Wakefield Town Council Notes -- March 24, 2025

Here's a brief summary of our not-so-brief Town Council meeting on Monday, March 24:

• The Town Council interviewed two professional search firms to support the recruitment process for a new town administrator. Both firms, Community Paradigm Associates and Municipal Resources, have significant experience recruiting for municipal leadership positions in Massachusetts, and both maintain a deep bench of contacts within the field. The Council voted to retain Community Paradigm Associates, pending a reference check.

• The Council reviewed several budgets for the fiscal year that begins on July 1, 2025, including the Veterans Services Department, Health and Human Services Department, Department of Public Works, Retirement Department, and Human Resources Department. The Human Resources budget includes health insurance and benefit costs for all Town and school employees, which accounts for about half of the spending reviewed at this meeting. Similar to other communities, our health insurance costs are expected to increase by approximately 14% in Fiscal Year 2026 due to skyrocketing pharmacy costs and rising health care utilization. To mitigate this increase, the budget includes a reduction to Wakefield's annual contribution to our unfunded liability for post-retirement benefit costs -- a reduction that we should reverse in future fiscal years when health insurance cost increases moderate. Taken together, these budgets total $30 million, or about 27% of Wakefield's total annual spending, and they will increase by approximately 4.3% in Fiscal Year 2026.

• We reviewed and approved several warrant articles for presentation at Town Meeting in May, including an article for $2.5 million for trash and recycling collection. Of note, our costs for trash collection are expected to be level-funded in the new fiscal year due to the negotiation of a new ten-year contract for waste disposal, and a reduction in the tonnage of trash produced by Wakefield residents. Other warrant articles approved included $400,000 for the design and engineering of a replacement salt shed at the DPW yard on Nahant Street, $2.6 million for the construction of a replacement fueling island for municipal vehicles, and $1.3 million to remediate environmental contamination off of Butler Avenue.

• The Town Council approved a 99-year lease agreement with the MBTA for the Wakefield-Lynnfield Rail Trail Extension. We have been waiting for this agreement from the MBTA for over two years, and it will allow us to finally open the portions of the Rail Trail that have been constructed in Wakefield.

• We voted to create a seven-member search committee to screen resumes for potential town administrator candidates. We will determine the exact composition of the committee at our next meeting, but it likely will include a combination of existing Town employees and Wakefield residents.

• The Council approved a copyright infringement settlement with Prepared Foods Photos for $9,000. We also appointed the Town Planner as Wakefield's representative to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), with the Town Engineer as an alternate. Finally, we approved the warrant for the Annual Town Election on April 22.

• Due to the length of our meeting, we tabled to a future meeting agenda items related to a request for municipal trash pick-up for a condominium association on Nahant Street and a proposal by Councilor Vincent to eliminate the bike lane on North Avenue.

Our next Town Council meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 14 at Wakefield Community Access
TV and on Zoom. We expect to start at 6:00 PM with an executive session, with open session to begin before 7:00 PM.