Select Board: September 24, 2025

Transcript captured from MHTV’s Vimeo auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:00 We’d like to call today’s meeting to order as, uh, town administrator’s already done. I want to announce that this meeting’s being recorded. Uh, it’s Wednesday, September 24th, uh, 2025, and there are no members, uh, participating remotely. So with that Thatcher, if you could give us your, uh, town administrator update. Well, I think we have public comment first. Oh, yeah, that’s right. Public comment. Sorry about that. I’m outta out of practice. Uh, any anybody on public comment either here or online?

0:33 Albert Jordan Roosevelt Avenue. Um, I’m just wondering on the three A I see an article in the paper today, um, that you’re gonna wait till next May. I think we need to have a town meeting this fall. Um, because the taxpayers have to know if this thing, what way people are gonna vote. And, um, you know, there’s a lot of other things. We’re gonna have trash contract next year. We got the teachers raise. We really have a real bad issue about money in this town coming up next year to begin with. And we need to know that taxpayers need to know, have time to decide how they want to vote, these real important things. And, um, last year at town meeting people were telling me they felt intimidated.

1:18 There’s been people out protesting about the three a thing when they’re going to work in the morning. In the past they told me they voted no because they, they, like, they’re, they have fear of these people out there. And it’s, it’s not a friendly environment and everyone should have free speech within reason and should be able to go out and vote the way they want. Um, but this is a really, really, really important, um, thing that we have to decide here. And what the taxpayers have to know is that if they don’t comply with this, um, the taxes are gonna be going up substantially if we want to have everything else that we’re trying to, um, pay in the town that we already have obligations.

2:03 So it, we shouldn’t run this through town meeting. ‘cause what happens here, these people go up to three A and then after this happens, they run out the door. And then there’s other important art. It’s not fair. We have to go over the regular budget. That’s just as in as important. The three A thing is so far out of control, and I don’t know how anyone in their right mind thinks. I’ve seen three houses in the past month or two in Marblehead. Sell anywhere is from six 50, 700,000, 2.2 million in tear down there. There’s not gonna be any more affordable housing in this town. Um, so, and I, I spoke to one of these ladies that just moved back to Marblehead last week, walking my dogs up Augustus head. And she just got a new tax bill, uh, recently

2:51 since she bought her new house that was redone and it went up $7,500, but she paid over $2 million for it. And it wasn’t assessed at that before. So what I’m saying to you is, we gotta deal with this three a thing. We don’t wanna wait eight months away. We have, we, how is the finance committee and these people figuring money? What are you gonna have two plans here if it goes through? It doesn’t go through. But like I say, people when we go to town meeting, you can only focus so long and this is going to apparently draw a big crowd it has in the past and we put ‘em off. And then there’s all kinds of people running around, as far as I’m concerned, causing problems there. And people go into town meeting are getting irritated by it. They don’t feel safe there.

3:37 I certainly didn’t feel safe when someone picked up a microphone and threw it. Okay. I was speaking right before that and someone behind me said, does the person have a gun? Okay. So I think we need to deal with this three a separately. If you have to have a special towel meet, I don’t like spending the money, but we need to focus on that. It’s gonna help out the finance committee tremendously. So I do not think we should wait till a regular town meeting. That’s, that’s just my opinion. ‘cause I don’t know how we can plan for anything else. So you can just think about that and you do what you want, if you wanna wait till May, but, um, there’s gonna be a lot of serious issues, uh, may at town meeting with everything else that’s going on. There’s a lot of costs that people don’t, aren’t aware of, that I’m aware of in town.

4:23 Um, there’s gonna be some really, really big decisions to make. And if you think you, you’re gonna have an override and everything like that, you’re voting all these people, they talk about affordable housing. I deal with a lot of older people in Marblehead that are having a problem paying things now. And I know there’s programs out there. I’ve gone to the veterans agent, I’ve gone up to the counseling center. Um, you say there’s all these programs out there, it’s hard to get people to help, um, get these people what they need. They don’t have too many people up there. Um, and I’m doing this for people I don’t even know. And, um, it’s really, really diff I got a phone call a month ago. I asked for some assistance and I’m, oh no, this takes a long time. Well, the tax bills are coming back out that do November 1st. Again, I’m trying to get assistance for people

5:09 that need it now, not six months from now. So, thank you. Appreciate your thoughts. Uh, Mr. Jordan. Thank you. Any, anybody, anybody else? Just two minutes? Yes, please. Hi, Michelle Bell, ocean Avenue. Um, good evening. And I would like to respectfully request that the select board take the final steps necessary for Marblehead to be designated as a green community. You know, over 90% of the population in Massachusetts actually lives in a green community. And to me, that’s pretty compelling evidence of the program’s success in helping towns achieve and move towards their net zero goals. Hence, I would hope that we would like to desire to become a part of this thriving program. Um, you know, a lot of work has already been done to help us establish this at a green community.

5:56 Uh, I think there are just two criterion that need to be met in order to be eligible for green community status. And these would require, absolutely require your, uh, support as a select board. The first is, um, to adapt. Uh, our town will be policy that our town will be committed to energy reduction of 20% over the next five years in its municipal buildings. I think Logan is working on that right now, and that should be coming to you soon to this year. Uh, this is an aspirational goal, but it aligns with our already established 2040 roadmap goals. The second is sending a more complicated, but setting a letter to the light board, stating that you want the town to become a green community

6:43 and will support their decision to move ahead with the renewable energy charge. This circ charge would only be initiated when we com compliant with three A, because our current non-compliance, um, we disqualifies us for any awards. So I urge you to take the step now. So our application for green communities would be complete and this would set the stage for us to rapidly become green community status when we do become three A compliant. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anybody else? I, I do have to say one thing because I’ve already spoken about this green stuff. We have no money. I don’t want my light bill going up. Okay? I know it’s a, a very small amount of money.

7:28 I want to go green. If we can afford it. We cannot keep going. Buying more and more energy efficient things like a school bus that costs $750,000. I wanna comply with it, but we have no money right now. There’s no rush. And these dishes should be made when we have a five member board and you should have a public hearing so the public knows that you’re doing this. A couple people are making the decision to make my bills go up. And we have a person from out of town telling me what I should be doing and my light bill’s gonna go up. He’s not paying a light bill in Marblehead. I am. And I’m telling you, people are having a hard time paying their bills now. And I’ve already discussed this with the Electric Light Commissioners and I’ve called all five of them

8:14 and only three of them had common sense to call me back. So you need to have a public hearing on this and you need to know what we’re talking about. And I just want to know, let you know the, I was down the Electric Light Commission when they discussed this, uh, several months ago. And the rate hasn’t changed in 14 years. What they’re assessing the communities that went in. So once we start this and we start putting more money, we’ve hired, you know, the Selectmen have hired Logan, the electric lights hired someone, we’re gonna get a couple hundred thousand dollars back a year possibly. If we go to the state, we’re paying that in salaries and benefits. So on, on the two people that you hired, we never had one. Now we have two and it’s $200,000. So if we get $200,000 back, it’s just paying the salaries.

9:02 So let’s not run into this overnight. Let’s do a study on this and let’s have five people that are slightly, if, if few people are making the decisions, see if the public has anything to say before, we’re just rubber stamping everything here and it’s not fair to the taxpayers. Thank you. I appreciate your interest in that, Mr. Jordan. And, and the debate is ongoing, right? So I let them know because I like to talk to people that don’t call me back. The people that are voting This. Thank you. Hi. Yes, please. I feel this is a nonpartisan issue, which might be nice. Um, my name is Addie Flynn. I live on Elm Street. I own a business in town and I apologize, I’m gonna be reading off my phone ‘cause I just wanted to keep it succinct. Um, I wanted to talk about the recent Lin Way projects and the new proposed bus lane on the Lin Way

9:47 because I think that many people in town have no clue about it. I don’t think Swamp Scott people know about it. And I think that that’s part probably by design. Um, anybody frequenting the Lin Way has noticed the recent addition of a bike lane, which took away a lane of traffic entering the rotary to the hunt. Many are upset about this. Um, as most know, there is no need for this. Now, the MBTA is proposing taking away another lane of traffic to add a bus lane. According to the information that was available to find, which is from 2015, there are 41 to 44,000 vehicles a day that travel the Lin Way. And according to the MBTA, there are 3000 people daily who use the bus. There is no current public data available to support either the bike lane

10:33 or this new proposed bus lane. And I think that that is by design. There’s a reason they’re not informing people most are unaware that there is a plan being put into action. They had three meetings, they canceled one meeting, um, and then they had a meeting in Marblehead in the middle of the daytime where nobody that could actually, nobody that was affected by this could even attend. Um, as everybody knows, this is the one route that we have into Boston. All of the North Shore communities will go down to two lanes. Think about that. Some questions we need to ask. How will this affect the daily commute for residents of the North Shore? Is adding 1700 new units on the LynnWay while simultaneously taking away a lane of traffic? Logical. How will this affect the parking at the commuter rail in swamp? Scott, I’ve heard that it’s already full

11:19 by 7:00 AM most days because people have stopped driving into Boston. Why are we asking people to spend more time and traffic and more time away from their families after a long day of work? How will this affect the delivery trucks that rely on the Lin way to access the businesses along the North Shore? None of these, if issues are being looked at the North Shore, especially Marblehead and Swamp, Scott will suffer greatly. I cannot emphasize that enough. Anybody who uses the Lin Way would agree. Lynn is ignoring the needs of the entire community to, to cater to a small and sometimes hypothetical subset of people. The wheels are in motion on this project that will be incredibly detrimental to the everyday life of the taxpayers on the North Shore. I implore you to do everything you can to fight this for us. Thank you.

12:04 Okay, Aiden, thank you very much. Uh, we are aware of this and looking into it, but thank you very much for your comments. Can I add a comment? There is a survey online that you can figure that, that, that they’re looking for everybody’s response. So be sure to find that and get put your input. You’ll feel better after you do that. Alright, thank you. Thank you. Anybody else for public comment? Anybody in the room? Anybody, uh, online?

12:32 Okay. With that, we will now proceed to the town administrator’s update. All right, thank You. Thank you for that, Mr. Chairman. Uh, and I’ll, I’ll be brief. I’ve given a a pretty detailed update in your packet and, and it’s available for anyone who, who wants it publicly. So, real quick, uh, fiber network transition, as you’re aware. Um, last year or so, we allocated about a half million dollars of ARPA funds to upgrade the fiber network, which is the municipal, uh, network to, to support all the town functions, um, and to put into a loop configuration, which makes it a redundant, resilient system. Um, this Sunday, the 28th is when we’re gonna make the switch over from the

13:17 old network that we’re relying on to the new network. So, um, there’ll be a number of staff as well as, uh, the IT contractors that are doing this project, uh, on duty Sunday morning, um, switching over all the various facilities and checking to make sure that at least all our critical services are, are online. Uh, as soon as the switch is done over. Um, this is a, it’s a big project. It’s, um, absolutely necessary, um, for our communication system, but also it meets the need of the so-called Article 44 committee that was put in place several years ago through town meeting. Uh, in regard to increasing, you know, our, our, um,

14:06 meetings, online meeting capabilities. Um, this is part of the infrastructure that makes that possible and, and make sure it’s reliable. Uh, in addition to the OWL and other technologies, we’ve, we’ve implemented, implemented to make our meetings more available. Uh, next, uh, we have a number of elevator projects. Uh, as you’re well aware, the Abbott Hall Elevator is currently offline. Um, it needed to go through some maintenance and upgrades, some state required upgrades. Um, that is nearly complete. I think we’re just waiting on the inspection, which, uh, the fire chief is working with with those folks. Uh, once we pass that inspection, we’ll be able to, um, once again use the ab atal hallway while the

14:54 elevator was not available. Uh, that meant that this building wasn’t fully accessible. Meetings such as this are made accessible by having Zoom. That’s the accommodation. During the workday, we had set up a telephone and table and a directory downstairs at the, the, um, accessible entrance so that anyone who cannot come up here can call us and we’ll serve them. We did have to shut down on the weekends with the docents for the tourism and such. Uh, the reason being is the purpose of the building being opened during that time was for folks to have access to this floor, to visit the paintings and the other artifacts. And there was no way to accommodate that.

15:41 So therefore, we had to have the building closed, uh, to the public. So it will be reopened once. Um, we’ll be back to normal operations. Uh, that’s the good news. Uh, the, the challenge is the so-called lift at the old town house is, um, is just failing. It’s, it’s beyond its useful life. Uh, it’s, it’s failing more than it’s operating. Um, and so once again, we’re in a situation where, um, we’re looking at for the elections that there’s no way that building can support the elections in the current condition because it’s the frequent, frequent use of the lift that overheats it and shuts it down. Um, and because it’s unreliable, we’re,

16:27 we’re looking at the calendar of events for the use of that building, and we may suggest any future scheduled events for that building be be located elsewhere. Um, and the, the, the fix to that is looking at, um, putting together in our capital improvement plan for the next budget cycle, um, not just to address the lift, uh, to, to look at a whole elevator system for that building that, that meets the full needs of that building, but also looking at the needs of all of our historic buildings that have a number of significant maintenance issues that need to be addressed. Right now we’re, we’re sort of bleeding our maintenance budgets, just patching and doing things.

17:13 So, um, so the fix to the old townhouse is, is taking a serious look at a capital improvement plan, um, proposal that’ll address a number of our historic buildings and the conditions that need to be addressed. If I could ask the, uh, so the hydraulic lift system, kind of like what’s in place now would not be considered a, a sufficient fix then, right? You’ve No. So that it, it, it was my understanding that at the time, it, it met sort of the minimum needs of moving people, right? But, but the, that system was never robust enough to handle like an election day or a large event, right? And what’s happening is the, the internal hydraulics are overheating and there are safety sensors in it

17:59 that keeps shutting it down among some Other maintenance. Even even on a quiet day, that’s very slow. And it, it concerns people because they get in it and it’s very slow and they think it’s broken and, uh, people panic. So it’s, it’s not just on a busy day. Yeah. You have to get on on Saturday to make it to the Sunday event. Yes. Um, uh, uh, next item. Uh, as you’re well aware, uh, Bo Port Bo Port Ambulance started, uh, August 15th. Well aware there. Um, so we received our first, um, uh, monthly operating report, which we were, we’re happy to, to start receiving those. Um, and report from the Fire chief, uh, very pleased with the, the results in its first month, uh, they responded

18:48 to 97 calls with an average response time of 7.5 minutes. That is very favorable. Um, and, um, no, uh, positive reporting metrics and, and no resident complaints on, on the service. So all good. And we are very pleased with, with the new ambulance service, um, implementing in their first month. And they’ve even had to handle multiple back-to-back emergency calls without any gaps in service. So that was a critical metric when we put out the bid of the ability to handle multiple calls and, and have the ability to back themselves up. Um, and then finally, they, they will be relocating. They’re currently at the, the fire station headquarters temporarily. Uh, they will be locating, uh,

19:35 to the eight Sewell Street location, which is where the, the prior ambulance service operated out of. They’re making improvements to the facility, uh, expanding and making improvements. They’ll move in. Then the, the positive from the temporary assignment and the fire station was, uh, an opportunity for the new ambulance, uh, crews to spend time with our fire department folks because it’s that relationship in, in an emergency response calls that’s really critical to, to, to working together, communicating well and having, having trust in each other’s ability. So it’s been a real positive having them co-locate during the interim time. Great idea. So we’re all, uh, thumbs up next. Um, and, and, and final, uh, we’ve received notification

20:21 that, um, the Village Street Bridge replacement project has reached 25% design. That’s a critical threshold in the process as we move through the, uh, transportation improvement plan process at the state, uh, in order to get it approved for full funding. Um, that, so that will continue. I remind folks that any project going through the MPO Metropolitan Planning Organization, which makes decisions on, uh, federal and state funded transportation projects, um, in our region, um, it, it’s a multi-year process, uh, in order to do that. So we will continue to push. It is still an open question as to what the impact

21:07 of our non-compliance under three A has on the process. Our, our, our hope and communication is that it stays on the conveyor belt and keeps moving. Um, and, and hopefully, uh, we, we at some point achieve compliance in time for, uh, the final decisions to actually fund this project. So, so the state funding would come in at the matching level, right? Um, most of it would be federal, do you think? Yeah. So the state, uh, excuse me, the municipalities on the hook for all the design costs. Right, right. And we’ve allocated funds for that. Um, and then it would be the, the, the transportation approval plan is a mix of federal and state funding for transportation projects. So if we’re, if we’re approved, they put it on the schedule,

21:56 everything from that point on would be paid for by basically your gas taxes is, is the original source of funding. So Marblehead no longer having to pay for it. The state federal funds pay for the whole project. That’s Right. Yeah. And this project includes, um, uh, a DA improvements, uh, connections between the, the roadway and the trails improvements for the trails and the, the, the, the multi-use, uh, and some of the sidewalks and roadway around that bridge project. So it’s a pretty comprehensive project that solves a, a lot of issues in that immediate area. So it is highly advantageous for us to get this funding and have this project. Um, as I say in the memo, in addition

22:42 to this is a critical link in the Town, village Street, uh, especially for public safety. Um, there’s, you know, not a lot of crossovers, uh, yeah. Uh, from one side to the other, this is one of them. So it is critical from a public safety sense that we get this bridge replaced and it’s, it’s almost a hundred years old. It is, yeah. So, yeah. But that, that concludes my update pending. Any questions? Alright. Any other questions from the board? No, thank you. Thank, thank you Thatcher. Uh, we now would like to entertain a charter, uh, committee report if

23:21 Amy Roseanne.

23:28 Welcome. Good evening. Good evening. And thank you for all your hard work over many, many, many meetings. You’re welcome. I really appreciate it. I’m Amy Drinker, chair of the charter committee, and with me tonight is Rosanna Ante, who is Vice Chair and Sean, Sean Casey, who is responsible for writing the majority of the language in the, um, charter. I just wanted to mention the other people who are on the committee. Bill Conley, Ron Grier, Seamus Jhan, Thomas Ro, who is here tonight as a member of the Board of Health, on which he also serves Caleb Miller and Victor Wild, and Jim Ssen, who is a former member of our committee. And many thanks to both Thatcher

24:15 and Kyle for their support of the committee. I sent the select board a very detailed memo this afternoon. There will be no quiz tonight given the late hour at which you received it, but I, we wanted to make sure that you had this information so that if you had any questions, you could tell us what your questions are. Most importantly, right now we’re gathering feedback from the entities that are mentioned in the charter, and that would include the select board. You, the select board is responsible for many of the components of the charter, so we urge you to read it and let us know if you have any concerns. There is a questionnaire that we’ve sent out to entities. It’s not meant as a legally binding document in any way.

25:00 It just is a way that we can keep track of questions that people have. And also that committees have looked at their components of the charter and answered it. This fall, we focus on getting in touch with committees and answering any questions that they have, getting answers on the questionnaire, um, receiving feedback from the Collins Center and also Town Council. And then in January to meet the warrant hearing deadline for submission of articles for town meeting 2026. We will submit a final version of the charter to the select board, and the select board, I think has a hearing prior to the closing of the warrant for public feedback.

25:48 And then next spring, the charter committee will work hard to, um, reach out to the community to answer any questions that people have and familiarize them with what the charter says and what it doesn’t say. So that town meeting 2026 can vote on the baseline charter, and also if there’s a standalone recall warrant article to vote on that as well, then it goes to the state for the state legislative process, and then it comes back to the town to be voted a town wide election. Mm-hmm. Um,

26:25 that’s all I have. That’s a nutshell. Does, do you guys have anything to add? Uh, no. I think maybe we wanna mention though the fact that once it goes to the legislative process, that is quite, that could be quite a bit of time right before it comes back to the town. So although this would be on town meeting next year, we may not see anything back until 2027 potentially, Or 2028 because Yeah. So it’s really quite a process. Yeah. And that’s not Jenny Armini will, will see the charter through that process, but it’s really out of our hands until it comes back. It might be 2028 before we see it again. We just, we don’t know. It could be a 12 to 18 month process,

27:12 but then it does come back for a town wide vote before it becomes a charter for Marblehead. Are there any questions from your committee at this time? I guess if, could you spell when is the final draft, uh, for review coming, coming You will Receive, or how, how, how is that kind of set up? We will, we will continue to send you memos about our progress, but you would receive that final draft roughly in January, 2026. And that’s after it’s gone through final review by the charter committee town council mm-hmm. Et cetera, call center. And it’s that memo that I sent you this afternoon. Okay. I just wanted to be details, let everybody know Yep. And be clear about it. The other question I had was

27:59 the outreach questionnaire. Now I know they’ve been directed to, you know, in your due diligence of, of, you know, the entire town, you know, committee structure and so forth. How, where else has, uh, uh, have you sent, uh, questionnaires to, The questionnaires are specifically to the entities that are mentioned in the charter, but we also send an email to committees that are not mentioned in the charter so that we, so that they’re familiar with the charter process. Perfect. We sent them a link to the charter just to make them more aware. And we have done our community outreach and we’ll continue to do that. But right now we’re focusing on the language of the charter to make sure that we’ve done the sufficient review that we need to, to present the final draft

28:44 to the select board. Okay. I, um, Please, yes, I, I I think it’s important to note that, uh, if it were to go through, it has to pass both town meeting and it goes to the legislature, and then it has to pass a town wide vote. It sounds like you have about three years to figure it out, but I was just curious if a town wide vote were to happen, would it be during the regular election vote or would it be similar to like the override? And if you don’t know the answer, you don’t have to answer now. I think I know the answer, which is that’s a decision of the select board. Oh, okay. Not the charter committee. I think the charter committee’s responsibility is to present the select board with the charter. So theoretically, I think the charter committee’s work is done at Maytown

29:32 meeting next year. Yeah. Okay. And then the responsibility, because it’s a warrant article sponsored by the select board, it’s will be up to the select board to determine those future steps. Fair enough. Thank you. We haven’t had really a chance to talk about this, but, uh, is there a chance, you know, once it, let’s say it passes town meeting in May, comes back, is there an opportunity between the first town vote and the second town vote to kind of tweak, modify, or respond to the state, uh, in any way in terms of The draft? I do not think so. We can certainly ask that, Sean. I’m just curious. My understanding is no, because yes, it’s an act of the legislature signed by the governor, so we, we don’t get a second bite unless we want to go back to town meeting and

30:19 Go and, and do it all over again. So nothing would, yeah. Okay. Well, okay. I Would Okay. Say this. Yeah, no, I’m just curious offices. So it becomes the state legislators document. Mm-hmm. And they will make, They will make And changes, right. That then come back and go on. So there may be, there may be changes, but it’s, it’s Sounds like there, it sounds like there sounds like they’re one way changes though, Um, From the state. If they were, if they were sign, if they were to make, again, this is based on my experience, that elsewhere, if they were to be making significant changes, they would be communicating in some points in real time, Hey, we have a problem with this, this is what we’re gonna do. Okay. Things of that sort. But I think Deshaun’s point, it becomes, it’s, it be,

31:07 it’s an act of the state law. So it’s their document and they can do as they see fit. And that’s why only then it comes and lands on the ballot so that if the legislature makes changes that are just not acceptable here, it would be rejected here. But part of our process this fall is to make sure that Town Council has reviewed the document, because that’s our opportunity to fix things that the state legislature might say, this is in defiance of state law or whatever. So we we’re doing our best to prevent the state legislature from finding issues that we have not corrected.

31:53 Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Appreciate it. Thanks for the update. We really appreciate it. Thanks for coming all the great work. Okay. And now, uh, a very, we have a, a public hearing, your honor, and then we come to you. Thank you for your patience. Yep. We wrote this, you? Yes. Are You gonna do a, a switch on the agenda to move? Yes, uh, we will. Um, but I think we’ll go ahead with the public with this, uh, uh, public hearing. First, I think we can move, uh, through that. Is, uh, Nancy Mantilla here? I’m there. Hey, there you are.

32:35 Welcome. Thank you. Okay. Listen, I, I do need to, uh, make an announcement, uh, beforehand. Welcome. Uh, this is a public, uh, hearing on the application for a wine malt beverage package store license for Florist Mantilla 164 Washington Street. This hearing has been legally advertised and a butters have been notified. The applicant is Nancy Mantilla and, uh, Elizabeth Besano was here. Attorney, or is it, uh, is that correct? Yes. Okay. And Andrew Upton, I guess was, uh, was also Yes. Here as well, but that’s okay. All right. So you’re here at the table. Um, and now I would like to say, uh, is, does anybody wish to speak against this application?

33:23 Anybody in this room? Anybody online? No hands. Okay. Um, does anybody wish to speak in favor of this application online? Alright, thank you. Okay. This is the close of the public hearing. Uh, do I have any questions or comments from the board?

33:46 I have none in that case. Uh, would you like to, uh, to, to, to tell us what you’re, what you’re, what you’re doing? Yes, absolutely. We, we have a package here, but perhaps for, for public consumption. Yes, absolutely. Um, again, my name is Elizabeth Pano. I am representing Nancy for this new wine and malts package store license. Um, Nancy is a longstanding resident of Marblehead and a business owner, florist Mania here, down, just down the road. Um, she has over 42 years of professional experience. Um, prior to opening her store, her first shop here in Marblehead, in 2000, she worked for the Ritz Carlton and Winston Flowers. Um, so she has been in the industry for quite some time. Um, in 2017, she opened her Boston location, um,

34:34 where she has just recently been granted a, um, beer and wine license as well. Um, and really what the public need is for Nancy to be able to sell fine wines and champagne is the convenience aspect for, um, customers. So the community convenience combined with a modern gifting trend is really what Nancy is working towards. Um, residents are increasingly seeking a shop location where they can not only buy their floral arrangements for celebration, sympathy, um, birthdays, whatever it may be, but you also make another stop typically to go pick up a nice bottle of wine

35:21 or champagne to pair with that gift. Um, and it’s been an increasingly, um, it’s been a trend really, um, and Nancy has seen it with a lot of customers looking for her to be able to sell those, to be able to pair those with her gift boxes. Um, so that is one aspect of why we are seeking this license. Um, it also will support the local economy and small business diversity. Um, the license would not duplicate what an existing package store in the town already offers. Um, traditional liquor stores focus on a broader inventories, um, whereas her business would sell only carefully curated limited selection, um, designed to compliment flowers.

36:06 So it’s not going to be someone just stopping in to grab a six pack of beer after work. That is not the intention whatsoever with this license. Um, again, it will be perfectly curated and it will be paired with flower floral arrangements and things of that nature. Um, and by meeting this niche demand, the store contributes to marblehead small business diversity and strengthens the local retail environment without displacing existing businesses. Um, and it would focus on, um, you know, being able to really align with Marblehead community community that values quality, tradition and hospitality. Um, Nancy is extremely responsible. She has taken the TIPS certification course and she has her tips training. Um, she’s had experience so far in Boston

36:54 and it has proven to be successful. Um, so we are here to answer any other questions, concerns that any of you may have. Any, uh, follow on questions? No. No. Alright. I think it’s, uh, very straightforward and, uh, you’ve been around for a long time. Valued member of our, uh, business community. Thank You. I also have 15 support letters if you would like to have them too. Please. Yes. That would be awesome. Great. Okay. So with that, I’d like to, uh, entertain a motion to approve the application for a wine malt beverage package license, store license for Floris Mantilla Incorporated, doing business as Floris Mantilla 164 Washington Street as presented hours of operation are Monday through Saturday,

37:40 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM Sundays 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM subject to receipt of the required fees forms department signoffs approval from the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission and Cory approval. So moved second to second, and it is a polled vote. Hold Mr. Z In favor, Ms. Singer? In favor, Mr. Grader? In favor. Thank you, unanimous. Thank you very much for coming in. Appreciate it.

38:11 Alright. We’d like to bring up, uh, Calin Dr. Kaitlyn Coyle and Tom SRO from the, uh, the, uh, of the Board of Health. Everybody, everybody in the room knows that the Board of Health is prime to introduce a program to upgrade, strengthen public health services within the town. We have, um, on, on Monday, the postcards will be going out for a survey that will help us define the baseline of wellness in the community. We have partnered in that effort with UMass Boston. Um, they’ve got a great program.

38:56 They’ve done 80 similar assessments in other municipalities in the town. They’ve done Salem, they’ve done swamps caught. And everyone that we’ve talked to in the other other locations finds great when we have found them great partners.

39:15 The, the world we live in though makes us very concerned about security and privacy. So when we approached the board a couple of weeks ago, we asked to come back and have Dr. Coyle go through the details to be able to guarantee to anyone who’s uncomfortable about, uh, giving private information to a survey that these, this will be as secure as possible in today’s world. So, Dr. Caitlin Coyle. Tom, thank you very much. You did come before us before, I think one of the, one of the key issues was around, uh, you know, uh, confidentiality and, and things like that. But I think within the context of what you’re trying to do, I think establishing baselines are sure, are very,

40:01 health baselines are very important, so, Yeah. Yes. Okay. Go right ahead. Sure. Yeah. I have some slides. I don’t know if, if they’re able to be shown. Yeah. Oh, you have them. Okay. Um, so I’m here tonight as, as Dr. Massaro said, to talk a little bit more about the details of the process of the survey and how the data will be managed. But before I get into that, just wanted to recap for the public what the purpose of the project is and why we’re doing it. Uh, so the Board of Health, um, in Marblehead has, you know, has plans to increase its capacity in terms of membership in the coming years. And so they are looking to really think about how they can grow their capacity and understanding what the community needs and how they can respond to those needs. And so the purpose is really to do that, to establish this baseline of need as it relates to health and wellness in Marblehead, to inform the Board

40:47 of Health in the coming years. I would also say that the approach that’s being taken by the Board of Health is comprehensive and will be, I believe, useful to lots of other entities in the town, aside from the Board of Health. And so, um, that’s sort of an added bonus. Um, they are taking an approach of trying to build, um, what they’re calling creating a healthier Marblehead or the acronym of of calm. But they, we have, um, talked about it, sort of taking this wellness approach to health, which is, well, we think of wellness as just being healthy in multiple parts of our life. So it’s not just about our physical health or our cognitive health or mental health, but it includes things like our spiritual health, our financial health, our social health, et cetera. So this is also guided by what we know from scientific literature, which is

41:33 that health outcomes are increasingly being, you know, as explained. Um, almost 80% of that variance can be explained by things that happen outside of the medical setting. And so where you live, how much money you have, how many friends you have, all of that contributes to our health. And so the Board of Health is really thinking holistically about this. So we are, I’m here really to invite the public to take the survey, which is going to be live starting next week. Um, it, the all residents age 18 and older will receive a postcard in the mail. Those will likely hit mailboxes middle of next week. They will be yellow card stock with black and white print, and they will have the town seal on them. There are three ways, uh, to take the survey. And we, so, first of all, I just wanna say th those are coming and you’ll get them. And they aren’t spam. They, they aren’t a scam.

42:19 They aren’t junk mail. Um, although, uh, we all are very familiar with that. Um, so I wanna just bring people’s attention to that. They will be sent to every individual, so not every household will get one, but if there’s a household where there are multiple people age 18 and older, they will receive multiple postcards. And they are encouraged for each individual to respond for themselves. Uh, there are three ways to complete the survey. One is online. There will be a QR code and a link on that postcard. But you can also, um, we are making paper copies available at three locations around Marblehead, the library, uh, the community center and the, this building Abbott Hall. There will be drop boxes where people who would like to take the survey, hard copy, can pick those up and drop them off there. The third way is to call us at UMass,

43:04 and we will have, have lots of wonderful students, graduate students who will help, uh, people take the survey over the telephone, if that is, uh, the preferred way. So we, I, I encourage everyone to take the time to do that. Um, and, and some rationale for, for why it’s important to do that is, you know, to be heard, to be part of the solutions. The Board of Health is really thinking, uh, not just about documenting the need, but how to respond to those needs. Uh, we anticipate that the survey only takes about 10 minutes to complete, is entirely voluntary. Um, and it’s really meant to support the community, support all of your neighbors in terms of understanding what the real needs are with respect to health and wellness, so that we can create, um, a community where people can really thrive. In terms of data security, all of the responses that come to us, um, will be anonymous.

43:51 So no identifying information is being collected about people, um, in terms of their names, their address, things of that nature. Um, I mentioned that all responses are voluntary, so there’s no, um, people don’t have to to participate if they don’t want to. I will say that all of our procedures are approved by the Institutional Review Board at UMass Boston, which makes sure that we are operating under the highest ethics of human subjects research. Um, so we have gotten approval for all of the methods that we’ve, um, put forth. Um, the data will be collected, um, by phone, it will be entered electronically, and all of that will be kept in a password protected folder on a server of UMass Boston. Only people who have access to that folder will have access to the information, which includes myself and the members of the research team. Um, it’s also important to know

44:36 that no raw data will be provided back to the town. So we actually will do all of the analysis, uh, in a house, and we will provide, um, comprehensive analysis and, um, and, and results of the survey. But this is, um, we are an objective third party here, um, in terms of the data that’s being collected. So we will, um, keep it anonymous and confidential, um, and protect the data with, uh, the methods that we have in place at the university. And that any reports that will be provided back to the town will be in aggregate form, um, and when they’re made public. So we won’t be, you know, quoting people or, or identifying people by age, gender, et cetera. Um, so all of that to say that, um, we encourage people to take the survey, uh, we, we, we will, we’re taking the utmost care with respect to,

45:22 to protecting the data and to maintaining our objectivity, um, on this, um, on this endeavor. And I want to also just mention that, um, I guess I’ll just thank Andrew, the director of Public Health, Dr. Massaro, and, uh, Dr. Kirsten Kristen Abeta, who have been sort of guiding, um, the work of this group on the side of Marblehead, and fantastic to work with them. I also wanna take a minute to thank the people who helped fund this project, which include the Rotary Club of Marblehead, the Marblehead Female Humane Society, the Mariner, and the Rotary Club of Marblehead Harbor. Great. So look out for a yellow postcard. Thank you. Um, any questions, uh, from the board? No, thank you. Uh, well, one question I have is what

46:10 are there specific types of deliverables that, uh, that you guys have looked at that, that you can kind of, you know, give the town a perspective on, uh, since you’re not delivering raw data, which makes, which makes complete sense, uh, but what, what does the deliverable look like? Um, Yeah, so I mean, I’ll, you guys can chime in if, if you have other ideas, but, um, the main deliverables will be a full report of all of the survey data. So one of those things includes an appendix, which is every survey question, cross tabbed by usually age, but sometimes other dimensions, so you will know how. So for each question, for every question, you will have it for the op, for any open-ended questions of which there are only a couple, we will review every response, code them, theme them, and report back the high level themes and include anonymous quotes that illustrate those themes.

46:56 So that’s the kind of level of, um, reporting that will be done. And we also anticipate, um, engaging the public in a presentation about those results, um, so that people have an opportunity to know what we learned and hear how the Board of Health anticipates using the information. Okay. And those will presumably be broadly available Yeah. Uh, to the town and then the focus groups? Oh, yes. Oh, we go ahead. Yeah. Well, just in these Four focus groups. Yeah. One of the things that we’re interested in doing is once we have the survey responses to be able to identify if there are groups in the community or areas, ages, genders, locations, um, of the community that are less often represented or under, um, underserved, underutilized, under, um, sort of represented. And we’ll be doing focus groups with them. And the content of those focus groups will really be

47:41 to deeper dive into the lived experience of wellness and health for Marblehead residents. And those will take place, um, next year after the survey is done. Okay. And that will contribute to the report. And then with all this information, this will essentially create the strategic plan, uh, for the board at It. So, and that will Help drive where we need to focus. And since we have limited resources, we will point those resources where they’re needed. Tremendous. Okay. That’s exciting. Sounds great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate your patience. See you first. All right. I think we’re gonna move now to the taxation aid committee interviews, and I think, uh, we’ll start in alphabetical order if we, if Meredith could come up.

48:29 How many position There? There, there are two, there are three positions. Okay. Yeah. Hello, Meredith. Hello. How are you? Well, first of all, thank you for coming. Oh, second, thank you for volunteering. Absolutely. It’s vital to our, to our town. Absolutely. Much, much appreciated. Uh, I think the only thing we would ask is if you could tell us a little bit about your background and why you’re interested in this, in this position. Well, mainly because I am on the board of Directors of the Council on Aging. Yeah. So I am, you know, all four aging marble hitters, including myself. Yeah. Um, but no, I’m very interested in, um, being on this committee because I think it’s gonna be very important, uh, even moving forward. So Yes. Um, I’m absolutely willing to help. Okay. Well, that sounds great. Any, uh, any other questions from the,

49:15 from the board, from No, I’m Super followed. Okay. Uh, I think we’re going to take these motions, uh, together, I assume. Uh, so, okay. Thank you very much. You’re welcome. Appreciate it. If, uh, Phyllis, if you could come up please, and, and we have the same question for you. It’s not too complicated. Same answer, same answer.

49:36 I too am on the Council on Aging Board. Well, thank you for waiting. Appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. Well thanks, thanks for doing this. Thanks for all that you do. So hopefully we can help some people out. Yeah. Okay. Well, we’re, as you know, we have, uh, you know, Dan, uh, our, uh, committee member is very interested in, in this and it’s taking a, a strong interest, so as all of us have Good. But he’s kind of leading a lot of interest around this, so, well, I taught him in third grade, so Did you, I’m very good. Well, no Wonder among many other people you’ve influenced for, for, for the good. For the good. Alright. So, okay. Well that’s great. Thank you. Okay. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for volunteering. Thank you. So if I can point out Yes. For folks, ‘cause I put a memo on this one.

50:23 This is sort of reconstituting, this committee, Lisa Hooper advocated, came and, and advocated for it. So, so it was adopted, um, uh, in, in 2000. And what is function is is that on our tax bills, your property tax bills, there’s a checkoff where you can donate a dollar or any other amount, and it goes to this fund. And, and the, the fund is applied to needy folks who qualify. And this is the committee that decides who, who, who benefits from it. So the members of the committee, there are two ex officio, John Kelly, who’s the chair of the board of assessors. So it’s a, whoever’s the chair of the board

51:10 of assessors Cammy, uh, Anelli, who is our treasurer collector. So they’re both ex officio, that’s the fiduciary oversight. And then three marble head residents. And Lisa Hooper, though she’s our council and agent director, is also a resident filling one of the seats. So this would fill the other two seats. The challenge has been is that a vast majority of taxpayers pay their property taxes through their escrow, through the mortgage holder. They never actually see or look at the bill to check off. Yep. So over the years, the, the, the level of funding has, has, has dropped off. So part of what we talked about was not just filling the seats,

51:55 but also to start working on a, on a campaign to inform taxpayers of this mechanism to help folks in, in Marblehead. So they’re stepping up to, to do the hard work, um, and, and to, to sort of re generalize and, and get this program going. And I would say this is part of sort of the overall big agenda that a whole number of people lot in this room where as there’s pressure on tax increases and potential overrides and, you know, generating more revenue, put as much effort into finding the mechanisms to take care of the folks who are least able to handle those impacts

52:41 and do everything we can possible to assist them as we also work to identify revenue sources to meet our service delivery needs. So I wanted to make sure that that was That’s great. Probably context. That’s great context. And I have kind of a follow up question with regard to that, Lisa, is that, you know, it’s so convenient having the bank kind of package the tax along in an escrow mechanism, right? How do you, and I know that, I think my wife may have actually done this, separated the taxes and, and is managing those taxes and paying them separately from the, you know, financing charges. So how does that get made easier? I think so that would be a significant aspect of kind of, you know, making the, you know, making that claim or, or can you get help from the bank?

53:27 I guess that might be another Question. That’s the way that they can do those two things, pay my escrow, and then also another check. It has to be made easy to That’s right. Yeah. No, that’s right. That’s right. So, well, I, I want to say, um, everyone still gets a tax bill right? In quarterly or whatever. And I wanna say there’s actually an insert for the fireworks, isn’t there for a separate insert? Yeah, you could potentially, not with the fireworks, but you could have another time of the year have an insert like the fireworks as if you would like to contribute. Uh, that’s probably about the only way you really do not want to get tied up with escrow accounts and banks. It’s, it’s, there’s a million, right? Well, Well it’s gotta get converted somehow,

54:12 Which I, I claim mine outside of escrow account. No, That’s right. It’s a pain. It’s a pain. Totally. Right. I guess the question is how do you, how do you claim the right amount so forth. But that might be a, a thing, an insert. That’s interesting. Alright. Any other, any other questions? Okay. So I’d like to entertain a motion to appoint, uh, Meredith Rearden to the taxation aid committee with a term to expire in June of 2026. So Moved second. All those in favor? Alright. The motion is approved and I’d like to undertake another motion to appoint Phyllis Smith to the taxation aid committee with a term to expire in June, 2026. So moved second. All those in favor, unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you for volunteering.

54:59 Alright, let’s, uh, let’s, uh, One more council on, There’s another one more Council on agent. Yes, I know there’s, uh, uh, I guess we have two, um, and there’s two vacancies as it turns out for three year terms for the Council on ag. Uh, we will take it in alphabetical order as well. The applicant, uh, Andy Gillis, if you’re here,

55:26 welcome. Thank you. And thank you for coming. Okay. Oh yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. Thank you. Alright. Uh, got a tough question for you. Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and, and why you’re interested in, in, in joining the Council on agent? Yep. So, uh, Uh, Pretty much a lifelong Marblehead resident and, um, I’ve been in senior housings, predominantly senior healthcare since 1993. Uh, predominantly nursing homes, assisted livings, hospice, and, uh, my offices have never, uh, been local. I’ve been on the road quite a bit, but Gotcha. Recently, last December, I, uh, changed things up, but I’m currently the executive director at the Mariner in Marblehead, which, you know, my intention is to,

56:11 to stay there for a while. It’s a better, you know, work life balance, living in town. So with that, I figured that, uh, it made more sense to try to get a little bit more involved in town, you know, joining Rotary, also Council on Aging and, you know, I thought, uh, senior housing and healthcare could, uh, put a, a little more input into the, the board could be Useful, outstanding, and a great facility too. Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. Wonderful. You have the time to, to volunteer and give back. Much appreciated. Mm-hmm. Any, any questions? No, that’s great. Thank you. Alright. Uh, if that’s the case, I’d like to entertain a motion to appoint Andy Gillis to the Council in Aging with a term to expire in June, 2028. So moved. Second. Second. All those in favor? Congratulations. And thank you very much. Thank you.

56:59 Appreciate it. Yes, Thank you. Okay. I think we are now, I just wanna make sure we’re right on, we’re on track here. Uh, I think we are looking at, uh, the next agenda item s Clark and Associates, uh, along with Alicia.

57:20 And this is about the 2024 Marblehead Annual Comprehensive Financial Report.

57:29 Thank you, Alicia. Gentlemen. Thanks for your patience. Appreciate it. Welcome. Alicia, is there a slide? Welcome we To, Uh, Kyle. Do I have it? Do? Yeah, we’ll hold, uh, should we, yeah, second. Should we check? Should we check on that? Yeah. Okay. We’ll, we’ll take a moment to check on the, on the presentation. Do you wanna share? Do,

57:57 Yeah, we’ve got it. In our package, but it’d be great to, to get it up on the screen.

58:15 You’re gonna send it to me. Okay.

58:22 This is what happens when I come flying in hot before A meeting. When when you come in hot from another meeting. Yeah, yeah.

58:31 Sorry.

58:37 I got

58:49 You while there Looking for that. Yeah. Should we go? Go ahead. You go ahead and, Uh, thank you. Honorable Select forward for having us this evening. I’m very excited to present, uh, Tony Roseli, partner at Rose and Clarke and Paul Garo, partner at Rian Clarke to present to you the, uh, financials. They’re a brand new firm. They really did a, a one heck of a job digging into Marblehead financials and, and looking at our operations and services. Brand new to us. Brand new to us, brand new Sherry. Yes. So, um, I’m not Brand new. I’m past my expiration. Yeah, you’re exaggerating a little bit. Tony. Tony, you’re exaggerating. It’s called brand new, right? It’s, um, very, uh, well looked upon to change over your auditors for a fresh audit perspective to see things differently.

59:36 So, Exactly. Right. There we go. Yeah, we do, we do. We have, uh, we have a presentation up there for Oh wow. Folks to see online as well, so, Alright.

59:50 Okay. Well, thank you for the introduction, uh, Alicia, um, myself and Paul today, we’ll go over, um, most of it is in this, even though there’s a lot of documents involved in the audit, most of it is in this 10 or 12 page handout, uh, which is flashing behind us. Uh, so today I’ll go over some economic trends. I’ll go over bond ratings, um, some findings and recommendations, and then, you know, we’ll entertain any questions as they, as they come up. We don’t have to wait till the end. Okay. So, uh, if we flip over to the introduction, um, I like to just kind of let our audience know what, what do we do when we get here? You know, what, what is it? Um, so, so what is an audit?

1:00:39 So the, we have to follow guidelines put out by the government auditing, um, accounting, um, it’s called the Yellow Book. And it’s, it’s a, it’s a process. Unlike when you go to a business and do an audit, a go, a government process is a little different. So we have to go through, uh, dig in and do this. Um, you know, as, as I’ve bulletized here, we have to look at your internal control over major transactions. And that doesn’t mean looking at every single transaction that took place in the, um, in the town. And the major transactions are payroll, revenue, and your disbursements. Those are your three major transactions. So we have to look at what sort of controls are in place

1:01:25 on those major transactions. Paul will talk later about some of the things we found as we went through those controls. Um, we also look at risk assessment. Are there areas that we might need to heighten our audit process? And, uh, certainly, again, Paul will talk about that a little later when we go through what your other auditor had reported, and we read those things. That’s part of our risk profile, uh, interviewing, uh, Alicia before we come to the audit. Um, trying to the department of, um, uh, the, the Department of Revenue, department of Education. So we get as much information as we, as we can, so that when we in to do an audit, uh, we know exactly where.

1:02:14 Sometimes, sometimes it’s really, it’s, it’s very clean. It’s got a great history. So we can do like a standard audit. Sometimes we say, Hey, there’s risk in this area, so we need to apply more resources there. Um, the, as part of this particular audit, because you receive more than $750,000 and spend that in federal, uh, sources, you have to have an additional audit called the single audit. So that’s a federal compliance audit. And, um, couple of other reasons why you may need an audit is for the bond, for your, um, so that the bond rating people can grade, uh, your credit.

1:03:02 Because what happens when you go out to build a school or public works facility, public safety facility, you need to out and do a bonding for that. That bonding needs to have a credit assessment done by s and p or Moody’s, and you need financial statements to do that. So that’s another reason why you would, you know, need your, uh, financial statements and why you would need an audit. Um, so clean opinion versus qualified opinion. The clean opinion is when we look at your financial statements and we look at the numbers, the numbers are fairly presented. This is a fair presentation of what, uh, the town of, uh, Marblehead, uh, presents for this year.

1:03:49 And finally, the governance report. The governance report is highlights problems, um,

1:03:59 hurdles, challenges. That’s what happens with the, uh, in the governance report. And we’re required to give that to you. You are the, basically the governors of the town and, uh, we’re required to give that report to you folks. All right. So hopefully, yeah, hopefully any questions on that? It’s not forensic an audit. You know, a lot of people are like, you know, oh God, the town clerk took some dog money. How come the auditors didn’t catch it? You know, well, it’s 10 bucks. We’re not gonna, you know, it’s a hundred dollars. That’s not the sort of thing that we go looking for unless you say, Hey, we got a problem with that department, then even something minor becomes more, more escalated, but we’re not going in looking for that, that sort of stuff. So hopefully everyone understands that. Well, good question, uh,

1:04:45 burning question on my mind is kind of the qual qualified opinion vis-a-vis a bond rating and kind of what’s the le the threshold levels? Uh, Yeah, That gets to be a, a concern or an issue. Yeah. So if you say you haven’t done your pension, um, actuary, we would’ve to qualify the opinion. If you haven’t done your opep, if you haven’t, um, provided us with a fixed asset inventory, uh, you know, it’s, that particular opinion is just accounting related. Mm-hmm. It’s not, uh, efficiency related. Understood. Like, are people doing what they’re supposed to be doing? That’s not that opinion that kind of pops up in the internal control, which is what Paul will talk about later as part of the single audit.

1:05:31 Got it. Perfect. Okay, great. Thank you. Pretty, pretty clear. Yep. Hopefully. Um, so one of the things I took a look at, which is great when you have an act for, is you’ve got a 10 year history in the act for, in the back of the act for tells you what your cash was for the last 10 years, what your revenues was, what your expenses were. So what I wanted to snapshot for you folks is the consistency in your reserves. Um, you’ll see that they’re, for the last 10 years, they’ve been between 18 and say $21 million. So there’s been a pretty good consistency there. So what hap what I’ve noticed happens is you beat, usually beat on your revenue forecast. You usually under on your expenses. So you’ve got what’s called turnbacks. Mm-hmm.

1:06:16 And then you have appropriations that turns into free cash, and then you have appropriations from that to either fund stabilization or, or to do certain smaller capital projects that you would not use, uh, debt for. So you’ve got this balancing act. As long as you can continue to beat the revenue forecast and beat your expense budget, you’ll always have this part of, part of, um, bucket of money that you could use the next year for these smaller type capital projects. And to, to do ep for example, right now It’s basically excess appropriation, right? Yep. That as long as we’re stay conservative on revenues and costs. Exactly. We can continue to generate that, that relative balance. And the, the bond rating folks love this, right?

1:07:03 They love consistency. They don’t love, you know, you go in here and there and here and there. Then it, because they, when they rate a bond, a bond is usually a 20 year vehicle or a 30 year vehicle. They want to be able to look out and say, you know, when we’re, when we’re evaluating this, we gotta look out, is that still gonna be as valuable 20 years from now as it is now? So they love the consistency, they can predict it better as opposed to the wild fluctuations. Yeah. So if I look at the reserve balance, 2024 was, uh, let’s just say 19 million. Is that essentially free cash before allocations? Or how would, So the definition of reserve, the reserve is, um, your free cash Yep. Plus all your stabilizations. Yep. Plus what, uh, what’s called assigned fund balance.

1:07:51 It’s fund balance that you put aside that you’re gonna spend in the following year. What, what the bar rating folks do is add up all those numbers and say, that’s your reserve balance. And then what they do, if we go to the next page, they divide it that by your expenses. And what they generally like to see is a number that’s higher than 15%, which is tier one that puts you into that AAA Gotcha. Type of bucket. So you guys are at 20%, so you cleared that. They also look at other factors, but that’s one of the factors they look at. So I wanted to kind of highlight that from a financial perspective, it’s being managed well. You’ve got the nice surplus that then you are able to use.

1:08:39 You’re not dipping into, into it aggressively. You’re not dipping into it. Yep. And you’ve main been able to maintain that nice reserve. Uh, the next page just kind of summarizes all that, you know, the financial trends, the metrics. Uh, who does the bond rating? Is it s and P? S and P? Okay. So S and P is the 15%. Um, and you continue to get your aaa. Um, they also look at wealth factor of your citizens and your value of your, your, your real estate. They look at a bunch of things. Yeah. Um, so the AAA puts you in the 10% of communities. You will have no problem going out and funding a new project based on your, your finances. That would never be a problem in this town. Uh, or, or a near term problem.

1:09:29 A couple of things that I thought would be interesting to talk about on the financial side also are some of your long-term obligations. And, um, we all know debt is a long-term obligation, but the ones that kind of are stealth are your pension liability and your OPE liability. They’re there, they exist. Um, the pension liability is what you folks are gonna pay. Your employees who retire. They’re not on social security. They put into your pension. You’ve matched that in some way, shape or form. And at the end of the day, they’re owed an annuity for however long they’re gonna live. Now, the good news for us old guys like me,

1:10:14 is those life expectancies are going up. That’s bad news for the municipalities because you’ve gotta fund that liability further than you would have, say, back in the 1980s. Back in the 1980s. You know, you got a 72, 70 4-year-old life expectancy. Now you’re into the eighties, people living well into their nineties, and you’re these annuities if someone’s earning a hundred thousand dollars. Think about it. If someone’s earning a hundred thousand dollars a year pension and it doesn’t take much to get there, and they live 30 years after they retire, that’s a $3 million. Yeah. Liability value. Yeah. You know, it’s there. It’s real, it’s not going away. So, um, what the state did back in the 1990s is they recognized this was happening and said, you’ve gotta

1:11:01 statutorily start funding this. Because what the communities were doing back then is pay as you go. Here’s what we owe our retirees. Now we’re just gonna pay it and pay it. They weren’t putting away for down the road. They weren’t booking it. Yeah. So at this point, uh, your unfunded liability is 54 million, which is, which is pretty good because you’re about 70% funded. You’re 30% short of a hundred, which puts you into a top tier of where communities that have pension systems are, you know, 70% seems to be a good number that I’m seeing that’s out there. Um, opep is your health insurance that you have to pay your retirees. The problem with Opep is the state never

1:11:49 forced you to do this. They said you can continue to do pay as you go, or you can fund it like the pension. Most communities decided not to go the pension route. So they’ve created these very large liabilities. Yours was 151 million, uh, at the end of 24. It was lower than the prior year because it was a good investment, uh, year. And, uh, but I think it’s what you’re funded at is about three or 4% of your liability, which in my opinion is a little low. I think that’s an area you might want to target in terms of some additional funding. If funds become available, I am gonna put forth a EP funding plan in the near future.

1:12:36 Good. Thank you. So, any questions on those bullets? A couple of informational items? One of the things I’ve been pounding the table on to my communities is you built up reserves, uh, which means you’ve got some cash somewhere. Is it earning interest? Okay. And towns tend to be the laed ‘cause they’re not, you know, they’re not these big investment, you know, folks, and, excuse me, a lot of towns fell asleep because the interest rate was less than right. 2%, half a percent. It was less than a half a percent for years. And you have to be very safe when you’re inve. You can’t go in and, but the entire town’s portfolio in

1:13:23 nvidia, although that would’ve been a good idea five years ago, but you can’t do things like that. Uh, the state has regulations that you need to follow. So treasurers kind of lost interest in earning, you know, uh, investment income. And what happened was the rates went up on the borrowing side because of the, uh, pandemic, the rates went up because they created inflation. And, um, the good thing about that was the bank rates went up. So very, very safe investments were yielding 5%. But when me and Paul were driving around doing our audits, we’re like, why are you at, why are you at one 10th of a percent? Why are you at two tenths of a percent when there’s banks out there offering 5%?

1:14:09 So we’ve been pounding the table on that. I’m happy to report that Marble had made about 3.2 million in investment income, which was double the year before and triple the year before that. Mm-hmm. So, so you’re going in the right direction on that particular, uh, item. Everyone’s smiling. We are Thank, thank you, Alicia. I mean, to me it’s free money. Take it. Yeah. It’s great. When you go out to borrow, the bank’s gonna hit you with the, with the rate that it is the market rate. So when you, you’re investing your own money, you should invest at the market rate. And that’s where there was a disconnect in the municipalities, uh, for a few years there. Happy to mention, uh, Cammy saw that the rates were gonna drop and she locked our money in a cd. Perfect. So when it went down to 4%, she was earning 5% for us. Perfect.

1:14:56 Okay. And Alicia, roughly, um, uh, what is that principle in the investment income? Rough numbers principle, is it like a hundred million? It’s, or The cash, what is the cash balance about

1:15:12 In all the interest? It Around 90, I mean, when we’ve talked about before, I can’t remember fluctuates obviously, but, but if, if we around the 93.2 million, I’m guessing it’s around a million. A hundred million. Yeah. Yes. Correct. Yeah. ‘cause you can’t put the whole thing at 5%, right? You have to have some, some cash out and, um, so, um, yeah, I would guess it’s, I I don’t have the number in front of me, but I would guess it’s about that. Yeah. We’re gonna see a Deon because we’re starting to spend down our ARPA now, so we’re making a lot of money just leaving that ARPA there and not spending it. But now we’re actually spending that down. Oh yeah, that’s right. We’re, we have to get that money out the door before it gets taken from us, so Yeah. Quicker the better. Yeah. Yep. Uh, the next thing is, um, not that I’ve

1:15:58 seen anything, you know, crazy with your network security, but it’s, I always put the reminder out there because I’ve seen too many clients up on Fox News. They’re locked down, they can’t get to their system, this ransomware or, uh, or someone’s money got wired to Latin America because someone fell for a phishing, um, uh, thing. And, um, so what what we’re really pushing is that you train your employees not to click on stupid things, not to fall for things. And, and it’s easy. I mean, I get some really good clones and I’m like, I send it to my IT guy right away. I said, I’m not gonna open this till you tell me I can open it. And he’s like, Nope, don’t open that one. And, uh, it’s really tricky and it can catch you.

1:16:44 And, uh, once you’re in that hellhole, it is horrible. It’s horrible, you know? So, uh, I, I haven’t read about you guys. I don’t think you’ve, you know, we invested A lot with the collaborative on our cybersecurity, and Patrick sent me out on numerous trainings along with, um, the police department also has a person that’s a IT specialist to make sure our, our stuff’s good. And in addition to, to that, we also do penetration testing. So we send out like fake The fake ones to catch people, to Catch people to kind of inform them. So we do that as well. Great. I was, I was in one town with a finance director. Oh no. The fake one. Oh no. And I’m like, oh God, come on. Brutal. So then you go on the, they put you on the,

1:17:30 in the hallway, you know, you’re on there as a, you know, your picture goes on there as only The month, but not the good one. Right? That’s right. Um, and so lastly, I’m gonna turn the this over to Paul Now. Uniform guidance is single audit. That’s where some of our problems so far, this has been really good, but there’s always, you know, the other side we’re auditors. We have to report this. So Paul, I’ll let you do that. Sure. I get to be the bearer of bad news. Yeah. Darn it. Alright. Um, Well, I’ll Follow the, uh, the form out of the slide first. We’ll talk about some of the financial statement material weaknesses, and then I’ll get, and I’ll talk about the uniform guidance. There was some minor, there was some issues there. But, um, so the cash and bank reconciliation process

1:18:16 and the receivable reconciliation process, uh, we found that there were material weaknesses in, in both cases. Um, so with a material weakness, that’s a deficiency where, um, the town employees are not gonna be able to find or detect material misstatements during the normal course of their job duties. Um, because of the lack of these controls. Um, you know, as you know, the, the bank and cash reconciliation process in particular caused the delay in the financial statements, but also a delay in your free cash. Mm-hmm. Um, and that kind of became a last minute, a last minute fire drill, which I was somewhat involved in. Mm-hmm. Um, so obviously that needs to be, you know, the,

1:19:03 the prime, the prime focus right now, um, in order to make sure you’re 25 free cash and financials are issued timely. And I’m hearing also too, s and p is getting to the point where they’re, you know, Moody’s was pulling some ratings on late financial statements, and now I’ve heard that s and p is now also saying that they’re, they’re expecting, was it within one year? Mm-hmm. They’re expecting financial statements within one year or they’re going to potentially, um, start affecting your credit year. So time this Becomes a metric. Yes. It, it is, it it Really Is. That was surprised when I started here that the former audit was always a year in arrears. That freaked me out when I first got here. Right. That’s what we’re, uh, it’s, it’s great to be,

1:19:49 uh, aware and improving. Right. So. Right. This is great. So, you know, again, we, we did find, I, I’ll just quickly summarize. I, I won’t go into detail, but there were some bank accounts that were being carried by the treasurer’s reconciliation that had already been closed, common stock that hadn’t been valued properly. There was some outstanding checklists that weren’t being properly maintained. You know, checks that were cash were being showed as outstanding. Um, and unfortunately a lot of this was due to turnover. I know Camie kinda inherited this unfortunately. And she unfortunately also inherited a lack of process as well. So I think what’s extremely important, as you know, I know this consultants in there assisting now, not only to get you guys caught up to cash, I think it’s also important for them to develop systems

1:20:35 that Cammie and the staff can follow and to train everyone on those systems so they can leave and she can just, you know, keep the ball rolling and, ‘cause if they just get you caught up and then walk away, we’re in the same boat a year from now. So What we’ve done is we have, uh, muni and now the Muni C system. So we’re creating a whole Muni C system for the person so that it will help with the system versus having three different ways of reconcile. We’re right now she’s going to QuickBooks, then she has on top of QuickBooks in Excel, and then on top of Excel. Then she’s going into soft, right. It, it multiple different things versus now will be on one platform that has one cashbook that talks to the system for her to get done. So efficiency and technology is being utilized. Yes. Well, you know, we we’re, we’ve been aware of this,

1:21:21 uh, issue for, for a little while. I think we had kind of a perfect storm during the COVID period Yeah. Where we had 20 year employees who were kind of the foundation of kind of the knowledge base operating on anti antiquated systems. And I think we just have a huge opportunity because we’ve got these amazing applications that live in the cloud. You know, we’ve got, we’re able to reorganize our workforce to address this, get the redundancies that we need, the cross training, especially in the, in the treasury department. So, you know, Alicia has been leading these initiatives, you know, take, take some time though, especially getting up on the systems to the, to the point where we’re, and I, I think we’re, you know, this, uh, you know, we did commission an audit, uh, what, three years ago, four years ago. Yep. Which, which told us the truth. Mm-hmm. You know, which told us a lot about what we needed to do,

1:22:07 but, so we’ve been working very hard to address it, especially on the system side, so, correct. Uh, you know, we’re hoping that we can get a timely deliverable of the accounting and then to have that basis in place so that if employees do leave, we don’t have, you know, gaps in continuity mm-hmm. Which has been the bane of our existence. Yeah. Honestly. So point well taken. Okay. And I’m working with a client right now that has the munis cash. Yeah. Um, and I was actually very impressed with it. It, it’s far beyond what I saw their capability, even, you know, three to five years ago. It’s Well, that’s right. Everything was right all In one place. Well, we’ve recommitted to that too, right? Yeah. So. Yep. No, I think it’ll serve you well. Um, and then also not as important as the cash reconciliation issue, but we also had our material weakness in the receivable reconciliations.

1:22:52 This was mainly due, um, to two entries that were, that had to be recorded in 24 that actually related to the prior year. So your beginning balance was materially off and that’s what caused the material. So it’s just a question of finding that basically. Yes, yes. Right. Um, in addition, there were some other, you know, I think what’s the total, there were another 160,000 of variances in vari in in different accounts as well. I’m assuming those have been cleaned up as we speak, I would expect. Correct. I would expect this comment to be mostly resolved this year. Unfortunately, the cash where you were year behind, you went through all of 25 with the same condition. So that probably stays, you know, it’ll get up, we’ll update it. But unfortunately, as part of the next year’s opinion

1:23:40 as part of the FY 25, unfortunately that condition was there all year. But pretty much, so there’s, I don’t think there’s a way around it, but again, we’ll, we’ll update, we’ll update the issue. Um, and on the single audit, um, you know, we’re talking about clean versus qualified opinions. Um, we did audit the coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery fund as a, as the sole major program. You did have a clean opinion, so there was a clean opinion, but you did have some deficiencies in internal controls as part of, as part of the process. Um, there was a significant deficiency, internal controls over reporting the expenditures reported COR were reported COR correctly, but the obligations weren’t. Those are the two items that the US Treasury is having us validate on those reports, obligations and expenditures.

1:24:27 Uh, so basically the town was reporting all the projects that were approved and voted by the board as obligated. But the federal definition of obligation is you’ve either spent it, actually ordered it, or you have a signed contract or agreement with a, with a vendor. So are those getting re-categorized? Those have already been corrected. Okay. Great.

1:24:53 Um, and the second one, and that, the one I just spoke about is a common one that’s happening all over the state and the country right now that that misconception on obligation. Uh, and the other one that, that we found was a material weakness over lack of checking for vendor suspension and debarment, which again, we’re seeing everywhere. So for not just this, the Coronavirus, uh, local recovery grant, but all federal grants, when you pay a vendor more than $25,000 in a year, you are supposed to check if they are suspended or debarred from federal awards. So you do that in three ways. You could either have them sign a certification that they’re not suspended or debarred, you can write it into a contract, the clause in the contract if you have a contract with them, or you can do it manually. There’s a website called sam.gov and most checking. Yeah.

1:25:42 And, and you can check it on your own, but, so you have to do it through one of those means. And you had several vendor, all the vendors over 25,000 in the grant were not checked. So the fix on that is we now have a full-time chief procurement officer and Grant Coordinator, and grant coordinator who are focused on those kind of issues. And because it’s their focus, have the bandwidth to make sure those things happen. Whereas in the past, the chief procurement officer was also, your planner was also your something else, something else. And so having the bandwidth to ensure all of these things, a a lot of stuff falling through the cracks. So a big part of the fixes on all these things was reorganizing the structure of the, the team so

1:26:31 that everybody with these significant responsibilities were focused on had the bandwidth to actually do that function. They weren’t trying to be five different things, especially these areas where there are compliance requirements. So that, that’s the big, the big changes that we’re implementing. I, I, I’ll go back, I think I’ve said it before, the the first big step we took to fix a lot of this stuff is hiring a very competent and hardworking CFO who could lead the rest of us through the path of getting beyond these things. So Yeah, I mean, I, I think that’s been, you know, been one of the reasons I’m including your feedback, by the way, one of the reasons I’m more optimistic than ever about kind

1:27:18 of the fiscal, uh, status of the town, our capacity to respond. I think we’ve got a great resource management, uh, plan that’s been put in place by Thatcher and Alicia very importantly. And there’s a lot of hard work, you know, pounding down on hard planks to, uh, you know, to to, to make this stuff, to put this stuff in place. So, uh, we’re very pleased that we will be, uh, you know, under your, uh, you know, review, be put to a, to a high standard test and we welcome it. So, uh, ‘cause we have the team in place to do it. So we’re very excited about that. Good. Um, and that finishes our presentation, so if there’s any questions, we’d be glad to. Yeah. I’m, um, just kind of working through these for the first time.

1:28:04 Are the material we weaknesses, uh, documented in a management letter or is that your governance report? It’ll be d it’ll d it will be duplicated in the, um, governance letter. Governance letter, yes. Will essentially be like the management letter. Correct. Yeah. Okay. Same thing. Okay.

1:28:25 Um, And I provided a corrective action plan for all their items to the auditors. Yep. That’s in here. Yep. A very useful report. Thank you very much. Uh, and can we, can we do this every Year? Yes. You haven’t had an exit conference? Nope. Nope. I, I brought an actuary for the first, first time into to present, and now you as our auditors is first time to present. I was thinking like, my job may be monthly. Exactly.

1:28:58 Even if we have to pop up on the screen, You know. Um, yeah, you should do it once a year. Oh, a hundred percent. Oh yeah. You know, uh, we try to get even our, we get clients at three hours away out by New York and I’ll just pop on the screen and do the, you know, presentation on the screen instead of, you know, going back and forth. So, uh, it’s important. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s important. And I think it’s great too, even just highlighting some of these things with just, you know, the impact and like the, just the financial statements and just how those trends are shifting, you know, with, if URI is doing this and then SP is following up, if we can get in front of that and make sure mm-hmm. Then, you know, we keep our bond rating, we keep all of those things that keep us more fiscally sound. So it’s great to get in of, She’s, she’s put out a lot of fires.

1:29:44 Yeah. We, we know she Has put out so many fires and, uh, she likes to go to places that are on fire and put it out and she’s done a, she hasn’t failed yet, so I don’t see it happening. And she’s gonna, if you say, but, but, but I have a headache. No. Get it done. You know, it’s, there’s no excuses with her. It’s, it’s gonna get done. So, um, and she knows she’s got answer to me if she doesn’t. So Yes. You could see he’s audited me Before. That’s great. Well, both your reputations procedure proceed yourself. Yeah. So Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for all the help. Thanks. Thank, Thank you. Welcome. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. And the Red Sox are leading. Are they good? Three. Nothing. So, right. What are you getting it through? An earpiece or something? It’s just,

1:30:30 Unless they lost it in the last 10 minutes. I know, right? Don’t let Moses string You. No, no, no. I’m trying not to. Alright. I think we are. What on, uh,

1:30:43 the yacht club or the curb appeal? Is that? Oh no, that’s been yacht station. Yep. Curb cut. The, the curb Cut. The curb cut curb. Yes, that’s right. With Tom. Uh, Saltzman Saltzman, agent of the owner. Welcome Tom. Good to see you. Nice to see you. Hi. Yeah, thanks for, thanks for coming out. Thanks for your patience. We never know how long these things are gonna go for. It’s alright. No problem at all. It’s fun to watch night. Yeah. Okay. Um, thanks for hearing this. If, if you would, uh, present your appeal. Yeah. Yep. And, uh, and then we’ll, we’ll move on from there. Yeah, happy to. That’d be great. So, um, my name is Tom Saltzman from Saltzman and Brenzel. I’m representing the new owners at, uh, 4 21, 4 23 Ocean Avenue. Those are two numbers associated with the house and with the garage structure that are there.

1:31:30 Uh, the property’s on the neck out towards the lighthouse before the last bend. On the right side, there’s 172 feet of frontage on the property. That area is characterized by stone walls, lawns in front of the stone walls, there’s no curb. Um, and people generally don’t park there. I mean, trades people do during the day, but it’s not, you know, a a heavily parked area.

1:31:57 We, um, have a proposal for replacing the garage, which we had before the Conservation Commission on four 10, and then on ZBA 4 22. Both of those were approved. They’ve been recorded, they were heard with some questions, but everybody in the neighborhood was happy with what we were doing. And that, uh, this, what I had proposed was on the ZBA, uh, hearing that night. Um, when we applied for the curb cut for what we’re doing is to try to modify the center opening or the mess that’s kind of in the middle of the property. We were denied. And, um, we were denied on, uh, article 4 2 5, 5 dash 13 on the two counts.

1:32:42 One is the curb cuts shall not exceed 20 feet and width on each residential property. Right. And the other was, um, article G, which says, bear with me, no driveway shall be located in any front yard area, which is the front of any yard area calculated from the two outermost front corners of the dwelling. In other words, you can’t have a driveway in front of your house. So, um, we believe that our proposal is a betterment, uh, and we’re seeking relief from this. Um, we think it’s better for the public way and for the property to describe it. And you have plans there in front of you. And I have some pictures of what the original garage looked like, which might,

1:33:28 I definitely take the visual see this as well.

1:33:32 This was a garage that came right up that ocean out, right? Yeah, this came right up on the ocean. And that’s been removed, right? Yes. So the property, when it was purchased has a 16 foot curb cut or opening in the, in the wall. So this is it right here at one end? That’s correct. That’s the center. It had a 12 foot opening in the wall, or I guess you could call it a curb cut at the east most end. And what you’re looking at there is basically a 30 foot wide apron, two doors on the property extending actually out into the street. Right. That’s 58 linear feet of, of curb cut. Let’s say our proposal was not to change the one on the, uh, far east or the far left, but to reduce the center down to 14 feet. Um, the purpose of this, uh, in, also in the original

1:34:18 building, um, the original purchase of the property, the opening, which is the gate you see there, it enters into the property. There’s a large part of ledge right up to the front yard. You can’t really turn around. So there’s often you’re backing out backwards out onto the street. So we remove the ledge. The intention was to turn the garage sideways so you can drive around from that open. So th th this turn this garage? Yeah. There’s gonna a smaller garage that’s proposed that’s turned sideways that you should see on the, what I submitted to you. And, and that’s on what diagram? It’s just here. It’s on this diagram here. Oh. The Color is super helpful. Looks good. Thank you. Yeah, I can, um, I can put the visual Up If you want to have,

1:35:05 You can look here. It’s fine. So the intention is to get all of the maneuvering on the property. Right. And by doing that, you’re en you’re exiting the property basically nose first, no backing up. Um, we feel like we’ve reduced that. We cr cleaned up the mess there. We’re gonna reconstruct the wall along that area where the garage previously was. And that area in front of the building in front of the house was, um, it’s not visible from a public way. So I I Right, right. We have all kinds of support from the neighbors. They’re enthusiastic about the project, and I’m hoping that you might see this as well. So That Wasn’t the right house. Sorry. It’s right here. I had that wrong side of the street. Hilarious.

1:35:53 So Tom, so this, so you’re saying the, the, this is a would be, let’s just say an an entrance way. And you’re suggesting that the egress come, uh, so this maybe you can just describe the Sure. The entrance and the egress. This is right now. So that opening you’re looking at is here, right? This gate? Yep. There’s another small opening over here. This is not a turnaround. This is just access to the lower part of the yard. Yep. Okay. It’s not intended to be a, you know, traffic is not good. So this literally just came up and went here and came back out. Right, right. And on the other color down, that’s Where the gate is. That’s where the gate is. Right. And then it had, this apron was sticking out here out into the street. Right? Yep. So we want to make a small opening here. Mm-hmm. And then we were coming around the house like this,

1:36:39 into a, actually a parking lot here. And the new garage is located over Here. Gotcha. So you’re moving, so you’re removing that whole structure. Yep. Got it. Got it. So you have a what, a, a one bay garage now? Or two bay? It’s a three bay garage that’s turned perpendicular to the street. Got. And it will be behind. I see. The constructed wall, like what’s there on the street. So in this diagram,

1:37:04 where would the exit point be? It Would be from this point right here. This gate right there to approximately here. That area right There. But then you still have the entrance over here? That’s correct. And this is the 14 feet on both sides. You’re saying? This would be 14. This would be 14 feet opening. Mm-hmm. This one is existing as a 16 foot. Okay. That was, and there’s Small, small 12 all the way down There. That was the already preexisting, right? Pre, yeah. Okay. So the 16 is the preexisting, the 14 is the new. So that’s within the 20 feet width. But what is the small one down on the end? 12 feet. That’s, is there, it’s like access to the lower lawn. It’s a paved area. Right now we’re removing the paving and making lawn down there. He has bikes. I mean, he might use it

1:37:50 for coming in and out with his bicycle. Okay. But it’s not a drive, uh, it’s not intended for cars. So it seems to me that, you know, is the issue that this is coming in front of the house. I believe that is the issue. That Is the Issue that you’re, you’re coming here and because the driveway is like this, I guess it’s, ‘cause technically, technically you can have a driveway coming in here to the side. Right. And stopping, uh, ditto with this in theory. And di there Yeah. It’s not asphalt. It’s gonna be pavers and landscaping. And this is not visible from any public Way. And does this curb get, uh, curb cut, get removed? It gets removed. The wall is getting reconstructed across here where the building used to be, because

1:38:35 That, so that becomes curb. So you’re opening up parking there. That’s Lawn. This will go back to lawn space like it is now. Gotcha. Okay. Is there parking on this side of the street? Uh, I can’t remember seeing signs. There are signs every so often. They don’t say no parking. There’s no there. What’s the sky River? There’s no, there’s no intention of parking on the street. There’s no restriction on parking There. Says, what is That sign Right there? It says no barking s no, no parking, But certain hours. Certain hours. Certain hours, yeah. Parking. I don’t know the hours. That works for me. Okay. Amy might know. I actually don’t. Um, Yes. Okay. No, we’re just, we’re just trying to assess what we’re actually looking at and I think we have a good sense of it. So what, what do you, what do you think, Amy? Yeah.

1:39:21 Yes, please do. Yes, of course. Yeah, please do. Do you know The, the which one? I this is, what’s that? Do you know the, the times on this time? So I wasn’t here in 2016 when they put this regulation in. Right. So public hearing people had reasons for putting, there’s a lot on there. A through LI think, or what they went through. Um, some to me make extreme sense. Some to me can see the, I have no idea what the purpose was. Um, so I have reached out in the past to find out what different things, why we would do certain things and not other things. Um, g in particular, which is the one that stops me with this and stops me for almost every circular driveway, is the fact that it calls out. You can’t have a driveway in front of your house,

1:40:08 not accepting your garage. I mean, if you have a garage, you can drive straight up to that. Um, people have come in quite a bit for circular driveways and the way the process is right now, they have to come here. I think it makes it really very subjective. You guys have to go through all this. I don’t, I don’t know if what really needs to be done is that regulation needs to be looked at and people need to understand why they picked it. I’ve heard two reasons. One is for parking, and the other is that they don’t want full pavement in front of, in front Of the house. Sure. Right. Like a whole property. And then parking, multiple cars becoming a whole bunch of different issues. They might be, you know, uh, safety issues with fire getting there. They might be the fact that it just looks bad. It might be the fact that there’s a lot

1:40:53 of cars parked in front of someone’s house. So there’s, I don’t know what the thought process was. Well, I I gonna to ask you that. That’s not, we don’t have any insight into that, huh? No. So what, what is that, g You don’t GG not having the driveway in front of the house. Right? I I Don’t It’s very common though. No, what it was, so the drive, so it can’t be like directly in front and I don’t know. I don’t really don’t know. And I, there are a few circular driveways in town. I mean, I’m not gonna run. It may Be may grandfathered from prior to this being put in place. I’m not sure. No, but it’s very common because personally I wanted to expand my driveway at one, like two feet from in front of the attached garage to there. And I got a big no. And then I went walking around the town,

1:41:39 and you don’t find it that much that a driveway is in front of the house, to be honest, if if you, if I, I mean, once you get it in your head, you stop looking. And you do see a few, like on West Shore Drive, you’ll see a few circular driveways that Franklin are not a bad idea from safety. But those are probably grandfathered in, I’m gonna guess. Exactly. And, and they do. See, I mean, I had one just come up the week before, a smaller lot, but a circular driveway definitely would’ve been safer at this place. A hundred percent. So you’re saying it’s a single e egress entrance. Egress, but circular in within the park. Yeah. Just an entrance egress with a Right. But they attach, so you don’t have to turn, you don’t have to back out. Right. So you don’t have an extra curb cut. You’re just, you’re just making a circular Driveway. See, And I understand that people are making things better.

1:42:27 I don’t have an issue with that, but I, I get concerned when you start discussing, it says 20 feet there, they pick 20 feet. I let people separate the 20 feet. Right? I mean, you can do 10 and 10 and have two driveways. That doesn’t. But once you start allowing, discussing, well, should we do five, you know, 35 feet here? How do you tell somebody else they can’t have a 21 foot driveway because they’re affecting parking? They might not be affecting parking here. They might not be affecting a sidewalk yet here, but sidewalks are things that have to go into marblehead, especially out around the neck. Now that design has to come. So these things that are, there are all gonna have to be addressed to driveways that are too large. And you know, how we go about doing that. But you would admit that, that this

1:43:13 configuration is a betterment from the ramp of concrete that was extending out into the street as far as the sidewalk’s concerned. So, But to make a, to give somebody, yes, we’re gonna do this and then have a sidewalk design comes through that says, oh, that was, you shouldn’t have allowed that one. Now you did. So how do we go down the street? I just, I’m just concerned about you doing one off. So, and people coming here all the time to do one off, which Right, right, right. But I’m before the zoning board all the time, that board has a set of rules and regulations and people are constantly asking for relief from them. So it’s, it’s a little odd to be be in front of you asking for relief on something that you have to kind of make a judgment call about whether or not this is a betterment or not. Right. Right. That’s, I think,

1:44:01 I think you nailed the issue, the head. Right. The issue in that Amy and I have had a bunch of conversation on, and as you pointed out, uh, you know, these have been in place, who knows for how long and for whatever reasons, and there are, uh, and, and the ones that are impacting this, there are good reasons why there are those restrictions. Right. Uh, the, the issue is at, at her level of the decision making, she has to follow exactly this, right? Then, then it comes here as the appeal. And unlike the, the ZBA whose function is to give variances, you know, to make that judgment, that’s their primary function is to make those kind of decisions. Rather the board is, it’s different. So what we talked about is, um, where

1:44:49 how do we establish criteria that protects the interests that were the original purpose of having these, but also allowing at a more administrative level to allow for, as you say it, if it’s, it is a better design, it’s a safety design, you know, by what criteria can we differentiate that from others where it’s not a good design, good design, and it’s not for safety and say no. And so we’ve had a whole number of conversations about we really need to sit down and kind of take a hard look at this. Right. Right. Well, I would agree, this is kind of a forcing function for us a little bit.

1:45:35 Mm-hmm. Because I’m looking at a, an instance in which it makes eminent sense, but it doesn’t fit the, the kind of the rubric. That’s why I’m interested about what the history of the, of kind of the right, the rule was, number one. Right. And number two, you know, is there a modification to the policy that where we can achieve our, you know, the, the goal of not having paved, you know, front yards, they’re accommodating all sorts of vehicles. And I’m just, uh, yeah. I don’t know whether it’s something where we’re thinking specifically about circular driveways or, or the width of a driveway that has to be, uh, anyway, this is, you know, I, I, I guess I would just, my instinct says we should kind of remand this to further

1:46:21 discussion so that the board can not, you know, so that we can come up with something a little bit more. So, so we’re happy to take this on. Yeah. Um, to look at and to come back fairly short order. We don’t wanna Practice out For your purposes or anybody else’s with a recommendation of what, what can we do? Yeah. What are we trying to, what are we really trying to achieve? The parking no brainer, right? I mean, that just makes sense. And then kind of the, you know, know the concrete or the, you know, the, the, the paving in front of the house. Okay, that makes sense as well. Um, but there’s gotta be a, a way to kind of Right. Achieve both. So it might be, uh, other than, other than, than than section G. Right? So it may be, um, you know, what is the criteria for deviating for what’s

1:47:08 In place? And so that can be applied so that universally, because There Are multiple people who should be looking at this, right? Community development should be looking at it percent, you know, as far as whoever’s running your pavement in your sidewalk management, what the future is. They should be looking at it. Traffic safety should be looking at it. Okay, Well, if we could Zoning or planning, I don’t know which one. Yeah, Well, I think there has to be, yeah, some criteria in regards to what that deviation is. Like things like, obviously, uh, you know, we’ve, you know, since I’ve been here, we’ve had these types of things come up and, you know, if someone’s on Village Street for example, versus in another area of town, the parking impact, the traffic flow, you know, some of those things were, you know, potentially, um, citizens concerned, you know, about what could be safer as well, you know,

1:47:55 and obviously in that situation you’ve got high traffic flow, but so you also have that. And then I think also, and perhaps this is community development, but uh, looking at just the general size of the property as well, you know, and Where storm water concerns come involved too. Yeah. Like what is, what is the, the impact? And like I said, the different areas. So I think having, I understand the intent, um, of what, you know, why that’s there and what the, but I think, and if you’re looking at some sort of deviation, how do we put those things into place? And I think for us we need a little bit more, um, yeah. Impact from those guys. Well, you know, the biggest fear we have obviously as a board is that it, that we, that we’re perceived kind of as arbitrary.

1:48:41 And you know, and I think what you have here is a, you know, it would appear to be a reasonable proposal, you know, in terms of how the driveway might function. You’re reducing kind of the cut, uh, length. And I just, uh, yeah, I, we just wanna make sure we’re not opening a can of worms on this, number one. And number two, whether we can indeed have a, you know, policy that can apply to everybody so that we’re not making what, what may appear as arbitrary, uh, you know, changes every, Every time. What was the size of this curb? Cut again? I think I had it in my notes, but I just wanna make sure this, That, that apron Was 30 feet, the Building that apron is 30. Yep. Okay. The Structure. And that goes down to 12. 12, you’re Saying, and your, your proposal is 16 and 14,

1:49:28 14 as opposed to 30. Oh, no, no, no. But total, like if I, you know, if I’m comparing what the impact is here, the impact you’re proposing of like street fundage would be 16 or 14. You talk about total property Yeah. Just of that, like what, it’s basically pulling this out, but then the two entrance to the street would be 16 and 14, is that right? The, The two existing ones are 16 and 12, right? The one in the middle was 30 and we are reducing it to 14. Yes. So it’s a net. 16 foot betterment might, Oh, well the 12 won reopenings. Yeah. The, the 12 won’t change. No, that’s remaining 12 doesn’t change or anything. The 16 remains. So the 30 is being decreased to 14.

1:50:14 Okay. So I mean, I think these are some of the categories in the deviation, right? Because in that respect, from that perspective alone, you’ve got footage that’s shrinking. How does that come into play if there were sidewalk lay and stuff like that? ‘cause maybe that’s the type of criteria that would need to go into this type of plan. You know, someone like you’s designing this, right? If you, There have been areas in town where new sidewalks have come in and large openings for driveways have been removed. Well, my concern is that a betterment may still be perceived as relatively arbitrary, you know, particularly if it’s on another criterion IE you know, a driveway going in front of the house. So I think there’s gotta be a way to kind of make, make, make section G similar.

1:50:59 And, and I think it’s actually, this is, it is a forcing function. I think we’ve got a, I think it’s a, it’s a great thing now to go, to go back and really research it. And I think what we would look for is a kind of a report on that, on the policy level stuff. And I think if you could, uh, have forbearance on our answer, that’d be totally, I mean, I, I just want to say that, I mean, I served on the old historic for a long time, and I remember having many discussions with town council about what’s arbitrary and capricious and, and, and she said pretty oh blankly that one rule across the whole district is arbitrary and capricious. You really need to address things on an individual basis. So I’m just asking to find a way to kind of open that. So we have, I mean, as, because G seems a little strange to me.

1:51:45 I well, it does, yeah. I don’t want, I don’t want you to pave the front yard either, but there’s gonna be alternate situation if, if, I mean, you know, you built houses, that’s, that’s what they live by all over. Yeah. I mean, you can drive all over the north. Sho that’s, I, that’s not an unusual regulation. It’s a great lay. Yes. And, but Amy, you are here for the curb. Cut. G seems like a building inspector issue to me. It’s, it’s in the curb. Curb cut. So again, we weren’t here when, I wasn’t here in 2016 when the bylaw was changed and all these things were added in, and they were added in under the select wood and under highway. Okay. As a regulation for there. So, and maybe, maybe that’s what the discussion is, does this belong, you know, in the building design review, not, Yeah. And I think we might be able to get some more of that tho those original answers to

1:52:32 what the problems arose. And sometimes I think my experience in the time here is things evolve and shift, and maybe that’s part of addressing where, where was the intention? How do we bring it up to 2025, uh, you know, like what are the possibilities? And thinking of all the things in 2016 that may not have applied then but apply in 2025 is what, you know, when we’re looking at these types of regulations, like what are the challenges and the things that, you know, you when the highway perspective or from utilities or things like that might come into play with this type of decision. So, So Can we get a review? Uh, what, what, how much time do you think you need, uh, to, sorry, give you, Yeah. Oh, well, no, I mean, We definitely should talk

1:53:18 to all the people who sign off on the curb cut. Right? Yeah. And that might be, that’s, So I’m, I’m contemplating tough. It’s two of us. We’ve got Brendan over there. Community development. Yeah. Town engineer. Um, if it, if it’s building, building commission, I mean, we can convene staff level and start working this. I, I would also be interested to hear from Tom and others like you, because inform us as to what Needs are. See, I could see there being a hard, uh, criterium around, uh, the curb cut, right? You say no, if it’s an extra curb cut. No. Uh, but you know, the, the idea of a circular driveway, if it’s done tastefully and there’s enough, you know, it could be, but yeah, that’s

1:54:06 Defining taste. Well, that’s the question, right? Because if it becomes just a, you know, it might as well be a paved front yard, right? If you’re, If you’re, so that, I think That’s where you get into the issue of size and square footage and like Right. What percentage of the lawn in the yard and those types of things. Because that could have been the original intention, but maybe that part was just not, I think that’s probably right. That’s, I, I, I think that probably is where that was originally. Yeah. Schedule. What’s that? I’m just thinking of things that are coming up, but they’re not here for a while, so, Okay. We’re Just trying, like, how much time do we need? Yeah, exactly. So Here’s my gut, here’s my gut reaction to that. Four weeks. In other words, the, the board meeting at the first September, end of October. Okay. And if, if, if we’re struggling in time

1:54:55 for that agenda, we’ll let you know. But that Would, Tom, you and you guys reach out. Yeah, no, I’d love, I’d love to hear, gotta talk to, you know, yeah. To, to get your input, this conversation going to understand what, what the needs are on, on your side, but with our staff. What are the needs on the municipal side for all the impacts? And try to try to come up with a, Okay. So I think we’ll, we’ll go ahead and table this until then. Thank you, Tom. Thanks a lot. Appreciate. Thank You. Yeah. Thank you. All right. So next on the agenda is I guess, uh, Johnny Ray is enjoying to D’S back. Tom, do you need these back? Do you need these back? Don’t, But do you want me to clear your desk? Um, I’ll keep it just in case I try figure out some stuff for, you know, understand it further.

1:55:40 Thank you. Paper works. I’ll Keep it. Alright. Okay. So it looks like Johnny Ray is enjoying his birthday today. It’s A surprise birthday, so don’t say anything. No. Nice. Well, so he’s not gonna, he’s not here, So he’ll be rescheduled For his music emporium. Um, but we have birthday, we have Ronald, uh, Sakowski for, uh, Las Laro Thai Asian cuisine. Thank you for waiting. Your patience is much appreciated. We’re, which one? It’ll be worth it. It’ll be worth it. Yeah, that’s right. Uh, so, um, please tell us about your application, if you would. Okay. So, uh, we’re just changing managers for the liquor license.

1:56:25 We’re a Thai family type of restaurant. And, uh, we’re just having a change of management here. And we’re, um, kind just changing me over right now. And, uh, my wife’s the genius behind the food. It’s not me, but that’s about it. Right. Manage your, manage your changing menu, not changing. Exactly. We mind changing It a little bit. Yeah. Okay. We love it there. So, you know. Thank you. Don’t change too much. Uh, I think that’s pretty straightforward. Okay. So any, well, if there’s any que any other questions? No, no. You won’t have to come before the board to change the menu though. You can do it. Yeah, that’s right. So, uh, okay. So if I could have a motion

1:57:12 to approve the applications from La Ross Thai Asian Cuisine 26 Hawk Street for a change of manager on the wine malt beverage with cordials license number 0 6 9 82 dash rs dash 0 6 5 6 to Ronald o Sarkowski, subject to receipt of the required fees, forms Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission and Cory approval. So moved. Second. Second. And it’s a polled vote.

1:57:41 Mr. Keer, if you could take us through the poll. Vote. Ms. Uh, Ms. Singer? In favor? Mr. Zin? In favor, Mr. Grader in favor. Approved unanimously. Thank you. Thank you for your patience. We really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And good luck. Thank you. Missed the evening. Thank you very much. Thank you. Welcome. Alright, so we’re moving on now to, uh, the Marblehead Bicycle Facilities plan. And Logan is here to give us a, give us an overview. Thanks For waiting. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for It’s Almost my bedtime. Thank you. It’s always your pleasure. That’s, that’s an exaggeration. Big time. Um, Kyle, if you wouldn’t mind just promoting me on Zoom so I can share my screen.

1:58:31 Thank you. You guys are all in my field of view tonight. I know, Right? You’ve had enough of us. Clearly. That’s, yeah. Oh, thank you. It’s nice. You don’t have to turn Your head at all. We’re all squeeze. We’re all squeezed in tight here. Mm-hmm.

1:58:46 You want some, sir? I’m working up a powerful place. I know. Working hard. We’re talking a lot. Lot of business. A lot of business. That’s amazing. You know, I put you next to me.

1:59:03 There we go.

1:59:09 Um, yeah. Alrighty. Good evening. Um, select board members. My name’s Logan. I’m the Town Sustainability coordinator, and I’m coming to you tonight to kind of share, um, or initially present the Marblehead bicycle facilities plan to you guys. Um, this is a project that I helped, uh, with project managing on, um, since I kind of started this job. So, uh, this has been one of the kind of things that I’ve led through from beginning to end. Um, this project has been funded through arpa. It was about $80,000, the select board allocated to this. And, um, this was an item kind of identified as part of our, um, uh, a rescue plan priority projects, um, to fill out our Complete Streets plans, which I’ll get into.

1:59:56 So, um, I will try to be as brief as possible. It’s, uh, gonna be in three parts, uh, kind of the plan and overview and kind of the context of it. Um, the meat of the conversation will be the plan process and kind of the findings of all of our public engagement. Um, and then I’ll, I’ll wrap up with kind of next steps and kind of take any questions that you guys might have tonight. Um, so just to get started right away, um, kind of the objectives behind this plan, um, why we contracted tool design to help us kind of carry this out, um, is because we were looking to provide a plan that creates a framework for a bicycle network that provides high level of comfort facilities, um,

2:00:42 that are convenient, attractive, safe, and accessible, um, for residents and visitors of all ages and abilities. Um, kind of the eight to 80, you know, you want to get all ages in there. Um, you know, we want to, this plan also is trying to kind of position the town, um, to, you know, better, more efficiently guide our capital investments. So when we are kind of looking at doing improvements on the streets, we already kind of know where this infrastructure potentially will go. Um, and we will have an idea of what our long-term plan is, so we’re not, um, rebuilding kind of this stuff multiple times. Uh, and the third goal is to increase the bike ridership generally in town. And, uh, this is a picture from the historical commission, um, from the 18 hundreds, uh, right in front

2:01:28 of the old townhouse picture. Very cool. Um, so, uh, just to clarify as well too, that this, uh, plan is complimenting, not necessarily duplicating our Marblehead Rail Trail plan that was produced in 2020. Um, and it’s gonna be doing this by focusing on kind of the on street facilities as opposed to the rail trail, which had been, um, previously discussed in, in other engagement opportunities. And, uh, we’ve already developed a plan for. So, um, as I mentioned, kind of the timeline for this plan, uh, it, it started, uh, and got under contract in April of 2024. Um, we quickly jumped off with public outreach, and that was a large part of this. Um, and then, uh, we kind of have been, uh,

2:02:15 working on the draft at the beginning of this year as well as starting to work out the final. So it was completed a couple months ago, um, presented to our traffic safety advisory committee initially. And, uh, now is coming to you guys as well. So, jumping in the context, um, there is a larger history of kind of plans the town has put together that have kind of initiated the need for this plan. Uh, it really starts with the select board approving a Complete Streets policy, um, in 2018, which, uh, you know, in general kind of, you know, directs the town to focus on creating multimodal transportation networks, not only for cars, but also for pedestrians as well as bicyclists. Um, kind of the idea of creating a complete street, um,

2:03:02 is where the word comes from. Uh, and that also got us access to state funds to kind of implement that. So in 2019, we used state funds to create a complete streets prioritization plan. Um, and then the years after that, we’ve done, uh, you know, improvements using capital funds from the Complete Street State Program. Um, most notably kind of on our rail trail crossings at various points around town. Um, the Rail Trail Plan, as I mentioned, is another document that has supported, um, you know, bicycle facilities around town. And the Net zero roadmap, which is the document that got me hired, and, you know, I’m in charge of, um, implementing, is also supportive of, you know, kind of implementing, uh, the net, uh, excuse me, the Complete Streets policy, um, but also promoting, you know, alternative methods

2:03:50 of transportation, um, such as walking and biking, um, because it helps, reduces carbon emissions. Um, and then the kind of notable kind of plans that, uh, kind of tie into our bicycle facilities plan that our Department of Public works is previously developed. Um, our, our Sidewalk and Curb ramp plan, um, this was kind of our prode pedestrian overview of the town’s conditions of our sidewalks. Um, the overall kind of message is that we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of ramps to install. Um, and we also worked out kind of prioritization on kind of areas, um, you know, that are most frequently walked, uh, areas that are kind of missing sidewalks or ramps and kind of starting to work on addressing that.

2:04:37 Um, and then before that as well too, was a pavement management plan in 2022 that kind of went through the entirety of the town, documented, um, the condition of all of our roads and kind of gave us a grading to start, you know, helping us prioritize, you know, what is the worst condition, what makes sense to kind of, you know, repay, redo first. Um, and, you know, that all ties in with kind of the gas and, and water and sewer work that’s going on as well too. So, um, you know, this is kind of what this plan is developed is kind of the last plea piece that we kind of need for this Complete Streets planning policy. Um, and, uh, it’s going to ideally help us build a context sensitive network to Marblehead, um, that prioritizes bike route, um, based on safe route

2:05:24 to school crash clusters, town destinations and attractions. So, getting into kind of the meat of the conversation, the process and the findings. Um, so through the process, we kind of identified a couple of goals. Um, the first one, you know, as I mentioned earlier, developing safe, efficient and practical practical options, um, for all residents, visitors, um, to get around Marblehead by bicycle. Um, and we also wanted to put a special focus on children biking to school, is that is a very popular optional. A lot of bicyclists happen to be, um, you know, people going to school around town. So, uh, we wanted to kind of prioritize that as part of the improvements process as we’re doing with our other work.

2:06:10 Um, we, you know, want to expand the bicycle network to increase the safety for bicyclists, um, reduce traffic, uh, improve public health, um, and raise awareness for alternate roadway users like bicyclists and pedestrians. Um, and then again, this is gonna work to incorporate into the larger town planning and policies that we already have in place. So I am gonna go through kind of the four main parts. Um, we started by collecting existing data and analysis and a lot of public feedback. Um, and our consultants kind of put that together into baseline maps. Um, afterwards they worked on developing facility selection, which will kind of show off in some of the maps, um,

2:06:57 in a little later. And as well as a toolkit on how to implement, um, the infrastructure, uh, when we’re getting there. They also put together a prioritization, um, structure for, you know, how to implement this. Um, you know, considering also our, you know, pavement condition as well as our sidewalks. Um, and then how we are gonna document the, you know, improvements that we see afterwards, uh, in terms of performance metrics and, um, how we’re actually gonna implement. Um, and this is kind of, you know, getting into the public engagement, public engagement was throughout this entirety of the process. And we’ll be kind of the next couple of slides on, you know, what we heard overall in feedback, which I think is kind of, you know, the meat and really

2:07:42 important to this conversation. Um, but you can kind of see from, you know, April to, uh, January of 2025. We had been doing various forms of engagement, um, in person online with stakeholders, um, as well as committees as well too. Um, the first one I wanted to mention is popups. Um, we did a, uh, uh, tabling at a, uh, the Glover School open house. Um, we attended the Farmer’s market, um, and I also played a part in the engagement at the Festival of the Arts as well too, um, to kind of talk about the bike plan and get people’s feedback. Um, a lot of the key takeaways we got from these popups were, um, you know, many kids and parents don’t necessarily feel safe riding

2:08:27 to school on our current network. Um, but many still choose to bike regardless. Um, so, you know, even though that, you know, maybe we don’t have that protected infrastructure today, there is still a group of people that want to use, um, you know, Marblehead to get around by bike. Um, regardless. Um, you know, most people, you know, use the bike trails or the rail trail, excuse me, because, um, they don’t feel safe biking on our roads. This, you know, might be because the rail trail is perceived as more safe. Um, you know, you’re not interacting as with cars as much. Um, there’s definitely desire for community activities like group bike rides, um, as well as education sessions. Um, and people really feel like there should be an important education component to, um, the bike plan as well too.

2:09:15 And, um, kind of educating people on, you know, road etiquette with a bicycle as well. Um, we also host stayed a public workshop, uh, in the, the, uh, the auditorium area of Abbott Hall upstairs last year. Um, I attended it. It was a very fun spirited conversation. Um, and the key takeaways were that, um, were, you know, safe route to school, um, you know, quickly emerged as a, a priority there. Um, you know, it’s good that, you know, a lot of Marblehead schools around our arterial roads, which is kind of where a lot of our, you know, protected bike infrastructure you’ll see is kind of planned. So, uh, we’re definitely thinking about it there. Um, you know, better connections to the rail trail and other key destinations like businesses in town, um,

2:10:02 as well as better connections to kind of Salem and Swaps gut as well too, which, uh, we have, you know, the rail trail as kind of our backbone. Um, but, you know, this plan ideally is gonna set up a even larger network. Um, the online survey was a large part as well too. Uh, we held this open for about four months, um, and we collected over 800 responses. Um, we asked about, you know, current people’s biking trends, um, areas where they could see improvements, um, areas where they had concerns and what they wanted to see prioritized. Um, I’ll, I’ll highlight some key takeaways from that. Um, although I, I encourage everyone, and I’ll link it at the end of the presentation, but this is online. It’s, you know, 89 pages.

2:10:47 It’s a very detailed document and it breaks down this information more. But, um, you know, the key takeaways from our online survey were, um, you know, most people, uh, you know, often, you know, bike and marblehead for a lot of recreation and enjoyment, um, but we’re not necessarily seeing people using it for trips to work or maybe to the grocery store as much. Um, you know, as reiterated in the in-person conversation, there was, um, you know, a lot of points raised around safety, um, on our roads and at intersections. Um, again, schools and safer routes to school was mentioned. Um, and then as well, connections to outside areas like Salem, um, and the Swamp got, or, you know, the commuter rail stations there, um,

2:11:32 were also important to online respondents. Um, and then finally there were a series of stakeholder interviews. We also did to kind of collect, you know, really detailed feedback from, um, you know, the important, um, you know, stakeholders in the process, you know, the ones who would be directly affected or, you know, implementing this. Um, you know, it took place over about six virtual meetings. Um, and, you know, each of these included, you know, either town departments, committees, neighborhood associations, um, and we had specific ones for schools, kids and parents. Um, you know, we got a lot of key takeaways that, you know, had been reiterated before. Um, there were also concerns, you know, about e-bikes, um,

2:12:18 which are, you know, is a hot topic in the Traffic Safety Advisory Committee, um, for their last couple of meetings lately. Um, you know, the interaction with, um, bicycle infrastructure and vehicle parking, um, general aesthetics of the community, and, you know, what we want our roadways to look like, um, and the, the path to actually implementing these projects. Um, there’s also, you know, raise need for more bicycle parking in general to, you know, again, help, you know, increase the demand for people wanting to bike, um, but also having places to kind of store them when they get to their destinations. Um, you know, cost, like many other things talked about, um, at this level is definitely a factor as well too. Um, and, you know, we’ve been hearing from our DPW, um,

2:13:03 and others about, you know, the consideration for maintenance. And, you know, what, if we actually construct this, these facilities, we wanna make sure we’re able to maintain them to a, a good quality. So, um, and safety, again, a big, big part of this conversation. So, Uh, if I could, yeah, Logan, you’ve talked about, uh, aesthetics and costs and so forth. What about, uh, congestion crowding and kind of, you know, that aspect of perhaps narrowing the thorough fares to accommodate, you know, extensions and so forth. Any discussion around that? I’m just wondering what the, you know, what the key pushbacks might be in that regard. Yeah. Um, I think there’s actually some slides further ahead that kind of get into kind of some more views on, you know, different options for what we have

2:13:49 for types of infrastructure. But, um, you know, in general to kind of aesthetics, we did hear feedback that, you know, um, you know, there’s concerns with kind of, you know, line paintings or, you know, maybe the plastic dividers. So, um, you know, there’s, you know, in this plan it kind of lays out the variety of options that we can kind of use to implement. Um, you know, and, and further in, in kind of, you know, the, the width of streets as well too. This plan did kind of consider that. Um, you know, notably, I think, you know, like one of the things brought up, uh, especially with the old and historic districts commission was, um, you know, in our old town, you know, the streets are already very narrow. It doesn’t really make sense to, you know, put, you know, protected bike infrastructure in that part of town.

2:14:35 So, um, you know, this plan kind of makes recommendations for, you know, more shared infrastructure to, you know, maybe remind people that, you know, bicyclists also use these spaces, um, but maybe not dedicated necessarily for bicyclists. So, understood. Understood. Okay. Uh, yeah. And then, uh, there was a steering committee as well too. Um, so that included representatives from, you know, our different departments, um, the Complete Streets Committee, uh, which implements our Complete Streets policy, as well as the Traffic Safety Advisory Committee. Um, they were helping with kind of the guided decision making for the consultants as we move through this process. Um, you know, kind of listening to the initial public feedback we were being getting and then, you know, modifying our public

2:15:21 outreach based on that. Um, and they were also kind of the sounding board for how we should develop the plan and prioritize things. Um, the consultants also came into town and did a series of handlebar surveys where they were on the ground, um, kind of looking at our intersections roads to, you know, make sure that the recommendations they were making matched up to what actually was on the ground. Right. Um, I also joined them on a, uh, a bike bus, uh, which, uh, is a, you know, it’s a, it’s a flotilla of like bikes and kids and adults, um, you know, in town that they use the rail trail. And, um, you know, we had the consultants join us on that as well too, and kind of get an idea of, you know, how some,

2:16:08 you know, the more vulnerable, you know, users of, you know, bicycles in our town might use, um, our infrastructure. So, um, and then, uh, these are kind of the specific goals. I I won’t go into them in too much detail right now. Um, ‘cause they’ve already kind of been mentioned in all the engagement feedback that we got. Um, but we got, you know, a lot of work on, you know, kind of the different priorities that we should kind of keep including in our future planning work for the public rights of ways. Um, there’s also some kind of notable, you know, policy recommendations such as, you know, adopting a Vision Zero policy, which is, um, the Vision Zero for those who may know it, who may not know, um, is the idea that we should be aiming to get to

2:16:57 zero, um, road deaths and serious injuries. Um, and that is a commitment that the Boston region has kind of made, um, and our federal government is trying to push, you know, other communities towards. Um, so that is generally something that Marblehead might want to consider in the future. Um, so this is kind of the output of all of that feedback. Um, was, uh, recommendations on facility selection. So this is kind of what I was mentioning, you know, protected infrastructure in some areas versus, you know, maybe shared infrastructure in others. Um, generally this was broken up by two facility types, so what we call neighborhood greenways. And I’ll kind of show off a couple of pictures, which is,

2:17:42 you know, more of the shared infrastructure where you might be bike bicycling, you know, in between automobiles. Um, and then, you know, separated facilities, which, you know, could include things like separated bike lanes, um, or, you know, shared use paths, um, which I’ll also show some pictures on. Um, and kind of the factors, uh, you know, this was largely based off of kind of community input, but all the, um, technical characteristics as well too. So, uh, the, the, you know, the actual widths of the roadway, you know, the intended speeds, um, volumes of cars, as well as kind of the crash data that we have where, you know, we know the intersections are most dangerous. Um, you know, which roads, you know, definitely, uh,

2:18:27 need kind of the separation, um, versus which might not. Um, and then they also kind of put together a bicycle facilities toolkit for us to use, um, to kind of, you know, once we have these recommendations, how to actually implement it. Um, this is largely based off of state resources that, uh, tool actually helped the state put together. Um, so, you know, not only are we kind of using state best practices, but we’re also working with the consultants who develop the state best practices as well too. Um, so, uh, you know, that will be very helpful for my department as well as DPW to kind of, you know, work from this, you know, when we’re talking about actual implementation, um, getting to, you know, kind of, I think the, the conversation on

2:19:14 what this would actually look like, um, the share or the separated facilities. Um, you know, there are kind of two general options when you’re considering shared facilities. So, uh, there are kind of the fully protected bike lanes, which, um, there are some options both from Salem, uh, neighboring community of kind of giving various examples, you know, maybe bike lanes on either side of the road or maybe a shared use, um, path kind of asymmetrically off to one side. So, um, you know, there are ways we can, you know, do dividers, you know, plastic dividers, planters, um, concrete barriers, um, or there are other options. Um, kind of, you know, one of the more popular, um, you know, implementations of kind of bicycle

2:20:00 and pedestrian infrastructure in the last couple of years in Massachusetts has been, uh, this concept of a shared use path, which is, you know, you might be familiar with it. If you look at the Marblehead rail trail, it’s very similar, um, and kind of that style where it’s, you know, about 10 to 12 feet wide. Um, and it is meant for both pedestrian and bicycle traffic. Um, you know, this might just look, you know, end up aesthetically looking like a, you know, a larger sidewalk on one side of the road instead of, you know, maybe, uh, these protected bike lanes. Um, so this could be, you know, one path that we pursue in the future if we’re looking at shared use bicycle facilities. Um, and then here’s some pictures of kind of neighborhood greenways. Um, so this infrastructure again is, you know, the idea is,

2:20:48 you know, these are the areas where either it doesn’t make sense to have protected facilities because of the volume of cars going down the street. There’s just, you know, not enough, um, or, you know, the streets might be too narrow. So, um, you know, again, like the old and historic district might be a good, you know, idea for kind of this area. Um, you know, again, this might be involving painting, um, you know, maybe quick build things like planters to, you know, slow people down, maybe encourage the traffic to, um, you know, be more calm. Um, but generally you wouldn’t see, uh, kind of any dedicated infrastructure here. Uh, and then the prioritization, as I was mentioning. So not only did they kind of recommend what type of infrastructure we should be putting on our roads, um,

2:21:35 but also the prioritization. So, you know, the how, where, and, you know, when we should be implementing this. Um, they took, you know, the prioritization of, you know, key routes to school as a major one, um, safety connectivity of, you know, creating a generally well connected network so we’re not just, you know, constructing, you know, things just to nowhere, um, you know, in prioritizing key destinations. Um, and then the feasibility and, you know, the level of difficulty of actually planning and carrying out, um, these projects on some of our roadways. Um, and then there was also kind of an analysis on, you know, being able to do some of these projects as quick builds, um, which we might be able

2:22:22 to implement them in a, you know, more shorter timeframe. Um, and, you know, using less design or if we want to, you know, think about, you know, more long-term design, which involves, you know, like reconfiguring the roadway, um, you know, maybe a long-term reconstruction project after, um, you know, maybe all the water and, you know, gas work has been finished. Um, and then, you know, again, kind of connecting back to the feasibility and implementation. So, uh, this, you know, ties back to our sidewalk plan as well as the, the pavement condition plan. So this, they’ve given us kind of, you know, the foundation of how to work in the bicycle, you know, facilities into the larger, you know, prioritization of all of, you know, the, the work we need to do to our roads.

2:23:09 Um, and also kind of outlined for us, you know, the state and federal resources that are available, um, you know, to not only help us implement, you know, you know, bike facilities, but also, um, pedestrian and, and, you know, roadway improvements. Um, the final part is the metrics. So we do want to kind of be able to track our progress and show off that we are implementing and, you know, we are making progress in, you know, some direction. Um, so example recommendations. We’re creating a regular safety survey, um, you know, potentially through our traffic safety advisory committee to, you know, pull people on their general feelings. Um, and hopefully we’d see that improve over time with the improvement of our network, um, you know,

2:23:54 supporting existing bike buses that I’ve mentioned earlier that operate in the community and trying to get more community support, uh, and more organized support for, um, you know, bike facilities. Um, as well as kind of keep this information on, you know, the public’s mind by having, you know, uh, on our brand new town website, you know, ideally information about where our bike network is, um, but also where our, you know, bike, uh, you know, parking is as well too to kind of, um, you know, publicize that as well. So, um, the final slide I have is, uh, the draft plan is available for anybody in the public to read currently. Um, it’s available at marblehead.org/marblehead bicycle plan, um,

2:24:41 and marblehead.gov, marblehead ma.gov. Thank you very much, Thatcher. It’s late. Um, and, uh, there is, you know, we’ve had an internal town review process and now we’re kind of taking it to the Traffic Safety Advisory Committee and now you guys to kind of digest and, you know, eventually approve as well. So, uh, that is all, and thank you very much.

2:25:09 Thank you for your, for your, for your hard work. Uh, I have a question around kind of, uh, you know, do you have a sense of how extensive the bike to school proposition is in terms of, you know, what that would look like? Because I think that would be a, you know, not only appealing, but I think, you know, targeted to that, that commute Yeah. For kids every morning. Mm-hmm. That used to be a thing when we were, you know, Yeah. I think those are a lot of the current my job. Yeah. A lot of the current conversations I think we’re having in our DPW and community developed planning are about kind of, you know, how do we start implementing kind of spurring off of schools because we do have a lot of vulnerable users, um, you know, kind of in those age categories and going to these one specific place. So is

2:25:56 There like a mileage kind of? Yeah, so the prioritization plan, it, it kind of, you know, we took our, the physical locations of the school, we put that into the prioritization. And then, um, you know, part of the consultants also groundwork was, you know, talking with, uh, our Complete Streets committee. We have, um, you know, very vocal bike advocates on that committee who are also involved with our schools. Um, you know, marble Head’s very lucky that we have like, private donors that have put a ton of bicycle racks at all of our schools. Um, and, you know, during the school year, like most of those bike racks are filled. So, um, you know, there is kind of already, you know, that bicyclist kind of groundswell there. Um, and I think this plan now gives us kind of the, uh,

2:26:44 you know, tool or the, the objectives to kind of improve that for the community. How about the, the integration of, uh, DPW fire, uh, police into kind of the discussions and kind of setting of the parameters? And I don’t know whether your consultants have kind of had conversations Yeah. With areas that, of, of, of Arkansas. Yeah. I mean, they’re here too, so if they wanna have any comments, they’re welcome to. Um, but they were, you know, they, they were involved in the kind of stakeholder engagement process. We, you know, did kind of talk to ‘em about, you know, their concerns, how we can navigate around that. And also too, you know, this plan is kind of the, uh, you know, guidance for how we’re gonna implement.

2:27:31 Um, you know, when we get down to the individual projects, there will also be kind of engagement for the, the specifics of each individual item that will, you know, always include kind of, you know, DP Ws and, you know, fire police as those conversations. So. Well, I think that’s obviously an important component for, for how we think about it. And I imagine the town as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. I know you’re in a continual process of feedback loops and so forth. Yeah, we, we try to, yeah, we try to plan in a comprehensive way because if, if you forget to include somebody and you get down the line, I Understand, can run into trouble. So I understand how the planning process works, but yeah. Don’t forget. Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? Thanks for all your work. Yeah, Thank You. All right. Thank you. Appreciate

2:28:17 the, the debrief. Yeah. Thank you guys. Um, alright, let’s move on to the next item. Reserve fund Transfer. Reserve fund transfer. And here we get the language 15. What’s that? When we get to 50. Okay. Got, got it. Got it. Okay.

2:28:39 I was wondering you evening, that’s why you’re hanging around? Yes. The police chief, uh, came to see me in regards to the repatriation with the tank. Um, they found a few items going on and in order for him to finish up and take care of everything they needs to do to seal it, he needs another $12,000 for the contract. And I told him, I really think this is a good use of a reserve fund transfer ‘cause it was unforeseen and it’s important that we seal it and to get this taken care of. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Any questions from the board? Um, there was additional funds for, to Finalize a report, right? Yeah. That’s, That’s separate though, right? Meaning? Yeah, I guess this is for the, the tank work itself. Actual the

2:29:25 Actual work, yes. Okay. Right. For the cleanup. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, DEP you know, comes back and says not good enough. Yeah. Right. So we, we keep working it. Okay. Alright. Great. No further questions then. I’d like to entertain a motion to authorize Chief King to appear before the finance committee to request the transfer of the sum of 12,200, uh, 61, uh, dollars, uh, from the Reserve Fund in accordance with chapter 40, section six of the Massachusetts General Laws for unforeseen response related to the release of petroleum identified during the removal and closure of underground storage tank. I move second. All in favor. Thank You. Thank you very much. Thank you.

2:30:13 Okay, next, uh, domestic Violence Awareness month. Um, I don’t know, is there anybody here to speak on that? I thought This was, I think Aaron forwarded this, if you remember, Megan Sweeney gave a presentation That I do remember however Many months ago. That’s right. And saying, reminding that this was coming for October. Mm-hmm. So that’s, that’s where This is coming from. So we are we, are we to make a motion? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, uh, if I could entertain a motion to reclaim October Domestic Violence Awareness Month and prepare a proclamation on behalf for this. So moved. Second. All in favor? Thank you. Unanimous. I’m gonna ask that the cannabis be Yes. Forwarded to

2:30:58 a future meeting. That is fine. And, uh, do we need a formal motion to do that? We had, of course, Kyle just handed me a piece of paper with my script on it. I can’t, Yeah, I don’t think there’s a motion necessary Is on No, no motion necessary. Then we’ll just go ahead and defer to future meeting. We’ll defer, we’ll recommend that to, to another meeting. Yep. Okay. Uh, we have a con, a consent agenda items in front of you. Uh, they involve the private drain connection, uh, Abbott Hall, uh, for visual art, uh, or head I booster drive. I think they’re all self-explanatory. I will just go ahead with the motion and we’ll seek a motion to approve the following consent agenda items.

2:31:43 Minutes of September 10th, 2025. Private Drain connection. A license between the town of, uh, between the town and Michael and Sean frisoni. Hundred 55 Jersey Street as presented and authorized the chair to sign on behalf of the board. Abbott Hall, Marblehead High School, May 17th through, uh, May 7th through 29, May 7th through 29, 2026. A request from Shirley Huller, white lead teacher, instructor of Visual Arts, AP History, Marblehead High School for the annual Marblehead High School and Veterans Middle School Art Show. And opening reception on May 14th, 2025 from four to 8:00 PM subject to the usual rules, regulations, and fees paid to the, to the town and the required certificate of insurance.

2:32:29 We also have the Marblehead High School Annual Booster Drive, Sunday, October 5th, 2025, 12 noon to 3:00 PM Uh, we also have Congress, uh, Congressman, uh, Seth Moulton at Abbott Hall for a Veterans Town Hall. November 11th, 2025. One to 4:00 PM subject to the Usual Rules, regulations, and receive a certificate of insurance. Abbott Hall or Old Townhouse. Okay. Festival of Arts, or it’s not at it’s or is that right? It’s, or Because the, as I reported earlier, the status of the lift, so, Okay. So that’s sensitive. No, we’re, we’re hedging the bets. Got it. Got it. Abbott Hall or Old Townhouse Festival of Arts, Friday, October 17th, 2025. First look party subject to the usual rules, regulations,

2:33:15 and fees paid to the town. Certificate of Insurance, uh, chamber of Comma Commerce Trick or Treat Business Districts. October 30th, 2025. Request for the street closures on Thursday, October 30th, 2025. 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM subject to approval from, from the police chief as follows, detour Traffic at the end of Pleasant Street to go left on Washington Street. Detour on Washington Street to go left on Rockaway Street Road closure at the top of Summer Street. Do I have a motion please? So moved. Second. All in favor? Alright, con consent agenda items are unanimously approved.

2:33:58 Uh, we have a licensing that needs a polled vote, uh, for the Festival of Arts, old Townhouse or Abbott Hall. And this is a liquor, is it Liquor? Yeah. Liquor license. Distinct from what we just approved. Motion is self-explanatory. Uh, to approve the request from the, the Festival of Arts for one day liquor license, beer and wine only on Friday, October 17th, 2025 at the old townhouse or rabbit Hall, 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM subject for following conditions, delivery and receipt for the, uh, by the licensing authority of the requested fee. $50 delivery of and receipt by the licensing, licensing authority of proof that this alcohol will be purchased from an authorized source. Proof that the applicant can receive proper delivery, provide proper storage and disposal

2:34:44 of all alcoholic beverages purchased in accordance with the requirements of general law. Section 1 38. Receipt of the required certificate of insurance. Alcohol is not allowed on the premises. Overnight. Alcohol will be purchased, uh, from Martini, Carolina Wine and Beverage. I have a motion please. Yep. Second. Second. Seconded. Mr. Ssen In favor, Ms. Singer? In favor, Mr. Greater In favor, uh, unanimous. And, and we have, uh, what is this last item on the procurement office? So You have, so we have two, I don’t know if they’re on the right tab that we have. Yeah, lemme, Hammond Nature Center. Mm-hmm. The Hammond Na. Timber Stairs Project. Yes. Got it. Okay. Mm-hmm.

2:35:29 And that’s funded by Shaddock Fund. And any remaining costs would be out of the recreation revolving fund. Okay. So, so for roofing and components, This is, this is the Snow guards? Yeah, that’s the roof, I think. Yep.

2:35:47 So you have two different ones. Yeah. Yeah. So in tab, I don’t know. So let’s see, what are We looking at? The human one? I might have Been H Agency. Yeah. I, I don’t, here’s the human right here. Okay. And then that’s the second one, right? There’s two. Okay. So, oh, so the motion is at the top. I understand. Oh, motion’s right at the top. Mo motion’s right at the top. Okay. So any, any additional background? No, this is just a, a worthwhile project under Rec and Park. Okay. Okay. Motion To pre self-explanatory. You can see the project synopsis down below, and it’s the Mary Alley okay’s the roof replacement project for the Mary Alley Community Center. Okay. So, uh, I’d like to understand a motion to award contract 26 dash oh four Mary Alley Municipal

2:36:32 and Jacobi Community Center roof replacement project between the town and MDM Engineering Company in the amount of $839,000. And authorize the chair to sign on behalf of the board. So moved. Second. So let me just mention please. Yes, go ahead. On that one, one, it’s funded by Article 11 from 2022, correct? That’s right. Which is for Mary Alley, not to be confused with the debt exclusion we just approve, which is primarily the HVAC and elevators. So they both mart, but the good news is, um, we were anticipating about a $1.2 million cost and we were all nervous that it was gonna hit that number and it came in at 839,000 for both.

2:37:19 So that’s good news. And it’s sort of an economic indicator that, that the costs, and I’ve been talking to some other that’s Remarkable. That’s a, That’s a and some other, like my trustee meeting, they, they were talking costs are coming in much better than the past. So Can, can I ask, um, were there other bidders? Um, YI think there were, how many bid, how many did we receive? Because now that we have a chief procurement officer Handling you, my, my real question is were they consistently lower? I’m always concerned with the low. Yeah. Actually, I, I saw the list. There was like seven or eight for this bid. Yep. And this was the lowest bid. And, and we validated that it was a, you know, okay. Reliable bid. ‘cause I, as soon as I saw the price range,

2:38:07 so my first question is the lowest bid or qualified Yep. Right? Or are we getting low balled? And again, they were vetted and, and all thumbs up. Well, we’ve used MDM in the past, I’m pretty sure. Yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m not too, too familiar, but yeah. But anyway, yeah. So it was a good bid. All right. That’s, that’s, that’s good news. All right. Uh, we, uh, the next agenda on our, we Gonna vote. Oh yeah, we do have to vote. So I apologize. Uh, yeah. All in favor? Did we, we, yeah, we read the motion, huh? Yes. On the Mary Alley? We Did. Yes. So, uh, all in favor. Alright. Unanimous. And then the other contract is the Park

2:38:53 and Rec Hammond Nature Center. Okay. And again, that’s the one that’s paid for combination, shaddock, fund and revolving fund, park and Rec. Rec and park involving It’s removing existing landscape timbers and steps, excavate, looser, unstable soil, grade, and level the stairway footprint. Okay. Install new timbers, stairs and railings. Okay. Uh, I’d like to entertain a motion to award contract 26 dash oh oh five Hammond, uh, Hammond Nature Center Timber Stairs Repair Project between the Town and Northeast Trail Works, LLP in the, in the amount of 19,000, uh, dollars. And authorized the share on, uh, to sign on behalf of the board. So moved. Second. Second. All in favor? Unanimous.

2:39:49 That’s all the business. That’s all the business, indeed. All right. Do we have any, uh, select board announcements?

2:40:02 I would like to entertain a motion to adjourn, to move if you or so. Okay. This meeting is hereby all In favor. Second. Yep. All in favor? Yep. In favor.