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Tennis courts, a field pavilion, safety work along a regional bike path and 140 balcony seats inside Town Hall are among seven projects the Winchester Select Board backed Aug. 10 as they move through the town’s Community Preservation funding process.
The vote awarded no money. It endorsed the applications as written and sent them on to the Winchester Committee on Community Preservation (WCCP), which decides what to recommend. Anything recommended still needs fall Town Meeting approval.
What the vote does
All seven involve property under the Select Board’s care, custody and control — the town body legally responsible for that land. The WCCP’s 2026 application process expects that body’s approval before a project on town land advances.
Select Board member Michelle Prior moved to accept Town Manager Christopher Senior’s recommendation. Michael Bettencourt seconded, and the four members participating — Chair Anthea Brady, Vice Chair William McGonigle, Bettencourt and Prior — voted yes.
Fields, courts and a pavilion
Senior’s July 31 memo lists four recreation projects: Packer-Ellis Tennis and McDonald Court resurfacing, both sponsored by the Recreation Department; a Leonard Field Pavilion master plan sponsored by Friends of Winchester Recreation; and a Nutile Field master plan filed by the Recreation Department with the Winchester Youth Baseball/Softball Association.
Packer-Ellis continues work already underway. The town has finished a second round of conceptual engineering, and the next phase would produce construction documents, permitting and final design.
The wider restoration also involves accessibility, parking, drainage and stormwater; the memo does not say which pieces this request covers.
Nutile changed most before reaching the board. Anthony Ansaldi, of the town manager’s office ,met a youth baseball representative at the field in July.
“They had a good conversation, and they changed the scope of the project for the good,” Senior said, calling the resulting master plan “really, really needed to happen down there.”
Trees, a trail and a balcony
The Permanent Street Tree Committee, with the Sustainability Office, seeks money for tree planning and planting.
Committee member Julia Osborne told the board earlier that night the committee had just lost a grant for a townwide tree inventory.
“We really have not been replacing trees as they’re coming down, and many of our streets have no trees, no street trees anymore,” she said.
That loss, Senior said, makes “the WCCP funding for their actions is really critical.”
Walk & Roll Winchester filed for safety and paint upgrades at points along the Tri-Community Greenway, the 6.63-mile path linking Winchester, Woburn and Stoneham. The request covers specific locations, not the full trail.
The Department of Public Works filed the seventh, restoring permanent seating in Town Hall’s Maurer Auditorium — 140 balcony seats, per the memo.
How far an August endorsement goes
Senior asked the board to back all seven through Town Meeting. That prompted the night’s one real exchange.
“For the Select Board to commit on Aug. 10th that we support it when we haven’t voted positions on warrant articles and we haven’t seen the motion language and we haven’t seen any potential concerns or risks or cost changes, that feels a bit premature to me to vote that tonight,” Prior said.
The board usually takes warrant positions later, she noted — “sometimes the evenings of town meeting.”
Senior said the WCCP wanted more than a filing permission slip.
“This is an endorsement of the application,” he said, “not just the right to apply, but you support the application.” He allowed the board could revisit later: “This is all new. We’re kind of making this as we go along.”
Bettencourt was ready.
“Management has reviewed them at this point,” he said, adding the town has been “building the plane while we were flying it.”
Brady said changed costs or scope could change the board’s position, but for now, “I think this is our acknowledgement of the projects in their current form.”
Second full cycle under a 2024 law
Senior said the summer’s coordination came too late and “need to come much earlier in the process next year.”
Winchester adopted the Community Preservation Act on Nov. 5, 2024, creating local money for open space, recreation, historic preservation and community housing. A fiscal 2026 pilot round sent nine projects worth about $1.04 million to Town Meeting, which approved them all.
The WCCP met Aug. 12 for applicant questions and fiscal 2027 deliberations, with Nutile Field fences, the greenway and tree canopy work on the agenda. What it recommends, and for how much, is not yet decided.
Will Dowd is a Massachusetts journalist who covers municipal government and community life for Winchester News. He is also the founder and editor of The Marblehead Independent, a reader-funded digital newsroom.
