Maybe I just sit over here where I was relegated to. Oh, I’m still doing is. You’re. You’re trying to. Yeah. I’m trying to turn off. Sorry. Look at my big head. Is still in the way. Around the air conditioner. Oh, okay. Right on this. We’ll try it over here.
Did you do that? Yeah. All right. Someone. All right. Okay, wait a minute. Good evening. Everyone. I want to call to order the August 17th, uh, Hamilton Selectboard meeting. Because we’re a hybrid. Tonight, we’re going to do a roll call voting throughout the meeting. And we’ll start with a roll call right now. So we’ll start with you.
Okay. Lee McCoy here. Ben Kaluza here. Rosie Kennedy here. Uh, bill Olson here and online. Tom Myers here. I stick up in. Audio. Is not there, right? Yeah. Tom. Can you hear us? Because we’re having a little trouble hearing you. Can you? Yep. Okay. I can. Hear you perfectly fine. Yep. No problem. Again with the audio.
We had that problem last week. I don’t know what happened. Come on. Where’s our techies? Let’s go. Boys. Check the volume. We turned that knob over there, and I. Hope not me. All right, while we’re working on audio, we’ll read our board and committee openings.
Although we look like we’re going to fill a bunch tonight as well. We’ve been doing a good job of filling spots, so Affordable Housing Trust has one opening. Conservation Commission has two openings. Council on aging has one opening. The Community Preservation Committee has two openings, one opening for a member of historic district commission and one opening for an at large member.
The Hamilton Environmental Impact Committee has one opening. The Historic District Commission has two openings for three year terms, two openings for two year terms, and one must be a resident of the historic district, and one should have this memorized by now, and one must be a resident realtor and Human Rights Commission has one
at large opening. The list is getting shorter, so thank you. Uh, public comment. If you want to make public comment, please come up to the podium. We’ll start in the room first. Introduce yourself and your address, and you have up to three minutes to speak. Good evening everyone.
Corinne Kale Hamilton, town Clerk I’m just here for one reason to provide everyone with information and reminders regarding the September 1st state primary, which is two weeks from tomorrow, reminding everyone that there are three ways to vote in Massachusetts. Obviously, on Election Day, you can show up at the rec center between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m..
Vote by mail if anyone is not yet requested a mail ballot, they can do so up until August 25th. That’s Tuesday at 5 p.m., so please get that in. And if you do get it in, please sign the application. And please make sure that if you’re enrolled, you indicate which ballot you’d like to receive, the Democratic or the Republican.
We’re running at about, I’d say 10% of the applications are coming in and are not complete, and we have to do some follow up. Always nice to touch base with residents, but it’s a lot of work to follow up with people. All mail ballots must be received by 8 p.m.
on Election Day, so get them to us as soon as possible. We’ve already mailed out 836 vote by mail ballots, so typically an election anywhere from 30 to 55% of our overall votes are by mail. So we got quite a few ballots mailed out.
So voting on Election Day, voting by mail and in-person early voting starts this Saturday, August 22nd at the homestead, and my office. We’ll be doing in-person early voting from 10 to 4 on Saturday. It’s also the last day to register to vote, so we’re actually there from 9 to 5.
And then early voting is available in the clerk’s office during regular business hours all next week. So it will end Friday at 1230. And we’re actually hoping we have better turnout for that than we did in 2024, where we had a total of 39 people over the entire week. So, um, it’s not a popular way for people to vote in Massachusetts. They definitely prefer voting by mail.
So but we’re covering all three now, if anybody has any questions, they can contact my office. The absentee form that we have received, does it have to come back via the mail? Can people drop it off to your office? Thank you. Good question.
I can absolutely drop it off in the office or the drop box. Um, at the parking lot of the Koa from the Public Safety Building. Absolutely does not have to be mailed.. Any other questions for. Did you know there was a primary in two weeks? Right. We all knew that.
We got a few things in the mail, a few things on TV. So you should get decent turnout. Okay. Thanks. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else in the room and you know anybody else online raising their hand? Nope. Okay. Uh, select board, committee, uh, liaison reports. Um, we’ll start online with, uh, Tom. Tom, you have anything you want to update? I know it’s summer time.
No, nothing for me tonight. Thanks. Nope. Okay. No. He said no. I’ll start down there with Lee. Anything update? Um, I met with the dark sky folks they’re going to present tonight, so. Okay. I’m excited to see their presentation. Okay. Um.
Had a meeting with one of the members of the fin com chair and Joe last week. Um, to discuss updating our, um, capital committee, kind of, uh, capital planning policies. And so making some headway on that. And I think it was maybe 2 or 3 meetings ago, we had we also had an update, sort of somewhat related, um, from council around how we form or choose not to form subcommittees.
Okay, yes. For working groups, I don’t know if that’s been discussed as I missed the last meeting, but I just wanted to I don’t know, it could be covered in any other business as well, but so the update there is, I started drafting a policy, but
I want to make sure that at least the select board, as well as other committees that might be affected by capital planning, are kind of aware of some of the new guidelines. So it sounds like there’s been some discussion. Yeah, we did have some discussion. On that.
Okay. So that’s my big update is moving ahead on that. But look forward to getting informed for what you all decided last meeting okay. Joe I’m good this week I’m good this week. So uh, and Rosemary. Well, we know I always have something to yack about.
Um, let’s see a few things. Um, first, um, the meeting, uh, on August 5th. Um, they are, they have a resignation. Unfortunately. Um, Steven Desroches is leaving and moving to Essex, so hopefully there will be a new CBA member appointed tonight. And that will give them a full contingent of three.
So I think that’s that’s something that we’re very grateful for, to have somebody to feel that seat and something else that happened at the CBA meeting. Um, Robin Stein came and discussed, um, changes in the state statute for, um, changes in, um, NGL, uh, 48, section six, which is, um, changes to the non conformity protections, um, abandonment timelines and zoning freezes.
And then secondly, to uh, section ten changes to the variance standards. These were interestingly passed quite quickly in the governor’s, um, budget bill. So that’s kind of surprising that zoning amendments would be updated. And, um, there’s there are significant changes. I won’t go into them.
I will just say that they they exist and that, um, the changes to the zoning bylaw, uh, section six and ten are in fact law now, but there may be some challenges because there are some words, uh, some there’s some nomenclature that’s, um, ill defined. And so I don’t think we can say that it’s cast in stone.
Um, I think there’s going to be a lot of room for some, for some case law that’s going to make some changes in that. Um, second thing, um, oh, Essex Aggie, in my day, we called it the Essex Aggie. It’s now Essex Tech.
Um, I’m very excited to be going to an open house on the 26th of this month. Um, and the 17 communities who were in who are included in their, um, their, their scope of students are going to be discussing the allocation procedure for the 2028 school year.
And I’m very excited to go and hopefully poke around the school a little bit, see what it’s all about, see what all the hype is, and I’m looking forward to that. And then finally, one other thing. I was in my garage painting something and David Smith came over and talked to me about the EV e-bike bylaw that I had talked about last time.
And David Smith said that, yes, he’s seen a lot of worrisome things going on with little kids on e-bikes and versions of the e-bikes. And because I have been so interested in this, he proposed that he, as the chair of the Board of Health, um, work with me and we would work with, um, um, chief Guy, the police department, to look at what
other towns have done for bylaws while we wait for the state to develop their bylaw, their their statute, and come up with something that’s going to protect our residents and the kids, um, specifically the kids who are flying around our town, um, sort of unfettered. And they’re adorable.
But there are some there are some dangerous things going on. And that’s what prompted David Smith to come over and chat with me. So I’d like to, at some point tonight, talk about that and see if that can, that can come to fruition. Okay. And that’s all. Well, that’s. Been on our agenda. So we should be talking about it. Yeah. Okay.
All right. Um, anyone. else okay. All right. Um, the first item on our agenda. Consent agenda. Oh, sorry. Consent agenda. First. All consent agenda. We have two items on the consent agenda.
We have approve minutes of the July 20th, 2026 Select Board meeting and approve minutes of the August 3rd, 2026 Select Board meeting. I was not present for either one of them, so I want to make a motion. I move that we accept the consent agenda. Do I have a second? Second and we’ll do a roll call vote? Actually, we’ll start online to make it easier for, uh. Tom Myers. Yes. I. Lee McCoy, a. Mean I. Rosie Kennedy.
I and motion I will abstain because I was not there for either meeting. Okay. Signed. Okay, great. We go. All right. We’re gonna start with a two part. Is Sean. On mine? Sean is. On my. Okay, I’ll start with a department report with our fearless director, Sean Timmons. Showing. You there. Hey, guys.
Can you hear me? Because I think my camera might not be working, but you got me audio. We can hear you if you speak loudly. Okay, I will talk as loud as I can. I have no problem talking loud. So that’s. That’s okay. Um, so. Yeah.
So obviously with, um, you know, with summer winding down, just wanted to sort of recap, uh, some of the things that we had going on this summer, as well as, um, you know, some updates on some upcoming programs and some projects that we have been working on. Um, you know, for a little while now.
So, uh, last week, uh, last Friday was our last day of camp. Um, so we obviously, like we’ve done in the past, we did eight weeks of camp this year, uh, we started, um, you know, right when the kids got out of school and then ended, like I said, last Friday. So, um, you know, it was a really successful summer.
Um, we made a couple changes, uh, specifically with our older kids. Um, we we actually moved to doing two field trips per week for our very old oldest campers. Uh, we brought in some, uh, some different special entertainment, uh, as well, this year for our younger campers.
So, you know, all in all, a successful summer, uh, just really happy with the way, um, you know, with the way things went, um, you know, for the camp program staff was great. The kids were great, um, and really was, uh, was a lot of fun.
We had a we had a good time this summer. Um. The pool, the pool is still open, so we’re we’re getting down to the end here. So the we’re we’ve entered our postseason hours. Uh, so the pool will be open for the following or for the next two weeks.
Um, the pool closed on Sunday, August 30th, will be our last day. So our, uh, postseason hours are posted on our website. I posted them on our socials, uh, as well. So if people, you know, want to check that out, uh, they can see our, uh, postseason hours for the pool.
But, you know, hopefully the weather gets a little bit better here over this week and a half or next two weeks. So, uh, you know, folks can take advantage of the pool here. Uh, you know, before everyone, uh, you know, gets back into, I guess, school mode.
Um, we, uh, just because camp ended, we also are running some programs, uh, this week, next week and the following week as we lead up to school. So if anyone’s interested in, um, you know, keeping the kiddos busy, uh, we do have, uh, I think we’re running six, 6 or 7 in total, uh, programs over these next few weeks.
So, uh, there’s still have some availability in some of them, but they did fill out pretty quickly. So, um, you know, we’re looking to, to close the, the summer out strong, uh, in that respect, um, our fall programs, our fall program brochure was released last week. We actually are having, uh, registration starts tomorrow morning for residents.
So, uh, you know, folks want to check out the website. It has all of our upcoming programs for the fall. And again, registration for all of our fall programming, uh, starts, uh, starts tomorrow. Um, and then just for projects.
So I know the last time, uh, I was on, we had talked about the gazebo project. So that project did go out to bid, and we have awarded the contract. Um, so we’re just waiting on, uh, a couple final signatures for that.
Um, we’ll actually going to be meeting with, uh, the company that was awarded the bid on site, hopefully next week or the end of this week or early next week. Uh, and start the project over there. Um, you know, uh, early fall. Um, so, you know, more to come on that once I get the final update and the final schedule. Uh, but, you know, we’re moving right along with that. And like I said, uh, awarded the contract.
Um, so we’re looking forward to getting that project started. Um, that’s sort of, uh, see if I have anything else in my notes. Um, you know, that’s all, uh, just back to the pool.
Uh, there was a great article, uh, in the Hamilton, one of news a week or two weeks ago at an opening on Reddit. Um, but our swim team, uh, did go undefeated again this year. So five and zero. Um, and and came in first place in the all star meet.
So that’s, uh, that’s four years in a row, uh, that our swim team, um, you know, won the league and then also won the the all star meet this summer. So, uh, congratulations to them. We had close to 100 swimmers on our swim team, uh, this summer, which is just absolutely amazing.
Uh, and the coaches and the kids, the parents, the volunteers, uh, you know, it takes it takes a village to to get that program up and running every morning with practices. So, uh, really happy for the kids and proud of the coaches. Um, and, you know, hopefully next year we can make it, uh, five in a row. Yeah. That’s impressive. And what what time they start in the morning.
They start at seven. So the oldest kid started seven. So we always joked that the kids get up earlier in the summer for swim team practice than they do for school during the school year. So, uh, and trust me, the water, uh, can be a little chilly at 7:00 in the morning.
So they, uh, they’re unbelievable. Uh, troopers to get to get out there and get in the water that early. So, uh, the kids work tremendously hard, and, uh, I’m glad to see all their hard work and effort pay off. Excellent. Thank you. Sean. Uh, let’s start going on here.
Tom, any questions or comments for, uh, Sean? Sorry, Tom. Here. He can hear us. He’s just saying, shaking his head. Okay. Um, Lee. I don’t have any questions. Thanks. No, thank you, Sean, for for the update. It’s great to hear.
I know, uh, folks in town are going to be, uh, really excited about the gazebo project kicking off and getting that cleaned up. So thanks for shepherding that through and looking forward to shovels going in the ground and paint getting stripped. Anything.. I just have a quick comment, Sean.
Um, just I went to the senior swim and there were maybe about 7 or 8 other seniors who really enjoyed the senior swims this year. So thank you very much for for doing that this year, as you have for the last several years.
And I also wanted to say, as I was leaving the swim, these two little boys who were about 8 or 9 years old, had biked all the way over by themselves, but they both lived just down the street. And they were they were so proud of themselves for coming to the pool by themselves, and they were the most adorable two little boys I’ve ever seen. So thank you for providing bike racks for the kids to bring their bikes.
We love when the kids get to ride their bikes. They’re. It’s great. Yeah, and I did forget to mention Rosie to that part of the senior swim on Wednesday mornings and Sunday evenings. We did add that, uh, water aerobics, uh, portion of it. And that actually went went over really well.
So we did have a lot of folks taking part in that program on, uh, you know, Wednesday morning specifically, but both on Wednesdays and Sundays as well. That’s just fabulous. Thank you so much, Sean. Thanks, Sean.
My only comment was, I haven’t caught up with you since, uh, since the tank got finished, but it looks like the tank is now is down. It looks great. And so thank you for helping manage that, uh, volunteer work as well. Yep. Yeah. No, the the, uh, the Abrams company did an amazing job, so I would, you know, um, you know, invite anybody to go down there and check out the work they did.
It’s really, uh, detailed and really quite amazing. All right. Any public comments or questions for Sean? All right. Thank you for joining, Sean. All right. Sorry about the camera, but thanks, guys. Thanks, everyone. Thanks. Sean. Can I get can I take the next one? Let me kick. It off..
I’ll kick it off to you. Um, next item on the agenda is, um, discussion with the Hamilton Parks. Oh, I’m sorry. Missed one recommendation for Tom. So the next one is really. We’ve been in a transition period for about the last few months.
Um, between chief, uh, brunettes, uh, pending retirement and, uh, and promoting, um, our. We said the lieutenant. Right. Lieutenant. Uh, deputy chief, deputy chief, um, Dan Sullivan to, uh, to, uh, to fire chief. So, um, we appreciate their working together over this transition. I think it was very successful.
We have not done that before, but, um, looking forward to seeing how that works. So maybe we can do two other positions in town. So, um, Joe is the next step is for Joe to work on a contract. So I’ll turn it over to Joe. He kind of talk us through next steps. Yeah.
So I just want to I’m proud to, um, make the recommendation tonight that the select board appoint Daniel Sullivan to be the next fire chief of the town of Hamilton, effective October 1st, 2026.
Pending, uh, successful negotiation of a contract three years ago, a little over three years ago, Chief Burnett and I sat down because he was he had told me he was working on his last contract and we needed to identify a succession plan to make sure that we could maintain the stability and the growth in the department that he had worked so hard for.
Um, that discussion led us to decide that it was time to hire a deputy chief and groom, that person, to take the place, take his place. That led to a very rigorous, uh, assessment center exercise that evaluated several very well qualified candidates.
And Dan was the best among them, uh, and the chief’s recommendation or the chief made the decision to appoint Dan as deputy chief, with the goal of getting Dan ready to take his job someday. And that day is here. Dan, over the last three years has taken on more and more responsibility in the department, especially in the day to day stuff. He spent the last year and a half working side by side with Ray on the annual budget process. He’s ready to take this next step.
I know that the men have the men and women in the department have faith in him, as do I. So I really recommend that the board vote tonight to appoint him, effective October 1st, and then he and I will get down to brass tacks, figuring out a contract.
Do you want to come up to say hi? How are you? You good? Um, yeah. You guys have any questions or. I mean, I’ve been working on it with Joe, but I just want to make sure everybody else has a chance to speak and ask questions. If. Uh.
Could he come and say hello at that podium? Yeah, sure. You can. Come on up. You want to come up to the podium and say hi, get get on the firing line. Hey. Oh, boy. And okay, so I’ve heard your. Is it all right for me to ask a question now? Okay. So. Hi. Welcome.
Um, Rosie Kennedy and, um, in in a nutshell, how much experience have have you been in local fire departments, small departments, before you came here? Or just, like, really briefly. Um, so I’m coming up on year 30, um, 26.
5 with the town of Wenham, where I started as a probationary firefighter in May of 1997, worked my way up through the ranks of, uh, lieutenant captain, and then finished my career there as deputy fire chief. And, um, as a call part time the whole time. And then, uh, as I, uh, moved forward, I wanted to end my career, like, in a full time position. And the opportunity arose to apply for Hamilton, which was similar demographically. And operationally.
And I thought it was a good fit. Great. And when, I’m, when amuses, uh, a large call firefighter. Correct contingent also right. As I, as I remember. Okay, okay. Yeah. They roughly the same size a couple less full time and more call. Okay. Thank you.
Um, I met with them last week, went down to the station, gave me a tour. Uh, it was great. Um, got to see the facilities and, uh, talk about the future. And I have high hopes, so. Good. Good. I. Yeah. So then anybody else? No.
Just, uh, thank you for many years of service and being willing to join us here in Hamilton and for being willing to step up and work with the team and, um, kind of a slightly sounds like different than usual, uh, transition process, but we’re very grateful to have you here and serving in our town. So, yeah, I hope that the negotiations go well and look forward to, um, having you be chief one day soon. So thanks.
And I think Tom, Tom. Go ahead. talk loud. Can you hear me? Can you talk. A little bit? Uh, yeah. No, I just sort of reiterate all the comments here, just really, uh, you know, thank you for all the, like I said, years of service that you put into one of them
and to Hamilton. And we’re really excited to have you on board. And I will note that, uh, Chief Burnett did allow select board members to participate in some of your training and do some of the, uh, uh, monthly, uh, get into gear and go through the the rigorous training that you go
through. So I hope that we can continue that process. I would love to to cut a car in half again. Fair enough. He’s eager to put that gear back on now. Thank you as well. I’m just curious, are you. And I may have known this already, but you were a resident of Hamilton. Wenham. Okay. Yeah.
So basically, the next step is that we have to sort of vote. And then and then we basically, by the vote, we authorize Joe to negotiate the contract. And that’s kind of the process. So I have to stay within what was appropriated. So you don’t have to worry about me going crazy. It’s good.
So Joe, you kind of made the motion. You say it again, somebody can move it. If somebody could move that. Um, the town of Hamilton Selectboard appoint Daniel Sullivan to the position of fire chief effective October 1st, 2026. So moved. Ali McCoy have a. Second. Second. And we will do a roll call vote and start with Tom.
Tom Myers, I. Lee McCoy, I. Bengaluru. I Rosey Kennedy, I. Mohsen I thank congratulations. Thank you thanks. Do you want to take. A minute. All right. We’re going to recess for like five minutes just to say congratulations to Dan. Anybody else want to want to do that? Can this actually work? That’s kind. Of. No, I don’t know.
I only know. It’s just to push the. Button. I numbered them wrong because I forgot about the department. It’s bolded. So I always think that’s the agenda item. All right. Next item on the agenda is discussion with the Hamilton Dark Sky Committee.
Um, they put together a presentation for us. And keeping in mind that it’s something that we’ve asked them to do, it’s a goal of the select board. So we’re excited. They’re here. to show us what they’ve done. And the direction they’d like us to go in. So I’ll turn it over to Anne. Good evening and thank you for having me. Here.
We have a slide presentation that Joe is putting. Up, but. I’m going to be rude. We’re going to turn our back to you. Sorry. That’s quite all right. Um. Here on the other side. My name, for the record, is an Giroux, spelled GERO. I reside at 821 Bay road.
I’m here tonight in my capacity as a member of the steering committee of Hamilton. Dark Sky. What I’d like to do tonight is take a few minutes to explain to you what we’ve been doing as a group review with you some of the principles of light pollution and what can be done about it, and then review with you some common
bylaw provisions. Um, and issues for the board’s consideration. Next. Hamilton dark Sky formed about a year ago. It was when a group of residents realized that we shared a common passion for protecting the dark sky. The first thing we did is we reached out to dark Sky, Massachusetts.
It’s the Massachusetts chapter of dark Sky international. They have a lot of resources, including a model bylaw, a model dark sky lighting bylaw. We looked at that bylaw as well as the bylaws from other towns. We’ve also been engaged in some public education. We had an event at the library in April. I think you have before you the announcement of that event.
It was very well received. We had over 70 individuals attend that night. Uh, we’ve also been partnering with Essex County Greenbelt. Last night we worked with them on the Sky Party at Sagamore Hill.
And this coming week they’re having a citizen science event at Dodge Farm where they’re going to be teaching people how to take light pollution readings with their cell phones, and then how to register those online. And that’ll be this Wednesday evening. Um, we’ve also started speaking to stakeholders. You can go back one slideshow.
We’ve also started speaking to stakeholders here in town, um, that we thought would be interested in light pollution issues. We spoke to Marnie Crouch, and we’re going to be appearing before the planning board tomorrow night to give them a brief update on what we’ve been doing. We spoke to Rick Mitchell of the Hamilton Development Corporation, the chief of police, Superintendent Tracy, one of the downtown major property owners, and Andrew DeFranco.
We’re looking forward to speaking to additional individuals. We hope to be able to meet with the director of the DPW, um, the property owner of the CVS Plaza, and would also like to reach out to Gordon College and Pingree over the next couple of weeks.
The next, next slide, the basic issue is what is light pollution? And light pollution is defined as the excessive, misdirected or inappropriate use of artificial light at night. When we say dark sky, we don’t mean that all lights should be out at 9:00 at night. That’s not what we’re talking about.
What we’re talking about is the strategic use of artificial light at night. So it’s used only when it’s needed, only where it’s needed, and only of the type and character that’s appropriate. What is at stake with light pollution? Light pollution is very disruptive of the natural environment. It’s very detrimental to our nocturnal wildlife and ecosystems.
It has a negative impact on residents, both in terms of the glare that would be around them and making it difficult to see the the night stars. It would impact the rural character of our town and result in wasted energy. Next.
This slide shows some of the basic fundamentals that anyone needs to address in a dark sky bylaw. On the far left you see an example of a lamp post. Really inappropriate lighting glare everywhere. The first step is to shield that light, make all the light point down.
Once you do that, the next step is to adjust the color temperature to make it a warmer light rather than the cool white blue light. After that, you adjust the intensity to make it only the intensity that you need. And finally, you only have it on for as long as you need that light. When you don’t need it anymore, you turn it out next. Day myself.
This is an example of an unshielded light. You look on the left side. You can tell it’s an unshielded light because you can actually see the light source. You see the light bulb at night, the glare goes everywhere, up, down, all around. Next.
This is a picture that was taken down in Nantucket. It’s a building and you can see those lights along the drip line of the roof. They’re all facing directly out. Those lights were also on an arm on a bracket, so they could be tipped down. That’s before they were tipped down.
The next slide is what happens when you simply tip them down and shield the light. It makes a dramatic difference. Next. Also, inappropriate lighting with glare and too much intensity can create a public safety issue. It can be difficult to see at night with inappropriate lighting.
If you look in the middle of that photo, you can see there’s a fence and a gate in it. If you just look at that gate. Next photo Joe. You can see once that glare is blocked, there’s actually an individual standing in that gate and the glare prevents you from seeing that. Next. Shielded lights have gotten much better over the past 5 or 10 years.
We’re starting to see shielded light that would be appropriate for residential use. You can tell it’s fully shielded because, for example, take a look at the one on the right. The light is coming from the housing up in top. And I’ve seen a light similar to that used in Newburyport, only they have a fake light bulb in the middle.
So during the daytime it looks like it’s an actual light post, but at night the light is all coming down from the housing up above. Next, once you correctly shield a light, then you need to look at the color temperature and the color temperature simply means the hue or color of the light.
And it’s on a range. They call it a Kelvin or K is how it’s initialled. So on the left you have a light with a thousand K color. It’s a very orangey light all the way up to the right where it’s 9000 K and it’s quite bluish.
International dark Sky, as well as the Massachusetts Medical Association, recommend that outdoor lighting have a Kelvin rating of 2700. So that would be just to the left of that 3000 K light. Now a 2700 light is described as a warm white.
If you go into the hardware store and you buy a package of light bulbs and they’re described as warm white, if you look on the side, you look at the specifications, it will say Kelvin 2700. So that’s what we would be aiming for in terms of the outdoor lighting. Next, we also drove around at night and we took a look at some of the lighting problems in town.
This is a picture at the high school. The high school has a lot of floodlights that just point directly out. Next. And this results. That’s also a picture of the night sky over the high school. Um, it’s a little bit, um, this was taken on a winter night with a very, very low cloud cover.
So the light is going up and it’s being reflected back down by the clouds. So if there were no clouds, that light would just continue going up into the atmosphere and it wouldn’t look quite like that. But that is an example of the amount of light that is going up into the night sky from the high school.
Now, when we met with you jumping ahead, um, Joe, um, when we met with Eric Tracy, he knew he had a problem. He gets complaints from a Butters. He said he understands it. It’s a problem that’s already on his radar screen. He wants to deal with it.
We talked to him about some of the principles that would be found in a lighting bylaw, and some of the requirements that we think the school would have to meet. And he found them all to be reasonable. And he said that he didn’t think it would be a problem at all for him to bring all the schools into compliance within five years.
And that was very, very good news. Next. This is lighting at Gordon College again, roadway lighting, unshielded lights. Next. And this is a picture of a building down in what I call Henderson Plaza. Again, floodlights pointing directly out.
Now these are all examples of bad lighting, but there’s also some really good lighting in Hamilton. If you go downtown and you go along Bay road, or you look at the shops in the CVS Plaza, a number of them have out front, the gooseneck lights, or some people also call them barn lights. They’re fully shielded. They’re quite attractive.
A number of the businesses have those kind of lights. Another great thing that’s happening in town is there are already a number of businesses that shut their lights off at night, and in particular, the two liquor stores and the three gas stations all have their lights shut off at night. Now, they probably have cameras.
They may have lights on motion detectors, but when you drive by them, they’re really quite dark. So we have some good things going on, and I think that gives us an opportunity here in Hamilton to move forward, to try to correct some of the problems, get our arms around how things should move forward and prevent light
pollution and Hamilton from getting as bad as we have in some of our surrounding communities. Next, that leads us to what would we do with the bylaw if we decided that Hamilton was going to have one? A bylaw itself is very easy to draft. We’ve got the model bylaw from dark Sky, Massachusetts.
I already took a stab at drafting one. It’s not hard. What’s difficult is to figure out what you want in that bylaw. Um, one of the first things to consider is exceptions.
What are some of the things that we don’t even want to touch with our our bylaw? And as Hamilton Dark Sky has been thinking about it, we would suggest that you don’t you don’t bother with streetlights. Streetlights are a complicated issue. Our street lights aren’t great, but they’re not the worst. My understanding is they’re fairly new.
I think it would be very expensive to redo them, and as I mentioned to Joe, some lighting specialists think in 20 years that cars won’t need streetlights for driving anymore, for driving safety. So I think streetlights is a complicated issue. And based on what I know so far, and I think I have more to learn about them is probably not worth the bylaw. Trying to cover streetlights.
Another thing that I would recommend is that we shouldn’t try to cover holiday lights. Some of the bylaws do, but I don’t think we want to be regulating people’s Christmas lights. I think that would just be a little bit too much for some people. Another thing we’re not looking to cover are the stadium lights at the high school.
Um, they were certified by dark Sky. They’re great. Um, I know there’s some problems with light trespass with the butters, etc., but I think they’re trying to work that out. I don’t think there’s any reason for a bylaw to address that.
When you think of sports lighting, though, we do have downtown at Patent Park, some old style sports lighting, and we have heard complaints about the sports lighting at Pingree School. It’s something for us to learn more about.
Um, we then go on to if you’re going to have a bylaw, should it be a general bylaw or a zoning bylaw? And we think there are three reasons why it should be a general bylaw. And that’s what our recommendation would be. So for a general bylaw, the first thing is that it can cover properties and uses that are exempt from zoning. So for example, if we had a general bylaw that govern lighting, it would cover a 40 B project.
It would cover the schools, it would cover municipal buildings. And those are all exempt from a local zoning bylaw. The second benefit of a general bylaw is that it can require existing zoning to come into compliance in the future. Zoning doesn’t do that. Zoning only covers future construction or substantial renovation.
It doesn’t do anything to try to change existing buildings going forward. The third reason to do a general bylaw is that a town meeting, a general bylaw, only needs a 50% vote, a zoning bylaw requires a two thirds vote.
Once you decide what kind of bylaw you want, you then get into the issue of what properties do you want to cover? What uses do you want to cover? People are pretty much in agreement that you want to cover commercial. You want to cover schools. You want to cover municipal. It gets a little bit complicated when you’re trying to figure out whether you want a zoning bylaw to cover residential.
Most people say, yes, multifamily should be covered, but what about one and two family houses? Most people are pretty tied to their porch lights, their garage lights, or the lights at the end of their driveway.
And we looked at what other towns have done with respect to one and two family, and they’re really all over the map. So you look at, um, a recent bylaw, Chelmsford recently did a bylaw and they said, we’re not even going to touch one and two family. We’re going to make recommendations for one and two family, but we’re not going to put any requirements on them.
Maynard just a few months ago passed a zoning bylaw and they said, well, we’ll we’ll try to cover 1 or 2 family, but only new one and two families. We won’t require existing 1 or 2 family lighting to be changed. Nantucket is yet another example. Nantucket said.
We’re going to cover residential lighting, all residential lighting, including one and two family, but we’re going to give existing residential lighting five years to come into compliance. And then the final example I have is Rockport. Rockport is really interesting because they have a lighting bylaw and it doesn’t cover commercial. It only covers residential.
And when you think about Rockport, they’re commercial centers, fairly small, but the neighborhoods, the parcels are small, the buildings are close together. So probably in Rockport, people were more annoyed by the porch lights and the garage lights than they were about what was going on in the in the downtown center.
Um, Rockport governs new lighting going forward, and they also try to regulate existing residential light, and they say existing residential lighting for one and two family. It needs to meet all the requirements, i.e. be shielded and be of a certain color, or it needs to be turned off at a certain lights out time, or after that lights out time.
It needs to be on a motion sensor and that lights needs to go off. If there’s no motion after a five minute period of time. So regardless of where you are in that continuum, there’s a pretty wide range of how people deal with one and two families.
And I think that might be the most difficult issue that Hamilton would have to face. If it’s going to do a lighting bylaw, the next issue is what you do about pre-existing lights. As I said, Maynard said only lighting going forward, we’re going to forget about preexisting Nantucket said preexisting has to come into compliance, but we’re going to give people five years.
And Chelmsford said, yeah, they need to come into compliance, but we’re going to give them ten years. So again, there’s quite a range in terms of what people are doing with pre-existing lights. Once you figure all that out, the basic requirements are pretty easy. And we’ve already covered the lights should be shielded, the color temperature should be the warm white.
Bylaws generally have a limit on the intensity of the lights. That would be the lumens, and there’s generally a different intensity for residential and a higher intensity allowed for commercial. Then some of the bylaws talk about the, um, a timeout or a lights out time. And we would recommend a lights out time for Hamilton.
And it’s because we looked at what’s going on downtown. There’s only three businesses downtown as far as we’re aware that are open until 10:00 at night. That’s CVS, Cumberland Farm and the Weathervane. All the other businesses closed much earlier than that.
And the way a light out time is generally worded is it would be the later of 10:00 or one hour after the business closes. So CVS, the weathervane and um, Cumberland Farms, they would get until 11:00 to have their lights out. That would give the employees enough time to do whatever they needed to do and exit the building.
Now, even if you have a lights out time, what do you do about safety and security lights? Because we all know there need to be safety and security lights on. You can’t just ignore that. Um, and Nantucket has a really interesting way of dealing with it on commercial Nantucket says yes.
After the lights Out time, commercial safety and security lighting either needs to be on a motion sensor, or it needs to be dimmed by 50%. What Nantucket does with residential safety and security lights is they said, you can keep them on all night long. You’re going to have to have them shielded the correct color, etc. but residential safety and security lights can be on all night long.
That then leaves us to a nuisance provision. All the bylaws that we’ve seen generally have a nuisance provision. So if there’s a type of lighting that is not covered by the bylaw, say you’re not covering 1 or 2 family, but there’s a pretty egregious lighting situation with a 1 or
2 family resident. The the neighbors can complain. And if it really does constitute a nuisance, that lighting situation can be required to change. So even though they’re not covered, there is this catchall for really egregious lighting situations, which leads to the issue of enforcement. There’s always an enforcement provision.
From what we’ve seen, most of the bylaws leave it to the building inspector and the public safety officers. Um, complaints can be issued and notices of violation, um, with an opportunity to cure. And then finally, the possibility of fines being levied. That’s what we’ve seen.
Um, I’m going to open it up to questions, if you have any. I know I’ve covered a lot. We are fully supportive of the board. Uh, putting a lighting bylaw on its goals. And we will offer whatever assistance we can to the board to accomplish that. If that’s what you decide to do.
Thank you. All right. That’s very informative. You did a lot of work. So nice. job in your in your committee. I had a few questions, but we can go around first. Do you want to go in this direction first. No. Go ahead. You can start.
So my my first question is you raised a lot of very interesting possibilities, a lot of scenarios. Um, if we’re going to take on the responsibility of, um, enacting or bringing to the voters, um, a dark Skies bylaw, certainly one doesn’t want it to be cony and. Right, the whole town has to be blacked out.
But on the other hand, if we’re going to do it, then we need to work to bring people on board about understanding the importance of it and why we’re doing this. Um, my little neighborhood. You know, I think there’s an issue.
People talk to each other, and, um, I, there have been a few issues, um, talk to the property owner, and it was resolved. So they have and so we live in a very, um, collegial neighborhood. But, um, the specific question when you spoke at the library, were there any opinions? Um, you said it was well received. What did people what did residents think about it, and what did they think would be, um, a good ideas to, to bring forward.
That kind of discussion did not happen at the event. It was at the library. Um, there were a few questions at the end, but we needed to be out of the library by 8:00 as you guys, because we’re not a government entity or whatever.
So people were trying to ask questions and we were literally being pushed out the door. So we did not have that kind of fulsome dialogue that I think needs to happen. And, and a fair amount of.
It because it sounds like, you know, it sounds like the bylaws are all over the map and, and you really don’t want to say, oh, well, only make the schools and public safety building. And three businesses need to be compliant. And then the whole rest of the town, which is mostly residential, not compliant. And I think there there’s so I think about encouraging people on pre-existing homes to comply.
I think about it would be relatively easy to just make some minor adjustments, like put your blinding 20,000 watt, uh, spotlight in your driveway down to, um, a shielded light. Right. And tip it, tip it down and change the light bulb. Right? I mean, those are those are minor, minor adjustments that won’t cost an arm and a leg.
I mean, I know that that’s in the eye of the beholder, but it seems like there could be some requirements that would add benefit to the entire town without making it draconian and not making it so arbitrary that it would have no effect.
I think if we’re going to do one and two family, we really need to give people a long time to comply. Um, there’s a whole education process, and I think the newer light bulbs or the newer light fixtures are harder to change over because they’ve got the integrated lights in them now.
I mean, you look at the wall packs at the school, that’s all got integrated lighting in it now. So I think the whole wall pack needs to be changed. Um, I think there will be different situations for different kinds of lighting. Exactly, exactly. And so where it’s an easy changeover, that would be that would be great.
People can feel that they’re doing something to help the environment. Um, and I do appreciate that there would be some difficult situations as well. So those are. Just my and I think we’re planning, uh, we’re tentatively planning on having some kind of educational event this fall.
We’ve reached out to a few people, and we’re hoping to have it more of a family type event, maybe about moths or fireflies or whatever. And again, that would be an opportunity to do a little bit of this education. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. Go ahead. Um, thank you. Anne. Charlotte, this is fantastic. I think this is one of the most diligent and thoughtful.
Clearly, you guys, you all have been working on this for for a long time. And there’s been a lot of thought and effort put into this. So I just want to commend you on that.
I think it’s really exciting to see community members working together on something like this, to this level of detail, and then bringing this idea, you know, up, you know, to, to our attention and for consideration. I think it’s a real model for how a lot of things can happen in this town. That would probably benefit a lot.
The, the one area, um, that we brought up during the goal setting that I was curious about, and maybe you’ve spoken to chief Guy about this, uh, public safety around how different light intensities, uh, might affect, you know, their, their ability to to see what’s kind of happening in the evening or late. At night. I was not at the meeting with chief guys. Kathy was.
so sorry. I’d like to invite her up to the podium to answer your question. Okay. I think, um, we’ll need more conversations with chief Guy and basically established a working relationship with the police department about this. The overall response was, this is great. We understand dark sky bylaws in our own towns.
And, um, light is, um, the police officer’s friend, but it can also get in the way. Um, um, uh, it, uh, security cameras work best without a lot of light.
Um, too Much light, provides glare and dark shadows so that police officers can’t see a suspect as and showed that photo, and they were very much onto that. They looked at some of the photographs that we had of bad lighting in Hamilton and said, yeah, that’s too much. We don’t need that.
So I think that, um, uh, and we talked about pole lighting downtown, and they thought that there was too much of that down by the railroad station, down by Talbots, and that it could be directed downward and be as effective. They offered to spot bad lighting for us at night. On their patrols. Yeah. It felt really good. Like, um, we’re all sort of in this together. We want to respect, uh, police officers jobs.
Um, and the challenges of doing the job. Um, and not only chief Guy, but, uh, Captain. Donovan. Donovan. Donovan was there. Who’s who was an on night patrol for over 20 years, I think 25 years, and was very supportive of, uh, a general bylaw. Okay. I don’t think I answered your question. No. You did. I think. You did.
Answer. And the aspect, especially around, you know, that while light can be helpful, it can also work against them. If it’s not done well. And the types of high contrast images that you’re showing and that creating shadows, that explanation, and then the fact that they’re willing to help you all spot bad lighting to improve safety.
And it sounds like that’s also congruent with the dark sky lighting techniques that you showed. So that’s sort of a net benefit as opposed to it being something that would work against them. So that’s insightful again. So I mean it’s just very thorough.
I think that you’ve all just sort of more of a comment and more of a question for the board as well about the process of how we go from like where we are now to if we were considering this this April. Um, you know, I’m interested to have some additional conversation about that, but. I’ll. Yeah.
Yep. Thank you very much. That was a great presentation. Um, I attended the presentation for dark Sky, and I think one of the things that resonated with me was just that there’s a lot of low hanging fruit that it’s easy to do.
And, um, that giving people examples of the lighting, I think is really good. And also probably adding into that residential lighting. Like, what would it take to take this home from its current state to a dark sky compliant thing I think would really resonate with people? Um, to understand, like, you know, what’s the cost associated with this? Because I think those
examples that you give of just, you know, simple fixes of turning the lights down, it’s not a major cost. It’s something that allowed it to go into compliance quite easily. Um, you mentioned something about when are you guys working at all with Wenham people in Wenham is are. You working with.
Anyone in Wenham? We started out with a Wenham person in our group and he unfortunately dropped out, and it’s been so much work just talking to the people in Hamilton and doing the Hamilton work. that unless people from Wenham came and started embracing us, um, we’re, we’re going to continue for now. Um, just to work on Hamilton. So great.
Uh, Tom, got anything? No, nothing. Nothing specific. Just, uh, thank you. And and and Kathy for a great presentation. This is really thorough.
Um, you know, I think my only my comment would be is that I would be supportive of some sort of, you know, community event where we’re sort of, you know, discussing this and getting a sense of like, you know, representatives from the business community or residents to get a sense of how they’ll be impacted so they can sort of weigh in on how they could potentially comply with the bylaw down the road and what that might look like.
So, um, I think that would be really helpful to, you know, make sure we’re getting the message out to to folks within the community. I didn’t catch that at all.
I just want to have a like a community forum type event, what he suggested and get more what kind of what you’re saying the next sort of the next step. Agreed. Yeah. Um, we’ll work on the audio for next time. Thanks, Tom. All right. I do have one other question. I’m sorry.
Um, and I could have asked you this at our other meeting, but, um, is there is there any sort of audit thing available through dark Sky, Massachusetts, or that where they can come and help you with, um, understanding your dark sky situation? Um, we actually have a call with a dark sky individual who is a lighting consultant and has a is part of a lighting practice in Cambridge.
We’re going to talk to him this week and ask that question. Um, I did speak to the woman in Nantucket last week. Um, Nantucket has a five year period for everyone to come into compliance. They’re two and a half years into that five year period.
So they are working on trying to educate people and do audits and do inventories. They have hired a consultant to help them go around and inventory all of the municipal and school lighting. Um, we’re much smaller than Nantucket. Seems like Eric Tracy already has a handle on what the schools need to do.
Um, I think we may need help assessing some of our parking lot lighting in town and maybe some of the other lighting that’s a little bit more difficult. Um, okay. I don’t have any other thoughts. I got a few questions and notes. More notes as well to just to get Megan to the public record for follow up.
But I know I wanted to echo our group here, but very thoughtful presentation. Um, I think we did really well was acknowledge a lot of the challenges. And so examples of solutions. I think a lot of people should take less than that.
But I think it’s a good way to present a good point by having examples and acknowledge what the issues are and not just pretend they don’t exist. So you got a lot farther than what I expected you guys do at this point. So thank you for taking this so far.
Um, I’m in favor of two of what you kind of say, like a consistent, intuitive type. I don’t want to say common sense, but intuitive. Consistent. I think that we need to be have it be an intuitive thing, like simple, low hanging fruit and consistent throughout town.
Like we don’t want to just do pocket zoning, right? So I think we’re kind of hearing that from the group here that we need to sort of be more than just five buildings in town, or five properties or whatever. But, um, I had a few questions. Maybe you can answer. Maybe you can we can look at them later.
But the comments I hear about people sort of, you know, scared of the dark sky concept is one with safety. I think we’ve sort of addressed safety. And I think meeting with the public safety was a good one to, um, internal lights, internal lights are sort of exempt from, from dark sky, is there what’s the interpretation of like a house that’s really lit up well, from the inside
and it just comes through the window like, is that exactly. And I’ve asked, um, the people at Massachusetts Dark Sky and they admit that internal lighting is kind of off, off the table. And in particular downtown we have two features.
Two of the buildings have, like the cupolas, I think you call them. You know, it’s just like the little steeple at the top. It’s only purpose is to have a light. Is that an inside light? Is that an outside light? Um, the person from dark Sky said, I think you should call that an outside light.
Um, the one I looked at. The one that’s, um, at the top of the interior design building. And it’s interesting that actually has the light up in the in kind of the housing in the roof area. So that one complies, um, automatically. You know, that’s certainly something to think about.
The other one was at the bank, and I don’t know what they’re going to think about that as a feature. But the other one was, uh, landscape. A lot of people spend a lot of time and effort to design landscape lights, which aren’t supposed to be huge, but some of them light up trees or or their front of their house.
So what? What’s the is that something you’re going to work through? Is there already some sort of been some interpretation on that? Well, I think, um, many, um, bylaws have provisions that um, with respect to accent lighting or decorative lighting, which this would fall into.
And they generally say that that lighting needs to be I mean, you can’t shield it because then it’ll just go down. But it has to be directed so that it’s only lighting up the feature that it’s intended to light up. And those lights would be subject to that lights out time.
So if we had a 10:00 lights out time, those would have to be off. They’re not safety and security lights. Um, we really hate those landscape lights. I again, I don’t know if you have any at your house, but for, you know. For I do. Not okay for wildlife and insects and, you know, the bats and they’re really horrible when people are lighting up trees. And the.
Whole industry based on it. Right. There is a whole industry based on it. And, and I think that’s why the longer you wait to put something like this in place, the harder it’s going to be. So.
Um, I had a question for Joe in terms of if it’s a general versus a zoning, does it a different board have to initiate the process? Yes. I mean, it would. Be like board and zoning would be planning. Board, right? So, okay. And. You know, I think that Dan made a if you don’t mind me. No. Go ahead. I had a couple and Kathy. Presentation was excellent.
Again echo what everybody else said. Great job. Thank you. I think you’re hearing most of the people that are in these positions, including myself, are supportive of the idea. We just need to make sure we find the right way to do it. I think the general bylaw makes the most sense.
For all the reasons you outlined, um, for the for the areas that it can impact versus the limits of a planning bylaw. Um. I. Think that, um, it’d be good at this point if the Select board wants to make this a a goal, I endorse the idea because then it’s a goal we can check off really quickly.
I love when we have goals that we can accomplish in a short timeframe, because most of my goals are. Take. 5 or 6 years to get there. So it’d be great to have what we could do in less than a year. Um, it always makes it feel good about coming to work and knowing you accomplish something.
So, uh, I endorse the idea of having a goal of having a dark skies compliant bylaw in front of an annual town meeting in April. I endorsed the idea of the board designating one of your members to work with I.
The Dark skies and Town Council to put together a draft bylaw and then a very rigorous public process, because the best part of getting this passed is going to be making sure we’re letting people know ahead of time what we’re proposing and why, and get their input so that we can make modifications and edits and change it around the edges to get the most likely bylaw to pass.
Um, I love the idea of having a period of time for people to come into compliance. I love the idea of, you know, giving a range lower down the scale to, you know, what the light should be. I think most people in this town value nature. They value their open, their open air, their all their trees.
They moved out here because they want to be able to look up the sky and they see stars, and there’s a lot of light pollution. You can’t see the stars. So I think you’ll have a lot of people that won’t want to do it, but leaves. Right.
You’re going to need to answer people’s questions about what’s it going to cost them to convert, because that’s that’s the one thing that I could see tripping this up on the flat floor to a meeting. I don’t want to spend $2,000 to come in compliance with this. You’re crazy. I like my lights. Are. I spent $10,000 on my decorative lights.
What do you mean I can’t have one? You’re really pushing hard for 10:00. I’m often here till later than 10:00. I think maybe 11:00 would be fine, but, like, they’ll let the public process play out and see where everybody lands on that. Uh, it’s the town’s bylaw.
It’ll be what the voters wind up approving. Um, we all have going to have opinions. Like I said, I’m often here much later, I see that maybe 11:00 would be good, but that’s just me, you guys. You guys will make the decision. Um, but confirm this is one of your bylaws in the next couple of meetings.
Point somebody to start the drafting the bylaw policy. They’ve already taken a stab at it. So you got you got good work, good stuff to start. And that. Was that. Was Mike. And then do some meetings. Yeah.
So my question to you is that once you, you take good notes from us because we always ask, hey what’s the what’s a good example of a local bylaw. You pick three prior three good ones. Is there any close is there any that exists closer than Chelmsford or the. The problem about looking at places like Rockport and then also Gloucester? Gloucester has an old one. It’s just downtown, just commercial, and I don’t think they’ve ever enforced it.
Um, older ones tend to be zoning bylaws. Um, you know, I think there’s been a big change in the past ten years with the advent of LED lighting. There’s a lot more lighting outside lighting now than there was ten years ago. I think cities and towns are just starting to catch up with it.
The older bylaws tend to be not that helpful to look at. So we just looked at Nantucket, which is kind of the gold standard. Everyone in in Massachusetts, dark Sky tells us that. And then we just looked at the other most recent ones that were done within the past year or two.
We can continue to look, um, again, I looked at Raleigh. I looked at some other ones that they really weren’t that helpful. The state there’s a I think you talked about a state bill going into committee and is it worth of of us getting a copy of that, looking at that, or is that really not going to relate
to what we’re looking at? No, I don’t think it relates. Um, I took a look at the Senate version of that bill. The Senate and House version are not that far apart. Apparently. It’s just dates for things to happen.
Um, but what that applies to, its for any outdoor lighting that’s funded with municipal or state funds, it only applies to lighting going forward. So it doesn’t do anything about existing lighting. Um, it says that for the new lighting, it has to be fully shielded. They’ve asked the Department of Energy, um, to come up with regulations for maximum Kelvin in terms of color and maximum intensity.
And they’ve also asked the department, whoever sets rates the DPU, the Department of Public Utilities, to set a special rate for cities and towns for their streetlights. If the street light is using less than 35W.
And what that is, is the legislature is intending to give cities and towns a special electric rate if they dim their streetlights at night. I think we’re all pretty far away from that. I don’t think Hamilton even has the ability to damage streetlights based on. I’m not so sure about that. But that’s that’s why I said we don’t we don’t know a lot about. The streetlights.
Wilmington bought the streetlights from National Grid back in the early 20 tens. They were part of a group procurement process for new LED streetlights. When I was in Winthrop, they were in the same group as us. Um, we bought our lights from Siemens. We bought LED street lights.
They we have the ability to turn up and down the lumens. I think we have the ability to turn the color to, but I’m not sure. None of that’s been done since they’ve been put in. They’ve been there for a while. They might have corroded.
We don’t know for sure, but there was some forethought at the time to give ourselves the ability to play with it. But I don’t know that. I don’t know for sure because I was with at the time. So. We’re recording. Sorry. So you have to just go to the microphone. I apologize. And I should introduce myself. Sure.
Cathy Simons I just wanted to say that I wrote to Vicki Mason, okay. To to find out if she can provide us with the details. She’ll probably. Be the. Flexibility to. Be able to look back and see what we purchased. What we’ll have to do is look at the service contract at. The town, which you would have.
That would be would Tim, would Siemens to see what the service contract says and, um, how much it would cost for us to go around town and turn down. Lights. And really, even Vicki’s emails and records will tell us what the lights are capable of, and then we’ll have to see what it would cost to be able to. Don’t know yet.
And again, we’re happy to look at documents. I know Tim’s really busy. This is probably the last thing on his priority list. So whatever we can do to help out in that. Effort, um, it’s. Almost a recycling. And then the town hall.
So then he takes a big, long vacation, and then we put him back to work. Um. So, um, next steps. Right. So one of the things I’d like to recommend is they’re going into the planning board tomorrow.
Right? It would be good if we we can’t vote but have a straw vote here and say, hey, if they go to the planning board to make a recommendation, hey, that’s the site. Board seems to be behind a general bylaw. Maybe they won’t get, you know, have to start talking about a zoning bylaw.
So the question is, do we want to send them to the planning board with a straw vote, saying that we’re interested in this being a. One with one? Yeah, maybe a potential couple of caveats there. But hey. Go ahead. Uh.
For the you know, it sounds like the the area that is often, um, most debated and deliberated is around the one and two family homes. But since the planning board also has the authority to kind of set standards for, um, for new new homes, new construction, new development or things like that, does the I guess now it’s a question too, but would the buy like a. General bylaw. General bylaw would go over all of those.
Would cover all of. That and even well, even. We wouldn’t need a zoning board backstop for new development. And then I think during site plan review for commercial multifamily, whatever the that would be an issue that the planning board would look at to make sure that it was in compliance.
But again, that would be new construction going forward. And they only do site plan review for commercial and multi-family. They don’t. Do they haven’t. Been making it part of the order conditions. They do dock down lighting. And there I’ve looked at what they’ve done so far in their they’re three day zoning etc.. It talks about Philly shielded.
It doesn’t say anything about color, intensity, lights out time, whatever. So and again that’s only for commercial and multifamily. It’s not single family right. The other thing is is and pointed out something like a 40 B project is, um, immune from local zoning.
So if it was a in a zoning bylaw, then it would not matter. The 40 B could do whatever it wanted. So you want it as a general bylaw so that you would pull in those. Projects. Why didn’t they do the dark sky stuff? I think they did voluntarily. And we’ve actually talked to Andrew.
Um, their lights are, um, the ones that were ordered were ordered as being fully shielded. We explained to him that there’s more to it. There’s also the the color temperature. He quickly changed the order. The ones they had ordered was not the appropriate Kelvin. So he quickly changed that.
Um, and he told us that he’s really interested in working with us. He said he wants to be a leader on this issue. He’d love to have this kind of being experimental project and whatever works here in terms of lights out, timing, cameras, motion sensors, whatever works here, he would he would love to then take it
to other projects going forward. So again, he really was interested in partnering with the town. I think my only caveat in like area of concern is around the the one and two families especially existing and how those are brought into compliance.
I feel like that’s something that I’d want to see kind of fleshed out during the public engagement process. And I would like for us to be thinking about, well, what is that? What does that look like in terms of those hearings? Is that something that we help administer. Orchestrate? If it’s going.
To be a select board bylaw, I definitely think you could set aside portions of your of your regular meetings to have a hearing on the bylaw, on the draft bylaw, and you could do special meeting as well with just 1 or 2 of you kind of taking feedback. And okay.
It doesn’t mean that the straw votes doesn’t mean that we’re going to include 1 or 2 families. It just means we’re going to do right. A yes, that our goal is to over the next some months is write a Da Scott bylaw, and what it contains is what it contains. And we’re going to do the best job. But it’s not we’re not committing to what’s in there.
We’re committed that we’re going to make it a Selectboard goal. So when they go to the planning board and we don’t have to do it, I’m just saying if we’re on the planning board tomorrow, if. I’m in favor of doing this, I like doing the straw vote tonight.
I think, you know, Joe outlined kind of like, here’s an order of operations we could do. I think my only hat to that feels like and they have already done a lot of this, especially through community engagement and like targeted kind of conversations, but opening it up for some more broader public engagement before we start drafting
something as well. And that way, it’s sort of we can give maybe a framework very similar to the presentation that was given today of like, this is the direction of travel, but have a public engagement, then get a draft together and then do some further, like public engagement, public hearings or
whatever we want to call it before we bring it to the the floor or the the town meeting. Okay. That’s my recommendation on. I agree, I think, I. Think that’s a good process.
Um, before we talk a little bit more, is there anything else that you want to ask us or have us discuss? I mean, we were thinking that we would just continue talking to people in town. Like I said, we have more outreach that we think needs to be done. We’d love to find out more about the street lights. We’d love to find out more about the sports lighting, whether that’s going to be a big issue. Um.
We have a letter to the editor ready to go tomorrow for this Friday’s paper. AGW news. Following up on the article they had with the state law and the planning Board last week.
If there’s a straw poll tonight, um, it says more about our organization and gives people an email address where they can contact us. And if we can add the straw poll vote, that will maybe start email coming our way.
The town of Maynard really gave us a heads up warning that you’ll hear from a lot of naysayers that don’t necessarily reflect the the large body of people, so I think it’ll be interesting to think about ways that we can really, um, try to engage and sway, uh, you know, but educate not. This. But broad spectrum of input, perhaps. A broad spectrum of input. And I think that’s, um, it. Yeah. And the Selectboard can really help us with that. Well, if you want to do any.
I mean, Jojo, if somebody wants to contact them right now, who do they how do they do that? Uh, I do want us to say. That h w dark Sky. H.W.. Dot com. H.W. no, it’s sweet. No, we used to be h w you’re not w anymore. H Hamilton dark. Skies. And dark Hamilton. Dark skies. Dropped when I’m so there..
Allison I already sent one to h w. I’m, um. Can I just ask a question about the sports lighting particularly? I think you’re talking about it. Paton Park. Um, so if the idea is that, you know, we’re going to have at some point it’s like a lights out policy, at some point. We have.
Won the that’ll be swept up in that because the the sports games won’t be on. Um, you know, that late at. Night I. Think sports lighting generally has its own separate provision. It would not be tied into the lights out time generally for sports lighting.
It just says it needs to be out within one hour after the end of play or something like that. So it would not be subject to. the 10:00 or. Whatever it is currently. Yeah, that. Makes it. The high school and the Pat Parker all have a lights out time in there. Yeah. In there.
I think I think the high school lights were approved based on an hour after any games. Are done. Joe. A question question on process. If we do have a public hearing, is there any limit to the number of board members who can attend and. Participate? We’re going to advertise it. We’re going to take notes. And yeah, go. To be clear, what I was I’m suggesting.
And once again, Tom, if you got something, just raise your hand cause it’s hard to hear you, but, um. And joking. But what I was suggesting is that we talk about making a commitment to making it a goal. It doesn’t mean it’s going to get approved. Doesn’t mean it’s to include everything.
But at least they know that walking away from now, it’s going to be our goal to work on a general bylaw. Obviously, we still have to have all the processes you talked about. Then draft it, then vote on it.
So it’s not we’re not guaranteed it’s going to get passed or guaranteed what’s going to include, but it’s a commitment that we’re going to make it a goal for this year to put a a bylaw. We’re going to work towards a deadline of an April of an April meeting.
Once again, we don’t always make those, but that was my intention, make a commitment that put it on our goal to work on a general bylaw for dark Sky, the town of Hamilton, for the. I just think it like, you know, while this with all the the new, uh, case law that’s come about makes it very hard for us to communicate when we’re not all here at a, at a meeting. And so that’s why I’m.
Also it’ll. Be it’ll be at meetings. It’ll be meetings. And you can send information to myself or the chair at any time. And that gets incorporated into. So I like anybody else submitting evidence, testimony or, you know, opinions to the board. You can all submit stuff to the chair. And you’re talking about working in the background.
To. keep this thing. Being able to continue, like working through helping coordinate and set up and, you know, say like, okay, well, we’re thinking about these types of dates and this sort of timeline for, for public hearings or, um, for draft policies, you know, to have a champion kind of basically from
the, from the select board who can, yeah, start to head in that direction if we’re or maybe I don’t know if it’s one, one vote around like, yes. It’s really. It’s really having one person to work with.
The dark Sky committee and and and they can help and they’re going to help us. It’s not going to be they’re. Going to help us. Thanks, Mike. You’re going to help us the whole way through the process. You’re not going anywhere, right? We’re not going anywhere. Right. We’re delighted. If you’re going to pick this up and run with it.
So I understood that Lee, that Lee might be willing to serve in that capacity. So I met. With them. I think you. Just got nominated. By somebody that’s not even on the committee. All right. So we. Know totally. I was on board. I wasn’t sure whether. We it’d be up to two as well. Doesn’t have to be one. It can be too.
So because the meetings would be public, it doesn’t it doesn’t matter. The early right issue. Been with some of the other stuff that you were working on. You were trying to work on things to just back and forth amongst yourselves.
If you’re going to work in groups of two or more, you have to have a public meeting, keep having it posted. Agenda, keep minutes. And that was. That was. Just one of us going out. Two of us or two. Of you can if you’re gonna have a public meeting. Yeah. It’s fine. I’ll figure it out. All right. But that’s what I mean is, like. So I got it now. Thank you.
Yeah. All right. And I think the question I have about a public meeting or a series of public meetings is, would the town hire a consultant to give a presentation? Would it be me or Cathy? Would it be Lee? I mean, how are we? I don’t I don’t. That was a great presentation.
I think it’s really good. I mean, I mean. If people are phenomenal. I mean, through the process as we as we start to do some things together and have a couple of public meetings, if it seems like there is a want from the public. For.
More, maybe we can ask Massachusetts Dark Skies or somebody, if there’s somebody that they could send to us. Um, and. I think there it is. And. Well, but let’s let’s not put the cart before the horse. Let’s see if we’re answering people’s questions first. Okay. Taking their input.
Because one of the things sometimes an outsider coming in sometimes makes it feel like they’re pushing an agenda where if it’s brought from you live here, and then if you can’t answer their questions, we get somebody else. That’s a that’s a different matter. Right? But we’re also not lighting experts. And we’ve done research, but we’re not lighting or dark sky expert.
So I can see it both ways. So I just wanted to get your sense. Well, we’re into economy here. And I think that’s that’s an important aspect. I think, all kidding aside, I think you and Cathy have done a phenomenal job of researching background.
I mean, I this was my reason to to to be here tonight because I was looking forward to your, um, well organized and well thought out presentation. And I was not disappointed. So we’ve got a lot more work to do. Yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Bravo. And thank you. Thank you. Okay. So do we need to vote. So we don’t need to go. We need not gonna vote.
But I’m just gonna start with me. Is that I. I’m in favor of the select board. Um, working to put it on their goal to work towards a general bylaw for dark Sky for our April meeting. Absolutely. And, Rose Mary, you agree with that? Oh, absolutely. Agree. Yes. And yeah, Ben glues I agree. I agree. As well. Yeah. And Tom.
Yes I agree as well. There’s your straw vote. Yeah. We’re going to put on our goal. To you can take that information to the planning board too. So we’re working on it. It’s already great. Thank you. All right. Thank you Joe we can move on here. We can. All right. Next three items are appointments.
We have three appointments. Appoint John Green as a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals. So John is traveling. He’s out of country. He, uh, there is a letter in there from the chair of the, uh, CBA. He’s been he’s met with the committee.
He was originally going to be appointed as a as an alternate, but we’ve got somebody going off where you can choose to not appoint him since he’s not here. But we’re going to ask you to consider appointing him because when he gets back, he can get sworn in and be right ready for the next Ebor meeting. If you do appoint him.
If you don’t, we might not have a quorum for the next Ebor meeting. But is he the. They would not. If he’s not appointed, they don’t have enough people to have a quorum or. It’s very it’s very funny. They have two but they, they he they want to have him on board to be.
Able to. When is he appointed through. What’s his board. What’s his term. He’d be filling the vacancy of, uh, the gentleman stepping. Up John. Uh, no. No. Steven DeRosa. Roger. He’ll be filling the vacancy left by Steven DeRosa who’s moving out of town. I think his, um, term was up.
I think all three were up the end of June. Right. We just renewed. Just all through them. So it’s pretty much a three. Year term, pretty much three year term. We’ve. You could start to you could start to stagger them and you could appoint them for one year and then have to reappoint them next year.
And then that would get them off cadence with the other two. So it’s kind of scary to have everybody. Yeah, I agree with you, especially on CBA. What do we have the ability to do tonight? We have the ability to approve them for a year. You could you could, yes. You have the ability to appoint him for whatever term you want to.
One of the other things we’ve discussed recently as well, though, is, is having candidates for select board appointed. They usually committees come in and introduce themselves, at least at the least, and kind of say, this is this is why I want to do this. Yeah, they usually are.
We tried to schedule it that way, but he had unfortunately a trip where he was already going to be out of country and wasn’t able to be here tonight. Yeah. So my. CBA meeting. I’m sorry, when is the next meeting? Before the 15th. Usually once. I think it’s the first. I think it’s the beginning of September, the first week of September. Yeah.
So my only hesitation because I’m sure he’s fantastic fellow. But is that I just want to I want to hear from because once again, zoning board is a very important. He’s only been a resident for a year.
And so it’s just like, what? How do you have a lot of decisions you make are based on the character of Hamilton? I think Hamilton was my only sort of I wanted to become I like to become involved, and I don’t want to discount new residents. But, um. And I also was sort of I was looking at as his background.
He had a lot of very interesting and varied positions, clearly very smart person based on how deep his CV was and his. I think he had some, um, a military record as well, and leadership roles there. So clearly very ambitious person.
I think my only concern was that it didn’t have, um, kind of real estate design, construction, development and or kind of town planning or some of these other and I don’t know, that’s where it’s like, I kind of wanted to meet him and see, like, you know, if you have you brought projects through zoning processes before, have you, you know, what’s your other experience in this, in these aspects? You know, it’s not.
The other the other, um, bringing that um, to, to for I think considering um, only appointing him for a year is also a reasonable thing to do. First of all, I agree with you, Ben, that we should we should meet him. This is this is an important board.
And, um, but I certainly understand the that the CBA needs somebody who’s dedicated and is willing to to jump in. So. So we have multiple options. I’m actually just. And maybe you already said it, but I kind of missed it the first time through.
But we do the ability to appoint him as an alternate member only as well, which is what they’re asking us to do tonight. Really. It was originally an alternate, but. I still think we have that ability to do that. It says, hey, if you want to, the first year at it, you can be an alternate member because you’re really but but you’re still when the board’s not full, it’s become a really important role.
Right. And the board’s not full right now. So. Right. And if the board doesn’t have enough members, a full time members, then the alternate. Becomes a footnote. Yeah. Oh, God. Strategic I like that. But I mean, we could do we if so, let me ask you this question. If we wait until the September 17th. September 14th.
14th meeting, and. I know the September meeting, but he could. He is there anything that we’re putting the zoning board at, at, um. at risk meetings? The first week? Yeah, that’s what I mean. So you missed the first meeting in September, that meeting in September.
But I think, um, I think they’re worried about just about what’s coming up with the, the negotiations. executive session and the executive session.
Um, but as you point out, if you appoint him as a, as a alternate, he can serve as long as he’s there for the meeting, he can serve and vote. Uh, based on the fact that there won’t be enough full time. So he can’t vote because he hasn’t been. Exactly. Even if he was appointed. If he he can’t be appointed. He wouldn’t be able to to to vote on something he wasn’t. present there for the entire conversation.
So I don’t know why it’s such a rush to have him be a member, because he can’t even vote on that issue anyway. So I would say, let’s put him on the my opinion is, I mean, go with the will of the board.
My opinion is put him on the he’s not at risk because he can’t really vote anyways. Instead of number 14, he can go to the meeting and listen and be part of the meeting. But he would just come in. Front of participating in the executive sessions. Because he wouldn’t anyways. Because he didn’t. He hasn’t been. He might be if he’s going.
Well, no, but if we don’t vote, he can’t go to the executive session. Well. What about if he was an alternate? If he was. , if we voted for all that. But I think those are your eyes. You could vote to appoint him as an alternate.
And he could participate in the executive session. If the chairman decides that they wanted him there. Uh, the executive session is about the litigation. It’s not necessarily about the last. Not voting vote.
So he didn’t have to participate in that vote to vote on litigation, uh, to vote on what’s coming out of the litigation. And, uh, or what might be coming up to the board coming in the future. So that would give him the ability to participate in September if you wanted to let him. Oh, I’ll register my opinion, chair, if he’ll have it. Yeah. I’d like to hear you. I love.
It, my time, I think that we we need to kind of set a little bit of a precedent. I think the CBA is an incredibly important, uh, board committee here in town. They have a lot of discretion.
Um, and, you know, I know sometimes it’s hard to fill, fill these seats, but if they have enough to function, you know, I really want to meet this person and kind of know their background, their experience in these types of matters, why they want to do this. Um, you know, they’re it’s a three year ask. I, I’m not hearing it.
There’s an immediate harm to our ability to process. So you can make your application so. You can make a motion. You can make a motion to table is. Sure. I would like to make a motion to table this until our next meeting. We have a second. Uh, actually, I don’t think you need a second.
So any member of the board came on the board the first time we talked about the first time that issue was before you for a vote. That’s not a policy unless we. Know any one person. Can we? He’s moving the agenda ahead. You you can talk. I’ll withdraw my motion. Sorry. I think it’s fine. It was just.
Mark is on now. And did Mark did you have something that can. Oh, sorry. Can we. Thank you. Mark, recognize. Mark and Mark. Speak up. Because the speaker is not working that well. Okay. Can you hear me? No, no. Not really. Okay, well, uh, I’ll try my best.
Um, I’m a little concerned about membership on the CBA because the associates, the two associate members, have recently resigned, and we’re expecting Stephen to be moving out of town. So that would leave us with only two members.
So, um, I think what you could do if you’re concerned about not meeting this person is potentially a point of an alternate. And if you’re comfortable with that, at least that way we can function for the next meeting. The first meeting of September, uh, you don’t meet again until after the September meeting. So I’m a little concerned they wouldn’t be able to function as a board with only two members.
So we missed the beginning of that. Mark. Sorry. Can you reiterate the timeline and how and when they would be able to function as a board or not function as a board without this? Yeah. So the two associate members just recently resigned within the past couple of weeks.
And Stephen, I don’t know if Stephen has moved out of town yet, but he’s told us that he’s planning to move out of town. He’s a regular member. Um, and it’s only a three member board, so that would leave us with two board members, two regular board members with no alternates.
So we need three members to function. So I think if you’d like to meet, um. Mr. Greene, before you appoint him as a regular member, I totally understand that, but I would just ask you to appoint him at least as an associate at this point, so that we would have three members for their October meeting or their September meeting.
How about a compromise? How about a quick zoom meeting next Monday? So 24. Sorry, the CBA is a how many members are on the. Three members? Three members? Three. You have two. So that’s a quorum. But what’s the the the problem is if what they disagree with each other, then there’s nobody to break the tie. Yeah, yeah.
They can’t they they can’t really vote if. They there’s another aspect to where it’s like. You know I know what this guy breaking the. tie until I meet him. So so. So would we be comfortable appointing him as, uh. I’m not comfortable until I. Meet him. Even as an associate. Mark, wouldn’t he do.
Better if we could do a if we get the least, we could do a 15 minute meeting on zoom in the next two weeks, and I’ll be flexible to what time we do, as long as Joe can post it. But when is he going to be back? Well, yeah. We need Mark once he can do back.
You just due back to 27th. Um, if you did like an earlier meeting, you might be able to catch him. It’s just using a European time zone right now. So you could try to do you could try to do Monday the 31st. At some point on Monday the 31st. That’s my compromise. Otherwise I’m not comfortable.
Okay. You have to promise we’re not going to add on. The agenda. It will be a special meeting. It’ll be a special meeting for just this by zoom only. By zoom only. Okay. Just free everybody. The 31st. Yes. Oh, I mean, whatever everybody decides. But that’s the only thing on the agenda.
It looks to me. All right. I’m not going to violate that. I can’t guarantee. You anything else on the agenda. Okay? Okay. You have it. What time? Oh, I don’t know. Six. My dad needs to be evening. I mean, same time as usual, just so I don’t screw it up. If we get.
Six, can we do it just. A little bit at 630, six, 35, 630? I can do anything. 630 it’s zoom only. Zoom only here. Just you might have to text me because I’ll probably show up here in person at seven. Six. Right. So two weeks from tonight, 630.
And Joe’s gotta get out of it. You gotta confirm it. Okay. Um, and then we’ll go from there. Okay. Is everybody agree with that? Yeah. It’s not to be disparaging of the candidate either. It’s just, you know, I think we’re all recognizing how important of a board this is. And, you know, it’s. Yeah, long lasting impact.
So exactly, Mark, I’ll let you handle, uh, getting in touch with Mr. Green and confirming his availability, and then I’ll, I’ll get the meeting posted. Create the zoom. If he’s. Still okay. Sounds good. Thank you. I’ll be back on the 27th. Okay. So he’ll have time to recover from. Thanks, Mark. Okay. Thank you, thank you. Mark. Um.
Next appointment is Daniel Horgan. As a member of the Conservation Commission discussion vote, we have a resume. We’ve got a letter from both the chair and from you, from Dan. And fortunately, we have a candidate in the room. Hey. Come. On up here.
Hey, will this one come on up? I suggest that we tabled the next one since she’s not here. She’s not here. Stay consistent with what you’re doing today. How are you doing? Everybody? Hey, uh, Dan Horgan, um, I’ve lived in Hamilton for 32 years. I retired, um, about a year ago.
I worked for Saucony, the running shoe company, and I’m looking to do something within the community. And heard there was an opening in the Conservation Commission. Very interesting to me. I have no direct experience with water resources.
Um, but I certainly appreciate the importance, especially today and going forward, a hugely important, um, I am out and about quite a bit in the woods. Appleton Farms, Harvard, you know, woods, etc. so I do have an appreciation for the great outdoors we have here and the amount of water that’s flowing around. Um, so happy to serve. You know, if approved. Um, yes. Okay, great. So, um, thank you so much for for stepping up.
Um, Conservation Commission is a great group. It’s very, um, sort of, um, very intricate work. They do, um, a lot of work with wetlands is primarily one jurisdiction, and it’s a tricky, tricky subject. Um, so. Thank you. Yeah. And I appreciate that. I attended the last meeting just to observe. And, uh, really interesting. And Baker, as the chair.
Uh. I think, uh, I think Denise. Is Denise. Denise is the chair. Yeah, but Nancy certainly, uh, had a lot of thoughts. Yes. Of of wealth and. Yeah, and wealth of knowledge. And you’ll certainly learn a great deal under their tutelage. Oh, yeah. And the only.
Yeah, the only thing, uh, you know, having I was on council at one point and, uh, um, a lot of enforcement, um, decisions that are, uh, sometimes hard to make. But, yeah, it’s great to have people step up and help make those decisions. So thanks for doing that. Sure. Thank you. Um. Have another question.
Have you had experience kind of dealing with these types of technical challenges or like or around, um, you know, something related with environmental science or kind of these like making these types of trade offs. Uh, can you give some color to past experiences there? Um, I’m not going to say that I really have in water resources.
Um, I understand what all of you are talking about. The type of decisions there are, and that they’re not always popular. And there’s a lot of evaluation. Um, so I cannot say I’ve done that within the environmental part of the, the, world here.
But, um, you know, it is similar to a lot of experiences I’ve, I’ve had, I think, in my work career, um, you know, decisions every day. And, you know, you have to look at all the factors. And, um, also, you know, rely on your, your colleagues and, and come to the best decisions possible within Saucony.
I can say that, you know, every type of, um, environmental, you know, strength that we had or initiative that we had, I was involved in because ultimately I was in operations. You have to make it happen, but you need to have all the parties on the same page, understand, you know, where we’re going. And, um, set up as you’re talking timelines, etc.
and, and really make it happen. So maybe related in terms of a project management or whatever, but you know, no direct experience with water resources. That’s fine. Thank you. Yeah.
But they do often have when there’s a very complicated project, they would have um, the con com, the com would be able to hire, um, a peer reviewer, a peer expert, and they’re invaluable with their, with their expertise. So it’s, it’s not my complicated issues would be left to the discretion of the board. I mean, obviously you want to get it right and and so you would have a lot of support for, for complicated issues.
Yes. And I saw that in the meeting the other day. Even the presenters, consultants, etc., bringing a lot of information. They’re aware of all the rules and regs, you know, and, and they’re even, you know, talking openly about, well, we are in violation a bit here.
But here’s the reason and here’s what we’re trying to do. So I did see there was a lot of information, very useful information. Yes. And Bethany’s also sent me, um, information to read. I think he’s very excited to get a new another new member of the consequence. So, I mean, I guess my notes are the same as that.
I appreciate your volunteering. I think my sort of opinion comes from the fact that to be 43 years at a fashion forward sneaker shoe company, which is one of the most changing, innovative fashion businesses to be in in the last over, how many different people have owned Saucony and how many
different companies are people of own Saucony over 43 years and staying on board and being building, obviously consensus, collaborating with people. Um, that says a lot about who you are and what you’re what you’re about. So not even knowing you.
But that’s pretty a lot of people don’t last 43 years at a company. So you’ve, uh, I’ve, I applaud that. So thank you. Yeah. I think I’m also excited to have someone 32 years in town kind of knows, uh, knows the town well and spent their life here, then, uh, desiring to give back in this fashion I think is really exciting to have to. So thanks.
Um, so we have to. Uh, do I have a motion? Yeah, I move that. We, um, appoint Dan Horgan to the Conservation Commission. A second, second. Do any further discussion? Tom, I kind of didn’t get to you, but you’re good. All right, we’ll do a roll call. Vote. We’ll start with Tom. Tom Meyers. Eye. Lee McCoy. I. Ben Kaluza, I.
Rosie Kennedy. I Mohsen I. Thank you. Welcome aboard. Great. Thank you. To get sworn in. Uh, there’ll be, uh, my office will send you out a letter of appointment and take that to see Karen Kale. And she’ll spoil you away. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for sitting through the whole meeting tonight.
So our next item on the agenda is to. appoint Ashley Serrata to the, um. She’s not here. Conservation. Uh, sorry. The Hamilton Wyndham Cultural council. Um, I think to be consistent with our message tonight, we’d like the applicants to commonly say hi to us so we can talk about that.
I actually happen to know Ashley and think she would be great on the board. So it’s not any sort of, um. So I would recommend her as well. But I’m just saying to be consistent with what we’re trying to do, it’d be good to sort of have them come and say hi.
So I think and I don’t think there’s a timing thing. I think we invited her the next meeting on the 14th. and we will vote. On it. Great. Um, the Hamilton Wenham Cultural Council. So this is a joint council. This is a. Town for a seat in the Hamilton from Hamilton on that coat.
How many seats are there total and how many do we have? Is it ask a question? I don’t know the. Answer to three and 2. Or 3. Yeah. You ask enough questions, you’ll eventually get to one. I don’t know the answer to. I. I’ll take that as a compliment. Just.
Uh, I. think I think that there’s seven seats, uh, three and three in a quite large. But I do I know there’s a vacancy in the Hamilton side of things, so. We love you, Ben. Thanks, I appreciate it. I feel seen. What is the board want to do with this one? I’d to wait.
What’s that? I think they the the other I would like to wait. You know, sometimes, you know, it’s nice to have the letter of recommendation, you know, um, from from the chairs. If if the individual can’t make it, you know, sometimes the chair comes and says, like, you know, I’ve met them, they’ve met everybody else.
This is an. Able to represent that individual. I think that that’s just important for the chair to be someone here to speak to that, to who these people are. Okay. All right. So we will, um, put that on the next agenda, Joe.
And as you can tell, it wasn’t about anything other than we just want to opportunity to meet them and say hello and thank them for their volunteering. That sounds great. But, um, real quick, I do think that it’s, uh, that policy maybe should be also conveyed to the chairs of those committees to know.
Because when I was brought on to council, comp had no idea I was supposed to be at the meeting where I. Was appointed. And I didn’t. I was somewhere else. Yes, I can communicate that. I will help communicate that. Yeah, okay. Okay. All right. Next item, the agenda is the first reading of the revised cemetery plot purchase policy.
Rosemary, do you want to do that tonight? Huh? Sure. Um, okay, so we discussed this briefly. I’ve got the one dated 817, hot off the presses. Yeah, hot off the presses. That’s good.
So we talked about it briefly and some suggestions were made and which were incorporated into this, um, draft version. And this is our first official reading. And so do you want me to just run through it? So, yeah, it might as well people there’s. Only there’s only a page. Page. Yeah. And then and then others can, um, give their input. So, um, let’s see. So the issue let’s see okay. So here we go.
So the purpose of this policy is to clarify who may purchase a Hamilton cemetery plot limitations in the size of the cemetery. And with the finite ability to expand plots are reserved for Hamilton residents, which has always been the case. So and current residents may purchase burial plots for immediate need or future planning.
But there are particular circumstances where former residents may qualify to purchase a single burial plot, and so the concern has come about where people who’ve left town maybe 20 years ago have or in some cases 30 years ago, have shown up and said they’d like to have a family plot.
And it’s left us kind of uncomfortable feeling that we need to to make a policy that is fair, first and foremost to residents and recent people who have recently moved out of Hamilton. And so thinking about all that, this is what I have come up with.
Um, okay, so there are particular circumstances where former residents may qualify to purchase a single burial plot and past residents are eligible to purchase to purchase a single cemetery plot. Only in the following circumstances.
So, for instance, if a resident moves to an assisted living facility or nursing home due to health issues, regardless of the legal change of address, that resident remains indefinitely eligible to purchase a single cemetery plot, either directly or via a legal representative to.
If a resident moves in with an out of town or out of state relative because they were unable to care for them for themselves, regardless of their age or circumstance, they remain indefinitely eligible to purchase a single cemetery plot, either directly or via a legal representative, so a number three if a resident voluntarily moves out of town, not more than five years prior, and that person had a substantial tie to the town, they are eligible to purchase a single cemetery. Plot.
If a husband and wife both had substantial ties to the town, together they may purchase two cemetery plots and substantial ties may include attending Hamilton Windham schools for the majority of K through 12, or residing in town for more than ten years. Um, exceptions to this policy may be allowed due to extenuating circumstances, such as a person leaving for military service and after an extended absence related to that military service.
Request to acquire a cemetery plot request for all exceptions must be submitted in writing to the Select Board. The board regrets that it cannot approve all requests, and then finally repurchase of prior owned cemetery plots are required to adhere to the following procedure.
If the current holder of one or more cemetery plots opts not to use it, they shall return the plot or plots to the town of Hamilton and receive back the monies originally paid for the plot or plots. A direct sale of the current holder to another private party is not allowed. The current owner must sell the plots back to the town.
The purpose is to ascertain that the intended buyer meets the eligibility criteria as outlined. Above. And provided that criteria are met, the intended buyer may purchase the plot or plots from the town at the current rate, as set by the Hamilton Select Board, and so. Those were the edits. Read the.
Last two sentences of peace for cemetery plots are set by the Hamilton Select Board. Yeah. Procedures for interment. May be located By contacting the Hamilton Cemetery Department at Town Hall, and this is dated August 17th, 26th. Okay, so. It’s good. Got a few questions, please. Did.
Um, and you would maybe have been an email, but was there. Did you find any other bylaws that or policies of any other town that helped you do this or that you thought were good? Yeah, I looked at it at several.
I sort of thought about what what our criteria is that compared to, to other towns and just sort of took a mishmash. I don’t think I chose one in particular as a template. I just sort of incorporated several things that I thought were relevant to to our cemetery. I think it’s good because it gives guidelines.
Somebody like says, oh, can I qualify? They don’t just have to send it in, like not knowing and writing some letter. The letter can address some of these things. I had two questions. Um, specific. One was I like everything. I think number three, I have a little bit different math problem I’m doing in my head. It’s a little confusing, but it kind of simplifies it.
But okay, it’s basically saying that as someone because I don’t think five years, I mean, we’ve looked at some people that like we’re in their 80s, they had lived in town for like 40 years, but they’d moved away like ten years ago so they wouldn’t qualify, even though they had lived in town.
So my math was from the day they apply to the day, from the day they applied, to the day they last lived in the Hamilton, it was a very set date. They’re going to know, hey, I lived in Hamilton in 2006. It’s now 26, has been 20 years.
If they can prove that the time between when they moved out of Hamilton and now is at least equal to race, and they lived in Hamilton. Oh. Then they qualify. So they lived in Hamilton for 20 years and they’ve been gone for 20 years. I’ve been living here for 20 years, but they’ve been gone for 21 years.
Like it has to be equal. Like you’ve left Hamilton for ten years, but you at least were resident for at least ten years. It’s like it’s simple math that has to equal. Equal because. Because I think that, well, it’ll protect the people that lived here for 40 years. But maybe they didn’t.
They didn’t plan far enough ahead and they didn’t buy their plot, and they moved away to retire somewhere like, oh, I’ve been out of Hamilton for ten years. We’ve limited we’re limited to five.
We’ve we have approved people who have lived out of Hamilton for more than, for more than five years, because they lived here for so long. Well, right. But and everybody who comes to Hamilton is going to have that same that, that same sort of. Uh, well. Like if someone, if someone had moved away five years ago, but they only lived here for three years, they wouldn’t be eligible. No.
That’s right. So I’m saying you got the five. I’m saying but I’m saying is that the years that they are away has equaled at least the years they lived here. Yeah. It can’t be, can’t be greater than the years they lived here.
For instance, if somebody lived here for 20 years, but they’ve been gone for 25 years, Bill is saying they wouldn’t be eligible because they’ve been then they’ve been gone longer than they lived here. Right. You can’t be gone longer than you lived here.
Well, and that also would work for someone that only lived for three years and left two years ago and then wants to buy one. But they would be eligible, right? They’d be eligible. But it kind of gives it like it gives some, it gives some currency to how many years they live in Hamilton.
And it allows them to use that currency to buy that pot later versus just saying five years. Oh. Can we do look at that. We do look at uh, we’ve looked at in the past. We’ve looked at how long they lived here. Right. But I think part of it is how long ago. Right.
If somebody moved out of Hamilton, I don’t know, I think like 20 years ago, it just seems like that’s, you know, you’ve you’ve made ties somewhere else. Ah. Is it the responsibility of Hamilton to provide permanent housing? For I don’t know, I just okay. That’s my I. Mean, we could work. We could wordsmith that but I, I’m, I’m comfortable with everything on here except for.
Okay. Except for I don’t think five years. And forget some other math. That’s sort of simple, but makes sense and gives people currency that they live through because once again, if they haven’t been lived here for 20 years, but they’ve but they did live here for 20 years, that means they
paid, you know, they were residents, they were taxpayers. They were they were for at least 20 years. Um, the other that was number one. The number two thing was family plot. This address, family plots anywhere. This is only individual. Um. Do we have because you say two, but you don’t say family, right? Right. Um.
Do we have approved family plots? Two which have been always a little bit like. How does. That work? Well, there you go. So, so I think it talks about, you know, if there’s a, if there’s a person and there’s a person and then there’s a partner or spouse, significant other, I mean, I don’t know.
And, and nobody else in the family has any ties to Hamilton. I mean, we had a case last year or the year before with the entire family, right? I remember. Yeah. It’s just not and I don’t agree with that. But let me let me ask a question, Joe.
If the if there’s a if there’s a resident of Hamilton who buys a family plot, who can they who can they bury the family plot? Anybody they want. They can own very, very, very anybody they want to. Be that takes care of that. Issue because their. Family, the family budget, has to be purchased by a resident.
Hamilton, which makes sense to me. Somebody who lives out of heaven wants to be buried here, could be buried here, but they can’t buy a family plot. But if you live in Hamilton, you can buy it. Well, if you’ve been gone for. I don’t. I think I think. That there’s a little. Bit of a I think.
That if you lived here, if while you were living here, you bought the family plot, and then you moved away and you moved to Indiana for. 20 years. You can still come back. Yeah, yeah.
No, I’m asking specifically the question if someone leaves town, can you still buy a family plot if you’ve left him? I don’t think so. I think so, right. But there’s a does that need to say that? Because it doesn’t. Yeah. No. No it says it says you can only buy a single. Plot. Okay okay. It doesn’t. It’s silent on the fact. But yeah. So maybe but. It’s not. But it’s. typically stays.
It does specifically say you purchase a single cemetery plot. Right. So what do we. So the policy though needs to have some verbiage around the family plots as well. Is that what we’re saying? Well, there I think they’re asking I don’t know if they’re saying they’re trying to determine.
Okay. But my question was doesn’t talk about a family plot. Does it need to? But I don’t think I’m not in favor of allowing people to buy it. I still don’t know what to do.
Tom had the comment to of like, I think it was the last meeting, and Lisa was quoted in the paper was around giving guidelines to so that people know coming in. Right. Like that doesn’t feel arbitrary. So I think that would like some sort of a nod to what we think are the reasonable guidelines around family plots to.
So that way, if somebody, you know, did live here for 50 or 60 years, but they moved away for 20, then maybe they even raised their their kids here. Right? You know, and like they’re second generation, they come back and they want a family plot. But it’s like, sorry, you don’t live here. You can’t get one. You know, or like, there’s I think just having people have some expectations and being aware. That’s why.
That’s only because of math. That makes sense. But yeah, I agree with you. I think the family plots thing is different than than single plots for that reason of right. I think the family plots, you have to live here and a story. Okay. In my opinion, but makes it easier. I have a. Question.
Who you ask it? Asking somebody who. Might not. That’s Joe. Well, Rosie might have looked into it as well. Um, of like at our current rate of like, you know, the number of plots are coming out. When do we run out. Of the series? Okay. I had the same question. How many more plots. We got? Yeah.
What do we got? I think we can keep making more because we own more land that we haven’t developed yet. So I don’t know. How. We have some room to grow a little, but, um, to be honest with you, Tim Olson is. I bent my ear on this a couple times.
There is a there is an adjacent parcel of land that is landlocked and doesn’t have any frontage. And there’s an indication that perhaps the owner of that land would be willing to sell it to the town to expand the we we, we surround that lot on two sides already.
We bought about it, I should say, on two sides. And there’s a possibility that we might be able to engage that owner. But, you know, we have to have the board will have to have a conversation about when do you want to look at that? Because the longer you wait, the more expensive it’s going
to be. But the longer you wait, the more likely you’re going to need to do something with it. So you might want to talk about that at some point in the future, but. Sooner rather than later. You’re not you’re not in immediate danger of running out of room right now, but like.
It does before we run out of space at our current rate. Yeah, I would say. Just curious. Like I’d say 5 to 10 years, something like that. And, and but, you know, we might want to start thinking about a land purchase down the road to that.
That’s the one that it wraps around that the, the cemetery wraps around. I believe it abuts it on two sides, uh, from the way it was depicted to me. He’s got the GIS up for the whole town. This thing. All right. What’s not on the. I wouldn’t go too far down the rabbit hole because it’s not on the agenda. And I.
Want to be a little careful. I want to be a little careful. There. I see it all my time. This has been a good discussion. Okay, I have a question. Um, you specifically mentioned husband and wife. Does it apply to other partner arrangements? Of course. You want to change that. The spouse? Yeah. If legal. Partner, legal.
Partner, spouse or. Legal partner I would say legal partner. Yeah. Okay. Right. Yeah. Some people don’t go through the legal process though. I think you need to be legal partner. Right. That’s why. Right to me. Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. You don’t want to just being handed off to any. Right? Yeah. Okay.
Um, I go, I think I, I, still think that’s, I mean, that’s how I’ve looked at it in the past is how long they live here in versus how long they were gone.
It says if you’ve been here longer, if you’ve been gone longer than you lived here, it’s a no. For me, that’s sort of how I look at it. If you if you’ve been gone long and you lived here. Oh, you had an exception for military. Yeah. Right. Um. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think I’m, I’m not averse to that suggestion. Um. Whatever.
We don’t see that that that often, but at least, like, it’s not like it’s gonna, we’re gonna get a thousand applications for people. That we have. We have sort of a run on them from time to time. We do? Yeah. But you you talk.
About, you do for like three times in two months, you’ll have that come up and then it’s at the end of the day you got. Rid of. We had no math. We had no we had no math. Based off. So I appreciate that you put math in here to base it off. I’m just suggesting different math, that’s all. Okay. Um, so.
What do you guys think? Sorry, I, I have more questions. Can we legally require that they sell the plots back to the land, to the town? Yeah. How does that work? When does it time out? Can we make sure that that’s, uh. So I. Yeah. If it’s if it’s a town owned cemetery. Yeah. Okay. So. Well. The question the question.
Is, is it. Is the question is, is the purchase of the plot considered an interest in real property and therefore, is it transferable? Okay. It’s just a it’s just to use the space. Okay. You’re purchasing a right to use the space. Okay. That makes sense. I just.
We know how many there are of those out there. Do we audit that every once in a while? I don’t. I mean and once again, a policy is not a bylaw. So it’s hard to be hard to enforce. It. Right. I don’t know how that works. Well.
It gives us reasonable guidance instead of floundering when people come in with situations that might make us a little uncomfortable. How much how much money are we making on this per year? And the budget? The the money doesn’t go into the general fund that goes to the. Cemetery fund. It goes into the cemetery fund, it goes into. The. It’s not a tax. Um, okay.
So do you. Does anybody else have any comments about, um, how many years after a person moves out of town? Would they still be eligible? Just for, you know, from my perspective, I kind of like what Bill’s saying because consider somebody that was born and raised here goes to Hamilton.
Windham schools, uh, is even considered a resident through their college years. They come back here right, to set up and get their first job, and then they get offered a job in San Francisco. And they their dream job, they take it, they go to San Francisco and they’re they’re 15 years.
And now they were here for their whole, you know, early upbringing there. And they’ve got attachments. They went through the schools just like you lay out in one of the other examples.
And then they decide that they want to they’re going to start to plan for their future, because now they’re 40 something years old and they’re going, oh, it’s time for me to start thinking about this.
If you give them the credit for that 25 years, they’ve got plenty of time to say, you know what I do want to I do want to be laid to rest there and make those plans that you’ve not cut them out. There are native Hamiltonian who only left after graduating college because they had a job opportunity that they wouldn’t have had here. Yeah. We’ve never said no to one of those people. Yet you’ve always. Said yes. Those. Yeah. Your type. Of my computer is off now.
But Rosemary, remind me the language that we had. Are we allowed to make exceptions as a board as well. Yes. Yeah. So if somebody came back and said, hey, I’ve just recently. Said number four. Now.
But the more the more things you let fall to the exceptions policy, the harder this is going to be to enforce, you know, I mean, so if you don’t. Have nodding as well, uh, um, let the record show that tom toms nodding. I was nodding. Not nodding off. Yeah, that was my whole point.
My comment last time was that we should clearly define the extenuating circumstances, because in the past we have just let everything fall under the exception. And we basically approve everything. And I know this happened with the water abatement policy. And, you know, I think we need to be clear about what is an exception. Right? I mean. We list one example, military. The question is do we want. To is. There.
Any other examples that are do we want to I just. Like fallen ill maybe. Right. But we already we kind of have the ill one that they’ve got with. A one and. Two, one and two. Oh yeah. I moved out because they went to a nursing home. Or, or moved in with a relative.
Resident relative because they were. Health care. They had health. Care doing. Yeah. Unable to care for themselves. Yeah. So okay. So where. That’s if they’re moved out of state because of that issue. But what if I’m just picturing a scenario where it’s like they were born and raised here, right.
And maybe it’s like there was long lived dream like moved back to Hamilton, but then it’s like you’re living in California, your dream job then, and you fall ill while you’re out there and like, well, where do you want to be buried? You’re like, well, I grew up right? And then it’s like, sorry, you you can’t.
What you have David voice they’re they’ve been gone longer than they lived here. It’s a no.. Yeah I don’t know. I’ll just try to come up with other exceptions. I got. Yeah.
Like like where it’s like you might say well if somebody’s like if they were to meet the other criteria, but they’ve like fallen ill and are not particularly attached to where they presently live and want to go back to where they were born. You know, I think that’s usually a. Okay. I don’t know how that gets enforced.
Is this a common I understand it’s an issue, and it’s a good one for us to write a policy on and have that in place. But ah, is this I’ve only been on here for a few months. Is this a regular. We’ve had like ten in a row where everyone was like, oh, it’s such like stretching the boundary.
And with this address that would this, was this have made it clear that what the. Okay. Yeah. It was like a family plot and we’re like, oh. For six. For six. It’s like. And only one of them had lived in Hamilton, but for 30 years it’s like.
And you feel bad saying no because it’s like, but but we also kind of preserved them because there’s only so many left. Right. Okay. Right. Okay. So that’s and when you know, people live here, you have the opportunity to to purchase a plot. So I understand it’s it’s definitely a sticky situation. But we do need to come up with some boundaries. Um, because it becomes a free for all really.
And, and it has. Right. And that’s why we sort of we’re uncomfortable with several of the people who came in to ask. So Bill, what do you what do you folks think about Bill’s suggestion? Not more than, uh. You’ve been gone longer than you lived here. I think.
If a resident voluntarily moves out of town and has been absent for longer than they have lived here, right. They’re not eligible. They’re not they’re not eligible. Okay. Well, you know that that seems reasonable. What do you folks think. Should follow the lead on that? I’m not okay. Yeah, okay. But you’re what? I didn’t hear.
I was mumbling. , if a resident voluntarily moves out of town, um. I meant Ben. What? What were you saying? Did you mumbling? He was mumbling. Like, I, I think I think that seems. That seems like a good clear to me. That’s clear.
If if, if you’re if you’ve been gone longer than than you’ve been here. And I know that that opens it up for a lot of people who have been gone. For they’ve gone, but those people have already come there. They have, but they have put in their time. And they’ve already all come to us. We’ve said yes every time.
So hasn’t it hasn’t eliminated anything, but it helps us at least have a policy support that we’re doing. You know, the other part is if somebody lived in town for 20 years and they’ve been gone for 20 years, I mean, they’ve developed ties elsewhere, too. I mean, we can’t be the no. But we.
Still resting place for everybody, right? We still have 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. You still had 20 years. And there’s lots of things that can happen that somebody can go away and be married 20 years living somewhere else, and then they get a divorce and they don’t want they were planning to be
married, be buried next to their significant other. And now they’re like, well, that’s not where I want to be. I want to be somewhere else. The only place left I feel connected to is my hometown. Well, let’s go to the second part of that, because I think we really talked about that.
Your partner, sorry, your partner, your legal partner. Do you get an automatic part of your legal partner or your legal partner also has to have the same math equation. Well. You’re right, you wrote it after the same equation. If a husband and wife both had fantasized at the top.
Of both, that’s going to be that’s yeah, it’s going to be a tough one because. You might get some people to self-select. Well, I’m not I. Think. that’s that’s good.
I from that one my opinion is that, is that the spouse, the legal partner had to, at least at one time live in the Hamilton. That’s it for any might they qualify. Because once you you want to keep a couple together as long as you lived here at some he or she lived here at one point. Then there’s sort of that relationship was sort of had some tie to Hamilton.
But I think self-selection is good, where it says, hey, if one person is here and the other person’s never been in Hamilton, then what? Then? Then go, then go, then go find a cemetery plot somewhere else. I don’t know, I’m just trying to come up with a way to self-select.
Otherwise it’s going to be we’re going to run out in the next three weeks. Well. Yeah. I mean, and this this is sort of hard to set these boundaries on this. But I also think it’s important. All right. I was just thinking like a I’m just thinking like.
a like that worst case scenario is like a somebody grows up here high school college lives here, gets married and live here for, for five years. They move away for 10 or 15 years and then now they’re in their 50s. They say, oh, we’ve got to figure out where we’re going to get buried.
They want to go to him. She’s no the spouse. And in this case, you know, is now is not eligible. Well, I think they kind of make sense. They should be because they live here because I’m pointing.
So I say the spouse, the spouse or legal partner has what at some point have been a legal resident of Hamilton and then and then that’s. The second area. And that reduces how many would come to you because that sets bright lines for the cemetery department.
They can say the person comes into play and they say, oh no, I lived here for I grew up here, and my wife and I lived here for a couple of years when we moved away. Okay, good. I can tell you. I can tell you two spots. Yeah. And I think that the exception should only be military. Yeah, okay. I think Tom doesn’t want to have any other exceptions.
Right, Tom? But, yeah, we all agree that we’re gonna get rid of the other exemptions and exceptions. Or do we want to leave ourselves that wiggle room that a of a lot of positives have that wiggle room. And I just I always like to get rid of it if we can. But if we want to keep it, we can keep it. Well, um. I mean, you.
Do, I will say, I will say this don’t work too hard to get rid of it entirely because, okay, in two years you could have an entirely different board. And that board can change this policy and it doesn’t matter what you did.
So I wouldn’t worry too much about exceptions, policies, or parts of the policy. You want to have a little bit of exception in there. Give yourself a little selves, a little wiggle room. Then I would make it. Your board can always change of policy. Military one. And I say if you think you have a you know. Extenuating.
Please send a letter to the board and never view it. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So I think there’s we had four changes. The number three you’re gonna break up into live longer than you left. Been gone long. And you lived here and. You’re longer than legal. And your legal partner had lived in Hamilton.
Legal resident for some point in time. Yeah. Uh, number four is going to be just military. You’re going to add a 4.5, which is which is if you have a think you have other extinguishment protesters, you write a letter to the board. Write requests for all exceptions must be submitted in writing to the select board.
And the board regrets that it cannot approve all requests. And then I just love someone’s opinion on number five. I think it’s a great thing. But what else? What other teeth can we put into it to have some more teeth? Was there? There’s no there’s no deadline because you don’t know when a person could
live to a hunt. The person could own and live their 100. I love their 105 years old. And you think they haven’t used it yet, but they’re still alive. Somewhere out there in the world, right? Yeah, yeah. So the owner of the current holder of one or more cemetery plots opted not to use it.
But how do you audit that? Let’s say someone bought it in their 40s and they’re 105 years old and they’re living in California. Because you can’t just sell it to somebody. You can’t. Just you have to go get it. Back, right? Yeah. Right. In other words, in other words, we need to let people know.
Basically, the policy needs to state up front that if if you don’t sell it back to the town at what you paid for it, they cannot they they cannot.
Well, we won’t we won’t guarantee that somebody else with a different name is going to be able to be buried there. You know what I mean? We we have a record that says John Doe bought this plot, and then in 20 years from now, if if Bruce Doe comes to us and says, I’m going to be buried in John Doe spot we got, you didn’t buy
that spot. John Doe bought that spot. That’s not your spot. Okay. So it’s not transferable. We we just want you. I think you just want to say, you know, that that actually say that, uh, cemetery plots aren’t transferable, and they need to be sold back to the town. Individual plots aren’t transferable. Okay? Family plots obviously are. Yeah.
Individual plots are not separate. Does that make sense? Why do we have to buy them back? Because they. Are these. I’m just like. Well. Now 150 bucks. So I mean like like if 20 years from now, somebody like you gotta buy it back from me for 50 bucks, like. Well, it’s 707. , 50. 750.
Hundred and 50 and and it’s also you also want to set it at the price they paid for it because you don’t want to pay them what we’re charging now. So if somebody got 40 years ago for $200 and they’re going to sell it back to us, we’re not paying them the 750. We’re only paying them 200.
Okay. I still wonder though. Like, why? Like I would just say if you make it non-transferable and like in the event that it’s not used by you. If it doesn’t come back to us, we don’t know what it’s available. We have it on the books is sold.
Why do we have to pay them to get it back? That’s just a legal transaction. We’ll just give them a dollar. We’re talking. About the money’s already. depreciated enough over that period of time. They. It doesn’t come out of the town budget. And don’t tell. Us it’s right. It just feels all right.
Money’s already depreciated enough during the time that it was in the cemetery fund. So you don’t want to make it even more generous. I’m just wondering if we just didn’t have to. How often does that happen, though? I don’t know. We’ve. I don’t think.
we’ve I don’t think we’ve been presented with a lot of examples of somebody coming in and saying, I bought this, I bought this. for a neighbor. who just didn’t want it anymore. Who has the map of all the plots that have been sold, that have not been. Used. And they do a good job of tracking that. Yeah, I think so. I used to see that.
And I know that there’s at least one, if not two plots that, um, a family is not going to use. And she’s thinking about what she’s going to do with it, because the person who was the Hamilton resident died and was buried there, and then there was at least one other, um, plot that she said, this
person who died owned, but that nobody was going to use it, and she was wondering what to do with that. So back to town. I think it incentivizes them to actually do something with it. Even a few hundred bucks at least. They like, say, I’m gonna get a couple hundred bucks. Sure. Yeah.
They bought it 50 years ago. It might have been 20 bucks, but still. If they bought it for what? If they bought a 50 years ago, maybe they only spent $20. On it. But you got to have a no no less than what you paid for it. Yeah. No. And no less than 150.
I mean, we don’t need to deal with that complicated with it. All right? So we move on. Are we good? We good. Anything else? I’ll make those edits and then we’ll come back again. Let’s meet next meeting. Second reading. I don shake your head. You’re good.
You let me know if you’re ready for the 14th grade. If not, we can do it on the 20th. The next time. You do it. Next time you raise this, it’ll be a second reading. You can vote on it. All right. The next topic is the, um.
Did you review a discussion of FY 27 goals? I have not reviewed that. I know that Lee gets a gold star for his review of it, and so I’m gonna turn over to Jose Joy. I think I’m going to give you a homework assignment to get it done.
We have a month in the next meeting, but what other things do you want to think about and us to talk about today? So I think. I think I mean, you’ve had some you’ve had over the last couple of meetings.
I know, Ben, you weren’t at the last meeting, but over the last couple of minutes, there’s been a little bit of conversation about the goals that we discussed at the workshop in the on June 29th. Um, Lee did a great thing, which I really appreciate. He kind of took the the latest updated spreadsheet and then prioritized it in his order of preference or what his priorities are.
If the rest of the board members could do that. Circulate back to me what your priorities are. I can kind of chart them all out on a spreadsheet and see where most of the votes are falling, and then we can bring that to you as, uh, this is the the priorities list of the goals. And we can adopt the goals for FY 2627.
Just add a column and put a number there. Yeah okay. So not so he had a column at the beginning and just put you what your number is on those and go through in that way there. Um I can see where the. Trends are.
The two things like prioritize the or the larger goal. What is that the main goal. Main goals. Yeah. And then and then within that I prioritize the the internal goals because there’s usually two or 3 or 4 goals internal to those as well. And then I actually just prioritize the top ten or something.
And then I put several that I didn’t didn’t care about. No, it’s not that I didn’t care about them. I thought that they were a little low enough priority, that I wasn’t going to rank them. And then things that seemed like they were wrapping up that were still left on the. Page. I thought, just were.
You could you can send your versions to myself and to the chair. And that doesn’t violate open meaning. And then he and I can put it together in a final spreadsheet for you all to review and vote on. Does that make sense? It does make sense. Any questions? Ben. Good. I think that’s fair.
That helps actually, because the the version that you sent, I think is, uh, isn’t embedded in a PDF. No, I think I sent it as a spreadsheet. Okay. It should be an. Excel PDF. Oh, if you if you don’t if you want, I can resend the spreadsheet as an Excel spreadsheet. So it’s easier to manipulate.
That’d be great if we don’t have it yet. Yeah. Anything else on this that has you thought about since last time we talked? Okay. On the e-bike bylaw, do we understand legally what we can, um. We can do any other business. Now, is this the nuts? I think we’re in a.
New business. Yeah, we are, but I just haven’t seen on this one. But an e-bike bylaw. Do we understand what what we can and can’t regulate on a local zoning, general bylaw or whatever? Do we have any precedent on what that. Um. Is on? It’s on roads and not like I don’t know how that works, but I.
Want to understand. Town property roads. Yeah. I think you’re gonna look into that a little while ago, but I don’t know how that works. But. Yeah. So we David had proposed that we look at, uh, there are lots of, um, other local e-bike bylaws.
Uh, look at those and then talk with, um, chief Guy and then thirdly, um, I have reviewed the proposed state legislation. Um, it’s pretty general legislation. So we would want to make things particular to, to our needs. So it would definitely take some doing. And I think David Smith would be a great person to collaborate with. Um, yeah.
And I know chief Guy has some ideas and has already tried to, you know, put some thoughts together. Yeah. Um, one of the things I’m concerned about with any of the legislations being proposed at the legislature right now is that the session ends in, uh, because there’s an election coming up.
So the, the actual, voting session is only going to be live here for another couple of weeks. Then they break. Is that already over? But they put some. They did. They changed their process a little. They put some things into committee already. They can. Go that can that they can still vote on. But yeah.
So uh, there will be some things that will pass. Yeah. But I think it’s going to they’re going to focus on things that are required for budget and for, for kind of real high priorities.
I’m not sure where this or the dark skies stand in the legislature’s priorities, so they may wind up expiring and have to be refiled with the new session after January. So but that wouldn’t affect our ability. To know what effect.
Actually, it’s more to say you should continue to pursue something local if you feel it’s necessary, because I’m not sure the state is going to pass something in this session. Its session is almost over. So right. And even having looked at their their bylaw, um, that the state bylaw I it, I don’t think that it encompassed all the needs of someplace like Hamilton. Right. Because because they’re trying to they’re trying to hit the things that will affect all municipalities, not just some.
So exactly. I’m sorry. We they’re trying to address. What? They’re trying to write something that will will be useful in all 351 cities and towns, as opposed to something that you can use here to to have. Um.
And that’s I guess, part one question for this is if we should move away from it being an e-bike one or an e-scooter one and just really be about. all right, and any, any sort of ability to go faster than, you know, 20 miles an hour down the street, right? No, I agree, like that’s what. Yeah. Don’t make it about the bike. Make it about. Yeah. About the motorized.
Water. Motorized. Motorized. In general. Because there. There are electric scooters. Holy mother, I’m telling you the I think it was I don’t know, yesterday morning this. I don’t even know what how old this this boy was. They came flying down my street on an e-scooter. It was terrifying. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, but.
And I’m. Yeah. Yeah, I picked somebody up off the road. Yeah. I’m not sure the town’s gonna have the ability to, quote unquote, license. Uh, riders of e-bikes. That’s what one of the things the state was trying to look at. Uh. They had they had.
Age, right? They have. And I’m not sure you’ll be able to do that. That’s all. I know what we can actually. But, um. And I think chief chief Guy is looking into that to confirm what you can. That’s why if you and David work with chief Guy, I’m sure you’ll get. You’ll get to the right spot.
Um, but certainly roads, safety equipment. Um, speeds, things like that. So there. Has to be some age. Not in sidewalks. So abide by the rules of the road, those kind of things. You know, the kids that I’ve seen on these e-bikes and versions of motorized vehicles are little kids who don’t have the intellectual development.
They don’t have that front, love development. To be able to manage emergency situations. And they don’t even think about it. They think it’s just really. Cool to go fast. And yeah, that’s fine. If you go in a parking lot on a Sunday afternoon, when there’s when there’s nobody there at the North Shore Mall, but you can’t be.
So I think state law also has some, you know, in general, cyclists are supposed to be paying attention to the same rules of the road as motorized vehicles for the for the most part.
So we we need to, I think, also do a better job of educating the parents and the kids in this town that even if it’s an e-bike, if it’s a bike, it’s still supposed to be following, it’s even a regular bike. It’s still supposed to be stopping at stop signs signaling for turns in traffic. Uh. they don’t. Right? Slow traffic to the right, not in the center of the lane. So they should be doing those things.
And if they aren’t doing those things, we should be doing something that allows our police to cite them for it. Enforcement. Right. And do you do you. Use that. Ten year old kid to sing sing prison or. If you issue. You should find that the parent. Has to put in there.
The parent will talk to him about making sure they ride. Wait wait wait. Yeah, yeah. Bicyclists in Massachusetts. General. Uh, chapter 85, six and 11 be. Bicyclists have to follow the same rules of the road. Yep. Um, and it’s not.
That just, like, raise an issue, though, is that there are a lot of our busier streets like Asbury and Bay road, where there are children who ride their bikes. And I would hazard that, you know, just regular bicycles, don’t do e-bikes thing, but they probably encourage their children to ride on the sidewalk, not the road, because they’re not segregated cycle lanes. That’s not safe.
For they should I agree. Right. Yeah. So there’s we we have I’m just pointing out that we have cyclists, little kids who are safely riding on the sidewalk. But like we’re also saying it’s not safe for the e-bikes that are going 20 miles an hour on the sidewalk to be on.
But there’s this, this, that’s where it’s like. But the like the letter of law would say the all cycles, e-bike or regular need to be on the road. No, but we’re saying is common sense. Says like we just don’t want the kids on 20 mile an hour e-bikes, right? Number one, doing stuff that’s not. Even a worry.
About pedestrian. Bike. Motorists, etc.. All right, so let’s put this on next agenda. Yeah. Give us a month. Get ready. But it sounds like we want to tackle this one. So let’s go to move to new business and say let’s put this discussion. Start the discussion with what we can do and how we can do it.
Okay. So is it is it okay to start talking with David Smith about pulling in other, um, bylaws and decide. You can do whatever research you want to do and bring that research to the meeting on the 14th. Okay. You’re just doing research. That’s fine. Okay. And, um.
So whoever you want to talk to, whoever they want to talk to and do the research is that’s open, we can roll out. We’re allowed to all do that and do what we want to do and just bring that research to the meeting on the start, talking about next steps.
And chief Guy is going to be there too. Yeah. Yeah. And I think our council should be there too. Or not. Maybe not be there. But at least you can get some. I don’t want to pay for them to be here, but if we can at least get. Some I. Mean, we can do.
That, get some, do that. At least understand what we’re allowed. Yeah, we’re like job. You can just find out what we’re allowed to regulate. Uh, in our town. Just an idea when to. I know we have, like, the fire department public.
Kind of like public safety day coming up in the fall, right? It’s in September. Yeah. I don’t remember the date offhand. I wonder if there’s a. And then. Way to piggyback on that for parents to have, like, a safe cycling like and kind of we.
We can’t I think that I mean, a lot of the people that tend to come to the Public Safety Day are kids with very small kids, and then the kids that are getting on the e-bikes, I think are generally tend to be. They don’t always. Go educate them. Educate them. Yeah. No, no. Absolutely. And and. But we need to find a way to. Get to that full face.
You may have older kids. It might be something we might want to partner with the schools on too, because it’s kind of a captive audience. When they do their, um, bike to school day, we should make sure that they, uh, help us, you know. Advocate from.
Advocate around, you know, making sure that you’re following the rules of the road when you’re on a bike or an e-bike, you’re you’re still bound by the rules of the road. It turns out that our bylaw, our our policy may actually incorporate already existing laws in the book that aren’t just being enforced. We may find that out.
We may find what you’re looking for, like, oh my God, these are already laws. This is where I was kind of going like, you know, the kids riding their bikes, the pool thing, it’s like, I don’t want them getting enforced. Like, no, no, no right to ride on the road. Right? I get. That.
You know, and it’s like, well, no, it’s safer for them to be up on the sidewalk. Right. Yeah. And I. I see a lot of kids riding their bikes to. School table this until next right next. To. Okay. I just. See a lot of kids riding their bikes. To.
School. and I think it’s fine for them to ride on the sidewalks down Bay road. What other new business? I wanted to just clarify process on the capital committee, uh, capital planning policy and process that now that with the new the latest case law that only one person
is going to do, I think we have the last meeting I was at, it was a month ago, but I just wanted to. You found on the cemetery one. It seems like that process is working. I want to try to mimic that, that process, because you have to kind of do them individually now, right? Yeah.
Everyone’s uncomfortable with that. Yeah. So I mean. At this work with you, Joe. You’re not allowed to meet together. But but again, still some of the same rules. Hold, hold. Right. So you you can draft the policy, right. Based on the feedback you’ve got from folks already. Okay.
You can give the policy out at a public meeting and read it the way Rosie just did. And you can accept feedback just to you, the person that drafts the policy not to not to share it around, but feedback, hey, what about this? What about that? You talk about it at the meeting and then you can incorporate that feedback into the redraft.
So One Direction will then open invitation to the select board members here tonight. Um, you guys could you all can send me input things that you would like to see us doing consistently when it comes to capital planning.
Um, I think framework wise, you know, where the feedback I’ve gotten already is around trying to do like kind of good practice, uh, transparent process, helping to lead by example for other, um, boards and committees and timing around like especially around joint use properties and assets, you know, with when, um, things like the library and the school district, etc.
, so that we kind of have a very clear ability to build out our capital planning roadmaps. That’s sort of the direction of travel and other items around ranked prioritization. So that’s sort of a bit of the flavor and direction of travel.
And then if there’s other particular things that you see going by the wayside of, hey, you know, this, this should have been in the budget three years ago and it wasn’t like, or if you see dilapidated things around, you’re kind of wondering, why isn’t this gotten taken care of? Maybe there’s things like that that spark a, an interest in.
Let’s get some capital lined up for that. So go take any and all input and I’ll bring it back here for this fall. I think I’d like to do some session like basically kind of like September, October. But by mid November it feels like have something that’s um, ready for prime time..
And it’s good. We’ll already be working with the Capcom and schools and the departments and then but we can, we can whatever your process is, pick it up from there and go. Before you finish cemeteries. Next time, or maybe the time after that. We’re bringing the Capital One forward. Okay. That’s what I’m thinking.
Sounds good. We’ll see what the timeline looks like, but I want to do it as quick as we can for that purpose. Appreciate that. Any other new. Business? Anybody want to make a motion? I move that we adjourn. I’m doing your job. You’re pretty much. Wait a second. Second. Uh. Roll call. Vote. Tom. Tom Meyers, I.
And I. Rosie Kennedy. I Bill Olsen, I. Wonder what I thought was going to. Be tonight. Should we just. Night, Jason. Thanks, everybody. Have a.