Here is a selection of the committee and board meetings for the week along with my selected highlights from the agendas. The biggest one this week is the Board of Selectmen meeting, which you’ll see below has a jam packed agenda.
Be aware that changes to the meeting schedule are known to happen throughout the week. For an updated list of meetings, visit the town website.
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
- Board of Selectmen, 5:30 pm @ Hearing Room – Southborough Town House (agenda with packet)
- Begins with closed Executive Session related to purchase of property (likely for the Public Safety Building project) and complaints against a Town employee/official (possibly more discussion on the petition asking for Leo Bartolini’s resignation from Zoning Board of Appeals).
- In public session – Reorg of board; Presentation on Recreation Facilities Study; Closing of warrant for Special Town Meeting (including article for disposition of Fayville Hall and Citizen’s Petition to eliminate granting of Use Variances); and related to Park Central – Presentation on Water System Report related to project, Discussion of decision process for the townhouse development under a Use Variance, and future public forum for Flagg Road – Broadcast live and replayed by SAM*
Wednesday, August 24, 2016
- Zoning Board of Appeals, 4:30 pm @ Town House – Hearing Room (agenda) Agenda Highlights: The Residences at Park Central – discuss decision and order of conditions – Broadcast live and replayed by SAM*
Thursday, August 25, 2016
- Conservation Commission, 7:30 pm @ Southborough Town House, Hearing Room (agenda) Agenda Highlights: 15.73 acre parcel on Chestnut Hill Road (former Johnson Farm) – determine applicability of wetlands bylaw jurisdiction and verification of dillineated resource area
*Southborough Access Media will broadcast the meeting(s) live on Verizon-37 and Charter-192. Click here to see this week’s schedule with rebroadcast times.
(Photo by Susan Fitzgerald)
How to spend your summer vacation if you care about the impact on Southborough of the largest project proposed here since the Sudbury Reservoir in 1897:
BOS at 5:30 PM 8/23
http://www.southboroughtown.com/sites/southboroughma/files/agendas/board_of_selectmen_-_agenda_8.23.2016_0.pdf
ZBA at 4:30 and again at 7:00 PM 8/24
http://www.southboroughtown.com/sites/southboroughma/files/agendas/zba_agenda_8.24.2016.pdf
Conservation Commission at 7:30 PM 8/31
http://www.southboroughtown.com/sites/southboroughma/files/agendas/concom_0.pdf
** DEADLINE FOR PROVIDING COMMENTS TO THE ZBA ON PROPOSED CONDITIONS FOR A PARK CENTRAL AGREEMENT IS TUESDAY NOON 8/23 **
Why it is important to weigh in on conditions. See decision below from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
http://www.southboroughtown.com/conservation-commission/news/park-central-certificate-secretary-deir
Agendas for today’s BOS and the 8/24 ZBA meetings were revised yesterday, 8/22/16:
http://www.southboroughtown.com/sites/southboroughma/files/agendas/bos_revised_1.pdf
http://www.southboroughtown.com/sites/southboroughma/files/agendas/zba_revised_2.pdf
The only change that I see to the selectmen’s agenda, is that they are no longer discussing a complaint against a member of the Town. Instead, the closed executive session is only to discuss real estate. More concerning maybe the change to the ZBA agenda. I struggled to find what the difference was. It was A few words “and to vote upon”
It’s not clear to me whether that just means that they are voting upon the decision process the project needs to take, or the project itself.
They word is they plan to rush through the conditions, close the public hearing and vote on the project even though the planning board and conservation commission have not finished their review and the water report is not complete.
If you have the ability to be at this meeting and voice your concerns, now would be the time…. and possibly your last chance.
It is safe to have all traffic from Park Central egress onto Flagg Road, turn left and traverse to Main via Deerfoot.. So say the traffic safety experts citing statistics and guidelines accepted by MassDoT, and the ZBA is buying that. But wait. Isn’t safety a matter of degree – like the freshness of fish? A codfish, gutted and iced right after capture remains “edible” for 21 days when held in ice. I know about such things from work on a taste panel in a food science lab in Gloucester. We rated quality over a range from excellent to putrid.
The ZBA has approved a user variance to turn BOTH ways onto Flagg via John Boland Road. So what about the allowed Flagg/9 merge and what about all the added traffic that will surely flow onto Lovers Lane, Lynbrook and Clifford? All omitted from the safety study – like we have been invited to taste cod, but what’s on the plate is herring.
ZBA meeting today, Wednesday at 4:30. Safety comes in shades folks.
The Planning Board, in a 7/19/16 letter to Secretary Beaton, is on record recommending “Mitigation would be the exclusion of traffic from the proposed development onto Flagg Road.”