The Coastal Resilience Advisory Committee voted Oct. 28 to approve its third-quarter report (JulySeptember 2025) to the Select Board and to release a companion press statement summarizing 2024 accomplishments and the committees 2025 priorities.

Leah Hill, the towns coastal resilience coordinator, presented project updates. "For the Francis Street Beach improvement project, we did some additional coastal modeling to see if underneath that boardwalk structure, if there needs to be, like, harder infrastructure to reduce flooding. And, luckily, we don't, so that is great," Hill said. She said the work group had chosen a "dune swoop" design and that the project will proceed through schematic design, cost analysis and operation-and-maintenance planning, with a target of completing the 30% phase in 2026.

EasyStreet mitigation is in a scope-development phase: Hill said staff will increase outreach, perform a pump-station feasibility study and update coastal-flood modeling to evaluate potential impacts on nearby properties.

Funding debate: members focused significant time on how to finance near- and longer-term resilience projects. Matt Fee urged beginning planning and smaller early investments now rather than waiting for later capital cycles: "I know this is a big number, but we don't wanna push this off. If it says 2030 or 2050, that doesn't mean we start working on it in 2050." Joanna Roach and others said previous letters and outreach to the Select Board had generated little traction and pressed for more specific, repeated budget recommendations in quarterly reports to keep projects front-of-mind with the Select Board, Capital Committee (CapCom) and Finance Committee (FinCom). Members discussed assembling a 1-to-3-year timeline tying projects to likely funding sources and grant opportunities.

Committee actions taken: by roll call the committee approved the third-quarter report (unanimous 'Aye' among participating members recorded on the transcript). The committee later voted to approve the press release and authorized its distribution to town administration and to partner boards and commissions. Both votes were recorded by roll call; names recorded in the transcript voted "Aye."

Communications and outreach: the committee agreed to revive the "Coastal Resilience Thursday" social media schedule. Staff will assign committee members specific projects to draft short social posts; members asked staff to produce analytics from prior posts to guide future content.

Next steps: staff were assigned to (1) draft the regulatory-referral checklist (see separate item), (2) add CRP excerpts and MCFRM figures to future packets for site referrals, (3) supply the committee with the capital requests and proposed departmental budget items so the committee can align recommendations with CapCom/FinCom timing, and (4) assign social-media topics to committee members before the next meeting. The committee agreed to move the November meeting from Nov. 25 to Nov. 18.

Provenance: report presentation begins at 39:00 and the committee vote to approve the report is recorded at 62:35 in the transcript (see excerpts).