Wellesley Select Board now publishing background documents along with meeting agendas
We’ve been encouraging the Wellesley Select Board for years to include background documents along with its meeting agenda items when it publishes the agendas online, and as of last month, it has begun doing this. We’ve seen this approach by other communities, like Natick, and it really makes following along with meeting discussions much easier for the public. It also lets you study up on the agenda items in case you might want to take part in public comment during the meeting, as allowed.
No more wondering what Select Board members are talking about when they refer to things in “the package” during a live meeting—now you can see the package. Now whether you want to see “the package,” sometimes weighing in at a couple hundred pages, is another matter.
For the June 25 meeting, if you were watching the meeting and wondered what new restaurant Mortadella Head’s layout would look like, you could refer to the diagram in the packet (we broke the news earlier this month about Mortadella Head’s pending arrival at the former Pizza Peddler space on Washington Street). You could also peruse a rundown of the Select Board’s draft work plan for FY25.
Other town boards and committees, including the School Committee, Design Review Board, and Wetlands Protection Committee, are already good about publishing documents in advance of meetings. Hopefully other town bodies that don’t already do this will follow suit.