WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE – 12/23/24
COMMUNITY PRESERVATION COMMITTEE
At its Thursday meeting, the Community Preservation Committee unanimously voted to halt any further spending of CPC funds on the adaptive playground project, pending the outcome of a vote for town support of the project at May’s Annual Town Meeting.
Additionally, the CPC voted 8-1 to end project funding for the historic McFarland-Sanger House, as no progress has been made since a restoration proposal was approved nine years ago, and voted unanimously to transfer the management of funds for existing tail projects to the new Trails Committee. CPC halts funding for adaptive playground engineering plans (Article by Nick Schofield, 12/22/24)
SCHOOLS
Elementary School Building Committee. At its Tuesday meeting, the Elementary School Building Committee was presented with an issue of well depths that arose while drilling for a geothermal test well at the Charleswood School site, and reviewed the infiltrometer report. They also saw a presentation of design updates of the plan at 90% completion. The Committee further discussed the possibility of creating an adaptable playground at the Charleswood School, regardless of whether the proposed adaptable playground at Marathon School moves forward. Geothermal testing, water infiltration among ESBC topics (Article by Susan Gonsalves, 12/18/24)
School Committee. At its meeting last Thursday, the School Committee met with the Select Board and Appropriations Committee to review the FY 26 proposed school budget. The budget requests were presented, and the proposed adaptive playground at Marathon Elementary discussed. Additionally, the proposed school calendar was approved without changes at this time. Due to the mixed results of the calendar survey, committee members noted they felt uncomfortable making changes to the current holidays. Proposed budget, adaptive playground top multi-board discussion (Article by Susan Gonsalves, 12/20/24)
SELECT BOARD
At its last meeting, the Select Board voted 4-0 to promote Lt. Scott van Raalten to the role as depute police chief, following discussion.
The board also discussed the FY26 budget, hearing from Chief Financial Officer Kyla LaPierre, who shared the preliminary budget information with all departmental requests, except for the School Department’s, which was still being finalized. The preliminary numbers showed significantly higher departmental requests than FY 25, and the board noted that cuts would need to be made and work would need to be done on the budget. The board cautioned residents and town departments about adding financial articles to the warrant for May’s Annual Town Meeting, and stressed the focus on economic development to generate more revenue. Select Board votes to promote van Raalten to deputy chief, hears update on FY 26 budget (Article by Nick Schofield, 12/18/24)
CONSERVATION COMMISSION
At its meeting last Tuesday, the Conservation Commission declined approval of the release of three new foundations, which had been amended hours before the meeting down from the initial request for the release of ten foundations in November. The commission noted that the last minute filing did not give them enough time for review to make decisions that night and discussed the required documentation.
The Commission also heard from project representatives regarding the widening of Hayden Rowe Street, and discussed management plans for dealing with removal of an invasive knotweed plant on a portion of the roadway, noting concerns that some of the plants fell on private property, outside of the project’s scope of work. The hearing was continued to January 7th. Conservation Commission denies last-minute request to release foundations to The Trails (Article by Nick Schofield, 12/19/24)
MAIN STREET CORRIDOR UPDATE
There has been continued progress with service transfers from the overhead systems to the new underground systems. Crown Castle has finished their works, and Eversource had transferred all properties except for three to the new underground system. Verizon and Comcast have completed a walk with the Town, as their utilities follow Eversource in transferring their services over to the new underground system. Comcast is expected to commence work soon. Coordination efforts are underway to remove existing utility poles from Wood Street to Ash Street and overhead wires from the police station to Ash Street as soon as possible. Weekly Construction Advisories will begin back up when there are weekly updates on the project again.