Wellesley Select Board not putting Vote 17 question on ballot; Capital planning committee discussed

The Wellesley Select Board during its Nov. 18 meeting decided not to put a non-binding question on the March ballot regarding the lowering of the voting age in local elections to 17. The procedurally-focused agenda item was a follow-up to Special Town Meeting’s approval of a motion to make this Vote 17 request of the Select Board.

See the full meeting recording on Wellesley Media. More than a third of the roughly 3-hour meeting was devoted to the FY27 Facilities Capital Plan Presentation by Facilities Director Joe McDonough (See “Multi-million dollar answers to where Wellesley’s town building projects stand & what’s ahead”).

At the recently completed Special Town Meeting, Dana Hall School senior Anya Khera and Wellesley High senior Kourosh Farboodmanesh (both Town Meeting members) brought forth a citizen petition. They sought Town Meeting authorization for the Select Board to place a non-binding public opinion advisory question on the March 2026 town election ballot, and if voters approved the question, to petition the state to enact special legislation allowing qualified Wellesley residents aged 17 to vote in town elections.

The board discussed various statutory ways that such a question could wind up on the ballot, including the Select Board of its own accord putting a question on the ballot, 10 residents asking the board to do it, or by vote of Annual Town Meeting. Board members bounced questions off town counsel.

Going the Special Town Meeting route to put a non-binding question on the ballot has no precedent based on town staff and counsel recollection, said Chair Marjorie Freiman. While an unusual approach by the proponents, the strategy could demonstrate the level of public interest in the topic. It could also speed up the process by a year vs. waiting to take action at Annual Town Meeting, which happens after the annual town election.

Board member Colette Aufranc raised concerns about the preparation, including voter education, that would be required for the board to endorse putting such a question on the ballot. She cited other high priority matters, including the MassBay property/housing issue, now on the board’s work plan.

Board member Tom Ulfelder voiced his respect for the proponents, and said (ahead of the vote) that he hoped they would go the Annual Town Meeting route if the Select Board took negative action that night, as it unanimously did.

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Town-wide Capital Planning Committee

Later in the meeting, Aufranc led discussion of plans to form a Town-wide Capital Planning Committee (directly relevant to the earlier presentation by FMD Director McDonough). The topic has been on Select Board agendas in recent months and other town bodies have been and are being brought into the loop as well. A draft of the plan was included in documentation posted along with the Nov. 18 Select Board agenda. Aufranc sought comments on the draft and on the committee’s possible make-up.

The town has a capital planning process involving its departments that results in a five-year capital plan. But the Select Board has cited the challenge presented by a bunch of significant projects being proposed and that has led to the idea of forming a Town-wide Capital Planning Committee.

The board’s policy subcommittee in presenting the concept to the Select Board in late September cited numerous reasons for forming such a committee, including:

Converging Capital Needs and Rising Costs. The Town is entering a period where major projects totaling up to $400 million are emerging. Construction costs are rising, debt affordability is tightening, and multiple departments are advancing projects at the same time. Without a structured, transparent process, the risk is that capital projects will be considered in isolation, which can drive up costs and place unsustainable pressure on taxpayers. Establishing a Town-Wide Capital Planning Committee allows a more holistic approach to capital prioritization.

Discussion points during the board meeting included what the make-up of the multi-disciplinary committee would be. Aufranc has examined how dozens of other communities address this. The draft document shows the committee comprising two Select Board members (one would be the committee chair), a Board of Public Works member, a School Committee member, and a citizen representative. Non-voting members would include the town’s executive director and others; Aufranc recommended including the Natural Resources Commission and Library directors as non-voting members (ex officio).

Board member Beth Sullivan Woods said she’d like to see such land-owning groups represented as full members (fellow member Kenny Largess said he’d like to hear thoughts from those groups’s leaders on this). She also had objections to the role that such a committee would play, and how it would square with Select Board responsibilities to prioritize capital projects.

Board members articulated the potential benefits of having such a planning committee, which they say could make more predictable and formal the process through which major capital projects progress. Aufranc said the school air conditioning projects now under discussion might have been further along with a broader capital planning process in place. “It’s the perfect example of, all of a sudden it became an emergency and kind of got pushed to the front. I don’t think that would have happened if there’d been a formal meeting every year that was looking at the whole plan…,” she said.

Ulfelder said he sees the committee as “a useful, additional tool to try to bring some order and make some sense about the financial impact on families, residents generally, small business owners here in town.” He acknowledged that the town currently is reaching the edge of our taxpayers’ ability to pay their tax bills… we’re on an unsustainable pattern of growth in terms of our taxes and our expectations financially…”

More from the meeting:

• The citizen speak section at the start included four residents who aired concerns about the state’s planned disposal of 45 acres of MassBay property to use for housing (40 of those acres are forested land adjacent to Centennial Reservation). Chair Freiman encouraged members of the public to attend the Dec. 8 visioning session at which the town seeks to gain ideas to include in the input it gives the state ahead of the Commonwealth issuing a request for proposals to developers next year.
• As we reported recently, Wellesley College plans to tear down an old dorm and put up temporary buildings for the next 8-10 years that will serve as swing space while more extensive renovations are made to existing dorms on campus. The College recently went before the Planning Board for this Project of Significant Impact. The Select Board, for its part, was focused on any possible traffic impacts, and the college’s study was peer reviewed by an engineer for the town. Traffic impact is largely expected to be contained on campus. None of the reps who attended and were prepared to answer questions were called on to do so. The board voted that the college’s traffic evaluation was professionally prepared and that projected traffic conditions resulting from the project meet town standards.
• The town opened the warrant (aka, list of articles) for Annual Town Meeting, set to begin March 30.