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Charlton planning board debates scope and grant use as townspeople bid to update master plan
Summary
Planning board members disagreed over which consultant to hire for a new master plan after the town received a $100,000 grant; concern centered on whether CMRPC’s higher-priced, grant‑augmented proposal offered better outreach than lower-cost alternatives such as Barrett Planning Group.
CHARLTON, Mass. — Town planning board members spent the bulk of a lengthy Nov. 19 session debating which consultant should prepare an update to the town’s master plan and how to use a recently awarded $100,000 grant.
Board members compared three finalists — Barrett Planning Group LLC, the Central Massachusetts Regional Planning Commission (CMRPC), and a consultant group represented as Dodson/Fickler — focusing on differences in price, in‑person outreach and what each firm would include in the work scope. A recurring question was whether CMRPC’s proposal, which the board learned assumed the town’s $100,000 grant and therefore listed a much larger total project cost, created an uneven playing field.
"I just don't wanna spend a 150,000 of taxpayers' money on something that we can get for 50,000," one board member said during the discussion, expressing a common concern that the town should get demonstrable value for the added expense. Other members pushed back that CMRPC proposed a more extensive program of stakeholder interviews, mapping and community outreach that might produce a more durable planning product.
Board members asked for clearer, apples‑to‑apples comparisons. Several suggested asking each respondent to reprice its submission to exclude grant funds and to specify the incremental cost of adding additional in‑person outreach events. The board discussed a range of practical steps: asking the firms to state how many in‑person community workshops they would deliver for a $50,000 town-paid scope, requesting an itemized cost for additional outreach, and consulting Andrew, the town’s chief procurement officer, about legal procurement options and the grant’s stipulations.
Members repeatedly emphasized community engagement as an important deliverable. "I care about having that community engagement, having those big meetings," another board member said, describing the value of large in‑person workshops for generating ideas and buy‑in.
No final award was made. Motions were proposed during the meeting to select Barrett and later to select CMRPC, and members debated conditional approaches, but a motion to finalize selection was withdrawn before a vote. The board agreed instead to seek procurement guidance from the town procurement officer and to ask each bidder for a clarified, comparable proposal that specified how much additional in‑person outreach would cost.
The board also discussed whether the $100,000 grant could be used as a supplemental allocation applied to any selected consultant or whether it was tied to a particular proposal. Members directed staff to ask the procurement officer for advice and to return the item to the next meeting with answers about grant requirements and an updated set of bidder responses.
Next steps: The board expects to clarify the grant terms with the procurement officer and return to the consultant-selection item at a future meeting; no contract was awarded on Nov. 19.
