January 7, 2026 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript
January 7, 2026 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee
Call the meeting of the Capital Improvement Planning Committee to order at 6 p.m. on January 7th.
We're in the large hearing room and in the town building and on Zoom.
And I'm going to review the agenda. So this is, as I said, a hybrid meeting because we are in the town building and on Zoom. I have to read the OML statement. So this meeting may be recorded, and if recorded, will be made available to the public on WICAM as soon as possible after the meeting.
Public will be excluded from executive sessions. We're not having one, so it's no big deal. Today, pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law. If this meeting has remote-only access, no in-person attendance by members of public will be permitted. That is not the case today. If this meeting has remote access, which it does, one may watch it or participate remotely at the meeting link that can be found. I'm not going to read this out loud, but it's available on the town's website.
Okay. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so in person or on Zoom. Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. And so attending in person, we have Brian, Liz, Kelly, and John. And attending on Zoom is Brad. So we will be needing to do roll, call, vote for any votes that we take. And I'm going to go ahead and review the agenda. And then we can do announcements and public comment. So 6 p.m. is called the Order Review Agenda for Public and Announcements. 6.05, public comment and members' response. 6.10, continue to review of the Excel spreadsheet reflecting consolidated departmental capital requests for FY 2027 to FY 2031, including answers to questions from department managers and revisions to requests. Potential vote of the committee's position on ranking such requests. 7 p.m., we're going to discuss content, revisions, and potential vote on the draft of the committee's report to the town manager. I left out of time, but at 9.20, we're going to review and vote to approve the minutes of December 17th, 2025. 9.25, topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair. 48 hours prior to posting, if any, and setting the times of our next meetings. And 9.30, hopefully, adjourn. So is there anybody in the queue for public comment? So no one there for public comment? One member of the public? Do I not want to make public comments? So we are all set there. I do not have any announcements. Does anybody else have announcements? Brad, you all set? Yep, all set. Okay. All right. So I want to go ahead and get started on discussing capital. So I sent you guys, I forwarded you a bunch of responses to questions that I had based on our last meeting and based on review of going through the spreadsheets. I had sent out to various members of town staff and they had sent back. And I think sort of highlights of those, if you didn't get a chance to look at them, Christine from schools did get a quote for the security, which was the radios. It was, as I understand it, Brian, correct me if you think I read that wrong, did include the full request. So not just the phase one or phase two, because she hadn't done the estimate previously. And that amount did come in significantly lower than her placeholder. I think her placeholder was 200 for phase one. And I think it came in at 135 for everything. So that was good news.
On fields, I still have a question outstanding, but did try to pull a little bit further on costs that we're currently experiencing as a result of the baseball fields not being playable. And what it seems like to me from those responses is that they are used, but they are not being used for games, that they, whenever they have a game, they're doing an away game. So they're not necessarily experiencing field rental costs, but they are having to pay for busing, which is costing about $500 per trip. And obviously, they reiterated the cost of the septic needing to haul a site is costing, I think they said $150,000 range. And what I didn't get an answer on yet that I've asked a couple times different ways is the question Brian had asked earlier on, which is, we have a project that was in the plan originally for FY29. It was called phase three, the high school fields project, which is from 2017, there's a document attached that shows kind of the sequencing of rebuilding the football stadium, swapping the softball and tennis courts, all that those were phase one and phase two were done. Phase three was the baseball diamonds in that plan, it's moving the base, the two baseball diamonds and making room for a multi use, multi configurable rectangle. I'm sorry, trying to get this that is in that plan, and the project that was on the docket for 29 was phase three, which links back to that document, but there was also a second project that was in the plan then and still in the plan now for 75,000 design and $2.5 million of fields. To build rectangles where the baseball diamonds used to be, it seems redundant, which Brian had said from the beginning, I can't, I've yet to get an answer, I don't think you've gotten an answer, confirming whether or not that actually is redundant or not. It seems like that second one should come out, but I can't get an answer, so in the later years of the plan, I'm tempted to drop it to low until we get an answer, if we have it all right. Okay, so that was fields, and I sent a request to IT, because it wasn't clear to me in their requests. We have in the plan, one of the security projects, we have it phased the way that he's got the expenditures laid out, so it was $425,000 total, phased over three years. We have it as three projects. He answered me today, but he didn't really answer my question. He gave me more detail on the projects, but didn't really answer the question of, is that supposed to be one project with a three-year spend, or is it supposed to be three projects? And so, I'll follow up again, just to get that answer clarified. The biggest thing that came across was, I had asked some questions of the facilities director, and I got back, it was the questions of, do you have, and that's the breakdown on the roof, right? And he did give that back, and he did break it down into phases, but he sort of reworked his whole plan for a few other things that had come up with the elevators here in this building, and swapping some other things out. So, it was essentially a pretty, a bigger tweak on his overall plan than what we had talked about before. So, with all of that, I would like to do a couple of things before we get into the report itself. I'd like to do a couple things on walking through Brian's spreadsheet, and that is, one, looking at the changes that facilities made, and ranking the ones that we haven't ranked. I would like to also talk about where, if all we have room in capital spending sources, and this is a bit of a tough thing to say, but given the size of the MWRA project, arguably, you have no room in anything anywhere, right? But at the same time, I think there's probably some space in things that don't affect taxation, specifically free cash. And so, I want to talk a little bit about that. Ultimately, it's not our call. Ultimately, the town manager and the finance committee and finance director will make that call. But I do think, you know, there might be a little bit more room to get in a couple projects. And what stuck out to me is DPW, we don't currently have anything in the plan. And I do think, one, we have to revisit roads and discuss roads. And, two, it doesn't make sense to me. It makes sense to me to hold off on some projects because of clearing the backlog. Vehicles at DPW doesn't necessarily make sense because those don't tend to be things that tie up resources for a long period of time. And so, if we've got needs in order to continue service, I think we need to, pushing that off doesn't necessarily have a whole lot of benefit from a service standpoint or from helping keep the backlog cleared. So, I'd like to talk about that as well. So, why don't we start with facilities and the changes in the facilities budget or request.
Let's see if I can move this so I can actually see. Was that all on the 8th, the subject project, or is that a separate? No, it's throughout his budget, he may change this. So, I was going to... That's not a big thing about it. It's not all that came out earlier, right? I'm sorry, which? What do you... So, if you look at the version 6, I think it's self-spersed. Oh, I didn't know, okay. Yeah. And it's not the easiest way to do that, just to allow us to continue to track what we've looked at before, which I had a column. That's through the divisions, and most departments are no changes, so I just carried over the total. So, the facilities and the schools were the only two that you'll see revised numbers. And you can see it in the spreadsheet, but it's the very first item that I'll just add. And what Kelly just said, facilities director, they did what we asked them to do, which is rethink the roofing part of it. So, the first six items up there, which are showing as zero in the revision, and what he submitted back, simply left those just open. And I, for the moment, if you move to the right a little bit, I simply parked them in Fiscal 28 in the revision column. That's not necessarily what he has suggested, and probably an open question for him is, is he still looking at those items to see if there's anything there that he's proposing be funded in Fiscal 27, which is most urgently needed? And if not, that's fine. And then, as to what's parked at the moment in this spreadsheet at Fiscal 28, when does he think he'll be able to provide more color on the dollar amounts and timing? Yeah, so what I read in his email, how I read it was that he has to delay it because of other things that have come off here, sounded like the elevators, other things that are going on, and that he was also trying to get better information on cost and exactly what needed to be done. And so it seemed like he sort of tabled it. I think the question for us is, do we put it in FI 28 or in another year? Right. I feel like we should, because it's a significant amount of money. At a minimum, if we don't do that, I think we have to have a paragraph on the town building. But along those lines, and why I could go with either approach is, we know that's not everything, right? And so I think it's still worth, even if you put it in FI 28, I think it's still worth discussion in the report about, you know, there's an elephant in the room here of this building and what it means. And we don't have a number over, we're dealing with what has to have to be done right now, but we don't have a good concept of what, when, and how much the building needs overall. And I don't think we can go back to the town, as I've said before, to ask for that until we have that whole number. So we can talk about it, what other people's feelings are, do we want to just move it out into another year because we know it needs work, or do we want to leave it out and call it out as a, you know, this isn't everything, there's more that likely would be needed to bring the building up to standard. I can be convinced either way. Yeah, I think the finance director chose to pull five and a half million out of 27, 20, 25 annual time anymore, and it didn't appear in the capital table, so I'd rather pull all in a footnote indicating that there was this aggregate amount to spend. So that was sort of similar to the approach where we would obviously include it in 28, but put it in a paragraph. To say, this is what's left. Yeah. But we still don't know. Yeah. I don't feel comfortable putting it in any other year, because I have no basis on which to phase it. And at least for me, I don't really care either way. I think it just needs to be clearly identified as it's still an open question. And highlight, I think, the point you're making, which it's really difficult to look at those dollars outside the context of what's going to happen to the building. Yeah. And if they're staying, what other costs over what period. So I don't know how others feel about it or whether you want to wait until you get to the report to address that. But I just wanted to highlight. Yep. That's why you see it in the fiscal 28 column. What he did do is identify $310,750 needed to redo the roof, the flat roof over this section building, the gym. And assuming that's based on whatever ongoing conversations he's having with a vendor, which is focused on fiscal 27 per minute.
The only odd thing I found about that was he gave a lot of airtime to the structural issue that's over the town manager's office, which is on the opposite side of the building. And that was the one that he seemed most concerned about addressing sooner than later. He's got that one programmed in fiscal 28, which at least he's identified it. But nonetheless, that's his call. And I, it just, it always makes me a little uncomfortable when people, and I'm sure it was based on whatever information he had at the time and maybe further inspection he determined that. Well, this one's leak, actually, this one's actively leaking. Yeah. Versus the other one. It's actively leaking and it's been leaking for a while. I agree with you, right? I mean, I, based on his comments, I'm surprised to him to push. But I think, based on, I don't know what the situation in the elevator is, I assume that's up there in terms of safety. So, I would agree. It's not a safety, you can't, like, the building's no longer. It won't be ADA compliant. Yeah, the elevators weren't, they may have been in the on-site, in-site report. I haven't gone through all those reports yet. But again, yeah, that one wasn't even on the radar screen. But, so the only concern about the roof is just have him confirm that he's comfortable that there is no active safety issue. Let's say it's too. Over, over the town manager's office. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about $150,000 or a safety issue. I don't think that's, that's not, as things go, it's not the worst thing out here. If it's, he hasn't listed a space, he's structural. Well, the problem is, I think, to get at the structural issue, he's, he's, I think, assuming that the roof is ripped off, whatever the underlayment is under the. Yeah, there's two pieces to that. So he just broke it into the structural roof of $700,000. Yeah. And I don't think he can deal with his structural without doing the $500,000. Yeah. So, but I'm assuming that he's programmed this way, he must be comfortable. So, I just want to keep and get him on record to say. Yeah. Oh, I wrote it down. Yeah, I mean, I agree with the overall assessment, which is, I mean, yeah, there's no way that's with all the cost. I mean, if they missed a half-million-dollar elevator and the cost of something to repair, then that's not a little thing. So, my personal take is, I don't know where our leeway is on this. I mean, I like the idea of one and two. I think those are pretty sound. Like, I mean, the defense was there, right? We know they were the structural, the rest is fine. I mean, the roof is straightforward, but I think, yeah, we put below the line. Here's what's been identified as additional costs. But our recommendation is that a full building assessment is done, because this is likely only the bare minimum, right? And I think we identified that elevator, you know, case of point, elevator for half a million was just added in 2017. Yeah. That would be my personal take, but I absolutely agree with you. I think five million is, you know, I'd be very surprised if it's less than 10 if you really get it to where you want it to be. Yeah. The interesting thing is we have 2.8 in for the roof and the sum of the five pieces, I think, is only 1.8. So, I think maybe to John's point, to that point, Kelly, maybe in the report, a sentence or two. Yeah. Just, and again, I understand that, you know, Michael, again, just joined partly through last year. He was catching up on a lot of projects, really hadn't, you know, he kind of, I think, brought forward what was probably in the file. And I think just to drive home the point about it, we needed to be a bit more rigorous upfront analysis before presenting proposals to this committee, the town manager, whatever. Is that, I mean, is that the right approach for something like this? I mean, we're talking about essentially refueling the whole building, right? He's just, his focus is repair. These items now look more like what it absolutely has to get done in this opinion. So, do we recommend, I mean, do we go as far as recommending that perhaps this becomes its own, I don't want to call it a committee, right? Like everything else saying, should there be some of the point to actually do a full assessment? Well, this, their, their, their, on-site, in-site was an assessment of the building. I think he's just, he's, in his defense, he's scrambling, right, to put together, give, having, new in the role, to take what was protected in the past, marry that with the on-site, in-site, in-site, and dig in. So, I think a little more time, he'll be able to do that. But is that, get it to what we, like, tell us, or is that just a pair? Yeah, this is the other question, though, that there's a bigger question, which is, and the select board has asked me, when we're done with our report, to come and, you know, talk to them about what we've, what our report is, what our challenges were. So, one of the things with your, your buy-in guys that want to talk to them about is, they need to, they need to figure out what they're doing, right, what the plan is for this building, because otherwise, we're going to start burning into, we're not going to have a choice, right? It's just like the roof, you're going to have to, the elevator, you're going to be spending millions of dollars, and you're going to do it by default. Some costs, some costs, and then you're forced to just say, we can't leave the hours. So, I think there's two points here, both of which I think are valid, and I think both should be made in the report, not a long-winded discussion, but just, these are things that became clear to us as we evaluated the site. One, we really need some initiative to determine what future use, because the facility's director can't do the second part of it, John, which is. My sixth thing, or am I redoing? Over one period, you know, what needs to be done, and how much does that cost, because, you know, I think we just approach this, but we don't want to understand the full scope and cost of this project, just based on the emergency department, right? Yeah. So, I'm just recommending, we already see an additional 4 million ahead of us, or 5 million, and we already have a half a million added before we finish that conversation. I mean, I don't know, however we want to word that, right? Well, you had a 10% error rate, and we're three, four months into this. What Kelly said, though, it actually is net favorable variance at the moment, because the roofs went from 2.8 to 1.8, and the elevators are in there and a half a million. So, we're half a million ahead of where we were, but we still have that top six items that, you know. But I have no confidence, and this is nothing, this is nothing against Michael. I have zero confidence that this encompasses all of the demons that are in this building. I have an overarching, what's called on-site, in-site came in and did something, but that doesn't get down, from my understanding when we asked him about this, it doesn't get down to the level of detail. It gives sort of, it goes through and says, okay, your boiler is X number of years old. It's probably going to need to be, you know, looking at it from here, it's going to, in this condition, he needs a deeper. But that's what I'm talking about. He hasn't had the opportunity yet to go to each site and look at staff and get eyes on site. Okay, yeah, so I agree with this, or it's better than or worse than. And so I would imagine everything we're going to get from facilities is going to be, and so he's gone through, and for sure. Do we have an idea of how long? Well, that's why I say those first six items. But I mean, so we could, I think we have to, we have to, we have to ask Michael, and I think that's in the report, right? I put a future section, sort of what I wrote first, which was one of the things that we, as a committee, want to do, right, when we get beyond this report. And one of them is, and it starts with the facilities director and other department heads, but what is the condition of everything where, like, we need a better underlying understanding of that in order to be well-informed as we're prioritizing. So I don't think we have it now. I don't know when we're going to have it. I'll add it to my Michael. Well, I was just saying, like, the changes that we saw, I would imagine we're going to have more iterations of that. Yep. Yep. For sure. I mean, it's possible when this leaves, this committee. We'll have to snap a line and say, based off of, you know. There could be changes from the department heads direct to the town manager. So before we claim, say, 600 grand for the attic, it's probably part of the attic. It's just not. I'm sorry. Oh, because the attic's in a different place? Yeah. Yeah, it could be. He inflated the attic in a different lineup. Yeah, that's true. I didn't think about that. I view that as possibly a different project, but yeah, you're right. I, yeah, but he talked about it when he was talking about the roof replacement. He talked about it when they were up there. Yeah. So we're net even. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. Okay. Check one thing. Yeah. Brad, are you hearing everything okay? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I actually, I agree with everything you're saying. I think that it's very important to emphasize that we do need a complete building assessment and not, not just a building assessment, but also just what's the necessary use for the building or what does the town need? And does the, does the current building satisfy it? I don't think it does. And so, you know, where are we going to go from here? It's beyond just a building assessment. It's more of a use needs as well. But, but I agree with everything, everybody has said.
So let's keep walking through the changes.
Stay focused on 27.
Yeah. Let's stay focused on 27. I think, you know, the, on the roof though, I will comment, right. He's, he's basically phased that roof out over five, the full five year schedule. So the pieces are, you know, he broke it up, but it's spread out over a few years. Right. From what it was.
All right. Next was the elevator.
So he has a elevator specification for 47,000 and elevator upgrade for 471, which is basically the design and construction. He broke into two projects. Normally we do design in one year and construction the following year. So we're asking for the right amount. He's got them in the same year. I understand why in this case, if the elevator is not functioning, I do appreciate that he broke it out so that we are recognizing that there's two pieces to this. I would probably though, ultimately, and I'm sure Brian Keveney will do this, combine them just because, um, otherwise you end up with a spend issue. If you, if you're under on one over on the other. Whether it's good for my cash notification before they have to get a bond, maybe. That we're used to. Yeah. You, you could end up in, I think in bonding. So combine them for purposes of like, it's a, in fact, we combine a whole bunch of things when we bond. But they can, they can do the first part in cash and then bond later. Yeah. I just like, I just like when it's, you're right. You could, I, I just like when they're identified because we're identifying that there's, there is a step that comes before, right. The actual work. If you, uh, when you're saying what you just said, would you propose leaving this, uh, you know, assuming people rank this, which we need to do, uh, high such that it finds its way into fiscal 27. Yeah. I would rank both the phase one roof and the elevator at high. And I would, I will ask the question on phase two, right. Just to make sure we don't have. Oh, everybody else. Or an issue. So is it, is it really late until 27? What? Is it really late until 27?
It's not, listen, it's not that far away by the time, by the time, um, they get everything up and, you know, like contracted, right. Yeah. I mean, the elevator's the worst thing in the world for sure. Yeah. But yeah, I don't, I don't think it's, it's where we are right now by the time they get everything ready to go. That's not that far away. Right. It's only six months away. So one clarify question I would have is the elevator specification. Do we know it's just for the main building and not the one in children's way as well? Or is that, uh, he has another line for that. But I mean, the 47, does that cover? But, uh, my understanding was the 47 is the design of both and the, and then the two pieces were, although it's a good question. Um, I thought it said it was both. I assume it would be, but. And then the, and then the actual work on the second one was pushed out a year. So we don't have like a bonus 15 tag to do the. No. Yeah. So, so where we ask about rankings from the others, um, for our purposes, would we lead this best specification broken out to be able to, again, drive home the point about normally? I, I would leave it in our report and you know, if Brian, or they want to combine it, they can. Great. You want to pull people on their ranking of those three items? Yes. Uh, how do you guys feel about ranking of the, the phase one roof and the, uh, two elevator? I think it's high. Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Hi. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Perfect. Uh, see what else was, was that everything? Was that everything I think that was everything for 27, um, for his other changes, he did some swapping of things, some in and out a year. And then I believe he also added the tie in for the DPW building that my dream in that up, Brian.
Yeah. The DPW and retro commissioning, which you explained to me what the tie in was before, but I don't remember, um, and it was 60,000 in FY 29, I think, 15,000 in FY 30, that was, yeah. Yeah. I think again, the out years, we're just moving things out, but there were two small items brought in. Yeah. That was, yeah. Okay. So people want to rank those while we're upon them. Sorry. Which ones? We're still on facilities, the second to last and third to last. 87 and 88, where have you got in your spreadsheet? The building management system. Yeah. No, it's DPW. 60,000 in FY 29. 50,000 in FY 29. But a DPW BMS tie in to the town building. It's not a building management system. I don't know what it is. I think it's, but it makes sense, I don't know, like I have a town building. Oh, building management, that's what BMS stands for, okay. Okay. And I don't know what retro-commissioning is, does anybody? Normally, make the commissioning of a building would be, after the fact, make sure it was running. Okay. All right. I think those kind of items, looking at other similar kinds of items, we'll probably write this medium. Yeah. I would put them as medium, because that's what we did on the other ones. Medium works. I agree. Sorry. Yes. Brad? Yeah. I agree. Medium. I think those are the only ones we need to give the rankings on them. Yeah. I believe so. Is that inflating? Yeah. Oh, the insulation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's out here, but you still have to rank it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the question is, I think people have been leaning toward high for the roof in general, so I guess the question is, I assume that all roof-related aspects are still high. I would, my opinion is still high, because if you're up there doing the roof, I would go do the roof and do the insulation while you're at it. I agree. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. The only statement I have about the attic, and this gets back to, at what point do we say that we're just going to bring it in versus the patch? So, it's out for 29, do we need a lot better information in two years about what we're going to do? I know it's a loaded question, but... I would like to. Do I do, if I was a betting plan, which I'm not, would I take that bet? No. I mean, I think... That's our request. Well, I mean, I think, and it may be as a part of our recommendation is, you know, we have all of these expenses that are going into past jobs, let's just make sure that, you know, the ROI is there, but, especially as these are in further hours. Yeah. But, yeah. I'm having a hard time mapping that the ROI is there based on how much money we're looking at. And how to replace. I, I think my personal opinion is that the money spent on this building is sunk cost. That it's not necessarily... Yeah, I mean, it's just hard at the moment to... Well, so when I think of a roof repair, that's 100% high. When I think of insulating, not that it's a nice to have, because it's definitely, there's definitely a value that comes with making sure we don't have loss of heat and cold. However, if we're going to go and decide to put a whole new town building in place... Yeah. But if you don't, but if you don't put insulation in the, like... It extends the life of the roof. It extends the life of the roof. Right. But, but your point, if you're not going to be in the building for more than another five years, who cares? Yeah. But you have to, but you have to make that decision. On, on almost everything on here for the town building, you have to make the decision, right? This, this is, even though this is not getting the building to like pristine condition, it's a ton of money. And so I don't see how you can go beyond a year of emergency stuff and not have made a decision on what you're doing. Even if the decision is, we're not going to have a plan. It's going to take us five years. You're going to have to spend, right? To keep us functioning for, for five years, even if that's the decision. Yeah. I mean, I think a decision to stay is a good decision, is a fine decision. It doesn't, it hasn't yet any, no one has yet put up a rational alternative. Alternative. Yeah. Agreed. Possible exception of stop and shop vacates that building. It's big enough to, you know, carve it up into a town building. But otherwise you're left. You stop. It's not new anymore, but yes. But, but otherwise you're left with either having to break up where the schools are operating and the town's operating or, you know, pleasing space. But, and if they're proposing to build a building, a likely timing of that would fall probably somewhere in line with the school coming forward. Yeah. To want to build a new elementary school. Yeah. And so, but I think the only point is it has to have a focused discussion with a decision that people will live with for the foreseeable future. Yeah. I think I'm just going back to when I, some of the earlier conversations was there was talk of having, yes, a new school building, maybe multiple. That was a consideration, consideration for a new town building. This was just, as we have drips and drafts of investment going into repair, you know, understanding what is the ultimate decision on a new town building. Well, there's no, then okay. I don't know. And I would just say like that it gets complicated outside of like, like Brian said, outside of, you know, there's a building at town center that's big enough, especially if you start talking about new school buildings, because then you start having the discussion of, well, if you're going to build a new school building, would you keep children's way over here? Or would you build that building to accommodate children's way? When you pull children's way and say, let's, I'm going to go even further and pull the school department children's way out of here. Well, then you're rehabbing a building. And yeah, you rebuild and it's half occupied. Does that make, and you're heating a building that made that we're attempting to. So there's. They're trying to move meetings from here to the community center. I mean, I think we can do, like, I don't want to, we have to do that. I think our task is to make sure. We just have to make them aware. Kyle is aware. Yeah. Yeah. If you read the last, your items. Right up in the paper, it was, it led a much smaller, oh, it's only this. And it's clearly not the case. No. I mean, I actually just really looked at it. I don't know. Cause I added the elevator, 7.5 million already in the book. Yeah. Cause I mean, if you have these. And that doesn't count what we've spent. Cause we've spent a bunch on this building. You need to go do 27, 28. I say that a short term, you have to go and do it. But when you think, I think 29 and out thereafter, it's like, okay, well, what do, what is the long-term plan for this building? And if it's just to keep it functioning, upgrade it as we can, but if it's not going anywhere, then, then okay, that's, that's an answer. But if we're going to, I mean, forget the whole, we have to go and replace the water in time. Cause I feel like, oh my gosh, we're not getting any new buildings. We have to pay for that instead. But, you know, it's just, you know, I feel like we should have a better idea of where we're, where we stand three years out from now. Yep. I agree. Okay. That was fine. Otherwise. Yes. Fine. We'll go back to fiscal 27. Yep. And then scroll, scroll down. Some of these a little bit. So you'll see where the library line items are saying I included the library line items here. He removed took out 75,000 and 200,000. Didn't he? Yes. Yes. Cause, and we were concerned those are duplicates. So it looks like he thought they were duplicates. Yeah. Cause I, I caught that as well. I think that was it on this one. Okay. We've gotten ranked the new items. Yep. All right. Brian, did I capture everything that was changed or we got answers on? Definitely so. Okay. Oh, and he, I think you, again, I, it was tough with what he gave us back cause he deleted line items that completely deleted the line items that were in there before. So if you look again at facilities, there, there's a line item that originally had, you know, $150,000 to the transfer station, uh, repair. And then he had a million eight out of fiscal 31. He, he completely deleted his line item, but I, I just, I don't think I caught that. You just need to look in the, uh, you need to look in 28 through 31 to see what, you know, other activity where he might've either phase things or. So on that note, um, and I didn't get to putting this in the report, but I wanted, we can, we can talk about it when we get to the report. Um, I did want to walk what was originally requested. Meaning like, why did everybody give us right out of the gate before we got any clarification before there were any changes to. Okay. Now there's been a bunch of, we've had to ask questions. They've made changes. I did want to show that in the report. Um, just because it, it wasn't insignificant in terms of like, Hey, there was stuff duplicated. There was clarification. There was a whole sale. I do think it's, I don't want to spend a ton of time on it, but I do think it's personally, I think it's a valuable part of like, we didn't just take what we got and run with it and plug it in. Right. We had discussion. There were realizations, both on our part and on the part of the department managers, which tweaked it in the end for nearly a hundred million dollars with projects. It didn't move it, you know, $15 million, moved it a couple million, but I do think it's, it's a point I want to make somewhere along the way, um, that there was, you know, changes, changes and redundancies and things that we, we cleared up a long way. Yeah. I mean, it shows value. Yeah. Right. We're not just a pastor, but we're actually offer a comment on that when you get to the report. Yeah, I disagree with that. But I think the other thing I started to prove that we need longer term planning, because this is the volatility that everyone says, why we're so like, this is what we're seeing. And it's not, it's not so much the terms of machinations. It's literally been this long time. I think that's that confirmation as well. I don't know if that adds value, but I think I would agree with that. Yeah. I think it's valuable for a couple reasons. One, I think we added some value too. Um, but for the process to work, we prefer, it would be preferable. We wouldn't be having sort of wholesale changes at this stage in the game. We don't let it fire into the process. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So from here, let's talk about, you know, we've just added a few other things as high. We've gone to schools because there's a couple of little changes there. Oh, okay. Oh, he made changes. Michael made changes, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So in, go back to facilities for a minute. Yep. Because it was difficult for what he sent us. Um, there's a line item, um, it's after the library grounds improvement line item for fire sensor replacement. Uh, isn't it earlier? You mean the middle school one? Yeah. It's right here. It's row 73. It's row 73. The middle school fire sensor replacement. Yeah. So he had in fiscal 29, he had 200,000 and fiscal 30 at 350,000. Yeah. So he deleted those. So you see that he zeroed those out from the facilities budget. And put them to school. And then in the, I'm assuming, because I remember when we met with the schools and Mike Fay was here, we asked about, are they comfortable waiting to deal with fire alarm systems until a later year and all the three of the attendees seemed comfortable. Uh, but then he basically added into the school budget, 140,000, 203, an upgraded happy hollow for fire alarm. Then a $375,240 upgraded poker, a $409,160 upgrade. Um, and, uh, you don't see it in this spreadsheet, but it is, uh, his spreadsheet. He sent back to us. He also noted in the sidebar that there was $173,189 of existing funds to deal with the happy hollow fire alarm, which suggests to me that that projects really a $310,000 project. Yep. So if you add all those three items up, it's 923,000. Um, they had a, um, I think there was a $500,000 item that I zeroed out in the schools for the fire alarms. Right below those three, right above that room. And we'll get to the right here district-wide fire protection. Yeah. 500,000 in fiscal 31. Yeah. That's what prompted us to pose those questions. Yep. So 923 is bigger than 500. And the only point I'm making by, by highlighting the 550. Cause it would really come out or plus 550. Whether fire sensors are related to fire alarms, kind of sounds like they are. Yeah. Yeah. It may have been a duplicate, but I think total budget wise it would probably wash it out. Yeah. It also put it back. How it was helpful because it put, I didn't understand why they were up in facilities and not in schools. But middle school never came back, right? Uh, that's what it was labeled as, uh, and you're correct is these are all three of the elementary schools. So I suppose that's the question, you know, were those, what were the middle school fire sensor replacements just not needed? Yeah. So it was, he was in, I think he had said he was still waiting to report. So that made the timing. It's not a terrible surprise. Yeah. Okay. Um, so the question is, I'm assuming. If anybody disagrees, I'm assuming everybody used fire safety, uh, is high for all three of those. Yeah. Anybody disagree with that? Okay. So that's the only, oh, and then he added, um, which again is a new item on the radar screen, a middle school hot water feeder system, 359,722. I have to assume, but certainly ask the question to be sure, but I have to assume if he decided to put it in now this late game, something must have presented itself to suggest that if they're at risk, the existing system that they need to deal with it. Yeah. I thought this came up two years ago when the boiler went that the water heater was going to need to be replaced. So I don't know. Maybe he looked at the outside inside report and it was called out. Although those are separate reports. So they are. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So I think when people, assuming for the moment that it's a risk issue of the current system failing, uh, people generally do that as a high priority. Yes. Yes. Yep. Okay. So I think those are the ones that required rankings. I noticed. There are a couple of, um, few other items that he either deleted or moved around. He took out the. He also got hot water for the bicycle that we need to bring. It's in and out here. And it's very good. I'm just going to pause back to what we previously said. It's interesting, right? That we had submitted this on time. These are the all being changes. Yep. Which is a point we're making earlier on Christmas. Yeah. And I would like to tell you that this is unique, but this is hard for the course. Yeah. And there are things literally right up just before in that. And in fact, after the warrant is printed, if something happens, it's got to get dealt with. Yeah. The hard, the hard part. Right. And I want to give Michael a lot of grace because he's coming in trying to do this. Right. This is, there's a lot of public buildings to get your arms around in the short time he's been here, but things like water heater failing, getting ready to fail at the middle school. It's hard for me to understand. Right. How that's a surprise in general. And I swear it's come up before. So it's like, it's, it comes down to. Yeah. I can't blame it on Michael because he's, he's brand new and he's trying to get his arms around things. But I think this is one that was. Yeah. So it doesn't fit. Yeah. They're, they're unfortunately don't have any history. Yeah. And it was warm in September. Yeah. Anyway. I mean, one thing to probably is because he's looking, I do wonder how much this is just having third party inspections versus someone internal or saying, Hey, it's fine. Right. I mean, fire alarm, all that, right. Hey, do a compliance study. Cause he's digging into it. I wonder how much of that's really tied to him having a third party. Yeah. Well, again, the schools initially did their own onsite insight reports. He just may not have had. Right. But I thought when they redid for the town, they refreshed the school one. I thought that was the plan. Right. So as I said, I don't think there's any rankings other than those items required. He moved out. Did he move out something else? The sidewalks, I think it was like sidewalks and driveways. The roadways and sidewalks. He moved. Push. He pushed him out. Right. A few years. And then. Yes. And the interior. Door replacement, bicycle water heater. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. The bicycle water heater didn't have an amount in what we were looking at before. But it did last year. I looked last year, but it had a ridiculously low amount. In the fire plant. Yeah. It was like 50. Do I have a number next week? You do now, but he, cause he gave us one. I put the four 50 in, but if it was in the five year plan last year, I would have put a number next to it. And I fixed it. No. It tied all these numbers. It tied all these numbers out to the five year plan. So what it might've been was it might not have had a number in the five year plan, but I have in my spreadsheet, the full. Maybe it was a request. And at some point, this is where I get into like, at some point, somebody requested this and it came off the list. Right. So it's, it's been on the docket before. Yeah. Now the finance director would be the one that normally would go through and do triage. Yeah. And so, you know, as Kelly said, it might appear in forms that were submitted, but never have gotten into the actual plan. Yeah. So we didn't rank the, I guess we need to rank the high school water heater. Aye. Aye. Water heaters are high priority. Aye. Aye. Okay. Okay. Is that everything? I think I, as you were looking at the question there, I think I put yellow highlights in the ranking column for all the items that are required in ranking. Can you just quickly scan? Where is your ranking? Is it right here? It's the green column. This group over one. So the left? Right. Which is the fiscal year, in 27? Yeah, right here. Sorry. So if you just start, you scroll down, there should be yellow highlighting and anything required a, um, I'm looking as well as we've been going through. There we did, right? This is high. I want to mark me. I marked them down on my sheet here. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I marked them down on my sheet here as well. I'll fill it in here. No, but it won't let me type it in. You may not have enabled it. It didn't enable that. Oh, okay. I can't see the enable button because I've got the zoom. You don't need to put it in now. Just as long as we scroll down and make sure we can rank each item that had a yellow barn. Okay. You just go back to stills. CMS. Kind of go over one hour. I thought I wasn't. Oh, you want to go to 28? Okay. I thought you were going to. Water heater. I think we're good. Okay. So I'll, uh, I'll put those rankings into this in version seven. And, uh, there's also a couple other corrections I've made, uh, after getting some questions from LA that, um, don't affect 27 other than a description. And, uh, it's two numbers for, for, uh, engineering. There's an engineering department that had $50,000 a year in fiscal 28, 29, and 30 for a new vehicle. So I guess we need to rank those since I put them in version seven, which we don't have it. So most of our vehicles, I think we had been ranking as medium. Yeah. And these are not specific vehicles. It's just arbitrary vehicles. Yeah. So people want to rank those. I'm fine with medium. I, I would at some point in our journey of understanding, like to see the full inventory list of vehicles and where they are, you know, who has them. So you had three more vehicles. No, that's what I'm saying. Engineering reports to DPW, but it's not, it's a separate line item. We missed it in the original submission. I didn't pull it in. It was there the whole time. We just, we missed it. the original submission. I didn't pull it in. It was there the whole time. We just, we missed it. So when you get this, there'll be a one-line item section for engineering that has $50,000 in 28, 29, and 30. Yeah. Okay. So it really is. People feel comfortable ranking those medium. Yes. For now. Yes. Good with that. So now $1.50 then? Yeah. $1.50. And we still have work to do in school 20. I'm assuming next year we'll get more information. So we're going to be asking more information. So we'll get a lot more. Well, yeah, that's number one on my list. We've got to change the CIP form to the information we want. And then we picked up on that because Kelly was copulating her own spreadsheet that she uses to produce tables that are partly being used in the graph report, but also the finance feed they end up using. And there's so many numbers, so many years that obviously I was hopeful that someone would do a double check and obviously a double check prove that errors happen. Yeah. Going forward the next year this time, really everybody should go through the detail, but at least two people. Yeah. Everything needs, and so Brian and I have been doing that for each other, right? Like just somebody's got to do a quality review on peer review to make sure that everything gets captured. I hope two things. One, if we create a CIP form that is got useful information in it and we only accept completed CIP forms, that we can then automate the production of the summaries using a complete CIP form. But until we get there, there's a lot of manual work here in getting this stuff summarized. Question. I don't want to add more work because I know our priority is getting this finalized, but since this is our baseline going forward, to your point about what you said about vehicles, is it worth sorting these a little bit? You've always finalized this to say within each department, vehicles is a section, right? Yeah. So we can do that. I attempt in the spreadsheet that I use to identify categories for each project. Vehicles are easy to categorize. I always get caught up in my own head between things that are building repair versus equipment. Like you put a new hot water heater in, is that building repair, is that equipment? I think it's building repair, right? But sometimes I get into like funny, but yes. So I have that. And I think it's probably worthwhile in our complete listing. So we will have a listing in the back of a report of everything to identify the categories. We can certainly sort that way too. Like within our rankings, what building repair, what's new buildings, what's vehicles, because I think it's valuable in the way that you look at it because there's so many. And then it just, I mean, nothing we can't sort it, but there's a big chance we continue to go through it as they have another vehicle, another vehicle. I've heard the vehicles, like, you know, it gives us the sections to kind of say, what's your, the person's just saying we're going to rank everything in your group. It may not come down to that. We may say, wow, we can just start getting a kitchen list. I don't know. And DPW particularly, right? Because, I mean, I think roadway is its own thing, right? It's so much money. And then vehicles are the other. So my highest kind of order of priority of things here, my highest priority is the FY27 capital budget, because that is needed most urgently to develop the FY25, FY27 operating budget. Then it's the plan, the five-year plan, because that's going to ultimately be a part of the warrant with modification by town manager, finance director, and if income. And then my third level priority is, okay, did we get this all communicated fully and in an easy fashion? It's important, but it's got to go after actually getting numbers agreed upon by us. Yep. Okay. You want to go now to the green tab and deal with how we paper these things? Yep. I just threw them into columns that seem feasible to me, but you all think one of them. I don't know if you want to go through all of them. Yeah. We didn't really talk about it. Yeah. So I think we want to go through it. Let's go through it by column of funding source and talk about it in a couple. I want to talk about it by project, but then I want to talk about it in total. And there is a guideline, which I put, I reprinted in the report that came out of the finance committee's report last year. It's been regurgitated a few times. Interestingly though, it still says, I think six to 800,000 of cash capital, which we haven't been using for a number of years, but it's still helpful. So let's start with borrowing and we'll start with excluded borrowing. So I believe the only excluded borrowing for FY27, we anticipate is that the MWRA project, but that's actually not, is that not because it's water? Now I got that confused. Is it water rate borrowing? Sorry. Two things. I'll take this opportunity because it's a minor change to report, but I think it's critical. When we refer to the MWRA project, we need to refer to MWRA slash Happy Hollow Wells project. The cost is split roughly 40% to the connection of the MWRA and 60% to build a new permanent filtration system at Happy Hollow Wells. So I think it's just question putting the slash HH, you know, Happy Hollow Wells. But anyway, on that item, at the moment, there is no, we're not proposing that anything be funded with excluded debt in the draft report or on this schedule. Yeah. I suppose if, and we'll get to the report when we get to the report, but at the moment, the report doesn't include doing the ball field at the same time. So if all we're doing is $2 million septic. Well, it doesn't yet. We need to talk about that. Yeah. But if all we're doing is a $2 million septic that probably is levy debt, without needing excluded debt, if that was expanded, it's possible that that would... We would call that, it's possible that the select board, because the select board's decision, right, would say those projects are combined for purposes of debt, and it's an excluded... Right, just because of its impact on the operating budget, $4.5 million debt. They just went through the town election, special election, to eliminate debt on the old DPW facility, the pre-off levy. So to put another $4.5 million on the levy debt... I agree with you 100%. Interestingly, though, their debt policy that they adopted uses $5 million as the threshold. Okay. So, and that's why I put both those items in here as levy debt. But anyway, as to excluded debt, I think I mentioned this at the last meeting, and I'll keep it short. I believe the select board has decided that the MWRA Happy Hollow Wealth project, that debt funding, debt service, could be paid for through water rate. Waste water rate. Yeah, water rate. Okay. Normally, if that is the case, that would be water debt, and that doesn't, you don't need a debt exclusion, and it doesn't affect the town's levy. Because that's already outside the levy. Right. I said that. There was a pretty long discussion two or three meetings ago, where the finance director was expressing concern that if water rates weren't increased high enough, and or people started using less water because the rates were going up, you know, significantly, that town might have to subsidize the water enterprise fund. And if that were the case, that is done inside the levy, which would affect future overruns. So he came up with a proposal, although I'm not sure how wedded he is to it, that the town actually issued the bonds, its town debt, the water debt is town debt, but town debt as an excluded debt, which would require a ballot question, vote, ballot, and the water fund would reimburse general fund 100% of the debt service. That way, if, for whatever reason, the water fund fell short, the general fund could pay the debt service, but it wouldn't affect the levy. But in a reimbursement scenario, doesn't that make it part of, oh, no, because we're doing it as a levy debt, as excluded debt, sorry. Excluded debt. Okay. And the only issue we had with that was that assuming the water fund is reimbursing 100% of the excluded debt service. It actually creates, absolutely anything else would create excess levy capacity. And he was concerned that future folks doing budgets would attempt to use that for operating costs. I sent him something that the OR put out that suggests that if you're getting reimbursement, your debt exclusion amount can be net owed. You can take a vote net of your reimbursement so there wouldn't be the issue he had. Having said all that, the select board never took a vote on that proposition. He seems to be shying away from it. So at the moment, based on the select board's discussion, although Bill Whitney's still not concerned, he's still concerned that they haven't got to the bottom of that question, because I think he would prefer the whole town getting an opportunity to vote on the project. It's really been a focus of his, rather than just town meeting of, you know, two, three, 400 people. And certainly he didn't want it to be five select board members voting on it. But yeah, I agree with Bill. I think if you're going to do a $38 million project, it should be at the ballot box. But to get it there, you have to do what I just described. Yeah, I understand. So at the moment, there is no debt excluded debt that will be on the ballot, but it's possible that that particular debt may end up on the ballot. Yeah. But at the end of the day, right? And this is like, we don't control touch on the report, we don't control it. And it's a significant project, whether I don't, I don't care where you put it, right, or how you do it. It's a significant project that's going to affect residents and what residents pay. And so it's why I called it out separately. And because it's going to be voted as an article. And I don't think it's appropriate to just slam it in with everything else. Right. But we have to consider it and the cost of what can be afforded. Okay. So there's a bunch of other items that I put in the levy debt column. And again, you all may disagree with some of them. No, I had, because I've matched that up to Brian when I was doing mine. And I think I was pretty consistent.
Yeah, I think you've... So the ambulance don't know. How come that one isn't in the ambulance? Well, it's on the far right side for ambulance. Oh, the ambulance itself doesn't have enough funding. No, because they can't have funding. They don't have enough for an ambulance.
But is the debt service not servicable for the ambulance fund? I think, I think the finance director said sometimes they will have the ambulance fund covered debt service. Yeah, the way he does it actually similar, it's done similar to what you just described, Brian, with the way it's, yeah, it's a funding back. And that prevents, what if the ambulance fund? Because we have had issues with collections. So what happens if he has collections issues and can't pay it? Right. So that's why he did it in debt. And that is, I believe, consistent with how we've done. We may have done one ambulance out of the ambulance fund, but I know we've done fire trucks that way as well. Okay. Okay. So let's just go down. I agree. It's ultimately not going to be our decision, but the wastewater facility and the fields could be bundled and potentially put and excluded. It does. It's a little bit lower than what policy says, but it won't be our call. Talked about the ambulance. I, I couldn't, I did this independently, Brian, from what you had first, and then we were pretty much well matched. It was sort of a, if the project was a sizable nature, had a decent life on it and, or it could be combined, like for example, the upgrades to the fire alarms that there was, you know, maybe that wasn't a good one. There was a few projects that went together that were sizable. They belonged in levy debt. And I think that's consistent with what you have as well.
Feel free to chime in, Brad, if you see anything that you either feel differently or have a question on. Yep. Okay. These are just our recommendations. I mean, the manager will look at the man's director to tell them how to fund it. So yeah, in the rule of privilege, that was the net of what we get from the state. No, uh, that is what we get. That is, that is what they're requesting from the town. They also get from the state. And they, we do need to revisit that among other things. Um, because right now, if we were just doing highs, we don't have that in, um, at all. Okay. Great. Yeah. So I think we need to revisit that. Yeah. Again, for your all purposes, this includes all the requests. Yeah. And, um, but we're in our rankings. When we get to the memo, Kelly has pulled out just basically the highs with a couple of the median highs. Yeah. Which I did it just so I could get an exhibit in there, but we, but once we decide. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I was fine with all of the things you had is debt. Okay. General fund. I need to freeze this because I'm not going to be able to tell.
We don't have anything coming out of cash capital, then it's free cash. So free cash, we tend to do shorter term, smaller amount items that wouldn't necessarily be good candidates for debt. Um, although I could argue a couple of the, this, you know, if we were to do this swap loader for that, that one could probably move, um, but for the most part,
maybe the HVAC was the other one. Yeah. Just, just for everybody's benefit. Um, you know, the, uh, the free cash balance that certified at the end of fiscal 24, it was 10 million. And the recently certified free cash balance at the fiscal 25 was 11.9 million, not by 1.9 million. So knowing that I kind of erred towards spending a bit more of the free cash. Yeah. There also will likely be some surplus capital. Yeah. Two things. Yeah. I wanted to talk about on that front. So thank you for bringing them up. One, I think there's probably still some room in free cash. Um, there's debate always about how much free cash we should have. I, I, I asked my AI friend what, on how much free cash you should have. And for the state of Massachusetts, the recommendation is three to 5% of the operating budget. I think, I think we have double that. Now that said, we, from a Moody's debt rating purpose, they want to see us have larger reserve balances, which is not just free cash. It's free cash. It's emergency stabilization. It's cap stabilization. It's, it's all of the, the balances. So my issue is, I don't know that free cash is the place that it should be sitting. Um, if the town, this is not our charge, but it's, I'm going to give you my, my view on it. If we're, if we need it for a reserve balance as a town, that's fine. I just don't think it should necessarily be sitting in free cash. I think it should either be decided, well, that's part of a stabilization fund. And the reason I believe that is for those of you who haven't lived here that, you know, for a period of time, we got a pretty high free cash balance at one point and voters put a petitioner's article up to have that return to taxpayers and it, and it was approved. Um, and I'm not saying I'm opposed to that. I'm just saying, if you think you're setting it aside for a rainy day and you're leaving it in free cash, um, you're right for, for being told otherwise, given how many capital projects we have and the MWRA, I think it requires, and this will be another thing I, I think might be worthy of discussion at select board is what's the policy on free cash. What are you doing with it? How, how are you going to utilize or not utilize it? What's the strategy around free cash? So yeah, I mean, and just that again, more educational, um, in years in which union contracts are not settled, the operating budget usually carries a reserve, can't cover what that estimated cost of cost of living adjustment is going to be. And if it doesn't settle, that contract doesn't settle by the end of town meeting or just before town meeting, what happens to that reserve, it ends up going to free cash. And then next, the following year, you basically have to add two years worth. So at the moment, finance record is recommended. The site board seems to be, um, agreeable is to, uh, start putting the reserve, run, settle contracts into the general stabilization fund. Yep. So that you're not raising budgetary appropriation capital and then having a good free cash. So that, that's going to start to help at least every three years anyway, potentially. Well, it'll manage the future, but it won't manage what's in there right now. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's just an aside. Yeah. So I just, I, I agree with John. There's a couple that I think could move, but I, I know, I knew what Brian's, um, philosophy and mine's the same. If we're just looking at highs, we're at 1.3. Yeah. I think we have 1.5 to 2. Um, I, if we come back to talk about a few other projects, I, I would, I would be comfortable going up to 2. That's with the chances we just made. Yeah. Cause you had already made them. Oh, what's the total of the town? Had you already, you had already put them in? Yeah. I put the changes in this version. Okay. But the ones we've just talked about. Yeah. He, he, he, he guessed where we would be. He tied to the green tab. Yeah. Yeah. So like the elevator. Again, you may not agree with the columns I put in anybody. No, I, I do. They're in there. Yeah. And actually that's another reason to our earlier, should we keep that split? You have the specification of free cash was John, exactly what you were saying. You've got that cash free cash and you've got the elevator itself in debt, which makes sense. Um, so those are already in there. So I do think there's a little bit of room. We can come back to that. Um, finance director might not agree with me, but I, I think there's room. Yeah. And we've got to kind of, we've got to keep that in borrowing, um, to stay consistent. We can move something else. Yeah, exactly. Okay. All right. Cap stabilization. There's only a few things in cap stabilization. So we have the IT project, the additional a hundred thousand for the firewall. Yeah. The, the, one of the, one of the rationales of the cap stabilization, capital stabilization fund was to provide follow on funding for projects. And that was a follow on. That's why that, I put that one there. Yeah. And then the radios at the school. Um, it, it, it was kind of a, it was kind of an unforeseen. Yeah. But immediate need and need to use that capital fund for something. I mean, radio system in general, they're constant, the constant follow on, right? Yeah. The, I did ask, um, the fire chief about it. I asked everybody actually, cause I was like, there's so many radio line items across the departments and you know, he had, he had laid it, he had given more detail, which I thought was helpful, but then he said, you know, they would drop off after that. And I'm like, I don't think so. Because if you look at the life of some of the equipment, like it's, it's almost as if you're going to have sort of a continuum of between DPW, fire, police, schools, feels like you're going to have a continuum of a couple hundred thousand dollars of replacing radios. And, and, and, and I actually prefer it that way versus, hey, it's all replacement. It's all got to get replaced at the same time. But I feel like we might be putting ourselves based on how we're doing it in that situation. So, um, speaking of radios, I meant to bring it up before, um, it may be that not all radios are created equal. Uh, we did get a, uh, most of the responses we got to tell these questions, we got a lot more detail from Tom folder about, well, where his estimate came from for his radios. And on top of my head, I think he referenced 70 to 75 radios. And when I worked out the math, I'm sure there's other equipment. It was like 8,000 bucks per radio. And then I looked at the estimate that Chris, first thing gave us where she, in order to cover phase two, she had an extra 50 radios into what was probably a handful for administrators. And her quote was 135,000, which is a lot less per radio. And, and I don't think we did get a detail that I saw from police or fire. So, uh, it may be that they are, they have different capabilities, um, even what they're used for. If you look at DPW's quote that they sent, there's a lot of other stuff other than the rate, there's a lot of other equipment. Yeah. So I think the schools is, you know, basic walkie. Yeah. Walkies and repeaters. And I think the DPWs had more equipment, which I think also has to do with the fact that they've got stuff that's in the vehicles versus, versus portables. So it wasn't that far off. No, anyway, but yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, it's another one of those recommendations that these, this should be consolidated for just to line them. I guess he has five different groups, five radios constantly. Yeah. I'm not sure where person got her estimate from whether she went to a vendor. They were all from Motorola. The state has a contract. Yeah. I would prefer that the radio be an IT buy, but that's just because ultimately the IT infrastructure has to support that. And so I, I wish it was a combined buy phrase, but I think we're getting pricing based on it being combined. It just, it's weird to have it all over the place. So anyway, the radios, I guess that's a capitalization stable. I didn't know it's growing. I just pick that item to throw in along with the appeals, the town manager request for the appeals. And that was consistent with last year, right? Yeah. Okay. So it didn't make sense to me last year, but I'm still struggling with why it's town manager versus DPW. It was a last minute add, uh, in a budget cycle last year. Right. But it's not last minute anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And it, it, it, uh, technically should fall under recreation. Well, but rec doesn't have, this is exactly like a round in circles, right? Rec doesn't have any actual requests. I think it's, it's either facilities or DPW. Um, so, okay. I'm fine with the funding sources there. And then water and wastewater. Brian Cavaney said, you really can't do retained earnings. Everything needs to be borrowing. So we've got the water main and, and MWA, which we've already talked about at length, and a vehicle while in borrowing and wastewater. Same. There was great, uh, low pressure sewer in borrowing and then transfer station. Did the transfer station actually have anything? No. Right. I think I included it because it was a request. Oh yeah. But we, yeah, but yeah, I think it's my perspective. And I don't think there's disagreement, um, older, like, hey, it won't keep it done. And that's another one. It's in the same category as the town building or similar category of like, there's some thought that needs to go into the future before we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Okay. And then ambulance was the dive equipment. And this one is actually not the ship command vehicle. It's changed. You didn't change it here. It's the cardiac, cardiac monitor. Yeah. So that was one of the things I caught when I was reviewing Brian. Two line items, one above the other, where on the other tab, I changed the descriptions. Yeah. Yeah. The ship command vehicle was actually a request in FY28. Right. So the 80,000 is really the, the cardiac. The numbers, right. The description. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine.
I'll change that. All right. All right. All right. So I think seems, does anybody have any, before we want to talk about DPW, if we want to, roads in particular, um, to the extent we're going to try and squeeze anything in, um, else out of free cash. We want to lose free cash in now, assuming that the other projects won't be, take that aside with, assuming it goes, let me, or Brian will answer that. Um, I would like to at least make sure we've got all the projects we think need to get in here. And if, um, if it's, um, I would, I would recommend moving a few things to free cash. Um, the other thing, which Brian or Hurley, he mentioned is there's likely to be some capital closeouts. We don't know what that amount is. I've asked, and I don't get answered. Um, if there's a sense of what that is, but I think it would be good to say, here's our recommendation of projects. And if there was more funds, right, our recommendation would be to go, you know, these, these next one or two or three things are, you know, what we think are next in line. Um, if there were additional funds via surplus capital. So let's talk about roads first, because I think that's. Well, it's your first question. Are there, are there items that are currently showing here as levy depth? Yeah. Could you, could you move to free cash? I guess my, my take is, I'm a couple of the way we have it. Once we've got a selection, I mean, Brian, as we go through this, I think it doesn't matter if you moved to free cash. I think it's more the other way to make it more than that should be crappy, but movies don't they move to free cash? I have no concern. And I think I'm okay to explore that after the fact, we decide off on it. I don't think I mean, where it should be to start, but yeah, my instinct just because of what we, the time this went through and we're willing to DPW debt to a slew to debt would be if, if folks are looking to move of $300,000 more to free cash, I would be supportive of taking out of the, an item that's in levy debt, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think John's agreeing with you. I think you just choose after. I don't think it really matters. I mean, I don't think it's everything. I mean, you can pick any of the basic scenes. The only thing that makes a difference, and this is light difference, and I don't have the debt periods on here, is like, yeah, you probably want to leave the things that have a longer service. Yeah, maybe you want to follow the debt, the capital policy. Right. The debt policy, I think for the product, you're a lesser, the last candidate. The shorter stuff you want, you want to move first. So I'm not real, I don't have strong feelings otherwise. So what I'm hearing, folks are comfortable with possibly shipping something else with free cash, but you're not looking to decide that right this second. So we'll leave it up to the chair to, to make that decision and inform me and I'll, yeah, reflect it in this, this particular. Okay. So let's talk about roads then. Now you're talking about, are there non-high priority items that people think might be funded, some, yeah. And I think like John said, we did say we weren't going to fund roads at all. We were talking about what the amount should be. So I did. You, you did. Yes. So.
Uh, let's, let's do it from, why don't we do it from this? Is it easier? No. Okay. Yeah. It's just, oh, you know what, maybe can I just do, you don't have a total column, right? Or did I freeze it? Maybe I froze it there. No, there's no total. What are you looking for? I was just looking for if we can look at the mediums without scrolling across to what the numbers are, but I think, um, the mediums start your road improvements, um, right. So my first comment was when I was putting together the summaries, it did stick out at me that DPW had zero capital, um, appropriated. And as you probably have gathered from the way I've talked before, I have a hard time. I have a little bit of a hard time with that one because I think Tom does a great job putting together his requests. Um, just sort of clear, right now you're referring to what we're talking about next, which is your draft report. Your draft report picked up as quote our proposal for our recommendation. It picked up all the highs. All the high items. And then in this section, it picked up an IT item. And the field maintenance. The field maintenance. Yeah, that's exactly it. Everything, everything else below the high priority in those two items at the moment is not in the draft report. So I think we're now saying to the majority of the members feel like we should take any of these other items, table medium, when we're not low, and, uh, include those in what we recommend be funded and somehow in fiscal 20. So make sure we're all in this. Yes, correct. That is what thank you for, thank you for clarifying. That is what I'm saying. But everything in column A has identified if it's in, if it's not, or if it's a main period. Yeah, in, sorry, I can't. Yeah, column A is where
yeah, we racked and stacked. And I think there was one that was a, is there one that was a maybe that we didn't decide? Maybe it was this field monitoring and the field's got fields are medium, but Norman Kelly put those into a same as a high. And in the high section, the only item not included was the two and a half million dollars for the field. High school field. Yeah. So that'll certainly. Yeah, I'm not necessarily. You should start there. Yeah, we should start there. So I, I'm struggling if they, if they tear that whole thing up to do the septic, that we would just leave it and not fill the field. But what I still can't seem to get the answer on is, is there a lesser project that fixes, right, what they dug up from the septic and gets the fields in game playable condition? Oh, what they haven't responded to yet. I don't know if they just can't. Once I've asked them, can you, on site plan, which shows the existing area where the two baseball fields are and the proposed rectangle, can you delineate what's going to be impacted of that area by whatever extension of the leaching field needs to be done for the traditional septic system? If you're not in a position to be able to do that. So it's hard for me, if it's literally, you know, a rectangular trench that goes a little bit further in the grass area. But I think he did say there wouldn't be anything built under the playing field, you know, the infield area. But without that, it's hard for me to say how much has really got to be put back together once they do whatever they have to do. So I just don't think we have the benefit of doing off the wall. Yeah, I just don't think we have enough information. And the fact that I agree. The fact that you got to pay $500 to bus the kids to 10 or 12 baseball games, I do feel bad that the town doesn't have the ability to host home games. But in the scheme of what the town's up against in the overall financial picture, I just don't think we have enough information. I don't disagree with your point. I think we talked about that. There could be very good rationale as to why it makes sense to do it at the same time. But I'm not even sure they have to. He responded on where they got the 2 million estimate for the septic by saying, I think, the preliminary estimates 1.4 we added a 35% contingency. And they're still designing. It was clear the fields were, well, this is what they had the last time. Yeah, but you could get an answer on if that's what you had the last time, the last time had the rectangles in it. And there's a separate request for the rectangles two years later. So I'm struggling. Lack of information. In the report that Kelly referred to, which was done by an outside engineer, 2017, I think, they had a very detailed list of costs related to a project. I'm still not exactly sure if it's redundant, not redundant. And it wasn't clear how that cost five years ago relates to $2.5 million. So I just, my general view is we just don't know enough. And if within the next month, they can provide enough information to the town manager or the FinCom to justify putting it in. Yeah. So be it. My instinct is it could probably wait. In fact, I also asked the question, which you can get a response to. Yes, we know the DEP has been telling us for the last five years, we've got to stop yearly pumping and come up with a solution. But they haven't done anything terrible to us in five years. Could this all get pushed out, given what we're up against financially and the big water project? But they even pushed the septic project to fiscal 28th with the DEP's consent, and he hasn't responded to that. So I still would like the question and answer to that question, but I'm comfortable leaving the septic. And I just, I don't know how we put it in. Yeah, I'm not disagreeing. And I would like to see it done. However, I have significant concerns, given how much we're looking, the town is facing in expenses, capital expenses, that we're not further along, right, on the detail of the project for something that we want to do in fiscal, right, we're asking for money in fiscal 27. Right. And I understand when we give it, that's when, you know, a lot of work will start on this. I just, I struggle with, it's four and a half million dollars. It's the biggest thing on here outside of, outside of the MWA. I'd like it a little more flushed out before we said, yeah, it goes in there. So I, I'm with you, Brian. I, I'm fine with leaving the septic in and leaving the fields out. I would like to put some words around that in the narrative, around like the reason, the reason we're leaving it out is not because we're necessarily not supportive of the idea of the project, but because there was still unanswered questions that were significant given the large spend. And also include as your normal design build concept. Yeah. And again, as the school designee, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that Kirsten, in her email responding to questions about the field, it was pretty emphatic that the school would really want to see this done. And so I'm relaying that information, but I know when we met with her, she wasn't that clear yet, but she did speak to the athletic director. And I understand they want it done, but our job, um, on the designee of the schools, I think our job collectively as a group are to try to be consistent, how we evaluate and propose things. And again, for all the reasons you're saying, um, I haven't heard anybody say, don't build it in any, are there any circumstances? Just there's a readiness issue. So part of the, part of this, what we said we were going to do as a committee, right, is determine priority and that there were both financial and human resources to execute. Right. But it's also, it has to be, the project has to be ready. Um, and I, like you, Brian, we, we said on FinCom many years ago, one of our big problems we've had as a town is not doing design, build as separate phases. And we've gotten ourselves in trouble in the past. Fire station two is my favorite example, right? Where we didn't fully scope everything out and we ended up having to go back to the town three times to get full funding. So I have a hard time with hurry up. We've got to do this right now. We don't know what we're doing, right? We we're going to go ask the town to do this and we don't have, we don't have it fully. Well, I'm a riskier as well, it's a pilot narrative. We don't improve it. Well, I think that, I guess I'm not clear why this fields are okay to practice. I couldn't, I think I asked that. Maybe I didn't know. Like, can you, can you give me a little more color? I'm like, well, it depends on the day. Yeah. The other, the other thing we've heard, I mean, I've been out there. It's something, sometimes it's up to six, like you just sick right there. Yeah. It doesn't drink. Okay.
We also heard that Tom Holder, I think, said in a meeting or said in one of these email exchanges that in the spring, I mean, three, three months, they're going to spend a hundred thousand dollars doing. They were going to. Yeah. Um, you know, maybe that's just an annual type thing. No, no, it's not. It's the, it was, it was, it was in the capital plan. It was in the capital plan to spend a hundred thousand dollars on that. It's been removed because Tom said they had enough room to do it without additional money. Yeah. That's what I heard anyway, was that they had enough, but they've spent the, whether they're intending to spend the money that was appropriated under the town manager budget. Um, I think I saw it somewhere, not here, maybe on Facebook, um, an update from Dave Bernstein, who sort of initiated getting that hundred thousand a year on what was done with a hundred thousand. I believe it had to do with the, it was the, the women's, the girls' softball field at the high school needed some improvements. There was some sprinklers, right? There was a number of things that got done. And I, I remember reading it and thinking, geez, having done municipal finance, um, did come for a long time. I was like, wow, they didn't get a lot done for a hundred thousand dollars compared to what I see when we have looked at projects. It's like, it's funny how we could do that. So the risk, the risk is that stuff that gets, is on track to get done and completed in fiscal 27. Although I asked also for a start and end with construction for that. And again, they're still on the planning basis. So I don't even know when that project would actually start and finish. It shouldn't take more than a year. I wouldn't think of a traditional septic system to be built. It's just bigger than what's in our backyard. Right. But, um, so the risk is that they actually get that project done in fiscal 27 and have disrupted some portion of the field, which will be rough graded and some grass seeds thrown on it. I mean, it's not on the playing surfaces of the infields. And, um, maybe the town could have saved X dollars by bidding out a much larger project on the fields. Although, normally, I wouldn't think it's septic. Except the ones that are doing septic and the ones who are building fields are not confusing. Yeah, normally not the same. The septic providers will throw the seed on the, we'll put some loan down and throw the seed out. Yeah, you're talking a hundred grand, let's just call it a hundred grand of savings, but that's a lot of money, but in a two point. That's what I'm saying. I just, I don't, I just don't get the sense that there's going to be a complete rip up of that whole area. Um, it's going to be an awfully big septic field if that's the case. Yeah. And I'm still, I still have reservations about putting anything on top of, you know, spending money upgrading and putting like sprinklers and other things on top of the leaching fields. And then if something happens where you got to repair the leaching field, then you got to rip everything up and, you know, uh, right now, no, I don't think so, but they've been trying to add. So that's not an issue there, right? It's so, I mean, they've had to put sprinklers in the console. They're very wrong. They went the wrong direction, right? It's so wet. And not only if that's. And then in the phase three, phase three 2019, I don't know for sure, I'm pretty sure the wastewater facility that was built when the high school was built is actually still working. Like it was supposed to work. Maybe it never worked because it was supposed to work. I don't know that it ever worked. So I'm not sure that that whole plan just got put off as phase three ever contemplated a traditional SEPIC system. So I just, to me, there is some financial risk that, you know, some lost opportunity. I just don't think it's millions of dollars. I think it, as you say, John, it's how much is going to change between now and six months from now anyway. I mean, I think, I think we're all languages. It needs to be evaluated. We put it in the notes that, hey, this is important, but we don't know. No, we don't have definition of what the impact of time it is. I think we just leave it at that. Yeah. Right. Okay. So I agree with that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Once, once you clear that item out of the way. So we're making that, so we're making that a no then, right? We're going to make that a no with the required an explanation around it. Yeah. And kind of, you want to change the ranking to medium or do people still view that as a high priority just to know for now? Well, I don't think we gave it a ranking. Didn't we say, yeah. Yeah, I think we were kind of open. Maybe you might say, yeah, medium. I won't leave it as a high. Yeah. I think we left the ranking open. Some people do. Okay. Right. Now you have the rest of the mediums who are back to Rhodes. Yeah. Back to Rhodes. I'm a zero. The only thing I would, the only way I know it's cool, but that I might categorize it as a high is that for some reason they can't play baseball at all. Like if they lose the season, I'd be like, no, it goes up priority. Yeah. I don't think that would be the case. I want to leave it as I would like my, I would advocate for leaving it as medium. Somebody wants to come in here and tell us, you know, that they're going to lose a season and whatnot. We can revisit it, but to a degree, to a degree, if they're going to, if they're going to do the septic system anyway, aren't they going to lose access to those fields? So they were going to play baseball anyway. They'll probably do it over the summer. Yeah. I mean, the septic should not take, you know, a year to do, right? This, this should be a summer, they do it over the summertime and fields are, although they're going to lose, but they're going to lose a year. Every time we build a field out of grass, they lose a year because of, you have to have two growing seasons. You have to have two growing seasons. Well, again, what we don't know is how much of the, how much of the, it's basically the outfield, um, how much is going to actually be disturbed. I mean, it could be next to nothing. It could be, which goes back to, you need a slight trench or something. I mean, right. I just invited baseball, angry baseball parents that come to our next meeting, but, um, well, again, it wasn't, it wasn't put in the budget last, it was in the budget five-year plan for fiscal 29 and 30, and it was redundant, right? Yeah. Last year. Um, the only reason that it's been brought forward is because the septic was being done and rightly so people said, hey, if we're going to disrupt that area enough, does it make sense to combine them? Yeah. It wasn't brought forward to my knowledge because all of a sudden people are saying it's a priority. Well, I'll, I'll disagree with Brian only because there's been anger that it was not, that it was broken out from the original stadium project back in 2018. So I would, I would tell you the people that use the field have been, um, upset about it since then. I agree. I wouldn't say upset. They've been having this for, I mean, but now we're debating what we don't know. I mean, we just don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's not that we're not supportive of the project. It's that there's a lot of unknowns and it's a lot of money and we need the details filled in. And there's not nothing to say that if we've excluded it, that those details won't come in such that town manager and finance director added in as a project and it goes to town meeting. So I think not, I'm accepting of that. I just, where we stand today, we do not have enough information to include it. Okay. Email Kelly.
No, I'm getting those emails. Um, all right. So next up is road improvements. Um, Brian, you've made it clear you're, you're at zero. I'm being, I mean, I'm being a little facetious. And I, I, I think you mentioned Kelly, the need to at least be thoughtful about it. Maybe you don't need to fund the whole amount. Let's say you have access to chapter 90 money. They have one year at least worth of prior appropriation, but maybe there needs to be a little bit of transition and then back on the cycle every year. Yeah. So I went back to Tom's answers to our questions. And he had said of the appropriations from the town, he had 600,000 that was going to be spent by the end of the fiscal year. And that in addition to that, he had 800,000 in chapter 90, of which
half of that was, um, earmarked for future projects and half of it, they like to leave for emergencies, which I understand. Right. Right. 900, 900,000. Okay. Sorry. So they, they view that as half of that's going to go to future projects that they've got in the hopper and half of it, they leave for emergencies, which I, I don't disagree with. Right. Based on we have a water. Exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say. That's 900 is what the state has already. That's that is what's already in their fiscal year. Current fiscal year. What I had a hard time, Brian, I don't know if when you looked at capital project status, understanding was, do they take, because the budget in, I think I was looking at FY24's balance for roads was bigger than anything we've appropriated. It was nearly a million dollars. Um, and so it, to me, that had to have been an appropriate, and it was the FY24. So it was like, well, how did we get, unless they rolled a prior, it was listed on our roads, they're usually separate projects, or they put the chapter 90 money in that bucket. And that same account setting it with the reimbursement. Right. I, I couldn't. I mean, that's the question I asked is that the town has to spend the money, and then get the reimbursement from the state. How about the last year's approval from the state? No, from the town? Uh, hold on. Yeah, so like six, seven hundred. It's, it, I knew it, it was smaller than what I saw as a balance. So the only way that would work is if they, they add, I think he said they get, they anticipate 485. They added the 485, and they had spent part of it right down. There was no talk of matching, right? There's not a, right? It's not a match. It's not a match. It's not a match. And that was, that was my question. Don't they need to go, they, we never, we haven't, at least in recent history, ask the town, if appropriate, just pick that case a million something, knowing that they're going to get $500,000 back from the state. Yeah. But I believe, the response to our question was, the town goes ahead and spends the money, but it's spending it without having been fully appropriated. Yeah. It seems to me. And then, and then the state sends them on. No, it's just an accounting, and like, they, they set up an accounting entry, right, to say, here's what your balance is, so that you can see it. But it's based on, right? It's like, I mean, it's not even a form, but it's just based on. Yeah. I, I'm like, Brian, I think, technically, I think they really probably should be asking the town to appropriate it with the understanding that there's a reimbursement versus just doing it. Yeah, which the schools do. I mean, it's school, the operating budget has the full school budget. Yeah. Operating expenses. But that will affect debt, right? Of which the state sends nine million bucks to the town. Right. I mean, what we're looking at is how much debt do we want to approve towards it, right? Because the reality is, let's say, finally, approve 1.2, we only give them four. And so, like, 400 grand of debt that we're asking to get in 2017, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, I think, what I'm trying to get down to is,
my, my thing on, on any of this, and I'm not opposed to, like I said, having 400,000 for emergencies, particularly given, I felt, as you did, John, I kept seeing water main break announcements every, every couple of days over break. So, I understand that. But what I don't want to see happen is, and we've had this on other capital projects, right? We're appropriating capital projects. And it's not getting done. And that either, right, whether that's borrowing, in this case, it's borrowing, we're paying interest on borrowing. So, I want to keep that as close, as tight as we can. Now, if he's, Tom's saying he's going to spend the 600 that was appropriated by the end of the fiscal year. He's got nothing there. He's got 400 to get himself started for FY27. And he's going to get another 400. And he's going to get another 400, right? So, my thought was, you drop the 831 down by 400. And, you know, Tom can argue it's a different number, but you drop it down so that you're running closer to, oh yeah, what would be a one point, he'd be 1.2, 1.3 total appropriation for the year still. So, that's the number I had in my head, too. You just split it in half, you have to see where it takes us, right? Yeah, I was going to knock 400 off. Yeah. And I mean, personally, I know it's a long-term improvement on the road, I guess. I mean, if we're worried about getting approved, we drop into free cash, right?
I want to be careful with that. It was getting funded by taxation for a number of years, which also goes back to the period of time that free cash was being built up. And then, in order to try to avoid overrides of income, a few years ago, proposed not funding through taxation. And the finance director generally agreed to do it through debt funding as long as there was an agreement on it. In the next at least five to X years, if you're funding, it'll be done with debt. So, I would say it needs to stay, even though I prefer not to have much money debt. Yeah. Which is why I'm at zero, just because I know it has to be funded with money debt. And again, to me, worst case, he runs out of money in my road, your road, somebody's road. I blow out another tire on the corner of our series. It's passed another year until he gets back on cycle. My commentary isn't. Yeah, I don't want to focus on that. Programatically, I think going forward, doing an annual funding of road improvements makes a whole lot of sense. But this year is just such a wild card. And between the Happy Hello World Project and then the operating budget challenges, it looks like 27 is not going to require an override, but the next nine years will, likely. And so, I'm just troubled by adding levy debt. We just took levy debt off to try to help with the operating budget. But that's just me. I'm not going to make big deal about it if the recipe weren't on. Well, I got this. I think 400 grand is the recommendation. He's going to have to have the conversation with Tom anyway. And they can decide up or down based on priorities. I mean, he may come back and say, I need less, I need the truck. Yeah. Yeah, we didn't talk about the truck. So I do find the truck in the story with the roads. Well, my goal doesn't start with 400. I think drop it, you know, 431, we split it in half, give them a chance to debate it. So give them 400 for the roads. Well, 431, however. Yeah, no, we can do even. Brad, the other view on that? No, I agree. I think the 431 makes, uh, makes sense. I think that makes perfect sense. Liz? I'm not opposed to dropping it or cutting it in half. Yeah. Um, it's just, it's one of those, I wish I had more information with what I would say in here too. Um, can you expand on that? Like, like, so what goes into the 831 exactly? Well, it's a cost per mile and how many miles. So the town has, I forget how many miles of roads. It's a cost per mile to replace. And they have us on a, somewhere between a 15 and a 20 year cycle to road replacement plan. So that doesn't mean every road gets replaced every 15 years, but on average. So for example, I'll pick Clayford Hill Road gets replaced more frequently than my, than Sears Road because the bus traffic on it destroys it. Right. But that's not the average. So they do it. It's a cost per mile times the number of my at night. I think we have 96 miles of roadway, um, replaced over somewhere between 15 and 20 years. So I think I did the math and it's like 17 years. Yeah. I think of all the numbers in this, in this chart, other than some of the vehicles,
you could, you could sleep at night knowing that that money will be, it's a good estimate for the projects that they have on their plan to do. And then, you know, maybe some slated those costs going out. Yeah. And, you know, they might have a little extra that they use to repair. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a good number. It's really a question of where philosophy is to where we're at right now in fiscal 47. Well, and also how, how far in advance are we funded already? That's my, that's my take. They have enough to survive the storm because I mean, this is people and if we don't do it, then what do we do with the people in your search department? It's not something other. Yeah. Right. So yeah, we don't want to, we don't want to be in a situation where people who would have been doing roads, although apparently we, we do outside contract these line painting. That's where we have, we struggle with that. Um, so I guess it's the point that we've got a lot happening in the road 27. It just seems to putting out 400 days kind of a myth, like a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of it. So yeah, I'll take every little bit I can get. I guess, I mean, how much room do we say we have half a million to 800? I mean, I say room. I, I, yeah, I, I think. Well, that's free cash. Yeah. Yes. We're not going to hear about adding additional levy debt. Well, we could move, we could move, there's a few levy debt projects we could move out of them. Right. So that, that's part of your proposal, to add 431 to roads and move roughly 431 into free cash. Into free cash. Yeah. From some items. Yeah. And that would pretty much use up your complement subject to there being surplus capital to replace. Yeah. I still think you have free cash room. But you saw that truck. I mean, I, I, I think he, I don't really want them. He wants the full amount here. And he'd want the truck. I just feel he probably needs the truck more than he needs to. My take was give him 400 under the road. Give him the truck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you can. Agreed. That. Yeah. Both of those items. I think, yeah. I think. Move the truck into free cash. So you're just trying to say, you're agreeing that you don't have an issue increasing levy debt. Or move something else into free cash if you wanted to push more. So I'm sorry. Yeah. So you're saying move. Because the truck's not in here. Not in Kelly's memo at the moment. I'm suggesting based on what you said, 33 is critical. Right. Which is the loader. Right. That's not. Because we write. Which loader though? There was H40 swap loader is 370. And then the H11 John Deere loader that he brought forward. So I think that one was the one that. The one that he brought forward. Couldn't wait. Right. And he also brought forward a dump truck. So I think it was those two that were. So that's where it was 33 and 34. Yep. Were the two that. Right now, none of those vehicles are in Kelly's memo. I mean, that's not a, I mean, at least for his, from a budgeting perspective, this side, again, I think the top is going to have to, top, top holder. We'll have to make a decision that maybe the take is to give the two critical trucks that could be put up for, they're obviously a problem. And half his budget. So that's what we're saying. Hey, we took 400 from roads to getting in two vehicles. Yeah. And they try to balance this out. Yeah. And that's what I would advocate for, is those two that he had to pull forward and the half, half the roads. Wasn't the budget with that then? So it drops from about a 1.7 million dollar ask to We're saying it's not in 27. So we're saying adding additional to 27, 431 to the roads, and then 475 to the two critical vehicles. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because that's not just road. I mean, those vehicles are everything, right? I mean, the chaos that just continues to ensue. Yeah. I have on the, on the vehicles in particular, like I've said before, he had those out. He pulled them in. He talked about why, right? I, I don't want to see. So we have water main break and you can't do the work that you need to do because you have equipment that doesn't work. That's not a, that's not a place I want to be. So that's the proposal. I'm in agreement with John. That's the proposal in front of us. And for my benefit, I can't see the two trucks or describe how it's the H11 John Deere loader and the H7, uh, F550 dump truck. And what was the other one that's not, uh, the one that's not included was the H40 loader. The other thing I still don't have a good answer on. And I think we've given where we thought was important on it. Um, I still, I, Nick is also new trying to get up to speed. I think my recommendation to the town manager and, and the finance director would be whether or not he thinks all the existing funding that he's gotten for projects is going to get used on the projects that it was intended for. Um, or, um, or if not, should it be returned right as surplus capital and the projects he needs, you know, put forth, because I am a little concerned just because there was so much IT dollars unspent in the report that, that you had. So that was my other, like, and I just want to make sure, right. He knows you can't just take money from a project and move it to another one, unless it's, you know, additional funding on the like project. You can't, you can't swap. So there's nothing there for IT that's not in the high category. You're talking about simply. I'm talking about in general. Yeah. When he met with us, he obviously, again, had to have time to really evaluate. Exactly. And with the passage of time, there's a good chance that we talked about with him. Just like he may not even recommend now spending that money. Right. Particularly in the IT world, because there's so many things for like, we planned it four years ago, and the world has changed, and we don't want to do it anymore. Right. Yeah. So I think that's a call out in the, in the memo, make sure that, and I'm sure the finance director will screw up open capital, as he always does. Yeah. But this is given, and this is a, those are different conversations, right? The finance person questioning whether I should spend it is different than the town saying, go back and say if you really need it, because you might be afraid to do it. If someone said it's important, you know, it's, yeah, well, and there's a tendency to, you also have to be careful because like, well, I don't want to give it back unless I know I'm going to get it on the projects I need it for. Right. So I'm open to that. I just want to make sure that that's, that the technical process is happening. Yeah. And I think when he was with us, I think we made that point that it wasn't clear he'd been working in municipal government that he couldn't simply move money from one project to another. Right. Um, I think it's also good for the town to see, right? Because they're going to say, he has a, look at all this money he has, they're not spending the realities. He may not need it. So it's part of it. I, I'm guessing he needs it. It just might not be needed for the things that he, it's earmarked for it. Right. Yeah. Um, based on my view of our IT that I've used, I, I would find, I'd be hard pressed to be convinced we don't need it. Okay. Anything. So back to the, to the DPW discussion. John and I were in agreement. Is everybody else? Well, yeah, just again, just so I'm clear that, so we're, we're, the suggestion is the, uh, H11 John Deere loader and the, the dump truck be, uh, approved on the swap load or not. Is that the suggestion? Correct. Yeah. Okay. I'm okay. And half the, yeah. And half the road. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm good with it. The vehicles would be funded with free cash. The vehicles would be funded with free cash. Yeah. Half of the roads would get. Yeah. And, uh, that's my only other question. If that's all the extras we're adding to what currently is in your draft memo, other than the additional items that we talked about earlier in the evening. Um, uh, I didn't have it. Is there any sense that, um, given that again, the town manager will do what the town manager wants to do. Um, is there any sense that folks want to rank order the mediums such that if in the memo, we said, this is, this is far as we're willing to recommend. Yeah. The only other one, Brian, you've got ship commander as a no command vehicle, but that was, that's the, that's actually the cardiac monitor and that. Yeah. No, in my, uh, in my, uh, version seven, I've changed the description. Okay. Okay. That's why I didn't. Yeah. Okay. You didn't see a change description here. Got it. They changed the priority. But other than that, just my question is, if you want to, if, I mean, for me, the only thing I'd say that with the rest of the office are unknown, if town is unknown, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, I can see, you know, it looks like HVAC in the health of the schools. I mean, I, I'd always throw that in there for money. I just think that's it. Yeah. I'm going to leave that though, as if there's, if there's surplus capital, they can feel, yeah. I'm just asking a question. We feel we want to lay out what, if you decided to tell manager that you'd have even more money than we think. I, I would, yeah, I don't, I would say the HVACs are the one I would do next. There's several of them. It was hard to see a little further than that, but he does, then it's just going to pick every fix. Yeah. It's something we're not going to prove because it doesn't make it. I mean, I agree. I think, Hey, this is what I would add. This is the priority to go to add Melissa to kind of that media bucket. Yeah. I think that isn't the website in there, that website, which would be frankly, it's a medium for IT. Yeah. Yeah. And I, but it was always, that's the project he wants to see done. So all I'm saying is, if, if we feel we want to at least lay out what order in which we would do these things, you know, but again, if we do that, it'll still, yeah, everyone's seven. We may leave the ones we have in there. I think IT, we have the governance of maybe which, where you have money and maybe free up that, close those programs and reapply each other. I mean, that could be cover IT maybe versus. Yeah. The only other one is, and I'm going back to DPW is we didn't put their radio system upgrades in. So we did school, we did, um, we did fire and police. We didn't do DPW. Yeah. Again, I'm fine with what you proposed on the roads, but I, I, no, I'm not saying we do put it in. No, I'm, I, I would be more inclined to deal with trucks and upgrades to radios when we're doing all the town radios and just take a pass on roads other than the chapter 90 Monday and surplus. Yeah. I, I think where I'm at now, Brian, I'm not disagreeing is I'm good with what I've suggested. And if the town manager and, you know, DPW director and they want to swap it out, they can, they can go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I, I would like, I don't think, I think going to zero means all progress on road, you know, you're, you're limited on how much progress you can make on roads. And I think that concerns me from a staff perspective. Yep. Right. Maybe patching roads. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I mean, we're not connected to this. I mean, we can't, that's for, that's for this forward. Yeah. If this was, if this was fiscal 28 and we'd have better clarity on the town's operating budget side. Yeah. And we figured out what happened with the water. I think my view on some of these items would be different. I'm just towing a pretty tough fiscal line given what we're up against and then those. Okay. Okay. So we're, we're adding the alternates that are prior to HVAC, right? I guess we can get further. Is there a number on that? Uh, there's a couple. There's to have, I see, elementary supporting, uh, for you to learn, uh, while on the tab, we're off. That would be fine. That's elementary. There's a public safety building HVAC, which is 250. I would say I'm schools before I'm probably safety building. Um, it's 540 for elementary installation of. What do I actually see? I'm just one of those. Yeah. Those are the two HVACs and I would prioritize. I am just not, wasn't sure. Cause it says installation. If it's adding HVAC versus replacing HVAC, I feel differently about it. Great. Seemed like, I thought when I read it, it was kind of like an additional unit to better coverage. Yeah. I think he, what he said to us, I think it's that of the units on the roof, only a certain number of them are actually working, right? For the school. Yeah. For the school. So he said, yeah, he needs to replace them all every year. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the ultimate since the HVAC, I mean, if we want to throw the DVD, probably DVD radios in as an alternate, just because of the JCC program overall, it's probably not zoning, but yeah. So, no, you're going to deal with this in your draft memo or whatever you do. Yes, I am. I'm going to slide this. Finish up with this Excel workbook. Close it up. Uh, I'm probably going to get some modification to this schedule to create a section between high and medium to put some of these items we just discussed. Yeah. And I'm doing, just so you know, don't get, I'm doing it in my spreadsheet and I can pivot off of it as well. So, Brian. James Bromack. How are you? Good. I guess I'm in the wrong room. Do you know where the planning board is hearing it? Oh, I don't have to go wrong. I need sanitary. It's a big community center. Of course. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. Appreciate it. Drive safely. Yeah. Sorry to bother you guys. Hey, Jeremy. That's okay. I mean, I think it's the guest president expected us to get a line, but I was good. Yeah. Well, I only gave us an until seven o'clock to do this and it's now, uh, quarter after eight, but I said nine. I was like, I guess we're all in. No, no. Well, cause we, I, I split with the report, but I actually think we covered a lot of what we covered quite a few things that are report related. So. Okay. So I'm going to just do one final recap. I'm going to, I'm going to, on this, I'm going to move fields into the medium section. Yep. I'm going to include half of the road, or 431, 431,000 or so of the roads in the high section. Yep. I include those two vehicles in the high section. Correct. Um, vehicles are going to go pretty fast. Yeah. I got the funding structure, and then I'm going to take the, uh, HVAC, the schools and move it up in a little section. At the top of the medium, high medium, high medium, high medium, its own little section. Okay. Priority medium or something. Yeah. And, uh, and the funding source will stay the same or whatever I got it. But did that have on the HVAC for funding source? Uh, it was borrowing. Yeah, it was borrowing. Borrowing, but you have free cash on the public safety, but, yeah. And you want public safety also in that, but behind the schools? Yeah, it goes behind the schools. Right. So you'll tell me when you see version seven, if I got it right or wrong at the next meeting. Yeah. I agree with you, John. It was a good discussion. Yeah. Okay. So we have to miss the fun course, I guess.
All right. So now I'm going to, let's see, stop sharing. I can get my whole menu bar with the stop share. There we go. Stop share. And let's open up. And this story is where when I send this, the, uh, workbook out, I've sent it, you may have seen, I sent it to the ex officio member. So right now I'm all there. Yeah. And Kirsten have seen it. I haven't heard from them, but they're probably going back through the chair. I haven't heard from anybody. Is that right? Kirsten, has it replied back saying she was going with it? She did reply back. She did. Yeah. She did. No, she did reply back and say that you had her accurately captured. Some of this won't come as a total surprise when they've been looking at the minutes. So, yeah, I, I did not send them the report because I wanted to have a discussion before we, we did that. So, all right. So I'm, I'm in the report and there's still quite a bit of work I need to do here, but I wanted to get you something to get started with. Um, I did not put the executive summary in because I always do that last after we've actually got. Oh, did I put, do it wrong? Sorry. I, the IE or, yeah, IE. The funny thing is I thought I, I did that once. I know I thought I copied and pasted it from somewhere. So maybe that's right. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Mine's usually missing a page. That's the usual. Okay. All right. So why don't we start with background. Brian, I know, um, you had sent me something. Thank you. That's very helpful. I can, I can amend this to align with this. So it was actually approved. Um, our existence of the committee was approved by the attorney general. Um, I was led to believe it was sort of a default thing, but we actually got a letter proving it. And Brian sent that to me. Yeah. And just, you might just, because of the length of time after they got approved, it then had to be publicly noticed at least twice. And then there was an issue with one of those public noticing. So they had to do it a third time. So we couldn't officially get going, which I think was the punchline of this until the earliest August 23rd. I think we met on,
it says in our first meeting. So it was early September. Yeah. That at least answers the question of what, why, why did things seem to be delayed? Yeah. Although that was the intent of this. Although I will also say, even if we'd started on July one, I still think we would have struggled to, to do what we needed to do in the timeframe because the timeframe was the 15th. Um, all right. So my, any other comments on the background, if I make, I'll make some changes based on the technical of when this was approved. So there's some of them, yeah. I heard. So in the trigger mission, it says greater life of five years and the cost. Oh, you're sure. Is that four? Five years. No, it's both. Okay. So I thought that was like, if you buy a bunch of small things, it's also counted. And a, and a total cost. And a thousand in the aggregate? Yeah. It's probably right out of efficiency. Aggregate. That's, I think you probably just, you gave this. Yeah. I want, I, I, I listed a lot from, yeah, what we already had. I just, we just need to be careful. I mean, that sounds like a, what's on the website, might not be totally clear. No, I thought these are documents that were sent out to us before. Yeah. It could be on the website as well. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So I just want to go back on members. Brian, you're probably the best to answer this. I wasn't positive and I saw it written different ways, different places. Were you and I appointed by the committee, by the finance committee and the school committee, or were we designated and officially this, this select board appointed us? Okay. So we could put designated two, two designees or. Well, that's how I have it. Cause I say the select board appointed us. And then I have in the columns who designated. Who of which were designated by. Yeah, I have it. I, I guess I didn't, I didn't throw it in the narrative because it's in the, it's in the chart. That's accurate. Okay. Okay. Good. Anything else on the charter mission section? And you guys are free to send, if you've got like Nits and Nat type edits, just send them to me. But if it's, if it's more than an internet, I'd like it at least call it out in the meeting from a well known standpoint. And thoughts on, I've, I've got sort of, I haven't added them, but appendices that I was intending on sort of copying the various documents into an appendix of this, just so that everything was in one place and we're not referencing the capital policy, the debt policy. And then somebody who actually wants to leave it has to go like pump them all down. Yeah. I got fired these. I sent you three tables that I thought might end up in a pennies, but obviously with your tables included, uh, two of the things I sent you wouldn't be needed. Okay. Doing up because I wasn't sure what you're going to do. Um, I think, well, I think, I think one of the, uh, tables I sent you was a complete listing of open capital projects. Yeah. As of November 18th historical record. Okay. Because what happened last year, once Brian Stephanie produced, they reported a point in time, Munis moved on. Then when I tried to go back and reconcile, he said he couldn't recreate. So just, so maybe you could add an appendix and use what I Yeah, I think that would be good. Just cause I, I'd like to avoid like any future, like, Hey, these numbers don't add up to what? So that there's clear that the open capital was as of the day. Yeah. That would be a, you know, just adding that appendix. All right. So I'm on any other comments on the charter mission. So current process. The only thing I would add, um, towards bottom, we're going to set the committee to do the requests. Yeah. I'm sorry. Since before that. Yeah. Um,
you may have gotten slightly earlier than the rest of us, but probably not much. So I think it'd be helpful to put in the first gun initial PPW request on October 29th. All right. Okay. I think they were due 30 days after the committee request went out and we didn't get the other, we didn't get the other ones till November 11th, but I noted in the zip file, they were all dated November 3rd. So I don't know if they went to the town manager's office November 3rd and you didn't get them till November 11th. But again, I just think it's relevant in terms. I think I'll just add the dates. I, I received them. Um, right. Because in some cases we received like a blank folder for school. So when did we actually get, I'll go back through the emails. Maybe I'll just put it. You can say the first, we received the initial submittal through the DPW, you know, October 29th and over the next two to three weeks, we received the rest of them. Okay. You want, you're okay with that versus me just let's take it out. Yeah. And then it may not be here is the right place to put it, but obviously we just got some substantive changes for some of these. Um, that may go somewhere else. I apologize public. I meant to start sharing this as we went through it and I did not. Okay. I will add that. Yeah. Next up is right out of the capital policy, right? Uh, they came from, no, I don't think so. They came from, uh, Liz's niceties, but I read them and liked them. Um, but I can,
I don't think I could find any. No, the capital policy has it, but it's like a sentence. It's like, you should write. Yeah. Yeah. Based off of what we talked about when we were acting exactly like what comes for, you know, so that's, I thought that's where you got to play it. Let me go back to a little bit. Anyway. Uh, I'll, I'll take a look. I, I feel like the capital policy was light on it. It mentioned things. Yeah. Yeah. When this is more how we did. Yeah. I remember our first meeting and I asked that question is, are they listed in a capital policy in order for other than the first one? Yeah. Probably not. Yeah. And I, I, but I like the way this reads. So yeah, I put this sort of in the way I think we thought about it, the order that we, because I moved one of them. Um, but I would also, I didn't want to commit to like, it's strictly this. No, I didn't do like prior. Yeah. I left that language out intentionally. Yeah. I think it was good that way. Is there anything worth adding? I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was going to say, I like the way the current process reads and the way it's set up. I think that's, uh, I think it's very effective. The only thing I was going to say that we should add is that, again, I do not want to bring it up again, but the baseball field, that concept of projects that are not fully defined, that we don't, I feel like that should be in there somewhere saying. Yep. I agree with you. Maybe it's financial or just, or maybe it's the last bullet. Yeah. I'll just, I don't know. Um, it's, uh, project readiness as a criteria. I, somewhere I talk in there, I talk about resources and I think it's resources and readiness. Okay. Is it resource readiness and open capital or something? Yeah. I, I, when I say resources, I always mean both people and financial, but, uh,
okay. The concept of completeness of submission, which kind of goes to the, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah, yeah. Completeness. Yeah. And that'll be more of a longer term. Yeah. It would be hard for me to argue that we, completeness was achieved in most cases this year. Um, but I, I give a pass because we didn't make. Yeah. I mean, some of, some of the things we've now gotten after, in fact, asking questions might be the type of information we would hope that we get as part of the initial submission. Yeah. I think as I, I outlined here somewhere, I think our request format, forecast, the way we're asking for things is, is not our, our current CIP form is ineffective in getting what you actually need. And most people don't follow up. Yeah. Don't ask why I fill it out. Yeah. No, I agree. Yeah. The next section I go, I, I, I'm fine with the chart that has the numbers populated. So I might suggest on the other items, but on the table, just a little narrative, just through a sentence. Yeah. I'm, I'm good with that. I started thinking I was, and then I was like, I don't know how I'm going to do this. I was trying to get at the fact there are other ways to fund projects. Yeah. No, I think it's important.
And thoughts on, we have it, I think I have it in one of the charts, but like, on the funding sources calling out impact on taxation. And I think it's helpful for anybody who's non into town finance, like understanding that cash capital would be a direct, you know, hit to, to taxation. Levy borrowing is, is a hit, but free cash and ambulance receipts or not. I, I think that's helpful to have, but I wanted everybody else's opinion. Yeah. Let me probably, a little narrative somewhere with that. Yeah. Here's the rainbow. These are technically driven by this. Yeah, sir. I think it would be helpful if I actually took an action to go and refresh myself. What should those categories are for the negative cash funds? Yeah. All right. I'll add, I'll add something there. Um, okay. All right. Future improvement targets. I actually, this is the very first thing I wrote. It's okay. This packet of charge says it's a sensitive subject with the board of public works. Yeah. I know you took this list from the FinCom report, but that retained earnings line item. I, I, what I was thinking is if I add a description that I will put on, cause I, I, I want to say this came like, we didn't make this up, this isn't our guideline and then make a comment on our understanding is that, um, retained earnings is, is not available currently. Yeah. All right. Let me add that. So I forget. So future process. I mean, I think the two things that still stick out my head, but I don't list everything to commit us to it, but yeah, I mean, open project, open capital project status, health improvement, right? I mean, you're trying to follow up. We don't actually call it out. We have capital assets, but we don't necessarily have to open the project status. Yeah. And then the other one was we want to some sort of older to say, again, the town building conversation or assessing full scope versus, you know, driving total costs of programs or something. So what would you call that, John? I would call it like understanding future. Well, and that bullet on expand long-term capital planning might be including, uh, ensuring that total future costs are, are considered, right? Yeah. And then maybe saying where, where appropriate ensuring that we're revealing, uh, multiple projects impact in the same capital asset. I mean, I don't really want to call it too, but that's too much funding. That's probably, I'll, I'll think about how to, yeah, particular asset or. Let me have part of the first collection, right? So I think the funding, I'm assuming eventually, eventually, our funding requests are going to extend past the five years. Yeah. That's what the last one is, is that we got to get beyond five years. But I think what John's saying, and I like is, it's beyond five years with an understanding, a strong understanding of a particular asset, right? To the extent. I mean, it's the town building. In my mind, it's because the five years, you know something that's broken, but that's not true. Right. But if you had a 15 year plan, I would hope the other stuff would end up on there. But it, to me, there's also a pairing of understanding of the town's strategy and direction as to use of buildings, right? Like, right. This building needs all these things. Are you guys planning on vacation? Like, are you planning on doing something else? Because that's important. Maybe it's like the, what is the plan for a long-term asset before, you know, in, you know, maybe it's capital improvements are greater than X. I mean, something like that. So is there, is the intent to put that on the new funding request? Or capital? I don't, so I don't think that in particular is something a department manager can answer. And I think that's also a problem with our existing funding or existing CIP, is that it's got a bunch of stuff on it that a department manager wouldn't answer like funding source. And so they skip over it. I think, I think that question is a strategy question that has to go usually like select board school committee. Right. What's your use? You know, if we're looking at repairing things at a particular elementary school and school committee is intending to do a building study and build in your building, right? You have to know that in, as a part of, but one of those is a strategic, completely strategic. One of them is, could be strategic, but is likely to be repairs, right? Maintenance of a building.
So if we get our information currently from the department that, but this is really strategic with the decision or analysis to be done, decisions to be made. Are we even getting that information? That's, I think there are two different things, right? See, improving the CIP is to get better information from the, from the department heads. I think there's maybe a separate bullet here, which is understanding the needs, right? Use needs, right? Of the, of the various TEM boards, committees, functions, right? But it's a separate, it's a separate initiative. Yeah. It's us, it's us taking the information for someone saying, I need to fix the roof. What else do you have to do? Oh, I don't know yet. Because they're just worried about today. So then going up to the town, what's our use plan over the next 10 years? What are your repairs look like? Yeah. And then burying them and saying, well, hey guys, you want to keep using this building, but it's going to cost $15 million. Do you still want to keep using this? But like, does that change, it's, it's the circling back to say, does that change your view on, on how to do this? But I think it's a different body than, that we've got to get information. I think it's probably more to the boards and committees, but. Yeah, we'd like to try to do new committees somewhere, I'm guessing. Yeah, I don't want to regret that. A good example is the stormwater discussion that we had, which I heard the chair of the site board at the meeting Mondays, alert the rest of their members that their board needs to have a further discussion about over the next 10 plus years to make sure we know how much money needs to be spent to be in compliance at the end of that period. The good news is, as our liaison, she heard that discussion. Yeah. She's put members on notice and said, who does that on their committee? But that's an example right now, we're just seeing 250,000 here, another 200,000 there, but it's millions of dollars. And then we have an asset management plan that they had to approve an invoice for so that could get done. Yeah. Or a grant form or something. Yeah. But that's another example where. Yeah, I was just, I was thinking. The department head's going to be in charge of that. That's a higher, that's an account manager. Yeah. Select board, school committee, school committee team. Well, and that's where, you know, before making a bill, it's just understanding what is the actual ask and the intent, and how do we accomplish it? I mean, to me, it's ensuring we're asking questions about multiple phase or multiple year capital spends for, you know, is that the vehicle we're going to get that integration, the updated capital requests? No. I think it's our budget. I think it's the 10-year budget saying, hey, these all go together. Right. And it's for a building that's going to be information request meetings. Yeah. Yeah. And this is what I said, like, if we had us, if we start breaking down sections like vehicles, we see them, hey, this is town, but these are all the town building that's against a certain platform, we say, okay, this is the problem. Yeah. I don't think it's a CIP form. I think that's, it's a little more qualitative, you know, awareness of what's going on in the boards of committees, working with our liaison, right, on the select board, um, possibly Brian, you working with school committee on like, hey, what's on the horizon, um, use-wise. So I, it's, it's not as defined in my head of what it looks like. I just know we need to have better, we're going to need to have better information in order to achieve, you know, a long-term beyond five-year calendar. It makes it work that's improved visibility too. I mean, that keeps it kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, spend more time on the site, but it may be after kind of town meeting stuff is done, that's one of the things we want to do is have a joint meeting with the select board, the manager of school committee, and make it a working session to talk through some of these themes, concepts and themes, um, because they're the ones that they're going to have to do. I mean, so again, queuing them up to, hey, you've got to start thinking about this. It's a bit of a change in the process. Absolutely. Like, schools are working on a separate master plan for all the elementary schools. I don't know if they're- I even think we should do that, just having the updated, you know, capital request from like, oh, by the way, we talked about getting better clarity and information, and this is how we're going to do it. It's questions now. Well, that's the thing, right? All this is disconnected, essentially, with all these master plans. So that's the problem. Okay. The town master plans. Yeah. I mean, all this is band-aids until we get there, right? That's all this is. Yeah. Okay. I added a bunch of notes to expand that section. All right. Both in capital, Brian, I basically just took what you had done. Would you like me to foresee tables in front of these, and if not, I can put in table one and two and fill in blanks and send it back to you? I don't- the only thing is I'm not sure if I'm not going to end up with a table in the executive summary. Okay. I'll wait till you're ready. I mean, if you want to just send me, they're spreadsheets, right? Yes. I mean, I can copy and paste them myself to send me your spreadsheets. Okay. Okay. So yeah, I didn't, I didn't do anything to that, because I love it. I hope you guys like my watermark. Oh, they can only read it in a few places. Just wanted to make sure. Drafts subject to material revisions. I didn't want anybody to- I might have a couple of questions on the next section. Yeah. I think I sent you one already in the email. Whatever numbers you decide- Yeah, you're not trying. Because I know you have to update them anyway. Yeah, I'm going to cross-reference to what yours is. My only thought would be, well, I have no issue putting the total, whatever the total turns out to be that was initially submitted. And I know you referenced right after that, 38.6 million. Just do the math for people and just say that it's 18.5 million, which then people can equate to what we're recommending. Yep. And I've already given my NWRA comment. Yes. Do them in.
Changes during the discussion tonight. Yep. I will change the numbers. And I will- Generally, generally recommended limiting, and then you have to add some verbiage on the two or three items that we have talked about adding in. Yeah. So you want to say the committee recommends generally limiting- Yeah. Generally, that's like my favorite words. Okay. But you have in mind the narrative summary of the capital projects that are expensive. So what we had, I looked at the FinCom report last year and it just had a real couple sentences on on what's really driving up to the 6 million. Personally, I'm not a math person. I don't love narratives. I love throwing charts out there and just having you see what's there. But I figured once we nailed down what the projects were, I'd probably add a little bit around, you know, major projects being a septic. You start at a high level and say, Yeah. Town flip, schools flip. Yeah, exactly. Enterprise funds flip, and then- Yeah. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's right. Kelly says, she's going to just- But you're thinking how when they write the reports, generally, you'll do a couple sentences in there, but then there's a table that says the same thing. Yeah. And I'm a just throw the table in person. So you included this part of that section. You included the septic under the schools, which I don't have an issue with. So it relates to the high school, but he's an owner. Yeah. So here's the thing. In my spreadsheet, I actually broke the facilities
identifier as facilities slash schools, facilities slash rec, right, to who were the other partners. I can do that here, and I'm okay with that. All right. I kind of like it in the schools to do that thing. Yeah. Just because- It's how we've done it. It was- The reason I left it that way is because that's how we've historically, in FinCom's report, that's how we've historically- We've given facility projects that were schools to schools. Yeah. And the existing, the existing waste water facility was built as part of the high school building, which is a high school building. Yeah. Well, I don't think anyone really cares for spending the money. They want to know what it's going to be in town. Yeah, it gets tricky because facilities, like all their other projects are dotted all over, but I tend to separate my, and I think most people do, town versus school, right, rather than more detailed parts. Especially if it's going to have some specific expense. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, maybe drop two million into facility and people's like, what are you doing? Yeah. I will tell you that, again, I have no issue with this. Again, I think it'll hopefully
get a slightly improved chance of passing town meeting, but we're going to add a couple more items potentially here with schools. Yeah.
And my understanding is the operating budget at the moment is, the operating budget is
pretty sizeable increase in the school budget and a relatively smaller increase for the town budget. So both operating and capital schools are going to be outsized.
Those projects would be called out above as the top projects anyway, right? I mean, you're going to accept it. It's that way. I put it below. And we have to do it. Yeah, it's on the next page. Anyway. Which I was going to put in the appendix. I'm like, no, it needs to come up front, because you need to know what those are. So does DPW have nothing in this current draft? They do, which is part of why I initiated that conversation, because that doesn't make sense to me, just broadly, that you've got a lot of assets there. How could you be at no spend? They have a $36.8 million project. Well, yeah. Anyway. So this table will get increased for the town for the group, the two elevators, things. Yeah. Happy Hall of Fire alarm, the top water heater. So what would you group that in departmentalization? Which doesn't make sense, knowing that that's going to be a major topic, like school. MWRA? No, the tent, the buildings, the elevator stuff. Are you better off the department? That is going to go in facilities. It's going to go in facilities, but it'll be on this, this exhibit. It'll show exactly right. It'll lay out exactly what it is. Okay. It's not in the summary. And I debated
if the summary that I have on whatever page this is, is needed if we then give the next, because I actually like the next page better because it does the projects. It just doesn't, it doesn't summarize a total for each department. I don't. Yeah. I wouldn't mind not excluding the first table. And I know it's appeared in the FinCom report in the past, but. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Or for what our, what our goal is. Yeah. I think it's redundant and not as useful as the next one. So. We'll get it. Yeah. I'm great. All right with that, Brad? My table is great. Yep. Good. Yep. Keep six, the first table.
I got an email from FinCom about, you know, what I, what I keep updating. Brian, would you and I keep updating the tables for them? And I said, well, I'm going to update my tables to do our report, but I can't guarantee I'm going to, you know, keep updating them as, as things change. I mean, I'll help if there's a question, but.
Okay. So that'll all get updated. Brian, this reflects. I know this happened when I, after I left FinCom, breaking out water and wastewater as a separate. Chart that didn't used to be the case, but that came about.
Yeah. Right. Well. Enterprise funds. Yeah. Yeah. They have to be started. Right. But they weren't for, for many years. Right. That was a decision. That was a change last year. I'm excited.
Yeah. What I didn't have time to do for this and I'm not planning. I may get roped into helping is in the warrant. There's a description of each and every project. That we're recommending for the current year. I mean, that takes a lot of time to get together. So I don't think it can go in our report. I won't. Much less of a changes.
Yeah. So I don't want to, I, I would happily help put it together. Once they've nailed down projects, but I don't.
You know, in the work that has like the summary, it's been, uh, the description. The CIP forms. Except the CIP forms generally don't have what needs to do in there. I've, I've been, I've been reaching out to department managers to create. The description. Yeah. And then that's, I didn't start. I didn't have enough time to get into the out year. So what I will do next was some of the same tables that we put. The account was put in the warrant. I'd like to produce for the out years based on where we find medium load. Thanks. The problem is this is cumulative. If we medium something in 27, we're not including it.
Am I, am I pushing? What's your general philosophy? Am I pushing? I thought we decided, um, given where we are in the process, that, um, we needed to get fiscal 27, the town manager. Yep. We needed to continue our work. Yep. Um, having ranked that we were going to maybe include with this, which is a table I sent to you, which needs to be slightly cheap. So just give the high, medium, low for each. Our rankings. Yep. That's fine.
I'm going to be in the next six, two, but I sent version five after the last meeting to the finance director and copy the town manager saying this is before Christmas. You might want to, you know, our memo is not going to get discussed until after the new year. Yep. Here's our rankings. You might want to get going and filling out your own budget template, which includes exactly what you're talking about. They're going to be making their own decisions anyway. Um, what I heard my instructor say on Monday evening at the FACOM is that they're waiting to get our report, which will include fiscal 27 and five-year plans, which is exactly what you were just starting to describe, which are the- Which I didn't tell them we would do. And we've, we've, we've said, we've only said that we would provide the rankings. And I know that that was understood because, um, I got some, a comment back about it. Right. Um, I'm not saying we didn't start out and the charge for the bylaws that we shouldn't, in fact, be producing a five-year plan with numbers based on how we feel based on all the information we've gotten fit in the financial plan. Our problem was we, A, asked several times for the financial resources in the out-years. And what we were told was just use what was provided in fiscal 27 through 30 last year's five-year plan, but it doesn't address fiscal 31. But on my spreadsheet second tab, it kind of showed that at the bottom of the tab. Here's all the requests we got. Here's what we were shown in last year's five-year plan is available. Funding sources. And every year we were short. So that left open the question, are we supposed to reflock? Cut it to cut our recommendations down to meet those finance bills, or are those going to change based on accounts finances? So we needed at the last minute you were here, John, we, we said, we need to get something. And I thought what we're going to do is we're getting pretty much done here. In this section, say, we just haven't gotten all the information we need to properly assess. We still have $4 million of facilities projects that we're waiting to find out how much and which years they're not fiscal 27. And we haven't really talked about the movement of numbers. If we had to move numbers and end up with, you know, a specific table like the ones in the year for each year. We can do that, but it's not going to get done at the next meeting or the meeting after that. And, um, which is why I suggest the town manager and finance director get going, because they're going to do what they're going to do anyway, right? Yeah. We've given them our rankings. I'd say put the rankings in this section in the same group. So, you know, I would say in your direction, we will continue to work on developing a- So, that's what I'd like to do. So, yeah, I would like to put the rankings for the out years, right, in here. We can put it, and I can do it two ways. I can summarize the dollars, right, that ranked high, low, medium, low as a summary. And then a listing with everything in the detail. I would like to, and we can issue a report. And then I would like to go still as a committee, keep working on what we think a plan would look like. Now, the question is, is that a futile effort, right? Because they're going to go change a bunch of stuff anyway. And so, let's see what they come up with and start over. I don't think it's completely futile, only because we're going to have to do this all again next year. And I would like to know what we, where we stand on what we think about the projects. And to the extent they come up with a plan, and we're like, yeah, that's not what we thought. Right? I'd like to identify that.
We just went through a process with one year, which that's the most clarity. And it's just going to be, it's just, you know, we should do that. We can do that. It's just, it's going to take more time than... We know there's a big gap too, and what's the next year's highs are going to be able to they didn't do that. Yeah. Right. I mean, I don't want to add more work. My, my, my, my almost thought is that as our first pass, I mean, it's really the each year's, I don't know if that's worth it, obviously, just based on what we're at. But do we take what's left and then say, okay, in 28, these are how we do high media work. Right? Well, we did, we, we, we, I have a table that I sent coming after the last meeting. Yeah. After we all write, you know, did the consolidated writing, which is in the spreadsheet. I produced it. They exhibit. So we have that. Yeah. So we have that. Then we should review that. That's just to say, okay. So I can, I can update that. We didn't spend a lot of time on it, but I'm aware. No, no, we did last, we did last week. I'll update the exhibit I sent you that consolidated our rankings by year. After the meeting, I'll circulate it to everybody. So they have it. It's, it's, it's in the, it's in the large spreadsheet. Yeah. It's just, it's spread out. I just, and now you have all the. I squished it down into five columns. Yeah. Focusing on the rankings. And I think I have the dollars in the rankings. Yeah. And it just made it easier to be concise. Yeah. But what we're talking about is. Then do we keep them going forward and creating. You know, one of these tables for each of the next four years. Deciding what's in and what's out based on our rankings. And I think I agree with your point, Kelly, given where we are in the process. If they, which is, I think what we've been saying for a month. How management of finance directors should. Do that based on what they know their resource allocation fee. We keep working on it. And I suspect there'll be a fair amount of agreement. Yeah. But whatever they decide to do, they're going to do. If it's along the way, we could say, we'll provide you with. As soon as we can, we'll provide you with. Yeah. I'm not opposed either to issuing a report and issuing an addendum to the report. But I want to get this. I want to get the FY27 out. Yeah. But just stay out of the report. Because meanwhile, I know the FinCom is expecting not only to get a fiscal 27 capital budget, which, but they also want to get the five-year plan.
And they got their canceled because they're going to have articles, the operating budget. And so at least if they can get the 27 capital budget. Yeah. And, uh, but, but the base record and the commander have to be moving on their own on, in my opinion, on 28 to 31. I agree. Right. So I'll, I'll recirculate that table after I update it for additional projects. And then Kelly, you can decide, you know, it'll be too small for you to put it in here at the table. So you may just refer to it as an exhibit. Yeah. Or I'll figure out how, how, what, what, if there's a format of some of the information to put it in. Okay. Right. I'll, however you want it. Yeah.
Okay. When is our, uh, we hope to get this agreed to and issued by our next meeting. Yes. At our next meeting. At our next meeting. Yeah. I'd like to be on final edits at our next meeting. Okay. So next meeting is scheduled for next Wednesday. Um, it's currently. Are we having June? Just confirming that. Yes. I'll be remote. Yes. It's currently scheduled for, we had talked about six o'clock. Um, is, are you guys amenable to 630? Okay. I have a child leaving the country for months. So I'd like to figure out. Oh, you need more. You need that work? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Well, today.
Somebody has got, you know, an amount of luck that I don't like to depend on is what I would like to say. My daughter waited a little longer than she should to, to get her visa situated. Yeah. It came in the mail today. It came in the mail today. Yeah. That's good work. Brad, did you take them in?
Pardon? Do you have a question, Brad? No, nope, nope. She was just laughing. Yeah. So if we can, if we can push back this to 630, I'd appreciate it. Just. That's fine. That's fine. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. On Wednesday, the 14th. And we're going to be in the select board meeting room.
Okay.
That's because the heat's working tonight. Although the select board doesn't work. Maybe after tonight's discussion, we may have a full crowd next day. Yeah. Good. All right.
Let's. Can we move to minutes?
Before we do that, Brian, do you think we needed a vote? I mean, we got agreement, but we didn't vote on, on our rankings. Do you think it's sufficient to just vote when we get the final report? I think when we get the final report. Yeah. Okay. All the schedules have been updated. Yeah. Yeah. I think. I agree.
Okay. Minutes.
I have no format. This was the agenda. This was now the required format. Yeah. Which I just want to say for the public that we've got a new format for the minutes and for the agenda. And I quite frankly thought the changes were great. It was the agenda lets me pick the committee name off a drop down, pick the date of calendar. And I sent those comments to the town clerk. And she had expressed that she was happy to hear that because a lot of people did not like them. But I thought it was pretty slick and helpful to me. So I don't know about how you felt on the minutes. Yeah. No, I think in the minutes are fine. I've added, you see, I added a footnote for example, just to add some additional detail, which they're fine with. I think there were certain. Yeah. I added, I added some things too. Yeah. There were certain key information they wanted to be consistent across every board and committee. Yeah. But basically said how, how the rest of the minutes go is up to you. Yeah. So obviously if you all have any substantive questions or edits, see if you have some time. I do not. Yep. No comment. They're robust. Yes. And as an example, every once in a while when we spend time on talking like on big tables and things, I'll just attach the table right to the minutes for the public's benefit. That's fine. It's easier. Yeah. That's fine. Um, I'm actually fine if you attach the draft, like just attach the whole thing as an addendum to the back of the minutes. Right.
That's up to you.
Um, okay. No discussion on the minutes. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes of December 17th? Motion to approve. And a second. Second. I wasn't here. Nope, that's fine. All right. And we're going to have to do a roll call vote. So I'm going to start first with John. You can abstain if you, if you, you don't have to, but you can abstain. No, that's good. Yes. Yes. Brad. Brad Carver. Yes.
Brian. Brad Carver. Yes. Yep. Yep. Liz. Yep. Kelly. Yes. So the minutes of December 17th are approved. I don't have any topics not reasonably anticipated. I think I did mention earlier select board. Our separate liaison has asked me if I would come to select board to talk about our work and where we are at and what our challenges are. And I expressed to her that, one, I wanted to talk to the committee about it, but that I wouldn't see us doing that until we've actually voted and issued the report. And then I would, um, provided the committee is okay with it. I'm happy to do that. Once we have an issue report. Any concerns? No. All right. So next meeting, we said 630 Wednesday, the 14th in the flat board room. Do we want to schedule beyond that? I think I would like to. If you're going to get a hybrid room, you probably should. Yeah. So can we do the 21st, which is the following? I just, I'm just in case there's any follow-up. I hope you're listening to this. You cannot. Okay. Take it out of the spring. Okay. Any days that week folks can do?
Monday is a holiday. Oh, it's a holiday. Only hybrid days are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday. Yeah. I can do Tuesday. I might just not be able to. I've got three days in a row. Brad, can you do Tuesday? Yeah, the 20th. Yep. Yeah.
All right. I'm going to say six and see if I can get that.
In the event, medium, in the event we get done and the 14th and we're like, hey, we need a little break before we take on to the next. We can do that. But I just want to have it there just in case we've got any follow-up. Okay. If we'll finish next week, do you think you'll get feedback from the flight board before that?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Unless there's a, what was the next major town meeting? Next town meeting? Next town meeting.
Let's go ahead and go out one more week just so that, in any event we don't meet on the 20th, that I've got another one out there. So, days of the week, preferences, guys? Or like Wednesday. Or Thursday. All right. Are we talking about the? The week of the 26th, the last week in January. Okay, the 28th is Wednesday. Yeah, I would like to do the 28th as possible. I'm going to be out of, I'm going to be out of state from the 28th through May, February 7th. Yeah, I can do the 27th. I can, yeah, 26th or 27th I can do.
Lizzie, are you okay? The PMVC is meeting that day as well. 27th? Yeah. Can you do the 26th? Definitely do the 26th. Okay. 26th okay for us? Yep. If we can go from 6th to 7th, then that works. It'd be done at 7th? You wouldn't even start at 7th. No, Donna's perfect. Yeah. That's why we were laughing, yeah. Okay. All right. I will, I'm just going to get those reserved. And we'll, we'll go from there.
Okay. That might be the, it doesn't affect us as long as they have a room somewhere. It's hybrid. Maybe there's been an article during that night, but. Okay. Yeah. If I, if I can't, we'll go from there. But if we can't, we said Wednesday, Brad could do Tuesday. Wait, that was Tuesday that we decided, right? Or Monday, sorry. We said it Monday. We said it Monday. We said it Monday. Tuesday, Brad, I'm 26th. Yeah. Who? I can, I can, I can do Tuesday. I'm going to do Tuesday. Yeah. So just in case, if, if we can't get Monday, I'll book Tuesday. And I'll, I'll do hybrid, but I'll. Yeah. Yeah. No, I understand. Okay. I got a, what is CIPC? Like somebody saw it on the, one of the kids on the calendar. What is CIPC? It's like, oh, so we haven't been listening to me for the last three months.
All right. Are we good? Can I get a motion to adjourn at nine Oh four seconds. All right. And we have to do a roll call. Brad, are you in favor of the motion to adjourn? Yes. Brian. Yes. Liz. Yes. Don. Yes. And Kelly is a yes. We are adjourned at nine Oh four. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
And I'm going to review the agenda. So this is, as I said, a hybrid meeting because we are in the town building and on Zoom. I have to read the OML statement. So this meeting may be recorded, and if recorded, will be made available to the public on WICAM as soon as possible after the meeting.
Public will be excluded from executive sessions. We're not having one, so it's no big deal. Today, pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law. If this meeting has remote-only access, no in-person attendance by members of public will be permitted. That is not the case today. If this meeting has remote access, which it does, one may watch it or participate remotely at the meeting link that can be found. I'm not going to read this out loud, but it's available on the town's website.
Okay. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so in person or on Zoom. Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. And so attending in person, we have Brian, Liz, Kelly, and John. And attending on Zoom is Brad. So we will be needing to do roll, call, vote for any votes that we take. And I'm going to go ahead and review the agenda. And then we can do announcements and public comment. So 6 p.m. is called the Order Review Agenda for Public and Announcements. 6.05, public comment and members' response. 6.10, continue to review of the Excel spreadsheet reflecting consolidated departmental capital requests for FY 2027 to FY 2031, including answers to questions from department managers and revisions to requests. Potential vote of the committee's position on ranking such requests. 7 p.m., we're going to discuss content, revisions, and potential vote on the draft of the committee's report to the town manager. I left out of time, but at 9.20, we're going to review and vote to approve the minutes of December 17th, 2025. 9.25, topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair. 48 hours prior to posting, if any, and setting the times of our next meetings. And 9.30, hopefully, adjourn. So is there anybody in the queue for public comment? So no one there for public comment? One member of the public? Do I not want to make public comments? So we are all set there. I do not have any announcements. Does anybody else have announcements? Brad, you all set? Yep, all set. Okay. All right. So I want to go ahead and get started on discussing capital. So I sent you guys, I forwarded you a bunch of responses to questions that I had based on our last meeting and based on review of going through the spreadsheets. I had sent out to various members of town staff and they had sent back. And I think sort of highlights of those, if you didn't get a chance to look at them, Christine from schools did get a quote for the security, which was the radios. It was, as I understand it, Brian, correct me if you think I read that wrong, did include the full request. So not just the phase one or phase two, because she hadn't done the estimate previously. And that amount did come in significantly lower than her placeholder. I think her placeholder was 200 for phase one. And I think it came in at 135 for everything. So that was good news.
On fields, I still have a question outstanding, but did try to pull a little bit further on costs that we're currently experiencing as a result of the baseball fields not being playable. And what it seems like to me from those responses is that they are used, but they are not being used for games, that they, whenever they have a game, they're doing an away game. So they're not necessarily experiencing field rental costs, but they are having to pay for busing, which is costing about $500 per trip. And obviously, they reiterated the cost of the septic needing to haul a site is costing, I think they said $150,000 range. And what I didn't get an answer on yet that I've asked a couple times different ways is the question Brian had asked earlier on, which is, we have a project that was in the plan originally for FY29. It was called phase three, the high school fields project, which is from 2017, there's a document attached that shows kind of the sequencing of rebuilding the football stadium, swapping the softball and tennis courts, all that those were phase one and phase two were done. Phase three was the baseball diamonds in that plan, it's moving the base, the two baseball diamonds and making room for a multi use, multi configurable rectangle. I'm sorry, trying to get this that is in that plan, and the project that was on the docket for 29 was phase three, which links back to that document, but there was also a second project that was in the plan then and still in the plan now for 75,000 design and $2.5 million of fields. To build rectangles where the baseball diamonds used to be, it seems redundant, which Brian had said from the beginning, I can't, I've yet to get an answer, I don't think you've gotten an answer, confirming whether or not that actually is redundant or not. It seems like that second one should come out, but I can't get an answer, so in the later years of the plan, I'm tempted to drop it to low until we get an answer, if we have it all right. Okay, so that was fields, and I sent a request to IT, because it wasn't clear to me in their requests. We have in the plan, one of the security projects, we have it phased the way that he's got the expenditures laid out, so it was $425,000 total, phased over three years. We have it as three projects. He answered me today, but he didn't really answer my question. He gave me more detail on the projects, but didn't really answer the question of, is that supposed to be one project with a three-year spend, or is it supposed to be three projects? And so, I'll follow up again, just to get that answer clarified. The biggest thing that came across was, I had asked some questions of the facilities director, and I got back, it was the questions of, do you have, and that's the breakdown on the roof, right? And he did give that back, and he did break it down into phases, but he sort of reworked his whole plan for a few other things that had come up with the elevators here in this building, and swapping some other things out. So, it was essentially a pretty, a bigger tweak on his overall plan than what we had talked about before. So, with all of that, I would like to do a couple of things before we get into the report itself. I'd like to do a couple things on walking through Brian's spreadsheet, and that is, one, looking at the changes that facilities made, and ranking the ones that we haven't ranked. I would like to also talk about where, if all we have room in capital spending sources, and this is a bit of a tough thing to say, but given the size of the MWRA project, arguably, you have no room in anything anywhere, right? But at the same time, I think there's probably some space in things that don't affect taxation, specifically free cash. And so, I want to talk a little bit about that. Ultimately, it's not our call. Ultimately, the town manager and the finance committee and finance director will make that call. But I do think, you know, there might be a little bit more room to get in a couple projects. And what stuck out to me is DPW, we don't currently have anything in the plan. And I do think, one, we have to revisit roads and discuss roads. And, two, it doesn't make sense to me. It makes sense to me to hold off on some projects because of clearing the backlog. Vehicles at DPW doesn't necessarily make sense because those don't tend to be things that tie up resources for a long period of time. And so, if we've got needs in order to continue service, I think we need to, pushing that off doesn't necessarily have a whole lot of benefit from a service standpoint or from helping keep the backlog cleared. So, I'd like to talk about that as well. So, why don't we start with facilities and the changes in the facilities budget or request.
Let's see if I can move this so I can actually see. Was that all on the 8th, the subject project, or is that a separate? No, it's throughout his budget, he may change this. So, I was going to... That's not a big thing about it. It's not all that came out earlier, right? I'm sorry, which? What do you... So, if you look at the version 6, I think it's self-spersed. Oh, I didn't know, okay. Yeah. And it's not the easiest way to do that, just to allow us to continue to track what we've looked at before, which I had a column. That's through the divisions, and most departments are no changes, so I just carried over the total. So, the facilities and the schools were the only two that you'll see revised numbers. And you can see it in the spreadsheet, but it's the very first item that I'll just add. And what Kelly just said, facilities director, they did what we asked them to do, which is rethink the roofing part of it. So, the first six items up there, which are showing as zero in the revision, and what he submitted back, simply left those just open. And I, for the moment, if you move to the right a little bit, I simply parked them in Fiscal 28 in the revision column. That's not necessarily what he has suggested, and probably an open question for him is, is he still looking at those items to see if there's anything there that he's proposing be funded in Fiscal 27, which is most urgently needed? And if not, that's fine. And then, as to what's parked at the moment in this spreadsheet at Fiscal 28, when does he think he'll be able to provide more color on the dollar amounts and timing? Yeah, so what I read in his email, how I read it was that he has to delay it because of other things that have come off here, sounded like the elevators, other things that are going on, and that he was also trying to get better information on cost and exactly what needed to be done. And so it seemed like he sort of tabled it. I think the question for us is, do we put it in FI 28 or in another year? Right. I feel like we should, because it's a significant amount of money. At a minimum, if we don't do that, I think we have to have a paragraph on the town building. But along those lines, and why I could go with either approach is, we know that's not everything, right? And so I think it's still worth, even if you put it in FI 28, I think it's still worth discussion in the report about, you know, there's an elephant in the room here of this building and what it means. And we don't have a number over, we're dealing with what has to have to be done right now, but we don't have a good concept of what, when, and how much the building needs overall. And I don't think we can go back to the town, as I've said before, to ask for that until we have that whole number. So we can talk about it, what other people's feelings are, do we want to just move it out into another year because we know it needs work, or do we want to leave it out and call it out as a, you know, this isn't everything, there's more that likely would be needed to bring the building up to standard. I can be convinced either way. Yeah, I think the finance director chose to pull five and a half million out of 27, 20, 25 annual time anymore, and it didn't appear in the capital table, so I'd rather pull all in a footnote indicating that there was this aggregate amount to spend. So that was sort of similar to the approach where we would obviously include it in 28, but put it in a paragraph. To say, this is what's left. Yeah. But we still don't know. Yeah. I don't feel comfortable putting it in any other year, because I have no basis on which to phase it. And at least for me, I don't really care either way. I think it just needs to be clearly identified as it's still an open question. And highlight, I think, the point you're making, which it's really difficult to look at those dollars outside the context of what's going to happen to the building. Yeah. And if they're staying, what other costs over what period. So I don't know how others feel about it or whether you want to wait until you get to the report to address that. But I just wanted to highlight. Yep. That's why you see it in the fiscal 28 column. What he did do is identify $310,750 needed to redo the roof, the flat roof over this section building, the gym. And assuming that's based on whatever ongoing conversations he's having with a vendor, which is focused on fiscal 27 per minute.
The only odd thing I found about that was he gave a lot of airtime to the structural issue that's over the town manager's office, which is on the opposite side of the building. And that was the one that he seemed most concerned about addressing sooner than later. He's got that one programmed in fiscal 28, which at least he's identified it. But nonetheless, that's his call. And I, it just, it always makes me a little uncomfortable when people, and I'm sure it was based on whatever information he had at the time and maybe further inspection he determined that. Well, this one's leak, actually, this one's actively leaking. Yeah. Versus the other one. It's actively leaking and it's been leaking for a while. I agree with you, right? I mean, I, based on his comments, I'm surprised to him to push. But I think, based on, I don't know what the situation in the elevator is, I assume that's up there in terms of safety. So, I would agree. It's not a safety, you can't, like, the building's no longer. It won't be ADA compliant. Yeah, the elevators weren't, they may have been in the on-site, in-site report. I haven't gone through all those reports yet. But again, yeah, that one wasn't even on the radar screen. But, so the only concern about the roof is just have him confirm that he's comfortable that there is no active safety issue. Let's say it's too. Over, over the town manager's office. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about $150,000 or a safety issue. I don't think that's, that's not, as things go, it's not the worst thing out here. If it's, he hasn't listed a space, he's structural. Well, the problem is, I think, to get at the structural issue, he's, he's, I think, assuming that the roof is ripped off, whatever the underlayment is under the. Yeah, there's two pieces to that. So he just broke it into the structural roof of $700,000. Yeah. And I don't think he can deal with his structural without doing the $500,000. Yeah. So, but I'm assuming that he's programmed this way, he must be comfortable. So, I just want to keep and get him on record to say. Yeah. Oh, I wrote it down. Yeah, I mean, I agree with the overall assessment, which is, I mean, yeah, there's no way that's with all the cost. I mean, if they missed a half-million-dollar elevator and the cost of something to repair, then that's not a little thing. So, my personal take is, I don't know where our leeway is on this. I mean, I like the idea of one and two. I think those are pretty sound. Like, I mean, the defense was there, right? We know they were the structural, the rest is fine. I mean, the roof is straightforward, but I think, yeah, we put below the line. Here's what's been identified as additional costs. But our recommendation is that a full building assessment is done, because this is likely only the bare minimum, right? And I think we identified that elevator, you know, case of point, elevator for half a million was just added in 2017. Yeah. That would be my personal take, but I absolutely agree with you. I think five million is, you know, I'd be very surprised if it's less than 10 if you really get it to where you want it to be. Yeah. The interesting thing is we have 2.8 in for the roof and the sum of the five pieces, I think, is only 1.8. So, I think maybe to John's point, to that point, Kelly, maybe in the report, a sentence or two. Yeah. Just, and again, I understand that, you know, Michael, again, just joined partly through last year. He was catching up on a lot of projects, really hadn't, you know, he kind of, I think, brought forward what was probably in the file. And I think just to drive home the point about it, we needed to be a bit more rigorous upfront analysis before presenting proposals to this committee, the town manager, whatever. Is that, I mean, is that the right approach for something like this? I mean, we're talking about essentially refueling the whole building, right? He's just, his focus is repair. These items now look more like what it absolutely has to get done in this opinion. So, do we recommend, I mean, do we go as far as recommending that perhaps this becomes its own, I don't want to call it a committee, right? Like everything else saying, should there be some of the point to actually do a full assessment? Well, this, their, their, their, on-site, in-site was an assessment of the building. I think he's just, he's, in his defense, he's scrambling, right, to put together, give, having, new in the role, to take what was protected in the past, marry that with the on-site, in-site, in-site, and dig in. So, I think a little more time, he'll be able to do that. But is that, get it to what we, like, tell us, or is that just a pair? Yeah, this is the other question, though, that there's a bigger question, which is, and the select board has asked me, when we're done with our report, to come and, you know, talk to them about what we've, what our report is, what our challenges were. So, one of the things with your, your buy-in guys that want to talk to them about is, they need to, they need to figure out what they're doing, right, what the plan is for this building, because otherwise, we're going to start burning into, we're not going to have a choice, right? It's just like the roof, you're going to have to, the elevator, you're going to be spending millions of dollars, and you're going to do it by default. Some costs, some costs, and then you're forced to just say, we can't leave the hours. So, I think there's two points here, both of which I think are valid, and I think both should be made in the report, not a long-winded discussion, but just, these are things that became clear to us as we evaluated the site. One, we really need some initiative to determine what future use, because the facility's director can't do the second part of it, John, which is. My sixth thing, or am I redoing? Over one period, you know, what needs to be done, and how much does that cost, because, you know, I think we just approach this, but we don't want to understand the full scope and cost of this project, just based on the emergency department, right? Yeah. So, I'm just recommending, we already see an additional 4 million ahead of us, or 5 million, and we already have a half a million added before we finish that conversation. I mean, I don't know, however we want to word that, right? Well, you had a 10% error rate, and we're three, four months into this. What Kelly said, though, it actually is net favorable variance at the moment, because the roofs went from 2.8 to 1.8, and the elevators are in there and a half a million. So, we're half a million ahead of where we were, but we still have that top six items that, you know. But I have no confidence, and this is nothing, this is nothing against Michael. I have zero confidence that this encompasses all of the demons that are in this building. I have an overarching, what's called on-site, in-site came in and did something, but that doesn't get down, from my understanding when we asked him about this, it doesn't get down to the level of detail. It gives sort of, it goes through and says, okay, your boiler is X number of years old. It's probably going to need to be, you know, looking at it from here, it's going to, in this condition, he needs a deeper. But that's what I'm talking about. He hasn't had the opportunity yet to go to each site and look at staff and get eyes on site. Okay, yeah, so I agree with this, or it's better than or worse than. And so I would imagine everything we're going to get from facilities is going to be, and so he's gone through, and for sure. Do we have an idea of how long? Well, that's why I say those first six items. But I mean, so we could, I think we have to, we have to, we have to ask Michael, and I think that's in the report, right? I put a future section, sort of what I wrote first, which was one of the things that we, as a committee, want to do, right, when we get beyond this report. And one of them is, and it starts with the facilities director and other department heads, but what is the condition of everything where, like, we need a better underlying understanding of that in order to be well-informed as we're prioritizing. So I don't think we have it now. I don't know when we're going to have it. I'll add it to my Michael. Well, I was just saying, like, the changes that we saw, I would imagine we're going to have more iterations of that. Yep. Yep. For sure. I mean, it's possible when this leaves, this committee. We'll have to snap a line and say, based off of, you know. There could be changes from the department heads direct to the town manager. So before we claim, say, 600 grand for the attic, it's probably part of the attic. It's just not. I'm sorry. Oh, because the attic's in a different place? Yeah. Yeah, it could be. He inflated the attic in a different lineup. Yeah, that's true. I didn't think about that. I view that as possibly a different project, but yeah, you're right. I, yeah, but he talked about it when he was talking about the roof replacement. He talked about it when they were up there. Yeah. So we're net even. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. Okay. Check one thing. Yeah. Brad, are you hearing everything okay? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I actually, I agree with everything you're saying. I think that it's very important to emphasize that we do need a complete building assessment and not, not just a building assessment, but also just what's the necessary use for the building or what does the town need? And does the, does the current building satisfy it? I don't think it does. And so, you know, where are we going to go from here? It's beyond just a building assessment. It's more of a use needs as well. But, but I agree with everything, everybody has said.
So let's keep walking through the changes.
Stay focused on 27.
Yeah. Let's stay focused on 27. I think, you know, the, on the roof though, I will comment, right. He's, he's basically phased that roof out over five, the full five year schedule. So the pieces are, you know, he broke it up, but it's spread out over a few years. Right. From what it was.
All right. Next was the elevator.
So he has a elevator specification for 47,000 and elevator upgrade for 471, which is basically the design and construction. He broke into two projects. Normally we do design in one year and construction the following year. So we're asking for the right amount. He's got them in the same year. I understand why in this case, if the elevator is not functioning, I do appreciate that he broke it out so that we are recognizing that there's two pieces to this. I would probably though, ultimately, and I'm sure Brian Keveney will do this, combine them just because, um, otherwise you end up with a spend issue. If you, if you're under on one over on the other. Whether it's good for my cash notification before they have to get a bond, maybe. That we're used to. Yeah. You, you could end up in, I think in bonding. So combine them for purposes of like, it's a, in fact, we combine a whole bunch of things when we bond. But they can, they can do the first part in cash and then bond later. Yeah. I just like, I just like when it's, you're right. You could, I, I just like when they're identified because we're identifying that there's, there is a step that comes before, right. The actual work. If you, uh, when you're saying what you just said, would you propose leaving this, uh, you know, assuming people rank this, which we need to do, uh, high such that it finds its way into fiscal 27. Yeah. I would rank both the phase one roof and the elevator at high. And I would, I will ask the question on phase two, right. Just to make sure we don't have. Oh, everybody else. Or an issue. So is it, is it really late until 27? What? Is it really late until 27?
It's not, listen, it's not that far away by the time, by the time, um, they get everything up and, you know, like contracted, right. Yeah. I mean, the elevator's the worst thing in the world for sure. Yeah. But yeah, I don't, I don't think it's, it's where we are right now by the time they get everything ready to go. That's not that far away. Right. It's only six months away. So one clarify question I would have is the elevator specification. Do we know it's just for the main building and not the one in children's way as well? Or is that, uh, he has another line for that. But I mean, the 47, does that cover? But, uh, my understanding was the 47 is the design of both and the, and then the two pieces were, although it's a good question. Um, I thought it said it was both. I assume it would be, but. And then the, and then the actual work on the second one was pushed out a year. So we don't have like a bonus 15 tag to do the. No. Yeah. So, so where we ask about rankings from the others, um, for our purposes, would we lead this best specification broken out to be able to, again, drive home the point about normally? I, I would leave it in our report and you know, if Brian, or they want to combine it, they can. Great. You want to pull people on their ranking of those three items? Yes. Uh, how do you guys feel about ranking of the, the phase one roof and the, uh, two elevator? I think it's high. Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Hi. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Perfect. Uh, see what else was, was that everything? Was that everything I think that was everything for 27, um, for his other changes, he did some swapping of things, some in and out a year. And then I believe he also added the tie in for the DPW building that my dream in that up, Brian.
Yeah. The DPW and retro commissioning, which you explained to me what the tie in was before, but I don't remember, um, and it was 60,000 in FY 29, I think, 15,000 in FY 30, that was, yeah. Yeah. I think again, the out years, we're just moving things out, but there were two small items brought in. Yeah. That was, yeah. Okay. So people want to rank those while we're upon them. Sorry. Which ones? We're still on facilities, the second to last and third to last. 87 and 88, where have you got in your spreadsheet? The building management system. Yeah. No, it's DPW. 60,000 in FY 29. 50,000 in FY 29. But a DPW BMS tie in to the town building. It's not a building management system. I don't know what it is. I think it's, but it makes sense, I don't know, like I have a town building. Oh, building management, that's what BMS stands for, okay. Okay. And I don't know what retro-commissioning is, does anybody? Normally, make the commissioning of a building would be, after the fact, make sure it was running. Okay. All right. I think those kind of items, looking at other similar kinds of items, we'll probably write this medium. Yeah. I would put them as medium, because that's what we did on the other ones. Medium works. I agree. Sorry. Yes. Brad? Yeah. I agree. Medium. I think those are the only ones we need to give the rankings on them. Yeah. I believe so. Is that inflating? Yeah. Oh, the insulation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's out here, but you still have to rank it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the question is, I think people have been leaning toward high for the roof in general, so I guess the question is, I assume that all roof-related aspects are still high. I would, my opinion is still high, because if you're up there doing the roof, I would go do the roof and do the insulation while you're at it. I agree. Yeah. I agree. Yeah. Yeah. The only statement I have about the attic, and this gets back to, at what point do we say that we're just going to bring it in versus the patch? So, it's out for 29, do we need a lot better information in two years about what we're going to do? I know it's a loaded question, but... I would like to. Do I do, if I was a betting plan, which I'm not, would I take that bet? No. I mean, I think... That's our request. Well, I mean, I think, and it may be as a part of our recommendation is, you know, we have all of these expenses that are going into past jobs, let's just make sure that, you know, the ROI is there, but, especially as these are in further hours. Yeah. But, yeah. I'm having a hard time mapping that the ROI is there based on how much money we're looking at. And how to replace. I, I think my personal opinion is that the money spent on this building is sunk cost. That it's not necessarily... Yeah, I mean, it's just hard at the moment to... Well, so when I think of a roof repair, that's 100% high. When I think of insulating, not that it's a nice to have, because it's definitely, there's definitely a value that comes with making sure we don't have loss of heat and cold. However, if we're going to go and decide to put a whole new town building in place... Yeah. But if you don't, but if you don't put insulation in the, like... It extends the life of the roof. It extends the life of the roof. Right. But, but your point, if you're not going to be in the building for more than another five years, who cares? Yeah. But you have to, but you have to make that decision. On, on almost everything on here for the town building, you have to make the decision, right? This, this is, even though this is not getting the building to like pristine condition, it's a ton of money. And so I don't see how you can go beyond a year of emergency stuff and not have made a decision on what you're doing. Even if the decision is, we're not going to have a plan. It's going to take us five years. You're going to have to spend, right? To keep us functioning for, for five years, even if that's the decision. Yeah. I mean, I think a decision to stay is a good decision, is a fine decision. It doesn't, it hasn't yet any, no one has yet put up a rational alternative. Alternative. Yeah. Agreed. Possible exception of stop and shop vacates that building. It's big enough to, you know, carve it up into a town building. But otherwise you're left. You stop. It's not new anymore, but yes. But, but otherwise you're left with either having to break up where the schools are operating and the town's operating or, you know, pleasing space. But, and if they're proposing to build a building, a likely timing of that would fall probably somewhere in line with the school coming forward. Yeah. To want to build a new elementary school. Yeah. And so, but I think the only point is it has to have a focused discussion with a decision that people will live with for the foreseeable future. Yeah. I think I'm just going back to when I, some of the earlier conversations was there was talk of having, yes, a new school building, maybe multiple. That was a consideration, consideration for a new town building. This was just, as we have drips and drafts of investment going into repair, you know, understanding what is the ultimate decision on a new town building. Well, there's no, then okay. I don't know. And I would just say like that it gets complicated outside of like, like Brian said, outside of, you know, there's a building at town center that's big enough, especially if you start talking about new school buildings, because then you start having the discussion of, well, if you're going to build a new school building, would you keep children's way over here? Or would you build that building to accommodate children's way? When you pull children's way and say, let's, I'm going to go even further and pull the school department children's way out of here. Well, then you're rehabbing a building. And yeah, you rebuild and it's half occupied. Does that make, and you're heating a building that made that we're attempting to. So there's. They're trying to move meetings from here to the community center. I mean, I think we can do, like, I don't want to, we have to do that. I think our task is to make sure. We just have to make them aware. Kyle is aware. Yeah. Yeah. If you read the last, your items. Right up in the paper, it was, it led a much smaller, oh, it's only this. And it's clearly not the case. No. I mean, I actually just really looked at it. I don't know. Cause I added the elevator, 7.5 million already in the book. Yeah. Cause I mean, if you have these. And that doesn't count what we've spent. Cause we've spent a bunch on this building. You need to go do 27, 28. I say that a short term, you have to go and do it. But when you think, I think 29 and out thereafter, it's like, okay, well, what do, what is the long-term plan for this building? And if it's just to keep it functioning, upgrade it as we can, but if it's not going anywhere, then, then okay, that's, that's an answer. But if we're going to, I mean, forget the whole, we have to go and replace the water in time. Cause I feel like, oh my gosh, we're not getting any new buildings. We have to pay for that instead. But, you know, it's just, you know, I feel like we should have a better idea of where we're, where we stand three years out from now. Yep. I agree. Okay. That was fine. Otherwise. Yes. Fine. We'll go back to fiscal 27. Yep. And then scroll, scroll down. Some of these a little bit. So you'll see where the library line items are saying I included the library line items here. He removed took out 75,000 and 200,000. Didn't he? Yes. Yes. Cause, and we were concerned those are duplicates. So it looks like he thought they were duplicates. Yeah. Cause I, I caught that as well. I think that was it on this one. Okay. We've gotten ranked the new items. Yep. All right. Brian, did I capture everything that was changed or we got answers on? Definitely so. Okay. Oh, and he, I think you, again, I, it was tough with what he gave us back cause he deleted line items that completely deleted the line items that were in there before. So if you look again at facilities, there, there's a line item that originally had, you know, $150,000 to the transfer station, uh, repair. And then he had a million eight out of fiscal 31. He, he completely deleted his line item, but I, I just, I don't think I caught that. You just need to look in the, uh, you need to look in 28 through 31 to see what, you know, other activity where he might've either phase things or. So on that note, um, and I didn't get to putting this in the report, but I wanted, we can, we can talk about it when we get to the report. Um, I did want to walk what was originally requested. Meaning like, why did everybody give us right out of the gate before we got any clarification before there were any changes to. Okay. Now there's been a bunch of, we've had to ask questions. They've made changes. I did want to show that in the report. Um, just because it, it wasn't insignificant in terms of like, Hey, there was stuff duplicated. There was clarification. There was a whole sale. I do think it's, I don't want to spend a ton of time on it, but I do think it's personally, I think it's a valuable part of like, we didn't just take what we got and run with it and plug it in. Right. We had discussion. There were realizations, both on our part and on the part of the department managers, which tweaked it in the end for nearly a hundred million dollars with projects. It didn't move it, you know, $15 million, moved it a couple million, but I do think it's, it's a point I want to make somewhere along the way, um, that there was, you know, changes, changes and redundancies and things that we, we cleared up a long way. Yeah. I mean, it shows value. Yeah. Right. We're not just a pastor, but we're actually offer a comment on that when you get to the report. Yeah, I disagree with that. But I think the other thing I started to prove that we need longer term planning, because this is the volatility that everyone says, why we're so like, this is what we're seeing. And it's not, it's not so much the terms of machinations. It's literally been this long time. I think that's that confirmation as well. I don't know if that adds value, but I think I would agree with that. Yeah. I think it's valuable for a couple reasons. One, I think we added some value too. Um, but for the process to work, we prefer, it would be preferable. We wouldn't be having sort of wholesale changes at this stage in the game. We don't let it fire into the process. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So from here, let's talk about, you know, we've just added a few other things as high. We've gone to schools because there's a couple of little changes there. Oh, okay. Oh, he made changes. Michael made changes, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So in, go back to facilities for a minute. Yep. Because it was difficult for what he sent us. Um, there's a line item, um, it's after the library grounds improvement line item for fire sensor replacement. Uh, isn't it earlier? You mean the middle school one? Yeah. It's right here. It's row 73. It's row 73. The middle school fire sensor replacement. Yeah. So he had in fiscal 29, he had 200,000 and fiscal 30 at 350,000. Yeah. So he deleted those. So you see that he zeroed those out from the facilities budget. And put them to school. And then in the, I'm assuming, because I remember when we met with the schools and Mike Fay was here, we asked about, are they comfortable waiting to deal with fire alarm systems until a later year and all the three of the attendees seemed comfortable. Uh, but then he basically added into the school budget, 140,000, 203, an upgraded happy hollow for fire alarm. Then a $375,240 upgraded poker, a $409,160 upgrade. Um, and, uh, you don't see it in this spreadsheet, but it is, uh, his spreadsheet. He sent back to us. He also noted in the sidebar that there was $173,189 of existing funds to deal with the happy hollow fire alarm, which suggests to me that that projects really a $310,000 project. Yep. So if you add all those three items up, it's 923,000. Um, they had a, um, I think there was a $500,000 item that I zeroed out in the schools for the fire alarms. Right below those three, right above that room. And we'll get to the right here district-wide fire protection. Yeah. 500,000 in fiscal 31. Yeah. That's what prompted us to pose those questions. Yep. So 923 is bigger than 500. And the only point I'm making by, by highlighting the 550. Cause it would really come out or plus 550. Whether fire sensors are related to fire alarms, kind of sounds like they are. Yeah. Yeah. It may have been a duplicate, but I think total budget wise it would probably wash it out. Yeah. It also put it back. How it was helpful because it put, I didn't understand why they were up in facilities and not in schools. But middle school never came back, right? Uh, that's what it was labeled as, uh, and you're correct is these are all three of the elementary schools. So I suppose that's the question, you know, were those, what were the middle school fire sensor replacements just not needed? Yeah. So it was, he was in, I think he had said he was still waiting to report. So that made the timing. It's not a terrible surprise. Yeah. Okay. Um, so the question is, I'm assuming. If anybody disagrees, I'm assuming everybody used fire safety, uh, is high for all three of those. Yeah. Anybody disagree with that? Okay. So that's the only, oh, and then he added, um, which again is a new item on the radar screen, a middle school hot water feeder system, 359,722. I have to assume, but certainly ask the question to be sure, but I have to assume if he decided to put it in now this late game, something must have presented itself to suggest that if they're at risk, the existing system that they need to deal with it. Yeah. I thought this came up two years ago when the boiler went that the water heater was going to need to be replaced. So I don't know. Maybe he looked at the outside inside report and it was called out. Although those are separate reports. So they are. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. So I think when people, assuming for the moment that it's a risk issue of the current system failing, uh, people generally do that as a high priority. Yes. Yes. Yep. Okay. So I think those are the ones that required rankings. I noticed. There are a couple of, um, few other items that he either deleted or moved around. He took out the. He also got hot water for the bicycle that we need to bring. It's in and out here. And it's very good. I'm just going to pause back to what we previously said. It's interesting, right? That we had submitted this on time. These are the all being changes. Yep. Which is a point we're making earlier on Christmas. Yeah. And I would like to tell you that this is unique, but this is hard for the course. Yeah. And there are things literally right up just before in that. And in fact, after the warrant is printed, if something happens, it's got to get dealt with. Yeah. The hard, the hard part. Right. And I want to give Michael a lot of grace because he's coming in trying to do this. Right. This is, there's a lot of public buildings to get your arms around in the short time he's been here, but things like water heater failing, getting ready to fail at the middle school. It's hard for me to understand. Right. How that's a surprise in general. And I swear it's come up before. So it's like, it's, it comes down to. Yeah. I can't blame it on Michael because he's, he's brand new and he's trying to get his arms around things. But I think this is one that was. Yeah. So it doesn't fit. Yeah. They're, they're unfortunately don't have any history. Yeah. And it was warm in September. Yeah. Anyway. I mean, one thing to probably is because he's looking, I do wonder how much this is just having third party inspections versus someone internal or saying, Hey, it's fine. Right. I mean, fire alarm, all that, right. Hey, do a compliance study. Cause he's digging into it. I wonder how much of that's really tied to him having a third party. Yeah. Well, again, the schools initially did their own onsite insight reports. He just may not have had. Right. But I thought when they redid for the town, they refreshed the school one. I thought that was the plan. Right. So as I said, I don't think there's any rankings other than those items required. He moved out. Did he move out something else? The sidewalks, I think it was like sidewalks and driveways. The roadways and sidewalks. He moved. Push. He pushed him out. Right. A few years. And then. Yes. And the interior. Door replacement, bicycle water heater. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. The bicycle water heater didn't have an amount in what we were looking at before. But it did last year. I looked last year, but it had a ridiculously low amount. In the fire plant. Yeah. It was like 50. Do I have a number next week? You do now, but he, cause he gave us one. I put the four 50 in, but if it was in the five year plan last year, I would have put a number next to it. And I fixed it. No. It tied all these numbers. It tied all these numbers out to the five year plan. So what it might've been was it might not have had a number in the five year plan, but I have in my spreadsheet, the full. Maybe it was a request. And at some point, this is where I get into like, at some point, somebody requested this and it came off the list. Right. So it's, it's been on the docket before. Yeah. Now the finance director would be the one that normally would go through and do triage. Yeah. And so, you know, as Kelly said, it might appear in forms that were submitted, but never have gotten into the actual plan. Yeah. So we didn't rank the, I guess we need to rank the high school water heater. Aye. Aye. Water heaters are high priority. Aye. Aye. Okay. Okay. Is that everything? I think I, as you were looking at the question there, I think I put yellow highlights in the ranking column for all the items that are required in ranking. Can you just quickly scan? Where is your ranking? Is it right here? It's the green column. This group over one. So the left? Right. Which is the fiscal year, in 27? Yeah, right here. Sorry. So if you just start, you scroll down, there should be yellow highlighting and anything required a, um, I'm looking as well as we've been going through. There we did, right? This is high. I want to mark me. I marked them down on my sheet here. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I marked them down on my sheet here as well. I'll fill it in here. No, but it won't let me type it in. You may not have enabled it. It didn't enable that. Oh, okay. I can't see the enable button because I've got the zoom. You don't need to put it in now. Just as long as we scroll down and make sure we can rank each item that had a yellow barn. Okay. You just go back to stills. CMS. Kind of go over one hour. I thought I wasn't. Oh, you want to go to 28? Okay. I thought you were going to. Water heater. I think we're good. Okay. So I'll, uh, I'll put those rankings into this in version seven. And, uh, there's also a couple other corrections I've made, uh, after getting some questions from LA that, um, don't affect 27 other than a description. And, uh, it's two numbers for, for, uh, engineering. There's an engineering department that had $50,000 a year in fiscal 28, 29, and 30 for a new vehicle. So I guess we need to rank those since I put them in version seven, which we don't have it. So most of our vehicles, I think we had been ranking as medium. Yeah. And these are not specific vehicles. It's just arbitrary vehicles. Yeah. So people want to rank those. I'm fine with medium. I, I would at some point in our journey of understanding, like to see the full inventory list of vehicles and where they are, you know, who has them. So you had three more vehicles. No, that's what I'm saying. Engineering reports to DPW, but it's not, it's a separate line item. We missed it in the original submission. I didn't pull it in. It was there the whole time. We just, we missed it. the original submission. I didn't pull it in. It was there the whole time. We just, we missed it. So when you get this, there'll be a one-line item section for engineering that has $50,000 in 28, 29, and 30. Yeah. Okay. So it really is. People feel comfortable ranking those medium. Yes. For now. Yes. Good with that. So now $1.50 then? Yeah. $1.50. And we still have work to do in school 20. I'm assuming next year we'll get more information. So we're going to be asking more information. So we'll get a lot more. Well, yeah, that's number one on my list. We've got to change the CIP form to the information we want. And then we picked up on that because Kelly was copulating her own spreadsheet that she uses to produce tables that are partly being used in the graph report, but also the finance feed they end up using. And there's so many numbers, so many years that obviously I was hopeful that someone would do a double check and obviously a double check prove that errors happen. Yeah. Going forward the next year this time, really everybody should go through the detail, but at least two people. Yeah. Everything needs, and so Brian and I have been doing that for each other, right? Like just somebody's got to do a quality review on peer review to make sure that everything gets captured. I hope two things. One, if we create a CIP form that is got useful information in it and we only accept completed CIP forms, that we can then automate the production of the summaries using a complete CIP form. But until we get there, there's a lot of manual work here in getting this stuff summarized. Question. I don't want to add more work because I know our priority is getting this finalized, but since this is our baseline going forward, to your point about what you said about vehicles, is it worth sorting these a little bit? You've always finalized this to say within each department, vehicles is a section, right? Yeah. So we can do that. I attempt in the spreadsheet that I use to identify categories for each project. Vehicles are easy to categorize. I always get caught up in my own head between things that are building repair versus equipment. Like you put a new hot water heater in, is that building repair, is that equipment? I think it's building repair, right? But sometimes I get into like funny, but yes. So I have that. And I think it's probably worthwhile in our complete listing. So we will have a listing in the back of a report of everything to identify the categories. We can certainly sort that way too. Like within our rankings, what building repair, what's new buildings, what's vehicles, because I think it's valuable in the way that you look at it because there's so many. And then it just, I mean, nothing we can't sort it, but there's a big chance we continue to go through it as they have another vehicle, another vehicle. I've heard the vehicles, like, you know, it gives us the sections to kind of say, what's your, the person's just saying we're going to rank everything in your group. It may not come down to that. We may say, wow, we can just start getting a kitchen list. I don't know. And DPW particularly, right? Because, I mean, I think roadway is its own thing, right? It's so much money. And then vehicles are the other. So my highest kind of order of priority of things here, my highest priority is the FY27 capital budget, because that is needed most urgently to develop the FY25, FY27 operating budget. Then it's the plan, the five-year plan, because that's going to ultimately be a part of the warrant with modification by town manager, finance director, and if income. And then my third level priority is, okay, did we get this all communicated fully and in an easy fashion? It's important, but it's got to go after actually getting numbers agreed upon by us. Yep. Okay. You want to go now to the green tab and deal with how we paper these things? Yep. I just threw them into columns that seem feasible to me, but you all think one of them. I don't know if you want to go through all of them. Yeah. We didn't really talk about it. Yeah. So I think we want to go through it. Let's go through it by column of funding source and talk about it in a couple. I want to talk about it by project, but then I want to talk about it in total. And there is a guideline, which I put, I reprinted in the report that came out of the finance committee's report last year. It's been regurgitated a few times. Interestingly though, it still says, I think six to 800,000 of cash capital, which we haven't been using for a number of years, but it's still helpful. So let's start with borrowing and we'll start with excluded borrowing. So I believe the only excluded borrowing for FY27, we anticipate is that the MWRA project, but that's actually not, is that not because it's water? Now I got that confused. Is it water rate borrowing? Sorry. Two things. I'll take this opportunity because it's a minor change to report, but I think it's critical. When we refer to the MWRA project, we need to refer to MWRA slash Happy Hollow Wells project. The cost is split roughly 40% to the connection of the MWRA and 60% to build a new permanent filtration system at Happy Hollow Wells. So I think it's just question putting the slash HH, you know, Happy Hollow Wells. But anyway, on that item, at the moment, there is no, we're not proposing that anything be funded with excluded debt in the draft report or on this schedule. Yeah. I suppose if, and we'll get to the report when we get to the report, but at the moment, the report doesn't include doing the ball field at the same time. So if all we're doing is $2 million septic. Well, it doesn't yet. We need to talk about that. Yeah. But if all we're doing is a $2 million septic that probably is levy debt, without needing excluded debt, if that was expanded, it's possible that that would... We would call that, it's possible that the select board, because the select board's decision, right, would say those projects are combined for purposes of debt, and it's an excluded... Right, just because of its impact on the operating budget, $4.5 million debt. They just went through the town election, special election, to eliminate debt on the old DPW facility, the pre-off levy. So to put another $4.5 million on the levy debt... I agree with you 100%. Interestingly, though, their debt policy that they adopted uses $5 million as the threshold. Okay. So, and that's why I put both those items in here as levy debt. But anyway, as to excluded debt, I think I mentioned this at the last meeting, and I'll keep it short. I believe the select board has decided that the MWRA Happy Hollow Wealth project, that debt funding, debt service, could be paid for through water rate. Waste water rate. Yeah, water rate. Okay. Normally, if that is the case, that would be water debt, and that doesn't, you don't need a debt exclusion, and it doesn't affect the town's levy. Because that's already outside the levy. Right. I said that. There was a pretty long discussion two or three meetings ago, where the finance director was expressing concern that if water rates weren't increased high enough, and or people started using less water because the rates were going up, you know, significantly, that town might have to subsidize the water enterprise fund. And if that were the case, that is done inside the levy, which would affect future overruns. So he came up with a proposal, although I'm not sure how wedded he is to it, that the town actually issued the bonds, its town debt, the water debt is town debt, but town debt as an excluded debt, which would require a ballot question, vote, ballot, and the water fund would reimburse general fund 100% of the debt service. That way, if, for whatever reason, the water fund fell short, the general fund could pay the debt service, but it wouldn't affect the levy. But in a reimbursement scenario, doesn't that make it part of, oh, no, because we're doing it as a levy debt, as excluded debt, sorry. Excluded debt. Okay. And the only issue we had with that was that assuming the water fund is reimbursing 100% of the excluded debt service. It actually creates, absolutely anything else would create excess levy capacity. And he was concerned that future folks doing budgets would attempt to use that for operating costs. I sent him something that the OR put out that suggests that if you're getting reimbursement, your debt exclusion amount can be net owed. You can take a vote net of your reimbursement so there wouldn't be the issue he had. Having said all that, the select board never took a vote on that proposition. He seems to be shying away from it. So at the moment, based on the select board's discussion, although Bill Whitney's still not concerned, he's still concerned that they haven't got to the bottom of that question, because I think he would prefer the whole town getting an opportunity to vote on the project. It's really been a focus of his, rather than just town meeting of, you know, two, three, 400 people. And certainly he didn't want it to be five select board members voting on it. But yeah, I agree with Bill. I think if you're going to do a $38 million project, it should be at the ballot box. But to get it there, you have to do what I just described. Yeah, I understand. So at the moment, there is no debt excluded debt that will be on the ballot, but it's possible that that particular debt may end up on the ballot. Yeah. But at the end of the day, right? And this is like, we don't control touch on the report, we don't control it. And it's a significant project, whether I don't, I don't care where you put it, right, or how you do it. It's a significant project that's going to affect residents and what residents pay. And so it's why I called it out separately. And because it's going to be voted as an article. And I don't think it's appropriate to just slam it in with everything else. Right. But we have to consider it and the cost of what can be afforded. Okay. So there's a bunch of other items that I put in the levy debt column. And again, you all may disagree with some of them. No, I had, because I've matched that up to Brian when I was doing mine. And I think I was pretty consistent.
Yeah, I think you've... So the ambulance don't know. How come that one isn't in the ambulance? Well, it's on the far right side for ambulance. Oh, the ambulance itself doesn't have enough funding. No, because they can't have funding. They don't have enough for an ambulance.
But is the debt service not servicable for the ambulance fund? I think, I think the finance director said sometimes they will have the ambulance fund covered debt service. Yeah, the way he does it actually similar, it's done similar to what you just described, Brian, with the way it's, yeah, it's a funding back. And that prevents, what if the ambulance fund? Because we have had issues with collections. So what happens if he has collections issues and can't pay it? Right. So that's why he did it in debt. And that is, I believe, consistent with how we've done. We may have done one ambulance out of the ambulance fund, but I know we've done fire trucks that way as well. Okay. Okay. So let's just go down. I agree. It's ultimately not going to be our decision, but the wastewater facility and the fields could be bundled and potentially put and excluded. It does. It's a little bit lower than what policy says, but it won't be our call. Talked about the ambulance. I, I couldn't, I did this independently, Brian, from what you had first, and then we were pretty much well matched. It was sort of a, if the project was a sizable nature, had a decent life on it and, or it could be combined, like for example, the upgrades to the fire alarms that there was, you know, maybe that wasn't a good one. There was a few projects that went together that were sizable. They belonged in levy debt. And I think that's consistent with what you have as well.
Feel free to chime in, Brad, if you see anything that you either feel differently or have a question on. Yep. Okay. These are just our recommendations. I mean, the manager will look at the man's director to tell them how to fund it. So yeah, in the rule of privilege, that was the net of what we get from the state. No, uh, that is what we get. That is, that is what they're requesting from the town. They also get from the state. And they, we do need to revisit that among other things. Um, because right now, if we were just doing highs, we don't have that in, um, at all. Okay. Great. Yeah. So I think we need to revisit that. Yeah. Again, for your all purposes, this includes all the requests. Yeah. And, um, but we're in our rankings. When we get to the memo, Kelly has pulled out just basically the highs with a couple of the median highs. Yeah. Which I did it just so I could get an exhibit in there, but we, but once we decide. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I was fine with all of the things you had is debt. Okay. General fund. I need to freeze this because I'm not going to be able to tell.
We don't have anything coming out of cash capital, then it's free cash. So free cash, we tend to do shorter term, smaller amount items that wouldn't necessarily be good candidates for debt. Um, although I could argue a couple of the, this, you know, if we were to do this swap loader for that, that one could probably move, um, but for the most part,
maybe the HVAC was the other one. Yeah. Just, just for everybody's benefit. Um, you know, the, uh, the free cash balance that certified at the end of fiscal 24, it was 10 million. And the recently certified free cash balance at the fiscal 25 was 11.9 million, not by 1.9 million. So knowing that I kind of erred towards spending a bit more of the free cash. Yeah. There also will likely be some surplus capital. Yeah. Two things. Yeah. I wanted to talk about on that front. So thank you for bringing them up. One, I think there's probably still some room in free cash. Um, there's debate always about how much free cash we should have. I, I, I asked my AI friend what, on how much free cash you should have. And for the state of Massachusetts, the recommendation is three to 5% of the operating budget. I think, I think we have double that. Now that said, we, from a Moody's debt rating purpose, they want to see us have larger reserve balances, which is not just free cash. It's free cash. It's emergency stabilization. It's cap stabilization. It's, it's all of the, the balances. So my issue is, I don't know that free cash is the place that it should be sitting. Um, if the town, this is not our charge, but it's, I'm going to give you my, my view on it. If we're, if we need it for a reserve balance as a town, that's fine. I just don't think it should necessarily be sitting in free cash. I think it should either be decided, well, that's part of a stabilization fund. And the reason I believe that is for those of you who haven't lived here that, you know, for a period of time, we got a pretty high free cash balance at one point and voters put a petitioner's article up to have that return to taxpayers and it, and it was approved. Um, and I'm not saying I'm opposed to that. I'm just saying, if you think you're setting it aside for a rainy day and you're leaving it in free cash, um, you're right for, for being told otherwise, given how many capital projects we have and the MWRA, I think it requires, and this will be another thing I, I think might be worthy of discussion at select board is what's the policy on free cash. What are you doing with it? How, how are you going to utilize or not utilize it? What's the strategy around free cash? So yeah, I mean, and just that again, more educational, um, in years in which union contracts are not settled, the operating budget usually carries a reserve, can't cover what that estimated cost of cost of living adjustment is going to be. And if it doesn't settle, that contract doesn't settle by the end of town meeting or just before town meeting, what happens to that reserve, it ends up going to free cash. And then next, the following year, you basically have to add two years worth. So at the moment, finance record is recommended. The site board seems to be, um, agreeable is to, uh, start putting the reserve, run, settle contracts into the general stabilization fund. Yep. So that you're not raising budgetary appropriation capital and then having a good free cash. So that, that's going to start to help at least every three years anyway, potentially. Well, it'll manage the future, but it won't manage what's in there right now. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's just an aside. Yeah. So I just, I, I agree with John. There's a couple that I think could move, but I, I know, I knew what Brian's, um, philosophy and mine's the same. If we're just looking at highs, we're at 1.3. Yeah. I think we have 1.5 to 2. Um, I, if we come back to talk about a few other projects, I, I would, I would be comfortable going up to 2. That's with the chances we just made. Yeah. Cause you had already made them. Oh, what's the total of the town? Had you already, you had already put them in? Yeah. I put the changes in this version. Okay. But the ones we've just talked about. Yeah. He, he, he, he guessed where we would be. He tied to the green tab. Yeah. Yeah. So like the elevator. Again, you may not agree with the columns I put in anybody. No, I, I do. They're in there. Yeah. And actually that's another reason to our earlier, should we keep that split? You have the specification of free cash was John, exactly what you were saying. You've got that cash free cash and you've got the elevator itself in debt, which makes sense. Um, so those are already in there. So I do think there's a little bit of room. We can come back to that. Um, finance director might not agree with me, but I, I think there's room. Yeah. And we've got to kind of, we've got to keep that in borrowing, um, to stay consistent. We can move something else. Yeah, exactly. Okay. All right. Cap stabilization. There's only a few things in cap stabilization. So we have the IT project, the additional a hundred thousand for the firewall. Yeah. The, the, one of the, one of the rationales of the cap stabilization, capital stabilization fund was to provide follow on funding for projects. And that was a follow on. That's why that, I put that one there. Yeah. And then the radios at the school. Um, it, it, it was kind of a, it was kind of an unforeseen. Yeah. But immediate need and need to use that capital fund for something. I mean, radio system in general, they're constant, the constant follow on, right? Yeah. The, I did ask, um, the fire chief about it. I asked everybody actually, cause I was like, there's so many radio line items across the departments and you know, he had, he had laid it, he had given more detail, which I thought was helpful, but then he said, you know, they would drop off after that. And I'm like, I don't think so. Because if you look at the life of some of the equipment, like it's, it's almost as if you're going to have sort of a continuum of between DPW, fire, police, schools, feels like you're going to have a continuum of a couple hundred thousand dollars of replacing radios. And, and, and, and I actually prefer it that way versus, hey, it's all replacement. It's all got to get replaced at the same time. But I feel like we might be putting ourselves based on how we're doing it in that situation. So, um, speaking of radios, I meant to bring it up before, um, it may be that not all radios are created equal. Uh, we did get a, uh, most of the responses we got to tell these questions, we got a lot more detail from Tom folder about, well, where his estimate came from for his radios. And on top of my head, I think he referenced 70 to 75 radios. And when I worked out the math, I'm sure there's other equipment. It was like 8,000 bucks per radio. And then I looked at the estimate that Chris, first thing gave us where she, in order to cover phase two, she had an extra 50 radios into what was probably a handful for administrators. And her quote was 135,000, which is a lot less per radio. And, and I don't think we did get a detail that I saw from police or fire. So, uh, it may be that they are, they have different capabilities, um, even what they're used for. If you look at DPW's quote that they sent, there's a lot of other stuff other than the rate, there's a lot of other equipment. Yeah. So I think the schools is, you know, basic walkie. Yeah. Walkies and repeaters. And I think the DPWs had more equipment, which I think also has to do with the fact that they've got stuff that's in the vehicles versus, versus portables. So it wasn't that far off. No, anyway, but yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, it's another one of those recommendations that these, this should be consolidated for just to line them. I guess he has five different groups, five radios constantly. Yeah. I'm not sure where person got her estimate from whether she went to a vendor. They were all from Motorola. The state has a contract. Yeah. I would prefer that the radio be an IT buy, but that's just because ultimately the IT infrastructure has to support that. And so I, I wish it was a combined buy phrase, but I think we're getting pricing based on it being combined. It just, it's weird to have it all over the place. So anyway, the radios, I guess that's a capitalization stable. I didn't know it's growing. I just pick that item to throw in along with the appeals, the town manager request for the appeals. And that was consistent with last year, right? Yeah. Okay. So it didn't make sense to me last year, but I'm still struggling with why it's town manager versus DPW. It was a last minute add, uh, in a budget cycle last year. Right. But it's not last minute anymore. Yeah. Yeah. And it, it, it, uh, technically should fall under recreation. Well, but rec doesn't have, this is exactly like a round in circles, right? Rec doesn't have any actual requests. I think it's, it's either facilities or DPW. Um, so, okay. I'm fine with the funding sources there. And then water and wastewater. Brian Cavaney said, you really can't do retained earnings. Everything needs to be borrowing. So we've got the water main and, and MWA, which we've already talked about at length, and a vehicle while in borrowing and wastewater. Same. There was great, uh, low pressure sewer in borrowing and then transfer station. Did the transfer station actually have anything? No. Right. I think I included it because it was a request. Oh yeah. But we, yeah, but yeah, I think it's my perspective. And I don't think there's disagreement, um, older, like, hey, it won't keep it done. And that's another one. It's in the same category as the town building or similar category of like, there's some thought that needs to go into the future before we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Okay. And then ambulance was the dive equipment. And this one is actually not the ship command vehicle. It's changed. You didn't change it here. It's the cardiac, cardiac monitor. Yeah. So that was one of the things I caught when I was reviewing Brian. Two line items, one above the other, where on the other tab, I changed the descriptions. Yeah. Yeah. The ship command vehicle was actually a request in FY28. Right. So the 80,000 is really the, the cardiac. The numbers, right. The description. Yeah. Yeah. That's fine.
I'll change that. All right. All right. All right. So I think seems, does anybody have any, before we want to talk about DPW, if we want to, roads in particular, um, to the extent we're going to try and squeeze anything in, um, else out of free cash. We want to lose free cash in now, assuming that the other projects won't be, take that aside with, assuming it goes, let me, or Brian will answer that. Um, I would like to at least make sure we've got all the projects we think need to get in here. And if, um, if it's, um, I would, I would recommend moving a few things to free cash. Um, the other thing, which Brian or Hurley, he mentioned is there's likely to be some capital closeouts. We don't know what that amount is. I've asked, and I don't get answered. Um, if there's a sense of what that is, but I think it would be good to say, here's our recommendation of projects. And if there was more funds, right, our recommendation would be to go, you know, these, these next one or two or three things are, you know, what we think are next in line. Um, if there were additional funds via surplus capital. So let's talk about roads first, because I think that's. Well, it's your first question. Are there, are there items that are currently showing here as levy depth? Yeah. Could you, could you move to free cash? I guess my, my take is, I'm a couple of the way we have it. Once we've got a selection, I mean, Brian, as we go through this, I think it doesn't matter if you moved to free cash. I think it's more the other way to make it more than that should be crappy, but movies don't they move to free cash? I have no concern. And I think I'm okay to explore that after the fact, we decide off on it. I don't think I mean, where it should be to start, but yeah, my instinct just because of what we, the time this went through and we're willing to DPW debt to a slew to debt would be if, if folks are looking to move of $300,000 more to free cash, I would be supportive of taking out of the, an item that's in levy debt, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think John's agreeing with you. I think you just choose after. I don't think it really matters. I mean, I don't think it's everything. I mean, you can pick any of the basic scenes. The only thing that makes a difference, and this is light difference, and I don't have the debt periods on here, is like, yeah, you probably want to leave the things that have a longer service. Yeah, maybe you want to follow the debt, the capital policy. Right. The debt policy, I think for the product, you're a lesser, the last candidate. The shorter stuff you want, you want to move first. So I'm not real, I don't have strong feelings otherwise. So what I'm hearing, folks are comfortable with possibly shipping something else with free cash, but you're not looking to decide that right this second. So we'll leave it up to the chair to, to make that decision and inform me and I'll, yeah, reflect it in this, this particular. Okay. So let's talk about roads then. Now you're talking about, are there non-high priority items that people think might be funded, some, yeah. And I think like John said, we did say we weren't going to fund roads at all. We were talking about what the amount should be. So I did. You, you did. Yes. So.
Uh, let's, let's do it from, why don't we do it from this? Is it easier? No. Okay. Yeah. It's just, oh, you know what, maybe can I just do, you don't have a total column, right? Or did I freeze it? Maybe I froze it there. No, there's no total. What are you looking for? I was just looking for if we can look at the mediums without scrolling across to what the numbers are, but I think, um, the mediums start your road improvements, um, right. So my first comment was when I was putting together the summaries, it did stick out at me that DPW had zero capital, um, appropriated. And as you probably have gathered from the way I've talked before, I have a hard time. I have a little bit of a hard time with that one because I think Tom does a great job putting together his requests. Um, just sort of clear, right now you're referring to what we're talking about next, which is your draft report. Your draft report picked up as quote our proposal for our recommendation. It picked up all the highs. All the high items. And then in this section, it picked up an IT item. And the field maintenance. The field maintenance. Yeah, that's exactly it. Everything, everything else below the high priority in those two items at the moment is not in the draft report. So I think we're now saying to the majority of the members feel like we should take any of these other items, table medium, when we're not low, and, uh, include those in what we recommend be funded and somehow in fiscal 20. So make sure we're all in this. Yes, correct. That is what thank you for, thank you for clarifying. That is what I'm saying. But everything in column A has identified if it's in, if it's not, or if it's a main period. Yeah, in, sorry, I can't. Yeah, column A is where
yeah, we racked and stacked. And I think there was one that was a, is there one that was a maybe that we didn't decide? Maybe it was this field monitoring and the field's got fields are medium, but Norman Kelly put those into a same as a high. And in the high section, the only item not included was the two and a half million dollars for the field. High school field. Yeah. So that'll certainly. Yeah, I'm not necessarily. You should start there. Yeah, we should start there. So I, I'm struggling if they, if they tear that whole thing up to do the septic, that we would just leave it and not fill the field. But what I still can't seem to get the answer on is, is there a lesser project that fixes, right, what they dug up from the septic and gets the fields in game playable condition? Oh, what they haven't responded to yet. I don't know if they just can't. Once I've asked them, can you, on site plan, which shows the existing area where the two baseball fields are and the proposed rectangle, can you delineate what's going to be impacted of that area by whatever extension of the leaching field needs to be done for the traditional septic system? If you're not in a position to be able to do that. So it's hard for me, if it's literally, you know, a rectangular trench that goes a little bit further in the grass area. But I think he did say there wouldn't be anything built under the playing field, you know, the infield area. But without that, it's hard for me to say how much has really got to be put back together once they do whatever they have to do. So I just don't think we have the benefit of doing off the wall. Yeah, I just don't think we have enough information. And the fact that I agree. The fact that you got to pay $500 to bus the kids to 10 or 12 baseball games, I do feel bad that the town doesn't have the ability to host home games. But in the scheme of what the town's up against in the overall financial picture, I just don't think we have enough information. I don't disagree with your point. I think we talked about that. There could be very good rationale as to why it makes sense to do it at the same time. But I'm not even sure they have to. He responded on where they got the 2 million estimate for the septic by saying, I think, the preliminary estimates 1.4 we added a 35% contingency. And they're still designing. It was clear the fields were, well, this is what they had the last time. Yeah, but you could get an answer on if that's what you had the last time, the last time had the rectangles in it. And there's a separate request for the rectangles two years later. So I'm struggling. Lack of information. In the report that Kelly referred to, which was done by an outside engineer, 2017, I think, they had a very detailed list of costs related to a project. I'm still not exactly sure if it's redundant, not redundant. And it wasn't clear how that cost five years ago relates to $2.5 million. So I just, my general view is we just don't know enough. And if within the next month, they can provide enough information to the town manager or the FinCom to justify putting it in. Yeah. So be it. My instinct is it could probably wait. In fact, I also asked the question, which you can get a response to. Yes, we know the DEP has been telling us for the last five years, we've got to stop yearly pumping and come up with a solution. But they haven't done anything terrible to us in five years. Could this all get pushed out, given what we're up against financially and the big water project? But they even pushed the septic project to fiscal 28th with the DEP's consent, and he hasn't responded to that. So I still would like the question and answer to that question, but I'm comfortable leaving the septic. And I just, I don't know how we put it in. Yeah, I'm not disagreeing. And I would like to see it done. However, I have significant concerns, given how much we're looking, the town is facing in expenses, capital expenses, that we're not further along, right, on the detail of the project for something that we want to do in fiscal, right, we're asking for money in fiscal 27. Right. And I understand when we give it, that's when, you know, a lot of work will start on this. I just, I struggle with, it's four and a half million dollars. It's the biggest thing on here outside of, outside of the MWA. I'd like it a little more flushed out before we said, yeah, it goes in there. So I, I'm with you, Brian. I, I'm fine with leaving the septic in and leaving the fields out. I would like to put some words around that in the narrative, around like the reason, the reason we're leaving it out is not because we're necessarily not supportive of the idea of the project, but because there was still unanswered questions that were significant given the large spend. And also include as your normal design build concept. Yeah. And again, as the school designee, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that Kirsten, in her email responding to questions about the field, it was pretty emphatic that the school would really want to see this done. And so I'm relaying that information, but I know when we met with her, she wasn't that clear yet, but she did speak to the athletic director. And I understand they want it done, but our job, um, on the designee of the schools, I think our job collectively as a group are to try to be consistent, how we evaluate and propose things. And again, for all the reasons you're saying, um, I haven't heard anybody say, don't build it in any, are there any circumstances? Just there's a readiness issue. So part of the, part of this, what we said we were going to do as a committee, right, is determine priority and that there were both financial and human resources to execute. Right. But it's also, it has to be, the project has to be ready. Um, and I, like you, Brian, we, we said on FinCom many years ago, one of our big problems we've had as a town is not doing design, build as separate phases. And we've gotten ourselves in trouble in the past. Fire station two is my favorite example, right? Where we didn't fully scope everything out and we ended up having to go back to the town three times to get full funding. So I have a hard time with hurry up. We've got to do this right now. We don't know what we're doing, right? We we're going to go ask the town to do this and we don't have, we don't have it fully. Well, I'm a riskier as well, it's a pilot narrative. We don't improve it. Well, I think that, I guess I'm not clear why this fields are okay to practice. I couldn't, I think I asked that. Maybe I didn't know. Like, can you, can you give me a little more color? I'm like, well, it depends on the day. Yeah. The other, the other thing we've heard, I mean, I've been out there. It's something, sometimes it's up to six, like you just sick right there. Yeah. It doesn't drink. Okay.
We also heard that Tom Holder, I think, said in a meeting or said in one of these email exchanges that in the spring, I mean, three, three months, they're going to spend a hundred thousand dollars doing. They were going to. Yeah. Um, you know, maybe that's just an annual type thing. No, no, it's not. It's the, it was, it was, it was in the capital plan. It was in the capital plan to spend a hundred thousand dollars on that. It's been removed because Tom said they had enough room to do it without additional money. Yeah. That's what I heard anyway, was that they had enough, but they've spent the, whether they're intending to spend the money that was appropriated under the town manager budget. Um, I think I saw it somewhere, not here, maybe on Facebook, um, an update from Dave Bernstein, who sort of initiated getting that hundred thousand a year on what was done with a hundred thousand. I believe it had to do with the, it was the, the women's, the girls' softball field at the high school needed some improvements. There was some sprinklers, right? There was a number of things that got done. And I, I remember reading it and thinking, geez, having done municipal finance, um, did come for a long time. I was like, wow, they didn't get a lot done for a hundred thousand dollars compared to what I see when we have looked at projects. It's like, it's funny how we could do that. So the risk, the risk is that stuff that gets, is on track to get done and completed in fiscal 27. Although I asked also for a start and end with construction for that. And again, they're still on the planning basis. So I don't even know when that project would actually start and finish. It shouldn't take more than a year. I wouldn't think of a traditional septic system to be built. It's just bigger than what's in our backyard. Right. But, um, so the risk is that they actually get that project done in fiscal 27 and have disrupted some portion of the field, which will be rough graded and some grass seeds thrown on it. I mean, it's not on the playing surfaces of the infields. And, um, maybe the town could have saved X dollars by bidding out a much larger project on the fields. Although, normally, I wouldn't think it's septic. Except the ones that are doing septic and the ones who are building fields are not confusing. Yeah, normally not the same. The septic providers will throw the seed on the, we'll put some loan down and throw the seed out. Yeah, you're talking a hundred grand, let's just call it a hundred grand of savings, but that's a lot of money, but in a two point. That's what I'm saying. I just, I don't, I just don't get the sense that there's going to be a complete rip up of that whole area. Um, it's going to be an awfully big septic field if that's the case. Yeah. And I'm still, I still have reservations about putting anything on top of, you know, spending money upgrading and putting like sprinklers and other things on top of the leaching fields. And then if something happens where you got to repair the leaching field, then you got to rip everything up and, you know, uh, right now, no, I don't think so, but they've been trying to add. So that's not an issue there, right? It's so, I mean, they've had to put sprinklers in the console. They're very wrong. They went the wrong direction, right? It's so wet. And not only if that's. And then in the phase three, phase three 2019, I don't know for sure, I'm pretty sure the wastewater facility that was built when the high school was built is actually still working. Like it was supposed to work. Maybe it never worked because it was supposed to work. I don't know that it ever worked. So I'm not sure that that whole plan just got put off as phase three ever contemplated a traditional SEPIC system. So I just, to me, there is some financial risk that, you know, some lost opportunity. I just don't think it's millions of dollars. I think it, as you say, John, it's how much is going to change between now and six months from now anyway. I mean, I think, I think we're all languages. It needs to be evaluated. We put it in the notes that, hey, this is important, but we don't know. No, we don't have definition of what the impact of time it is. I think we just leave it at that. Yeah. Right. Okay. So I agree with that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Once, once you clear that item out of the way. So we're making that, so we're making that a no then, right? We're going to make that a no with the required an explanation around it. Yeah. And kind of, you want to change the ranking to medium or do people still view that as a high priority just to know for now? Well, I don't think we gave it a ranking. Didn't we say, yeah. Yeah, I think we were kind of open. Maybe you might say, yeah, medium. I won't leave it as a high. Yeah. I think we left the ranking open. Some people do. Okay. Right. Now you have the rest of the mediums who are back to Rhodes. Yeah. Back to Rhodes. I'm a zero. The only thing I would, the only way I know it's cool, but that I might categorize it as a high is that for some reason they can't play baseball at all. Like if they lose the season, I'd be like, no, it goes up priority. Yeah. I don't think that would be the case. I want to leave it as I would like my, I would advocate for leaving it as medium. Somebody wants to come in here and tell us, you know, that they're going to lose a season and whatnot. We can revisit it, but to a degree, to a degree, if they're going to, if they're going to do the septic system anyway, aren't they going to lose access to those fields? So they were going to play baseball anyway. They'll probably do it over the summer. Yeah. I mean, the septic should not take, you know, a year to do, right? This, this should be a summer, they do it over the summertime and fields are, although they're going to lose, but they're going to lose a year. Every time we build a field out of grass, they lose a year because of, you have to have two growing seasons. You have to have two growing seasons. Well, again, what we don't know is how much of the, how much of the, it's basically the outfield, um, how much is going to actually be disturbed. I mean, it could be next to nothing. It could be, which goes back to, you need a slight trench or something. I mean, right. I just invited baseball, angry baseball parents that come to our next meeting, but, um, well, again, it wasn't, it wasn't put in the budget last, it was in the budget five-year plan for fiscal 29 and 30, and it was redundant, right? Yeah. Last year. Um, the only reason that it's been brought forward is because the septic was being done and rightly so people said, hey, if we're going to disrupt that area enough, does it make sense to combine them? Yeah. It wasn't brought forward to my knowledge because all of a sudden people are saying it's a priority. Well, I'll, I'll disagree with Brian only because there's been anger that it was not, that it was broken out from the original stadium project back in 2018. So I would, I would tell you the people that use the field have been, um, upset about it since then. I agree. I wouldn't say upset. They've been having this for, I mean, but now we're debating what we don't know. I mean, we just don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Again, it's not that we're not supportive of the project. It's that there's a lot of unknowns and it's a lot of money and we need the details filled in. And there's not nothing to say that if we've excluded it, that those details won't come in such that town manager and finance director added in as a project and it goes to town meeting. So I think not, I'm accepting of that. I just, where we stand today, we do not have enough information to include it. Okay. Email Kelly.
No, I'm getting those emails. Um, all right. So next up is road improvements. Um, Brian, you've made it clear you're, you're at zero. I'm being, I mean, I'm being a little facetious. And I, I, I think you mentioned Kelly, the need to at least be thoughtful about it. Maybe you don't need to fund the whole amount. Let's say you have access to chapter 90 money. They have one year at least worth of prior appropriation, but maybe there needs to be a little bit of transition and then back on the cycle every year. Yeah. So I went back to Tom's answers to our questions. And he had said of the appropriations from the town, he had 600,000 that was going to be spent by the end of the fiscal year. And that in addition to that, he had 800,000 in chapter 90, of which
half of that was, um, earmarked for future projects and half of it, they like to leave for emergencies, which I understand. Right. Right. 900, 900,000. Okay. Sorry. So they, they view that as half of that's going to go to future projects that they've got in the hopper and half of it, they leave for emergencies, which I, I don't disagree with. Right. Based on we have a water. Exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say. That's 900 is what the state has already. That's that is what's already in their fiscal year. Current fiscal year. What I had a hard time, Brian, I don't know if when you looked at capital project status, understanding was, do they take, because the budget in, I think I was looking at FY24's balance for roads was bigger than anything we've appropriated. It was nearly a million dollars. Um, and so it, to me, that had to have been an appropriate, and it was the FY24. So it was like, well, how did we get, unless they rolled a prior, it was listed on our roads, they're usually separate projects, or they put the chapter 90 money in that bucket. And that same account setting it with the reimbursement. Right. I, I couldn't. I mean, that's the question I asked is that the town has to spend the money, and then get the reimbursement from the state. How about the last year's approval from the state? No, from the town? Uh, hold on. Yeah, so like six, seven hundred. It's, it, I knew it, it was smaller than what I saw as a balance. So the only way that would work is if they, they add, I think he said they get, they anticipate 485. They added the 485, and they had spent part of it right down. There was no talk of matching, right? There's not a, right? It's not a match. It's not a match. It's not a match. And that was, that was my question. Don't they need to go, they, we never, we haven't, at least in recent history, ask the town, if appropriate, just pick that case a million something, knowing that they're going to get $500,000 back from the state. Yeah. But I believe, the response to our question was, the town goes ahead and spends the money, but it's spending it without having been fully appropriated. Yeah. It seems to me. And then, and then the state sends them on. No, it's just an accounting, and like, they, they set up an accounting entry, right, to say, here's what your balance is, so that you can see it. But it's based on, right? It's like, I mean, it's not even a form, but it's just based on. Yeah. I, I'm like, Brian, I think, technically, I think they really probably should be asking the town to appropriate it with the understanding that there's a reimbursement versus just doing it. Yeah, which the schools do. I mean, it's school, the operating budget has the full school budget. Yeah. Operating expenses. But that will affect debt, right? Of which the state sends nine million bucks to the town. Right. I mean, what we're looking at is how much debt do we want to approve towards it, right? Because the reality is, let's say, finally, approve 1.2, we only give them four. And so, like, 400 grand of debt that we're asking to get in 2017, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, I think, what I'm trying to get down to is,
my, my thing on, on any of this, and I'm not opposed to, like I said, having 400,000 for emergencies, particularly given, I felt, as you did, John, I kept seeing water main break announcements every, every couple of days over break. So, I understand that. But what I don't want to see happen is, and we've had this on other capital projects, right? We're appropriating capital projects. And it's not getting done. And that either, right, whether that's borrowing, in this case, it's borrowing, we're paying interest on borrowing. So, I want to keep that as close, as tight as we can. Now, if he's, Tom's saying he's going to spend the 600 that was appropriated by the end of the fiscal year. He's got nothing there. He's got 400 to get himself started for FY27. And he's going to get another 400. And he's going to get another 400, right? So, my thought was, you drop the 831 down by 400. And, you know, Tom can argue it's a different number, but you drop it down so that you're running closer to, oh yeah, what would be a one point, he'd be 1.2, 1.3 total appropriation for the year still. So, that's the number I had in my head, too. You just split it in half, you have to see where it takes us, right? Yeah, I was going to knock 400 off. Yeah. And I mean, personally, I know it's a long-term improvement on the road, I guess. I mean, if we're worried about getting approved, we drop into free cash, right?
I want to be careful with that. It was getting funded by taxation for a number of years, which also goes back to the period of time that free cash was being built up. And then, in order to try to avoid overrides of income, a few years ago, proposed not funding through taxation. And the finance director generally agreed to do it through debt funding as long as there was an agreement on it. In the next at least five to X years, if you're funding, it'll be done with debt. So, I would say it needs to stay, even though I prefer not to have much money debt. Yeah. Which is why I'm at zero, just because I know it has to be funded with money debt. And again, to me, worst case, he runs out of money in my road, your road, somebody's road. I blow out another tire on the corner of our series. It's passed another year until he gets back on cycle. My commentary isn't. Yeah, I don't want to focus on that. Programatically, I think going forward, doing an annual funding of road improvements makes a whole lot of sense. But this year is just such a wild card. And between the Happy Hello World Project and then the operating budget challenges, it looks like 27 is not going to require an override, but the next nine years will, likely. And so, I'm just troubled by adding levy debt. We just took levy debt off to try to help with the operating budget. But that's just me. I'm not going to make big deal about it if the recipe weren't on. Well, I got this. I think 400 grand is the recommendation. He's going to have to have the conversation with Tom anyway. And they can decide up or down based on priorities. I mean, he may come back and say, I need less, I need the truck. Yeah. Yeah, we didn't talk about the truck. So I do find the truck in the story with the roads. Well, my goal doesn't start with 400. I think drop it, you know, 431, we split it in half, give them a chance to debate it. So give them 400 for the roads. Well, 431, however. Yeah, no, we can do even. Brad, the other view on that? No, I agree. I think the 431 makes, uh, makes sense. I think that makes perfect sense. Liz? I'm not opposed to dropping it or cutting it in half. Yeah. Um, it's just, it's one of those, I wish I had more information with what I would say in here too. Um, can you expand on that? Like, like, so what goes into the 831 exactly? Well, it's a cost per mile and how many miles. So the town has, I forget how many miles of roads. It's a cost per mile to replace. And they have us on a, somewhere between a 15 and a 20 year cycle to road replacement plan. So that doesn't mean every road gets replaced every 15 years, but on average. So for example, I'll pick Clayford Hill Road gets replaced more frequently than my, than Sears Road because the bus traffic on it destroys it. Right. But that's not the average. So they do it. It's a cost per mile times the number of my at night. I think we have 96 miles of roadway, um, replaced over somewhere between 15 and 20 years. So I think I did the math and it's like 17 years. Yeah. I think of all the numbers in this, in this chart, other than some of the vehicles,
you could, you could sleep at night knowing that that money will be, it's a good estimate for the projects that they have on their plan to do. And then, you know, maybe some slated those costs going out. Yeah. And, you know, they might have a little extra that they use to repair. Yeah. Yeah. So it's a good number. It's really a question of where philosophy is to where we're at right now in fiscal 47. Well, and also how, how far in advance are we funded already? That's my, that's my take. They have enough to survive the storm because I mean, this is people and if we don't do it, then what do we do with the people in your search department? It's not something other. Yeah. Right. So yeah, we don't want to, we don't want to be in a situation where people who would have been doing roads, although apparently we, we do outside contract these line painting. That's where we have, we struggle with that. Um, so I guess it's the point that we've got a lot happening in the road 27. It just seems to putting out 400 days kind of a myth, like a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of it. So yeah, I'll take every little bit I can get. I guess, I mean, how much room do we say we have half a million to 800? I mean, I say room. I, I, yeah, I, I think. Well, that's free cash. Yeah. Yes. We're not going to hear about adding additional levy debt. Well, we could move, we could move, there's a few levy debt projects we could move out of them. Right. So that, that's part of your proposal, to add 431 to roads and move roughly 431 into free cash. Into free cash. Yeah. From some items. Yeah. And that would pretty much use up your complement subject to there being surplus capital to replace. Yeah. I still think you have free cash room. But you saw that truck. I mean, I, I, I think he, I don't really want them. He wants the full amount here. And he'd want the truck. I just feel he probably needs the truck more than he needs to. My take was give him 400 under the road. Give him the truck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you can. Agreed. That. Yeah. Both of those items. I think, yeah. I think. Move the truck into free cash. So you're just trying to say, you're agreeing that you don't have an issue increasing levy debt. Or move something else into free cash if you wanted to push more. So I'm sorry. Yeah. So you're saying move. Because the truck's not in here. Not in Kelly's memo at the moment. I'm suggesting based on what you said, 33 is critical. Right. Which is the loader. Right. That's not. Because we write. Which loader though? There was H40 swap loader is 370. And then the H11 John Deere loader that he brought forward. So I think that one was the one that. The one that he brought forward. Couldn't wait. Right. And he also brought forward a dump truck. So I think it was those two that were. So that's where it was 33 and 34. Yep. Were the two that. Right now, none of those vehicles are in Kelly's memo. I mean, that's not a, I mean, at least for his, from a budgeting perspective, this side, again, I think the top is going to have to, top, top holder. We'll have to make a decision that maybe the take is to give the two critical trucks that could be put up for, they're obviously a problem. And half his budget. So that's what we're saying. Hey, we took 400 from roads to getting in two vehicles. Yeah. And they try to balance this out. Yeah. And that's what I would advocate for, is those two that he had to pull forward and the half, half the roads. Wasn't the budget with that then? So it drops from about a 1.7 million dollar ask to We're saying it's not in 27. So we're saying adding additional to 27, 431 to the roads, and then 475 to the two critical vehicles. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because that's not just road. I mean, those vehicles are everything, right? I mean, the chaos that just continues to ensue. Yeah. I have on the, on the vehicles in particular, like I've said before, he had those out. He pulled them in. He talked about why, right? I, I don't want to see. So we have water main break and you can't do the work that you need to do because you have equipment that doesn't work. That's not a, that's not a place I want to be. So that's the proposal. I'm in agreement with John. That's the proposal in front of us. And for my benefit, I can't see the two trucks or describe how it's the H11 John Deere loader and the H7, uh, F550 dump truck. And what was the other one that's not, uh, the one that's not included was the H40 loader. The other thing I still don't have a good answer on. And I think we've given where we thought was important on it. Um, I still, I, Nick is also new trying to get up to speed. I think my recommendation to the town manager and, and the finance director would be whether or not he thinks all the existing funding that he's gotten for projects is going to get used on the projects that it was intended for. Um, or, um, or if not, should it be returned right as surplus capital and the projects he needs, you know, put forth, because I am a little concerned just because there was so much IT dollars unspent in the report that, that you had. So that was my other, like, and I just want to make sure, right. He knows you can't just take money from a project and move it to another one, unless it's, you know, additional funding on the like project. You can't, you can't swap. So there's nothing there for IT that's not in the high category. You're talking about simply. I'm talking about in general. Yeah. When he met with us, he obviously, again, had to have time to really evaluate. Exactly. And with the passage of time, there's a good chance that we talked about with him. Just like he may not even recommend now spending that money. Right. Particularly in the IT world, because there's so many things for like, we planned it four years ago, and the world has changed, and we don't want to do it anymore. Right. Yeah. So I think that's a call out in the, in the memo, make sure that, and I'm sure the finance director will screw up open capital, as he always does. Yeah. But this is given, and this is a, those are different conversations, right? The finance person questioning whether I should spend it is different than the town saying, go back and say if you really need it, because you might be afraid to do it. If someone said it's important, you know, it's, yeah, well, and there's a tendency to, you also have to be careful because like, well, I don't want to give it back unless I know I'm going to get it on the projects I need it for. Right. So I'm open to that. I just want to make sure that that's, that the technical process is happening. Yeah. And I think when he was with us, I think we made that point that it wasn't clear he'd been working in municipal government that he couldn't simply move money from one project to another. Right. Um, I think it's also good for the town to see, right? Because they're going to say, he has a, look at all this money he has, they're not spending the realities. He may not need it. So it's part of it. I, I'm guessing he needs it. It just might not be needed for the things that he, it's earmarked for it. Right. Yeah. Um, based on my view of our IT that I've used, I, I would find, I'd be hard pressed to be convinced we don't need it. Okay. Anything. So back to the, to the DPW discussion. John and I were in agreement. Is everybody else? Well, yeah, just again, just so I'm clear that, so we're, we're, the suggestion is the, uh, H11 John Deere loader and the, the dump truck be, uh, approved on the swap load or not. Is that the suggestion? Correct. Yeah. Okay. I'm okay. And half the, yeah. And half the road. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm good with it. The vehicles would be funded with free cash. The vehicles would be funded with free cash. Yeah. Half of the roads would get. Yeah. And, uh, that's my only other question. If that's all the extras we're adding to what currently is in your draft memo, other than the additional items that we talked about earlier in the evening. Um, uh, I didn't have it. Is there any sense that, um, given that again, the town manager will do what the town manager wants to do. Um, is there any sense that folks want to rank order the mediums such that if in the memo, we said, this is, this is far as we're willing to recommend. Yeah. The only other one, Brian, you've got ship commander as a no command vehicle, but that was, that's the, that's actually the cardiac monitor and that. Yeah. No, in my, uh, in my, uh, version seven, I've changed the description. Okay. Okay. That's why I didn't. Yeah. Okay. You didn't see a change description here. Got it. They changed the priority. But other than that, just my question is, if you want to, if, I mean, for me, the only thing I'd say that with the rest of the office are unknown, if town is unknown, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, I can see, you know, it looks like HVAC in the health of the schools. I mean, I, I'd always throw that in there for money. I just think that's it. Yeah. I'm going to leave that though, as if there's, if there's surplus capital, they can feel, yeah. I'm just asking a question. We feel we want to lay out what, if you decided to tell manager that you'd have even more money than we think. I, I would, yeah, I don't, I would say the HVACs are the one I would do next. There's several of them. It was hard to see a little further than that, but he does, then it's just going to pick every fix. Yeah. It's something we're not going to prove because it doesn't make it. I mean, I agree. I think, Hey, this is what I would add. This is the priority to go to add Melissa to kind of that media bucket. Yeah. I think that isn't the website in there, that website, which would be frankly, it's a medium for IT. Yeah. Yeah. And I, but it was always, that's the project he wants to see done. So all I'm saying is, if, if we feel we want to at least lay out what order in which we would do these things, you know, but again, if we do that, it'll still, yeah, everyone's seven. We may leave the ones we have in there. I think IT, we have the governance of maybe which, where you have money and maybe free up that, close those programs and reapply each other. I mean, that could be cover IT maybe versus. Yeah. The only other one is, and I'm going back to DPW is we didn't put their radio system upgrades in. So we did school, we did, um, we did fire and police. We didn't do DPW. Yeah. Again, I'm fine with what you proposed on the roads, but I, I, no, I'm not saying we do put it in. No, I'm, I, I would be more inclined to deal with trucks and upgrades to radios when we're doing all the town radios and just take a pass on roads other than the chapter 90 Monday and surplus. Yeah. I, I think where I'm at now, Brian, I'm not disagreeing is I'm good with what I've suggested. And if the town manager and, you know, DPW director and they want to swap it out, they can, they can go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I, I would like, I don't think, I think going to zero means all progress on road, you know, you're, you're limited on how much progress you can make on roads. And I think that concerns me from a staff perspective. Yep. Right. Maybe patching roads. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I mean, we're not connected to this. I mean, we can't, that's for, that's for this forward. Yeah. If this was, if this was fiscal 28 and we'd have better clarity on the town's operating budget side. Yeah. And we figured out what happened with the water. I think my view on some of these items would be different. I'm just towing a pretty tough fiscal line given what we're up against and then those. Okay. Okay. So we're, we're adding the alternates that are prior to HVAC, right? I guess we can get further. Is there a number on that? Uh, there's a couple. There's to have, I see, elementary supporting, uh, for you to learn, uh, while on the tab, we're off. That would be fine. That's elementary. There's a public safety building HVAC, which is 250. I would say I'm schools before I'm probably safety building. Um, it's 540 for elementary installation of. What do I actually see? I'm just one of those. Yeah. Those are the two HVACs and I would prioritize. I am just not, wasn't sure. Cause it says installation. If it's adding HVAC versus replacing HVAC, I feel differently about it. Great. Seemed like, I thought when I read it, it was kind of like an additional unit to better coverage. Yeah. I think he, what he said to us, I think it's that of the units on the roof, only a certain number of them are actually working, right? For the school. Yeah. For the school. So he said, yeah, he needs to replace them all every year. Yeah. Yeah. So, so the ultimate since the HVAC, I mean, if we want to throw the DVD, probably DVD radios in as an alternate, just because of the JCC program overall, it's probably not zoning, but yeah. So, no, you're going to deal with this in your draft memo or whatever you do. Yes, I am. I'm going to slide this. Finish up with this Excel workbook. Close it up. Uh, I'm probably going to get some modification to this schedule to create a section between high and medium to put some of these items we just discussed. Yeah. And I'm doing, just so you know, don't get, I'm doing it in my spreadsheet and I can pivot off of it as well. So, Brian. James Bromack. How are you? Good. I guess I'm in the wrong room. Do you know where the planning board is hearing it? Oh, I don't have to go wrong. I need sanitary. It's a big community center. Of course. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. Appreciate it. Drive safely. Yeah. Sorry to bother you guys. Hey, Jeremy. That's okay. I mean, I think it's the guest president expected us to get a line, but I was good. Yeah. Well, I only gave us an until seven o'clock to do this and it's now, uh, quarter after eight, but I said nine. I was like, I guess we're all in. No, no. Well, cause we, I, I split with the report, but I actually think we covered a lot of what we covered quite a few things that are report related. So. Okay. So I'm going to just do one final recap. I'm going to, I'm going to, on this, I'm going to move fields into the medium section. Yep. I'm going to include half of the road, or 431, 431,000 or so of the roads in the high section. Yep. I include those two vehicles in the high section. Correct. Um, vehicles are going to go pretty fast. Yeah. I got the funding structure, and then I'm going to take the, uh, HVAC, the schools and move it up in a little section. At the top of the medium, high medium, high medium, high medium, its own little section. Okay. Priority medium or something. Yeah. And, uh, and the funding source will stay the same or whatever I got it. But did that have on the HVAC for funding source? Uh, it was borrowing. Yeah, it was borrowing. Borrowing, but you have free cash on the public safety, but, yeah. And you want public safety also in that, but behind the schools? Yeah, it goes behind the schools. Right. So you'll tell me when you see version seven, if I got it right or wrong at the next meeting. Yeah. I agree with you, John. It was a good discussion. Yeah. Okay. So we have to miss the fun course, I guess.
All right. So now I'm going to, let's see, stop sharing. I can get my whole menu bar with the stop share. There we go. Stop share. And let's open up. And this story is where when I send this, the, uh, workbook out, I've sent it, you may have seen, I sent it to the ex officio member. So right now I'm all there. Yeah. And Kirsten have seen it. I haven't heard from them, but they're probably going back through the chair. I haven't heard from anybody. Is that right? Kirsten, has it replied back saying she was going with it? She did reply back. She did. Yeah. She did. No, she did reply back and say that you had her accurately captured. Some of this won't come as a total surprise when they've been looking at the minutes. So, yeah, I, I did not send them the report because I wanted to have a discussion before we, we did that. So, all right. So I'm, I'm in the report and there's still quite a bit of work I need to do here, but I wanted to get you something to get started with. Um, I did not put the executive summary in because I always do that last after we've actually got. Oh, did I put, do it wrong? Sorry. I, the IE or, yeah, IE. The funny thing is I thought I, I did that once. I know I thought I copied and pasted it from somewhere. So maybe that's right. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Mine's usually missing a page. That's the usual. Okay. All right. So why don't we start with background. Brian, I know, um, you had sent me something. Thank you. That's very helpful. I can, I can amend this to align with this. So it was actually approved. Um, our existence of the committee was approved by the attorney general. Um, I was led to believe it was sort of a default thing, but we actually got a letter proving it. And Brian sent that to me. Yeah. And just, you might just, because of the length of time after they got approved, it then had to be publicly noticed at least twice. And then there was an issue with one of those public noticing. So they had to do it a third time. So we couldn't officially get going, which I think was the punchline of this until the earliest August 23rd. I think we met on,
it says in our first meeting. So it was early September. Yeah. That at least answers the question of what, why, why did things seem to be delayed? Yeah. Although that was the intent of this. Although I will also say, even if we'd started on July one, I still think we would have struggled to, to do what we needed to do in the timeframe because the timeframe was the 15th. Um, all right. So my, any other comments on the background, if I make, I'll make some changes based on the technical of when this was approved. So there's some of them, yeah. I heard. So in the trigger mission, it says greater life of five years and the cost. Oh, you're sure. Is that four? Five years. No, it's both. Okay. So I thought that was like, if you buy a bunch of small things, it's also counted. And a, and a total cost. And a thousand in the aggregate? Yeah. It's probably right out of efficiency. Aggregate. That's, I think you probably just, you gave this. Yeah. I want, I, I, I listed a lot from, yeah, what we already had. I just, we just need to be careful. I mean, that sounds like a, what's on the website, might not be totally clear. No, I thought these are documents that were sent out to us before. Yeah. It could be on the website as well. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So I just want to go back on members. Brian, you're probably the best to answer this. I wasn't positive and I saw it written different ways, different places. Were you and I appointed by the committee, by the finance committee and the school committee, or were we designated and officially this, this select board appointed us? Okay. So we could put designated two, two designees or. Well, that's how I have it. Cause I say the select board appointed us. And then I have in the columns who designated. Who of which were designated by. Yeah, I have it. I, I guess I didn't, I didn't throw it in the narrative because it's in the, it's in the chart. That's accurate. Okay. Okay. Good. Anything else on the charter mission section? And you guys are free to send, if you've got like Nits and Nat type edits, just send them to me. But if it's, if it's more than an internet, I'd like it at least call it out in the meeting from a well known standpoint. And thoughts on, I've, I've got sort of, I haven't added them, but appendices that I was intending on sort of copying the various documents into an appendix of this, just so that everything was in one place and we're not referencing the capital policy, the debt policy. And then somebody who actually wants to leave it has to go like pump them all down. Yeah. I got fired these. I sent you three tables that I thought might end up in a pennies, but obviously with your tables included, uh, two of the things I sent you wouldn't be needed. Okay. Doing up because I wasn't sure what you're going to do. Um, I think, well, I think, I think one of the, uh, tables I sent you was a complete listing of open capital projects. Yeah. As of November 18th historical record. Okay. Because what happened last year, once Brian Stephanie produced, they reported a point in time, Munis moved on. Then when I tried to go back and reconcile, he said he couldn't recreate. So just, so maybe you could add an appendix and use what I Yeah, I think that would be good. Just cause I, I'd like to avoid like any future, like, Hey, these numbers don't add up to what? So that there's clear that the open capital was as of the day. Yeah. That would be a, you know, just adding that appendix. All right. So I'm on any other comments on the charter mission. So current process. The only thing I would add, um, towards bottom, we're going to set the committee to do the requests. Yeah. I'm sorry. Since before that. Yeah. Um,
you may have gotten slightly earlier than the rest of us, but probably not much. So I think it'd be helpful to put in the first gun initial PPW request on October 29th. All right. Okay. I think they were due 30 days after the committee request went out and we didn't get the other, we didn't get the other ones till November 11th, but I noted in the zip file, they were all dated November 3rd. So I don't know if they went to the town manager's office November 3rd and you didn't get them till November 11th. But again, I just think it's relevant in terms. I think I'll just add the dates. I, I received them. Um, right. Because in some cases we received like a blank folder for school. So when did we actually get, I'll go back through the emails. Maybe I'll just put it. You can say the first, we received the initial submittal through the DPW, you know, October 29th and over the next two to three weeks, we received the rest of them. Okay. You want, you're okay with that versus me just let's take it out. Yeah. And then it may not be here is the right place to put it, but obviously we just got some substantive changes for some of these. Um, that may go somewhere else. I apologize public. I meant to start sharing this as we went through it and I did not. Okay. I will add that. Yeah. Next up is right out of the capital policy, right? Uh, they came from, no, I don't think so. They came from, uh, Liz's niceties, but I read them and liked them. Um, but I can,
I don't think I could find any. No, the capital policy has it, but it's like a sentence. It's like, you should write. Yeah. Yeah. Based off of what we talked about when we were acting exactly like what comes for, you know, so that's, I thought that's where you got to play it. Let me go back to a little bit. Anyway. Uh, I'll, I'll take a look. I, I feel like the capital policy was light on it. It mentioned things. Yeah. Yeah. When this is more how we did. Yeah. I remember our first meeting and I asked that question is, are they listed in a capital policy in order for other than the first one? Yeah. Probably not. Yeah. And I, I, but I like the way this reads. So yeah, I put this sort of in the way I think we thought about it, the order that we, because I moved one of them. Um, but I would also, I didn't want to commit to like, it's strictly this. No, I didn't do like prior. Yeah. I left that language out intentionally. Yeah. I think it was good that way. Is there anything worth adding? I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was going to say, I like the way the current process reads and the way it's set up. I think that's, uh, I think it's very effective. The only thing I was going to say that we should add is that, again, I do not want to bring it up again, but the baseball field, that concept of projects that are not fully defined, that we don't, I feel like that should be in there somewhere saying. Yep. I agree with you. Maybe it's financial or just, or maybe it's the last bullet. Yeah. I'll just, I don't know. Um, it's, uh, project readiness as a criteria. I, somewhere I talk in there, I talk about resources and I think it's resources and readiness. Okay. Is it resource readiness and open capital or something? Yeah. I, I, when I say resources, I always mean both people and financial, but, uh,
okay. The concept of completeness of submission, which kind of goes to the, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah, yeah. Completeness. Yeah. And that'll be more of a longer term. Yeah. It would be hard for me to argue that we, completeness was achieved in most cases this year. Um, but I, I give a pass because we didn't make. Yeah. I mean, some of, some of the things we've now gotten after, in fact, asking questions might be the type of information we would hope that we get as part of the initial submission. Yeah. I think as I, I outlined here somewhere, I think our request format, forecast, the way we're asking for things is, is not our, our current CIP form is ineffective in getting what you actually need. And most people don't follow up. Yeah. Don't ask why I fill it out. Yeah. No, I agree. Yeah. The next section I go, I, I, I'm fine with the chart that has the numbers populated. So I might suggest on the other items, but on the table, just a little narrative, just through a sentence. Yeah. I'm, I'm good with that. I started thinking I was, and then I was like, I don't know how I'm going to do this. I was trying to get at the fact there are other ways to fund projects. Yeah. No, I think it's important.
And thoughts on, we have it, I think I have it in one of the charts, but like, on the funding sources calling out impact on taxation. And I think it's helpful for anybody who's non into town finance, like understanding that cash capital would be a direct, you know, hit to, to taxation. Levy borrowing is, is a hit, but free cash and ambulance receipts or not. I, I think that's helpful to have, but I wanted everybody else's opinion. Yeah. Let me probably, a little narrative somewhere with that. Yeah. Here's the rainbow. These are technically driven by this. Yeah, sir. I think it would be helpful if I actually took an action to go and refresh myself. What should those categories are for the negative cash funds? Yeah. All right. I'll add, I'll add something there. Um, okay. All right. Future improvement targets. I actually, this is the very first thing I wrote. It's okay. This packet of charge says it's a sensitive subject with the board of public works. Yeah. I know you took this list from the FinCom report, but that retained earnings line item. I, I, what I was thinking is if I add a description that I will put on, cause I, I, I want to say this came like, we didn't make this up, this isn't our guideline and then make a comment on our understanding is that, um, retained earnings is, is not available currently. Yeah. All right. Let me add that. So I forget. So future process. I mean, I think the two things that still stick out my head, but I don't list everything to commit us to it, but yeah, I mean, open project, open capital project status, health improvement, right? I mean, you're trying to follow up. We don't actually call it out. We have capital assets, but we don't necessarily have to open the project status. Yeah. And then the other one was we want to some sort of older to say, again, the town building conversation or assessing full scope versus, you know, driving total costs of programs or something. So what would you call that, John? I would call it like understanding future. Well, and that bullet on expand long-term capital planning might be including, uh, ensuring that total future costs are, are considered, right? Yeah. And then maybe saying where, where appropriate ensuring that we're revealing, uh, multiple projects impact in the same capital asset. I mean, I don't really want to call it too, but that's too much funding. That's probably, I'll, I'll think about how to, yeah, particular asset or. Let me have part of the first collection, right? So I think the funding, I'm assuming eventually, eventually, our funding requests are going to extend past the five years. Yeah. That's what the last one is, is that we got to get beyond five years. But I think what John's saying, and I like is, it's beyond five years with an understanding, a strong understanding of a particular asset, right? To the extent. I mean, it's the town building. In my mind, it's because the five years, you know something that's broken, but that's not true. Right. But if you had a 15 year plan, I would hope the other stuff would end up on there. But it, to me, there's also a pairing of understanding of the town's strategy and direction as to use of buildings, right? Like, right. This building needs all these things. Are you guys planning on vacation? Like, are you planning on doing something else? Because that's important. Maybe it's like the, what is the plan for a long-term asset before, you know, in, you know, maybe it's capital improvements are greater than X. I mean, something like that. So is there, is the intent to put that on the new funding request? Or capital? I don't, so I don't think that in particular is something a department manager can answer. And I think that's also a problem with our existing funding or existing CIP, is that it's got a bunch of stuff on it that a department manager wouldn't answer like funding source. And so they skip over it. I think, I think that question is a strategy question that has to go usually like select board school committee. Right. What's your use? You know, if we're looking at repairing things at a particular elementary school and school committee is intending to do a building study and build in your building, right? You have to know that in, as a part of, but one of those is a strategic, completely strategic. One of them is, could be strategic, but is likely to be repairs, right? Maintenance of a building.
So if we get our information currently from the department that, but this is really strategic with the decision or analysis to be done, decisions to be made. Are we even getting that information? That's, I think there are two different things, right? See, improving the CIP is to get better information from the, from the department heads. I think there's maybe a separate bullet here, which is understanding the needs, right? Use needs, right? Of the, of the various TEM boards, committees, functions, right? But it's a separate, it's a separate initiative. Yeah. It's us, it's us taking the information for someone saying, I need to fix the roof. What else do you have to do? Oh, I don't know yet. Because they're just worried about today. So then going up to the town, what's our use plan over the next 10 years? What are your repairs look like? Yeah. And then burying them and saying, well, hey guys, you want to keep using this building, but it's going to cost $15 million. Do you still want to keep using this? But like, does that change, it's, it's the circling back to say, does that change your view on, on how to do this? But I think it's a different body than, that we've got to get information. I think it's probably more to the boards and committees, but. Yeah, we'd like to try to do new committees somewhere, I'm guessing. Yeah, I don't want to regret that. A good example is the stormwater discussion that we had, which I heard the chair of the site board at the meeting Mondays, alert the rest of their members that their board needs to have a further discussion about over the next 10 plus years to make sure we know how much money needs to be spent to be in compliance at the end of that period. The good news is, as our liaison, she heard that discussion. Yeah. She's put members on notice and said, who does that on their committee? But that's an example right now, we're just seeing 250,000 here, another 200,000 there, but it's millions of dollars. And then we have an asset management plan that they had to approve an invoice for so that could get done. Yeah. Or a grant form or something. Yeah. But that's another example where. Yeah, I was just, I was thinking. The department head's going to be in charge of that. That's a higher, that's an account manager. Yeah. Select board, school committee, school committee team. Well, and that's where, you know, before making a bill, it's just understanding what is the actual ask and the intent, and how do we accomplish it? I mean, to me, it's ensuring we're asking questions about multiple phase or multiple year capital spends for, you know, is that the vehicle we're going to get that integration, the updated capital requests? No. I think it's our budget. I think it's the 10-year budget saying, hey, these all go together. Right. And it's for a building that's going to be information request meetings. Yeah. Yeah. And this is what I said, like, if we had us, if we start breaking down sections like vehicles, we see them, hey, this is town, but these are all the town building that's against a certain platform, we say, okay, this is the problem. Yeah. I don't think it's a CIP form. I think that's, it's a little more qualitative, you know, awareness of what's going on in the boards of committees, working with our liaison, right, on the select board, um, possibly Brian, you working with school committee on like, hey, what's on the horizon, um, use-wise. So I, it's, it's not as defined in my head of what it looks like. I just know we need to have better, we're going to need to have better information in order to achieve, you know, a long-term beyond five-year calendar. It makes it work that's improved visibility too. I mean, that keeps it kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, spend more time on the site, but it may be after kind of town meeting stuff is done, that's one of the things we want to do is have a joint meeting with the select board, the manager of school committee, and make it a working session to talk through some of these themes, concepts and themes, um, because they're the ones that they're going to have to do. I mean, so again, queuing them up to, hey, you've got to start thinking about this. It's a bit of a change in the process. Absolutely. Like, schools are working on a separate master plan for all the elementary schools. I don't know if they're- I even think we should do that, just having the updated, you know, capital request from like, oh, by the way, we talked about getting better clarity and information, and this is how we're going to do it. It's questions now. Well, that's the thing, right? All this is disconnected, essentially, with all these master plans. So that's the problem. Okay. The town master plans. Yeah. I mean, all this is band-aids until we get there, right? That's all this is. Yeah. Okay. I added a bunch of notes to expand that section. All right. Both in capital, Brian, I basically just took what you had done. Would you like me to foresee tables in front of these, and if not, I can put in table one and two and fill in blanks and send it back to you? I don't- the only thing is I'm not sure if I'm not going to end up with a table in the executive summary. Okay. I'll wait till you're ready. I mean, if you want to just send me, they're spreadsheets, right? Yes. I mean, I can copy and paste them myself to send me your spreadsheets. Okay. Okay. So yeah, I didn't, I didn't do anything to that, because I love it. I hope you guys like my watermark. Oh, they can only read it in a few places. Just wanted to make sure. Drafts subject to material revisions. I didn't want anybody to- I might have a couple of questions on the next section. Yeah. I think I sent you one already in the email. Whatever numbers you decide- Yeah, you're not trying. Because I know you have to update them anyway. Yeah, I'm going to cross-reference to what yours is. My only thought would be, well, I have no issue putting the total, whatever the total turns out to be that was initially submitted. And I know you referenced right after that, 38.6 million. Just do the math for people and just say that it's 18.5 million, which then people can equate to what we're recommending. Yep. And I've already given my NWRA comment. Yes. Do them in.
Changes during the discussion tonight. Yep. I will change the numbers. And I will- Generally, generally recommended limiting, and then you have to add some verbiage on the two or three items that we have talked about adding in. Yeah. So you want to say the committee recommends generally limiting- Yeah. Generally, that's like my favorite words. Okay. But you have in mind the narrative summary of the capital projects that are expensive. So what we had, I looked at the FinCom report last year and it just had a real couple sentences on on what's really driving up to the 6 million. Personally, I'm not a math person. I don't love narratives. I love throwing charts out there and just having you see what's there. But I figured once we nailed down what the projects were, I'd probably add a little bit around, you know, major projects being a septic. You start at a high level and say, Yeah. Town flip, schools flip. Yeah, exactly. Enterprise funds flip, and then- Yeah. Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's right. Kelly says, she's going to just- But you're thinking how when they write the reports, generally, you'll do a couple sentences in there, but then there's a table that says the same thing. Yeah. And I'm a just throw the table in person. So you included this part of that section. You included the septic under the schools, which I don't have an issue with. So it relates to the high school, but he's an owner. Yeah. So here's the thing. In my spreadsheet, I actually broke the facilities
identifier as facilities slash schools, facilities slash rec, right, to who were the other partners. I can do that here, and I'm okay with that. All right. I kind of like it in the schools to do that thing. Yeah. Just because- It's how we've done it. It was- The reason I left it that way is because that's how we've historically, in FinCom's report, that's how we've historically- We've given facility projects that were schools to schools. Yeah. And the existing, the existing waste water facility was built as part of the high school building, which is a high school building. Yeah. Well, I don't think anyone really cares for spending the money. They want to know what it's going to be in town. Yeah, it gets tricky because facilities, like all their other projects are dotted all over, but I tend to separate my, and I think most people do, town versus school, right, rather than more detailed parts. Especially if it's going to have some specific expense. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, maybe drop two million into facility and people's like, what are you doing? Yeah. I will tell you that, again, I have no issue with this. Again, I think it'll hopefully
get a slightly improved chance of passing town meeting, but we're going to add a couple more items potentially here with schools. Yeah.
And my understanding is the operating budget at the moment is, the operating budget is
pretty sizeable increase in the school budget and a relatively smaller increase for the town budget. So both operating and capital schools are going to be outsized.
Those projects would be called out above as the top projects anyway, right? I mean, you're going to accept it. It's that way. I put it below. And we have to do it. Yeah, it's on the next page. Anyway. Which I was going to put in the appendix. I'm like, no, it needs to come up front, because you need to know what those are. So does DPW have nothing in this current draft? They do, which is part of why I initiated that conversation, because that doesn't make sense to me, just broadly, that you've got a lot of assets there. How could you be at no spend? They have a $36.8 million project. Well, yeah. Anyway. So this table will get increased for the town for the group, the two elevators, things. Yeah. Happy Hall of Fire alarm, the top water heater. So what would you group that in departmentalization? Which doesn't make sense, knowing that that's going to be a major topic, like school. MWRA? No, the tent, the buildings, the elevator stuff. Are you better off the department? That is going to go in facilities. It's going to go in facilities, but it'll be on this, this exhibit. It'll show exactly right. It'll lay out exactly what it is. Okay. It's not in the summary. And I debated
if the summary that I have on whatever page this is, is needed if we then give the next, because I actually like the next page better because it does the projects. It just doesn't, it doesn't summarize a total for each department. I don't. Yeah. I wouldn't mind not excluding the first table. And I know it's appeared in the FinCom report in the past, but. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Or for what our, what our goal is. Yeah. I think it's redundant and not as useful as the next one. So. We'll get it. Yeah. I'm great. All right with that, Brad? My table is great. Yep. Good. Yep. Keep six, the first table.
I got an email from FinCom about, you know, what I, what I keep updating. Brian, would you and I keep updating the tables for them? And I said, well, I'm going to update my tables to do our report, but I can't guarantee I'm going to, you know, keep updating them as, as things change. I mean, I'll help if there's a question, but.
Okay. So that'll all get updated. Brian, this reflects. I know this happened when I, after I left FinCom, breaking out water and wastewater as a separate. Chart that didn't used to be the case, but that came about.
Yeah. Right. Well. Enterprise funds. Yeah. Yeah. They have to be started. Right. But they weren't for, for many years. Right. That was a decision. That was a change last year. I'm excited.
Yeah. What I didn't have time to do for this and I'm not planning. I may get roped into helping is in the warrant. There's a description of each and every project. That we're recommending for the current year. I mean, that takes a lot of time to get together. So I don't think it can go in our report. I won't. Much less of a changes.
Yeah. So I don't want to, I, I would happily help put it together. Once they've nailed down projects, but I don't.
You know, in the work that has like the summary, it's been, uh, the description. The CIP forms. Except the CIP forms generally don't have what needs to do in there. I've, I've been, I've been reaching out to department managers to create. The description. Yeah. And then that's, I didn't start. I didn't have enough time to get into the out year. So what I will do next was some of the same tables that we put. The account was put in the warrant. I'd like to produce for the out years based on where we find medium load. Thanks. The problem is this is cumulative. If we medium something in 27, we're not including it.
Am I, am I pushing? What's your general philosophy? Am I pushing? I thought we decided, um, given where we are in the process, that, um, we needed to get fiscal 27, the town manager. Yep. We needed to continue our work. Yep. Um, having ranked that we were going to maybe include with this, which is a table I sent to you, which needs to be slightly cheap. So just give the high, medium, low for each. Our rankings. Yep. That's fine.
I'm going to be in the next six, two, but I sent version five after the last meeting to the finance director and copy the town manager saying this is before Christmas. You might want to, you know, our memo is not going to get discussed until after the new year. Yep. Here's our rankings. You might want to get going and filling out your own budget template, which includes exactly what you're talking about. They're going to be making their own decisions anyway. Um, what I heard my instructor say on Monday evening at the FACOM is that they're waiting to get our report, which will include fiscal 27 and five-year plans, which is exactly what you were just starting to describe, which are the- Which I didn't tell them we would do. And we've, we've, we've said, we've only said that we would provide the rankings. And I know that that was understood because, um, I got some, a comment back about it. Right. Um, I'm not saying we didn't start out and the charge for the bylaws that we shouldn't, in fact, be producing a five-year plan with numbers based on how we feel based on all the information we've gotten fit in the financial plan. Our problem was we, A, asked several times for the financial resources in the out-years. And what we were told was just use what was provided in fiscal 27 through 30 last year's five-year plan, but it doesn't address fiscal 31. But on my spreadsheet second tab, it kind of showed that at the bottom of the tab. Here's all the requests we got. Here's what we were shown in last year's five-year plan is available. Funding sources. And every year we were short. So that left open the question, are we supposed to reflock? Cut it to cut our recommendations down to meet those finance bills, or are those going to change based on accounts finances? So we needed at the last minute you were here, John, we, we said, we need to get something. And I thought what we're going to do is we're getting pretty much done here. In this section, say, we just haven't gotten all the information we need to properly assess. We still have $4 million of facilities projects that we're waiting to find out how much and which years they're not fiscal 27. And we haven't really talked about the movement of numbers. If we had to move numbers and end up with, you know, a specific table like the ones in the year for each year. We can do that, but it's not going to get done at the next meeting or the meeting after that. And, um, which is why I suggest the town manager and finance director get going, because they're going to do what they're going to do anyway, right? Yeah. We've given them our rankings. I'd say put the rankings in this section in the same group. So, you know, I would say in your direction, we will continue to work on developing a- So, that's what I'd like to do. So, yeah, I would like to put the rankings for the out years, right, in here. We can put it, and I can do it two ways. I can summarize the dollars, right, that ranked high, low, medium, low as a summary. And then a listing with everything in the detail. I would like to, and we can issue a report. And then I would like to go still as a committee, keep working on what we think a plan would look like. Now, the question is, is that a futile effort, right? Because they're going to go change a bunch of stuff anyway. And so, let's see what they come up with and start over. I don't think it's completely futile, only because we're going to have to do this all again next year. And I would like to know what we, where we stand on what we think about the projects. And to the extent they come up with a plan, and we're like, yeah, that's not what we thought. Right? I'd like to identify that.
We just went through a process with one year, which that's the most clarity. And it's just going to be, it's just, you know, we should do that. We can do that. It's just, it's going to take more time than... We know there's a big gap too, and what's the next year's highs are going to be able to they didn't do that. Yeah. Right. I mean, I don't want to add more work. My, my, my, my almost thought is that as our first pass, I mean, it's really the each year's, I don't know if that's worth it, obviously, just based on what we're at. But do we take what's left and then say, okay, in 28, these are how we do high media work. Right? Well, we did, we, we, we, I have a table that I sent coming after the last meeting. Yeah. After we all write, you know, did the consolidated writing, which is in the spreadsheet. I produced it. They exhibit. So we have that. Yeah. So we have that. Then we should review that. That's just to say, okay. So I can, I can update that. We didn't spend a lot of time on it, but I'm aware. No, no, we did last, we did last week. I'll update the exhibit I sent you that consolidated our rankings by year. After the meeting, I'll circulate it to everybody. So they have it. It's, it's, it's in the, it's in the large spreadsheet. Yeah. It's just, it's spread out. I just, and now you have all the. I squished it down into five columns. Yeah. Focusing on the rankings. And I think I have the dollars in the rankings. Yeah. And it just made it easier to be concise. Yeah. But what we're talking about is. Then do we keep them going forward and creating. You know, one of these tables for each of the next four years. Deciding what's in and what's out based on our rankings. And I think I agree with your point, Kelly, given where we are in the process. If they, which is, I think what we've been saying for a month. How management of finance directors should. Do that based on what they know their resource allocation fee. We keep working on it. And I suspect there'll be a fair amount of agreement. Yeah. But whatever they decide to do, they're going to do. If it's along the way, we could say, we'll provide you with. As soon as we can, we'll provide you with. Yeah. I'm not opposed either to issuing a report and issuing an addendum to the report. But I want to get this. I want to get the FY27 out. Yeah. But just stay out of the report. Because meanwhile, I know the FinCom is expecting not only to get a fiscal 27 capital budget, which, but they also want to get the five-year plan.
And they got their canceled because they're going to have articles, the operating budget. And so at least if they can get the 27 capital budget. Yeah. And, uh, but, but the base record and the commander have to be moving on their own on, in my opinion, on 28 to 31. I agree. Right. So I'll, I'll recirculate that table after I update it for additional projects. And then Kelly, you can decide, you know, it'll be too small for you to put it in here at the table. So you may just refer to it as an exhibit. Yeah. Or I'll figure out how, how, what, what, if there's a format of some of the information to put it in. Okay. Right. I'll, however you want it. Yeah.
Okay. When is our, uh, we hope to get this agreed to and issued by our next meeting. Yes. At our next meeting. At our next meeting. Yeah. I'd like to be on final edits at our next meeting. Okay. So next meeting is scheduled for next Wednesday. Um, it's currently. Are we having June? Just confirming that. Yes. I'll be remote. Yes. It's currently scheduled for, we had talked about six o'clock. Um, is, are you guys amenable to 630? Okay. I have a child leaving the country for months. So I'd like to figure out. Oh, you need more. You need that work? Uh, yeah. Yeah. Well, today.
Somebody has got, you know, an amount of luck that I don't like to depend on is what I would like to say. My daughter waited a little longer than she should to, to get her visa situated. Yeah. It came in the mail today. It came in the mail today. Yeah. That's good work. Brad, did you take them in?
Pardon? Do you have a question, Brad? No, nope, nope. She was just laughing. Yeah. So if we can, if we can push back this to 630, I'd appreciate it. Just. That's fine. That's fine. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. On Wednesday, the 14th. And we're going to be in the select board meeting room.
Okay.
That's because the heat's working tonight. Although the select board doesn't work. Maybe after tonight's discussion, we may have a full crowd next day. Yeah. Good. All right.
Let's. Can we move to minutes?
Before we do that, Brian, do you think we needed a vote? I mean, we got agreement, but we didn't vote on, on our rankings. Do you think it's sufficient to just vote when we get the final report? I think when we get the final report. Yeah. Okay. All the schedules have been updated. Yeah. Yeah. I think. I agree.
Okay. Minutes.
I have no format. This was the agenda. This was now the required format. Yeah. Which I just want to say for the public that we've got a new format for the minutes and for the agenda. And I quite frankly thought the changes were great. It was the agenda lets me pick the committee name off a drop down, pick the date of calendar. And I sent those comments to the town clerk. And she had expressed that she was happy to hear that because a lot of people did not like them. But I thought it was pretty slick and helpful to me. So I don't know about how you felt on the minutes. Yeah. No, I think in the minutes are fine. I've added, you see, I added a footnote for example, just to add some additional detail, which they're fine with. I think there were certain. Yeah. I added, I added some things too. Yeah. There were certain key information they wanted to be consistent across every board and committee. Yeah. But basically said how, how the rest of the minutes go is up to you. Yeah. So obviously if you all have any substantive questions or edits, see if you have some time. I do not. Yep. No comment. They're robust. Yes. And as an example, every once in a while when we spend time on talking like on big tables and things, I'll just attach the table right to the minutes for the public's benefit. That's fine. It's easier. Yeah. That's fine. Um, I'm actually fine if you attach the draft, like just attach the whole thing as an addendum to the back of the minutes. Right.
That's up to you.
Um, okay. No discussion on the minutes. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes of December 17th? Motion to approve. And a second. Second. I wasn't here. Nope, that's fine. All right. And we're going to have to do a roll call vote. So I'm going to start first with John. You can abstain if you, if you, you don't have to, but you can abstain. No, that's good. Yes. Yes. Brad. Brad Carver. Yes.
Brian. Brad Carver. Yes. Yep. Yep. Liz. Yep. Kelly. Yes. So the minutes of December 17th are approved. I don't have any topics not reasonably anticipated. I think I did mention earlier select board. Our separate liaison has asked me if I would come to select board to talk about our work and where we are at and what our challenges are. And I expressed to her that, one, I wanted to talk to the committee about it, but that I wouldn't see us doing that until we've actually voted and issued the report. And then I would, um, provided the committee is okay with it. I'm happy to do that. Once we have an issue report. Any concerns? No. All right. So next meeting, we said 630 Wednesday, the 14th in the flat board room. Do we want to schedule beyond that? I think I would like to. If you're going to get a hybrid room, you probably should. Yeah. So can we do the 21st, which is the following? I just, I'm just in case there's any follow-up. I hope you're listening to this. You cannot. Okay. Take it out of the spring. Okay. Any days that week folks can do?
Monday is a holiday. Oh, it's a holiday. Only hybrid days are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday. Yeah. I can do Tuesday. I might just not be able to. I've got three days in a row. Brad, can you do Tuesday? Yeah, the 20th. Yep. Yeah.
All right. I'm going to say six and see if I can get that.
In the event, medium, in the event we get done and the 14th and we're like, hey, we need a little break before we take on to the next. We can do that. But I just want to have it there just in case we've got any follow-up. Okay. If we'll finish next week, do you think you'll get feedback from the flight board before that?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Unless there's a, what was the next major town meeting? Next town meeting? Next town meeting.
Let's go ahead and go out one more week just so that, in any event we don't meet on the 20th, that I've got another one out there. So, days of the week, preferences, guys? Or like Wednesday. Or Thursday. All right. Are we talking about the? The week of the 26th, the last week in January. Okay, the 28th is Wednesday. Yeah, I would like to do the 28th as possible. I'm going to be out of, I'm going to be out of state from the 28th through May, February 7th. Yeah, I can do the 27th. I can, yeah, 26th or 27th I can do.
Lizzie, are you okay? The PMVC is meeting that day as well. 27th? Yeah. Can you do the 26th? Definitely do the 26th. Okay. 26th okay for us? Yep. If we can go from 6th to 7th, then that works. It'd be done at 7th? You wouldn't even start at 7th. No, Donna's perfect. Yeah. That's why we were laughing, yeah. Okay. All right. I will, I'm just going to get those reserved. And we'll, we'll go from there.
Okay. That might be the, it doesn't affect us as long as they have a room somewhere. It's hybrid. Maybe there's been an article during that night, but. Okay. Yeah. If I, if I can't, we'll go from there. But if we can't, we said Wednesday, Brad could do Tuesday. Wait, that was Tuesday that we decided, right? Or Monday, sorry. We said it Monday. We said it Monday. We said it Monday. Tuesday, Brad, I'm 26th. Yeah. Who? I can, I can, I can do Tuesday. I'm going to do Tuesday. Yeah. So just in case, if, if we can't get Monday, I'll book Tuesday. And I'll, I'll do hybrid, but I'll. Yeah. Yeah. No, I understand. Okay. I got a, what is CIPC? Like somebody saw it on the, one of the kids on the calendar. What is CIPC? It's like, oh, so we haven't been listening to me for the last three months.
All right. Are we good? Can I get a motion to adjourn at nine Oh four seconds. All right. And we have to do a roll call. Brad, are you in favor of the motion to adjourn? Yes. Brian. Yes. Liz. Yes. Don. Yes. And Kelly is a yes. We are adjourned at nine Oh four. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.