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Try: Select Board School Committee Real Estate Town Meeting Budget

November 13, 2025 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript

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November 13, 2025 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee

 
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All right, capital meeting of the capital agreement planning committee. It's an in-person meeting and we're called to order at 5.02. And today is Thursday. We select before a meeting meeting. It's an in-person meeting. If being before, then we'll be available to call up on Wacom. It's not going to be able to be practical. When required by law or allowed by the chair, which is allowed by the chair. Persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in meeting, we do so by in-person attendance. We will pass the past public comment to be limited to two minutes per person. We're going to review the agenda. So we're going to call the order right now. 5.05 approximately. public comment, no response if any. 5.10, we begin review. Discussion on the departmental capital request submitted this year. The department has been available. So Tom is here to talk to us about DPW. They don't have anybody else after that, but we haven't yet talked about the other ones we received. So we can talk about those, get our precautions together to have those meetings. 6.40, discuss potential content for the committee's reports. So we're going to call the town manager. 7.10, review and vote to approve minutes. About 4.30. And 7.20, topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours prior to posting. And set our next meeting time. And hopefully approximately 7.30 adjourn. 7.30. And all the members are in-person. We've done the agenda. I don't have any announcements. Does anybody else have any announcements? 7.30. Okay. And I don't see anybody for public comment. And does Ms. Martin want to do public comment? 7.30. So we're good there. And so I will go directly to Mr. Holder, who is graciously joining us tonight, to tackle his capital request from the Department of Public Works. We did put together some questions, which I sent to you. And as I said in my email, understand not everything on there is applicable and not everything is necessarily readily available, but to the extent you can give color requested, great. So I think going forward, just to let you know, it's our intent after this year to change the CIP form to encompass this stuff and take out the stuff that no one can answer any way. Right? Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, and that, it probably is time for a revamp from the CIP. Well, thanks for having me. What I did is I know that much of what I'm going to talk about you've got, you know, on your screens, but what I did is one of the questions I know that you have is the status of all capital partners. Yeah. So what I did is a, this is an FY24 and before, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to hand that around. I'm going to pass it around. And then also, at the risk of maybe these photographs did not, did not do a good job of really identifying how poor the condition that the equipment is. But I thought it would be helpful for you to at least see, you know, what some of the stuff looks like. Who knows what a swap model looks like. So, you know, I figured it would be, it would be helpful for you to at least, oh, you've got to. Oh, yeah, thank you. I made one for the five members. So we can, as I go through the, the CIPs, we can, I'll reference these, this equipment. This screen sheet again, it's anything that is within or before FY24 appropriations. You know, so you can see many of these either have been closed out or will be closed out. I'm not sure exactly how caught up the finance group is, how meeting with Kelsey next week to, we meet quarterly to all of this, you know, update all of our projects. So we'll be looking at this. And it's safe to say anything in FY25 or 26 is still alive and, you know, in an ongoing. We've kind of, at least in a new sense of where we are. So there are most of the ongoing roadway to our projects, which are the booster station and the water tank. So those are the four projects that you see in there. There are several appropriations for a couple of those. So that's why you see more than just one line for those. But aside from that, we've done a nice job in catching up. We've been able to hire some talented staff, a project manager, a town engineer, myself, and the superintendents all manage these projects and we've been able to make some advancements on them. So we'll be pleased as to where we're at right now. Yeah, this is great, exactly what we're looking for and we're grateful to get through with peers as well. Can I just ask, I'm going to pick a couple of examples. So say the FY23 appropriation for the DPW H14 truck, which is, I don't know, maybe seven or eight down the list. The balance says there's a balance of $280,000 and we say it's ready to be closed. Is that the balance reflecting the fact that you purchased the truck? I'm guessing no. Unfortunately, I would not put a lot of confidence in the balance. This is the thoughts I've used in November of last year, exactly a year ago. Okay, I can't remember that. Yeah, it's November of 24, after the sheet, you know, was started from, I think. What the clients' department shows in units and what DPW has access to, they're two different things. You know, so in working with Kelsey and working with Ryan Keveney, we'll be able to clean up that column. That's okay, I just wanted to point it out in case everybody's like, oh, we've got a whole bunch of money. No, because if you bought it, it's gone. Those were balances as of a year ago, so they changed dramatically. So yeah, so we'll work with Brian based on, and Kelsey based on, the fact that these are all going to be closed, what then the committee is going to want to see from them is, alright, if all these accounts are being closed, what was left, what is actually left in them, if that becomes a basis, potentially commercial plus capital for other projects. But this is helpful. On that one, just pick on that one, so the list as of August 1, 2025, that item shows balance 23,934. Yeah, alright. So we have, we can cross, I don't know if you've sent this to us in Excel. I have not. If you could send it, then we can cross-reference it with the current, or more current units. Do you think it would be better to send it to you now, or wait until I meet with Kelsey and she does her thing? Either way is fine or not. Either way is fine. I'm not. Either way is fine. Just, I wanted to go over that. And then on the stuff that's open, I know roadways is one of them, and I think that was one of our questions. So, so, you want to meet with Kelsey and can get a clean answer there. What's left in the roadway budget, right? And I know we go over this, we've gone over this in the past, but that's understanding what's there, and the plan to use it, is critical to how much funding do we put in, right, over the rest of the years. That makes sense. Yeah. In a quick synopsis, I can tell you that in FY24, there's about $12,000 left in that. We use old money first. Yeah. Come forward. Does that make sense? In FY25, we'll have used all of that by the end of this construction season. So, in another couple of weeks, we just wrapped up Tally-O and Grey Birch neighborhood. We have about $600,000 in FY26 only. And that will, we'll then be using that when we start in spring and April through June. And then, we'll then have access to FY27. So, that kind of gets you a sense of... And that's just budget money? What about, like, chapter... Oh, chapter 90. Yeah, so that would be, I don't have the balance handy for that, but we also, you're right, we have, you know, upwards between chapter 90 and we've had some winter recovery work. Money's allotted to us. It's in the order of, you know, $500,000, $600,000 a year is what we're going to get. And, you know, that gets plenty of thought as well. So, I can provide... Spent on the same... Spent on the same track that you just described from the... All of them? Yes. Yep. I think, going back to the building numbers here, I think, at least two years ago, I think you were saying you were probably two years behind. Yeah, it's... Behind was the right term, but you had a fair amount of previously appropriate money that hadn't yet been spent. Sounds like you're pretty well caught up. Yeah, we have. And what happens is that, you know, the appropriations don't line up with the construction season. It's almost six months off. You know, so you have to figure that in as well. You know, so I say, you know, FY26, you've got $600,000. Well, we'll start using that on April 1st of this year. And then FY27 money and some Chapter 90 money will be used. And I can... We keep a very good track inventory of our Chapter 90 funds as well, so I can provide that. Yeah. That would be helpful, too. And I don't know if so, but Chapter 90 is the state funding for groups. So we have what we appropriate, what the Finance Committee and Town Meeting appropriates, which you see in the budget, and we look at that when we look at the warrant. Chapter 90 is coming from the state. So it's not going to show up in the budget, but it is part of what DPW uses to maintain the roads. And each community, it's a lot of the communities based upon three things. Miles of roadway, the population, and employment. I have no idea why, but that's the third criteria. So there's this formula that's used, and that's how each community is alive. Pardon? So miles of road, population, and employment. So does unemployment rate make it go up or down? Which way does it go? Yeah, to be honest, I don't know. Up or get me dry into what I think? Well, the alternative would be if you have low unemployment, then you get more space. Yeah. So I don't know. That's the three criteria that's used, and like I said, it's right around $500,000. Okay. I want to ask one more question. Thank you. When you talk to Brian and Kelsey, you're the first one up here. Can you have them explain to you, or to us, how you could end up with negatives, very second to last, and third to last items on it? Yeah. So negatives, which suggests being overspent for the corporation, which you're not supposed to do. So if you could check with them as to what that reflects. So I can take a shot at that. More than likely what that is, is that we have a lot of capital rockets. We get a lot of invoices. Some of the project titles may look similar to one another. And that, you know, so when an invoice comes in and it's assigned to an existing purchase order, it may be incorrectly assigned to one. It may then overspend. What we then do is, when we see that, make a correction, you do a journal entry to correct that bond. I have a sense that that's why we see that. That's why we see that. We... You never... We... That makes sense, man. I'll ask a question to everyone. So you had a number of projects that were just included in the bonding. Right. That was borrowed. Yeah. You don't spend money in advance of actually the bonds being issued. Is that it? So I think we do. Because I think they issue a ban. Or a ban. Yeah. Yeah. So if you're the money to borrow, you don't spend money on it. Right. In anticipation of how we can. Yeah. Yeah. This is another argument. Side note for project members, being assigned to that for projects, so that it flows through from the approval to the unit's account to the invoice, right? So that they're... It's not that you can't correct the accounting entry, but it's easier if they all link up to begin by. Any other questions go in on this? Before we... Can anybody else change? Now, before the meeting started, I asked Tom about how much work had been done in the second water tank, which is on his list here as the last item, and on the list we've gotten in the Selectworks packet, it showed the project being 90% completed, which I questioned because they didn't borrow the money for you. Tom just told me before the meeting was that the design has pretty well been completed, and there was a prior cash appropriation for that. Yeah. It wasn't actually the buying funds. Right. But no money has been spent on that. That's right. So... So, to make the point, as I did at the last name, that list that we got, the extended attempting to suggest that certain projects are in percentage complete based on the financial amount shown in units, isn't necessarily always accurate. Yeah. And this list, Tom, doesn't include FY 25 or 6. That's correct. Yeah, I was referencing even more up to the list, but... Yeah. Anyway. And I thought I would do, it's probably up to you, but I know you've had DPW project-specific questions. I can run right through those, if that makes sense? You can, just one minute. Liz or John, do you have any questions on the exhibit that Tom shared? Or are you allowed to question? Liz PP? Pardon? Liz PP? Oh, Paul Ciccioli. That's right. DM, Don Millette, Joe Doucette. That tells me who the project managers are. Yeah. Do you think we looked here, or is there a run, a game for when you get to? I guess I'm surprised that... So, that list was developed last time. Yeah. Yeah, and I think with a lot of the transitions with the Tad administration... I was going to say, is this like a norm, or is this not? You know, I got it. There's no mark. We got it. There's no mark. That's probably the best case scenario. Yeah. This is actually an excerpt from this sheet. That's all the town, open capital. I appreciate your work. There was not, there was not a good tracking. We've made some strides. So, but you'll find that Tom probably has the best handle on his. So, we'll move it in the right direction. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. Yes, good questions. You know, number one, does it make sense to hold up in funding the Transfer Station Garage until after we have the evaluation? Yes. So, we have it. You see it, you know, in this sheet. This is what I call it because of the blue column sheet. Yeah. It's actually going to be a facilities-led project. So, that's Mike Fea. So, he's got it on his list as well. This is listed twice an option in his. And I think he's put it in a future fiscal year. Because, a very good point is, we're now accepting submittals for request for qualifications from firms. To evaluate how we're operating currently at the Transfer Station, what kind of things we're doing well, what kind of things we can do better. There's an interest, a strong interest, in going to a curbside collection for trash and recycling. We don't have that here. It's all private pickup. So, we have $58,000 to be taken at the Transfer Station Usain earnings to fund that. So, in the course of the next nine months, we've built a working group, a five-month working group. We'll be going through that once we hire a firm. We'll be going through that. Then we get the file deliverable with recommendations. Decisions will be made. And I think we'll be in a better place to determine. I have a sense that that property will always be used and open. I think that even if we were to go to a public curbside program, that property would remain a recycling sack. So, I think we're going to need to make an investment in the building structures there. But, I think that that evaluation will tell us, likely, what kind of an operation would it look like. And then we'll be better able to design and build something that's applicable to what's going on. Has there been any further discussion with Sudbury, which sits right next door? It just doesn't make a lot of sense to me that there's two cycling centers right by side by side, that we couldn't just trip all the way with people over there and say, so pay a fee to Sudbury. Yeah, so, to directly answer your question, no, there has not been any recent conversations. Historically, there was an attempt, you may recall, probably in 2016-17, where we did a collaboration. I wasn't here, but it's been described to me that Wayland's offerings were much better than Sudbury's offerings were. And, the line of cars queued up took up that entire road and completely overwhelmed the property and the staff. And, in about four hours, it was like, yeah, this is not working. And, I don't think there was ever any traction after that. That was how it was described to me. That may be a good option, though, because the website went open. So, if it's, if we convert to a town collection, you know, curbside program, it would be. Does Sudbury have similar stuff in that they are also private pickup? I believe so. Okay. Yeah. You're only open two days a week? We're only three. Three days a week? Yeah. How many days have they opened? I should know that I don't. But it's not been open in several times. Yes, it's not. Relative to the overuse on one side of the day. We're staggered. We know when customers can come and set their own. Yeah. We're not going to solve that here today. So, I think that the primary question is the important one, right? Which is. Yeah, I think so. We shouldn't be spending on a garage until we have an answer on operations. Right. Yeah. So, that's the answer to that. Does the proposed traditional septic system project for high school include costs or decommissioning? Yes, it does. Much of that equipment inside that building has not been used in over nine years. That building, that treatment plant has not functioned in over nine years. Which means it never functioned. In essence, it's the output. The build that was 15 years ago was probably whatever the heck it happens to be. So, it had problems right from the get-go. So, decommissioning was very limited by that? So, the cost to decommission to remove the equipment has been, yes. Yes. It's estimated that the project you're going to put in yet. No. No. We're still in that. Yeah. We're really actually kind of in the classes phase right now. And I'll talk. We're asking for a significant amount of money to invest in that property. So, number three. Sorry. Four on that. So, how will that work? Because I assume that project is still original. Yeah. So, the original project was part of the high school. Oh, you mean bonded as part of the high school? Yeah. That is still off-standing. Yeah. Still off-standing. So, how does that work? We decommissioned a part of the project and still being paid as a bond. I don't know that answer. Yeah. Do you have a money? Yeah. Yeah. It's unlike, I think it's unlike a mortgage on a house. The decommissioned that's been knocking it down. The lender's going to transfer collateral. Yeah. Yeah. There's no collateral on the collateral. Yeah. The town. So, from the mechanics standpoint, it's paid to be able to keep a promotion. It'll take the tax credit on it. It's not the corporate capital. Right. Right. We're still paying a bond on it and it doesn't exist. Yeah. There is a question there to ask whether or not it accelerated. I don't think so, but you had a certain memorization for the debt based on the life of the asset. Yeah. And so, the asset doesn't have a useful life anymore. I don't think that changes it because I think it's, I think it's whatever the conditions were we bonded it. But, I think we need to. It'll affect every project. That's an issue. It was an issue nine years ago. Yeah. I know. I know. I know. But that'll be true with everything that we're replacing it. Yes. Correct. Yeah. The brick and water will remain. The building itself is a relatively decent shape. And with the project, and I'll talk about it a little bit later in the meeting, the NWRE connection is likely a practical use to be made with that building. Okay. Can you address item 2A and 2C? Did you talk about 2B and 2A? The total ask is what, $4.5 million? Yeah. So, when I'm showing this question three, we got, we have a request for $4.5 million. I'm sorry. I sent more of my version because I realized I missed a couple of questions. Yeah. Go ahead. So, this project is split to a degree, but it is, it would be practical to combine the two projects. So, there's a wastewater project and then there's a baseball field project. The wastewater project is valued at about $2 million. The baseball project is valued at $2.5 million. $2 million for wastewater, $2.5 million, $2.5 million, $2.5 million, $2.5 million for baseball. So, what the baseball, up until this point, I think is in the future year, maybe FY29, 30, something out there. There's something out there. We are going to be, as part of the wastewater project, tearing up much of the baseball field, because we're going to ascend the Title V wastewater system. And so, rather than do that, put it back together again, and then two years later have somebody come in and rip it up again to redo the baseball field, if it was supported, those two efforts could be combined, and that would require moving the baseball project into recreation's capital plan. advance that as FY27. Do you have a feel for how much food costs that you, like tell me how food costs, of how much you'd actually spend, just really care if you had to do a non-generated project? I can tell that. I would imagine that figure has been thought of and derived out of it here. So, that would probably be good to say, well, to spend an extra $2.5 million, you're losing, you know, or essentially it's more resilient dollars for four years. You mean, if you had a solution that didn't involve, if you had a solution for this ethic that didn't involve tearing up the field and what that cost? No, if we chose just to repair the field and do the bare minimum, versus actually do the full baseball project, I'm sure there's a lot more to it. Let's say that's a million versus the two and a half, and that million is fully lost when you do the next project.
We're saying essentially, we save a ton of million dollars by the project. I hear what you're saying. I hear it, so let me see if I can bring it in a different way. We do the septic, and we just repair the baseball field for the damage done when we do the septic, and that costs, hypothetically, I'm making up a number. But the baseball fields, which were slated to be done as a part of another field project a number of years ago, still isn't really done, still on the schedule, and it's $3 million in five years, you wasted the million, because you're not going to get anything extra out of that. That's an important thing to know, Tom, between you and the schools, for when this gets written up, because otherwise there's potential if you do just the, if you did just the repair, you're throwing away, right, that's what we do later. I mean- And how do you think to factor into the economy of scale? You mobilize a contract at once, you know, so that will be part of that resort. That's why, if you use the other $3 million now, it costs you two and a half, so you're wasting the million and you're saving a half million, there's a million and a half sling. I think the two and a half is what was in the five year plan, just the point of that. Sure. It's a big enough number, I think it's worth the conversation to say why fold it forward. Yeah, I think one of the, I mean I get that part of it, and it's something I want to talk about, but whether it be the wastewater $10 million by itself or the four and a half million combined, my guess is that either or both of those would have to go through as bad exclusions on the ballot, given the state of the operating budget and that would be that and all that stuff. And the concern is if you put, I'm not sure you could put, because we have to do the wastewater, right? Right. So, I'm not sure you could put the four and a half million dollar debt excluding the question on it by itself, if that question failed, you haven't gotten your approval in another way to tune the app? Yeah. Which then, you know, this is going to have to be talked about, you have to split the two, make the case that you do them together, because you can save money or whatever, but you have to ask separate questions, and you combine that with potentially, if they're excluding questions, would be kind of a great connection, depending on what the subject would decide to do, and how they approach that, whether it actually goes to the ballot. And we haven't yet seen the facilities ask, but in the plan, there was an intention for five and a half million of building improvements, was building with the debt exclusion. So, you could have three or four different debt exclusion questions. So, I just think, you know, that's going to require discussion as part of this. So, you have to build it, part of it, we have to consider both that and the financial part of it. For clarity, the two million for the waste water takes the place of the five and a half million ask. So, if that was the five and a half million as to, we were going to rebuild the treatment process, and we were able to get approval from the DPP. The initial flaws that were anticipated in that building were far greater than we actually experienced, and that's why the plant was built as big as it was, but an actual alloy, and those flaws were never experienced. So, we know it comes into the plant. It comes in, we pump it, that's what happens right now. The truck pulls up to that building every two days, pumps from the holding tank, and we shoot it someplace else. The EEP says, you can't do that anymore. So, rather than the five and a half million to redo the treatment, we've now got permission to go to the Title V system, the price has been reduced to two million. So, one big question, what are we going to save by not pumping? At this point, it's in the running budget. It has been for $44,000 a year. Just for pumping? Just for pumping. What about other support? Someone's there, right? We have a wastewater operations manager that visits the site every day. They would still do that on a Title V system. Okay. Yeah, so the operational... We may increase it. How often have you... It takes time to know how often the septic 10 has to be pumped. The distribution box is much like you have at your house. Just like, you know, whatever you have on steroids. It's a much larger system. A household... For three years in high school, we have to do it. Maybe a year or a year. Yeah, somebody has that answer. I'm not quite certain. Yeah. It's been getting tied up and saying, you know, say 100% of pumping, we'll pay 20 right a year in pumping services now or something. However, we get to see that. Yeah. I think that's an important one because there's a lot, right, where we don't have an operational offset of any kind of stuff. And this one's got bigger than the red box. Yeah. I'm sorry. Two million... I understand. Two million for the new septic. You're saying that two million includes whatever the cost of decommissioning the old... Yes. I get it. I think there'll be an answer on the... If you just recredit basically, you're gonna have to kind of get a number for that. If you just do the basics, appropriate that. Yeah, so I... I know about your agenda. At some point in time, you're going to... here from Recreation. So, Catherine Brenna has that information. She's the one that would be kind of leading that part of the project. So, I don't have really so much information about that baseball aspect. Aside from the two and the athletes. Okay. That I have. Sorry. Who's that one? Catherine Brenna is the Recreation Director. You can talk to them if we need to talk to the rec project. Yeah. No. We need really about this. So, if we need to compare it to somebody. Any question you want to send us beforehand? Yeah. We'll want to go. We'll want to go. Any other questions on the rec budget as well. One other question before we move off. But, you mentioned the building. The Brooklyn Board is still a functional building. Like the other future options. So, is that in any of that for the purpose of that building? Or is that future? No. Yeah. Yeah. That would be something that would be in the future. I don't think that's been decided yet. And, I was floated the idea that. I'm not sure how much you know about the HWA project. But, we're going to build a new treatment plant at Happy Hollow, which is on the other side of the high school. We are, to keep costs in control, we are not going to build any, like staffing amenities, vehicle storage amenities in that treatment facility. We're going to keep the vehicle, employee amenities, active and fall in the pot. We'll decommission the treatment plant portion of it. We'll keep them there. I was thinking, you know, can we have this building that's got one overhead door. It's got office space and has bathrooms. You know, is there, since we're not going to have employee amenities built in, would there be, you know, a use for the water department to use that building? Maybe, maybe there's, you know, the schools, you know, want to, they need more storage to bring in their mowers or their whatevers. Is there anything else that there are future jobs, you know? Yeah. On the building board, you know? Yeah. So, I think that's kind of, like, yet to be determined. Number five, we went through talking about available, you know, funds aside from chapter 90. That was, I was talking about, uh, the roadway, water-proofing plants. Uh, sorry. Can we really talk about number four? Oh, I'm sorry. I skipped four. Yeah, sorry. Skip four. So, in 2018, I'm going to talk about it a little bit, um, the EPA probably made what they call the MS-4 stormwater. And it's municipal storm systems, uh, I'm probably missing an S, but in essence what it is, it's, it's drainage. It's the town of stormwater. We operate under a 20-year permit. The EPA oversees that for the state of Massachusetts. There's only two states in the country, uh, that are, that actually have federal oversight. The rest of them have local, you know, state, um, just the way Massachusetts operates. Anyway, um, beginning in 2018, uh, we put together an annual budget to maintain compliance with that. It's a 20-year permit. The first five years was, um, investigation and planning. And then years six through 20, uh, you, uh, start to build things. You start to put things in the ground to improve, uh, to be able to collect stormwater better, to treat stormwater better, to, you know, better outfalls. There's a lot of, um, the system is outdated. It's in relatively poor condition. I'm asking for $250,000 for that. The reason I'm giving you this long-ended history is that in 2018, we put the value, uh, annually to $125,000. The decision at that point was that the select board actually have jurisdiction. It's not the board of public works. The select board have jurisdiction over the town of stormwater. The $125,000 was placed in their unclassified property. It was there for four or five years. Last year, um, it was decided, I don't have a strong background on why this was, but it was, um, removed from the unclassified, and recommended to put into our property. And that's where it was last year, and that's where I'm asking for it again this year. The last piece of that is, when it got to the PICOM, it was being said, you know, it's an operating cost, take it out of the capital budget. It was just, in the town manager's recommended capital budget. The PICOM said, no, take it out and put it back in the operating budget, and ultimately that's what happened. So, it's, with fiscal 26 operating budget, if you're looking at the class fund, you'll see the $125,000 that's in there. Okay, so it's... So, it's still, it's still in operating. So, it never, it never came up. Okay. You were, you were being directed, by the management director, if you know what you did? Yeah. When I asked him and he said, wait a minute, that piece of it is not for capital. That's, that's annual compliance and paperwork. Keep it working. Okay. And so, as I said, he got, FinCon pulled it out, the town manager's capital budget, and hopefully, if you got the backing out of it. So, I think, you can confirm that with Frank Kevney, that he's not planning to try to do that again in the fiscal 27 budget, but... So, if that's the case, we can take that $125,000 that I'm asking for, and just confirm what I mean. Yeah. One second, Carol. I'm going to give you a recommendation to see it. It, tell me that's why in the spreadsheet with the white and the blue column, that's why it's not in the white, because it came out. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. Carol, recognizing Ms. Martin. Yes. Yes. Carol Martin, Lake Roman, Ms. LePort. I'm looking at the warrant and number 6 in school, what, asking project? And... I'm sorry. Through the state grant, that's a different project. It's a different project. Yeah. So, there's... Including in this, in Tom's budget many put forth, right? There's, there's some water compliance, and there's some water system. Right. Storm water system is really capital, but storm water compliance, the argument is... It is unclassified. It's important. Okay. Great. Yeah. You just tried to find it wasn't accurate. Okay. You just weren't... You weren't at the... You just weren't informed of the last minute of change. I know we're able to pay invoices, so it's, you know... Someone, yes, someone's doing it. Yeah. Yeah. But, but... How much does he ask him for? 825k. 825k. 825k. Thank you. So, our system you're referencing, literally, it's town-wide. It represents, uh, grains, culverts, you know, concrete, I mean, real stuff that gets built. Correct. Versus the compliance, which is just, you have to build a report and send it off to federal government every year and let them know where you are in your process of being pulled. Yeah. Right. There's a, you know, the attention was focused on water systems and then waste water systems and then in 2018, you know, the focus then began on stormwater. People experienced flooding backups, water quality issues, river health, all those types of things. And that's really what that MS4 permit is, uh... Is that the permit before? It's, it's a 20-year permit. For what? Uh, 2018 for August of 2018. So, one of the things that is concerned, as Tom said, and the chair of the Secc Board is here, in 2018 when this first hit the radar screen and all the communities were basically informed, you gotta get up to snub on this stuff, and it's the right thing to do anyway, right? Um, it was the intention to appropriate some amount of money, but the focus was to make sure the work gets done over for a period of time, because unless you get an extension pad, things can happen to you if you're not compliant. And, you know, each time the FinCon would bring us up, appropriately, we would hear from the ECW side, we build the stuff, we help in preparation reports, but it's the Secc Board's purview. And so, the FinCon needs to work with the Secc Board, really bring us back into focus, as we're halfway along that continuum. And I'm not sure we're halfway along where we're supposed to be in this process. At the same time, we're obviously up against a tough budget for the next eight or nine years. So, that's got to be figured out. But we have to plan for it, too. Even if it's going to be, we can't do it for the next few years, but we've got to get it done by 2038, then you've got to build that into a longer wage plan. And they have a priority level that's higher than other stuff, because, again, I'm sure you'll be able to tell us what's the bad stuff that happens to you if you're not compliant. Yeah, that's what, you know, that's my talking about the 250,000 for actually, you know, hardscaping that we have to, you know, improvements that we have to do. That's what that's all about. We've become quite aware because you probably recognize that storms are more frequent, that duration is greater, that intensity is far greater. And we've got flooding now going on in town that we didn't have eight or ten percent of areas were fine. Now it's, you know, it's a real problem. And it's also part of, as you plan other projects that we've talked about in the past, right, concerted effort to make sure we were replacing water mains before we dug up, before we redid the road, not through doing the road, then digging up the water mains. Same with stormwater, right, some of the things that you want to do, you want to do those when you're already tearing things up. So to the extent we delay the planning and lay out the spending, we're potentially putting good money after bad, right, if we're not doing that in order. Excuse me, Madam Chair. Do either of you, or I am a 10 percenter, do I have a sense of what the entire total expense is going to be over the 20 years? For stormwater? It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money, but I have no idea. Did you say a lot? Oh, it's a lot of money. Millions of dollars? Yeah. And it's not in here. Right? It's not in any of it. It's not, we've got 500, right? We've got 250. Every other year. I ask for 250 every other year. Every other year. Have you been able to keep pace, you know, with the most severe situations? You know, so I think probably, you know, unless something catastrophic, or if we encounter something that's really complicated, you know, then I might have to bundle a couple of years or whatever. But I mean, I think it's just being able to get a high altitude handle on it. If you took 250 every other year, rejected that after 2038, I think that that, and then in 2038, it doesn't mean that, you know, okay, you're all set, you're done, you know. No, but it's, the real question is, is 250 every other year sufficient to get us to that, to the line we need to be at at 2038? It may then be like, you've got to keep spending, right, to maintain it. Yeah. But, that's the real question. What we don't want to find out is, we're 15 years into the 20 years, and we've still got another $5 million. Yeah, I think that's the answer. And that, the asset management study that people are, yeah, referred to. I assume that is intended to try to bring some focus. It is. It's trying to identify and give them a forecast where the trouble spots are. I, I just think it, this needs to kind of be, what does that do, that report? The asset management? Yeah. Yeah. I sent you a link to the, the, the, the onsite insight? No, no. Oh, no. Sorry. It's a grant funded report. Oh, okay. Yeah. Partially grant funded. Yeah, I think this is, I believe, but most of the recommendations, the tech that, where you're planning to come from, that report? It will, it will be focusing on, not only that, but we've got a, you know, a number of areas in town, that we're trying to get a better handle on stormwater challenges. Dudley Pond is, you know, one of those. There's a lot of things going on in the Dudley Pond area. So, um, that, that asset management will also be compiling inventory and what needs to be done there will currently exist. Is there anything else that we're planning to do as a talent to figure out any, any major products beyond that report? Uh, no, I mean, and it's all being done by, you know, by EDW. You've got all the information coming from us. So, thus far, it is that report and anything that we experienced or observed. So, when is that report? Sorry. I think it's got a one-year-ish, you know, expected. Yeah. I don't know exactly, but I think that's the sense I know. I think, to the extent, this, right now we're focused on fire plan. It's supposed to be a lot of time to do anything about that. The only next spring will be pushing that out in 10 to 15 years. So, you should anticipate, does that, stormwater falls within that window, a longer window. Right. But we really need to try to get our arms around what, what has to be done and what will be possible. The other issue that the advance director raised numerous times was that, in spite of putting in $250,000 every year, and $125,000 in the operating budget, he wasn't seen at all getting spent, you know, on a year-by-year basis. And it looked like you were sort of, you'd have some carryover the next year, the next year. So, all of that just, again, suggests that we're going to be running out of time. And it really needs to be a hard look at quantifying, you know, planning for the remaining 11, 12 years, whatever it is. And then, quantifying the dollars that are going to be needed. Because that's going to ultimately inform us. We're just seeing in 21, we still have $150,000 for a stormwater. Yeah. And that, so, yeah. That would be your role. Imagine both reports I have. And we've done a fair amount of work recently that whittles that down. Yeah, okay. But I think it made the point. It's a big, it's a big dollar, potential dollar, long-term project that is required by law. And maybe there are consequences to the town that it's not succeeded. Well, I think all of this, just from our own front-end standpoint, one of the things we kind of make sure we do is that we're not budgeting too far, aren't we? So, obviously, you have the construction cycle, you have the batch. But if we're spending funds in 21, and we don't have enough room to measure your budget, and we shouldn't be putting 250 in there maybe a year after. Maybe we change the cycle. We just basically can't get to it. And that's kind of what we're trying to also understand. Okay. And then the other thing, too, associated with this, is right now, you know, any of this expenditure comes out of the package. What many communities are doing, we have yet embarked on that, is create a stormwater utility, which is an enterprise fund. And so you're able to... And what? So, charging? Like charging, we can charge longer? Yep. As based on the pervious surface homeowners, and there's a fee. And one of the benefits, we talked about this in the panel, one of the benefits of doing it, the communities that have set them up, and there are many of them, you've captured operating costs that are currently in the operating budget, and you pulled over the enterprise fund, which then gets funded with fees. So, it has a secondary benefit on your operating budget. Yeah, I mean, it's... Your general operating budget. Yeah, you're able to then, you know... What's that? Yeah, so it brings, it brings focus from a P&L standpoint, to the overall stormwater as it's significant, ongoing opportunities in the town. Wellesley just set them up a couple years ago. There's a number of, you know, large communities of care communities, and the county manager is aware of it, and it's one of those items that should be on the list for... From a taxpayer perspective, it's still taxpayer pay. Yeah. Potentially changing the distribution, right? Potentially. Yeah. Depends if your impervious surface isn't directly correlated to... Yeah. You have different payers. You paved the driveway, or a gravel driveway, isn't it? We have tax exempts, for example, right now, in taxes in town, but we have large parking lots. Okay. So, it's a way to please, not just pick on them, but... No, but it's a way to distribute it based on the actual usage. That's more fair. Yeah, the actual usage. Got it. Okay. There's a great question on that, and you might not have the answers here, but right, federal oversight, you know, we're one or two cities that go down the path. Do we get, is that these are additional funding to support? Or... So, we've been able to benefit from a couple of grants, you know, associated with snow and water, but in essence, not really, it's, you know, unfunded mandate. Do we have to adhere to a higher standard because of that? Yes, but I guess, um, don't think that it's, it's not only two states in the country that have to do this, every state in the country has to do it. Because where do you need, and I think, I'm not sure if it's Ohio is the other one, most states, it's the state, you know, environmental agency that has primacy that actually governs for whatever reason, um, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection doesn't have primacy. It's the Environmental Protection Agency, the feds, and, and, um, I don't, I once knew and I've since forgotten why that actually occurred back in 2018, but, uh, so don't think it's only Massachusetts. Does that make more sense? Yeah. Yeah, just who's in charge? For us, it's the EPA, that's who we look forward to. For, you know, New Hampshire, it's the New Hampshire Department of Natural Resources, or whatever they call themselves. Yeah. Yeah.
Uh, yeah, you go. That's the biggest dollar. Spend some time. I didn't have it on that question, specific funding, but let's, yeah, let's move on on on, all right, so we talked about some water, we talked about, uh, road improvements, they're gonna get us back, what's left in road improvements. Um, on the high school subject fields, did we have the cost of renting alternative fields during construction included in the project? I don't think so. Okay, so we'll talk to Katherine on that. That would be a Katherine thing. We'll just double check. Yep. And then, I got a couple on here, just implications of, I see the streets, the super being pushed out, and the, um, dump truck, and the, and the loader being pulled in. It would be kind of a matter of triage. Yep. Is that, uh, you know, this, this capital budget was built, you know, a number of years ago, and we, you know, based upon the condition of things to be placed. And the ones that we had to move forward, uh, are critical, and I'm gonna, you know, we have time to, uh, talk about that. The sweeper itself, uh, we feel, it, it will, we'll be able to get, you know, for about the three years. So it's, it's, it's a really issue trying to swap out. It really is. Yep. And I know that you've done that in the past. I just wanna make sure you could give a little color on it. Yep. Um, and so the loader and the dump truck, we didn't anticipate that they were, like, something happened between when the plan was created last year and this year that changed the, the expediency with which they did. Yes. Yes. With the loader. So that's, you know, that's nice. And I'm telling you, it doesn't look nearly this nice. You had too much, you had too much, you had too much good light when you were taking pictures. Yeah. Photo shots. So this thing, this thing articulates in the center. Particularly, it needs an exchange here. Yeah. Those, that whole mechanism at the center of the machine has worn out. And that just, it's, to repair it, it's tremendously expensive. The cab has to come off. That cab is completely rusted. And then when you take the cab off, it impacts, you know, the back portion of it. So it's, and this is a workhorse of the department. So, we know we needed, we needed to do events. We needed to bring this forward. So that's why that is. And then the, um, H40. This one here. That's who, I think it's a 2012. No, 2012. That year is when the emission standards, um, caused a lot of engine mechanisms to change. Whereby, uh, they're monitored. There's a regeneration process of wreaks havoc on the engine and the transmission. It was one of the first years that that emission standard came out. This vehicle, uh, is subject to that. And it's just, it's deteriorated to the point where the engine and the transmission requires frequent repairs. It's down a lot. It's a neat piece of equipment. You know, there's no operation. You can see. A sand on the back. A solder on solder on the back. You can put it on the back. So that's why that needed to come forward. Okay. Not that a level of need, but do you track methods for downtime and aim a cop? Those are the things we're not seeing that would help say, this is what we're doing. Yeah. So, rudimentally we do. Um, we actually just demonstrated a fleet workload system today. We're making some advances. We've got a gorgeous facility. If you haven't been there, we'd be happy to come down and give you a tour. The facility for the fleet maintenance itself is gorgeous. It's state-of-the-art. Unfortunately, our reporting and tracking and, you know, parts of the story is not state-of-the-art. It's rudimentary at best. So, we'll be doing a far better job. We do, you know, paper-wise or whatever and some spreadsheets that, you know, the fleet and supervisor can, you know, work out. We do track that stuff, but it's, it's . I think it's probably an overestimating 10%. I mean, I know we don't want to be wildly off, but if you have anything that just, I mean, I think when we get into these numbers of $100,000, $200,000. You know, one or two follow-up lines of, you know, downtime is 5-10%, you know, major repair, estimated to be $75,000, and that's just, you know, just as long repair. Yeah. But that's the cost of, if we don't do this, that comes out of the operating expense. And for getting to figure out, I think it's, it would just be helpful to sell it. Yeah. What about, what do we sell it off? We trade. Closely it's trading. What does that cost go into? Does it go back to the? Go back to the cash. A lot of times. So when we, going into town meeting, we're required to advertise to post the vehicle specifications and the cost to the town clerk's office. In that, you're going to see, so if I'm asking the 275, that 275 includes a $35,000 rate. So the, so, okay, so you're looking for equipment's 305. Right. So, I just don't think it's, it's called out very well, so I think it would be, assuming, you know, trading or, I don't know. No, it's, so, I mean, it's like, it's usually an article, you think, that we already met out of this. I thought these were usually at a full cost, but when I traded, we went back to the, went back to the general fund. Oh, does that only happen if it's a separate sale? True, you do it as a part of the sale. Yeah. Yeah, that may be it. So when you're, maybe it's the ones that are in a separate article are the ones that didn't have to be traded. I just want to make sure we understand that. Yep. It's 91 of these. Right. I just want to make sure we understand what's on that list. Is that list everything that we replaced, or is that just the ones that we didn't do at the record? Like when you bought, when you trade a car, it becomes part of one of the, of the transaction versus the people want to sell it separately. Yeah. Right. It's, it's two of them kind of options. So, all right, we can follow up on that. I just think from like, from a request example, you know this, just that this team would begin to have a note of the assumption is it's a trade. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We have those questions that are all useless. Well, this goes to fixing the CFP right forward that we've got the relevant questions. Okay. Okay. I want to get to NWRA, but there was one last question I had, which is the Sherman Bridge 663K that was previously in the plan and now over there. And I know, I'm not looking to go into the lightning rod of Sherman Bridge. Yep. I just want to know why it was there and now isn't. So, it's a pretty good story. Um, when we derived that value and that's half the cost. It was Sunderbury, almost half the bridge and we don't know. So, that's their share as well. Um, when we derived this cost, it was prior to the Department of Transportation offering to pay for much of the affair. Um, so, partially due to that and partially due to the fact that we have the ability to use Chapter 90 and roadway appropriation for this work, I didn't feel the need to keep this on the list. So, the State's willing, was willing to put a certain amount towards it? Yeah. So, they're, um, they've been talking about, um, and put it into writing recently, that they are going to pay for all of the timber materials for the repair. Which, 98% of the size from a couple of dark bills are timber. And they're also going to use their state contract, their contract to perform the work. Okay. So, each of the towns... They're going to pay for it. They're going to pay for it. They're going to pay for it. So, they're going to have to make sure these are works there, but they're not paying for it. They're supplying wood and labor. Yeah. Yeah. It's a nuance, but... Yeah. Well, it makes, it makes a difference, though, because through their contractors, they don't, then we're not, there's no invoicing to us. They're, they're supplying it. And then, you're saying there's chapter 90 money, other road money that you make up whatever. The difference. The difference. Okay. We did the same thing on the 27th bridge, which is closer to the road. Um, they did all the debt. Okay. They paid the materials. We then, you know, invested and did the other. I just promised Carol I wouldn't venture into this, but I'm going to do it anyway. Um... It's a question of this. It's, no, it's, it's... Yeah. I know there's a lot of feelings about this project. If we don't go with the, the state's preferred plan of how to do that bridge. If that, unlike the state's out and the cost is back on the town. Like, if we want to take a different route than, than is currently proposed. So, I think there's been a... This is important to know Carol because it changes the capital. Yeah. So there's a misconception that NASDOT is requiring a particular thing. What we're repairing this bridge to are NASDOT standards. Yes. Yes. But how we do that. So, and there's very few product lines out there that actually meet those standards. We've got to accommodate timber. There's a couple or maybe only one product line that actually is made of wood that provides trash protect, protection meets those standards. That's what we're proposing. So it's not, the state isn't saying you have to use this. The state is saying it has to perform this way. This is the only thing that does it. This is what we're using. Right. So set another way. Regardless of who's paying for it, it has to be, it has to meet DOC standards. Right. And so that's what's the main material. That's not changing. I got it. I'm good. Okay. You said you needed to pay a part of it with chapter 90 money. Does that have to be appropriate? When the state gives the money to count it, does the account have to appropriate the expenditure of the budget? Oh, what we do for chapter 90 funding is we actually apply to use funds for a particular purpose. So we submit a project request. Joe, who said, does that. As a portal, the portal does that. We then review what we're going to do, review the pricing, and... Maybe they didn't state it. They didn't state it. Yeah. Mass Department of Transportation. Everyone just said it. So are they literally like the bridge between the border dealing with or they send money to the town? What they do is they, so every year we get allocated $500,000 a year. We've got $500,000 debt to use that $500,000. So if our portion of the bridge costs $100,000, we then submit a project application for $100,000 to put in a couple of ancillary guardrails to pave the approaches, those types of things. They review it. It beats the spirit of chapter 90. We're procuring it appropriately, all of that. They approve it. Then when we do the work, we get the invoices, we then charge that chapter 90 account for those funds. That's what that's all. I was going to ask. Carol, do you recall, as Sarah pointed out as to whether use of chapter 90 funds requires the town to appropriate money, or is it treated like a revolving account that's state-funded? Carol, I don't know. Carol, I'm a select book. I'm a select book. I think it's been a checkbook, I guess. Yeah. Why am I mindful of the projects? I remember it's from the Southern Bridge, and I have seen something recently, but often a select book has approved anything that's appropriate, right? But it'll say in there, and the funding includes so much from this, and so much from chapter 90, so we go to approve the project, but we don't necessarily go to the project. We don't necessarily go to approve the 90 appropriation, I think. I think I'd have to ask more about that. Yeah, and in essence, that board would be contracted, so the contract would list out the account number that is used. It would be a chapter 90 account number. The select board, anything around $100,000, the select board has to approve. So that really is, that's your shot at approving the use of those funds for that purpose. But there really isn't an appropriation. I'm just trying to think about like chapter 70 funding for the school budget. The schools use that state aid, right? To pay a bunch of cost in the operating budget for schools. But the town appropriates the entire... Excuse me, it's up to some days for special education. But still, the town appropriates the expenditure, right? Even though the funding is coming from the state, so I'm just not sure why. So when you talk about road improvements, you know, resurfacing. If we see a number in the plan for a million dollars, I think what you're saying is half a million dollars you're needing the town to appropriate and borrow, whatever the best you've been doing in the fleet. And you're saying, but there might be another half a million dollars of road improvements resurfacing. It's actually physically getting done when it's beginning with chapter 90 money. I just don't see that the town was ever appropriated. So maybe you could put down your list and ask Frank something. Maybe it's just different. Maybe that's just the way it gets done. It's kind of like, most likely Brian, more like a grant. You know, you've been authorized the funds, but then you have to say what you've done with the funds. Or are doing with the funds. I think it's a Brian question. But so, like, you look at that, you look at the grant for the asset management store margin. We had to appropriate the full amount of the study, but we identified that the town was expecting 60% of the state grant to be appropriated, but the town only ends up spending in that amount. Yeah, so chapter 90 doesn't have those restrictions required. It must just be different. I'm gonna ask you to move on then. Okay. You can ask that one in the brain. Alright, so, we didn't have a specific question on MWRA that you wanted to talk about. Yeah, certainly the two members. Yeah. So, I'm gonna ask you now, Tom, to kind of give us the current story on MWRA, where it is, what the cost, what, and I think one of our questions was around, it was in our general questions, is, and we're gonna be asking this on all the projects, right? We're gonna be looking for, for any project, when is it gonna be started? When is the expected completion date? And then, what is the spend plan on that, right? Because we're very concerned, based on history, we've authorized a lot of money that then, projects aren't being done, it's been authorized, right? We've already taxed the taxpayer for it, in theory, in many cases, and it's not getting spent. So, we wanna make sure we understand the life of the project, the need for dollars across the life of the project, right? Versus, like, we're gonna, if one thing we're appropriating, right? Which we can do all in one, or we can do in stages, but that appropriation isn't necessarily even the way it's gonna get spent. And so, I think we wanna understand that, on something as big as NWRA, we definitely wanna understand it, because, I mean, all of us are gonna say, well, it's tens of millions of dollars. We're not gonna spend tens of millions of dollars, right, right out of the gate. There's gonna be production on that. So, that's one general question that I think we very much care about for NWRA, but I think it would be helpful to talk about NWRA in general, right? What that, hopefully that's gonna look like. Yeah, so this, you know, I can hopefully take up an entire meeting talking about NWRA. I will start by saying that there is a project webpage, and it's got a lot of useful information. It's probably four years old, so the old stuff is at the bottom, the newer stuff is at the top. And it describes the last thing, one of the last things we put up was the 30% design documents. It describes, you know, where we're at with that. We've been giving some forums. We've got presentations on there. There's actually a video. We had to do an environmental justice presentation. Since part of the project is located in Framingham, we're actually gonna make a connection to the NWRA within the city of Framingham's limits. Because they're an environmental justice community. We had to go through an effort to meet, you know, those requirements. Therefore, you'll see a video of the bar. It was about two weeks ago. It was about an hour and a half. Very informative. So I would encourage anybody. Great resource. On that website, we update it periodically. It is a schedule of scan chart. It shows 47 different tasks. In essence, what it says is that we're gonna design this up until about this period in 26. We're then going to bid the project for the project. The project construction will start in spring of 27. It's a two year duration. So it is scheduled to be completed in spring and summer of 29. And that's when I say we get the on switch. So that's what we're working very hard to keep our current water system and equipment operating for another four years. So I have a hard question about effectively two projects, right? The NWRA connection and the Captain Holliwell treatment facility. It's all part of a global long-term solution. Is the timeline you just described identical for both of those projects? Or will the treatment plant come on sooner than the connection or the other way around? It'll be timed that they'll have it at the same time. Yeah. Exactly. And Tom would say two years ago, from 12 or 38 million. Yeah. Yeah. So that 38.6 million that's being advertised will be spent in that 20. That 24 month period. Yeah. The 38.6 million includes the state's funding request with very high contingency. Four million, five million? Yeah. There's two contingencies. We had to, you know, as design professionals, you always include a contingency about we're uninterested in situations and conditions when you're doing something of this magnitude. There's open room for things that you're not interested in. We've been out of value. Since we're getting funded through the state development fund program, which I'll talk about in a minute, they have a requirement to have an additional contingency amount of that. So that's where you get to the 38.6. So how much dollars are you going to do? I think it's in order of magnitude of several million dollars. The add-on. The add-on. The add-on. So in the current world, if all those current plan... It would be three million less. Yeah. We just don't, we don't spend it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And potentially, you don't spend part of the contingency that's already built into it. Already built into it. But I think the two contingencies combined actually have a value of several million dollars. So we're getting funded through the state-revolving fund program. And what that is, we've funded projects here in the past. We did the bottom area number 25 years ago that was funded through that. Generally speaking, it's a 2% long 20-year term, which is favorable. And we can't get that kind of interest rate through a conventional law. This one, there's an increased benefit because, and a lot of this is coming from the federal government, the funding for this. It's then, you know, managed through the state, through the Clean Water Trust. Is that because we're doing this work as a result of PFAS, that any mitigation work that we do is eligible for a 0% interest rate through the 20-year term. And I know there has been some interest. We actually have an SRF representative that we speak with regularly. There is an option to extend that to longer than 20 years. But then at that point, they, since their risk is larger, they do charge more than 0%. We haven't figured out, you know, we've got to get out of the mini-grid. But you do have an option to have a longer than 20 years. So is the, I guess, because of PFAS and the whole project PFAS? Yes. The annual debt service of $1.8 million after the first year. Is that based on spending $38.6 million or is that less the state contingencies? The $38.6 million is being used for all of those definitions. So the annual debt service on a 0% was roughly $1.8 million other than the first year in $1.8 million. Debt barring always has a bump up of an extra six months. Yeah, we have, we use the Abraham's Group, a fellow, the father was Mark, his son, Matt. They do enterprise fund, you know, finance modeling. That's their career. So we have done a significant amount of work with the Abraham's Group. And we've got this whole thing projected, modeled, mapped out. And, you know, that information is available through our meeting units and our notes and other works, the devs. When you put the shovel on the ground and you start paying people, is that the point with the spin? Loans, the money? Yeah, so we will. So the timeline is that in July, we submitted an application part of the SRF program. By all indications, the project needs all the storage of that fund. In January, they issue what they call an IUP, an Intended Use Plan. And that lists all the towns and the projects that are accepted. So we'll know in January that we're accepted. The timeline, then, is that at the following town meeting, in 4th, we need to appropriate the full amounts. We have a . Then, on June 30th, the state will then begin working with us towards actually crafting the loan of the Greens. And that has to be finalized by October 26th. That's when we literally execute the long documents. And then, we do not begin paying until construction is complete. So that would be, project would be complete for the summer of 29. And then, I think this, you know, the next, the payment would be, or the first payment would be due, like six months from that. The whole thing has been mapped out. So there is a bit of a delay on when we actually start paying that debt service that Brian was referring to. So that's important because that's different. Yeah. But there's a lot of other debt. Right? We normally have to start paying as soon as we borrow. Yeah. This was... Okay. That was important. And there's no interest cost on, let's say, start funding the project and shoveling the ground. I'm not sure that's the actual final loan. I think they provide interim financing at no cost, until you get the project done. And they give you your 20-year loan and that's the same as much from that point. Yeah. And there are, there are some administrative, you know, possible associations. It's not completely, you know, no formula. But it's novel. Would include the WTR-01 project? Is it that, is it one of those the same kind of loans? Yeah. It's a $3 billion water made project. So we have a million dollars that I'm asking for in 27. That is to do the Dudley Road water main replacement. And then we take a bit of a break to get the MWRA and then the next, and that's the two million. I think there's, there's money for design and then there's money for the two million or whatever. That is for the West Plain, the water main on West Plain. So, again, we talked about this earlier, so is there going to be re-paving zones on all of these projects? Or is it just separate? Are these lines after that? Yeah, so the, the, the paving associated, because there is, there's a transmission main that's going to be installed along the open aqueduct. That's off road. Yeah. But there is a fair amount of distribution pipe being installed on all of Connecticut paths. And that will be requiring, you know, paving after that. That's included in the line. In which project? The 38-6. Okay. But I guess the question on this, this $3 million project, is that also going through the state level? No, no. So we, we could apply for a standard SRF loan at 2%, but the only one we've done thus far is Route 20. And I think the interest rates, they came down, they were more favorable. So there are, there is a fair amount of administrative burden. You go for a state revolving fund loan. There are particular criteria with what you purchase, what it's made of. And, you know, so it's, it's kind of a balancing act as to whether or not it's favorable. Obviously it's 0% loan on, you know, the $40 million is a no-brainer. So those, that million and that 2 million that you see there in working with Brian, we could go for the standard 2% for 20 year term, or we may just deduce that it's just a conventional loan is the right way to go.
Two components that Brian was referring to is that we're making a connection to the NWRA at their locations within the city of Framingham and their shaft out. It's a, it's a spot where both the Metro West Tunnel and the Hultman Aqueduct actually cross. So strategically we're connecting there so that there's redundancies with either one of those tunnels is taken offline for maintenance or unanticipated failures. You have that redundancy. There'll be a transmission main that will be going from that location to right where Castle Road keeps opening at. There'll be a pump station there. And that is where the water from Happy Hollow and the NWRA will be blended at that location. The treatment plant will be built at Happy Hollow. The treatment plant, the reason that we are keeping Happy Hollow operational is because we can produce water far less expensive than we can purchase it from the NWRA. So the plan is, is that the primary source of water for the town will be Happy Hollow. The NWRA will be a supplemental source. We, we don't have the ability to provide enough water to the town at Happy Hollow. The water is strictly there during high demand periods. When that plant would have to be taken offline for scheduled maintenance, unscheduled situations, we need to have a backup. The reason that we're going to keep Happy Hollow functioning and deep conditioning the other three sources of water that we have, is that in 2029, this is some talk about delaying that until 2031, PFOS, which is currently regulated, you don't have to provide water that's lower or within 20 parts per trillion. And between 29 and 31, that will be lowered to four. All of our locations will violate that. Happy Hollow is intended to actually treat the water there for PFOS. Disinfective, auto-control, all the things that we do for the treatment process. There is not enough real estate that those other three locations, Campbell, Chingo, and Balkan plot, they're all living weapons, they're all surrounded by water for us to build treatment at those locations with PFOS would not be feasible. So it's for those reasons that we are decommissioning, planning to decommission those three locations. To maintain operations. So there will be a, you know, in essence of maybe a $14 to $16 million a year plan being built to have you. 14 to $16 million? Of the 30? Of the 38. Yeah. It's like 22 and, you know, 14 is the, or 14, 16. 22 and 16. So. And I think I saw this a while ago, but what, so what's the pay off? Right? I understand that the rates, we can produce the water cheaper than we can buy it, but we're spending $14 million to be able to do that. What's the, what's the break even point? So we've done a 25 year projection, and the grant is, you know, on the web page, it's worth looking at. Yeah. I want to say year 20, those lines cross. So, whatever the year that is, that's when it actually, the capital, the very high capital investment that we're making now, if you were not to have it, if it was just truly NWRA water, those costs, that's, that's what those lines are just saying. What's the life of the treatment facility? 25, 30 years, yeah. Yeah. So, our break even is 20 years out, and we only have five or 10 years. That's tough. Well. My, my concern, and I, I'm not going to change it rate, obviously, this is not our purview. But my concern is, it's PFAS today, right? And the lower, the level keeps going lower. What other things are we going to find out about that regulations come into play in the future that the facility we're spending 14 million dollars on can't take care of, and we have to rate and invest in that. It's a great, it's a great question. We don't get it for 20 years. Yeah. It's a great question, and it's a valid concern. So, the EPA puts out, every couple of years, it's called the UCMR-5. They've done it five times, so now we're at UCMR-5. UCMR is Unregulated Contaminate Monitoring Rule. And what they do is they project, what are the things, what are the things that we should be worrying about? Yeah. Like, dioxil, such and such. So, we know a number of things, is that Happy Hollow doesn't have those things. Of the things that, kind of like on the edge of the radar screen, that facility will have the ability to treat that. That granulated activated carbon, which is proposed for the site, will be able to treat for those things as well as anticipated. So, as best we can forecast, this building's going to do it. Like, I guess, to our purview, which is a long-term plan. Right? Yeah. Do we need to request a longer term, if the life is 25 years? Yeah, I think, I think, probably everyone, I think a forecast that you guys have done for you, goes out 30 or 40, I seem to recall, slotted in where, you know, fairly large sums of money having to be spent. So, you know. In and out years. Yeah. It does. I wish I had a, just financial considerations. I think at this point. Yeah. One, it's not so much Tom, Carol's here. The slide board really, the one that's addressed the finance. How do we pass the cost along to, it's still up in the air as to whether the 38.6 million was spent entirely through increased water rates, entirely through increased real estate taxes, or some combination of the two. And, from my perspective, the relevance to our charge, we have to understand how much available financing is there over the next five, 10, 15 years. And, if it all goes to water rates, it really has no impact on the tax side of it. My sense is it's moving towards some sort of hybrid or split approach. We made it to the finance committee, I think, with Pam Roman. There's two ways that our understanding is generally all the same. People, but not. One is, there's a special provision in the state law that gives the slack board a loan to split all that debt service on the tax rate, or some portion of it. And, they also have the right, in future years, to change their mind. And, push all or some of it back onto the water. It's a special state law. The alternative is, you go with a traditional debt exclusion. Basically, exclude that debt from Prop 2 and a half. The one that requires a ballot question. One of the issues that I have is that if you do it with debt exclusion on the ballot, again, that's going to impact the next 10, 15, 20 years of all the other projects that you have to consider and how to finance them. Versus, if you went with the special provision, the law, and something came along, this happened in the town of Arlington, where they shifted some of the debt for a water subject project on the tax rate, but then they had a new high school to be built, and they needed the debt capacity to take care of that, so they pushed the water debt back onto the floor. So, you know, with a straight ballot question, you lose that blessing. Now, we don't, the only people that control that are the slack board for that decision. It's impact on us is that we may find our hands tied in terms of prioritizing longer-term projects like a new elementary school, for example, because debt service is giving. I would argue, I understand that under debt exclusion, it's tax rate, or it's on taxpayers in town bearing the burden of that, regardless, and so that's one of the factors that has to be considered. It may not be our consideration, right, because it's ultimately a tax rate, but it's still, it's all burden, right, that we're asking the people, the residents of the town to pay, and so it comes, whichever of the semantics we pick, it still comes into play for me in terms of how we're laying this out, because everybody who lives here is going to have some burden, right, one way or the other, and with this in there, it's going to become very untenable to add other things, right, other projects of large size. So, I get what you're saying for him, and I appreciate it, but I think it doesn't have a huge, at least on my view on how we, how it works. So, this is the, I'm hearing that that's been years past now, if we want to wait 50 years, is there any current, federal, that I know, the problem is we don't have a, to a small degree we do, it's understood that there is department 3 that developed materials, products, that had PFAS, that had PFAS. So, it's those two companies, Wayland joined, in essence, a class action suit, and is prevailing. So, we've been receiving funds, damages, we've received a check in June, we're just... A part of the settlement? It's a part of the settlement. You know, so there's, and we're talking in the order of magnitude between the two settlements, 3 million dollars. It's something, of course. And, so right now, we discussed, Carol was sitting in, what works is, you know, what's the proper use of that? Should it? I don't know, right? So, yeah, so our submittals are in, yeah, our submittals are in. So, that's what, over the course, and they, you know, the larger payments come early in the process, and then it goes, it spins out like 5 or 10 years and you get a little bit of money, you know, so it's, it's not all over one, but in essence, just, you know, as a matter of discussion, it's several million dollars. Do you have a sense of, if the decommissioned, three decommissioned water sites are put on the market and sold, do you have any sense at all of what they might be worth? I don't have a sense of what they're worth. I think of the three of them, it's probably only Baldwin Pond that has really any true value. The other two of them are surrounded by water. You know, they would be protected. Baldwin Pond was, well, eight years ago, the town purchased the Dory property, right next to the, you know, Collins that. So, the two of those parcels combined, it's, it's pretty nice. So, they would make some value, I'm sorry, how much, how many acres? If I ballpark it, I'd say, I don't know, 12. Do I need to, do I need to express my opinion on that? Sell it! But the DPW, at the moment, is advocating for how the legal settlement and the potential sale proceeds are spent to halt point those decisions back to the select board? So, it's, it's, it's struggling with paying for capital as it was. And so, any, any funds that are related to the decommissioning of this and the PFAS issue itself should be directly attributed to the project. I call, that's the last word's call, I just, I'm a big nut. We continue to, to work into it. Thank you. This was extremely helpful. Excuse me, Madam Chair, may I? Yes, you may. Before we leave, Tom did say, I am also the liaison to the Board of Public Works and Mr. Holden has neglected to say something very important that he does. He issues to his board a quarterly report of the status of this capital reports and so on. I'm going to help you out here and suggest maybe you might want to send that to them as well. I know you give it to me. Yeah. I love it. A quarterly report on what? So it's a, for each, we have upwards of 22 to 26, what I call projects and significant initiatives. And we have a small write-up, you know, a paragraph on each one of them talks about the status, cost, completion date, and all of that. We put that out quarterly and I would be happy to, I would actually have provided it. And it gives you, you know, a lot of information about it. That would be helpful. Yeah. Thanks. I used to send it to Pam. Pam was the, I don't know, the news also. One quick thing to say, just real quick, check the line on the interest rates. I believe we just, you know, Mr. Washington. Was it 3% on the bond and 2.68 on the bands, right? Yeah. And that was before the current, most recent, um, reduction in the lease. That's why I'm sure. I have to go ahead and update it, so. Thank you. Thank you, Carol. Thank you, Tom. It's a pleasure. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Thank you. I will take a little to us on that. Yeah, it's a, it's a, the facility is 10 years old. We keep it in very good condition and it's a great work environment. We are fully appreciative of the effort that went in 10 years ago to fund this bill. Is it fair to say that the difference of opinion is when you're going to apply? That each of you will get back? No. Yes. Yeah, we will. Yes. So. Yes. We will, that I'm committed to getting back to each of the department heads to the extent that what they put forth is not where we land, which is inevitable that there will be things that have to move, right? Because we sort of, the, the process, Tom, we're going to meet with everybody. Um, and then we've got to prioritize across the town with what the available funds are. And we'll come back to you with, you know, questions and definitely, hey, this had to move. Or if there's, hey, we really need to move this. What are the consequences of moving it, um, to make sure we understand that. But making sure you get that, that communication, um, and know where we landed before it goes in the report to them. So that it cadences, it goes from us to Michael, the manager, and Brian Kedney. Then they make the recommendation to him, um, still, right, Brian? Yeah. So if you, then we did something that you disagreed with, I guess I have another opportunity to go lean on the town manager and say, hey, these people don't know what they're doing. I mean, I would like to disclose our report to the extent there was strong disagreement. I would like to be, um, transparent about that. Right? So I'm discrepent from the requester. From the requester. Right? If we, if we ultimately change something and, and there's, you know, disagreement on that, that's the right thing to change, I think we disclose that in our report. Yeah, but to the extent there's, we're going to disclose the exception, we're going to disclose the difference. Right? But then if there's ones, I can talk about it where I was like, cause I can think of, I can think of a project not that long ago that got removed by the town manager that we then ultimately, I think it was like the bridge on 27, right? That got taken out. It was in the next, it was in Tom's plan for the next year. It got removed. And then the state came knocking on our door and said, either you fix it. Right? Or we're shutting the road down. Right? So those sorts of things, it feels like we should have known. Right? And I think when we talked to Tom after he was like, well, I knew that was going to happen. We talked about what was going to happen. So I just want to make sure we're being transparent about where we land. And then town manager is going to do what they're going to do. It goes to FinCup and then the town, because you just needed another. Another layer. Another layer. Yeah. And there is also the Board of Public Works Tuesday night. I'll be presenting the same thing to them. They're going to have opinions. They're going to vote, you know, conditional upon a couple of things. Right. So there's a lot of input. Yeah. Understood. And you know, because you're a part of the working group on CAP, this committee being set up. Right? The intent of the committee in my mind very much is around trying to consolidate everybody's right, wants and needs. And looking beyond, certainly looking at what's available for funds and what it does to the taxpayer, but also looking across all the departments and trying to balance the needs across the departments as well as the resources available to do them. So it's not anything personal against anybody. Right? We're just trying to make sure that there's a lot of good thought and transparency in the community about why things get into the plan and why they don't get into the plan. And there's one thing that you just mentioned that you've said that some of your past meetings that's really important to me, and I just wanted to mention before I go, is that you talk about resources. It's not only financial resources, it's the staffing resources. Yep. So I make my request and I make a pitch for all these projects. I believe that I've got the staff and the ability to manage these. There are other groups out there that have, you know, great intentions, great ideas, initiatives that will be terrific for the town. But as they're advancing these projects, they're presuming that DPW has the ability to properly manage them. And that's not always the case. You know, so I know that's an important, that's an important piece. It's not just all our resources and staffing services. And I think you just pointed out a really important thing that gets missed a lot is the interconnectivity, right? Where a project proposed by a particular group takes more than one group, whether it's, whether it's rec builds a field and DPW is going to have to maintain it. Or it's, hey, every single department that requests a project still has to come through the town manager's office in order to get it contracted. Right? So there's all of those considerations. So we're very mindful of that. I know that's what's far on other department research. Yeah. I think we could talk about that pre-occurring time. Yeah. Somebody's expecting to be there. Yeah. Yeah. It's part of, it's part of the CIP formula, right? It's like, what other, what other departments need to be involved in the, in the execution of the project and the maintenance of the project. And I think that's, it's missing, right? It's missing. Do they know about it? Yeah. Yeah. One, you start with a video about it. Two, do they accept it? Yeah. Right? But it's, we run into the same thing at work, right? This is, that we have like a whole working group process. You can't do anything without the whole working group sling off on it. So, um, thank you Tom again. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Good to see you all. Is there any changes by chance that the board of Public Works proposes to what you've already submitted? Yeah. Can you just set them across? Sure. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Good night everybody. Good night. Okay. We're going to talk about the entire time in BpW. Um, so what I'm going to ask- It's both for a budget, so it'd be fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm not going to raise a big piece. But, what I'd like is, I'm going to put questions and send them just to me. Send them just to me. We were talking about the questions based on the document. Yes. Based on what you were given. Well, I have a point too late. The answer is yes. Yeah, but we don't even know them, right? So, like, okay. Some did a complete CIP form, some- Yep. Yeah. You might just- Yeah, okay. So, opening it up, there's- So, if it's- And this is all my- So, if it's like- Like, you have no documents- I can't ask questions because there are any documents- I sent an email to, I don't know if you saw, the school- Yeah. The folder didn't include the school request, so you- It included, yeah. You pasted it in a copy of the time. Assuming they had submitted, you may have just sent us- That's a, that's a zip file from- That's a zip file from- That's a zip file from- Yeah. Yeah. I saw it too, and I was like- Okay. So, we need a school request, and we need the facilities- We need the facilities request. That's the- The two big nuts, right? So, okay. So, the sooner we get the- I can send you my list of questions, or I can kind of rattle them off right now. Whatever. I would prefer that you send them to me, because what I found when I was typing up questions- Yeah. And then I went to the minutes and added yours, was that my handwriting was not that good, and there were a lot of questions where I was like, I don't know what that was. So, I prefer that you send them to me, and I consolidate them. Yep. To the extent it's like, hey, it's just missing, just say that. Right? You're like- Okay. I would ask you to do that. I also need to take a pause here. I'll take a break real quick, and I'll be back. But can- I would appreciate if you guys can start on talking about the report. And in particular, I can start with John. I really like the couple of docs you sent, because it was good framing around things we need. If you could start that discussion, I will be more back. Okay. Okay. Hello, everyone. Here's your office. That's the one. There's spots. Do you have those documents on your- Of course, I'm glad I was in a dying moment, but- Which means I'll have to throw it there. She emailed them. Is it TV on? Looking for a move. Which documents, what? Probably- There's two- Word docs? Two word docs. We have more time than such. I'll do two more. Here I think. Yeah. Was it comparable now, or- Probably. It was all fresh in my mind. That's the- Yeah, that was the- Yeah, that was the- I'm just speaking about those words. We're just speaking about those words. Arnold Carly, Van Millis, Kelly had sent us copies of their reports part of the last meeting. It looks like, John, that you were AI. You have located in the area of the communities that have produced reports or something. Oh, you did? You will. Let's buy a drink of paper. I see health. It's been a lot of time working. I did look at a bunch of other towns, and I think what was obvious is- I kept running into the exception of Arlington, and maybe needed it. But there's a lot of reports that are several years old, and then it's almost like- So, you know, as beautiful as Arlington is- So- We're essentially trying to- To was, you know, like I said, we don't- Because we don't have the staff, and that's- This is the assumption. Then said, okay, we'll start with these more basic ones and work your way that way. Yes. And charting. Um, but I agree. I was thinking something more or less- Well, I think if you look at some of those big robust reports, a good chunk of it was just breaking out into the individual capital. Um, at least if we're doing a summary statement. But I was thinking, I'd like to help people put their charters up front. Like, what do we intend to iterate while we're here? And the benefit we're providing? And then, do your summary? And the one thing that Arlington did have that I really liked- I mean, we can't switch it around- But is that- Kind of summary of- We're trading previous capital on it. So maybe there is a dollar amount- Or, you know, I think we're going to work by- I don't know if we'll be prepared to do that this year, but- Um- I think we have something in the Finance Committee report, in the warrant as it is, that starts with- I think the first thing, which is- We've got this many projects with this many dollars. What I'd like to- We might not be able to get this status in- Although it'd be good to status the big- Right? If there's big amounts that aren't spent, just to kind of give updates on those. But I do think- I'd love to be at a place- We might not be there this year- If you could break that- What's outstanding- By how many- Like, when's it going to be done? Right? So, it might not be every single project, but like- Might be the year's projects. So like, the FY16 projects. We'll have those done at the end of these. Right? Something like that. So it's a little more descriptive. Um, and I'd like to show- The trend. So- Cause I- I hope there's a positive trend happening on- Projects that were outstanding- Two years ago, last year, to this year. Yeah. Awesome. This one we did two years ago, I put that together- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Last year, it was sort of the last minute- Item that added- Come in. Provided- The first one- The first one- The oldest project. Yeah. I like- I like this one, personally. I like this better. Yeah. Um, so this was two years ago in the warrant. We'll just pass it around. It's the by-year, like by the year they were through. That's left outstanding. And then when do you do that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you do is for the- Whatever years you figure there's a big enough number, obviously- Right. Then you could describe- Right. We could- If there's like- To your point, Liz- You're looking and you're like, oh, there's a five million dollars left, right? Three years ago. What's- What's the bulk of that? Yeah. Right. 80-20 is all- Right. And let's- Right. And let's talk about the status on those- The narrative part. The narrative part of the report would be statusing the big pieces. And even, even if it's recent, like the Council on Agents in here, right? That was an FY23. Right. I would call that out, right? That's why there's 15 million because 12 million of it was the Council on Agents in here, right? Right. So I think that's- That's great. So that's two years ago, Table 8. Yeah. The ones that did FY23. We don't have access to this information yet. Which? Well, this is- I think that's- The narrative part of the report would be statusing the big pieces. And even if it's recent, like the Council on Agents in here, right? That was an FY23. Right. I would call that out, right? That's why there's 15 million because 12 million of it was the Council on Agents. So I think that's- That's great. So that's two years ago, Table 8. Yeah. The ones that did FY23. We don't have access to this information yet.
I mean, the finance would have to provide that. I mean- Well, this table I made up based on- A work report. A work report. A work report. You've already seen the detailed listing and the dollar balances that are left. That's why I just went through and sorted them in fiscal years. Right. The only concern I have is I feel like we have a point to the report. Yeah. But we have a more recent one. We have a more recent one, but as I pointed out, I'm still not sure that it's fully captured. See, that's kind of my concern, though. Like, we want to publish something that we don't have to worry about. Yeah. Well, we're going to put- We're going to have to caveat. Yeah. Probably just warranted. Yeah. Right. Just based on information provided. Right. We are not the source of the information. We're not going to have direct access. Okay. So that's, I guess, maybe the more question. We're not expected to be the source of that. No. This would be an example where, you know, I might read my hand and say, okay, if that's something that we thought was important to be in a report, you know, I would sort of go get what I consider to be up-to-date after data, and then I have this spreadsheet already exists, and I just populate it, and then we look at it, and then decide, okay, you know, at least- You know, if you've been doing this for a period of time, and you're like, oh yeah, I was going right here, I lived in Boston, I lived in Boston, I actually built a report five years ago. Versus, you know, like, if you weren't here, I wouldn't have worried about that. No, I understand that. Yeah. That's not the makeup of the committee. Yeah. Part of this is a transition, and one of the things that I've found is private business. You have five years just to do it yourself. You know, if you wait and rely on staff, we've got 50 other things that are a little more priority, you may not ultimately get what you want in a report. So, but to your point, I think part of this first year cycle is to get the two of you and Brad kind of comfortable enough as to what information we want in a report, and then we play a lead time to figure out, okay, who's going to take responsibility. It's so awesome, in each of these exhibits, whatever we're creating, you're going to get information from somebody, Kelsey, Brian, Kevin, like mixture, documenting, like, this came from, right, and the finance director and the assistant town manager, so that there's a breadcrumb trail, right, for how to get it in the future. But you're absolutely right, there's a lot of, like, you know where to go get it. So, don't, as much that way, you're probably going to try and work at a bread table. But also having said that, the other good thing about having that exposed to some of this is that you may look at it and say, well, I think we'd be better served if we look at it this way, which is perfectly fine. And typically these things are put together under the gun, and the reports got to get done, and so you just kind of square them going through. Well, to the point that this was in the warrant two years ago, who, I mean, did you put it in the warrant two years ago? Well, he was on FinCom, and he suggested that last year there was a different... Yeah, it was the same discussion, we should have something in the FinCom's report addressing prior projects. I was just, I was getting back to him, why wasn't it in the C1? Well, there was a slimmed down version because the person writing the report, the chair of FinCom, was, he was writing the report, so he took a different approach. Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. One of the other members who actually wrote the two year prior that we were just looking at said to him at the end of our, geez, it'd be kind of nice to disclose where we are not going through projects, so he got sort of a couple of numbers, and we all looked at it and said, well, that's zero in formative, so we've got to at least do a comparison from a year ago to now, but there wasn't enough time for me to go back and... Yeah, okay. But that's the point where I was putting it in this report, because it is standard. Well, yes, so there's two things, right? So our report is going to be followed, and to the extent FinCom, or so if somebody wants to put it in the warrant, they can lift it and put it in the warrant, and so you stand with a better chance, if we're doing a standard report every year that's pretty consistent, they're going to be able to copy and paste, and it has another opportunity to see daylight rate with the public. I think the way it's in there is the place to start. The criteria over what are we going to talk about right out of that, and what do you need to argue that it's where there are sizable balances you want to talk about. So, again, unless someone else wants to volunteer to do it, if you'd like, I can start working on it, so that we're not rushing around at the end of that hour. So the only thing in that report that I tell sense, but what it doesn't tell you... Completely. Yeah, no, so I agree with you completely. I think this is the table for this year, but I think that that's where it's getting up with the trend, and I think there's a genesis there of if we can get to a place where we know actual status, not dollar status, of the projects. So, when is your expected completion date? Then we can do a different chart, which is, here's what's outstanding, and the way it's supposed to... You've got your year was approved for it on the left, and across the right is, when do I expect to run that down? Yeah. Right? Then did you run it down? And you can report on, like, we expected to run down 5 million, we only ran down 2, right? Something along those lines of, we're not keeping up, and it'd be narrative, but how are you keeping up with your plan? I think it's awesome to just drive a category of, okay, I won't hold this open to fix up it. It'll just drive it all over. Well, I think it's a good point, John, because I think the way we do priorities here, timely completion of your projects is a factor in the scoring of whether or not I'm right? Yeah, change your priority drops. My vision, ideal vision for the world, right, is that you don't get it done, you don't get it appropriated. Or if there's a problem to be solved here, can we solve a problem before we appropriate? And if we're imagining the report, so after some niceties about purpose, mission of this group, etc. We're reviewing kind of appropriations and projects. So, I mean, at that place... So this is what I put, we pulled together, we're just saying, yes, you want to do this in your letter, no, not your plan. Yeah. Yeah. So executive summary, yes, the niceties for the program. Yeah. Well, I think we have a policy that says... Yeah. Yeah, I think, I don't know that we've decided, you mean on like, how we're going to prioritize? I mean, maybe we didn't want an email, just the actual... So it's in, it's in the policy that it's approved. So I do think there's, there's the charter charge, right, or charge, right, but there's also, so we have a bylaw that tells us what we're supposed to do, right, broadly. There's policy approved by the town that we're supposed to, right, that we should be following. I think those need to be summarized. Yeah. And then to the extent, and in the policy, I'll give an example, in the policy, it talks about criteria for evaluating projects. Yeah. Right. To the extent we come up with a quantitative way to measure those criteria, I think we have to speak to... Yeah. We looked at the criteria and policy, we scored the projects, this is how we did it. I don't know the answer to that yet, I don't think we've gotten that far. Yeah. But I think you have to describe how you're leading the policy. Yeah. I sent you, Millis, I sent you one of their packages, you might now circulate that to other people. I will. I see them when I first open, or I see them on my phone, and when I get in, my computer, they're gone. Again, this may be an issue, came out in the face, if the town defaults sending emails is by conversation, and so if you've booked an email and the number one comes by, it buries that email. It's there. No, but I changed that setting. I took your instructions. Yeah. Changed, so I'll look again, but I changed the setting and I was still getting it that way. So, um, that was... I don't remember that email being this difficult since coming to somebody. That's the only thing I can think of. Yeah. I do send them to my personal email. If you recall, I haven't seen them. No, I had several where I've seen an email. I started to read, you know, that abstracted feedback, it would come. Um, and they're not my leaders. So, back to this list, um, one and two and three are sort of this generalized stuff. I don't think any of these address ongoing projects. The question is, would you see that as kind of 3.5? Yeah. I see it as the next section. So, after you get through the niceties and explaining what we do, it's the first thing after that. Right? So, first, let's talk about where we are. Right? What we've got outstanding. Yeah. Yeah. And then we move to. Maybe in the end of the current year. Yeah. And I debate whether, I guess, you can do current, you know, first year projects and then show the five year plan probably is the right way to do it. Sometimes, I think it's helpful to see the five year, like to see the full five years and then get the detail on the first year. But, that's a neat flip-flop that matters right now. Um. Some big details. For credit for the year. Yeah. Just flip your problems. Yeah. So, this is where I think, and I don't want it to be reproducible. We need this. We'll still be in four minutes, but. Yeah. And four, I don't know, because you said maybe we should just use it. Yeah. Because four is what's in the warrant, which I've modified over time. It is reproducible, but the issue with it right now is it used to rely on the CIP forms. And as the CIP forms get less and less compliance, it becomes more. It's reproducible because I sat there and, you know, wrote out what we had learned in all our meetings. Um. But it's some version of that. It might be like, hey, we're not going to do it this way, but. Um. Do you have one? I'm just going to flip to one of those. That's right. You look at some of the towns, and they have three pages. Yes. Um. So, I think it's still a decent amount of information. Um. Probably more than the most. Yeah. For me, and I have no problems, but the first three nice of these are really not intended for the town manager. No, no. They're not intended for the town manager. No, no. They're not intended for the town manager. It's really because, you know, we all want to work to stand up and be publicly available. Yes. Or, and it's for whoever comes after us to say, okay, this is our assumptions. Yeah. So, what's in the warrant today is, right, a listing of the current year projects, where they're going to be funded, and the amount, and then it starts into a description, which the format is like, amount, department, what is it, who's advocating for it. The description and justification is really the narrative of why they need it. We need this loader pull forward because we're, you know, it's not working, and it's costing us $75,000 to repair, that sort of stuff. Um. And then, it's supposed to be relationship to the general plan, which is really the category it falls in. It's supposed to be the category it falls in. These are not great in terms of, I think we need to look at other towns, because it's like, it is helpful to know, like, I'm replacing equipment, I'm building a new facility, that sort of thing. But the history one is the one, the history, the source of funds in the five-year capital plan, I think, are the ones I've tried to improve over time. Um, because we've had a tendency to be like, oh yeah, it was in the plan. Well, it was, but it was in the plan. So this was trying to get at, what was it in the plan for? How many other thumpings have you already had for the same project? Right? Some more detail around, um, the project, and where is it? Yeah. What plan version was it in? Right. Um. So, I still think what's here is valuable, but I am biased because I modified what used to be in here. So, it may not be in this version, it may not be exactly this information, but I think there's some of this needs to be in that display of the first year plan. Yeah. I mean, I would totally agree. Just, it's someone having to vote on it, right, or a committee. It's, what does someone really want to know? Was this plan in the, that it's been the plan for three years a sinkhole? Yeah. What I think is missing in here, and maybe sometimes we get it at the narrative, it's, okay, the plan for fiscal 26 is that we're going to spend 12.6 million dollars. What did we plan for fiscal 26 a year ago? Got it. Right. And, and we might talk about it in the narrative, but I do think a little bit back to your point on status, a little bit more of like, in total, what changed? Yeah, we can talk about it specifically on each project, but I think a quantitative how did this change matters. Yeah, I gave you an example. In this one, the five and a half point for the high school wastewater was in the five year plan, fiscal 26. It got pulled out because they were working on attorneys. So that was something that got addressed in one sentence, which was in the plan. And again, there should be a dollar threshold. In my mind, the big items. Yeah, we might be able to start. How do I say? I think that point, we want to break out some of the, include more, like, oh yeah, Tommy's in a trucker, but for, and this is where, again, there's a certain dollar amount that we hit. Okay, tell me why I need $5 million to overplay space. Okay, it's a two year, you know, spend over the 389. I think that's where I care more about some of the big deal movers than having a compromise. You accept for, at the end of the day, right, the town votes on every single one. They vote on every single one. So they, there's going to need to be some, and right now how we do that is they vote on the total list of projects for the current year as one, plus anything that was done as a separate exclusion. So like in the very, it'll get done as a debt exclusion. That'll be a separate article. Um, so it depends how much, depends how much we're trying to not only inform the public, but create what's going to ultimately end up in the warrant such that a manager, town finance director, and FinCom have to take what's in our report and then add more, right? Add more detail to it. In my, I would hope there's not a lot of that that needs to be done unless they're changing what we write. Yeah. And that's, and this is just one year, so. Yeah. We don't, we don't give this level of detail on the rest of it. Yeah. But you said, except we're looking at all the other, but as we put this out, next year. Yeah. So the, just this first year. We can also decide. Let's, hey, I'm, I'm just doing the big picture here and pull out some narrative points and FinCom, you gotta write the warrant. You gotta write the protocol. Yeah. I know, I know there are kind of moments in anticipating. That we'll do it all. That they'll capture, put together. Right. Yeah. Well, I just, like, like, with my guests. Like, you have the same reoccurring cost. But what might be nice to know whether you're spending your full budget or you're having But that's, that's where. Super important. Yeah. But that's, that's a different report. There, Tom didn't give it to us, but there used to be a road exhibit that didn't, I don't think it went in the warrant. But I don't know, I think we actually write it. Yeah, we write it. Yeah, we put in the warrant. Which roads he's gonna, right, which roads he's gonna work on. It's in his request. Yeah. And people are, and if you don't put it in there, it becomes, it's a, it becomes a follow-up action that somebody comes to report. So, I think for purposes of our report, the bare minimum is we're laying out the totals across the five years. We're giving narrative description of why certain big projects are in the plan. Like, why we prioritize some things over others, why the big ones are there, what they consist of. So, I, I don't think it has to be as detailed as this, but I do think. Well, to the point about the high, medium, and low. Maybe that's a good threshold. Like, we'll look, we'll give details on the high. And things that we have identified as being low priority. Maybe it's, it blocks into the low, maybe we're just doing, or minimally. Yeah. Once I did. Yeah. Can you try? Well, or maybe it's, maybe we group things. And so it's like, alright, you know. These are all, this is all the equipment that's reached your faithful life and needs to be replaced. Yeah. It's not actually a category, right? Yeah. Something closer to this level of detail, again, that's something that. How did you do that last time? That, that, this gets run off. As far as you were ever doing a bad thing. This gets run off. I wasn't on the compound, but I did it. This runs on the Excel workbook. Unfortunately, it's not a CD. No, actually, this one's. I mean, it's mechanized. It's back to your point about the information we're getting. You know, garbage in, garbage out. And so, some of this probably requires sort of editing. Well, my concern is, is that we don't have a share of points. I'm like, we can't get. This is a little exotic here until it goes and lives on someone else's computer. And this is where, again, I feel like, if somebody was like, well, this was the report last time. Let's say, you move away. You can't get a hold of you when this report is just gone. You know. The goal. My goal would be the framework and work. But then that becomes both using to fill in or vice versa. We get the easy CIP software demo, which I had requested to ask you about doing. That there's a, okay, these are the fields that are easy CIP. They spit out into an Excel file that creates the report. That's the world I want to live in. We're not. They're close to that. Yeah. So, but I hear you Liz. I hear you on, because Brian and I both live this, right? Well, and again, I was just, as I was going through the different towns, and I was seeing, like, really robust reports. And, like, community spending. So, this is where I'm like, hey, how is it, you know, informative, but, again, because I think, just listening to you guys talking to the look of a detail, I probably don't like that. So, just to, you know, I, you know. Well, Brian's an accountant. I love him, actually, so. I, I. Yeah. I think, again, we just have to differentiate between what do we need to do in the next three weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Versus picking this discussion up in the spring and saying, okay, now let's really focus on how we mechanize this, standardize it. Yeah. To your point, so that other, they may, other committees may want to make changes or approaches, whatever that's. Yeah. That's fine. But, yeah, you don't want to, you don't want to leave in the lurch. And, again, the thing was, basically, from six months, yeah, it was probably six months, we said, gee, we know we're going to get somebody on the committee. To walk through this. To figure it out and get it to the point. And I said, geez, if we have this information in December, we were supposed to, and the report's due in March, get these reports done in December, not wait till March. That's, so, you know, for this year in the next three weeks, you know, I'm not even sure we're going to be able to accomplish all this detail just based on the inputs I've seen so far. I don't, I don't think we are, but if, but I'll say this, if I'm doing anything, I'm reluctant to create new. Yeah. Right. Because I already have, because I have stuff I can work with. Yeah. And if we have to cut down, cut down. But. Yeah, no, your, your, your spreadsheet can produce it. My point is, are we going to have in the next three weeks have the. Probably not. It's a visual level of detail. And that's where maybe we default to say, we'll do our best we can. Yeah. I think it might be, it might be instead of this chart, it's just the five year chart that shows that there's a couple of five year charts, right? There's the ones that show by department. There's one that shows by. Yeah. I still think we need it. Maybe it's an exhibit, but I think, I think it's still would be helpful having detailed listing of every project that makes up the summary by department and stick that as an attachment. Yeah. Well, even when I was first just trying to get into this stuff, I thought it'd be very helpful to know, okay, who are the big hitters about EPW? No, it's significantly larger than everyone else. And I think if you're just trying to wrap and stack into your mind, okay, this is where I need to spend our, you know, my focus. I think that's where. Now, should they be there? Now that's another question. Maybe that's research. Like, but when I hear these spreadsheets just go on, what are you going to do? I mean, it can't be. I want to set up the next group that's going to go through here. Yeah. But I think Brian's point's important and I want to move on from here is we've got a job to do in a short timeframe. I think we've got to work with what, what we already have set up. And then we can have the discussion about like, okay, how do we make this sustainable for the future? We're going to make it sustainable in the next. So, to that point about updating the chart, you have. Well, I have the, yeah, I have two spreadsheets. One is the big one that I've sent you guys that I will populate with everything that they've given us. And then we have to have the discussion of like, is it, are we keeping this or are we modifying it? Which I think I've already heard some modifications tonight that need to happen. The second one is the one that does specifically these pages, which is the F would be FY27. That, I don't think we have enough detail. I mean, we'll probably be able to do this part, but we wouldn't be able to do the, the write-ups because we don't have a lot of them. I'm not as concerned about that for this report. It'll have to get done before the warrant gets done. But for this report, I don't, I don't think it has to. Yeah, but the dollars at a time is probably the most important piece for the process. Yeah. Right, right now it's, does it, does it fit, right? It's that when you look across the horizon, I've got departments and funding sources, and I've got years. Where is it, where is it going to slot? Where does it fit? And that gets back to Brian Keveney's capital budget Excel workbook, which he's maintained historically. That was the first one. Which takes all the data that we've gotten so far. The ones we don't have yet. He, in the past, has input requested. And he just basically takes, he's had other departments were resubmitting Excel workbooks. There it'll be cut and paste. Spreadsheet. And then he has made his sort of cut as where things go. And that's based on the town's financial ability to deal with it. And then eventually the town manager would look at that. I think we have requested that at minimum he do that again. I haven't requested that I haven't done. So we need to buy that because we really need that and weren't pulling the same data. It's not that hard because I have to do it anyway. What's requested? The first thing I do then is say, okay, what if we just give what's requested? Um, but because this year they actually filled out against, in Bryan's spreadsheet and adopt that, we can actually, you can actually see where the differences are from plan. Whereas last, in previous years, what they did was, they took their, uh, you know, the one for Bryan where it's got the blue column and the white column. Um, or maybe it's from the departments. That was a DPW. Is that just DPW? Is that the other departments? Yeah. Although I will say the other departments didn't have the, didn't have the five-year plan. Yeah, but Bryan said, yeah. And some of them, some of them, like the police department, had them manipulated. This is the police department. The five-year plan. Which doesn't tie into what they've had. Yeah. The problem is, for example, that first line item, the narrative that he sent said, I, I moved that from one year to the next, but he left it in two years. So you have to be careful that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why. It's a scrubbing number. Yeah. So the first thing I do when I put it in, that's what I'm doing. I'm scrubbing what they said versus what we actually approved versus what Bryan's saying they can have. If Bryan doesn't tell me what they can have, I still think we can probably get there relatively quickly. Yeah. But, so that'll be the task I take away, right, for this, probably this weekend. Is to take everything we've gotten and summarize it and produce, not the tables. Yeah. You're kind of buried. I mean, I, I did that for myself last year. I took, I like the con holders approach. Right today. And I, I built it out. Yeah. So as a ping con member, and then I needed to be a ping con member, someone thought it was helpful. But a lot of, each line item is say, hey, was it in the last year? Yep. What are they asking for this year? What did the town manager recommend? And then I had to offer the ping con. And so, then I had to track it. So I have that spreadsheet already populated to circulate that to you. You can. I'm still going to have to fill this out because I want some of the tables that are, that are, it's going to produce. Yeah. And then this kind of, I understand. Yeah. All three of you work, right? Yeah. As of, as of 7.30 this morning. Why don't I do this? Why don't I send you what I just described? Yeah. Why don't you do that? You can, you can look at it and say, hey, I already have this and what I do. Yeah. Geez, I can just take your document. I'll import it in the work that does this. And then just tie a bunch of cells together. Yep. And then it's just a question of, do we have the inputs? And then we got to scrub them. Yeah. So. Scrub them in a sense, again, are there inaccuracies in narratives versus the tables? And then we have a, some, then we have all in one place and we have to start going through it. And I was happy to hear, for example, on the transfer station garage, there's no pushback from Tom about the concept. Well, yeah, I know it was in the fiscal 27 in my request, but I do think it should be pushed out until the study says, well, that's great. Because that's kind of where I would have been myself.
But those that we, we have to literally. Yeah. So let's, let's, I want to stay in the paper. Yeah. So I think there's, so far there's, the niceties, status of the new, how we break that up and how many charts we do, right. We're going to, I think it's going to evolve a little bit from here as we go through. So I don't want to spend too much time on it right now until we've got it in front of us. So action wise, you'll send me your file. I'll take a look at that along with what I have and get you guys something back out. So that next week, I need to talk about two things I want to get based on that. Get the other facilities and school are the two biggest dollar amount. I was going to try and get facilities and I'm like, I don't have facilities to ask questions about. Or schools. Or schools. Yes. Which may be getting coordinated with facilities. Yeah. And so that's a lot of times, a lot of the schools items are actually facilities have to manage. So that may be why. I'm so excited because I saw the folder. Um, all right. So. And would you like me, collectively would you like me to take up the status of past projects so we can get it down to that table? Uh, yeah, you can. I, I already made that request to, to Michael. Up at the table, so it's available and ready. He gets you up and scrubbed. Just again, if they're simply pulling from units, there may be some depth. Well, I think that's making, yeah, that's a key with making sure that the, so let's, let's pause there. You could take up a whack at writing niceties. Yeah. Using the various documents that we've been given. I actually think that would be better than if I tried to do it. Yeah. Because I could, I would like it to be. Yeah. No. Well, this is where we talked about, it can't all press. Yep. Okay. And I don't miss the facts here. Sign up for the committee. You get to write, you know, I, I just, I, like. No, you're, I, I won't fight you for a second. All right. I'll take that. If you can just talk to chat. You can write my report. Well, I think you write it and then, or you write it. I love running. Yeah. It's good to make it more concise. Yeah. I need that. Um, so questions. My actions are, start with you. Your actions are to send me your spreadsheet. Right. And you're going to write the, get going on that. Yeah. And you'll double check with the manager as to what you can expect. Yeah. Take a look at your spreadsheet and also put mine, you know, see what I need from mine and see if I can generate a first cut based on what we have and also follow off on where the missing items are and get folks scheduled, which is going to depend on what we save for meetings. Liz, you're going to take a stab at the charter, charge, niceties sections. And send you questions. And send you questions. And send questions. And still on our radar screen, enterprise fund capital and CPA, CPA is my first. I'm going to take a stab at the first cut based on what we have. And also follow off on where the missing items are and get folks scheduled, which is going to depend on what we save for meetings. Liz, you're going to take a stab at the charter, charge, niceties sections. And send you questions. And send you questions. And send questions. And still on our radar screen, enterprise fund capital and CPA, CPA or other capital projects. Enterprise funds, if their capital budgets tend to be on the right side as well. So I'm not sure we're going to be able to look at it. And still on our radar screen, Enterprise Fund Capital and CPA will have their capital projects. Enterprise Funds, their capital budgets tend to be on the right side as well, so I'm not sure we're going to be available in the next few weeks on those. You could ask, try to get a definitive answer from the finance directors who are getting this information and it's populated. Ultimately, we still have to deal with the financial ability. We actually have to review everything, which a piece of what we need there is, what is my concern? The issue I talked about tonight was the wastewater facility versus the field and debt exclusion questions and the NWA project and how does it get the taxpayer excluded debt? And some of those questions aren't going to be answered in the next two, three weeks. All right, can we move on to the minutes of October 30th? Is there any discussion that you have on that? Seeing none, can I get a motion to approve? Second, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Minutes are approved. So I don't have anything unanticipated within 48 hours of the meeting. I need to talk about schedule, so I know it was a bit of a full responses. Liz, you're not able to join next week. Yeah, but then I just signed up. There's no reason for me. That's okay. If you're traveling, can you join hybrid? Well, that's what I say. Where's the scenario? Other than the Thursday, we can do hybrids, right? Yeah, and I would actually like to try to do Monday to Wednesday hybrid because that way, to the extent, we're scheduling departments, and later they can come in hybrid versus virtual. So you can do an all-zoom, but okay, so an all-zoom you can do even if all of the hybrids are used? Yeah, the person that typically does the set up Rafi, he'll get a hybrid meeting going, depending on scheduling, but he'll also get a Zoom meeting up and running. One of the members may have to... Yeah, I didn't know that. If I had known that, I would have... Yeah, I would even... I generally would be happy to be... Well, I'll try to get hybrid, too, if I can, but if I can't... So, do Monday or Wednesday... Can you guys just leave Monday, Wednesday open for now? I also need to check... Is that okay with your name? Yeah, I'm fine. Monday's going to be a pretty busy night. But if Monday's... It might have to be a few minutes. And I also lose... They have slot boards. Just changes... All right, so let's leave Monday, Wednesday. Both nights or one of these? If you can just hold them for now until I get an answer. Okay. Five o'clock start? I try to leave at five, but I... We can do hybrid that month. Six or seven? Uh... I'll leave it for five in case we need in person, but... Okay. Um... I'm gonna get back to you. I was like, I sent the agenda in for this meeting. I accidentally didn't update my address. When I sent it to the town clerk, I couldn't matter what day it is. I didn't update the day from the previous time I had done it. And she's like, you're too late because of the holiday. Right? You have to get it in earlier if you wanted to on Wednesday. I'm like, oh, no, no. It's not a Wednesday meeting. It's a Thursday meeting. I'm good. I'm a panic, girl. Okay. Good. Thank you. All in favor? All in favor?