Agenda – Plymouth Select Board 9-20-22 Agenda

Official Minutes – Plymouth Select Board Minutes 9-20-22

Please note this transcription is unofficial. If you find an error, use the contact page to notify Plymouth On The Record.

Betty Cavacco:

Welcome to the Tuesday, September 20th Select Board meeting. Would you care to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

All:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Betty Cavacco:

Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. Our first order on the agenda is public comment, and I believe Mr. Triffletti–oh, here he is. Welcome Mr. Triffletti, you may proceed.

Steve Triffletti:

Good evening and thank you for having me. I’m delighted to be here once again. And I also want to thank you for the opportunity to participate remotely. I want to provide you with an update since last week when I appeared before you. And first of all, I wanted to announce that I’ve been working closely with our legislative delegation. I’ve been speaking with Representatives Matthew Muratore and Kathy LaNatra. I understand they’re may be with you this evening and they’ve advised me that the hybrid legislation has been now fast-tracked and they expect it’ll be voted in the house during this year. So, that’s good news in terms of what we might expect since it’s sooner than I think what we had previously been told.

Last Thursday, I met with the Committee of Precinct Chairs. I continued to discuss with town meeting members, talked to the town manager, superintendent and PACTV and I’ve been receiving diverse recommendations and requests and people have varying needs. At times, the concerns are competing. And we’re also getting mixed messages at the national level since last week. President Biden has said the pandemic is over. Dr. Fauci may not quite agree. And I also heard the Surgeon General giving a little different information but I guess the question then certainly for me as moderator is how do I make decisions.

Well, first of all, all elected officers are given an oath to follow and that oath includes upholding the charter and also acting to the best of our abilities to uphold our duties according to bylaws of the town as well as the laws of the Commonwealth. And I would just further add that I’m also guided by a town meeting time. I’m certainly not influenced by personalities or by any threats. Plymouth has two co-equal branches of government, the executive branch and the legislative branch. And during the past 31 years as moderator, I’ve certainly endeavored to stay within my lane as the presiding officer for town meeting. I certainly tried not to interfere with the executive branch, and I also seek to assure that town meeting does not go beyond its legislative authority. And likewise, I’ve enjoyed some very cooperative relationships with past boards.

Next month’s town meeting is scheduled on October 15th and so, since it’ll be in-person, I continue to seek to reduce any health risks to attendees. I don’t want any voters to be deprived of the opportunity to participate and I’ve determined that there will be three rooms. The band will be for mask only, the library will be for the public and the Center for Performing Arts, I’ve expanded the participation. It’ll include any town officers, the town manager, the town engineer, chairpersons of boards, commissions, the advisory and finance committee, all department heads or those officials designated representatives. However, I’m going to invite and I’m going to ask that the town meeting members sit in the front section, the select board is welcome to sit in the front row but I’d like to invite any other attendees who do not plan to speak to consider sitting in the rear section. I’m going to continue to evaluate and adapt and adjust as appropriate for the best interest of town meeting members and the Town of Plymouth. And I sincerely hope that everyone will continue to pull together for a successful town meeting. And I’d be happy to answer any questions from the board.

[0:05:02]

Betty Cavacco:

Does the board have any questions for Mr. Triffletti? Mr. Helm?

Charlie Bletzer:

Stephen, I have one question. The second room, people with masks. What’s the third room for again? I’m sorry.

Steve Triffletti:

So, the third room would be for members of the public. We have some other people who may wish to attend or participate. And again, in the effort to try to reduce the risk for people who are town meeting members, that third room will be available to members of the public. Would you not come on to that list of attendees that I referenced.

Charlie Bletzer:

Yeah, I’ll tell you, I can live with that as long as the department heads and officials are in the same room with the town meeting members and everybody has an option to go to the second room and put a mask on and then you put the public in the third, because they’re not participating but they can see what’s going on. So, I have no problem with that. Thank you.

Steve Triffletti:

Yeah. The public can participate in that third room. There’ll be a video feed and there’ll also be audio feed. At the Committee of Precinct Chairs, one chair did say well we could have the public participate at home and again, just for those people who are watching, town meeting is open to the public. So, they will be allowed to participate but they will be in that third room and the band room will be for mask only town meeting members.

Charlie Bletzer:

So, I’d love to say that you need a big room for that third room, but I don’t think you do. I don’t think you’re going to get much public but they’re not voting and I think that’s fair. So, thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Anyone else have any questions, comments, nothing? Well, thank you, Mr. Triffletti. It certainly seems that that scenario will work better than the previous.

Steve Triffletti:

Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Okay. The next order of business is Licenses, Amplified Music Permits, Administrative Notes. Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, Russ. I didn’t see you with that dull shirt on.

Russ Shirley:

Yeah. I try to blend in. My name is Russ Shirley. I’m the Chairman of the Plymouth Housing Authority. I vote out of Precinct 11. I’m the elected chair. So, there’s two items that I think I should bring to your attention. Number one is Oak Street. We’re in the process, we’ve received separate bids for putting the ramp in at the back of the building. Initially, we had tried to work with Plymouth South High School to contribute labor to that particular part of the program and that just hasn’t worked out this last year or this year. So, we put it out as a separate bid and the bids have come in and we’re prepared within the next two weeks to start construction of the ramp in the back of the building. And then we’ve met with the architect to make the interior fit out as austere as we can make it and still provide comfortable housing for three units and that bid will be going out sometime in mid-October.

And then the second item is 253 South Meadow Road. The Housing Authority is very interested in procuring that property from the town. I think we’ve made that clear in prior letters that we’ve sent. And I’m trying to make it very clear, it’s a procurement, a purchase of the property. And I know that you’ve got an entrepreneurship study presentation by UMass Dartmouth later in the program and I’ll stick around for that but I think that also discusses this particular property with a recommendation for a private food service industry going into that building. But as I said, we’re ready to sit down and negotiate to buy it for this system.

One thing back on Oak Street that I’d forgotten. We have a request in that we send in on 8/16 for funding for the water service to Oak Street because the bottom line is that is one item within the project and we gave you an estimate of $22,371 for a two-inch water line going to the space so that we can sprinkle the building.

[0:10:02]

Russ Shirley:

Right now, the water service set going to the building is not adequate to support a sprinkler system. So, at some point in time, if there’s more information that’s needed on that I’d be happy to come back and meet with the board.

Brad Brothers:

Through the Chair, I can address that last request. So, on tonight’s agenda, you’ll see we have one request for ARPA for 5 EV Vehicles. The plan is on October 4th, our next meeting, we’ll have a larger presentation in regards of ARPA, what’s available. Right now, according to like our last statistic run, we have three million dollars available and we have 4.2 million plus in projects requested. So, the board will have to make some hard decisions on what we want to look at and what we want to authorize. But that project is on that list.

Betty Cavacco:

Okay. Any questions?

Dick Quintal:

If you can, Russ when did you actually take over the Oak Street building? Because I wasn’t here for that so I’m curious.

Russ Shirley:

It was about three years ago we took it over. We put it out to bid already. The numbers came in. We’ve got the files of bids in. We got one plumber only to bid, two fire protection bids, one electrical bids and the numbers were high, higher than we expected and higher than they should have been. So, we now on this go around will make a very strong effort to make sure that we solicit more than one bids and all those three file sub-bid trades.

Dick Quintal:

Did the Housing Authority purchase that from the town?

Russ Shirley:

Yes, for one dollar.

Dick Quintal:

So, really no. You want the Simes House to get another buck?

Russ Shirley:

Yeah, maybe we could put housing in there.

Dick Quintal:

So, being serious now. So, there’s no tenants in the building now?

Russ Shirley:

There’s no tenants in the building. The building is vacant. Right now, the drawings that we have is there will be two units. If you face the building, there’ll be two units on the left-hand side, one large handicap unit on the right-hand side and we’ll maintain our access to the basement on the right-hand side in front of where that unit is.

Dick Quintal:

What is your source of funding?

Russ Shirley:

Excuse me?

Dick Quintal:

What is your source of funding for the Housing Authority? Is it Federal money or–

Russ Shirley:

Combination of state money and CPC money primarily.

Dick Quintal:

So, CPC?

Russ Shirley:

Yeah.

Dick Quintal:

So, you just touched on the fire suppression system. Usually, the town doesn’t do that. I mean, it’s up to the people that own the property to do that. And it’s expensive.

Russ Shirley:

I get that. We went to the fire department. The Fire Department recommended that we put fire suppression in the building.

Dick Quintal:

Well, no. I’m not saying I don’t believe the Fire Department. What I’m saying is it’s going to be expensive to bring the line in. Who’s paying for the line? Let me get right to the talk here.

Russ Shirley:

Well, that’s what I’ve requested this $22,000 for to bring the line into the building out of ARPA funds if it’s available.

Dick Quintal:

I see. Is that one of the uses you can use for that?

Russ Shirley:

What’s that? Yeah. One of the uses that we can use for ARPA funds is utilities. Upgrades to utilities to public buildings.

Dick Quintal:

Okay, thank you.

Russ Shirley:

Thank you. Anyone else under public comment? No? No? Okay. Next is Licenses and Administrative Notes. If the board has had time to review and they have no questions, I’d like to see this move as a group. Do we have a motion? Motion by Mr. Bletzer. Do we have a second?

Dick Quintal:

Second.

Betty Cavacco:

Second by Mr. Quintal. All those in favor? Oh, I’m sorry, discussion.

Harry Helm:

Quickly under what we’re moving in en masse, are the administrative notes included?

Betty Cavacco:

Yes.

Harry Helm:

I’d like to ask the Assistant Town Manager to explain again number two, because it seems if we are allocating ARPA funds this week or would these be the ARPA funds, would it be better to discuss these ARPA funds after next week?

Brad Brothers:

Through the Chair, you certainly could. The issue with that is we’ve been getting quotes for EV vehicles and they’ve been off the market. So, to get them, we have a couple on hold right now, but if we delay this further and they sell them to another entity, it could be eight months now before we’re back on track of getting one.

[0:15:08]

Harry Helm:

Have they given us any idea of you’d say we have the reserve now, how–I mean, it’s just an open-ended sort of thing like–

Brad Brothers:

They’ve been reserved for about two months, I would say when we initially started talking about this but they did request update ASAP because they have other communities that are interested. That was an email last week.

Harry Helm:

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Anything else for discussion? All those in favor? Unanimous.

The next item on the agenda is the Pilgrim Nuclear Decommissioning Discussion: H4768, and it’s a Plymouth Pilgrim PILOT and we have our special counsel joining us Mr. Makarious. And we also have both our state reps, Mr. Muratore and Mrs. LaNatra. So, do you want?

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah, sure. I can provide the board an update. So, this evening’s conversation is regarding the special legislation that was approved by town meeting in April. And if you remember that special legislation as written would allow the town to enter–will allow a couple things. One, to enter into a PILOT agreement with Holtec and two, to tax spent fuel rods and dry cask storage systems. So, that was submitted in June right after town meeting. And talking to both Rep Muratore and Rep LaNatra, we have been informed that as I went through a committee, the feedback we received was that in order for this to continue through committees and through final approval then off to the Senate side, they are suggesting that we strike a language. And you should have a copy of the house language right here. But if you look on line 9, they’re asking that we strike on line 9 including spent fuel pools and dry cask storage systems. So, in summary, so the only board can agree to this and that’s how the article is written that any amendments for special legislation can only be approved by the board.

So, if the board were to approve this this evening, we would be left with just having the ability to enter into a PILOT agreement with Holtec. So, as the Chair pointed out, Attorney Makarious is here as well to provide any further detail. Both of our State Reps are here as well to give us more insight as to the process of the State House.

Betty Cavacco:

Mina, could you explain what your thoughts are on this?

Mina Makarious:

Sure. Good evening, everyone. As Derek just identified, the bill is at a point where I think realistically is not going to pass without striking that language. So, that would leave the town in the position of being able to still enter into a PILOT and bringing Holtec to the table to do that. It’s a clear message from the legislator that Holtec ought to do that. Hopefully that will be sufficient to have a productive negotiations and make clear the legality of a future PILOT agreement. And should the town not be able to get Holtec to come to the table because of that, without that further language that certainly could be open in the future but our recommendation would be to accept the amendment because it does send a clear message that we do need to be negotiating with it.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Mina, what exactly would we be negotiating if we’ve just struck out the most important aspect of what is going on on that property?

Mina Makarious:

So, you aren’t striking out the fact that it’s certainly that’s happening or that there are impacts related to it. What you’d be negotiating is the overall impact of the project on the town. One of the things that was true when you had a PILOT structure in the past is there’s actually quite a bit of flexibility once you’re in the PILOT structure. But as discussed in prior meetings in the past couple of years, because it is no longer an active generated facility within the meeting of state law, you don’t have that there.

[0:20:01]

Mina Makarious:

Obviously, our preference would be to have the full language or would have been to have the full language but I do think that not having any languages is a worse option or less good option. So, you don’t want to do that here and this is not in lieu of or necessarily to prevent something in the future from being added.

Betty Cavacco:

Anything else?

Harry Helm:

Not for Mina.

Betty Cavacco:

Anyone else? So, I mean, I obviously have major issues with this striking of any language because right now, Holtec doesn’t have to come into a pilot agreement with us. Although if our special counsel is telling us that we should enter into pilot negotiations with Holtec, I don’t necessarily have an issue with that. The issue I have is that I will never as long as I sit here, I will never relinquish the ability to tax spent fuel and ask our legislature to push that through. So, I understand that Matt and Kathy, if you guys want to come up and kind of explain everything but it floors me that our state would not want to push that through for this host community that has been so good to Plymouth and to Holtec. And in the other aspect, they have not been so good to us. So, I think as representatives of the community, we have to do everything we can to not only recoup revenues for the amount of money that we’re losing because it’s no longer generating and it’s disheartening that New York has this legislation. It’s just waiting for the Governor’s signature and Massachusetts wouldn’t follow suit. So, that’s the problem I’m having. I would approve a pilot, negotiating the pilot but I can’t give up the spent fuel at a later date. But go ahead, Matt.

Matthew Muratore:

Okay. Well, all righty then. First of all, thank you for having us, appreciate that. And Madam Chair, through you to a special counsel, he’s absolutely right. This will at least allow you to do a pilot agreement. Whereas right now, you’re not able to do a pilot agreement so at least you get that. We do understand your frustration though, Madam Chair with regard to language being stricken. Fortunately or unfortunately, we live in a democracy and you have to live with compromise. And as much as we pushed and pushed and pushed on this, this came up with the last day of session and this was the compromise that came up which is why we sent it off to you folks to look at and for you to decide whether you want to accept this or not. That’s totally up to you. But it’s very clear that that piece of language that says including spent fuel pools and dry cask storage systems will be stricken, if it’s going to be passed. If you want to keep it in there, you will go to study and be done with. Now with that being said, this is just through the house. The Senate is a whole another issue and debate and we’re an informal session. We’re not in a formal session anymore. So, we still got to get it on the Senate side and bring Sue Moran in this, Senator Moran in this as well. So, we’re just trying to get it through the house at this point. But you’re absolutely right, it’s totally up to you how you want to move forward with this. But we’re being clear that we’ve already been told that this will not go any further if that language is in there. Yeah, I know. I agree with you. It’s frustrating. It is frustrating.

Betty Cavacco:

Well, it’s frustrating because as all those and I know it’s not you guys because I know what you guys do for us here in Plymouth, but it’s frustrating that these elected officials don’t do what these communities are asking them to do. I’m quite sure Holtec probably has maybe people that they support that aspect of it and I don’t know how to say it any better than that without getting myself in trouble.

Matthew Muratore:

Lobbyists, yeah.

Betty Cavacco:

Well, whatever you want to call them. Like I said, I mean for us here on this board, I mean, we have to look at how this will go. I’m more than happy to negotiate with Holtec and then say, “You know what, you want to give us 1500 acres? We’ll think about that spent fuel issue,” but I guess, really it’s up to the board. I know what my position is.

[0:25:03]

Betty Cavacco:

Now, one thing that I want to be clear is that let’s just say because I’m betting on this, Holtec Tech says, “We don’t want to negotiate a pilot with you. We’re just going to do what we do and move forward,” or even if they do want to negotiate a pilot with us, does this language that we are going to strike tie the hands of this town that somewhere in the future they can’t go back and file another home rule petition?

Matthew Muratore:

Well, first of all and I refer this to your counsel on this, my understanding of this is this allows you to do a pilot without this being approved. With the stricken language, you cannot enter a pilot. There’s no forceful deck to do that but the second part of your question I think your special counsel needs to answer that.

Betty Cavacco:

Mina?

Mina Makarious:

Excuse me, sorry. I missed that.

Betty Cavacco:

So, this doesn’t tie the hands of the town? If we just approve to have this language stricken and get into a pilot program with Holtec, this does not stop us from filing additional legislation if we have to for another home rule petition let’s say in the spring maybe to actually go after the same legislation?

Mina Makarious:

My apologies I thought someone spoke in between but that was my echo in your chamber, sorry about that. No, that’s correct. There’s nothing prohibiting filing another home rule petition. I can’t speak to how soon that can get taken up after that, but that would be a new session, new legislation. Certainly, wouldn’t change and so that certainly would remain on the table.

Kathleen LaNatra:

Yeah, Madam Chair, that’s what I was going to suggest. Session is ended. We’re in informal but it will come again in January where we start fresh. We may not have that same chair at that committee, the regime whole changes. So, we have that opportunity starting again in January.

Matthew Muratore:

But I do believe you’d have to go back to town meeting though.

Kathleen LaNatra:

Correct.

Matthew Muratore:

You have town meeting do an article on this. And I guess, that’s the only question I have as well is, is this a significant enough change that this has to go back to town meeting or is this something that you can just vote on tonight? Because this was a town meeting article. So, I don’t know if that’s something you can answer through the special counsel if they need to.

Derek Brindisi:

The way the article is written, it allows for editorial changes only to be approved by the Board of Selectmen, which if you remember I think we had to do a slight modification back in the June time period to this legislation.

Betty Cavacco:

Okay. So, we like Kathy says, we can move forward with additional legislation if we had to. Harry?

Harry Helm:

Given that, Kathy, Matt, would you please give us some samples of the reasoning why this was rejected and this compromise was struck? Certainly, people must have told you why they were basically taking this out.

Matthew Muratore:

It was the decision of the chair of the committee.

Harry Helm:

And what did the chair of the committee reason?

Kathleen LaNatra:

They don’t have to give us a reason.

Matthew Muratore:

They don’t have to give a reason.

Harry Helm:

Really?

Kathleen LaNatra:

Really.

Harry Helm:

So much for a democracy, I guess.

Matthew Muratore:

You got it.

Harry Helm:

So, it isn’t democracy.

Betty Cavacco:

Does anyone else have any questions? John?

John Mahoney:

So, I share the Chair’s concern. I just have a different opinion on where the revenue for compensation should come from and I believe that should be the federal government. They advocated their responsibility through a piece of legislation 40 years ago, the safe storage of spent fuel from a hundred plus reactors that have been created or built in this country from the early to mid-60s until 10 or 20 years ago. So, I’ll ask Mina and I’ll ask the state delegation, has there ever been any discussion with our federal delegation specifically Congressman Keating about getting some–we are a de facto nuclear waste dump, our compensation is zero. I just believe that something should be coming at the minimum from the federal government. So, have you ever heard of anything, Mina at the federal level? Some initiative down there or has there any conversations with the federal delegation, Matt with respect to this issue or are we just keeping this at the state level?

Mina Makarious:

I can answer. From our perspective, we have not. I know there has been some efforts over the years to have nuclear host communities around the country compensated.

[0:30:02]

Mina Makarious:

We’ve tried to follow some of that legislation, but we haven’t seen much action on it. I will tell you that in our advocacy for the town and with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission certainly the comments that I believe Betty read into the record or in the letters that were sent with Senator Markey was here made that point that there is a burden being placed on the town to help secure this facility for the long-term, to provide public safety, not to mention the used land issues that you just mentioned and that that should be adequately compensated because this was ultimately the federal government’s changing off course from what had promised the community.

With respect to discussions with the delegation, I’ll defer that to the representative and to Derek, if there’s any more information.

Matthew Muratore:

Yeah, I was just going to echo what he just said. We had Senator Markey I think before you were re-elected, John for a federal public hearing here in this building and a lot of discussion and particularly around that as well. So, they’re well aware. Well aware.

John Mahoney:

Okay. So, this is our best path forward? I’m hoping that the board votes in the affirmative to approve this change, get that passed in the house Matthew and Kathy and let’s get to take the baton and get it into Miss Moran’s hand so she can deliver the goods on the other side. We need to be able to sit down with Holtec. And in a perfect world, I would like to see a pilot program that takes us out through 27, 28 or 29 to the end of decommissioning, provides us with plenty of time to come back, take another bite at the apple if we want, another home rule petition and get our ducks in a row. At the end of the day, I don’t know how you appraise something that no one wants. Okay? So, Harry Reid used to be the President of the U.S Senate and he was a senator from Nevada and he had the federal checkbook available to him representing his state. The federal government was going to hand his state tens of billions of dollars to take this material from all over the country and put it under a mountain a hundred miles out in the Nevada desert, not even close to residential home, and he said, “We don’t need it.” So, I let my other colleagues weigh in but I’m certainly ready to make a motion to approve the amendment.

John Mahoney:

I move approval the amended piece of legislation home rule petition at the state level.

Betty Cavacco:

Your mic wasn’t on.

John Mahoney:

I’ll make a motion that we approve the home rule petition as amended by the state delegation so we can get forward moving on a pilot program.

Charlie Bletzer:

On the recommendation of a state delegation and a counsel, I’ll second that motion.

Betty Cavacco:

Here’s a first by Mr. Mahoney, seconded by Mr. Bletzer. Discussion? Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Well, I’m going to vote Yes on this just because at least it’s a pilot agreement but it’s clear there is absolutely nothing to be negotiating upon. It is a pilot agreement over nothing. And I don’t see that it will be effective in any way, shape or form. And as a prelude to the hopeful removal of the current chairman of that committee, that’s where our hope lies in another home rule petition but it’s clear it will only occur if that chairman is not there. But I will vote yes on this even though I do believe it’s pretty meaningless.

Betty Cavacco:

So, one of the things that I believe that we should do is that–I mean, everybody knows. Elections are in November. We can see how that pans out. And shortly after that, I’d like to make sure that an article is prepared for Spring town meeting or if there’s something that we need or act quickly, more quickly on than we have discussions about a special town meeting. And I will support this begrudgingly because I really felt that the spent fuel gave us quite a bit of leverage. And I don’t understand why the delegation outside of yourselves would not support America’s Hometown and something like that. Harry? I mean, Charlie?

Charlie Bletzer:

Lastly, I’d just like to thank your efforts. I know you guys spent a lot of time on this trying to lobby for this. I appreciate the efforts and hopefully Sue can get something done too as well. But thank you again.

[0:35:13]

Betty Cavacco:

And while we have you, is there anything you want to kind of give us a quick update about or? Oh, yes, let’s vote. All those in favor?

John Mahoney:

Matt, that’s your time to say point of order.

Matthew Muratore:

Yeah, I almost did. I almost did it.

Betty Cavacco:

Unanimous.

Matthew Muratore:

I do. Thank you so much for that. Well, we would ask you to please follow up with the email through you, Madam Chair to the town manager to follow up with the email. It was actually sent from the committee so we can respond to it that they want to move forward with it. We can follow up with it next week, ensure it gets through the bills of third reading so it gets passed in the house. And then we’ll follow up with Senator Moran on that, so.

Betty Cavacco:

Perfect. Thank you.

Kathleen LaNatra:

Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Thanks. Mina, do you have anything else you’d like to say?

Mina Makarious:

Not tonight. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Betty Cavacco:

Thank you. And do you two have anything more you want to say?

Kathleen LaNatra:

No.

Betty Cavacco:

No? Okay. Thanks. All right. The next is a quick presentation on Entrepreneurship Study Presentation from UMass Donahue.

Stephen Cole:

Thank you, Madam Chair. This will be a very quick hour and a half presentation.

Betty Cavacco:

You’ll be here by yourself.

Stephen Cole:

Thank you for the opportunity to come to this board, Madam Chair. For those folks who don’t know me, I’m Steve Cole. I’m just some guy but I have a really cool job. I get to run the Economic Development Foundation for the Town of Plymouth and for the region. We’re joined here tonight by I think five of our board members. We have Matt Muratore, Bill Hallisey, our Board President, Lee Hartman, Dickie Quintal and Derek Brindisi. Did I miss anyone? I think that’s about it. But we have 13 board members and this board is of course very familiar with our board. I’m glad to say that we’re here tonight to discuss or at least share with this board a year-long study that was conducted by UMass Donohue Institute, the state’s economic public policy thinktank and research center.

The foundation submitted a competitive grant application to the US EDA about a year and a half ago, and I’m very glad to say that we received that competitive grant $200,000 so we can conduct this incisive study into the entrepreneurial activity that’s in Plymouth. The goals of the study were to answer four particular questions: Do we have entrepreneurial activity in Plymouth? The short answer was of course, yes. What we needed to know further though is what are they working on, what resources are they using and what resources do they need in order to scale up? Before I turn it over to Branner Stewart who’s here from UMass to give you the presentation, I have a couple of acknowledgments. I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who contributed to the study. The study which will be available by the end of this week on our website. If anybody at home wants to see it before then, just send me an email, I’ll be very glad to send it to you.

We have a complete list of the interviewees in that report, but I do particularly want to thank Mary Waldron and Dottie Fulginiti from Old Colony Planning. Without whom, we would not have been able to submit the application. At a time when we were ramping up in our capacity, it’s a rather onerous process to submit that application and they did that on our behalf after we wrote it. I want to thank also Lee Hartman who helped me run this process. Without whom, frankly, we would not have had as favorable of a cost share with the EDA. Typically, a community like Plymouth would have to have a 50% cash match for something like this, we got away with a 20% in-kind contribution. So, thank you very much, Lee for helping us with that.

I want to thank Rep Muratore, Rep Kathy LaNatra, Senator Susan Moran and Congressman Keating for their support and their letters of support for this. Without which, we would not have received this money so I deeply appreciate your leadership. And then frankly lastly, I just want to thank the EDA Regional reps, Debra Bevin and Linda Cruz-Carnal for believing in Plymouth’s future and securing this funding for us. With that, I’ll turn this over to UMass Donahue Institute Research Team, Branner Stewart. And not joining us tonight are two other colleagues of his that I want to say thank you to, Rebecca Loveland and Michael McNally. Sir?

Branner Stewart:

Yes. Well, thank you, everyone. I’ve enjoyed working with Plymouth for the past year or so. I’ve done economic development related work all over the country and I always find it interesting when we start unpeeling in different locations. What is taking place in Plymouth like other places that I’ve done work with around the country, there’s a lot more going on here than initially meets the eye. So, I hope that I can–you guys might know a lot of this but also educate you and help to maybe bring it all together.

[0:40:04]

Branner Stewart:

So, yeah, with this study is we looked at the feasibility for an entrepreneur center or centers in Plymouth to support the growth of business activity as well as to support new particular growth areas and future opportunity in the town.

Plymouth is full of assets between its location, between Boston and Cape Cod, its history, very, very large number of visitors that come here, proximity to the Boston area’s technology economy as well as to a lot of activities also happening in Southeastern Massachusetts.

Plymouth is unlike a lot of other places that I’ve had to look at around the country. Plymouth is ultimately quite asset rich and we’ll get into that in a little bit. And then looking at some of what I’ll be talking about, when we put it together Plymouth is well situated for Marine Sciences and Technology, growth aquaculture as well as further developing its food seen through the growth of a shared kitchen concept. And then to advance these industries, Plymouth needs to support entrepreneurial related activities and also maybe consider the actual physical space that’s needed to support these types of growth industries.

Now, prior to going into the actual entrepreneur center concept, we always like to look at what the context is for the particular area that we’re looking at. Plymouth is blessed by high population growth. Recently, it’s been exceeding the growth of Massachusetts, the county as well as the United States. And in terms of attracting business, that’s an asset that marketers and businesses want to see is a robust population because if you’re actually stagnant or declining, you’re already a little bit behind the eight ball.

So, Plymouth’s population exploded post-1970, reached over 61,000 with the 2020 census and is expected according to our own UMass Donahue Institute population projections reach about 70,000 in 2040. That’s just a baseline projection. But the population is aging. Looking into the future years, the older population above 65 is going to grow from 23% today to 32% by 2040. And then that working age population as a share of the population will decline. And so, in terms of like economic development strategy, we want to look at having a dynamic town or considering a town with a dynamic business structure and industries to help attract working age population as well as to retain them. That’s when the entrepreneur center concept really comes in more.

Plymouth is becoming increasingly wealthy. Between 2010 and 2019, as you can see here on the very right, the number of households with 150,000 or more in income more than doubled. That’s a good thing in the sense that for entrepreneurialism, people draw on their own money and their family money is the first place they go and Plymouth has that. And then also it kind of as a policy choice, how do you make sure that the advantages of Plymouth and its growth are equitably distributed.

On the employment side, it’s also very positive for Plymouth. Plymouth like in population is exceeding the growth of the state in the United States as well as some pure counties. We only went through 2019 because with Covid, that really flew through a wrench into jobs data but Plymouth was on a very positive trajectory prior to the Covid pandemic.

Looking at the Plymouth labor force a bit, Plymouth has quite a large, the town itself employs about 25,000 people with 16,000 coming in, 8,000 Plymouth residents working within the community but then over 23,000 are actually commuting for jobs elsewhere.

[0:45:11]

Branner Stewart:

And what’s interesting about that is that the main destination for people who are not actually working in Plymouth is the City of Boston. And in terms of industries that they’re going to, they’re going to professional business services as well as going to finance Industries. So, this group of people who are commuting, they tend to be higher paid as well as higher educated and then by retaining them within the community, they’re people that can help populate more of a tech or advanced economy and marine sciences and technology which we’ll show you.

Looking at Plymouth’s Assessed Tax Base, the share of the tax base that’s residential has increased markedly since 2010 going from about 80% to about 86% over an 11-year period. So, in terms of entrepreneurial activity, diversifying the economy, businesses really get more rooted here that could help to stymie or reverse that type of a trend.

And then just looking at the trend in the commercial assessed value, Plymouth and Plymouth County, Plymouth being the dashed line on the bottom, that has actually been going down since 2010. Whereas the change in assessed value for the State of Massachusetts has been going up over the same period. So, again, I’m just going to underscore that moving towards the business growth, the more diverse economy and entrepreneurialism could help to reverse that trend and introduce more commercial activity into the town.

Right now, Plymouth’s tax base as I mentioned before is about 85% or 86% residential and 15% commercial/industrial. That is kind of it’s higher than its peers in the initial area and it’s about the same as Massachusetts, but if you look at several communities around the state like Braintree, Burlington, Cambridge and Waltham on the left, they have much, much higher share of their assessed tax value is in the commercial and Industrial categories. So, that represents somewhat of maybe a stretch opportunity for Plymouth that it is possible to move more into that direction.

All right. So, the way to do it, developing stronger entrepreneurial sectors and that’s the core of our report. In terms of like the industries that we’re concentrating on, we chose three and this was like through a data process as well as interviews, trying to look at what’s unique for Plymouth to be able to develop and to grow. Our team with others came up with the development of Marine Science, Tech and Trades, Aquaculture and fishing and then the restaurant industry. All of these are ultimately tied to the ocean. There are other areas too that could grow like in healthcare as well as life sciences. But healthcare and life sciences, those are almost like national targets by just about everyone whereas you look at these three and they coalesce in Plymouth as strong opportunities.

I’ll go into describing a bit about each one of them. As I said in the beginning, when we took a closer look at Plymouth, one of the major areas that is now taking place is the growth of the marine science, tech and trades. This industry is at its very, very earliest forms of growth. It is a global growth industry and Plymouth already has several companies that are doing everything from underwater navigation and vehicle controls, hole service vehicles, ones that can remotely take care of the hole of your boat and amphibious crawling vehicles that can actually crawl on the floor of the um of the ocean for various purposes.

[0:50:02]

Branner Stewart:

There is an active cluster of marine science and tech centers in Southeastern Massachusetts or actually Southeastern New England stretching from Woods Hole and Cape Cod to the Newport Undersea Warfare Research Center in Newport. And then not on this map but all the way further to the left, we have the Groton in New London Submarine Technology and Development Base. So, Plymouth, geographically it’s very well situated than already is to further develop this particular area.

In terms of possible support from the town and others, there’s an opportunity. It’s basically a supply, so I look at as a supply side opportunity. It means introduce the training and the land and the waterfront access that’s needed to grow this industry and the industry would respond likely and kind in terms of growth in in Plymouth.

And the next industry related is the fishing and aquaculture industry. Oysters, mussels, fishing and they’re all growth and then kelp in particular is a global, it’s sustainable, it can be used to help feed people and livestock and it’s already situated here and it would be able to take more root and grow in this area. Plymouth started one of the few areas in Massachusetts that’s already active in shellfish fishing. So, the roots are here for this to take place.

And in terms of support, again, it’s like waterfront access, encouraging direct to consumer markets for the production of seafood and for shellfish and then introducing more of training related to this area and providing the space for this industry to be able to grow.

And the last industry is the restaurant industry and local food. The area is already intensive agriculturally with the visitors that come to the town. It’s a natural center for restaurants. Aspirationally, several communities in New England, we call them the 3 P’s: Portland, Portsmouth and Providence are known national destinations for food. And in Plymouth, and you’ll see in a moment through the possible growth of a shared kitchen to support it would be able to maybe be the fourth P in terms of restaurant destination. And that would be through like shared kitchens. Shared kitchen is where they have the equipment and the space for people to be able to cook. That’s not actually within the restaurant facility. And as this map shows here, Plymouth and you know where it is but down the lower right is kind of in a geographic void for these types of kitchens. So, the demand would be here for a shared kitchen.

And again, in terms of potential local support, the restaurants and breweries in town would benefit from increased knowledge about regulations, permitting, access to financing. And then also, through interviews, we heard a lot about space constraint for people to be able to expand or who want to expand and who are entrepreneurs in the industry. In terms of the actual entrepreneur center development, we did look at some locations around the community to be able to fit what we see as a marine science and technology and aquaculture as well as the food industry. Let’s speed along here. In terms of the actual locations. For supporting marine science and technology in terms of office space, we have the 4 North Street Building close by and that could be a co-working space. But we look at it instead of just being a co-working space, which is kind of ubiquitous around the country as well as in some close by similar facilities to have 4 North Street actually even though it could have more general type businesses that are growing or accommodate them.

[0:55:16]

Branner Stewart:

We’re looking at this maybe a place that could concentrate on bringing together people and the marine science and technology industries. To support this, they need the space, they need conference room and they also need high-speed internet access all things that I think that that location would be able to accommodate.

And on the marine side, then we have the Plymouth Maritime Facility. Access to water is important for a lot of these growth companies, and this area here provides an atmosphere that similar type companies and marine tech would find appealing for growth, the exchange of ideas and then having that ready access to the water.

On the shared kitchen concept, and you’ve brought up the housing question, we did take a look at that. Right now, because it is available, it is in place and it also has the right size and because of at some capacities in terms of floor capacities, electric capacities as well as delivery, it’s well suited for a shared kitchen type of a facility. So, something to consider on that end. The shared kitchen would need space for the restaurants, fruit companies, cold storage space and a possible dine-in. And so, that location and its proximity to Route 3 as well as not too far from the downtown area and a customer base would be able to accommodate that type of a building facility fairly readily.

And then just moving forward, I kind of already mentioned some of the main. We do look at 4 North Street as marine science and technology center and then 253 South Meadow is part of the shared kitchen and then the Plymouth Maritime Facility further supporting marine tech and aquaculture. I’ve already talked about the support areas but the support areas is like Plymouth is on the water. It has a long coastline but as is true in many Massachusetts coastal communities, the people who need access to the water to be able to conduct their business are starting to lose it. And so, Plymouth to support the marine science and technology trades needs to be able to look at preservation of access to water to help these companies thrive.

The same is true with aquaculture and fishing. That industry as well needs this consistent access to the water in order for it to grow as well as it needs the training opportunities for the people who are participating in the industry. And then on the restaurants and breweries, as I mentioned earlier, that they are feeling space constrained and having some growth areas where entrepreneurs and existing restaurants and breweries can go in and be able to expand their operations and be able to grow and to experiment would be able to allow the restaurant industry to further thrive in Plymouth. And also, eventually and maybe the consideration of some sort of a business improvement district within Plymouth to be able to support aesthetically as well as the safety of the downtown area fill up shops and things too that will enhance the restaurant and food Industries.

So, yeah, in conclusion I think Plymouth right now through a coordinated effort should be able to capitalize on its great location as well as kind of some nascent growth and some key emerging industry sectors. When I say key emerging industry sectors, I really mean in Plymouth, the blue economy. With that, maritime, sciences, trade and technology. It’s at the very, very early stages of what’s going to be I think fairly phenomenal growth worldwide.

[1:00:04]

Branner Stewart:

And with that and through the support of the spaces that the companies that in these respective industries need, now Plymouth could have a more coordinated way to be able to support some future growth in coming decades. It doesn’t happen overnight but places that have a strategy and seed it will actually see that growth eventually. So, that. Do you want to make any comments, Stephen?

Stephen Cole:

Just some final remarks, Madam Chair and board. This is not just a report that we commissioned so we can sit on a shelf. We’re actively moving right now to implement some strategies. We’ve worked with Derek’s office so that we could support the second boat ramp being built out so that we could have launches at low tide because the demand that’s on the existing boat structure. Branner had touched on this. One of our greatest assets that not a lot of communities in the Commonwealth or even New England have is accessibility to our coastline. And I don’t want to spend too much time diving into this, but when you look basically from Quincy North up to the New Hampshire border, it’s fairly industrialized. Into New Hampshire, you have only 13 miles of coastline. Around Cape Cod, you don’t have this opportunity because it’s the national seashore. Once you get into Rhode Island, it’s a bit of a Peloponnese of private estates and then frankly, I’m not going to eat anything that grows on the Long Island in Connecticut. So, when you think about where these types of Industries can start, can grow and I’ll pause here to say kelp is a 14-billion-dollar global industry. It’s almost pure protein and it extracts carbon from the water. It also helps with erosion mitigation.

I’m glad to say that in this past May, 10,000 pounds of kelp was harvested from Duxbury Harbor but they had to extract it from the ocean here in Plymouth because we’re the only ones with the infrastructure that can do that. So, part of the recommendations from UMass is not only to enhance some of the infrastructure. We’ve been able to identify potential funding sources and our partners at the EDA are insisting that we submit applications for implementation. I’m glad to say also that I’ve had great conversations with our very own small business leader and entrepreneur Scott Hokanson, who’s here tonight. I don’t want to speak for the gentleman but we did tour 253 South Meadow as a potential location for a shared kitchen. A lot of people don’t think that restaurants can be entrepreneurial. They are what they are, but that’s not necessarily true and that came up during the studies. There are lots of things that restaurants can do to be entrepreneurial, to drive more attention to them. But what’s more, we learned that a lot of restaurants in the downtown have a finite footprint. They can scale up, but they need a place where they can do it and a shared kitchen space could be that thing that lets them offer more types of restaurant foods or more types of prepared foods.

What’s more of the shared kitchen, anytime you add a layer of production, you add value. So, if you pull kelp or oyster out of the bag, it is just what it is. It’s just seaweed and it is just a shellfish, but if you turn that into something, a product, we’ve had a couple of food entrepreneurs here that have told me they have agreements in place with Amazon Pantry. They will distribute their products but they need to scale up so they have to increase their output and they have to increase their shelf life. The only place where you can do something like that is in a shared kitchen.

Similarly, we take a regional perspective. There is not really a food truck industry here and you need a commercial kitchen in order to support food trucks. You can’t do it out of your home. So, there’s a whole new industry that hasn’t been tapped yet that we think that a shared kitchen could help bring about. So, I want to thank Scott for your leadership, sir. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for believing in the vision at least for the shared kitchen. And I just want to assure the board, this is not a study that will sit on the shelf. We’re actively implementing these things. So, we’ll yield for any questions you may have and thank you so much for your time tonight.

Betty Cavacco:

Great. We’ll bring that back to the board but Derek, first thing is that could you have this posted on the town website?

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah, absolutely.

Betty Cavacco:

Perfect. Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

Yeah, I just have one question with the infrastructure on the Maritime for the blue economy. I know we did that. That second ramp is going to get done and that’s going to be very important. What other infrastructure do you think you’ll need down there?

Stephen Cole:

So, I understand that there are two cranes that are operated by the lobstermen fishermen right now and they have a limited capacity of pull. So, 500 pounds and I think 700 pounds. Frankly, we need something that can pull greater than a thousand pounds out. That would be something that I think we can secure Federal funding to support. Similarly, when the kelp farmer was pulling his product out of the harbor, he had stored a refrigerated food truck down there the night before. Thank you to Phil Chandler and to Chad Hunter for allowing them to do that. But the fact is when I spent some time in Saugus, one of the things that saved the lobster industry in Saugus was the state had invested in refrigerated cold storage at the harbor, at the docks. So, that’s something else that perhaps we could encourage.

Charlie Bletzer:

And would that be shared too, like a refrigeration storage that could be shared?

[1:05:05]

Stephen Cole:

I’ll defer to more brilliant minds than mine, but how I see this is if the town and the foundation are partnering on this and we secure federal funding, I see this as a potential revenue source for the town. Someone will have to lease or rent that locker and it could potentially be a revenue source for the community.

Charlie Bletzer:

Yeah, I know you talked about that before so okay, great.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Mahoney?

John Mahoney:

Branner, hi. I talked to Stephen today. I gave him a heads up. I’ll be gentle, okay? So, can you just put the slide back up that shows the tax bases Waltham, Burlington and the South Shore communities.

Branner Stewart:

Oh, yeah, that one. Let’s back a bit. There we go.

John Mahoney:

So, when we talk about land, one of the sides you had up there earlier was how the population of Plymouth was exceeding everything else the state, the county, etc. Well, you’ve got to dial down into what the reasons for that are. So, I just picked up my phone and I looked up Sandwich, Falmouth and Bourne. So, those three communities are 120 square miles. They didn’t add any population between the 2010 and 2020 census. Sandwich lost 500 people, 120 square miles of land didn’t add about a couple hundred people. Okay? The pressure is on the Town of Plymouth because we’re in between three North Cape communities that are at build out. And when you go north from here, Kingston, Duxbury Pembroke up that Route 3, Carter, all of those communities are in the 95 to 98 percentile of buildup. They’re fighting over scraps of land. That’s why the pressure is here on this community.

I’ve talked to Stephen about this multiple times. Those four communities on the left, they put a moratorium on residential development in 1970. And what I’m saying is they ran out of land. Now, I have nothing better to do with my life so I sit at home on the computer and I look at census reports from all over New England. Okay? Braintree and I’ll even expand it to Weymouth between 1970 and 2010, Braintree and Weymouth didn’t add anybody because they ran out of land in 1970. Now, they’re adding people, a couple of thousand people because they’re putting residential developments in places they would have never thought of before and they’re buying existing buildings leveling them and putting up these mass residential units. So, this town is under attack. The diversification again of the tax base is mathematically impossible. It is misleading to imply that we can do that. A textbook example, the best examples of economic development in the community of the North Plymouth Industrial Park in Camelot, that industrial tax base outside of the power plant is only 230 million. The town passed on 3,000 acres in 1997 and we told the residential developer, “We want empty nest are over 55 residential development.” Pine Hills is going to end up in the 2 billion range. That’s only in 20 to 30 years. So, once upon a time, I sat on this board, a gentleman out here in the third row Matthew Muratore and he was chair, we had another colleague raised her hand at the end of a meeting and said, “What do we need to do to diversify the tax base?” And the finance director came in a couple weeks later, you’re figuring out a batting average or an on-base percentage in baseball. It’s the same thing. There’s three or four variables. She came in and said, “Basically, you would need 500 to a billion dollars of industrial commercial to fall from the sky that day and you’ve got to put a moratorium on residential basically in perpetuity.” We can’t do that. You have failed state policy, 40B’s and it just goes on and on. So, that 85% is going to end up in the 93 to 98% range by 2040. I firmly believe in this report. I want diversification of activities. I’m willing to proactively invest in any infrastructure, Stephen that we need to support what you intend to be here and let’s try to get a break that seasonal cycle on jobs and let’s make them more 365. But I don’t want to mislead the public in telling them that we can do something that no one in this galaxy is capable of doing. And it only leads to higher taxes and bigger government.

[1:10:02]

Branner Stewart:

I would say that we were within our report, we’re kind of explicit about the growth of entrepreneurialism and the growth of those other businesses would help the town get out of the cyclical economy once in place. And then the other thing on the land use side, recognizing that in Massachusetts, you were the third most densely populated state in the country and that density is in the eastern part of the state where we are right now and that I think in terms of future opportunity, our report is emphasizing the ocean side, which is the marine science and technologies and the aquaculture. I mean, I think it’s quite great with the shared kitchen and restaurants because the seafood is complementary to that. But in terms of land use pressure by emphasizing this growth more on the seaward side, that’s where there’s more space as well.

John Mahoney:

All that stuff was fantastic. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

I’d like to go back to the moratorium. I’ll take that, because as you well know our residents are screaming about all the building going on in this town. I wanted to do a moratorium. I think it was five years ago, John, you and I sat on the board together.

John Mahoney:

Obviously, there are numerous hurdles, Madam Chair.

Betty Cavacco:

And I think that we need to start jumping those hurdles to see if we can slow down the progress, because this is not the Plymouth that I certainly grew up with and it’s not the Plymouth that our residents are wanting to live their lives in. So, Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

Would you please go back one more slide? Because I want to make sure that everybody watching in this room or at home–no, back. That one. I want to make sure everybody sees that. We’re the dotted line. We’re the dotted line that’s going down the tubes. We need to reverse this. Another fact or factor for the Town of Plymouth is that the average hourly wage in Plymouth is $20 an hour, that’s what you make it at Donkey’s. The average in Massachusetts is $36 an hour, so diversification of our economic outlook as is being proposed here is the intelligent thing to do. And it may not be a matter of impacting the taxes, it may not be a matter. But John, I believe that we can increase the efficacy of our commercial base in this manner. At the same time, we can institute things to prevent the total takeover of the town by residential. I think we’re perfectly capable or if we aren’t, we should be kicked out of our offices. We should be unelected, we should be recalled if we can’t figure out a way to walk and chew gum at the same time. So, I think if you look at it as now, you can reach some sort of a conclusion where you might think that it’s mathematically impossible, but I believe that there’s a way to step in front of the residential development and stop it. And I think if we don’t then we’re not doing the job I believe that the residents of Plymouth hired us or voted us to do.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Mahoney?

John Mahoney:

I mean, excellent point by Mr. Helm to bring that slide up. One of the things that that slide doesn’t tell anyone is that you’re talking about the change in assessed value of commercial industrial property. Well, Memorial Day Weekend of ’19, the Golden Goose, somebody flipped the switch and shut it off. So, there was a precipitous drop in valuation of that plan. You must have been here at the beginning, you heard us talking with Matthew and Kathy with respect to a home rule petition about a pilot program. As soon as that went off and they stopped making electricity, we lost hundreds of millions of dollars of valuation just from the plant alone. So, that that doesn’t reflect that and that should almost be the fourth bullet point on the right column.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

I’d like to point out that it was entirely predictable from the moment that Pilgrim was fired up that this would occur and nothing was done. Nothing was done, John.

John Mahoney:

You’re telling me that?

Harry Helm:

Yes, I’m telling you. No, I’m telling everybody else that to remind them.

[1:15:01]

Harry Helm:

I mean, you know John, it’s really easy to sit around and determine that like wring our hands over what’s happened in the past. We have to learn from the past and we have to improve our policies. One of the reasons that I ran for this was I got tired of sitting on the FinCom for eight years and seeing the same problems come up time after time after time. And it wasn’t they were in different decoration and different garb, but the basic bottom lack of policy created the problems coming over and over and over again. And it’s time that we started thinking outside of the box instead of looking at the past and wringing our hands and do something about it. And I do think we can walk and chew gum at the same time. And I do think we can deal with residential development. So, I don’t think that it’s a mathematical impossibility that we can somehow impact the future of our tax base. I just don’t believe it.

Betty Cavacco:

Anyone else? I mean, I have to agree. I’m so tired of listening to what happened in the past. I think everybody on this board should have learned if they haven’t of what we shouldn’t be doing because of what happened in the past. Obviously, the power plant went into that nice little dark deep hole called the general fund. We did nothing with it. I hate to point fingers but I’m pointing. So, not the responsibility, not under the direction of the folks on this board but I’m all done with what happened in the past and how it went. And you know what? Forget about the past. The past is just that. It’s in our rearview mirror. We have to look forward and we have to do something to change the dynamic of everything in the past.

John Mahoney:

Harry hit the nail in the head. I completely agree. We have to learn from it and move forward.

Betty Cavacco:

Correct. Great. So, no more past? Just saying. You’re going to be in the room by yourself again. Is there anyone else have any? Mr. Quintal?

Dick Quintal:

With all these beautiful conversation we’re having is where do we put the industrial park? Because I’ve been trying to figure that out for these two years on the board. And every time I bring an idea to the town whether you’re fully supported or not, I listen as it’s my job to just like it would be for economic development to listen to anybody that’s interested to come into town. As a starting point, I mean, people don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to hear it on the 100 acres. I’m already hearing they don’t want to hear it where Entergy was. So, I’m going to tell you like it is that’s what I usually do. Until you figure that out, all the smartest people in Plymouth, well we’re going to continue to have this problem and that’s what I’ve been trying to say in my own little words.

And the second thing I like to say the problem I see is that we have affordable housing for 55 and older. How about some affordable housing for the 20 to 35-year-old range who are just starting a family and can’t afford to live in this town, can’t afford an apartment because they’re $3200. You want to have affordable apartment? Do it for our kids and our grandkids because those are the ones that are going to be hurting and moving. I’m ready for the cardinals pretty soon. That’s where we’re all going, but if you look at all those down trends and they’re all right at when Covid started. I mean, you’re going to see that. I mean, it’s a wonder that we faired what we did do in this town and the businesses that did survive and we only lost a handful that I know of, at least in my industry. But we had to do a lot of moving and sacrificing and this whole community did great. I could be no prouder than this town and be a part of this town. When it was on his knees, I was there. There was a lot of people, a lot of businesses and a lot of people came to me and gave me money and food and we got it out to people and that’s something I’ll never forget. So, that’s really it. Let’s not forget that age group that nobody ever talks about and that that’s a real problem, so.

[1:20:03]

Dick Quintal:

And the second thing is let’s find out where to put this development. Mr. Cole, if you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them because every time I say something I get shot at. So, anytime you have one, just come on in and let us hear it. So, that’s it on another note but I don’t know. John, I’m sorry.

Betty Cavacco:

Is there anyone in the public that would like to speak on this? Sure. Come on up and please state your name for the record.

Scott Hokanson:

I just want to thank Madam Chair and everybody in the room here. My name is Scott Hokanson and I manufacture taxes. Okay? I create jobs and I’m going to go home feeling guilty tonight knowing that affordable housing is what I’m competing with on this building. But the building on South Meadow Road is not producing jobs or taxes right now. And I have a lot of restaurant clients that need trained people that are serve safe trained, that know how to run a kitchen. They need more space to cook for catering jobs and we can do that. And with Steve’s help and our Kathy and Matt’s help, I have a business plan in place to make that building a producer of jobs, taxes. We don’t need an industrial park. We have an empty building that’s producing nothing right now.

Betty Cavacco:

We have a few.

Scott Hokanson:

Right. And I don’t need the whole building but I got Sacred Heart who probably wouldn’t give me the commercial kitchen that we can move over. And like I said, we have these untapped assets. We don’t need an industrial park. We have a building. Let’s do one at a time. And like I said, one thing at a time. We take one step forward and we can create some jobs, create some taxes, create some more resources for our restaurants. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Thank you. Mr. Shirley?

Russ Shirley:

The good news is we don’t need the whole building either. And a very good possibility I can work with Mr. Hokanson to come up with a plan to give them I think probably about a third of the building. That includes the loading dock that would very be very helpful in this kitchen effort. We pay taxes, we pay payments in lieu of taxes. We pay over $200,000 a year in taxes. We pay over $250,000 a year in water and sewer bills right now. We represent thousands of elderly and youthful tenants, so it’s not just elderly. But we need a place to go and own it ourselves and work with the community to try to come up with another solution if we have spare space there.

One of the people that we were thinking about for spare space may be the group that oversees the elderly. But as I said, if a kitchen is a good use for that space and good use for training and good use for more income coming into the town, I’d be more than happy to discuss that.

Betty Cavacco:

Great. Mr. Hokanson, could you forward that proposal to the town manager? Perfect. Thank you. All right. Mr. Cole, is there anything that you want this board to do or just thank you for proposing?

Stephen Cole:

Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Betty Cavacco:

Thank you. Wonderful. Thanks. All right. Our next order of business is the American Cruise Line Agreement. And we’re going to pass that over tonight, because obviously there’s not an agreement. So, next is Downtown Parking Anti-Shuffling Amendment. Mr. Desmond Egan.

Desmond Egan:

Good evening. My name is Desmond Egan. I’m the Operations Manager for Park Plymouth. I’m formerly here on behalf of Plymouth Growth and Development Corporation and Park Plymouth to request a new amendment be added to the Town of Plymouth traffic rules and order. I mean, I would like you guys to consider is the anti-shuffling regulation. This is to reduce vehicle shuffling, which is when a vehicle is parked in a free time limit on street parking space, the vehicle is move throughout today throughout the day to avoid paying for parking elsewhere or in a less convenient location.

This action displaces would-be customers from these convenient on-street parking spaces that are highly important to the economic viability of businesses in these areas dependent on vehicle turnover. This anti-shuffle regulation will prohibit vehicles parking in these areas from moving on the same block to avoid paying for parking in less convenient areas. The anti-shuffle regulation would apply to all vehicles and motorcycles. We request this change to be added to Section 25, section 26 as well as section 26a in the traffic rules and order.

[1:25:19]

Betty Cavacco:

Any questions from the board? Mr. Mahoney?

John Mahoney:

Just a quick, what are they, MEOs, meter enforcement officers? We still call them that?

Desmond Egan:

Yes.

John Mahoney:

How do they enforce it? They have technology that–

Desmond Egan:

Yeah. We can use our handhelds, which is there now. We still find it even more efficient to be writing them down in that way. It’s a little bit easier than the Geofencing and GPS that comes with the equipment. We have a pretty well ironed out system from throughout the years that the staff finds more convenient to utilize.

Charlie Bletzer:

Betty?

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Bletzer?

Charlie Bletzer:

I support this. This is a long time coming. I was on the PGDC for about 15 years and we always try to be customer friendly. Nobody likes paid parking. Nobody liked it when it started. I’d say I was one of the biggest opponents of it down the waterfront but when I saw it in action creating more parking because we didn’t have cars sitting there for three or four days at a time. It was moving the park and that’s what paid parking is all about. We only have certain amount of spaces so we have to keep the cars moving and we have to get in what’s happening in the Court Street and Main Street, you’re getting owners of businesses and employees and they park. And then in two hours, they move at a couple of spaces. It’s been going on. And it’s not a lot. In fact, the Park Plymouth knows who they are. They know who the offenders are. It’s a few offenders but they get away with it because there’s no law on the books or no bylaw right now to do this. But I can tell you, it’s good. We give out to a dining now so a lot of the spaces are used for outdoor dining. So, the spaces keep depleting and this is a very good use of our downtown parking to make people use the permits. We have very affordable permits. And I know when I was on the board, we did these permits and I don’t think they’ve gone up over the years that much. But you can park in the garage for–

Desmond Egan:

$60 for a resident, yeah.

Charlie Bletzer:

What is it?

Desmond Egan:

$60 for a resident.

Charlie Bletzer:

$60 for a resident, okay, employee resident. How much for an out-of-town employee?

Desmond Egan:

Charlie Bletzer:

$90, and you can park year-rounds in that garage, which is right downtown. That’s just one of the lots. There’s other lots you can use for that. We’re trying to help the businesses and when I was on the PGDC, the PGDC and I know Chairman Cavacco and I had a few debates over this because she’s not a big fan of paid parking but this is to help the business in downtown, not to hurt them. We try to get through to them to say that if your employees are back in front of your business, how is that helping you? Tell them to get permits and get them out of there, walk two blocks up the street or go to that parking lot down the street. You get North Street parking lot, which is right near downtown. This parking lot is for $60 and it’s not a lot of money. So, this is abuse. People are abusing the system and now, they’ll be able to ticket these folks. And I know we used to mark them in the old days, now you get the machines, you get the handhelds so they can look at a plate and they can time it. So, believe me, this is not an aggressive ticketing by the meter enforcers and it’s not a money grab. This is to keep the cars go and do your business and move on so the next person can park. And if you’re an employee, put it in an appropriate parking lot. If you’re a business owner, same thing put it in away from your business so to help your business. So, I support this 100%. It’s a long time coming. We should have done this years ago.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

A couple questions. One, just a little, I don’t know how I’d phrase it but I don’t see North Street as any of the streets and you have, I believe, two or three spots.

Desmond Egan:

Yeah, those are 15-minute spaces at the top of North Street but that would be the three options. The rest are metered spaces on North Street.

[1:30:01]

Harry Helm:

Okay. All right. And secondly, question, how was it determined that a vehicle in all of these cases that a vehicle must park at least 100 feet from their previous space or five parking spots?

Desmond Egan:

Yeah. Well, I simplified the language when I was looking at other municipalities that had considered this. A block seems to be not definable to some people, so I tried to simplify it by a hundred feet, typical parallel space is 20 feet so that’s 5 feet. So, the normal everyday person doesn’t have to do mental math there to figure out where they can and there. I just tried to simplify the modification there. I also thought it was a fair distance for people who may be residents in the area who do have to return for a quick in and out, they could still have close proximity to their business or residence to come back and drop something off in the area.

Harry Helm:

Okay, yeah. I was just wondering, I mean, five parking spots seems like there are quite a few places along Court Street, Main Street that you could probably move your car just like five spots.

Desmond Egan:

Yeah, you could. I think it’s more on the lower end over here down this way but still as you go every two hours, you’re going to keep going further and further. I think after time that would outlaw the practice at a practability points.

Harry Helm:

So, say every two hours you couldn’t go from spot X to spot Y and then two hours later turn around and go back from spot Y to spot X if it were still open?

Desmond Egan:

Conceivably you could in this instance with that. I just thought, like I said, for simplicity the 100 feet and like I said accommodating some of the needs for those residents and businesses in the area. That’s why I chose that.

Charlie Bletzer:

Betty?

Betty Cavacco:

Yes.

Charlie Bletzer:

And Desmond, if you see this being abused, you can always come back and change it too. Come before us. Also, just let the folks know if we vote in this and you implement this that you’re going to get in touch how you’re going to let the merchants and all your businesses know, you’ll give them all notice so there’s no–will there be signage too?

Desmond Egan:

Yeah. Whenever we make a wholesale change like this particularly when we see some of the vehicles that would be offending, we would bring to their attention this change. In the past, we also had one-time courtesies as well that we extend to people just say, “Hey, now, you’re aware this ordinance is in place. Please, in the future avoid this practice.”

Charlie Bletzer:

It’s one more reason I know Derek has talked about getting a business association downtown. This is one more reason why we need a business association downtown on the waterfront so we can call a meeting. And at the meeting, talk to them about this. And I guarantee you, they’d all be for this and then you can let them know what’s going on. It’s very important. I know when we changed in front of East Bay Grill and in front of the Lobster Hut, those parking lots went from 10-hour parking lots to 4-hour. And when we did it, we had a meeting, we called the meeting and we invited all the abutters, all the businesses were all invited. Most of them came, a couple didn’t bother attending but we actually–you were at the meeting.

Desmond Egan:                              

I was.

Charlie Bletzer:

And the Chairman Leighton was there and we actually let them tell us what do you want to do. We made suggestions and then we said, “But it’s up to you.” And they debated it and I’d say it was a great debate. And in the end, they’re the ones that decided that’s what they want. They want the 4-hour and they said, “We want our employees going across the street to the 10-hour discounted parking lot over at by Water 4 which is next to the 1620. So, it wasn’t that PGDC or the Park Plymouth saying, “This is what we’re going to do.” We let them decide to do that. So, that’s why we need to get a business association down there just for issues like this.

Desmond Egan:

Yeah. It’d be great to be able to get in front of everyone as a group instead of one offset as we tend to do it now.

Betty Cavacco:

All right. Do we have a motion?

Charlie Bletzer:

I’ll make it.

John Mahoney:

Second.

Betty Cavacco:

Discussion? All those in favor? Unanimous. Thank you, Mr. Desmond.

Desmond Egan:

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

All right. Sarah, do you want to come up? I’m sure it’ll be quick.

Sarah Levenson:

Oh, and I was loud enough without that. It’s terrifying.

Betty Cavacco:

And this is the Morton Park presentation. And if there are any town meeting members out there or in here, they really probably should pay attention to this because this will coincide with the raising of the parking fines that will be going to town meeting. Thank you.

[1:35:15]

Sarah Levenson:

Perfect. First and foremost, thank you. I know it’s been a long evening. This is not very long. It’s 78 slides. Just kidding. I’m just kidding. It’s not. Lots of pictures.

Betty Cavacco:

Yeah, you’re done. We’re good.

Sarah Levenson:

Where’s that hook or the gong, right?

Betty Cavacco:

Derek is off the hook. You’re right beside him, you know.

Sarah Levenson:

I know. I can take Derek. I won’t though. I’m not threatening you. We’re going to take a quick look at the situation we’ve talked about already. This is just a visual presentation, so if any of you have not been able to see what’s actually going on, this will give you that visual impact. We’re going to look very quickly at the annual town meetings from the late 1800s that talk about how Morton Park got here. I know it sounds super riveting but it is very important. And then finally, just a couple potential solutions that we’ll get to.

So, as I said, this is very visual. These are all collected from this year. This is right outside Morton Park on Morton Park Road. We all know that there’s a hundred car maximum and what happens is people either don’t want to pay their per car fee so they drop people off or they’ve reached 100 cars and they’re dropping people off. This is outside my neighbor’s yard on Morton Park Road. He’s right there. Obviously, it’s a safety issue. Yada, yada, you all know that this is not ideal. I’m going to try to blow through this so you can move on.

Another picture there, same thing just unloading dropping off on Morton Park Road. This is one of my favorites. This is coming out of the row road which is perpendicular to Morton Park. You see the white car–oh, are you going to be able to click links? Whoever has the thing. Oh, okay, sorry because I’m already anticipating the next slide. The gentleman in the white truck is parked at the top, the Morton Park Road is already blocked, there’s a person pulled onto Thoreau Road hoping they can park there, talking to the guy with the grill in the white truck and nobody can get anywhere. The person in front of me on the right is a resident just trying to get out. There’s no link in this one, sir but there will be.

All right. This here you can just see the Recreation Department worker just again all of these gentlemen and ladies are working really hard to try to keep things smooth and no matter how many you have there, it is impossible to keep it smooth. The drop-offs are just non-stop. So, you remember the guy in the white truck with the grill, here he is parked on Summer Street unloading a full-size grill that’s bigger than probably most of ours onto Summer Street and it gets better. Where’s the grill, sir? Here we go. You’ll be looking down Morton Park Road in this little video. Yeah, no worries. You guys want to hear a knock knock joke while we’re waiting? I do too. I don’t have any. My yard, I walk. Yeah. Yeah, right. Oh, I see you. Hold on, nice. Okay. He looks happy. There we go. The volume is key. No, it doesn’t matter. It’s okay but I mean right by everybody literally a half mile down the road from Summer Street. That’s a long way. It’s a long way. Thank you, sir. There’s one more so hang tight just so you know. No, this is not part of anything of mine but perfect, thank you.

So, just in in summary, this is outside the park. We’re talking outside the little park, people are entering through the woods across from Eversource. There’s a little path there. I walk my dogs there. I see the remnants of people walking through there and neighbors see it. Just the pictures I took, I had the gentleman in the white truck came up to me and asked me what my problem was. It’s not very comfortable at all. We know there’s been urination on private property. Morton Park Road is loaded with little kids, lots of new young families moved in here and they are going quick. Dogs too. I mean, we can’t have people speeding down that road. You obviously see people waiting in private yards and driveways. They’ve actually pulled on to driveways and lawns before. The trespassing is throughout the day when they’re coming and going.

[1:40:01]

Sarah Levenson:

And we even have a lady on Morton Park Road whose lawn was ruined. She put a brand-new lawn in, somebody pulled into her driveway. She said, “You can’t park here,” so they did a three-point turn and angrily skidded off and ruined her brand-new lawn. I would not be happy.

All right. Now, we moved inside the park and this is the last link. This is 58 seconds. If we can get volume, it would be ideal, sir. It’s not going to happen? Okay. Just picture super loud music because that’s what’s happening. And this is the main beach. Oh, it’s so much less impactful without the music but it’s all right. It’s okay, it’s okay. All right. The tunes guy over here. It’s all right. I promise I would have been done by now. It’s not my fault, Miss Madam Chair. Just kidding.

Oh, that was it? That was the whole thing? Okay. Well, that’s okay. No, the volume’s fine. I think there was a little more of the video but you get the idea, it’s jammed, right? There’s grills everywhere. Every tree is used for a hammock. There’s a ton of overcrowding. I’m not sure if you noticed how many people are actually in the pond, tons of people in the pond. Rules aren’t being followed. One of the rules is you can grill with Propane, but not charcoal. Hold tight, there’s a picture. There’s trash everywhere in the woods and the park is just not being respected.

This is a picture from my other neighbor’s yard with two BJ sized bags of charcoal being brought in on a Sunday morning. No charcoal allowed. This is just still a photograph of pretty much what you just saw, but on a different day. On the left, jammed, trash in the woods. Another neighbor sent me that picture from a Sunday morning. This is just from last weekend. Looks like somebody had a gender reveal on Saturday and it looks like it’s a boy. Congratulations. On the left, you can see that the no alcohol policy is definitely not being followed either. So, this is where it gets a little dry but just hang tight. It’s important.

So, essentially, Morton Park as it is now and this is all publicly available on the Plymouth annual reports. Dr. Russell had a little bit of land. He said he would give it to Plymouth for $1500. The way he got that $1500 is by Plymouth residents getting it together and giving him this money for the small original section of Morton Park. The key was it had to be kept and used as a park. It wasn’t specified as public, but he said, “I’ll give you this land for $1500 if you keep it as a park.” All that meant was don’t build a church here, don’t build a prison here, whatever. Keep it as a park. Big into nature. So, they did that.

The land was then sold to Nathaniel Morton for the price promised promising Dr. Russell who again originally sold the land that he as agent for the persons who had pledged money for its purchase would again ask the town to accept it as a park, which they did. So, it doesn’t matter what happens after that because they did accept it as a park. At that point, they wanted to make the park a little bit bigger. So, they looked at some abutting land and said, “How can we get this land and add it to Morton Park?” It wasn’t called Morton Park at the time but it is now. And the owners of these lands actually said, “This is a good idea.” And they either gave their land or sold it at a small fee. So, essentially Morton Park was built paid for and built by Plymouth residents with their land and their money.

It was then deeded to George Briggs, not sure who that fella is but it seems important. So, once it was–okay, there we go. It’s tiny and I don’t have readers on. To be presented to the town as a gift on condition that the town should hold it as a public park. So, that’s the first time the word public comes up. Public matters. But what was public in 1886? A little different than public in 2022. The population in 1885, which when this report was based on was 7,200 people.

[1:45:02]

Sarah Levenson:

There were no cars, no grills, no BJs, no Costco, no charcoal, no drop-offs, no hammocks, no music.

Finally, the last clear stipulation was respecting the park, and I love this one. This is the first one I saw when I started digging around. “Every man woman and child who goes to our parks can feel that they have a share in their ownership and may use them as their own as long as they comply with the simple regulations that are needed to preserve the ownership equally well for one and all,” and that is definitely not happening. So, a little bit of relatively dry but kind of fun stipulation. And if you look to the picture of the right, that’s what I saw running in the woods last weekend in Morton Park and that’s definitely not following any regulations.

So, what do we do? We’ve definitely talked about this for a very long time and there are a couple solutions and I will say right out front that these are just to start the conversation. I know it’s not going to be easy if this was easy, we wouldn’t even be here and it would be done. I know it’s not going to be easy, but all I’m going to ask is that we don’t do a head shake. Some you guys earlier talked about thinking outside the box and there’s a way to get things done. There’s a way to fix this.

So, there’s two solutions that I have just to start the conversation and we have till next June to get something implemented and I really believe the word deterrent is what we need to keep in mind here. So, the first potential solution would be Plymouth residence only. Now, there’s nothing anywhere in the documents on the annual records anyway as far as deeding that precludes this possibility. It may be challenging. We’ll have to look at the state level and what have you, but there’s nothing in there that says we can’t. The resources available are not designed for those crowds. The little bath house, the lifeguards, the land and trees alone in that main beach are not meant to be there.

As of right now, Plymouth residents are not able to enjoy the main beach in any way. And in fact, the Select Board was kind enough to sort of give us those side beaches. On most nice weekends, you can’t get to the side beaches because that hundred car max is reached in the main beach. So, you have empty side beaches and no Plymouth residents that can get to them because the kids working hard at the front well can’t let them in, 100 cars already, but they’re all at the main beach.

If we can do this, it has to be residents only. I mean, I’m sorry, it has to include walk-ins because if we only look at the cars, we’re totally ignoring the people problem and that nightmare at the top of Morton Park Road will only get worse. It’ll get exponentially worse. How do we do it? Well, you either have to be a Plymouth resident or be in a party that’s proof of Plymouth residency. And how do we enforce it? It has to be an adult town employee. I will literally volunteer for two Sundays a month, get me a T-shirt and I’m there. I will do it. And I’m not even kidding. There’s always policemen there. I feel very safe going down and saying, “Where’s your wristband? Where’s your wristband?” We need an adult who’s strong enough to do that. We can’t ask the kids to do it. A couple weeks of that and I think we’d see a lot less people. So, that’s one option. Second and last option, so we’re getting there, we’re almost done is to pay per-person. Think about if we don’t have the resources down there that we need for these crowds, we need funding to get those resources. So, let’s pay per-person. Right now, they’re paying, how much? $15, $20 a car?

Male:

$25 a car.

Sarah Levenson:

$25 a car. If you’re going to treat it like Water Wizz, let’s charge Like Water Wizz. $25 a person. So, if you have a car of five, it’s $125. No one is going to stay. Even if you’re not in a car, you need to pay to be here. They could receive a wristband. It’s different colors every weekend, whatever. Like I said, I know it’s not simple but I’m absolutely willing to help. Again, we’d have an adult town employee to walk through 10 a.m, 2:00 and 4:00. And again, if we’re consistent, I see this definitely changing the way people look at our pond.

Plymouth residents could even pick up their free season, a gold band or something with the date on it that they have. They can attach it to their beach bag or their running backpack or whatever they have or just even show your license that you’re a Plymouth resident, whatever. Both solutions have to include walk-ins or again, it’s just going to be an absolute unlivable nightmare at the top of Morton Park Road.

Finally, just in conclusion, it’s been way too easy to abuse the park. I give many, many thanks to the board here because you guys have listened to us for over two decades. It’s a lot and I know that. I mean, I listen tonight, you guys have millions and millions of dollars flying around that you have to manage. This seems so tiny and I thank you for your attention to it. We live right there and it’s our everyday life in the summer and in the weekends. It’s sad. It’s literally sad and scary. You don’t even want to leave your home there.

[1:50:04]

Sarah Levenson:

In order to really deter this, we have to make some significant changes. The Band-Aids aren’t working, the mild changes we’re making, they’re finding loopholes around. We have to do something significant to deter this. And if we can’t move on those first two solutions or at least variations of those solutions or even if we can, I think we still look to eliminate the following, which is any grilling. There’s not a single Plymouth resident who’s going to say, “Hey, let’s grab the mini grill and go grill burgers at Morton Park.” It’s never going to happen. I’ve never seen it. We eliminate grilling, that will either deter them from coming or maybe they’ll spend some money in Plymouth at one of our hundreds of great places to eat. No grilling at all I say, nothing on a tree, don’t hang hammocks, nothing on trees, no alcohol consumption, no loud music, no joy, no fun. But if you throw that in there, I think it’s going to deter and we have to have somebody enforce it. Sorry that was inappropriate, but thank you. I know it’s not simple. I think we should work all through this winter and spring and come up with something we can Implement. And I am here for every meeting and I will help. And so will everybody over here.

Betty Cavacco:

Well, Charlie looks like he’s jumping out of his seat to talk. So, I’ll let him open.

Charlie Bletzer:

I just want to say, Sarah, this is not a minor problem. This is a major problem. When you get residents that don’t want to come out of their houses in a neighborhood where they move to because of the resources that are there. You’re at Morton Park because of the pond and everything else. Now, you can’t use it because you have a lot of towners coming there destroying your properties and making you feel unsafe in your own homes? It’s not right. Our town manager has identified four areas. White Horse Beach has already been taken care of for the most part, okay? Because we put enforcers down there and police. We have a problem with Fresh Pond. Morton Park is the worse than Fresh Pond and then we have a problem on Drew Road. There’s no parking and they just pull their cars over the side of the road. It’s very dangerous there.

So, we’ve identified. So, we came up last meeting putting together possibly making those districts and putting the fines that instead of $25, $150, okay? Maybe that might deter them. I know somebody at FinCom thought it was unfriendly but then he wanted a tow and wanted to do boots. So, I don’t know which is more unfriendly and I said, my answer to that was, “It’s for people that are breaking the law. So, I I’m not worried about offending somebody that breaks the law.” So, this is not a minor problem. And I’ll tell you, I like the idea of the $25 rep, because we can use that money to have full-time maintenance people maybe down there. Definitely police officers keeping the peace. It might not take long, maybe one summer we could probably end this. Okay?

White Horse Beach, that was much worse than what you’re dealing with and that’s been taken care of. So, this is not a minor issue. We got to do something. We’ve talked about it. This is one of my goals is to make–White’s Pond, I went down there and I know people that live they went to the ponds of Plymouth because of that pond. They won’t go there because of what happens on the weekends. That’s not right. That is not right. So, let’s take backup ones. Let’s make it safe for everybody and come up with what paying to get in, more enforcement.

Sarah Levenson:

The police are awesome. There’s never not at least one policeman in the park at all times.

Charlie Bletzer:

And I saw the young kids, the young kids down there. I went down there actually a couple times myself after all these issues and I talked to the young kids and I said, “Look, please call the police.” I have three kids myself and I would not want my kid to be threatened. Derek, our town manager feels very strong about that. We had young kids working there and we don’t want them to be threatened. We had it at College Point, you saw they stab him. It wasn’t serious thank God, but that could have happened in any one of our ponds. So, this is not a minor issue, Sarah and I’m glad you’re bringing it up. We have to do something about this and like you said, we got a few months to get this done.

Sarah Levenson:

That’s right. Can we just be kept involved as far as like what–

Charlie Bletzer:

Well, I’ll leave it up to the town manager. I think you’d have full support from this board, I believe.

Betty Cavacco:

Well, I think we need to listen to the others. Mr. Mahoney and then if there’s no one else, I’d like to speak as well.

[1:55:08]

John Mahoney:

Sarah, good job. Certainly, the summer passed quickly and I think today or tomorrow is the first day of fall and I remember 10 years ago, we would hear the residents’ concerns and then you’d get into the fall or winter and when things were quiet and there was no outdoor activity, it would kind of like we thought the problem had gone away and we knew that it hadn’t. So, definitely we have time to put together a plan heading into the season of ‘23 to make sure that everything is correct. I get a kick out of you putting it up on the slides the data from 1885 and 1886 but I would certainly look to the town manager because I know we’ve gone down this road before. I don’t know if we already have it or not, but a definitive opinion from town counsel as to whether or not we can do what you’re suggesting.

Sarah Levenson:

I totally agree. We can only do what we can do. Yeah, of course.

Betty Cavacco:

As everybody probably knows, I live on White Horse Beach and that was a long time coming. It had happened for a decade before I arrived. It took four years with a new committee to make all the changes happen that actually happened. So, one of the biggest things that I think that it’s important is that we are consistent and that’s consistent in every one of our areas. The footprint is there with White Horse Beach.

Now, one of the first things I picked up on was free seasonal passes. I will tell you right now, that’s not happening for residents. You want to make it resident only? We put it under the beach program. We make Morton Park, Morton Park District. We make Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond District or we make them all because White Horse Beach is its own district. But you know what? Everybody complained about paying for a sticker and we can certainly do the same as guest passes for residents or whatever it is. The whole footprint is there already. Very simple transition into it. Me personally, I want all of our beaches and ponds for our residents because we’re too big to cater to other people. And I’m sorry, no one that’s going to go to a pond or a beach all day is going to go hit a five-star restaurant in Plymouth. They’re going to go home and shower, because if they don’t, I don’t want to be sitting next to them either. So, honestly, make it a district, pay for the parking passes because I’ll tell you, you can ask all of those people down at White Horse Beach that didn’t want to pay that will never say it wasn’t worth it. It completely changed the dynamic of that place. It’s all family-oriented, it’s all Plymouth residents and their guests, it’s all people go down the beach. More Plymouth residents are able to enjoy White Horse Beach than ever before.

Sarah Levenson:

May I ask a question about that?

Betty Cavacco:

Sure.

Sarah Levenson:

How is outside White Horse? Do you see people trying to park and are the–

Betty Cavacco:

No.

Sarah Levenson:

No? Okay. So, yeah.

Betty Cavacco:

I mean, we now have a private security firm and they were fabulous. Yeah, they were fabulous. We have officers on the beach in an ATV. I mean, there’s been a couple that tried to get in some way, somehow. I don’t know where they’re walking from. I know that because of the whales, we had some issues up on Manomet Point, but they’re not coming to the beach. I mean, we have a comfort station. There are no more porta potties down there and honestly, I would 100% support and be part of the group that makes this move forward as we did at the White Horse Beach District because that committee did some amazing work, and it’s there. All we have to do is follow it.

Sarah Levenson:

Perfect. There’s a lot of great suggestions here. If we’re stuck in some sort of legal issue where we can’t do what we did at White Horse, who knows, there’s so many good suggestions from all of the neighbors that would probably want to be part of that discussion. It’s definitely time. Thank you for that.

Betty Cavacco:

You’re welcome. Mr. Helm?

Harry Helm:

I agree that it’s high time that we figure out a solution for the several areas that are currently under stress and also one that can be flexible enough to deal with the whack-a-mole nature that once we deal with these, they’re going to appear somewhere else.

[2:00:09]

Harry Helm:

We’ve got 365 ponds. So, whether we deal with Drew Road, Morton, Fresh Pond and White Pond, that’s another one to add, they’ll find another place. So, it has to be flexible. So, in that vein, I do believe that the White Horse Beach Parking Committee, the sticker program did need to go through town meeting approval.

Betty Cavacco:

To create a district.

Harry Helm:

To create a district, okay.

Betty Cavacco:

Yes.

Harry Helm:

When does the warrant close for the spring town meeting where it’s September 20th right now? When does the warrant close?

Derek Brindisi:

Offhand it closes I want to say it’s in early December, the warrant itself. Well, we’re going to open the water–

Harry Helm:

It opens in early December.

Derek Brindisi:

Right after town meeting, we’re going to open it.

Harry Helm:

Okay. And what would you just guess? I’m not going to hold you to it, when’s it going to close?

Derek Brindisi:

Brad’s going to look at it right now. He’s on it right now. He’s looking at when it’s going to close.

Harry Helm:

And I have a reason for this line of questioning because I think it’s important because strategy and planning is always important and knowing your time frames is always important. And it may not be just snapping our fingers or the group or whatever, but we need to know what the deadline is for the warrant closing because if you want it in place for next summer, it’s not going on the October town meeting. It need to go on the spring town meeting.

Betty Cavacco:

It’ll go on spring special.

Harry Helm:

Well, spring special.

Betty Cavacco:

And one of the good things is that if we know that this is the direction that we are going in, Mr. Helm, we can move forward with everything based on town meeting approval.

Harry Helm:

Oh, yeah. No, I agree.

Brad Brothers:

Madam Chair? We’ve got annual town meeting warrant opening on the last Tuesday in October, which is October 25th that’s opening and then closing on the third Wednesday in December, that’s the 21st of December.

Harry Helm:

So, it actually closes–September, October, November, one, two–three months from now. We got 90 days.

Betty Cavacco:

Piece of cake.

Harry Helm:

We don’t have a lot of time.

Sarah Levenson:

What can I do?

Harry Helm:

I don’t know.

Betty Cavacco:

Piece of cake.

Harry Helm:

I mean, I don’t like to be a nattering nabob of negativism. I just prefer to be a nattering nabob of realism. So, we got 90 days.

Betty Cavacco:

Mr. Brindisi?

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah. So, we’ve talked a little a bit about this in the past. Ms. Levinson has come in during the summer months to talk about some of the frustration in the neighborhood, and I know Mr. Malaguti is here and he has said publicly in the past that the Natural Resources Committee was going to take this on. And so, we’ve talked internally with department staff. Once that agenda is organized, we have already committed town staff to work with the Natural Resources Committee to try to look at these issues. We talked about having the Parking Committee look at districts, creating districts. So, we’re just, at this point, we’re ready, willing and able to assist however we can.

Betty Cavacco:

Like I said, I don’t think it’s as difficult heavier lift as some people may think. If we can follow the same footprint as we did on White Horse Beach then it would be fairly simple.

Derek Brindisi:

We have the model, I’m sorry.

Harry Helm:

Well, I would agree with you but once again, I mean, I’m a realist here. You’ve got an interesting problem at Morton Park, okay? And that’s the walk-ins. I mean, they’re parking all over the place. They’re parking in an empty Shaw’s parking lot. I know that it’s been bought and all that. White Horse was great with the parking district and I know that there’s some people who are sneaking their way into the Lobster Pound and all that stuff and not getting noticed, but that’s not a big deal. I mean, you’re seeing a lot of pictures, lines of people waiting for people who are parking in Shaw’s or over in Summer Reach, and all that sort of stuff. So, I mean, if it’s only a solution about automobiles, it limits the number of people using that park to 100 people.

[2:05:07]

Harry Helm:

People have shown a propensity to go say basically, “Okay. 100 people, we’re going to park somewhere else and walk.” And that’s something that we’re not really seeing down at White Horse Beach. So, there is a little bit of a wrinkle in what’s going to have to be determined for that. And I would also maintain maybe Fresh Pond and by the sounds of it maybe White Pond and Drew Road. So, I’m not disagreeing with you. I think we got to deal with this. I’m just saying once again, we have 90 days to put a warrant article together. We need to get on it.

Betty Cavacco:

One of the things–

Charlie Bletzer:

Go ahead, Betty.

Betty Cavacco:

I’m sorry, Charlie. One of the things that Derek and I had discussed is to reach out to whoever the owners are of Shaw’s parking lot and actually Jersey burying the whole thing off so people can’t park there. And I’m quite sure the town could probably come up with the Jersey barriers.

Charlie Bletzer:

You got businesses though that need that access.

Betty Cavacco:

Well, if they’re not at Shaw’s, the businesses already have their parking.

Charlie Bletzer:

I think the $25 a person would be fantastic because they’re not going to pay it. They might pay it once up, but I don’t think they will so that is probably one of the best solutions right now.

Betty Cavacco:

That could be additional to Plymouth residents.

Charlie Bletzer:

No, and I tell you, the $25 can be used. We can have private security down there. We can have maintenance people down there and we can put Porta Johns down there, because there’s residents down there that would probably like to use the Porta Johns. And it would all be paid for by the $25 fees. It’s not going to cost the taxpayers anything. So, that 25, that’s definitely number one, I think so.

Sarah Levenson:

Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Okay. Mr. Brindisi?

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah. So, one, I’d say is although we have a model, it’s going to be complicated to prevent the whack-a-mole phenomenon. We haven’t even talked about Hedges Pond as you know another place where folks could arise. So, I think because of that, we have to cover all our bases it’s going to be complicated it’s going to take time. But I would also add to the folks that are in the room that when we talked about increasing the parking fines, Administration and Finance Committee, they voted against us. And so, what I try to explain to them that we’ve had neighbors in all these different areas that are concerned about their safety during these months. So, I would encourage folks from the community that they may want to mark on their calendars October 15th, the town meeting because this is going to be taken out, the ability for the board to increase parking fines. And if that doesn’t pass at town meeting, that’s going to just take a tool away from us that we’re hoping that we can use as we go through this process with the Natural Resources Committee.

Betty Cavacco:

Another thing, Sarah you should reach out to the Committee of Precinct Chairs and ask to do the same thing because they are the chairman of each of the precincts. So, I think that would be important for you folks to be able to show what you’ve shown us tonight and explain the problems that you’ve had all along. We just need to fix it.

Sarah Levenson:

Who is that? Can I ask you later and you–okay, perfect. Thank you.

Charlie Bletzer:

And finally, my last comment is White Horse Beach was a real problem. So, when we sent the police down there, well where did they go? They went back to Morton Park, because Morton Park I think for quite a while was when the police went down the enforcement, it really solved a lot of problems there. Now, maybe I’m wrong, but they all went to White Horse. Then when they stopped White Horse, they ended going to other areas. So, we have to be prepared. We have to be consistent in all our pawns because once we clean up Morton Park, which we’re going to be able to do, they’re going to find somewhere else to go. So, we have to be prepared where are they going and we have to prepare to do the same thing so it doesn’t happen in another neighborhood.

Sarah Levenson:

Yeah, standardize it.

Charlie Bletzer:

Yeah. As Harry said, they’re just going to move somewhere else.

Sarah Levenson:

All right. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

And Sarah, please reach out if you have any questions, I can help you with whatever you guys need.

Sarah Levenson:

We’ll do. Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

You’re welcome. Okay. Now, the next is the Town Manager’s Report. Do you have anything for us this evening, Mr. Brindisi?

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah, I do have a few items. So, the first item I just want to bring up because I know it received a lot of public attention last week, we received numerous phone calls for folks that were waiting in traffic over at Home Depot Drive.

[2:10:08]

Derek Brindisi:

And so, I know I spoke to a few board members regarding this and we receive again lots of phone calls. So, I just kind of want to give an update. Part of the dilemma we faced last week was as you know part of the traffic mitigation for the Oasis and the 40B project in that area was to add a right-hand turning lane, which is now been constructed. Once they completed that part of the project, they had to relocate the electrical panel and then re-loop the traffic signals and that’s where the hiccup arise last Thursday. So, when they were doing the electrical work, we didn’t have a police officer posted there as a traffic detail which is what caused some folks at an hour and a half in line just trying to get out of Home Depot Drive. So, that’s been remedied. The DPW Director reached out to the general contractor last Thursday night to ensure that the final construction of the electrical panel would be completed on time, which was completed on time and that we’d have a traffic detail in place. So, that’s been remedied. I haven’t heard any of the complaints since then. So, we can’t predict what the traffic’s going to look like once the Oasis opens up but we’re hoping that with the right-hand turn and the new looping system, we’ll be able to mitigate any traffic delays.

So, moving on. Yesterday was a great day. The town took part in a press conference yesterday with Secretary Card from Environmental Affairs and staff from the Coastal Zone Management Department. And we were able to receive $2 million grant award, which is going to assist the town in a beach nourishment project at Long Beach. So, again, $2 million the town is going to receive. Lots of credit goes to David Gould as you know Director of Environmental Affairs, Kerin McCall, one of our environmental technicians and Tiffany Parker, grant writer. The three of them got together about three or four months ago. They identified a need one and then they wrote the grant application which again is bringing $2 million to the town. And just as a side note, that $2 million is the largest grant award CZM has ever granted to any municipality. So, again, a lot of credit to those three individuals.

Just relative to hurricane season, as you all know we’re entering hurricane season. Our emergency manager is hosting a tabletop exercise in a couple weeks so that we can kind of practice our ability to respond to catastrophic and weather events.

And then as I as I pointed out last week, I’m hoping that every week I can kind of give you updates on the goals and priorities that you set forth for this fiscal year. So, relative to one of our goals around communicating and engaging with the public, we have a couple of things that are already actively working. So, we brought together a committee that is looking at the website upgrades and we’ve already asked staff and you’ll start to notice it and start to see things come off the existing website. There’s a lot of old antiquated information up there, old policies that are up there. There’s information up there that is conflicting with other information. So, the departments are going through that first. They’re trying to give that a clean look. And then hopefully, with town meeting approval, we’ll have the funding so that we can go ahead and migrate from the old website to the new website. And as you know, this new website is going to have the 311-system built into it. So, again, starting to prepare for one of our goals of really engaging the community and giving them good information.

And then on top of that, Anthony has now created an Instagram page for the town. So, as you all know folks receive information in different ways. Some love Facebook, some love Twitter but the younger generation, they only get their information on Instagram. So, now, we have those three social media platforms that we’re going to be pushing information on a regular basis. So, thank you Anthony for doing that.

And then on top of all that, so last week, I was able to convene a meeting with. So, as you know, I meet with the department heads weekly. We talk about what are their job goals or the kind of the day-to-day operations of town business. And I haven’t in my first six months, I really haven’t had the opportunity to engage our division heads. So, those are mid-level managers. So, last week in this room at 4:00 pm, we convened a meeting with all of our department heads and our division heads. And so, we really talked about the trajectory the town is on. We talked about the FY ‘23 goals and priorities that you have set forward and kind of tasked us with reviewing and moving forward with. And so, I heard a lot of good feedback at the end of that conversation. Folks who have been here working in town for over a decade have said that they’ve never had the ability for the collective management group to get together and really forecast where we’re going to be in years to come. So, a lot of good information came out of that meeting. And the fact that we’re going to meet on quarterly basis now because they really want to have that type of conversation one-on-one with folks.

[2:15:15]

Derek Brindisi:

So, more to coppme on that, but again, really trying to show our shared vision with the file and rank.

And then last, I’ll end with some fun stuff. So, I’m still trying to learn about this but apparently our Chamber of Commerce on Halloween, they have a trick-or-treating event that goes down Main Street. And so our, human resources department has reached out to the Chamber and they trying to see if the town hall can be a part of that event. So, we’re going to ask all of our different departments to dress up and be part of the trick-or-treating event ‘and give out candy on Halloween. Again, it’s just I look at ourselves as we’re a business in downtown, right? In fact, I would argue that we’re the largest customer service organization here in Plymouth. In fact, we went around the room and I asked fire, police, DPW, treasure collectors, town clerk’s office, all of their touch points per day and they said to me and we added up but we probably touched the lives of 2,000 people per day across all of our different departments so again just this fun thing we’re trying to do working with the Chamber on just trying to be more approachable and engaging with the community on not just business but fun stuff as well. So, pending any questions, that’s all I have.

Betty Cavacco:

I want to be able to pick the board’s costumes. Does anyone have any?

Dick Quintal:

We got them on. What do you mean?

Harry Helm:

I’ve actually been participating in this since the very beginning.

Betty Cavacco:

Yes, but you have to be a board. You have to do it by the board now.

Harry Helm:

I dress as a pirate, period.

Betty Cavacco:

Anybody have any questions for the town manager? Mr. Mahoney?

John Mahoney:

Derek, I’ve talked to Anthony typically at the end of the meetings and I know a month or so ago, he was working to get a handle on the Twitter account for the town and he did that. I really don’t go on Facebook. I know what Twitter does and I’ve seen his–it’s all you, right? I’ve seen his tweets, but let’s go to Instagram because I don’t have an account. I don’t know what that is. So, is that strictly photographs with the description or what do you and can you give us an example of anything that you’ve done so far there?

Anthony Senesi:

Sure. So, Instagram is mostly photos. There is text that goes along with the photos. It’s kind of similar to Facebook in that way but it’s very much more photo based. You have to have a photo with a post. So, we’ve had the Instagram for just under a day. We have already have 68 followers, which is very exciting. There’s three posts I did the past 24 hours or so. The most recent one was that the DPW is hiring a snowplow drivers. So, we did a really nice graphic kind of promoting that. We also did a post on the Coastal Zone Management grant for the $2 million, that also was there. And then also just like an intro photo just to kind of go along with the branding that we’re trying to address throughout all the social media platforms.

John Mahoney:

Obviously, is post just the same thing, you know how many people–tells you how many people they–do people share these things? Same thing like Facebook?

Anthony Senesi:

They do.

John Mahoney:

They could share them and then you ultimately can track how many people looked at it or commented and stuff like that?

Anthony Senesi:

Correct. We have very generic data metrics: who shared it, who liked it and who commented on it.

Betty Cavacco:

It gets better and better all the time. John, do you need some help setting up an Instagram account? We’ll help you out. Anything? Do you have something?

Dick Quintal:

Yes. Just a comment on a few things that Derek touched on. I happened to be doing personal business in Town Hall. It was last week. And I heard from a department head and a few employees that you did have this meeting and I didn’t go into the meeting asking about the town manager. I’ve just listened and I said, “Really?” I said, “That’s very nice.” And I also learned in another conversation that fire prevention will be moving in the building department.

[2:20:08]

Dick Quintal:

I’ve been an advocate of that for I don’t know how long. If you built a building and you have to have all these plans looked at and designed and inspected, it makes perfect sense that that’s in this building. So, whatever you’re doing, like you said, they’re very appreciative and I got good feedback on just a couple people that happened to bring it up. So, congratulations to you on that.

The second thing is you better get a little money in your budget for the candy because sitting on the VSB, I know how many–it’s a ton. I mean, this ain’t going to be two little bags. I mean, it’s a lot of candy. So, I’ll be more than happy to donate some candy to you but yeah, it’s a ton.

Betty Cavacco:

We got wholesale. We’ll take care of that.

Derek Brindisi:

Honestly, a lot of these ideas are coming up from our frontline staff and we’re just giving them an opportunity to be creative, right? So, yeah, although it’s great for all of us to take credit for it but honestly like they’re just coming up with ideas. Every Tuesday, there’s more ideas and we just say, “Just go with it.” We’ll just keep going with it and trying to do the best that we can.

Dick Quintal:

What I got out of it, they said that the morale in the building has gone up. So, that speaks to itself. That’s probably the most important thing in what I was trying to say. And I know that and I kind of mentioned it to John once, a couple meetings after reading. I said, “John, you’re not going to hear like you know when it’s not–remember? That’s what I meant and that’s exactly what I meant by it and it is, and that’s good. Everybody seems to be happy, everybody’s working, we’re retaining people.

Betty Cavacco:

Working as a team.

Dick Quintal:

Yes, and that’s the way it should be, so.

Derek Brindisi:

Absolutely.

Dick Quintal:

Very good job.

Charlie Bletzer:

And also, I can’t wait to–what Lee Hartman started last year Christmas, the tree, the decorations. I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen this year, because–

Betty Cavacco:

Lee Hartman? Dick Quintal started it last year.

Charlie Bletzer:

Lee was the acting town manager.

Betty Cavacco:

And I did all the shopping.

Dick Quintal:

It was working together. I didn’t do the shopping. I got the bill.

Betty Cavacco:

You got the bill.

Charlie Bletzer:

But I can’t wait to see what happens this year. I guess, all the employees are going to look forward to it and I can’t wait to see Kelly’s clerk’s office all decorated and everybody in Santa outfits.

Dick Quintal:

We’re going to have a contest this year for whoever decorates the best. Right, Betty?

Betty Cavacco:

The front doors, yeah, let’s do it.

Dick Quintal:

Harry, we’ll go around and we’ll judge and we’ll pick one.

Betty Cavacco:

I think you guys should do a Yankee Swap too.

Dick Quintal:

No, I don’t know. We better stay out of that one.

Betty Cavacco:

Well, we can. So, all right. Everybody all set there. So, now, we have New business/ Letters/ Old Business, is there any? Mr. Quintal?

Dick Quintal:

This is old business and probably new business. As I look out in the audience, I see Everett out there and we sit on the Cemetery Committee. The committee seems to be having a problem to get the quorum to have the meetings, and Kenny King has requested a couple. None to his fault, but what it’s doing is it’s holding us up. This as a board and a town from hearing some of these recommendations and getting some things done. We have a hold on purchasing burial lots right now, and that’s my biggest concern with the extending, extending, extending. So, I don’t know if we can have them come in without the board. I mean, they are advised to meet with this board but I think if anything Derek, you should find out if anything’s really oppressive because to tell you honestly, it’s gone on too long. We need to hear the recommendations, vote on them and send it to town meeting like we’re supposed to. So, I guess that’s just for sure.

Derek Brindisi:

Yeah, I’ll follow up to try to figure out what’s going on and I will report that back to the board.

Dick Quintal:

Thank you.

Betty Cavacco:

Maybe put that on an agenda, future agenda.

Dick Quintal:

Yeah, that would be good.

Betty Cavacco:

One of the things I’ve heard from people too is that they’re planning their end-of-life stuff, and it’s a little hard to purchase your funeral services but not knowing that you cannot purchase your plot. So, that leaves a lot of unfinished business for people. So, I think it’s important that we need to move forward away from this band that we have on cemetery plot.

[2:25:00]

Betty Cavacco:

I only have one new thing for new business unless there’s anyone else. As we start bringing in all of our barrels, the ugly green DPW barrels, I had actually talked to Bill Keohan about it before. I’d like to see if there would be a cost and what that would be. We should wrap all our barrels like we did all the electrical boxes because those are some of the ugliest things I’ve ever seen, and they are strewn everywhere through downtown, on all of our beaches and they look terrible. And also, the new comfort station we have, I’d like to see if we could get that wrapped as well. You know, a nice Plymouth scene. I just think some of the small things that we can do to make the town look a little bit prettier because like I said, those barrels drive me crazy. They’re old, they’re rusty, they’re gross and maybe wrap them up pretty and with beach scenes or whatever, seagulls. I don’t care what they are as long as they look better than they do.

Dick Quintal:

Madam Chairman, when you’re going to dump them, they’re probably going to get old for the trash.

Betty Cavacco:

Well, no, because they have bags. They have bags on them.

Dick Quintal:

They use bags now?

Betty Cavacco:

Yeah.

Dick Quintal:

Okay.

Betty Cavacco:

Okay. Anything else? Motion to adjourn?

Dick Quintal:

Motion.

Harry Helm:

Second.

Betty Cavacco:

All those in favor? Motions adjourned. We’ll see you in two weeks.