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HomeMy WebLinkAboutKMB 02/08/2018�p,t5fielrt� a_ KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL AFFILIATE RECEIVED TO ffl, CLERKS OFFICE 2818 MAR 21 PI2:05 "Empowering residents, businesses, and governmenlCi Li F I EL D make Mansfield a greener, cleaner place to live, work"q jj Ll S F T Ts Meeting Minutes for Feb 8, 2018 7:00 pm Town Hall Attendees: Nancy Wall, Pat Colbert, Martha O'Connell, Jason Dodd, Jeff Ward, Erik Bednarek, Mike Healey, Kevin McNatt (Historical Committee representative), Kevin Dumas (Town Manager), Rebecca Foster (Mansfield Mother's Club representative) and Neil Rhein (on speaker) Absent: Mike McCarthy, Ana Newell KEEP MANSFIELD BEAUTIFUL Welcome & Call to Order Meeting called to order at 7:06. Nancy welcomed the new Town Manager Kevin Dumas, Kevin McNatt from the Historical Society, and Rebecca Foster from the Mansfield Mother's Club. Minutes accepted from previous meeting and signed by Pat Colbert. Treasurer's report- Mike Mike provided the following financial update: • Balance from Town Hall is $10,403.97 • Balance with Mansfield Bank is $532.80 • We have received the following donations: • $100 - Auto Body Pros • $100 - Christine Dumouchel • Paypal donations (not yet reflected in Mansfield Bank balance, some fees will betaken out): • $500 - Barbara Clarke • $100 - Kathleen White • $500 - Steve Schoonveld Official welcome of new members -All • Mike Healey and Ana Newell are our new members. Welcome! Relay for Life Event - Pat • Pat has joined the Leadership Team for Relay for Life and wondering if the group would like to form a team for the event. Mansfield has joined with Foxboro and Sharon to create one event. This year the event will be held at Ahern Middle School in Foxboro on June 16th from 4pm to June 17th at 10pm. You can come for as long or as little as you would like. There is no fee or fundraising requirement to join a team. Relay is also offering non-profit organizations to setup an information booth at the event if they chose. Relay is emphasizing this event as a way to bring friends and family together to support cancer awareness. The members of the group voted to join a group. Pat will set up the team and provide further information. Boosters Basketball Game - All • After the fun and excitement of last year, we will be participating again this year! It is scheduled for Thursday, March 29th at 6:00. Neil, Mike M, Jeff, and Erik are definitely in. Jason and Mike H. are thinking about joining. Neil is going to contact Dave Kobasa to see if he is interested in playing again. All the players should wear their Cleanup t -shirt. Nancy, Martha, and Pat will setup a booth and cheer on our team. Xfinity program for Non -profits - Neil • Xfinity Center is offering non-profit 501c organizations an opportunity to earn money by working at a food/beverage booth during concert events. Neil is going to get more details, but his understanding is they require a minimum of 6 shows, with 6 people working each show. Neil will confirm the time commitment, but it is at least from 7:00 - 11:00 for each concert, plus a one-time Tips training class. • The non-profit organization will get a percentage of the earnings and could receive $3,500 - $4,000. If we work the show, all the proceeds will go to Keep Massachusetts Beautiful since Keep Mansfield Beautiful is not 501c. • Neil is not sure if we can select the concerts or if Xfinity assigns them. Kevin Dumas provided Nancy with the list of concerts and Nancy will distribute to see which concerts we are interested in working. Neil will also be recruiting people through Keep Massachusetts Beautiful. Hazardous Waste Da v - Nancy and Mike H. The BOH Hazardous Waste Day is scheduled for April. We discussed whether or not we would want to have any recycle bins, etc. at the event. We decided that we would not participate, but would advertise the event via social media. Mike H. is going to give Neil information about the event. Clean-up 2018 - All • It is now time to begin planning for the 2018 Cleanup. We reviewed all the tasks and assigned new people to some of Neil's previous tasks. Jason will now contact the police department and EMTs to handle traffic and dangerous areas, Mike H. will pick up the flyers at Allegra, and Martha/Mike H. will distribute the flyers around town and make sure the schools send them via the E -newsletter. Nancy will update the spreadsheet with this information. • Neil will write the fundraiser letter. Nancy and Pat will stuff and mail. Kevin Dumas said we can get envelopes and pre -paid stamps from the town. Last year we enclosed the new brochure. We will not be enclosing the brochure this year. Nancy will send out Thank You notes to people who donated. • Pat will update the banner with the new date and fill out the paperwork to guarantee it gets hung over Route 106 from April 9th - April 20th. • Pat will contact the Precinct Captains to make sure they will participate this year. All the Precinct Captains will be given a scripted email to use when communicating with participants. We want to make sure everyone gets the same information. We will use the email format that Jeff created two years ago. Pat will provide the template. • We want to encourage participants to take "before and after' photos for us to post on social media. • We will be placing all the trash in front of the Town Hall again this year. This was very effective last year and actually made it easier for the Town, Waste Management, and Unity to pick everything up in one location. We will need to recruit some people with trucks to help pick up the trash. • We reviewed comments from last year's cleanup. One idea was to make this a two day event. Since we already do this for the Fall Cleanup, we are leaving it as our one -day signature event. Pat and Jason will combine Precincts this year since Jason has very few participants and these precincts are next to one another. • Neil reported that the t -shirts are a new design this year, to be used by all the affiliates of Keep Massachusetts Beautiful. The front of the t -shirt will be like the "Entering town" signs. • Mike M. needs to schedule the Litter Index sometime in March. • Pat will send out an email blast to all the community groups the last week in February. Flower Barrels - Nancy and Pat • We are hoping to have the flower barrels ready by the end of March/first week of April. Pat needs to check with Ray/Alan on when the pansies will be available. • We are switching the summer flowers to pink angel begonias. These flowers are heat tolerant and bug resistant - a dream come true! • Nancy will start soliciting the businesses and notifying them about the change in the summer flowers. We will most likely need to purchase some more barrels since a few of the barrels got damaged last year and need to be replaced. We will replace with the plastic barrels. • In mid-March, we will need to prepare the barrels like we did last year. This involves mixing up the soil, topping off with new soil, and adding fertilizer. This will be done on a Saturday morning, sometime in March. Painted Barrels - Pat • Ryan Mehigan's 8th grade art class just completed a barrel. It is an underwater theme. It is currently in Pat's basement since she doesn't want to put it out until the weather improves. It will replace the barrel at the intersection of Rumford and Old Colony Way. His class is currently working on a second barrel. It should be done by March. • Friends of Memorial Park are working on a barrel to place at the new Memorial Park playground. • The Adult Center is still working on the Candy Land theme barrel. This barrel is slated to go in front of the library. • One family is painting a dragon barrel. This barrel will be replacing the barrel at the Fire Station. • All of the 9 primed barrels from last year have been painted or are in the process of being painted. Pat will ask DPW to prepare 10 new barrels for this year. Adopt -a -Spot - Martha • Neil contacted Guerrini about the trees on the embankment. They need to be sprayed in early spring. Martha will follow up with Guerrini to guarantee this gets done. • The Girl Scout garden at the Mansfield Green needs to be sprayed for poison ivy and the East Common garden is overgrown and needs some work. Martha will follow up with both Girl Scout troops on making sure these things happen. • Lack of mulch last year was a big problem and Martha is hoping that we have mulch this year. Martha will follow up with DPW on the status of mulch this year. • We would like to pursue the Adopt -a -spot Veteran's Memorial Project. Kevin McNatt has information about all the 28 military monuments in Mansfield. Neil would like to have a new page on the Town's website listing all the monuments. When you click on a particular monument, you will receive a picture of it, its location, information about the person, the person's story, pictures of the person, and who is maintaining the site. If no one is maintaining the site, it could be adopted. It would be wonderful if this could be done by Memorial Day. It would also be nice to have a weekly series in the Mansfield News depicting one of the veteran monuments. We talked about the weeds at the Route 106 embankment, as well as, other weeds around town. Kevin Dumas did a weed control program in Attleboro and said he would allocate the $9,000 needed to perform this in Mansfield! This needs to be done in May/early June and it needs to be done at night. For our next meeting, we will highlight the areas on the town map that need to be treated. This was another dream come true and all the members were speechless! Kevin Dumas placed lights under bridges in Attleboro and suggested this is something we might want to do in Mansfield. The lights can change colors so you can change them for different holidays. We loved this idea too! Kevin Dumas also suggested we think about converting concrete islands around town with perennial beds. If there is irrigation on a town area next to the island, they can extend the irrigation to the island. Lowney Common - Kevin McNatt The name of the North Common has been changed to Lowney Common, after the owner Walter Lowney of the Chocolate factory. The Historical Society has placed a beautiful monument at the common. Kevin wanted to know if we could replace the North Common sign with a new Lowney Common sign. We all agreed to replace the sign. Kevin Dumas suggested we come up with a standard style sign. We told Kevin Dumas we tried to implement this idea many years ago when we purchased the green and white signs for the South Common, North Common, and East Common, all of which were approved by the Board of Selectmen. However, a few years ago, a Selectman changed the design to the new black ones you now see at the Library and Town Hall. The black ones are already started to show wear -and -tear. Kevin Dumas suggested we come up with a new design and use granite for the posts. We all agreed to work together on this new design and roll out the new signs as needed. Recycling for apartments /condos - Neil • Neil wants to look into providing recycling for apartments and condos. Others towns seem to offer these services so it can be done. Mike H. is going to look into the current bylaws and determine what needs to be done to change them in order to promote recycling. Keep Massachusetts Beautiful - Neil Neil reported that a Girl Scout is doing a "no plastic straws' campaign for her Silver Badge Project. This involves replacing plastic straws with paper ones and working with restaurants to reduce the number of straws by asking patrons whether or not they want a straw. There are similar campaigns in seaside communities. Neil reported that straws are in the top 5% of litter. We all agreed to support her efforts. Neil was happy to report that Dunkin Donuts will be eliminating all use of Styrofoam cups by 2020. Keep Massachusetts Beautiful has been on a campaign for the past year to make this happen. Congratulations! The Nip Bill to add a 5 cent deposit on each nip is working its way favorably through the Massachusetts legislature. Administrative - Nancy • Keep Mansfield Beautiful received a letter from Trevor Humphrey, a Dean Street resident, highlighting his concerns about the Mansfield Duck Race. He had three major concerns. One, the amount of ducks left behind in the water. Two, the trash left behind by the families. Three, the stress left on the fish. We all agreed this is something that needs to be addressed by the Mansfield Parks and Recreation Department. Nancy will follow up with them. Action Items Nancv Update Cleanup Excel Task Spreadsheet with new responsibilities. Work with Neil to prepare fundraising letter, get pre -stamped envelopes from Town Hall, and stuff envelopes with Pat. Begin soliciting businesses for Flower barrels. Distribute Xfinity concert schedule. Notify the Parks and Recreation Department about Duck Race complaint. Pat Fill out paperwork for hanging Cleanup banner on Route 106 from April 901 - April 20th Work with Bay State Envelope to modify the banner to have new Cleanup date. Contact the Adult Center on status of the Candy Land barrel. Request 10 more primed barrels from DPW. Help Nancy stuff envelopes with fundraising letter. Talk with Ray/Alan on status of pansies for Flower Barrels. Send out email blast to all community groups notifying them about the Spring Cleanup. Contact Precinct Leaders from last year to see if they are interested again. Prepare scripted email for Precinct Leaders to send participants. Setup KMB as a team for Relay for Life - need a team name! Martha Contact Kyle Guerrini about Route 106 embankment Send out Adopt -a -Spot letter for 2018 participation. Guide Girl Scouts on needed improvements on Mansfield Green and East Common. Work with Kevin McNatt on the Veteran Memorial Adopt -a -Spot program. ason Contact the Police Department and EMTs on assistance for Cleanup. Mike M. Schedule the Litter Index for March. Mike H. Give Neil information about the BOH Hazardous Waste Day event for him to publicize on social media. Investigate what needs to be done to provide recycling to apartments and condos in town. Neil Write fundraising letter. Let us know the details on volunteering at Xfinity Center. All Identify locations around town for weed control. Men - prepare for March Madness game! Next Meeting is Thursday, March 8th Meeting adjourned at 9:30 Minutes approved on: Secretary signature: