MINUTES
BOARD OF SELECTMEN
Open Session
June 26, 2007
Present at the meeting that was held at the Town Building were Chairman Stephen Dungan and Selectmen Kathleen Farrell, Thomas Ruggiero, and Ellen Sturgis.
Also present was Administrative Assistant Susan McLaughlin.
Selectman Jason Robart and Town Administrator William Wrigley were absent.
Chairman Dungan called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m.
Public Input
None.
Chairman’s Comments
Mr. Dungan announced that the Town’s five-year boundary perambulation report is available and thanked the contributors: Shirley Burchfield, Kathy Farrell, Linda Hathaway, John Mackey, Ross Perry, and Greg and Mary Troxel.
Meeting Minutes
June 12, 2007 Open Session: Ms. Sturgis moved to accept the minutes, as amended; Mr. Dungan seconded; and both voted in favor. Ms. Farrell and Mr. Ruggiero abstained, not being present on June 12. The motion carried.
Police Department Appointments
Acting on the recommendation of Police Chief Trefry, the Board made two appointments.
Ms. Sturgis moved to promote Enrico Maldari to the rank of Special Police Officer and to appoint Darlene Trefry to the position of Auxiliary Police Officer; Ms. Farrell seconded; and all voted in favor.
Annual Stow Conservation Trust “Bike for the Woods”
Ms. Farrell moved to approve a permit for the annual SCT “Bike for the Woods” event, to be held on August 26, 2007; Mr. Ruggiero seconded; and all voted in favor.
Mass School Building Authority and Stow School Building Committee
Ms. Sturgis reported that she would draft a letter to the MSBA regarding coordination of the upcoming school building project. The Board wants to know if the SBA is agreeable to the Town, rather than the school district, managing the building project.
Walpole Selectmen’s Request on “Unfriendly 40Bs”
Having reviewed Walpole’s request to seek a moratorium on “unfriendly 40Bs” and considering input received, Board members decided not to proceed with the request. The Selectmen’s Office will inform Walpole.
Recreation Update on Land Acquisition
The Recreation for Stow (RFS) group’s spokesmen Tim Allaire and Jim Henry and Recreation Commission chair Mike Busch presented their action plan in preparation for a fall Special Town Meeting. For tonight’s meeting, they requested feedback from the selectmen on moving forward with the RFS initiatives.
Mr. Allaire said RFS is reconsidering its approach to field development following Annual Town Meeting, deciding to build the fields as land is available, as opposed to doing one large project. He pointed out that, unlike the municipal land-banking proposal, recreation is a specific purpose for buying land. He said RFS has a database of land information and will use the Planning Board’s and Assessor’s lists of available parcels and Town-owned land as resources to identify potential properties.
Mr. Allaire described three RFS initiatives, which he said the Recreation Commission supports: acquiring the Snow property; issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for recreation land; and direct negotiation with landowners. The Conservation Commission chair is advising the group on how to negotiate land purchases.
Mr. Henry said RFS has identified 10 properties to pursue via an RFP and direct negotiations.
The selectmen provided the following feedback and comments:
· There should be no direct contact with individual landowners until the RFP is out.
· The Board will hold a joint boards meeting to identify potential uses for the Snow property. The meeting needs to be held as soon as possible, before Labor Day, to have a proposal for a fall Special Town Meeting.
· The Board will establish a Land Use Management Team, to create a strategy to use when land needs and opportunities arise.
· As with the school building project, we need to build a consensus on the solution to recreation needs.
· Needs should be better defined, to know the problem we’re solving.
· The RFS proposal to use self-help funds means regionalizing the field use, which is a policy decision. Policy is set by the Board and has not yet been decided.
· People are divided 50-50 on how to proceed. It’s good that RFS and the Commission are going to slow down.
· The Recreation Commission should be driving this project. It’s time to move from a working group under the Recreation Director to a sub-committee of the Recreation Commission (posting meetings, writing minutes, etc.).
· The Recreation Field Master Plan does not address field management and maintenance. The Commission is responsible for making a plan for this.
The news that US Fish and Wildlife is planning to acquire Crow Island was briefly discussed. RFS members said they had approached the owner several times. There is an issue with access. RFS said they are very interested in the property.
Lower Village Update on Traffic Plans
Lower Village Study Committee chairman Don McPherson and members Phil Moseley and Russ Willis presented a proposal to create several pedestrian islands, temporary structures to test their feasibility.
Mr. McPherson said the group had been studying the Lower Village traffic issues for six years, with traffic safety being the foremost objective. They have done a traffic study and completed the vehicle traffic connection between the post office and shopping center. Much of the streetscape will be public/private collaboration.
Plans include having sidewalks on both sides of Great Road through Lower Village and cutting off Gardner Road to expand the Town Common.
The present activity is to install pedestrian “refuge” islands, raised islands mid-way across the street, to protect pedestrians and serve as traffic calming devices. The traffic study indicated that this section of road has 17,000 to 18,000 through-trips per day, forecast to increase to 23,000 soon.
The Lower Village Committee requested that the selectmen endorse a trial installation of five pedestrian islands. The intent is to have them completed by this fall. Our highway department would install the islands and the cost of materials, deemed to be “short money,” would be paid from regular street funds.
Following discussion, Ms. Sturgis moved to support the Lower Village Committee’s creation of temporary pedestrian islands, as shown on the plan dated 4/4/07, to test their effectiveness; Mr. Ruggiero seconded; and all voted in favor.
Annual Appointments
The board approved the appointments of all annual terms and of those employees and volunteer officials whose terms were due for renewal. Mr. Dungan read the titles of the appointed positions for the record. (List follows.)
The Board agreed to appoint Mr. Wrigley in a separate motion from the larger group of appointments because he is the Town Administrator and his contract is due for renewal.
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Mr. Ruggiero moved to reappoint the Town Administrator to a five-year contract for the period July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2012, per the present contract, with all employment agreements in place as in previous contracts. Ms. Farrell seconded and all voted in favor.
Ms. Farrell moved to reappoint the list, as read by the chairman, dated June 26, 2007, Ms. Sturgis seconded, and all voted in favor.
Appointments by Selectmen, 6/26/07
Town Administrator (5 years)
William J. Wrigley - to 6/30/2012
Board of Selectmen’s Administrative Assistant
Susan McLaughlin
Town Counsel (annual)
Jon D. Witten & Patricia Daley
Of Daley & Witten, LLC
Cemetery Committee (3 yrs)
Roy Dudley - to 6/30/2010
Town Clerk (3 yrs)
Linda E. Hathaway - to 6/30/2010
Emergency Management Officer (annual)
David B. Soar
Superintendent of Streets (annual)
Michael E. Clayton
Assistant Superintendent of Streets (annual)
Bruce Fletcher
Forest Fire Warden (annual)
David B. Soar
Tree Warden (annual)
Bruce E. Fletcher
Firefighters – full-time (annual)
David B. Soar, Chief
John Paul Benoit, Captain
Gregory A. Vogel
Mark W. Guerin
Barry Evers
Lisa McNiff
Firefighters – on-call (annual)
Charlie Boyle
James Byrne
Christopher Camelio
Kristin Clayton
Christopher Devoe
Rene Doucette
Scott Dwinells
Jeremy Fiorvanti
Michael Gallagher
Tim Gray
Peter Holman
Scott Landry
Stephen Landry
Christopher Lazuka
Timothy Neufell
Paul Nevala
Liana Pratt
Michael Scimeca
Suzanne Siewierski
Larry Stafford
George Taylor
Michael Trioli
Christopher Whitley
Shawn Whitney
Constables (3 yrs)
Robert A. Kirchman - to 6/30/2010
Conservation Commission (3 yrs)
David Coppes - to 6/30/2010
Ingeborg Heggemann-Clark - to 6/30/2010
Douglas E. Moffat - to 6/30/2010
Police Officers –full-time (annual)
Mark H. Trefry, Chief
William L. Bosworth, Sgt.
Ralph Marino, Sgt.
Timothy J. Lima, Sgt.
Steven B. Sturtevant, Detective
Gary P. Murphy, Prosecutor
David J. Goguen
Kimberly H. Doughty
Darren J. Thraen
Sean M. Collins
Michael J. Sallese
Special Police Officers (annual)
Robert E. Blanton
James F. Finneran
Jonathan Butler, Dispatcher
John Connors
John Fantasia, Dispatcher
Lee Heron
Sherry J. Morton-Pelly, Dispatch Supervisor
Michael Smith
Police Matrons (annual)
Deborah L. Richardson
Rachel R. Belanger
Darlene D. Trefry
Lake Boon Commission (3 yrs)
Lee Heron - to 6/30/2010
Historical Commission (3 yrs)
Joseph J. Mishley - to 6/30/2010
Zoning Board of Appeals (5 yrs)
Donald E. Dwinnells - to 6/30/2012
Donald B. Hyde, Jr. - to 6/30/2012
Michele L. Shoemaker, Assoc. - to 6/30/2012
Trustees, Randall Relief Fund (3 yrs)
Dorothy G. Sonnichsen - to 6/30/2010
Trustees, Randall Town Fund (3 yrs)
Dorothy G. Sonnichsen - to 6/30/2010
Recreation Commission (annual)
Michael Busch
Mark S. Pieper
John Sangermano
Veterans’ Services Officer (annual)
Donald P. Hawkes
Registrars of Voters (3 yrs)
John D. O’Connell - to 6/30/2010
Stow Cultural Council (3 yrs from appt date)
Catherine J. Hammill – to Feb 2010
Betsy Stepp – to Nov 2009
Assabet River Trail Representative. (annual)
Donald B. Rising
Stow Advisory Members of the HL&P Board (annual)
Edward A. Brown
Street Numbers (annual)
Catherine A. Desmond
Selectmen’s Annual Liaison and Committee Appointments
In a general discussion of the purpose and process of communicating with other Town boards, these points were made:
· Assignments need to be manageable, given the number of committees;
· The purpose is to keep in touch with all that’s going on;
· Liaisons can work well, e.g. Public Safety and Recreation;
· Joint Boards or Quarterly Chairmen’s meetings have been used successfully in the past;
· Other boards could designate a liaison to the selectmen, instead of vice versa.
The Board made assignments to Capital Planning, Local Access Cable Advisory, and the Public Safety departments and committee.
Mr. Ruggiero moved to appoint Ms. Farrell as the representative to the Capital Planning Committee; Ms. Sturgis seconded; and all voted in favor.
Mr. Ruggiero moved to appoint Mr. Dungan as the representative to the Local Access Cable Advisory Committee; Ms. Farrell seconded; and all voted in favor.
Ms. Sturgis moved to appoint Mr. Ruggiero as the representative to Public Safety; Ms. Farrell seconded, and all voted in favor.
Mr. Dungan said the Board would use the time until the July 10 meeting to investigate how other boards and other towns handle the liaison function. He agreed to review Planning Board permit applications for the present time in the absence of a liaison. Ms. McLaughlin was assigned several follow-up tasks with other boards.
Response to US Fish & Wildlife on Crow Island
The Board agreed to make a written response to the US Fish and Wildlife notice on purchasing Crow Island, indicating the Town’s interest in discussing the property.
Acceptance of Arbor Glen Conservation Land Deed
As a follow-up to accepting the Arbor Glen conservation restriction, the Board voted to accept the land deed, which was now available. Ms. Farrell moved to accept the Arbor Glen conservation land deed, associated with the conservation restriction approved on June 12, 2007; Mr. Ruggiero seconded, and all voted in favor.
Standard operating procedures (SOP) for Selectmen’s Office
Members agreed to move ahead on writing an SOP manual and divide up the sections among themselves. The SOP manual will not duplicate the Mass Municipal Association’s Selectmen’s Handbook.
Regional Transit Authority (RTA) Membership Follow-up
Having reviewed the material presented at the June 26 meeting and seeing no downside to joining an RTA, members agreed it was good to do. Mr. Dungan will contact Ms. Jacobs for more information on which RTA to join.
Land Use Strategy Committee Follow-up
The next step is to hold a joint boards meeting with two purposes: 1) to hear proposals for use of the Snow property from various interest groups and decide whether to bring a purchase recommendation to fall Town Meeting, and 2) to decide how to create a long-term strategy of land use for the town.
The basis for the Snow property decision will be the needs identified in the Municipal Land Use Study. The basis for the land-use strategy will be Mr. Robart’s draft document on the topic.
The Joint Boards on Snow must happen as soon as possible, before Labor Day. Ms. Sturgis and Ms. McLaughlin will draft criteria for evaluating the proposals.
Affordable Housing Driver Follow-up
Mr. Dungan said more work is needed to learn what the various groups are doing and their statutory authority, e.g., per the Mass Housing Partnership’s handbook. The board agreed that either the Partnership or Trust should be the driver.
Members noted that this was a lot of work required by a volunteer committee, and most towns have a staff position, i.e., a community development coordinator or town planner, to do the heavy work required.
The next step is to do a side-by-side comparison of the Partnership and Trust roles, which Ms. McLaughlin will provide.
Executive Session, per MGL C.39, s23b.
At 9:30 p.m., Ms. Sturgis moved to enter Executive Session for the purpose of approving executive session meeting minutes and to adjourn directly from Executive Session without returning to Open Session; Mr. Ruggiero seconded; and all voted in favor by roll-call vote.
Respectfully submitted,
Susan McLaughlin
Administrative Assistant, Board of Selectmen
Approved as written, July 10, 2007
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