This session shares the Franklin (MA) Town Council Meeting of Wednesday, January 8, 2025. All 9 of the 9 members participated in Council Chambers. 

Quick recap:

• 2 public hearings on the accessory dwelling unit bylaw changes were opened and closed after discussion. Later the legislation for action approved by 9-0 vote to move both measures to second reading
• 2 public hearings on sign bylaw changes as proposed were opened and continued to the Jan 22 meeting without further discussion. Later in the legislation for action, those two measures were also rescheduled to the Jan 22 meeting by 9-0 votes
• Presentation on Franklin Ridge, a senior affordable housing project update was provided that with the recent funding made available on 2 front for Town work and for the private development of the 60 units, given the current schedule, ground could break in June 2025. Bryan Taberner, Director Planning & Community Development provided the update.
• Bryan continued with a second presentation on the sustainable housing inventory (SHI) or informally called the 40b requirement. Bottomline we are currently at 10.86% (above the critical 10% threshold) with approximately 1,000 units currently permitted or in the pipeline of approvals. If all of those units were indeed built (could be some # of years) we could increase to about 12-13%. Question then becomes, what should our goal be (besides remaining above 10%)?
• 2 items approved to enable the respective water and sewer connections for the Franklin Ridge project as mentioned earlier.
• The last item in legislation was acceptance of additional fund for the Senior Center etc.
• Interesting point in the Town Administrator's Report. The home rule charter request to exempt the town from paying for legal notices in print newspapers was signed by the Governor. We have an email alert process for any one with an email address to enable notification of such legal notices

Let’s listen to the meeting recording which runs about 2 hours.  Audio link -> 

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The Franklin TV video is available for replay ->   https://www.youtube.com/live/7dQWhWlHRW0?&t=208 

The agenda and released documents for this meeting ->   

https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif10036/f/agendas/tc_agenda_1.8.25.pdf 

My full set of notes (in one PDF) can be found online

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S-qr25XiQvmFi_gBNBvjrwUaeoK2ZukH/view?usp=drive_link 

Screen grabs of the presentation on housing (40b) ->    https://photos.app.goo.gl/pR2DTs2eaifKxWFo9 

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We are now producing this in collaboration with Franklin.TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) or 102.9 on the Franklin area radio dial. 

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For additional information, please visit Franklinmatters.org/  or www.franklin.news

If you have questions or comments you can reach me directly at shersteve @ gmail dot com

The music for the intro and exit was provided by Michael Clark and the group "East of Shirley". The piece is titled "Ernesto, manana"  c. Michael Clark & Tintype Tunes, 2008 and used with their permission.

I hope you enjoy!

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