FM #1351 - Franklin, MA Economic Development Subcmte Mtg - 01/08/25

Franklin Matters Radio

This session of the radio show shares the audio recording of the Economic Development Subcommittee meeting on Wednesday, January 8, 2025 in Council Chambers. All 4 members of the subcommittee participated in Chambers (Hamblen, Sheridan, Frongillo & Chandler).

Quick recap

• Goals update, discussion on setting what priorities there should be
• Open Space plan not yet approved by State, comments sent back to Town and they will take time to adjust and incorporate
• Round among the subcommittee as they shared their priorities, except for Chandler
• After the round, Town Administrator Jamie Hellen - The Crossing and 40r would probably be best to start with. Home business, taking a reasonable step forward re: water and sewer. Current bylaws restrict auto and food prep from home use, as well as medical. At scale, it gets to be a problem for the infrastructure. Possible joint discussion with Board of Health, Health Dept, along with DPW to talk about the issues they see. Attempting to provide an overview to someone to answer "How does someone start a business, and what are the triggers for the growth steps?" How to ensure the property owner is responsible for their damage that could be caused
• Frongillo comes back to offer his priority, (1) shared parking with initiatives/incentives, residential downtown parking permit, others do it; 19 Dean case for the managed shared parking - (2) downtown business use, a few minor exemptions would be good to look at to enable active store fronts (3) we stopped at downtown dimensions, didn't get into the frontage, setbacks, etc. which are a massive difference to enabling development; has drafted starting points for each of these 3 points
• Per Jamie, If there are bylaw changes required, we would need to get those started by July in order to get those thru the process, before the Nov elections
• Cycling back to the 40r discussion, a 40r draft was prepared a year or so ago, could be picked up from there

Motion to adjourn, passes 4-0

The recording of the meeting runs about 55 minutes.

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Franklin TV video is available for replay -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n11fImC7CE4&t=126

The agenda doc -> https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif10036/f/agendas/2025-01-8_edc_agenda.pdf

My full set of notes in one PDF -> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zpUk1_QkADUkb-iCbJGP9CKvXRx2yj-8/view?usp=drive_link

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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.

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