Freetown Select Board Approves MBTA Drone Deal, Sets Bay Shore Speed Limit

FREETOWN — October 7, 2024 — Freetown Select Board approves MBTA drone deal, $1 library lease, and 25 MPH Bay Shore speed limit at packed October 7 meeting. The board voted unanimously to accept a memorandum of agreement with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority for a drone equipped with infrared, zoom camera, and a speaker-spotlight system for emergency railroad incident response, at no cost to taxpayers; Police Chief Russ Rose said the department's first drone builds on a 2023 mutual aid deployment from Dartmouth that he credited with saving a child's life. The board also set a 25-mile-per-hour speed limit in the Bay Shore neighborhood under a 2016 town meeting authorization that had never been formally reported to MassDOT, a gap Town Counsel is now addressing. Town Clerk Cheryl Estrella reported 1,711 vote-by-mail ballots mailed as of the afternoon of the meeting and secured a unanimous board vote for no fewer than two police officers at each polling location for the November 5 presidential election. A resident who serves as water commissioner said he was "disappointed" that a discussion of exempting town buildings from a new state firearms prohibition law — H.B. 4885 — had been delayed for months, with Town Counsel confirming the exemption requires a town meeting vote now expected no sooner than spring. The board approved a five-year lease of the James White Memorial Library building for $1 per year, allowing the town to fund repairs for the first time, and unanimously approved $65,625.95 in ambulance abatements for September 2024.