgate games again because nobody has the equipment on them when they go to play, right? Um, again, the disc golf. Yeah, this comes with a carrying case and those three uh discs needed to play. Um, and for these ones, we charge $5 an hour. We keep the spare equipment right under uh the box. Um, so if something breaks, we can easily uh replace it. It works exactly like the kayaks. You scan the code. Um, you pay for the time that you use. It's the same maintenance technician. It's all on the same app. And that the programs cross-promote each other. Again, if somebody signs up as a member, they have unlimited usage for disc golf, kayaks, and potentially whatever else you guys um are interested in in renting out to the community. Awesome. Any other questions for Chris? I have a Yes. So, Chris, we have Michelle here, our director of recreation. Hi, Chris. Hi, Michelle. Hi. How are you? Great. So, just how many of these locations already charge people to go into their facility? Do you see that? Do you see that there's a an entry fee for the venue itself and then on top of the rental? Do you see that in many municipalities? I would say that's a great question. I would say I wish I had data on that um

first and foremost. Um, but I would say it's probably a 9010 split. 90% are kind of your standard park, public entrance, no no fee to get in. And maybe five to 10% are kind of, hey, you know, you're paying for the car to kind of come in, park, and now you kind of uh recreate within that park. What What's your park system? Do you guys charge to get into the park? Yeah. So residents don't pay. So the, you know, the residents would have a cheap day. Well, 25$25 to $40 day. Um, but then, you know, people that come in from out of town, it is a a $10, um, entrance fee to our facility and then, um, you know, on top of their their rental fee if they choose to rent. So, that's all that's just curious. Yeah. So, I I would say I I can dig in there and see. I'm not sure if we have that data. Um, again, I I would say I would love to know what you guys feel about that if you if you charge to to do anything else. But I I feel like, you know, I I channel my my uh my travel baseball uh career. And by career, I mean, you know, uh my heyday from 8 to to 14. um you know when you travel you you end up spending a little bit more money right those are the people that probably spend more on the snack shack versus the local and so on and so forth so without presenting any data I would love to know do you think does this do you think that deters people from wanting to to rent a kayak if they're paying or do you think it's more like hey I'm paying to use this park or to access the park I'm probably not going to be deterred to spend a little bit more to now recreate in it. Right? If I paid $10 to go in to enter the park, am I kind of content with walking around and looking around

and then leaving or do I want to make the most of my my day? Um I've decided to pretty much spend at least a half day at this park. That could be rhetorical, just a thought, just a thought. I I wonder if you guys see if you know the local pays less or if the if the visiting team kind of I don't know if you have ball fields there but um I don't remember but do do you know are there other ways to spend money in the park? Do you see locals paying more or less than than you know visitors? No, we don't have that data I don't think. Yeah. Um this is any other questions for uh just one quick. Yeah. So we have our director of public works here. This is Kyle Fox. Hey Chris. Uh just a quick question. So when this is super successful beyond our dreams and we start with this number and then we want to add four more do we get charged the 20 grand or just the 15 grand delta? Great question. and it's not the delta unfortunately. It's going to be that 20k. So, basically how we've done this is um built in um as you're kind of doing the math here, right? We've built in kind of that u you know bulk discount there. So, if you did the 35 um you know you're saving $5,000, right? Um if you did 50, you're saving $10,000 and so on and so forth. So, in a year if you wanted to do four more, you would pay 20. not not the delta. Um I'm going to share this deck with um I guess Chris and then he can share it around with everyone here because I don't have your email addresses yet. Um we also have some you know excuse the names there working title. The triple is not the worst named one. I'll I'll I'll let you know that one. Um but the bottom line is we've got some you know if you guys are interested

in lockers plus kayaks we've got some kind of bulk offerings as well, right? Like this one is uh I can't even count 12 kayaks, two game lanes plus lockers. The the game lanes all come with the lockers plus another bonus locker. Instead of 78k, that's 60, right? Um again, nothing here's too black and white. Happy to have a conversation, right? And and you know, you see putting green here in ping pong. We can move off of that, right? Stuff like that. So, um, this is a work in in progress deck here. Um, I told you the names got a little more corny as we go. This one's the special. Um, but the bottom line is we're discounting because we see when towns have multiple modes of of not transportation of amenities here, more usage, um, there's more utilization. And so, revenue-wise, you make up what this discount is. And for you guys, that just means more popularity, more revenue to you, um, and more usage across the board. So, I'll I'll send this over to you guys. You guys can have a peek. And again, happy to get get back on the horn. You guys can, you know, you know, hit me with more questions. I, you know, I typically am the support person here. I'm with Matt, with Chris, with whomever throughout the entire process. Um, and here to answer questions, present as needed. Couple more questions for me at least. Um, of the non bike and kayak offerings, which are your most important or important? Um, popular. Popular. Thank you, Michelle. Uh, popular. Yeah. Popular. It depends on your guys's existing amenities. If we were to build lanes for you, I would say um, and again, we talked about um, I forget who asked the question about kind of older folks. We just started building

shuffle board um boards, right? And and stuff like that. So, that's what I mean. If you present something to us, we're going to look up if it's feasible to build. So, if you guys have any imagination or or ideas that come up, throw it to us, right? We didn't do a golf uh setup until uh Sedona, Arizona asked for it. Right? We didn't do shuffle board until someone asked for it. The most popular if we were to build a lane would be cornhole, botchi ball, pingpong. Um, for existing amenities, I would say cornhole excuse gez. Um, I would say it is disc golf, pickle ball, volleyball, basketball kind of there. Um, uh, what's another one? Horseshoes is a popular one. Again, no one's renting out or or owns and carries around horseshoes with them. So, if you guys have a horseshoe pit or something like that, again, that's where people are just walking by and saying that that it'd be pretty neat if we could play it type of thing. Okay. Uh, second question. So, how does this unit and I'm going to speak about the kayak rental unit. How does it communicate with you? What's its power source? Yeah, great question. Uh, solar panels and cell service. So, um, don't worry, we're not coming to eat up the entire um, uh, utilities bill here. Um, no Wi-Fi, no no electricity needed whatsoever. Again, cell service, as long as you have a bar of service. If you can make a phone call from the park, this will work perfectly fine. And solar panels, we winterize the stations come wintertime, right? So, we shut up shop. We strip it of anything that could be armed in the winter, signage, technology, life vests, etc. Uh we put a special uh coating of of I I I use the

broad term called paint here that prevents kind of um uh you know discoloration and breakdown. And then come springtime, we freshen it up, right? We're coming to open that locker up, right? Uh leaf blow, just just make it pretty, right? If these aren't inviting, then no one uses it. And not only does is is this a miss from your guys' POV, but it's it's a swinging miss by us, and we lose money on it just as much, you know, just as like you guys do. So again, you know, everyone's been on some sort of a vacation where they leave the comfy seat on the beach, you get handed some gross looking life vest, and you start doubting why why you're paying for this type of excursion. If the life vest is crummy, if it is sundrenched and it's lost its color, on that two week u maintenance check, the technician not notices that the life vest is kind of on its way out. We replace those life vests. No cost to you, no hassle to you. New life vests show up. Um nothing that you guys have to worry about or take care of. And our last question for me, um how many I'm going to call them mishaps have you had? So, you know, people who have gotten in trouble out on the water, injured, uh, claims to your insurance broker. Can you just roughly give us a number there? Yeah. Um, none that I'm aware of to be honest. Um, none. We had an issue where we had, um, in Kalamazoo. So, one in 2023, um, we had an issue with people returning kayaks. Um, we diagnosed the problem. It was a software issue. We were giving people an option on the rental. We got rid of that. We improved rental accuracy uh by 93%. So again, we're monitoring, we're handling all of it, and then we make

those changes. In 2024, we had uh uh we had three stolen units. We had a bike stolen. Um, but again, when you are renting the kayak, your phone, um, I don't want to say this in a scary way, right? We we know where that equipment is when during your rental, right? So, if somebody was in it having an issue out on the water and it's not returned, again, listen, I don't want to overstate this. It's not like we're like identifying an emergency in real time, but at the end of the day, every return equipment photo is checked by a human at the end of the day, right? And so if we see a kayak isn't there, we look to see where that kayak is. If you didn't return the kayak, the dot on our map follows you, right? And so we know that there's a kayak kind of lost out at sea, if you will. Or in this case where I'm bringing up, a bike was stolen and our local technician literally saw the dot over, you know, someone's garage, knocked on the door, showed him the screen, and said, "Hey, I think you have our bike." And he wheeled it out of the garage back onto our truck. Um the other two issues were both in Kalamazoo uh Michigan where we uh pleaded with the city uh to choose a different install location. It was not next to or adjacent. It was at a uh homeless encampment. And so in the first two weeks uh somebody had a a m you know a power tool and cut through our metal locker. We've transitioned to these wood ones. the metal locker and stole two kayaks. The same week or or probably a week after uh we installed a sign that said you are being watched. It's been a year and a half. We have not had another issue after that. So, you know, if things were to be a problem, we had we put motion sensored lights. We could do a camera setup. You know, again, it's our equipment. We want to protect it as

much as the next person. Um so, those are kind of the three issues that we've seen. Um, truly I've been here for over two years. No distressing, no injuries, nothing like that. Knock on wood. Um, always something to consider obviously when you put people out on the water, but um, thankfully no incidents. Great. Thank you for that information. Chris, one question. From what I hear you saying, a person could actually come down, you know, take it, get a kayak, and theoretically they could throw it in the back of their vehicle and bring it to another pond or location in town and then still return it within the two two hours or 3 to four hours. That's perfectly okay. Absolutely. Um, and again, you're not, you know, yes, the payment structure is 2 hours and four hours, but it's not like you can take this out for eight hours if you want to. It's not like you're constantly looking at your watch to because it has to be returned by a certain time. Of course, you pay for the time that you use, so you may want to bring it back in two hours, but it's not like there's an alarm going off where you have, you know, you're in the middle of a great day and you have to bring it back by a certain time for as long or short as you want. And yes, you can take them, put it in a pickup truck and drive up to Maynard if you want, or drive somewhere else and put it in a different body of water. Um, absolutely. Okay. Awesome. All right, we are so far past our our agenda. It's not even funny. And Chris, you've been extremely generous with your time. This has been a great uh presentation and appreciate all the information that you've given us. So, I look forward to receiving that. Um I think what we'll probably do is uh I think we'll probably put this on the next commission meeting. You get the presentation. I can share with you guys. I Yeah. Um I mean I personally I don't mind taking a vote now. I don't know how anybody else feels. But what would be your motion? My motion would be

to move forward with this with this with this proposal. What specifically? A the an a kayak rental facility. An eight at what location? For which pond? I mean obviously there's so much more that has to be approved. Yes, of course. But I I think it's a good thing for the community. I I mean, you know, the I I also don't know if maybe CPC money compared to that. I would say CPC should I mean $35,000 for CPC money. I mean, it's a lot of money, but still, but you get it back. You get it back. I mean, you're getting revenue back over time. Yeah. I I don't see a big I don't see much of a downside to this or any downside to this. I don't. Well, that's why we have town staff to tell us what are the downsides, gentlemen. How do you feel about PW? Did you see any pros in yacht? I I know one problem right off the bat and it's going to be the dock at Forge which doesn't belong to the the town, right? That's the that's community boating dock. Yeah. So, if I'm Joe Schmo renting a kayak, I see a dock. I'm going to go walk on the dock, get in the boat. So, we would have to Is that community rowing? Yeah. So, that that's that's the only thing that jumps out. And I know that they would get upset with people using the dock and that's that's liability there. So, if we were to put it at Forge, we'd have to clearly indicate that that dock is not for launching boats. Not that you need a dock at Forge. It's a sandy beach. You just walk the kayak out and hop in it. But, you know, people are going to make that assumption. I think we the other challenge is, you know, something that Michelle brought up is when the beach is in operation. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So, we are charging when they enter the parking area. So, how is that going to impact? I think that's okay because it's not if they coming in the parking area, they have the they would have the obvious opportunities to kayak, but they also have the beach they can use, which is, you know, the playground. It's and there's the playground is there. So,

there's other it's not like that's all they can get is a kayak. They they can spend a day there pretty much. It is. It's really enticing. An extra $10 for non-resident. I don't And residents it's free. If you go if you go to Forge or Edwards, you have the swim area that's cordoned off and there's no trail around the pond. So, there's really no way to explore except by boat and people bring their boats car topped to both locations. I think this is going to be really enticing for people who the other thing you mentioned you could do the eight and do four Edwards and four fours if that would make sense. I don't know if it would or not. I don't see where I don't see an easy place to put it in. Tough. Um, I would be inclined to even go with 12. I think it's I think it's gonna be so popular that we I have no problem. I have no problem with I have no problem with 12. I thought some people were thinking maybe start with four, but I would I think on a hot day in the summer when that bad that one person rents one and everyone else will be like, I want to do that. It's Chris the uh one question you still there? Yeah. One question is the life jackets that are available are all adult life jackets, correct? Yeah, they are. Um they're Coast Guard approved. Um not I'm not uh sure what Massachusetts requires, but like in Illinois they require a whistle. So we put whistles on on the life vest, right? Um they are adult life vests. They are adjustable 90 to like 325 pounds I think it is. So 90 to 300 plus pounds adjustable. I got a couple in my truck if you want to play with. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Mike, your comment kind of spurred me on to think in Grten, I forget what the pond is called, but there's a rack where people can lock their canoes and their socks and like it it I've gone there a couple times and it's always packed. Even in October when

it's 60° out, people are still Oh, yeah. out on the water dipping their feet in, kaying. And I took advantage of that when I had my ACL done. I did a lot of, you know, kayaking and low impact to no impact activities. So, I think this is this would appeal to not only your 18 to 25 to 30 my age, it would appeal to people that are older and just enjoy. I would be interested in using it. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, so a good compliment to this and it's what Mayor did was they have a semiacable dock. So, that's that was easy doc. That's the company that installed it. And it allows you to drag the boat onto the dock, sit in the sit on this kind of slide basically, and then use the paddle to pull yourself into the water. Um, it it's it's not fully accessible, but it's about onetenth the cost of a fully accessible dock, but it does let folks with some mobility issues and balance issues get in and out of the water. But, um, you don't need it. I mean, you you can you can get into a sit- on top kayak pretty easily, but that's just that worked in Maynard and it might be something also to consider. Yeah, I think it depends on where we locate this vis the beach, right? So, if it was more towards the parking lot, I think the coastline's a little bit steeper. We probably want Yeah, put it in there. It's a little sketch, but the beach is super easy. If we put it nearer to the beach on the sort of the opposite side of where the dock currently is, right? to the one that's closer to the parking area. People could just walk it right onto the sand and into the water. Yeah, it's I' I've gotten to make this any longer than necessary. If we say took 12 uh unit under adisement and say we we said we approve this as a commission. Does this have to I mean how does this move forward the same way the turf field does? I think I think we would one we would want to bring it to the staff, right? let staff peruse and think about it. We might even

want to bring it through to legal counsel to understand liability concerns even over above the $1 million liability that they're offering, especially with the children case that that they're not covered. They're not covered. So that any other things that you guys can think of? So you got a couple issues. Um their liability caps would be well below what our requirement is for the town. Um you have a fiveyear agreement that requires town meeting approval, right? Anything over three years. Um you've got procurement questions has to be procured. What is Can you put a little bit more detail on that? Yeah. So basically every tier that they had would actually I'm sorry Chris this is Mike Edwards. He's our assistant town manager. Uh so speaking in the corner here just so you you know who's speaking. Yeah. So basically all of the tiers in the middle would have to go through uh the $10 to $50,000 procurement rules. So those would require basically specifications be developed and we would take quotations. Um the 12 unit would have to be competitively bid. So um we can use this information to generate estimates but ultimately this has to go through a public process only. If we go with the 12, if you go with any of them, you still have to take proposals. Okay. And that's regardless of where the C CPC would Okay. with any of the funding sources. But um so what you mean by that is we would say we love this idea. We would go forward with it and if and propose it to let's say the community preservation commission. If they decided to say yes, we'd be willing to bring this forward to town meeting and town meeting voted to appropriate $50,000, you would still have to go out

for a request for quote if it's over 50,000, it has to be competitively bid, right? So, but that happens after town meeting appropriates the money. Correct. Correct. Okay. Yeah. So, so this could be the basis for an estimate. I would certainly recommend, you know, increasing that amount to adjust for inflation, etc. Um but in any case to do even a non-competitively bid procurement process we would have to have really detailed specifications to take proposals. So you're looking at an apples to apples comparison across different vendors. So what information do we need from say Chris in order to provide that initial specification to drive our proposal? Well Chris can't provide our specification. I Framingham is just just is doing this right now. That's that's the place to start to see what other towns put together for. That means I get to call Jim. All right. No, he's not in it anymore. He's he's in Alison Elliot. He's not in recreation anymore. Okay. No, they're they're they're actually bidding uh this very thing right now. So, they put out an RFP uh about a month ago. So, they'd be that's our favorite is to copy something. That's what I would start with is is take somebody else's specs, make them yours, and then use that. But that I think you probably have enough information to build a budget for what you would need to take to CDC and ultimately a town meeting, right? Um and process-wise, we go through the same process. It's just like buying a truck. This fall, I'm going to come to the commission and say, "What is your priorities for capital?" And then that's what based on your direction is what Michelle and I will bring to the capital committee. If this is in there, then we'll do, you know, we'll do a capital worksheet. If we think it's CPA eligible, we'll do a CPA

application. So that's how the process rolls to town meeting. Thank you. And as far as the insurance liability concerned, if a million is not well, I think that's that goes into the specification. So if you take specifications that say another municipality has come up with, it's going to have specs for insurance. We match all that with ours. What is our I just didn't know. What is ours? Just I think on something like this, you're probably looking at um I would guess a $3 million cap. So Chris, how did how has that crossed your desk before? Have have communities come back to you and said, "Hey, the mill million isn't enough." And how do you guys deal with that? Not one has not one has challenge that I think that's three million, right? Yeah. Okay. Three million. You guys can have three You guys can have a $3 million um insurance policy. Definitely. uh the cost of that insurance policy would be paid by you guys and it would probably cost about 35 $40,000 a year just for that insurance policy. I think that was the last quote. So 1 million per incident, 3 million aggregate annual is our typical. Ours is ours is 1 million per occurrence, $5 million aggregate. Your software I think we're good. I think we're good uh based on that. And then we have auto um uh motor vehicle for up to a million as well. So again, I mean, not to make light of insurance, but I I you know, I met with the city of Baltimore. There was like 37 lawyers there. Um they were like, "Yeah, this is fine." Right? So not to gloss over the insurance thing. You guys will review our exact certificate of insurance. If you do have any push back, we we'll go from there. Um, I I do want to say the procurement

is not obviously something that we want to do. Um, for for all the obvious reasons, we we're going to go through procurement if that's what you guys want to do. But I think Matt can attest um it hasn't been the best process for Framingham. They're now, you know, Well, I don't think we have a choice. I think general law requires us to do that, right? Sorry, it's it's a requirement of mass general law. It's not a requirement of the town of Westford. Yeah, it's understood. It's a difference in funding, too. So, Framing Framingham, it's it's a little bit of a unfair comparison because Framingham's not paying for it. So, technically, they they might have been able to avoid procurement, but they wanted to their legal council recommended it, but since Westford would be paying for it, it's it's a different it's a different situation. Understood. Thank you for the context. Appreciate it. Matt Kyle Chris, is the concrete pad included or is that something? That is something um you guys would lay um happy to do it. Um we can we can get a quote for you and and do that as well. Um we just need to build it into the Mayor doesn't have one. They use I think uh it's just like crushed stone or something. But still, we would have to build. Yeah. Yeah. I I would also say the the be the top two locations are beaches and and campgrounds. This is one in Ocean uh County, New Jersey. Um you know, again, you have people who have no clue that this exists in their town naturally, right? And they're sitting on the town beach in their bathing suits, right? You know, and they see this over here. you know, you're getting rentals from it just being on the beach alone, let alone people driving to Kayak, right? So, um definitely our best lo best performing

uh location. Listen, we we'll do follow um you know, any process that is your process, right? Um I will say that the benefit here um you know, I'm not holding any cards back, right? being completely transparent with you guys, happy to lock in pricing so that you don't pay $6,000 more in August, right? Um, by signing an agreement, making you pay $0 until we actually install it. And please don't tell my boss, but I also mentioned to you guys that I would do a backout fee uh clause that if for some reason you you know, you didn't get board approval, aka you changed your minds, you wouldn't be liable to pay a single dollar on this, right? So let's keep that uh between us. But so very favorable terms there in that regard. Um you know not sure how that's affected if we go down the procurement route and and how long that takes. So any contract we have and really any procurement we have is going to have. So sorry. Yeah. Can you repeat any anything we have and and let me just back up one second. So, or do you guys routinely use contracts provided by municipalities as opposed to your own? I would say I can count on my on one hand uh the amount of times that we've used a city's agreement. Um I'm not opposed to it. uh they've just been Chicago, Baltimore to a degree, ma major cities. Um there are times where we kind of combine agreements. Listen, I I'm not poo pooing anything that that that you guys are are saying, right? If you if you need us to sign your agreement, we'll review that agreement and there's a good chance we'll sign it without any

push back, but there might be push back on it. So, um again, um happy to play along with your your approval process. Um we also have a soul source letter um if that's helpful. Um that seemingly avoids procurement a lot of the time. Um again, not not as well verssed in kind of what you guys have to do by law, but um just h you know, throwing out um options, if you will. So, Chris, outside of Maynard and now potentially Framingham, what other uh you said Denim was another place that you have uh you've worked with? Any other places? Denim um in Massachusetts. Uh Franklin, Massachusetts. Um Okay. In Connecticut. No, that's okay. I It's really Mike. It's pertinent to Massachusetts just because of uh Mass General law procurement. So, that I got you. That's fine. Yep. Okay. I think what we would probably need to do is why don't we vote to add it to our capital plan or add it for consideration to our capital plan for fiscal year 27 right 27 50 fiscal year 27 and then when we get to capital planning because we do have other capital needs we would you know look at this and weigh it against all our other capital requirements that we have and prioritize as necessary. Sorry. So, this would it move along hopefully be for annual town meeting next spring. I think that's the fastest we can make this the earliest we can probably get. I just can't see it. I can't see. So, number one, if we were going to go through CPA, they typically only take really emergency requests. We'd have to start in October or something like that. That would be the earliest we even the first meeting we're talking November, whatever it is, right? So, I don't I think that would be tough. would be, you know, you'll be submitting it sometime in the fall or whatever and we take it up for

next, you know, for next next year's town meeting. So, Chris, just to close the loop with you, um, if the commission does vote to move forward on putting this on our capital plan, um, we typically go through the capital planning process in the August, September time frame. Is that something about right, Kyle? I think maybe a little later. Little later. Um, and at that point, um, we can circle back with you and let you know where it sits in the process. Uh, I understand you're you're you know, we may have to pay a cost increase, but we'll we'll build that in as part of our proposed budget and, uh, we're going to have to unfortunately work it through, you know, the procurement process and the funding process that we have in the town, which does mean that it might be a little slower. Um, our annual town meeting if it does get that far would be, you know, next spring. Um, and then we would probably look to Can we put it in if it passes town meeting? Can it go in right away? Right away. Okay. That's so then we could we could look for a possible installation in the uh late spring, early summer of next year. Well, let me let me ask one question. Do we own this unit? Do we own this unit? No. then it's not capital then it basically would be a contract for service. So it would be available until after the fiscal year. But would it still go through our capital planning process though, wouldn't it? I don't know. I mean this Gosh, Kyle, this is almost like a equipment lease if you get down to it because if we don't own the asset, it's not a capital asset. Therefore, it would be subject to regular appropriation which means it wouldn't be available till July 1. I don't know that. What about what about uh does the same limitation apply for community preservation funding? I don't think so. It's going to be the same because it's got to be appropriated in a fiscal year. Well, that's fine. That's fine. We use prior year. Yeah. For capital. But just be clear, we could use community

preservation funds potentially to pay for this even though it's a leased item, if you will. That I don't know. Okay. So, all right. question upon question is being there's a lot of things we'd have to kind of dig through, okay, to figure out how exactly this works, but it's it's not a capital outlay item if if we don't own this asset. That's a good point. Okay. This is it's a contract for service. Okay. But as far as budgeting it, I don't know if it would still I think we'd have to kind of think through it. I mean, given what it is, I think you're It's closer to a capital item than anything else I can take. It's the fact that we're getting revenue from it. Does that make a difference? From an appropriation standpoint, it does. You know, obviously when we're looking at cost benefit, but the approval process, so that doesn't make a difference how it's hand you're not budgeting for revenues, right? The question is really it's what what is the process for approval, right? From a budgeting perspective in my mind. So, would you mind? I know you're super busy, but could you inquire or We We can certainly look. I mean, we'd need to see if he wants to send us kind of Well, you're getting all this information. So, send this over and we'll we'll look at it and see how it works from an appropriation standpoint. I'm about positive it's not going to be capital. How we would want to consider it is kind of an interesting question because it kind of acts like capital and walks like capital, but it's not capital. Does it go into that same prioritization process? So yeah, it's but in any case, the pro the process that's here as moving it forward from this, we so we could you can make a motion to ask a motion could be to request that the town manager's office

review the presentation and provide guidance on how to move forward in terms of budget. That's what I would suggest. I don't think you know exactly what you're moving forward at this point. Anyway, say you've got a rough idea of something that you'd like to do. We'd have to think through what does this look like from a project standpoint. There's, you know, some level of infrastructure associated with it, whether it's a concrete pad, it, you know, then you've got the ADA question. If you're launching a new program that's not accessible, you have to make it accessible. So there's there's a lot of other pieces, but I think what you're what you would be motioning is just make a recommendation to investigate it further and figure out what do we want to do? Can we can we direct that to your office or would it go to Kyle or Michelle? I I would kick it to the town manager's office and she can figure out where she wants to send it. My guess is it's going to be a collaborative effort. Okay. You ready for that motion? I'll make Yeah, I'll make a motion that we approve the next step in the process going to the town manager's office to to determine the approval process. Think that what can you try that again? Yeah, I'm trying to think. I know it's late. Or for further evaluation. We we we we approved the further investigation or further evaluation of of kayak the kayak program to Westford. Okay. For for use at Forge Beach before at Forge Beach using should I mention the number or do we care about the number? I don't think that matters at this point. Okay. Okay. All right. The number the dollar sign was 30 or 50. It doesn't Okay. So, yes. The motion is to

approve the the further evaluation of adding this kayak rental system to West and for it to the town manager's office. Okay. Do I have a second to that motion? I'll second it. Thank you. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor, please say I. I. I. All right. All right, Motion passes unanimously. 600. Thank you very much, Chris. Uh, please, uh, send that presentation, any other pertinent documentation to me and I will get it over to the appropriate parties. Thank you again for your time this evening. Uh, really appreciate it. I know we went super late and uh, look forward to seeing how this evolves over time. Yes, thank you everyone for for the time. I I appreciate it and honestly um a lot of times I get zero questions and and people either don't move forward or move forward and don't know what they're getting right. So I appreciate um as I'm sure your community does your guys's um thoughtfulness on this. Um yeah, appreciate the time and we'll be in looking forward to the next conversation. Have a great night everyone. Chris, I have one more question. Oh, does anybody tell you you look like Josh Groven? Oh my gosh. I don't even know who that is. If you say it a little louder, I think my wife is downstairs, please. So, just a little louder. No, I'm just joking. Um, no, but I'll take that as a compliment. Um, and we'll and we'll end it there. Thank you. All right. Thanks again. Appreciate it, Chris. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. All right. Take care. All right, guys. So, let's wrap this up. Park grounds reports and updates. DBW director, you have 30 seconds. Brief. Shade project. We held a pre-construction meeting. Still waiting on a construction. That's a project that will never end. I know it's been years. I can't put anything off of my plate. Um

Jack Walsh Courts contractor is back working. I saw Playground is closed. But I saw a lot of uh heavy equipment there this morning. They're doing good work. All right. Yep. Playground's closed though, huh? Yep. That's going to make me happy. Jack Walls uh entrance. Um, I'll just talk about the entrance because the other one is really pet safety. But coming along nicely. We expect within the next month to have the new entrance be the entrance. Are you leaving it as crushed stone? No, it'll be pave it into the Okay. Yep. And that's really where we're at timing wise. Uh, our paving contractor is doing Texas Road and the subroads off of there this year. Yep. So, we're coupling that with the smart with this. How are we going to close off the old entrance? What are you going to do for that? We're going to pull up the old pavement so that we don't have the puddle there anymore. And we're going to lom it and seat it. Uh we want to see kind of how it looks. Uh we're still waiting to make a decision on whether we move the jack wall sign to the new driveway entrance or we leave it there. Maybe rotate it towards the road. Maybe make a little picnic table there with a pocket park kind of thing. So, we kind of want to see what it looks like. Um, we also want to do some plantings there. Um, just to pretty up the area, but we'll see what it looks like as we as we approach the end of the project, but we have a few ideas we're banding about. Um, the last thing I wanted to bring up, I spoke to a resident um who lives next to Edwards Beach today. Um, he couldn't be at the meeting tonight. Um, I offered to share some of his, uh, concerns with the commission. So, um, that's what I'll do. Um, he was concerned about the dust created by Edward's Beach. Um, said it's mostly dirt now, not sand. So, um, he's

getting a lot of windb blown dust onto his house. He's not happy with that. Um, a lot of drinking and partying. Um, we had coordinated uh a response to his previous email with Captain Briald who reported that they have received calls on five incidents since January of 24. Um, this gentleman when I brought that up said four of the five calls were from him. Uh, so uh, you know, according to to Captain Bo, they are patrolling it there uh, during off hours and and weekends. Um, he doesn't like that out oftowners use the property. Doesn't think we should have attendance there. It's a waste of money. Doesn't like that the bathrooms get used after hours. Um, he's seen illegal dumping at the dumpster. Um, and that kind of sums up his concerns. So, I told him I would share with the commission and I've now done that. Dust is from the road. Dust. No. From He's claiming from the beach. Yeah. Like when the wind blows, it hits his house. Yes, that's that's the claim. Yep. Huh. I know. When he first he started to say it, I assumed he was going to mean from the gravel road, but no, he said from the beach. Where's his house located in retrospective? Is it Is he It's directly adjacent. He's on lower road, which is a lower road, which is a private road. Is it a dirt road or is it a paved road? I think it's paved. Okay. Ask somebody that must be coming from a his own dirt road. I think it's paved but it's a private road so I'm not super familiar with it. I just if it's coming from that or something. What did you say about bathrooms? He said the bathroom

facilities there are getting used at night. They're getting used at night. Yeah. He said they're unlocked and being used at night. It's just a porta potty, right? Not sure. Portaotti. Oh, okay. Oh, I thought it was Okay. There's no Yeah. Yeah. I'm not that familiar with Edward. So, yeah. Used to be a bathroom building bathrooms are open when we're staffed. Okay. So, nobody can get in there, but he's referring to the So, the the I thought he was referring to the permanent bathrooms, but they're not open. Is the sand causing any issues beyond nuisance? Like, is it causing damage to his property at all? He didn't indicate so. Okay. Yeah, his solution was 10 truckloads of sand. Um, but I did share with him that there's environmental considerations. We can't just bring sand down and dump it on a beach even though it seems that simple. Um, we require permits from D. So, just curious, do you know how long he's live there? Is it long-term? I guess we have someone 24. Yeah. No, I'm not sure. I think he's been there sometime. Sometime. Yep. Uh, and you said his concerns have all been relayed to the Westford Police Department. Yeah. And the town manager's office. And besides sand, was there any other things that he was looking to have? Uh that was the primary um objective was sand to stop the erosion and PD presence to stop what he termed as partying and loud noise. I think it it struck me as a similar concern that we heard at a commission meeting last year. I forget which meeting that was. We had

we did have a resident that was more related to Forge, right? Well, the one I'm thinking of is was it Edwards and it was about the use of music at the beach? The signs up. Yeah, we were talking about signs. Yeah. So, that's what I was remembering. Okay. Um yeah, that's a tough one. Um is the most of this is happening, you know, after hours and at night. Do we lock it? Can't. The gate's no longer functional. I mean, we could each night when we close up, but they're going to get top the fence. We'll just jump over the fence. Yeah. Did he know Did he say there's a lot of vehicle traffic there, or is it just kids, neighborhood kids that are kind of busting? Yeah. Not that he said. That's a real tough one. Um, what's our ability to put up cameras or signs to say that you're under surveillance? I think is there some legal concerns with that? PD has a issue with that as a concept. Just the cameras that aren't there. Um it's who's going to monitor them? And even if they're there, they still have an issue. Well, certainly something to bring up to PD. Yeah. Funding would certainly be an issue. Oh, yeah. And that would be a challenge. Yep. You said he was the source of four of those five phone calls. Yeah. But he's probably the one closest to the Yeah. Yeah. He's literally in affected parcel. Yep. I I hate to say it, but I feel like if you buy a house next to a public beach, you're kind of

you should be expecting a certain level of usage of that that location. I mean, as long as the beach was there when you bought or Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's it's uh it's it's similar to the person that had complaints about the softball games at VFW Park. Yeah. You know, they bought they bought a house next to a softball field, another park. And we made good made some changes. We the lights go off at a certain time now and things of that. But, you know, something you've got to live with if you're going to buy post next to some kind of facility like that. Yeah. I mean, to some extent, I think it's it's fair to expect that police respond to illegal activity at night, but I mean, at a certain point, it's it's tough to it's tough to really prevent anyone from ever trying to access the property when when it's after hours. So, the police are aware. They are. And they're patrolling. Yep. Okay. And he was told that. Yep. All right. So, I think we we'll need to leave it at that. And if you hear back from him, please let him know. We'll be happy to have him come to a commission meeting uh and we'll be able to speak with him in person. Okay. Thank you for that report. Any other uh items? I guess the only quick thing I would add just because my jog my memory the uh VFW lighting project is out to bid. Nice. That's excellent. Is that both the Yeah, they both are. We combined the bids. So, is there a deadline when that has to be? Yeah. I forget the date we open bids, but it's within a few weeks. Are you hoping that it will be completed by the fall? So, we put um dual completion dates in uh for Jeff. He needs it for football season at WA. Yep. So, his needed to be completed by September 7th, I believe. And for the Forge Field, we put December 15th as a completion date. Uh

well, how is that going to impact the men's softball league's use of they'll use the existing lights? So if this company if company comes in and says we're going to do the switch in September or then that's fine. Yeah. It might affect a couple games. Okay. It's not like a monthsl long project. Okay. Yeah. It's a few days typically or Yeah. I mean, there's pre-work that they would have to do. Put the footings in. Yeah. Put the towers up. Yeah. Uh but then when they do the switch over, it'd be pretty quick. Yeah. Okay. And we would work with whoever the vendor is to minimize disruption. Okay. I don't remember off the top of my head when their season I think their season ends in October. The playoff new playoffs end up in October. Okay. So, all right. Great. Well, that's great news. Anything else? That's it. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, pal. Michelle, anything from your end? Um just the usual spring goings on. We have some spring programs that have started. Um I'm in the midst of uh hiring for summer. That's going well. I'm hoping to have that all wrapped up by the end of May and um you know and then take next steps to start preparing for summer programming. Um I've been working alongside the library helping them out with space so they can run some of their programs. So, that's been kind of fun to help out with them. And they're going to be using our existing kids club summer program this summer to bring some of their entertainers and um vendors into the program, stuff that they would normally do at the library. They're going to join in at kids club, add some added fun for the kids that are there along with the public. So, that's kind of like the big thing that we've been working on with them to um find them space to be able to operate. So, it's been nice getting to know the library staff who I normally

wouldn't um interact with. So, um other than that, like I said, I'm in summer mode interviewing, getting that ready. Um getting ready to open beaches in not till June, but we all know how fast that comes. So, and you are prepared to capture numbers, right, this summer? I'm prepared to capture whatever numbers that you need me to capture. Yes. If I recall correctly, Matt, what were we gonna ask? What did we say? Oh my gosh. Putting you on the on the hook cuz we want I think it Oh gosh, it was I know we wanted to get the count of residents and non-residents. Yeah. Was there anything else besides that? No, I think we usually do non-residents, but I'm going to um be capturing the amount of residents that also come in this summer. I thought you wanted to do it weekends versus weekdays, too. Well, every day we would get accounts every day and then we'd be able to track it over and Yeah. I just want to find a I'd like to find old pen and paper seems to be working, but it would be nice. Why don't we just talk to somebody WA an in WA could whip up an app in about a half a day that everybody could use to log this data. Even if you're just doing in a Google form. Yeah. Well, we can Yeah. I mean, every kid that's working there is going to have a cell phone. Yes, we'll do something. Do not do not use Yeah, you don't need to use caps for a project if you No. Well, fine. We'll I have someone who's going to be running the waterfronts this summer. Okay. Besides me. Um Great. So, she'll have some nice innovative ideas and we're going to sit and chat about expectations. Who is this person? My site director that runs Robinson. So, name her name is Emily. Emily. Yes. Fantastic. I'm glad to hear that she's willing to do that. Yes. Looking forward to the innovation. Yeah. Me, too. Yeah. Me, too. Um I'd love to get her take on what we just saw tonight

after she's Yeah. I mean, I I think it's a great idea, too. Yeah. Um it's a great concept. I mean, I mean, it's a win-win, right? I mean the fact that you know we picked a beach and they if they want to throw it in the car and go to Ed's and then bring it back someone's alongside pond in your house. There's many waterways in Westford that could be utilized. Absolutely. Um Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool. Anything else? Matt leads the paddle, you know. Yeah. I just I like the stand up paddle board. That's a cool idea. Yeah, I think the hardest part for us would be to choose the right amount of kayaks versus subs. Okay. Anything else, Michelle? No. All right. On to meeting minutes. March and April were provided to us. Does anybody have any um comments, changes to the minutes? I have one. Yes, Mike. April meeting. Yeah. April uh in the They left out a T on your last name on Damn it. where it says actually the path that's highlighted in yellow Robert Butler street street name in that sentence next sentence does no one had been surveying commission chief Barrett said and you're missing the final team the one that has the yellow highlighted okay second sentence yes man that is that's a close reading it's hard to grab their names unless you like ask them again what they said on the iPhone yeah the other the question when we don't have the I guess the street name. I think that's I guess still that's the best we can do is just leave it as a question mark. Um we looked it up. She looked up time looked trying to find is the question mark on the name or on the street name? I assume it's on the street name. So therefore the comma would be

after Butler, right? I'm not sure. It's Robert Butler for sure. Oh, okay. Maybe we should just say I'm reset butler age 43. Wait, say he lives on 81 Nutting Road. I know that's him. It's okay. Just leave it. I think if we're guessing, we should we should indicate that. I think the question mark is is indicating we're guessing. So, I'm just wondering, is it better to just remove the name if we're not entirely sure? Part of what I do is I do a comment and then because there were so many comments I name I named a few of the people and then I said other comments were and then I just listed the comments without the names. I I don't know. It might be it might be let's let's do that because I just I mean if I don't know maybe if Robert Butler wasn't there we don't want to attribute a comment to him. Yeah. You know what I mean? So I think better be safe than sorry. I would say let's move that down to the other comment section. And um any other uh changes? Um and March was good for everybody. Yeah. All right. Uh do we have a motion to approve the minutes as amended for March and April? I'll make a motion to approve the minutes for March and April as amended. Uh a second. Second. All right. Any discussion on the motion? Second. Nope. Seeing none, I call for the vote. All those in favor? I. All right. Motion passes unanimously. any old or new business that we want to discuss this evening? I think kind of new um not for tonight, but I'd be happy to provide a debrief on my experience trying to facilitate one of these rental stations, both the pros and cons and all the all the kind of pitfalls just so we can learn from another city's experience. So, if that if that can be a future

agenda item down, if we if we make progress, I'm happy to I think it would be great if we could have an update on this at our next meeting. It um Mike uh from a town manager's perspective, would um it be appropriate to put this on the next commission meeting for an update? Do you think you guys would have a chance to do anything on it given your current load of projects? It's a lot to add right now. I think I'd have to talk with Kyle and Michelle meeting after the meeting. If you want to push to July, would that be better? I think we can probably talk and get with Kristen and see when we think an appropriate time would be, but sooner rather than later. Okay. And obviously you have a resource here to to collaborate with. Right. Yeah. And I have no attachment to rent fund like I've worked with other organizations. So they're great for a budget starter. Yeah. So, I'm happy to talk and or or I'm happy to talk and or put folks in touch with either Framingham or Maynard because I work closely with both conservation commissions, parks and wreck and other folks. Well, the town manager Maynard, right, used to be our assistant town manager. So, we can talk with him. I think that prop where they did it is a conservation land. So, it wasn't they went through a different process. Of course it did. Uh Framingham is putting it on a parks and wreck property. That's a good question. Who owns forge? Is it select board or wreck? Anybody know? I'm assuming it's select. Yeah. Or conservation. No, I don't think it's conservation. I Edwards I think is conservation. We'll have that answer for the next Oh, it's it'll be on the I can figure it out. GIS. Okay. Uh any other updates, Edwin? Yep. Better or worse, I signed up for another three-year appointment to the cooling commission. Thank you for your service. All right, that's excellent news. All

right, so um I didn't put on here, but uh the next meeting you guys have any issues with I guess we're looking at June 2nd. Does that work for everybody? Yep. I don't know. Probably. All right. June second. Will that be here at um I don't see any reason why we would have to have it here. So I would assume it' be in the park and recon bush. I can't attend, but um that's fine. Like I can miss it. I got another meeting I got to go to. Okay, sounds good. Motion to adjurnn. I make that motion. Is there a second? Second. All those in favor? I I