March 4, 2026 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript

March 4, 2026 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee

Autoscroll:

All right, it is 6.02, and I'm calling to order the meeting of the Capital Improvement Planning Committee. It's March 4th, and this is a hybrid meeting, so we are on Zoom and in person at the Select Board meeting room. We do not have, Robbie, just double check for me, no one's on, no members are on Zoom, so we are all in the room. As long as that stays the case, we don't need to do roll call votes. So, we have Brian, John, Kelly, and Brad are all here in the room, and let me see the O'Mell. This meeting may be recorded, and if recorded, will be made available to the public on WICAM as soon as possible. After the meeting, pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law. You may participate remotely via the meeting link that can be found on the town's website or join us in the Select Board meeting room at the town building. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so at the meeting location. So, that public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. Okay. And then we're going to review the agenda. So, 6 o'clock, call the order, review the agenda for the public and announcements. 6.05, public comment, members' response. 6.10, review and discuss differences between the town manager and CIPC's respective capital improvement plan recommendations for FY27 through FY31. May only talk about FY27 because that's what I was able to prepare. 7.00 p.m., review articles submitted for annual town meeting to assess impact on capital plan. If any, I don't have anything new on that tonight, so likely we'll skip it. 7.15, debrief on the CIPC report process and compile suggestions for future reports. We've done this a couple times already, but we've now had a little bit of space. I'd like to double back and give it a more thoughtful conversation. 7.30, discuss next steps to advance future CIPC report process improvements, including but not limited to those outlined in our report as amended on February 17th. 7.45, review and vote to approve minutes of February 10th.
7.55, topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours prior to posting, if any, and setting the time of the next meeting, 8 p.m., adjourn. 8.50, and I did send you guys a note on that in particular. 8.50, I was asked, we were asked to go to FinCon meeting. I wasn't comfortable committing us to that, having not yet talked about the differences ahead of time. And so I said I would go as long as everybody is comfortable here. I never got a confirmation back, but that's happening. So I'm going to send them a note while we're meeting just to say, am I coming or not? I can always walk out wherever they are. They meet at 7, but I asked them, you've got a lot on your agenda. Can you give me a little bit of time? You are on the agenda. Okay. And I knew that I was on the agenda, but I also got an email after the agenda was issued that said they would confirm, but I'll just show up there. Okay.
So that's what I had for announcements. You hear from Liz, the only thing I was thinking is that our last meeting, I know the agenda says 6 o'clock, and I'm sure you did that because you needed to go to FinCon, but our last meeting, we said we were going to start these meetings at 6.30, and Liz was one of the proponents of that. So if she didn't look, if she didn't look at the agenda closely, she made 5.30. Yeah, that's my fault. I don't know that. I have not heard from her. I don't see any emails from her, but that's. Shows up that's at time. That's fine. Yeah, and I don't know if I told. It's a problem for another day. I'm not sure I arranged it that way because it's for a whole string. Yeah, we're going to address that at the end. Yep. Okay. So that's my announcements, public comment. Is there anybody? Robbie? Okay. So no public comment, so no need for a member's response. So I'm going to go ahead and put up on screen a comparison that I sent out at another lovely hour today.
Because everybody have put it on screen, but hopefully you guys have a copy. Brian, you have a copy. Okay. So focusing on FY27, which is what I was able to do, a detailed comparison, and probably the most. Look at you, I'm going to stick it together, too. It's an autodest. We would have to, like, kind of pull the prop on a bit. I'm focused on FY27 because that's what I was able to do, a detailed comparison, and also because I think that's what's most imminently important, right, given that is what the town will actually vote on. And even though FinCon will put a five-year recommendation, there will be a vote on the FY27 capital budget. And there was a pretty big difference between our recommendation and what the town manager and finance director are recommending. So we recommended $8.3 million. The finance director and town manager recommended $13.8 million, both of those excluding MWRA for comparison. And so I did try to go through on a detailed basis and break these into groups of kind of how it fell. Some of them have more than one thing that changed, but I think this at least helped me get a sense of what they did. And I think high level, you know, they added 660,000 of projects. They took away 660,000 of projects in terms of pushing them out. But then they pulled in another 5.5 million, which is very similar to the town building, right, projects that we had been pushed out on the calendar relative to last year's plan, at least in value. And then there were some differences in funding sources, a handful of projects, and also a number of projects where they split the funding source with surplus capital. And so starting with that one, because it's kind of the easiest one, I don't have any issues with that. We talked about the fact that if they had surplus capital, that'd be great. We didn't know what that number was, so we couldn't do that. So I don't think there's a lot there other than I think my one question for the town manager and the finance director would be, where did that surplus capital come from? And what are the implications of, are those truly closeouts, right? Or are those projects no longer needed? Like, is it finished projects that had leftover funding? Is it projects that we've decided we no longer need? I heard the finance director say a couple of things in the last two FinCon meetings ago. He had gone to the schools and said, if you want these new projects, you got to give up. So I just would like a little sense of exactly where those came from and the circumstances. But that's, I don't know if everybody else shares that. So is that really, I mean, is that what happened? Or did they just move the septic in the field to excluded debt? No, there are projects that, where he's using surplus capital to fund. So if you take, if you go to the bottom of this sheet. I think we talked about what surplus capital is, but just both of you clear what that means. Yeah. So if you look at those bottom three, and there's a few others throughout the list, let's just look at the H7 F550 dump truck. You know, we had said $150,000 of free cash. He's got $101,844 of free cash and $48,156 of surplus capital, right? So he's splitting the funding source, which is fine. We can, we can do that. I just would like to understand what projects are done, closed out from our, from our list versus what are projects that we're saying we don't need the money for. Before you go through all the detail on surplus capital, my high level comment is, and I know you asked for funding source information from the finance director several times during our process, but as a process matter. Obviously, if we knew that there was X amount of surplus capital available as a funding source, that very well could have influenced or impacted how we chose to do what we were recommending. So, you know, next year, and I don't know what the normal sequencing is for the finance director to go seeking information on ongoing projects. Historically, when I was on the finance committee, it seemed like it happened toward the end of his process. So it was like December, January timeframe. I don't know. I mean, clearly there might be some projects that we went out to do that in the summer, for example. There might be some projects that people can't commit to say, okay, we can close it out and come, you know, come back and talk to me in December. But there very well could be other projects that you could get a firm commitment that, yes, that could be closed out. So at least this committee could go into the process knowing that there may be some amount of surplus capital. Right. I agree. Makes sense? Yeah. No, it makes complete sense. And I would say as long as it's done on a consistent cadence, right? Say you did it every year as of July 1st, whatever the surplus capital was, you're fine, right? If you're doing it on a consistent basis, yeah, sure. There might be more that extra that becomes available between July 1 and 12-1. But at least if you're doing it on a consistent basis, it'll work its way out, right? I think it would have been helpful more effective planning if we had had amounts and sources of surplus capital before we made the recommendation. That's kind of a high-level planning going forward basis. We're supposed to be submitting our reports in October, right? Yeah. Yeah. So you'd want to – that's why you'd want a summertime. Right. You can't wait until December. But I agree with Brian. It would change – I don't see how it doesn't change the recommendation every time. Yeah. I mean, I have no doubt that in a second high-level comment, again, before we get into the weeds here, I had no doubt that there would be – that the finance director would have a view on what sources to use for which recommended projects. And it would have been helpful for him to be participating with this committee throughout our process so that we would get the benefit of it. And again, it's not that this committee didn't attempt to ask those kind of questions and for that input. And I think that was and hopefully continues to be the intent, at least as expressed by the town manager, that it be a more collaborative process so you don't end up – because the issue that I think is going to happen here is that – and I can see it already with the finance committee, and eventually it's going to happen possibly at town meeting, that the finance committee and town meeting members are with the view, well, we have this new capital committee. They may not fully appreciate it, what it means to be an advisory committee to the town manager, which means the town manager can recommend whatever the town manager wants to recommend. But much as much as this committee through Kelly has been asked to reconcile our recommendation versus what was presented to the finance committee, I suspect at town meeting the same kind of thing is going to happen. Someone's going to say, well, I looked at the report of the capital planning committee online and it says 8 point whatever million, and here you are asking for 13 million. And, you know, please explain. And so I think the town manager's expressed intent three or four months ago was to avoid that situation. It was intended to be ongoing involvement of the town manager, the finance director, the other ex-fissure members, a number of whom were here as carbon heads. And so, again, just thinking at a high level process going forward, I think that really needs to happen. Otherwise, I look upon this and say, what's the purpose of what we do? I don't disagree with you. I'll let you go, Brad. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, obviously, it's a new committee and you guys have been on FinCom before and I haven't. But I guess my expectation coming in was it would be much more collaborative, a give and take with the town manager, the finance director, to understand and have a dialogue, discussion, debate, if you will. And we've acted, it seems, pretty unilaterally. I know the department has come in and we've talked to them, but not a lot of give and take that I can tell. Well, yeah, I think a couple of things, right? One, time definitely influenced how this operated this year. It was not what I thought it would be. It's not what I thought I asked for it to be, right, via the participation of the town manager and the finance director.
It is not where I wanted to land. I personally didn't want to land that we made a recommendation in a vacuum. I would have preferred that we had discussion, right? We're at 8.3, you're at 13. Let's talk about the differences before we issue the recommendation. And what we ultimately recommend to you is something relatively close to where you might land. But you've got another couple of months before you know, before this is going to get finalized with FinCom. That was what I expected it to be. It isn't what happened. I agree that's what it has to be. If it isn't going to be that in the future, I don't know why this group is here. I agree. I agree. Yes. I think, and I'm saying that, and I think, so I think we're all in agreement. And that's going to, it's going to be important to express that at some point to whoever the right party is to express that to, whether it's select board, town manager, and obviously we're expressing it in a public meeting, which will be on tape. But I'll be interested to see how the FinCom deals with, if you're going to go through with them tonight, and ultimately how the town meeting reacts to whatever appears in the warrant. Now, it may be between now and March 15th, that difference narrows, but that's up to the finance committee to decide what they ultimately want to present. But I think, obviously, had those two things happened, there would have been far less variation. The third higher level comment is, and I don't disagree, I think the finance director that said, I don't disagree, philosophically says, once you establish a five-year plan, absent extraordinary circumstances, you really should be bringing forward the last four years of that five-year plan and adding one year at the end. And therefore, in this case, fiscal 27's capital budget should have looked pretty close to what was included in the fiscal 27 column in the five-year plan that was in last year's warrant. Clearly, there were, whatever, 15 to 20 new projects coming in. And so I think his approach, as I see it, is he, best he could, he tried to stick with things that were in fiscal 27 in the five-year plan, and then exercised his judgment, perhaps with looking at what we recommended to bring in some of what he viewed as extraordinary enough items to bring in. But he made that judgment. And yet, inconsistent with that comment I just made, he took the ball fields from fiscal 29 or 30, depending on where you think it was in the plan, and philosophically shouldn't stay there unless there was an extraordinary reason to bring it forward, and they brought that forward. So there was some inconsistency in terms of how this got built. But I think, mechanically, that's why I think there's a number of items that you're showing that are there that we had prioritized. And I think we went into it, as I recall, during our discussion, pretty sure, Kelly, when I asked, you didn't seem too concerned about being locked into what was in the five-year plan. Because we were a new committee, we were taking a fresh... I still stand by that, because I think I agree with the philosophy in broad terms, that if you're working a five-year plan, it should be first year is pretty similar to what you had planned in the prior five years, you're adding a new year at the end. However, in the first year you have this committee, if we're just going to take the five-year plan that was there, then why don't we just start working on the fifth year out, right? Like, there has to be some adjustment to a new process. Did I think it was going to be $5 million worth? No. But I also... The only other thing I would say about the way this worked is I don't necessarily view the five-year plan as, I had a plan for $13 million of spending in FY27, and if the projects change, I'm still going to spend $13 million. And so that's where I have a little bit of a... Right. There was $13 million of spending, which was including a fair amount of spending on this building. That isn't happening. That doesn't mean to me... You can still spend that. You still spend it, particularly because it's above, right? The amount in total is above all of your guidelines, and there's reasons to go above the guidelines if you're doing, right, a big project, right, things like that. But I don't necessarily view it as like, oh, no, in that, in 2027, we were good to spend beyond guideline, we'll just swap projects, right? So I struggle a little bit with that. Yeah, I mean, conceptual, that's kind of like, I won't go there. So I get it that from a financial planning perspective, because I saw it being a working group, debt service is a huge component of the forward-looking forecast. And so I think the finance director wants to have some predictability as to what he's going to reflect on that forecast. And so that's the only rationale I can think of as to why you say, well, we plan to spend 13 million. It may be on different things now, but we're still going to spend 13 million because that's what I built in the forecast. As a fiscal matter, I have to agree with you, I don't think that makes sense. As a fiscal matter, I'm nervous with the amount of money, we have an outstanding capital, right, that's progressing, that is outstanding, plus the MWRA, right? And to say, well, yeah, in the year that we do a 38.6, we approve a $38.6 million project, why don't we also do, you know, another $5 million of other projects? To me, you know, I would prefer slower than the whole a little bit and getting through some of this. And I recall in one of our earlier meetings, and Stan, I can correct it, but pretty sure Carol Martin, our select board liaison, attended a meeting at which I thought I heard her say, given what you just described, the MWRA article, et cetera, I prefer a lighter number on the capital request issue. That's what I remember her saying. She was like $4 or $5 million, I think. And so, yeah, I mean, it just seems, it just seems like there's a disconnect there. And that's something that may or may not come up later this evening when you talk to the finance committee. I would like to think that the finance committee would be of the same view, particularly given the operating budget pressures. But if we just stay on a process, at the process level for now, I just think it could have worked differently and better, and hopefully it will in the future. Yeah, I hope it will. Those are my high-level comments, and back to the weeds. I agree. All right. So I want to go back and start at the top. So added funding, $660,000 total, and that was really three things. One was restoring roads to the full amount that had been approved in the prior plan, so adding $431,000 to road construction. The second one was the in-car computer replacement in FY27. And I didn't get a chance to look, but the police chief, I put a note on the side here, the police chief had originally requested that in FY27 and in FY28 and told us that FY27 was an error. He had swapped a couple of projects and put it in FY28. Yeah, it's possible the finance director wasn't aware of that minutiae. Yeah, I just wanted to check because, yeah, it is, it's again, it's again in 28-ish. No, he definitely, the police chief definitely told us that when he had a list, but again, since Brian, Brian, who historically would have met with the department editor and the chief would have told him that, the chief told us that, and I think it appeared in our report somewhere in a table or something, items that didn't make it in, and that item was in there. So he'd like to think if he looked at the report, he would have seen that, but in any event. Yeah, and that's just, that was the only item that I saw as a, like, I think that's a corrections necessary there, because he has it in both FY27 and FY28. And then the water fund, this was the one that I had mentioned, Tom Holder had sent us a revised quote, or he sent us a quote, he didn't have a quote originally, and it was $170,000 more. So I knew what all of those were. I assume, let's check with the two of you, I assume three of you, I assume had Tom Holder made his request two or three weeks earlier in this committee, we would have likely increased the million that we put out of the plan to make one step. Yeah.
The road item, I think, is worth, I know Pam Roman gets it, this is a discussion that finance committee had at your behest for at least two years about them carrying a excess kind of capital. So I think that's worth it, if they give you the opportunity tonight to explain why that. I did explain it when I met with them a couple weeks ago, I will repeat it if needed, but I did explain that one, because I was asked, I believe, point blank, the last time I went to FinCom, why we didn't fund the full amount. And I explained, and I said, if it can be demonstrated otherwise, right, there may be a reason not to, or to fund more, but that was our take on it. It's a one-time event, and it was intentional to try to tamp down this year's fiscal 27th plus. So then he, the town manager, finance director pushed out the middle school rooftop air handling units and exhaust fans. It was 500,000, he pushed it out to 28.
I couldn't recall, but I thought this was the one that he needed for the middle school in order to do the ceiling work, but maybe I'm, I thought they were interconnected, but perhaps they weren't.
I mean, he said he had more, maybe he had this to a different section. Yeah, and then the video monitoring and management system was pushed out to FY31. I think my, my only comment would be on that is, is everybody comfortable with that from a public safety perspective and the issues we've had in town in recent years won't be negatively affected by waiting another. I'm just surprised it was pushed out that far, given our conversation. Yeah, that's, that's why we, we, we actually pulled it, either we, you know, it was in fiscal 27th or we pulled it forward. But I don't think we pulled it forward five years. It was in 20, it was added in 23, so it could have been more than 28, right? Yeah, I can look at it in a second. I mean, my take is, I mean, I have to assume in all these things, he knows something we don't, right? I mean, that would be my assumption or my hope, or someone knows something, so maybe they're not ready, maybe it's part of the town. No, that's fine. Or maybe they've got a band-aid if they're working through. Yeah, maybe there's so many other things like, we're not going to do this anyway, but. Yeah, I would just hate to have yet another incident and then people say, well, aren't there camp really? Third time when we don't have cameras on it?
Okay. I mean, if the amount of money was pulled in, I can't imagine it was pushed out from a financial reason. There has to, I mean, it just. Except the amounts are not coincidentally matching, I don't think, right? But the average was 660 and the minus was 660. Yeah, so my comment on those two items in particular, going back to my high-level comment about how I thought he approached building the town manager's capital plan, is that both those items were in the fiscal 27-year in last year's five-year capital plan. So in theory, absent having other reasons to push them forward because you have to pull things in and make room, and maybe that's, maybe, you know, we obviously saw there were a bunch of new requests and was trying to balance everything. So we ended up having to do the same thing, just that on those two items, we chose to keep them where they appeared in the five-year plan. Right. Versus the five, shooting it out five years is the one I think an explanation is warranted, right, if it was in the plan prior for 27. Okay. So then these, the next list of projects is all things that were pulled in, and I can go over, but most of them were pulled in from 28, a few were 29, 2030, and then a couple were, you know, slight other differences. Maybe it was, you know, some surplus capital or a difference in funding. The biggest one I think we can talk about is the baseball fields. And I think the distinction, I just want to make sure I understand FinCom, right? If they're going to do, if they, if they're considering recommending, which I don't know that they are, the field and the subject as excluded debt, but they're not going to, I don't know that they can be an article, right, Brian? Unless they call a special town meeting within town meeting. In order to, at this point. So the distinction being there, the excluded debt vote, if there is one, would happen at the ballot box before a town meeting. The town would approve that these projects, should they be approved, would be done with excluded debt. I mean, that's what it said in the presentation. Yes. The distinction is usually, not always, most of the time, when we do an excluded debt, we put a project on the ballot for excluded debt, we have a separate article at town meeting for that project versus having it included in the capital budget for the year. Because usually it's a big project, right? And you want to have separate debate and you don't necessarily want your capital budget to get picked apart, right, one item at a time. And so you do that separately. It's too late to put a separate article in for those. It wasn't done by the deadline. So I was asking Brian, like, they would have to do a special town meeting within town meeting. So explain, I understand what you just said, but I don't understand what, what do you mean a special town meeting? Yeah, so town meeting is scheduled for May 4th, right? As long as they call for a special town meeting within whatever the number of days are before you're going to hold the meeting, it's like 35 days or something. They could schedule a special town meeting for May 4th or May 5th. And when you get the warrant, the warrant will have annual town meeting stuff, and then it'll have special town meeting. And we've done this many times over the years. So you look at the meeting minutes of town meeting, you'll see the annual town meeting starts and then somewhere along the way it stops. And then the special town meeting is called, you know, and you go through that process. And it simply opens a warrant for seven days to allow more articles to come in. Because right now you can't put any other articles in for a regular town meeting. But if you open it, you know, there's other articles to come in. So they generally don't like to, unless there's a particularly important reason to do it, you know, open another window for more articles. But yeah, I mean, I certainly, I'm not uncomfortable with the wastewater being part of the regular capital budget. It's kind of infrastructure, county structure. But yeah, I think, and again, ultimately it's up to the select board. If that project finds its way through the finance committee, et cetera. I don't think that there's any rule that if it's, if they're going to the ballot for excluded debt, they have to do it by article. But I know, you know, last, over the years, there, at times there have been capital expenditures that people have wanted to put in the capital budget on the theory that it wouldn't get as much airtime at town meeting as if you put it in its own separate article that was dedicated to that issue. And there was at least one issue in the three years I was in the FinCon that I, I was raising a question why something was in the capital budget. I thought it was one of the water requests for the MWRA. I said, yeah, that really should be pulled out as a separate article. And I got, you know, immediate pushback from the Board of Public Works that really didn't want to, you know, it was going to get focused on, but they just felt like, well, because in the capital budget, it'll just kind of, particularly if you watch town meeting the last three or four years, the budgets, you know, unlike the old days where every line item was questioned practically. So, but, you know, there's nothing we can do about it. No, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just, it's completely fine. It can go in the capital budget. I just, I anticipate that that will cause a town meeting significantly more time spent on the capital budget on the rest of it. Right. And getting it picked apart. But that's, it's not, nothing we can do about it. It's, I guess my point is, had we had a more collaborative process up front, the intent was to push this in right all the whole time. It might have been submitted as an article before the deadline. Yeah, I think, you know, look, we didn't have the information necessary to actually feel comfortable doing something differently with it. I don't think the town manager and the finance director at the time they submitted their recommended budget had any additional information that we hadn't seen. I think there's been some additional information finally coming forth.
But just as an aside, I caught up just a small piece of the finance committee meeting last night and there was a discussion about whether or not to include the 10 to 14 pages worth of CIP descriptions after the capital budget with this whole press to shorten the warrant. And it's unclear what the finance committee is going to decide to do or not do. But if you, if you're worried about having town meeting pick apart the capital budget, if you remove what's been a pretty good source of information on each line of the capital budget, which I think has in turn cut down better transparency, and therefore I think it's cut down on the amount of, you know, discussion time, you're going to leave people saying, well, what's this line item? What's this line item? So if you have an opportunity when you meet with them tonight and you want to say, geez, I heard that you might. Yeah, I answered some questions over the weekend on, on that. Well, maybe I didn't on the whole exhibit. Maybe it was, it's the, there is a workbook that does both the FY27 summary, which we have a version of an R report and creates the beginning of the, of the descriptions. So I, I guess I didn't necessarily answer questions about the second part of it. It may have been the first part, but I can, I can bring it up. I don't know if it's a workload issue. I mean, if it's a workload issue, I can probably, I could probably help with that piece of it because, you know, as you know, Brian, I streamlined that a few years ago to get it shorter than it had been previously. And also more consistent from one item to the next. And I think it came out pretty good in terms of sticking to the things we typically were getting asked. It's not terribly hard to produce, but it does require a little bit of work on the narrative, you know, a couple of sentences in their narrative. Yeah, it's not our, it's not our responsibility, but since we do have, you know, a role in the capital planning process, and it goes to this issue you're just talking about, I just think that would be far less transparent and lead to problems. But anyway, at the moment, select board has only been asked by the FinCom to consider placing a ballot question on for excluded debt for the wastewater septic system. That's not to say that they may still be asked to do the same. And MWRA. MWRA is not going on. Oh, sorry. It's not. Sorry, because it's right in here. Okay. Which, again, just since brought up MWRA, just as another aside, I just, I just discovered, although it's been out in the public domain for a week and a half, I'm going to pay as close attention as I usually do, that the town's application for the 0% state revolving fund financing was not accepted. We were put far down the list, and therefore we're not on the list. And Tom Holder is apparently going to lodge an appeal, but isn't overly confident, because if they were to somehow acknowledge they missed something in our application that had him score us half the points that he thought we were going to get, they would have to bump somebody else off the list to put us in, which means that's going to have to go as traditional bond financing. So there's still, the finance director is still trying to figure out, you know, the impact of that. You know, we were looking at a 20-year 0% loan, there's 75 basis points of fees per year. That'll turn into a 3.5% plus or minus maybe 30-year loan. Yeah, it can spend a little longer. And the other, because, you know, we did consider it, we agree it's an important project, I don't think the financing part of it is really our issue, but the cost of it is, and the $38.6 million includes $3.69 million of additional contingency that was required by the state if you get the 0% financing. So I posed the question to Carl Barnes and the finance committee, if we have to do it with traditional debt, we didn't need that contingency, it was kind of required. There's already other contingencies built in, so will that extra $3.69 million, at least by the time you get to town meeting with the motion, they may need to leave it, you know, in the warrant, because I don't think they're going to know, you know, before town meeting whether or not they've exhausted their appeal. But it would seem to me, why, why ask for 38.6 if we're not going to be able to get state funding? So... If I can just pause you there, Liz has joined us. Liz, I don't know if you know exactly what time you joined us. Right, probably... How many minutes? Just how many minutes? Hmm? 6.35.
Not a problem. Yeah. I was just speculating. No, I wish it was just me being forgetful. But not the same. Okay, no problem. We'll have to do roll call votes. Yeah. So anyway, I thought since we're on things we've already talked about, and let's, Kelly, just have to pop up when you're there. Just want to make sure you're armed with that. Thank you. That's helpful to know. I think I wanted to separate sort of, I want to come back to the fields for a minute, but I want to just talk on the overall list of these projects, right? I don't necessarily have, like, I personally don't have strong feelings against the things they've added back. Two of them, the public safety building, HVAC, and the elementary school. Those are those two items we had as maybe first up. I think we could all agree that we're fine with those being in there. If there's money to do it. And I assume the sidewalk is just whatever one got picked. I mean, we have pushed all the sidewalks. We had pushed all of them. We had pushed all of them, right? I don't, I guess my only thing is, it's purely, and this is really a finance committee territory, is affordability. And if affordability is an issue, are all of these, right, absolutely imminent, right, have to be done?
That's, that's the question. And I don't, I don't know. Well, and the list is, is the other mechanical issue is that if the select board is agreeable, putting at least $2 million on the ballot for excluded debt for the wastewater, that's 2 million that we have as levy debt, which impacted how much other items we could put in if we were otherwise inclined to put in other items in fiscal 27, because we were trying to stay within the, the levy, the levy debt. Yes, exactly. It all, it still all comes down to me to affordability at the end of the day, right? How much we're putting on, right? Whether it's excluded or levy. And, and also the amount of projects that we're adding physically can get done, right? To get done with, with a couple of them being very big, right? So the, obviously MWA is a very big project that spans over multiple years. The septic is a decent sized project. The field is a decent sized project. Um, and then you add a bunch of other, um, projects on top of that. Right. I guess my request, and this goes to process again, Brian is if this is the plan we're going forward, whether, whether it's, whether it's with or without the difference, right? Whether it's our recommendation errors or something in the middle.
My request is that simple milestones be put on every single project, right? That we've added to plan, right? Whether, and you can think about whether it's, you know, design contracting, right? Start on the progress, finish, laying that out, best guess up front, so that we have something to measure going forward, how well we've done progress wise in any given year. I would hope along the way here, we get a better sense of how much we can handle, um, in a given year, because our history on this has not been great of getting through projects. There's been lots of reasons, right? But I, I do think there's probably a range of what can be managed in a given year, if it's a normal year, and I don't think we have a good sense of that either. Um, I didn't have time to look at the, um, the town manager's report that you referred to. The presentation. Did they have in there anything to do with, uh, open projects? I don't recall that, sir. I didn't, I don't recall that being discussed when you met with them two or three weeks ago. Um, if it's not in the town manager report, I would suggest you bring that up. I did raise it. I did raise it, but I can, because I raised it as one of the, right? What were our primary constructs? Like, what have we looked at? What was open? We looked at what the policy said, right? We focused a lot on the policy and we ranked the projects. Um, and so I did say it, but nothing that you can see in the report. Yeah. So, so that, that was a pretty important factor for us. Uh, again, if the finance committee is trying to understand starting at least at a high level, why we did, why we recommended the town manager, what we did, I think that whole open project issue is certainly, again, something that the finance committee has focused on over the last. Yep. And again, it's better than it had been. So, I mean, my message back to them, unless you guys disagree is I don't necessarily disagree with the projects, right? I don't think the committee necessarily disagrees or has strong feelings that they shouldn't be pulled in it for us. It's affordability and capacity, right? Are the concerns if, if, if. Sidewalks, that's a million dollars worth of sidewalks and driveways. There's three, three separate, three separate line items that we, I think we had at 2030 and they moved to 2027. So that's, you know, it's like you said, capacity and affordability. But one, I would take exception to what you just said. And again, the rest of you may disagree with me. It's the two and a half million dollar item. I separated. I'm sorry. If you didn't in the beginning, I separated. I said everything but the field, let's discuss. And then let's just, now you can, now we can discuss how we feel about the field. But again, another, keep going to these high level themes, but because I did hear one of the FinCon members a number of meetings ago that asked the question of the town manager, the finance director, did you, did you prioritize? I'm pretty sure he had looked at our first initial report and saw that we had these priorities. So he asked, did you all prior to the town manager, did you all prioritize? And you didn't really get the response back? No, he did. The answer was, CIPC did. They ranked. That was the answer. In the meeting I was in, they asked that, the town manager that question. He didn't give an answer what they did, but he said we did it. I guess, you know, my only point on these other projects, well, I don't, we eventually put them in. I think, again, as an approach, we started with the approach of what's most urgent and important to get done, life safety, triggering other grant funds, et cetera, et cetera. And a bunch of other stuff that we know has to get done. And then there are just other things that we felt, you know, could slide. And driveway sidewalks, that's a lot of money. Not to say that they don't have to get done at some point, but we just didn't collectively prioritize those as much as other things. So, I mean, based on the budget that was given to us, it was different. Yeah. Yeah. Well, understanding that they were in the five-year plan in fiscal 27, a lot of these items. I understand. And to the extent that the finance director's view is, you know, you got to stick with best you can what's in the plan. That eliminates the ability to reprioritize, which I get, but I just, it'd be good to get that feedback though. It's like, what is it that they were trying to achieve with the changes, right? Because otherwise we're just going to have the same because now all the other years are out of whack for us. Right. Right. And so it's a lot of wasted effort. So it'd be good to get the feedback of why these are chosen. I mean, it could be that the department's lobbying for them. It doesn't really matter, I suppose, but. Yeah, I'm sure there's that there, but I do believe there was a strong, like, well, we had a plan and we're going to stick with what was in the plan. And I, again, normally I, that's how I would want, I would hope it would work. But in the first year, if, if that's all the committee's going to do is like, well, let's stick with what's in there. Then why are we here? Right. If we're not going to talk about each of the projects and why we would prioritize one or the other. Yeah. Right. I agree. Yeah. I mean, I agree. There's nothing in here. I mean, they're all medium or high. It's not like they were low on the left. So I know we would have done them, but just not financially at that time. So. Yeah. I, I, I guess I would have preferred to see, to your point, not all three of, of roadways and sidewalks. And I understand they're for different things, but unless there's an efficiency to doing them, but. Yeah. If they were going to bid them all out as one project, I could see it, but I, but I, I don't think it's likely because some are school and some are not school. Yeah. I think it's just, they were in the five year point. No, I, I, that's yeah. That's a bunch of those. That's. All right. So let's talk about the field. So Brian asked some more questions and I don't, I don't think I forwarded that on to everybody, but I think we can cover, we can forward it after the meeting. Um, but I want to talk over the, the things that we found and Brian, you can fill in and correct where I say it wrong. Um, we got an estimate from the town engineer that she got two different numbers. I thought, but the one that she gave it, which was that, um, she, there wasn't a ton of overlap in our savings and some of the early stage parts of the, of the project or maybe a backup. No physical overlap. There's no physical overlap, right? Based on the maps, Brian's asked this question a couple of different ways. So it doesn't appear to be much of any, not digging up, not digging up any part of the baseball fields to get septic leaching fields. Right. That's a question we've been asking. Yeah. We were asking for it. It was first described to us and maybe the DPW director was under the impression that that I would point out the plans that I pulled from the select board meeting packet for dated October 8th. So the plans have been out there and they had two site plans, which I pulled out kind of circle where the leaching fields are in the plan. And we've got some confirmation that those therefore wouldn't have any physical impact on ball fields. And the engineer said, you're correct. There's no physical impact. I thought when it was described to us in the very first time Tom Holder met with us, we kind of got in this sense that, well, if you're going to be digging up part of the outfield, we don't know how much, but then it might make some sense. Right. So you have to go back and dig it all up. So I, I've been 20 different ways. I finally just took the plan, circled the area, said, it doesn't look to me like it's going to impact physically the field. They finally said, you're correct. That's a physically impact field. But now you can fill in the but. Before I get to that, I don't, I think you heard, you were called correctly because we had a very specific discussion and back and forth, Brian, with Tom Holder about building a baseball field on top of a leaching field. And whether, so like it was, it was more than, you know, you recall correctly, because we had a discussion about whether or not that was a good idea and they, they don't overlap. But the town engineer said there is savings from primarily from earthwork of when you're digging up the septic, even though they don't directly overlap, being able to do the, the move, right. Move everything at the same time. There is going to be some savings, which that makes sense to me, particularly if they're going to dig up and they're pretty close to each other. Right. You're digging up the leaching fields that you might be putting piles of dirt, right. Where you put in the piles of dirt, you might disturb that way. But also if you're doing it and get the equipment out once, right. And you're digging up the whole thing at once. There's some savings there. So her estimate was that there was 215,000 total of savings by combining the projects. That was mostly earthwork. And I'm just going to try and find it. I did ask the question. Right. But then I did ask the question. I said, okay, so where is that reflected? Is that reflected, you know, is that come out of a two and a half? Is it already out of the two and a half? And I said, I recall the two and a half was just taking the 2017 field proposal and rolling it forward with some cost inflation. So I don't think it had any adjustment taken out of it. And her, she had sent me an estimate that was closer to 2.6 and said she wouldn't take out. She would leave it as is. Right. And not take anything out, which I kind of understand. But I also, this is where like, is there going to be any accountability for like this really did cost? Like if we had done, like we bid it, but if we do it together, I don't, I just, I just bid a project that if I did them separate and I did them together and I got great concrete difference on pricing. Is that going to be the case? Well, I mean, keep in mind that this building, 2.2 million or whatever it was that had originally been supposed to be spent on all the roofs. I'm sure if you do them all at the same time, there'd be savings. But we, the reasons that we don't want to spend all 2.2 million on buildings until we do. But it can happen with the buildings, right? So it's likely that we're going to cost more because they're not doing it all at the same time. So it's kind of the inverse. So, yeah, I kind of look at this where there's no physical overlap. I kind of look at it and say, okay, maybe there is, but there are probably other projects that the town could do where if you happen to have a project that is scheduled for four years from now. But if you brought it forward and did it at the same time, you might make some savings. But I don't know that means, in my mind, that philosophical needs to start go grabbing projects that are otherwise programmed out based on how much you can afford. And I think that's why I'm telling Kelly, Kelly, the original comment, which is the five-year plan assumed 5.5 million was going to be spent on this building. And I think that if a septic facility isn't going to be repaired at a cost of 5.5 million, and a new septic system is going to be put in for 2 million, that's great. The account saves $3.5 million. But does that necessarily mean that you have $3.5 million to spend, right? That's not our call, but that's a fiscal question. But anyway, so I think we've got two answers. One, there's no physical overlap. I think, Kelly, the dirt would go. There's primary leaching field and there's reserve areas. And I think where the reserve areas are is plenty of open space to take the dirt. They end up carting it off anyway because they fill the hole up with equipment and sand and everything else. So I think the real question is, you know, does this committee, I assume we can issue, as more information becomes available, we can issue addendums to our report, as we just did. Is there, is this sufficient reason for a majority of this committee to want to take a different position on the $2.5 million? We put it in fiscal 29 in our five-year plan that we recommended. Is this sufficient information for majority of this committee to want to move it up fiscal 27? I mean, I guess my question is, do we need to? I mean, the town select board, town manager have pulled it in. Do we have to then fall in behind and say, yes, we support this? Does that even matter? We don't have to. I think we, FinCon has asked the question of us. And I think we very likely will get asked the question at town meeting. So I think particularly because we put in our report that, you know, pending, right, that we're not putting in because we haven't gotten all, you know, all the information. I don't, I don't think we have to, right? No one's telling everyone. I think it'd be fair. I think now have basically, and we, again, process wise, we could or should have had this information back in October or November because the plans existed. Right. But for whatever reason, we maybe weren't asking a question. Right. But, and it was only because I saw the plans in the suck boards packet for the meeting on Monday night and saw the site plan. But anyway, just keeping the field out of it though, just from a, but just for all of these projects, I mean, I don't disagree with them, but there's a bigger difference than we recommended. We didn't recommend them. And now we, I gotta, I just, I guess, what is the expectation? I don't think we have to comment on my view. I don't think we have to comment on comments report. I think our, we did what we did for the reasons we did it. And it's up to the finance committee at this point inside, you know, in a perfect world, they wouldn't have to be doing this so much. Um, cause you said the haggling would have occurred, uh, as we were going on. Um, but I think it's now in the FinCom's, uh, part as to, uh, what they want to present the town meeting. And they could, they could say to the town manager, um, geez, we like, we like 8 million more than we like 13 million. So you figure out what you want in 8 million, right? That's one way to go at it and put the onus back on the town manager to fit stuff into an $8 million budget. They could say, do something in the middle. They could just accept the town manager budget, put it forth. So that that's, that's what they have to do. And, um, so I'm only saying that on the fields, um, um, at the moment, there's a discount, right? Town managers recommend pulling it up. We recommend it based on primarily lack of information to do otherwise, to leave it in fiscal 29. And I guess my, I'm just questioning if these two factoids are sufficient information. Would it cause a majority of this committee to move it from fiscal? Would it have caused us to move it from fiscal 29 back fiscal 20 or move it from fiscal 29 to fiscal 27? In our original report. And if that is true, then it might be useful to avoid this disconnect, uh, to do so. I have enough. I'm not agreeable to that myself, but all it takes is three of you and three of three people in place to say, yeah, this now seems to make more sense to pull it forward. I'm still not satisfied with, you know, I understand that, that physically they're two separate. Areas are going to be worked on. I understand the cost saving concept, but there's to me using the word disconnect. There's still a disconnect there. And I'm still not, I'm not very satisfied with, with the explanation that we receive sufficient that I would change my new, that we should move it from 29 to 27. I, it's two, it's two very different scopes of work doing a septic and a ball field. They're very different scopes. And I assume, I don't know if it's gonna be the same contractor, it's gonna be two contractors that would do it. You know, just to say that you're gonna save some money, to me isn't, isn't really sufficient. I mean, I understand you might. But it's also causing you to borrow two and a half million dollars more in fiscal 27, when the, this is really what my concern is, when the outlook for the next decade is pretty dicey. And so, and I think I stated at the very beginning of this whole process, I was approaching this saying, whatever we can do to push off things that we don't have to do, we're better off trying to do that. Because of the uncertainty and the impact on the financial budget of debt. Which, which was, which is where my head is. So I very much would like to do this field. However. I think there's general agreement. The, the, the project, the number of projects and the amount of money and the cost to the taxpayer. Right. When you put the MWRA and is so significant. Which is now. Now they're going to be that much higher because of, if we don't have the preferable financing. I have a very hard time saying, yep, just go for it. It's going to save 200,000. Yes, that's, that's a real, it's a, it's a, it's a real amount of money if it materializes. But to your point, Brian, about what we did with the roof here, but there's two reasons. Right. I understand doing the roof at this building would be cheaper to do it all at once. My reasons for not doing it all at once are. What are we doing with this building before we go quit? Right. So breaking it up was an emergency plan. It was like, do what you have to. Right. As you have to, but it was also affordability, right? Like, are we really going to go put this money also with no insert, no certainty on what the bill, what's going to happen at the building. If you were absolutely very, very sure that you're going to do the field in two years, then maybe I say, yeah, go ahead, because it's inevitable anyway. And the difference in the borrowing is, you know, two years of debt service, right? You're ultimately going to spend the money anyway, but I am very nervous. The amount of money we're spending and the amount of impact on residents to just like, yeah, pile on. Let's do 30, 38.6 million plus 13 and a half. I mean, plus it's also the water piece, right? That's not in this. It's in the water enterprise fund, but it's still cost. That's what I mean. I don't. People like to say it's, well, excluded debt. Well, it's water rates. It all comes out of my bank account the same way, no matter which one it is, right? My take is, just from a field standpoint, right? I mean, so yeah, if there's 200 grand in mobilization savings, it doesn't surprise me the least bit. I mean, doing projects like this I've done before in my other life, right? In my prior company, it's like all the time I would get bits, hey, if I can do this parking lot and dig this. Yeah. So at this scale, 200 grand, fine. I mean, I really, I think that's a reasonable assumption, right? Because they're going to charge you just to do safety and all that twice. Fine. I think the fact that there is actual, some sort of estimate that's 2.6 makes me feel better. I mean, it's as good as probably most things that we see. Whether or not that really encompasses what should happen in 2027 or eight when this actually happens. Probably not, but it's probably close enough. So I don't have any structural problem with it, but I got to go back to the cost. And the only thing on the other side is we did recommend looking at pulling a bunch of school spending for 2728 and excluded debt because there was so much school related stuff. So if this solves it, then I don't necessarily have heartburn on that either because we were trying to make a hole somewhere and maybe this makes it. I mean, that's, that would be it. I wouldn't have naturally chosen the field, but it was our intent. We did recommend potentially making a hole for the school budget because it was just such a short, we weren't getting there and things are falling apart. But I think from those pieces, I'm okay with it. But again, I don't know if I would have picked this out of bundling real mission critical type product, but that's a different conversation. Good point. Liz? Liz? So I know what you're doing late, but one quick clarifying question. Are we saying that there's two plus million for both a septic sewer redo as well as the fields for a net of foreign change close to five? Yeah, it's two plus two and a half. So four and a half. So I thought we were at one point thought that might've been a double count, but okay. So we, there was a double count. There was another two and a half million in another year. So it was, it was duplicated in another year, which we did ultimately took out that that was a another year we had taken out when we did our recommendation. Okay. So, so I guess I have two thoughts. Um, one, I, I wouldn't change. I wouldn't go back. Let me put it that way. I feel like we made a recommendation, snapped the line at a point in time. That's the best information we had. And I think we need to kind of let it lie. You know, I wouldn't go back and change that. Now that said, if we're being asked to go and take a, uh, uh, a relook at this new information and kind of do a one off. Okay. Um, it's still wouldn't, I would agree with Brian. It's not going to change. I'm sorry, Brad. If I can change my vote that we shouldn't bring it into 27. It just seems like we're trying to make a rash decision quickly. And a two year, bringing it in two years is a significant shift of funds to in years. And of course we don't have the budget. And if I have to, you know, balance my check account or checking account to make sure I can afford what I'm paying for. I feel like the town should be more or less doing the same. I think I'm comfortable explaining. Right. But there's not, there's not, uh, support. Right. Strong support for doing it. Um, based on financial considerations, overall financial considerations. Even with finally getting, even with, yeah, getting, getting the plan and getting the, um, the savings. Right. Are that doesn't offset our concerns about spending, um, overall spending in the town and impact on residents and uncertainty. Right. We haven't, we haven't gotten override yet, but we think we're headed there. What I'm having real struggle with is that we go and decide to spend all this money before we hit the override. Right. It removes, it removes optionality. Flexibility. I mean, just, it's not really the same, but as you know, we had that special election in November to convert levy debt to excluded debt. And there was a cost to that. And the cost was, uh, push out, um, some bond barn that was going to get done in November was part of the, another part of the program. And that had an extra cost of a couple hundred thousand dollars. So the town is spending money to push things out, to buy more time, to get through union negotiations. So this just seems to me, having been in the room that went through all that, pulling the fields forward, absent there having been really physical disruption to the field. I mean, I was more willing to consider if, you know, it came back that, you know, the septic leaching field was actually going to be underneath the outfield. And so they're going to be digging up the outfield, putting in the leaching field and then putting it back. So that makes more sense to me that you then really should consider, because I'm sure then there would be both disruption and cost related to it. But once, once I finally got them to confirm, there's no physical overlap. I just pulling it forward is just, it's just inconsistent with everything that I've been involved with the last six months on the operating budget side of pushing everything out. And the fact, I want to just clarify, because there are those who would say, well, but we're being proposed as excluded debt. And that doesn't change anything for me, because again, it's still have to pay for it. Right. And there's, we're, we did these things to get things into excluded so that we wouldn't have the override, because we didn't want to go ask voters, right, to approve an override. This is just another form of an override, right? It's just, which is consistent with the discussion that the operating, the budget operating committee had is we purposely recommended doing the special election to deal with the conversion of the levy debt to the DPW facility in November, December, whenever that happened. So we didn't want to have to do a ballot question for debt in the spring, when the DPW thing was coming through that, that was the marching orders. And so now to come back and, and then to have a 2 million, and now we're down to the 2 million request, which, you know, again, you can parse the town capital and debt policies, as to whether you really need 5 million to go to the ballot. Now the reading of that is not so much that anything that's over 5 million really should go to the ballot. That's how it's being read. That doesn't mean you can't go to the ballot as policy matter or something less. But then I agree with John, and we did talk about trying to find a point in time where you could bundle $5 million worth of projects to be able to go to the ballot. But we were targeting like fiscal, in fact, we targeted fiscal 29, because you'd have the two, two and a half million dollar field. And then you'd be able to grab, you know, other schools, other school related projects and push it out after a year or two after the operating level. So I guess my point would be, we actually gave a lot of thought to that, even though we're not responsible financially, but the FinCom is, and they should understand that pulling that fuel forward really is totally inconsistent with that whole process. You asked for effect, you asked for an override in November, right? You're going to ask for another effectively, right? As a debt exclusion. Now, when are you going to have to ask again? Next spring, a year, you know, spring of 27 for the operating level, right? A three year operating level, right? Okay. So that's three, that's three in a row then, right? If that's what they want to do, I just, I don't, I have a tough time with that philosophy, right? Yeah. But I understand why the finance committee recommended asking the select board to put the $2 million on the ballot, because I know the chair who served on the budget operating committee with me said, well, we just went through all this effort to convert $5 million, remaining $5 million of Webby debt into excluded debt. Why would we then automatically put $2 million back on the Webby debt? And since I wasn't at the meeting, I didn't have a chance to respond. But in the financial forecasting that the finance director did, he assumed, based on the five year capital plan, that there's a certain amount of Webby debt coming in. And so we were, we were really just focused on how do we get past 27, needing to do an operating override, and also have a benefit on the next five years. Not that every piece of Levy debt that otherwise comes forward, we're going to try to do is excluded debt. That was never discussed. So, but anyway, that's... On the same theme, though, I don't know if it's the right place where we can shelve it. Just look at the presentation they put together. I see 5.7 and 28 for excluded debt for the town building, but we didn't put the town building, we didn't put that portion into the 28 plan that I'm aware of. I thought we put it in purgatory. No, we put it in purgatory. But this says, this slide shows it in 28. Yeah, I know. Okay. Which, again, since you either told them or will tell them that you haven't had a chance to reconcile, but that's a big enough item to say, hey, by the way, in the five-year, town manager's five-year plan in 28, he's got all the town building back in there, we put it in a separate bucket. I don't think he, I don't think it's in the actual, I think it's just in the slide. It's below, it's still below the line. Let's make sure I pull the right one. No, I can look at it real quick. The fin cut. I'm looking at 28. They have it below the line as an article. He doesn't have it. He does not have, he does not have it in the 28, in his 28 plan. Oh, it's not there. It's in, but it's in the slide. I mean, there is a couple things. There's the elevator. Yeah, sometimes in his, it's requests versus, but that wasn't even a 28 request. It was a 27 request. I'm on the 28 tab. Yeah, it's not there. So, I didn't say this at the beginning, but I'm going to the meeting because I want to be helpful, but my brain works in a way that says, I reconciled our plan to the prior plan. I provided that. They've made a recommendation. I would have, and I had told FinCon that I would have assumed they reconciled to, right, that they do the reconciliation step. So, I've reconciled it in both directions. So, I got one year done. I just, I didn't have time to get to the rest of it. Again, I don't mean to suggest that it's your job to change minds. Your job is to do what you just described, which is, you asked me to reconcile. All I had time to do is fiscal 27. Here's the reconciliation. If you have specific questions about why we did what we did, pay the answer to them. Okay. What way they will have questions. Right. And then there was some difference in funding source. I do want to move on. I don't have any person. I mean, the finance team wants to change funding source. Is that right? Yeah, that's where I was. And I think we've talked about the septic. I understand the rationale for absoluted borrowing.
So, I'm good with anything else on here. I don't have any other concerns, I don't think, on that.
Job reconciling that. I thought it would be really easy. And then when I started, I pulled the whole list, right, I had it all compared. And then I'm like, well, this is really hard to read. Like, how do I make sense of this in any rational way? Yeah. Okay. Let me get back to, I'm going to stop sharing.
You can keep it really simple. We were comfortable with 8.3 million of capital spending in fiscal 27. We weren't comfortable with spending north of that.
And we ranked things in the order we thought we could spend 8.3. So, okay. So, let me next.
Okay. So, I don't have any discussion on articles submitted for town meeting. I just said, I'm going to very briefly, in the select boards packet on Holiday Road, somewhere in Orchard Land, there was a redline version of the article language that I'm not sure who did the redlining, but it included things like having the school committee co-sponsor the article. And it expanded the site investigation to include potential use of it for a school building. And I think, again, the audio wasn't that great. I really couldn't fully hear what Suckborough was doing. But it led me to conclude that maybe they didn't do the redlining, and they were sort of asking themselves, you know, we started out here wanting to look at this as a new growth possibility. Ergo, we'd do some site investigation and tee it up at a future town meeting that we could transfer from the school committee to the town, and then the town could sell it to the developer. Ergo, that was, I think, where this came from, and I got the sense that if the site investigation was going to also include the potential use of the school building, which, by the way, I didn't send it to you. Ergo, I'm happy to do it. There's a slide deck that the outside consultant at the school has hired for the long term, as in like 20, 30 year long term school planning process. Ergo, tonight they're having a public forum, and I think it's helpful for us as a long term planning focus to have me send that to you. But I caught the first five minutes of the presentation a week or so ago, and the consultant said, really, the only large school property that you have that could serve immediately as potential new development is where you're going. Ergo, they're still at a very early stage of their long term planning process, but it's just I think the school committee rightly so is being careful not to want to prematurely give up control and but they also appreciate having to do some investigation I think are supportive of it. Ergo, it's just not clear to me the Select Board is willing to go forward on a joint basis. Ergo, I don't know what that means. I don't know if that means they're going to pull the article, whether they're going to just leave in the article they originally had, which doesn't include reference. Ergo, the only relevance to us is that if I thought if it became the possibility that this would be related to a school, and I think we talked about one meeting where we talked about doing some investigation. Ergo, I did do that. Ergo, to do studies on future capital projects. Is that within our purview as part of the capital plan, but that's the only reason that this would be relevant to us. Ergo, I can get back with the chair and see where she thinks it's going right and if it's worth spending more time on. I'm still not convinced, even if it they did include a school purpose in it that at the level they're at that that that's a capital project right. Ergo, for our purpose to review right because it's a I mean they're really just doing very high level planning. Not even right feasibility feasibility and I don't, I don't know if we want every feasibility study pulled into capital. I mean I did do some checking and there are a number of instances where I saw various towns where feasibility studies site studies were considered a capital expenditure. Were they were yeah they were. It's interesting. And I wonder sometimes if that's split based on like, you're doing a feasibility study because you're like, yep, we're doing it there. Can you just confirm that we can do it there versus like this piece of property. Well, part of it is state reimbursement because I mean some of the stuff I was looking at was because they couldn't get it. They could include it in the in the request. Yes, they include it for reimbursement reimbursement the site investigations feasibility studies are all submitted for reimbursement. I'm not a school financing expert, but what I looked at I looked at they they did. That was that's how I found it was various towns were submitting for reimbursement for feasibility studies site studies. If you look back at like the mwra project. I think it ended up in the capital budget 2, 3, 4 years ago, but they got an appropriated certain amount of money that allowed them to analyze, you know, 50 different alternatives. And I think that was actually in the capital budget, maybe with a separate article, but so I think Kelly, the answer is, we should probably just keep tabs on this. Well, because I think at one point I had suggested when Carol was at one of our meetings that if it had no real connection to ultimately the town asset, that at least for the public, they might think I might want to put a sentence in the write up that we determine it. You know, you know, we really didn't need to weigh in on it, but I think we then said, but if the language were to change, so that it could result in a town capital asset. We might need to at least have talked about it and then that sentence wouldn't be relevant. So anyway, but so I don't know what they're going to do with it. All right. So we have a couple of topics left here, and I need to wrap us up by eight. So on the report process, any other, we've, we've already compiled a couple of suggestions on future report process. I think we had a couple tonight that we've reiterated, right? How we think it should go. It needs to be more collaborative from the beginning. We've talked about, it needs to be more focused on the long-term, which I think, Brian, thank you for bringing up the school report. Cause I think that's a part of going to start between the onsite insight reports, right? Inventory and these other, like really getting a sense of what the long-term future looks like. So we have a better sense of, you know, do you, do you put money in this building or do you not? Like they'll, all those things have to be looked at a better handle on, but is there other things you guys have thought of in the time, a little bit of a break since we issued the amended report. That you're like, I really, I woke, I woke up at night and realized I wish we'd put this in there. I bet that happened to everybody. Right. Me, but I didn't work on the report as closely as you did. Let me give Liz an opportunity. Yeah. Liz, you got anything? It should have been in there. Just a good laugh, but yeah, no, no, not waking up at night. They can do something. That wasn't, that wasn't my question. What, what six things aren't in there that should be in there or three or two. Yeah. That's, I mean, I think it's pretty solid report. Yeah. I mean, I think basically information we have and we hope to have in the near future. It's pretty good. I think in a year or two, we're going to have a different conversation, but it's so far away. It's going to depend on the next item, which is like, what can we make progress on? If we can make progress on these things, will we have more things that we want to put in there? So, and I have, I think one of the two items I had brought up, the long-term planning, which we will get to eventually, would have to be in there. And then I think another meeting I brought up, including some form of reconciliation. I may want to rethink that based on the reconciliation that Kelly did. We, we couldn't put that in the report. I don't think. I mean, we could, but it wouldn't be in a different form. Listen, there was two ways to do it. And I had to decide I could have just reconciled funding sources in years. Well, I thought that was great. Yeah. And so in a report, I think what I would do is a summary style. Here's what they recommended for 27. Here's what we recommended by funding source. Here's the difference. It's like three tables without the detail by detail. Maybe highlighting the text. Right. But I decided for us and for our discussion, that wasn't enough that we really needed to look at the project by project. But I think in a report, I would just stick to here are the differences in my question. Either I always go back and forth funding sources versus department, like seeing those are kind of two ways, like seeing like it show a big difference. If you did it by department here and also show a big different, maybe not as big, but yeah, difference on funding source. Both of those are things that I care about. So I might do it that way, but it would probably be an appendix rate of comparison of the two. I do think it's valuable to have a reconciliation. It is the question that's come up the most from FinCom. And I pointed them, I mean, I did give in the report table nine to try and walk from the last report for the one year. It just gets really ugly when you start doing every year and on multiple different cuts. But I think it's worth considering reconciliations of some sort. I mean, it didn't really exist until just now, right? Right. Anything else? Photos? I'm not opposed to, maybe not in the report, but I would, some towns on my, Northboro is my favorite one to look at. Their CIP includes, right, a photo in the corner of what the asset is. Sometimes it helps me, particularly with the DPW vehicles. Like I get them all mixed up, but it's not a must happen. I'm not in the CIPs. I was referring to the report later. Yeah, I know. I would put them in the report. I would put them in the report. Probably the CIPs, yeah. That's different. I did at one point think, you know, I wouldn't mind putting some GIFs in there. Just that was the point, you know, when I got pretty late at night, right? But not an interactive report. Okay. Anything else? Otherwise, I'm taking this off the agenda going forward. Obviously, if you have something, we can add it back to a future agenda. I think on the next item, which is we're not going to get into a substantive discussion today because we're not going to have time. But what are the next steps, right? So we had a section in the report on what we want to do to improve the process. And so I think we've got to take a look at that as a group. And I would appreciate, right, if everybody would sort of take one that's going to be their baby and figure out how we progress them. But I think this is the point where everybody could have a hand. And so I would ask you take a look at that section of the report. And when we meet, by the time we meet next, if you could just send me an email just to me, right, of which you're interested in leading. How about the six bullets? Yes. Yeah, that's actually true. Well, we won't either won't do one or somebody gets double duty. So everybody pick one, and we'll see where we land. And if you guys pick the same one, then, you know, we'll have some sort of duel for who gets it. On this topic, I would suggest when the dust settles and the account manager and the finance director have a little bit of time, that we get them on the agenda and talk through some of the things we talked about tonight. I would agree. I would agree. I mean, we definitely need their feedback at this point. We'll initially keep heading in some direction. And not so anecdotal, more direct. This worked. This didn't work. This is why we made changes. Even when we plan all these changes, if they're not on board and roll out of that sooner, yeah. Yeah. And the same on that token, FinCom has requested, the FinCom chair has requested the same. So, like, can we get together? And I'm fine doing that. I just didn't want to do it on a, I decided that before we met, but where we meet, joint meet with them and talk about, right, what, how the process could go better, what they're looking for, right, what they think they need from us. I think that's a valuable step as well, because maybe, maybe we're missing the mark. Maybe there's something that they feel like when they've got it, they'd like to know from us. Yeah. After we've concluded, I think it'd be important to get the comments from FinCom and. Well, I'm thinking a joint, I'm thinking a joint meeting of the two committees, which the town manager and the finance director come to. Like, rather, I don't want to do two different ones. Let's just do it together and get on the same page and I'll hear the same thing. I don't want to play telephone anymore. Right. I agree. Great. And maybe, you know, select board chair, whomever that may be when you get around to this, may decide to try, try board meeting. Since there are, select boards ultimately responsible for this committee. Right. Yeah. The current chair has very, I think a lot of the things we talked about tonight, the current chair of select board is probably in agreement with a number of those things. So. All right. Well, I will work on getting, arranging that. I, I, I think the chair of the FinCom, I think I put him off and I think he's happy to do that. So after they get through there, I don't want to, I don't want to take away. It would be good to know. I mean, they're going to learn something. Right. So it actually makes sense at this point to wait. So. Yeah. Yeah. Ideally, all of this could have, right. If, if the cycle didn't work the way it did and the committee was, with this discussion would have happened at the beginning. Um, but first year, say that. I don't know if we would have learned as much. I mean, they would have, everyone had opinions what they wanted, but the reality is this is what happened. Yeah. Sure. But time is of the essence because understandably you hold stuff off until after town meeting, but the extent to meet the October 15 deadline, we ultimately really need this process to get going. Like. Yeah. I don't want to, I don't want to put it off too long. So I was thinking more like warrant deadline. Like once they have the warrant in. You could try that. I mean, they, you know, they may still want to punch it till after town meeting, but. Yeah. I agree. I think it'd be better for process. To have that meeting as soon as it's convenient for those two groups. Yeah. They need a little decompression time given how hard they work. But yeah. But, but, you know, we really need to be hitting the ground running. You know, July 1st, late June, you know, early July. Um. Yeah. I'd like to even earlier, just cause once, once town meeting is voted on the projects. And that's set. I feel like it's time to. Right. What's stopping us from getting started on. Yeah. I guess I'm, I'm partly I'm referring to. The department heads. And, and, and coming to some agreement with the town manager. Yep. The school superintendent. As to managing through expectations. The process used to be this, but we really needed to kind of. Start. Start earlier. And assuming between the next month or two, we're able to talk about the CIP. Process. That's also going to be something new. It will be. Different. It will be different information. Could be more. Maybe not necessarily. So again, there's just not a number, not that much time. No, but I think we have, there's a lot we can do even without that feedback. I mean, the CIP process, the CIP form is. Yeah. No, we can do that. Most critical. Right. Has to be ready to go by the, before we engage them. Because. I think we can save a lot of time. If, if we're getting more comprehensive information. Okay. All right. Let's. We good to review and. Review the minutes of February 10th. I have one edit. That's a lot when you have edits to your own. Edit and one question. So my edit is on page two. At the end of the first paragraph under the first agenda item bullet. As I had done in. Two or three prior sets of minutes. I meant to add in that. Effectively that. Kelly Lappin had shared. That document via zoom. So we could discuss it. So I'm going to put the same language in that I had in. Two prior minutes. So I just wanted to inform you of that. I don't have a specific language in front of me. So as long as you are. Comfortable with it then. You should be comfortable with it now. And then my question is just to reconfirm and. Also leads into the next agenda item on. Each three. And again, I understand tonight's. I'm happy with a six o'clock start myself. But I also appreciate those of you that work. 630 is more convenient. So I just wanted to make sure that the minutes were accurate in. Second paragraph under. Setting the times for meetings that we were planning to start this meeting at 630. Then every two weeks thereafter at 630. He definitely said that. However, I just want to look and see. Did I. Fail to. All I'm concerned right now is. The minutes accurate. That's what might be. It's a 630. He said. My calendar says that too. Okay. But I just. While we're on that topic. Want to. No, I. I coordinated it for. I coordinated it for 630. So. Interesting. You may just for the next meeting. You may need to just. Make sure that the town staff. Knows that we're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. We're. There's. We're. We're. It's a number one. They just. Recycle. The February meeting. That's. Why. It took a February one and rescheduled. They do that all the time. But I'm just looking. I. I booked it for 630. So that was my fault on the agenda that I made it 6. More. I booked. The room for 630 and I booked it for 630 went out. So. They may have just adjusted when I sent the обisping, adjusted when i sent the agenda at six so that was my bad on the agenda i'm sorry guys i'm not i just want to make sure we're all clear we all show up at the right time would have saved me a little bit of stress so all you need at this point then would be unless there's other questions or edits you need to roll call for a second roll call can i get a motion second and we're gonna do your roll call vote liz brian yes um yes brad yes kelly is a yes so that passes five zero zero okay um topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours prior to posting um the only other thing i have that i'll forward is um the tom holder promised the visioning committee report i think i think i have that let me look and see this is what happens when i when i travel for the south um for the south landfill you're saying he sent it to you so you're going to forward it oh that's what i i thought he did why don't i just say that you you will get to the members copy that so either you have it or you'll have it yeah yeah and i already sent you the stuff from the town engineer um field you sent that okay yeah probably half the savings was insurance i didn't really understand completely but it's just the same amount each time you haven't come out okay um all right that's all i had next meeting is set for two weeks 18th at 6 30. april 1st the one after that okay uh yes so you won't no i'll be uh i'll be remote on the 18th that's all right i'm going to be out of state but i can participate yeah i'm i may have a problem with the first it depends i i'll have to get back to get back to you on that up another minute it's those two gates specifically is the first is a tentative and let me just double check again there was one date we couldn't get and it's had uh wednesday april 15th was not available so yeah yeah yeah okay thank you i'm sorry um you said the 15th is going to be the 14th it'll be the 14th but from that point just every two weeks from the 15th on that wednesday okay um because you have to get your tax returning i'm starting for 6 30 start yeah yes 6 30 start yes okay all right any other comments questions things you didn't anticipate that you need to get out before we adjourn hearing none can i get a motion to adjourn at 7 46. so moved all right i'm on a roll call liz brian yes um yes yes kelly is yes the cost is 5 0 0 thank you everyone