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Task force lays out next steps and timeline for 2229 Main Street acquisition effort
Summary
Committee members agreed on initial steps for 2025—budget legal costs, notify EPA/DOJ and direct town counsel to craft negotiation milestones—while urging flexible timelines tied to remedial-action completion and EPA readiness rather than fixed dates.
At the Oct. 15 meeting, task force members concentrated on Chapter 14 of the draft report, which lists recommended next steps, sequencing and a milestone timeline for possible acquisition and reuse of 2229 Main Street.
Members coalesced around a set of "initial steps" the task force considers appropriate for 2025: budget legal costs, hire or secure counsel and instruct town counsel to prepare a negotiation plan and draft protections for town liability. "Budget the lawyer. Hire the lawyer. Get advice from the lawyer," one member said during the discussion about priorities for 2025.
The task force debated whether to use specific deadlines. Several members cautioned against rigid dates. A common framing emerged: describe initial steps as likely in 2025, use ranges (for example, a Select Board decision on acquisition between 2026–2028) and make later items contingent on remediation milestones. Technical staff explained that a reliable institutional trigger is the remedial-action completion documentation and the EPA "site-wide ready for anticipated reuse" milestone—sometimes referred to in the discussion as SWARU—which generally follows construction-complete and some institutional controls.
Speaker 10, a technical advisor, summarized the trigger plainly: "Construction complete is a big target...the remedial actions are complete." The meeting record lists five remedial-action elements that must be completed for the site: bedrock groundwater, overburden groundwater, off-property assessments, holding-basin work and soil remediation.
Members recommended presenting milestones and timing as estimates and clarifying that many events are contingent on EPA actions. The task force agreed to red-line and rework Chapter 14 so the Select Board receives a clear but not overly prescriptive timeline ahead of the planned Select Board briefing.
