August 31, 2026 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript
August 31, 2026 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee
order it's uh august 31st at 5 30 this is the meeting of the capital improvement planning
committee um both in person and remote in yellow whaling town building and this meeting will be
recorded and it will be made available to the public on wacom as soon as possible after the
meeting public will be excluded from executive sessions pursuant to chapter 2 of the act of 2025
this meeting will be conducted in person and or via remote access
if this meeting has remote access which does one may watch or participate remotely with the meeting link that can be found on the agenda 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 in person or remote as applicable and public comment activity limited minutes the tranquilization commission committee began reading benchmarks for 날in sn拭 I'll frequently go through the agenda 5 30 called order and review the agenda 5 35 public comment and members response 540 review and discuss departmental capital requests submitted this year as well as outstanding capital project with various department heads 6 40 discuss potential content for draft CIPC reports at the town manager seven discussed proposed with town building working envisioning group seven discussed proposedällund women and men supporting adoption on the improvement of land agent have been working hard to submit to the meeting so this meeting will take place during the next 2 or 3 p.m. if you want to reduce your attendance at the meeting at the meeting point there are still some inventor days until 9 00 p.m. it will be due back to the committee to be approved so that you can expect an였습니다 and revive the meeting even at 630 announcement come through the meeting at the meeting all time again像 Phoenix plans representative right for a TAMIMN gears brotha oh and bringing care to 7-10, discuss preparation of annual report. 7-20, discuss succession planning. 7-25, review and vote to approve minutes of August 24, if available. And 7-25, setting time for times of next meeting, 7-30, adjourn. And in person, we have Brad Carver, myself, John Klein, Nick Lombardi, Brian Herlihy, Chief McPherson, Kelly Lappin. And online, we have David Bernstein. Is there anybody else, Rob? No, that's us.
So for public comment, Mr. Bernstein, I understand you have a comment.
Can you hear me? Yes. Great. Several years ago, under a different town administrator and a different IT manager, Waylon came within a hair's breadth of losing several million dollars as a result of a sophisticated phishing attack. After discussion at the next town meeting, I offered an amendment to increase the IT budget by the 50K that the IT manager stated was required to prevent recurrence. If you attended our last town meeting, you saw IT manager Lombardi and I engage in a discussion of how much more was needed to ensure the protection of Waylon's IT assets. But my amendment was correctly ruled out of order because our bylaws now prohibit such actions on town meeting floor. Therefore, I am imploring you to ensure that elements of our IT and DPW budgets required to protect our assets are fully funded. As the paper I sent you points out, AI lowers the cost and skill needed to conduct creditable, affordable attacks at municipal scale. And IT infrastructure isn't the only target. In the month of July, more than 100 municipal water systems in the United States were attacked. So I understand that Waylon is under extreme financial pressure. I get it. But we cannot allow our assets or the mechanisms that we depend on, like clean water, to be held hostage or to be lost. So please. Please find a way to fund these at the appropriate level. And I trust the managers involved to state what those levels are. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bernstein. We are going to be reviewing those requests this evening. And we'll take your comments into consideration.
Anybody else? I don't believe there is. No, there's not. Okay. I saw Kirsten join briefly. I don't know if she's on the other side. Panelist? Okay. Hey, Kirsten. I think that unless there's any objections or comments, and I think perhaps the best way to approach it is to proceed first with Chief McPherson. I think what you have is fairly straightforward, at least from what I've looked at. And so why don't we begin there? And I think that what we've done is where you've had changes from previous years, perhaps you can focus on those and do what. Okay. So for this next year, this is the year 28, we asked for expectation equipment of $85,000. That was the jaws of life. I do believe that has been in there. We wish you a compliant fit testing machine, 30,000, and then the fire command vehicle for 90. I will point out that the cardiac monitor and the fire command vehicle were the things that got switched around. I don't know. Last year, I had included that. I know the first draft didn't have that change. That was changed last year based on usage of the command vehicle and funding that was received for the cardiac monitor, which we're in the process of buying. Yeah. And I think I told you, Neil, via email, we had it as you requested it. When we submitted it to the town manager, they reversed it inadvertently. So we had raised that with them after town meeting, but that wasn't the intent based on our discussion. That's perfect. So as you can see, none of these are really regular capital expenditures for equipment that has come to the end of its useful life. And that total is $205,000.
Okay. If you didn't want to continue on and just as I said, no changes that you had from previous year.
Oh, okay. There was no other changes that left. Oh, that's okay. Everything else is the same. I think virtually everything is the same. And then just added the, the final year as you requested. Yes. Got it. Got it. Do you have schedules of, I'm sorry, go ahead. It's immaterial that the cardiac monitor fiscal 30 went up by $5,000. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. Do you have schedules that go beyond 2032 in terms of the useful life of various pieces of equipment? I do. Is that something you could share with us? Cause we are trying to stretch out the, the capital plan to more than just five years. So if you'd have that, that would be helpful. And we're not looking for perfect chief. We're what we're trying to get an idea of it's known. If it's known useful life, we know some things might stretch a little longer. Others might come in shorter, but at least it starts to give us a cadence of what a longterm pattern looks like. Right. If we know it has to be reversed, maybe include more items, but in the longterm question section on the general tab that we're the two, large vehicles, right? Yeah. And I think those are the biggest things that I've mapped out. Some of the ancillary stuff I've not mapped out as clearly past the five year mark. But for example, the ladder truck is one of those things that, and pumpers are big expenditures. So those are the things for vehicles because of their costs of trying to map out their useful, effective life, right. And based upon the number of years that they will be good for. So I do have that for another five years built out already. I can send it to you tomorrow. Yep. That'd be perfect. That, that's most important. Um, I would say by the time we get to next year, we're going to want to start to next year's process, start to map out the cadence of everything else or the other stuff, because very often you're very good about it. Chief. When you come in, it's because things have met the end of their useful life. Well, we probably knew what the rough end of the useful life was the day we bought it. Right? Sure. So we can, we can get a better idea of the overall financial needs to, to replace that equipment. Um, the longterm. Right. And I should point out if I may to that, you know, obviously we always look at England's revenue. We're not in the business of making money, but I would say to you that the reimbursements, we just increased our England's rates recently. And I think that the revenue is generally up. All right. And a lot of the items that are purchased, the smaller items, and that's certainly up to you in finance have been funded out of that England's fund. So the good news is for the smaller items, which is the majority of what we have other than vehicles. And I think that there will continue to be, uh, a good inflow of, of funding, for some of those items. Since you brought it up is we raised the rates, but I know we were getting a lot of pressure from insurance, um, on recovery. Are we, we're not getting more pressure after we raise rates. Um, so I'll answer that this way, that there is insurance companies will pay reasonable and customary rates. Private insurance will pay higher, reasonable and customary rates. And Medicare, Medicaid and mass health, right? The majority of our business is mass health, Medicare, Medicaid. So we get less on that grouping in the middle of the majority compared to the private insurance. Yeah. So obviously there is certain increases that they will allow on a yearly basis. Even Medicare, Medicaid increases, I think it's like 2% per year or something of that nature. Uh, so we're just trying to capture whatever we can get up to what is reasonable and customary. And we hadn't moved our rates, I think for like five or six years. Um, so I think there is still going to be some increased revenue. I would say that even before that rate increase, that it fluctuates from year to year. But I think the amount that we've been recovering and overall revenue, um, it hit actually was, was ahead of the year before it's been on an upward track. Yeah. So set a different way. We upped our rate there within reasonable and customary. So we expect most likely private insurance will pay, but we're still beholden on Medicare, Medicaid, and mass health to whatever they dictate the rate is. Yep. Absolutely. Okay.
Uh, you may also have any other questions. What'd you think of the form easier this year? So I think there's a, I just had to look through it and I thought that the fact that it did a lot of the workforce, that was very nice and easy, nice format for presentation to summarize your results. So I think that's awesome. And again, I thank you for all the support in the past and the residents, for their support. And I think this is a great effort because having been a finance major, um, in college of absent that I understand the importance of capital budget and trying to iron out some of those curves and challenges when you don't do that. So I applied your effort in doing this. I think it's a great worthwhile endeavor. Thank you. Anything you wish changed or, um, you know, I'm going to guess there's some things weren't really applicable to your items, right? They tend to be more focused on building items, but anything you looked at and said, why are you asking for this? And do you really need that? The only thing I would comment is when it comes to prioritization, it is harder for me to prioritize when I'm talking about a cardiac monitor and an aesthetic jaws in my mind that I might be biased. I will accept that, that to me, those are both high priorities. So you probably saw a lot of my scoring was pretty consistent in terms of it being a top priority. And I didn't feel badly about rating all of that. But again, a lot of the things that we're purchasing are, are for, are for emergency purposes. That's fair. And if you read our report last year, you would notice that we prioritize to health and safety in the ranking of the overall time. So we understand that, um, we still ask because the money does run out at some point. And so if we put life and safety first, that's, that's going to be fine for your stuff, but somewhere down the line, right there, there's not going to be enough. So I appreciate that though. And one last time, we'll just be through that. Clearly the costs go up. Yeah. Year over year. Yeah. So even though we may have put $50,000, when this comes up in five years, it's unlikely that costs is may still be 50,000. So I try to pick realistic numbers and give a little bit of. Yeah. You escalate you're including an escalation and assumed escalation in an item that you're putting out five years. Right. And if you understand that actual escalation will be different, but you're putting an assumed escalation. You're not using today's dollars. That is correct. Okay. Just. And I think that's what we want. You want that, that cushion in this. Okay. One additional question. So on the JCC side, any app, there was nothing in 2032. Is there anything needed that we didn't already have in by last year? I don't, I know the police chief, please chief submits. They say that you talked about it, but I don't have it in front of me. Okay.
I think we asked. Yeah. He didn't either. That's another question. Greg, um, I don't think you were at the slug board meeting when the questioning came up. I think that's the Whitney raised a question when they're approving a consent calendar that included, I think something to do with an ambulance. And I thought he said something about some sort of lawsuit that, um, it was dealing with pricing pricing in Massachusetts of, of that type of vehicle. Is that anything we should be interested in terms of money? So what I can say to you is that, um, I think that there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of evidence that there's, I believe two class action suits that not a Wayland is involved with. And the first one is with fire truck manufacturers. So there is, uh, a suggestion that there has been some collusion and that's the allegation. So that that is being pursued. That's being done through town council. I can't say what and when that will. And I think the second one that, uh, Michael and I have discussed is relative to PFAS. Okay. And PFAS and firefighting gear and, and potential health implications in a firefighting gear. So I think that's something that we should be looking at. And I think that's something that we should be looking at. And I think that's something that Michael and I have discussed is relative to PFAS. Okay. And PFAS and firefighting gear and, and potential health implications in firefighters. So that is the second thing that is a class action suit that don Wayland has chosen to, I think, participate in both of those. Okay. Good tip. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You were on the next step. With a hands with, with a hands with the, with the, She has one item. Yes, thank you. Kirsten, I was here first. Okay.
Yeah, I mean, this should be quick. It should be very quick. Okay. So I sent you the quotes. Yes, you did. Yes, I had sent that earlier with the initial request. I guess it didn't get transferred. No, it did. Yeah. I have one question. Why John Deere? No, well, the current tractor is John Deere and all our implements are John Deere. So we can't, you know, all we're buying is a tractor. We're not buying the mowing deck. And we ended up, you know, I mean, it was a bit of, it wasn't the smoothest process. The last time we purchased this, the cost went up by the time the procurement officer purchased our John Deere. So we couldn't get the tiller. And so somehow we ended up with an auger. Which we've never used. So they did tell us we can turn in, we can use its traded value. And so that's why what you're looking at is this quote. It's a 56,000 is the cost of the tractor itself this year, right? And we're hoping that we can at least get some traded value for, you know, this implement that we have no use for. And again, I don't know what it would be. I have no idea how they would cost that in two, three years from now. But I think we've pretty much run the end of the life of this. We do have, I hire, I have a contract with a small engine equipment company that comes out twice a year and sometimes more if needed to service all our equipment. So that's a lot of the little stuff, the mowers, the brush mowers, you know, everything. And he does do the John Deere, also the tractor, you know, cleans it up in the fall and it's ready for winter. The one thing we do. I have a problem with is because it's stored in a, I don't know if you've seen it. It's on a common, we have a metal shed that we put it in as if we're storage, but that doesn't keep the mice out. So we do have a little bit of a problem of chewing on things. Just hungry little guys. I have a question for you, Kelly, you might know. When, I want to refer to trade-in. When we go for an appropriation, should we be looking at it from a gross? I think. It has to be gross costs because the trade-ins, the trade-ins come in back to free cash. That's my understanding. Oh, that's dealt with under the.
Okay. So the number that's in here is your inflated assumption of the gross. Yeah. I mean, it's only 9,000, less than 9,000 more than it is today. And that's, so that's in two years, right? FY 29, we're looking at, so I'm hoping we can live along the current tractor. Yeah. Until. Until then, but it's, it is, it's an essential piece of equipment for us. The conservation department manages 200 acres and four of the biggest properties are old agricultural fields. So they're flat, they're easy to mow. And we do use them for trails. You know, we, we use the, for cow comm and sedge, that's the tractor gets used for trail management, you know, on a weekly basis almost. And in spring and fall, we use it for field mowing. So it does. It does. It does get well used. One question and one comment. Question is process. Why is this coming in this year, as opposed to it having been included last year? Did we just miss the cutoff for getting something in or did the tractor deteriorate over? Well, no, because it is really well maintained and it doesn't have a ton of hours on it. Like maybe it's something a farmer would use. We assume that we could. We could have it for 10 years before we'd have to buy a new one. But like I said, then we developed some of the mechanical issues. It's been out in Lancaster towed out there by DPW to get fixed. It's came back and had to go back again, or they, they had, they came out here to fix it again. So it's been this, this ongoing process over the last two or three months that we've had just, you know, fairly extensive mechanical issues with it. And at some point you have to realize, do we keep paying that? Or do we just, you know, realize that what we really need is probably a replacement. Mm-hmm. And I know DPW told me they use, they tend to replace every eight years, but we were hoping that we could, we could push it a little bit further because again, you know, we do use it probably, we have one person using it, you know, so it does get less hours than probably what DPW does. But like I said, I think at this point we've kind of get to hit the point where it's like, Ooh, I think it's probably time to replace it. So I'm just, I'm anticipating the finance director will ask the question in his review, you know, where was this? So I'm just, I'm anticipating the finance director will ask the question in his review, you know, where was this? And, you know, sort of last year's. Yeah, it wasn't anticipated that we would need it. And this is the only capital asset that falls under the ComCom's purview. Yeah, for the most part, yeah. And my comment is. Well, and the other, and the attachments. Yeah, yeah. They were bought at the same time. Yeah. When we purchased the original one. My comment is, Linda, I believe is the only one that got her board to approve this request before it came to us. You got to say Gold Star along with the ComCom. And, you know, what you don't know also is that the last time I asked for this, that I was, I was told I had to reduce my budget by $15,000 for three years in a row to pay the town back for the tractor. So technically, I'm not sure you guys actually. By the finance director? I don't know who that is. That's outside our purview.
Technically, you didn't pay for the first one either, because. Definitely outside our purview. I have no other questions. Yeah. So it was. But like I said, if anybody enjoys our property, you have to understand that we do that with one and a half people. We do 1,200 acres with one full-time staff and a part-time staff. So having, having equipment like a tractor is really, really essential because you can't do that. I mean, before I started, they were doing that by hand with brush hogs. Okay. And it's just, I mean, you can't do that. I mean, it's, it's, it's so labor intensive. So this, this is important, very important piece of equipment. And for us. So. All right. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Be in 12 years.
This is the other reason I'm going out. Now, right. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to Kirsten. Hello, Kirsten.
As you know, we already talked to. Good evening. Good evening. I'd like to. I talked to Mike Bale last, last week and went over a lot of the school items, but.
You know, we'd like to give you the opportunity to discuss any items that Mike did not discuss or any changes since then. I know you made a presentation of the school board. I will not school with the site for last week.
So. So that was the school committee that we. That they had approved the 28 submissions and really the only submission was the change from the fiscal year. Ask of a feasibility study from 30 to 28 and at the going cost for a feasibility, the size that Wayland public schools would need. And that is based on the architect study that we. Just completed last last year. And the rationale for that change is that we will be submitting a statement of interest with the Massachusetts school building authority in April their next submission timeline. And what they require in order to invite you into the program is validation that you have the town funding to conduct a feasibility study. That would be the. The first part of the process that they invited us into a project, so if we are not invited into a project, this first cycle, then we would not have need, and we would not request that that amount be bonded. We would be able to notify the town prior to that happening. The, the process is typically fairly quick. Once it gets. Started the applications are in April, and typically, by the end of June, early July, they have made their notifications for what districts would be invited and then they make sure that you have that support from the town or community to engage in that process. And with the process, that feasibility study portion is also a portion that would be eligible for. A portion that would be eligible for. A portion that would be eligible for. A portion that would be eligible for the reimbursement process. Once the project was identified. So, even though it is a bit of a sticker shock at the upfront, that would be kind of wrapped into the total project costs for a new construction build. And that leads to the 2nd, soft submission. That was just a. Tbd placeholder in each subsequent year. Thereafter. Thereafter, depending on if, and when we are able to secure a construction projects, and the hope is to be partnering with so that we do get that reimbursement. Portion Christine, that the reimbursement on the 2Million, though, is only only if you were to be accepted right as as a project, right? It's it's if they were to say, no, it's some cost. It's if they were to say, no, it's some cost. It's if they were to say, no, it's some cost. It's if they were to say, no, it's some cost. Its你才不是收入? We're not set to. I think so, are we set on your endorsement? And then we'reまた upfront. We're not no bill of that social life. Is that the only betty elders risk is if you Lois to the town? Right? Like, well, I think she said we wouldn't spend it. Would we unless we might for rent if they invite you in, that means that you're invited. In to all right, to conduct a project. Okay. That it doesn't mean that that the town the town didn't vote. So, you're invited in. But if the. Town approves the 2M in spend. the $2 million? No. If the town declined to support the construction, that's correct. Okay. So I don't have the CIP. You're saying that on that line item, you inserted, after the $2 million in fiscal 20, you inserted TBD in the other four fiscal years? Correct. Because we don't know what that cost would be. And it's more of an informational to put all the boards and groups on just to understand that we are looking for these construction projects. So the $2 million is for one of potentially several long-term projects, correct? Yes, but that's the most immediate one. So they're going to be spread out across multiple years. I just don't know when a construction actual, like a build project would occur. So rather than leaving it open to one particular year, I populated the entire five-year lookout just with a TBD. Right. So this $2 million is for a project when everyone gets prioritized. And the TBDs that you put in are potential funding for construction of that project. Correct. As opposed to more feasibility money for subsequent school building projects, correct? Correct. At this juncture, yes. Okay. So TBD, just for everybody in the committees, that TBD was in the summary that came from facilities on their summary that was manually inserted, but there's no corresponding CIP. So when I summarize the CIPs, it doesn't populate a TBD. I mean, I can put it back in there, but Okay. I think it would be more productive to put, even if we're making up a number, a placeholder, if it goes. Yeah, I think much like the town building, I suspect we will hopefully have time to add a section on the long-term Yeah, the big long-term projects that are up in the air. Yeah, Kirstine. I looked at minutes for the school committee. I know there are... four or five different options that the architect ran through in terms of which buildings for which grades, etc. Has the school committee staked out a position yet on which one, which option they want to proceed on? So we, the school committee and the district, are not at liberty to decide on a project. That would be up to the MSBA. So they, that would be part of the overall process, that they would look at all of our data, the... Okay. That would be part of the overall process, that they would look at all of our data, the... the architectural study that we conducted, all of our historical enrollment patterns, all of that information, and they would identify what project they would be willing to support. So we're basically in a holding pattern until we submit that SOI and hear from the MSPA. I want to pull on that a little bit further. So when we submit the feasibility study, are we submitting an application that includes the four, I forgot how many options there was, five options, and they're picking which path and then which building is going to go first? Or are they, we're picking up your... We're picking a path and the building, and they're picking the building that they want to go first.
I'm sorry, I lost you there. Yes, so for example, I don't have it in front of me, but I think one of the options dealt with, do you put kindergarten through second grade in one building, third grade to fifth grade in another building, middle school, and we got the high school. And the focus seems to be on the elementary schools, getting those rebuilt, and the renovation of the middle school. So I think what you're asking, Kelly, is if, and each of those options seems to have a slightly different configuration, all of which include building and or renovating buildings. So are you asking, is the town going to put in its application a single path and then leave it to the MSPA to decide which of the buildings in that path happen first? Or are you going to present the architect's full study with all five of those options? Or are you going to present the architect's full study with all five paths and let the MSPA decide which of the five options they like or fit within there? So we have had preliminary conversations with MSPA. Dr. Fleischman did have a conversation, and this was the process that they identified and laid out for us. So yes, the process itself was that we would likely submit multiple statements of interest, and we would identify the priority level. At this, at this juncture, every project is a priority one. So every project we are saying is needed, and that's where their decision would be identifying what would be the most value and the most, the best investment for their funding, for their funding share. I guess I'm still not following, though. Is a project a building? Or is a project a series of buildings? It's one building at a time, but you have to submit multiple in order to be identified for the different options that you have identified with the previous architect and the work that was done this past year. Right. So you'll put in a statement of interest for, for argument's sake, maybe I'll just pick one of the options. Two new elementary schools and renovation of middle school. Each of those will go in as a separate application? Yes. And is there any, as you went through all those studies, is there, is there any basis on which one has to get done before the other for that path to make sense? Or can they all be done in whatever order the MSBA decides it makes the most sense for their, you know, purposes?
Well, I think that's where, you know, that's where we are at in terms of being invited into a project is that they would identify what, you know, we're saying we need, we need all of these projects, which one would you support and partner as a reimbursement cost share? And that's what, that would be the project, the construction, whether it be a merging of buildings or one building or an addition. Or a new construction, whatever the project that they identified to move forward with is what we would be engaging in as the first, first construction project. So these are going to happen over a number of years. The first one is likely going to be between, you know, three, three years from the starting point. So we're hopeful that we actually get accepted into the feasibility that would then be another year out before. Or those results are compiled and identified for what a total cost of a, the construction would be. So it's in phases that are very, very specific and it is delineated and driven by the MSBA. Maybe what we should do is, this kind of gets into the, I mean, it's immediate because it's a fiscal 28 request, right? But based on looking at the architect's set of options. And likely timelines and things, I think it's optimistic, my opinion, it's optimistic to think that the first building where, where we to be, or as you say, it's cool to me when we're included in the MSBA for funding that I think it's optimistic that, that you'd actually be building something four years from now, maybe. I would hope so. It clearly is going to be in the future. I think it's going to be in the, in the 10 to 15 year long-term plan. So, you know, it seems to me that this is probably, there's a lot more that this committee could get into from a long-term planning perspective. Obviously the schools have done, you know, lots of work on this, but, you know, maybe, maybe a separate meeting at some point and have Kirsten in and, and, you know, even possibly, I don't know if they cost money to have them in, but have the architects that put the fee ability together. I mean, you all have a copy of it. You can read those options. You can watch their presentations. But I think for tonight's purpose, you know, I just feel we'll get bogged down if we, I mean, it's relevant to how do we feel about, you know, recommending spending, you know, 2 million in fiscal 28 and accelerating it from fiscal 30. But I just think beyond that, it's, it's, it's more in a long-term discussion, my view. I think it's also important that that also, you know, will take away some of the facilities capital requests that are ongoing that we have to continue on. So that's also what we're hopeful is that, you know, by building a new school, building whatever size that, that will help alleviate that long list. Facilities, capital projects that are related to the schools because of the deferred maintenance on those. We want to make sure that, you know, obviously that side would be being reduced over the course of the long-term once construction is done. Clearly an elementary school X, if Michael's got slotted in, you know, four or $5 million to do a new roof. Right. Uh, four or five years out, but you know, that, that elementary school X is going to get replaced with a new building. You might be able to figure out a way to pass the roof for a couple of years, right? That's kind of what you're saying. Yes. But, but you've got, you've got the money in your plan now because you just don't know when the town will get accepted into the MSBA process. Well, is that what I'm hearing? I may be phrasing it another way. The $2 million you're, you're requesting it. That's just the price of admission to get into the program for the MSBA. Yeah. So it's not like we can actually pay a fee to get in. That would be nice if we could just do that, but it's what we would have to be responsible for and show that we are ready and committed to doing a project. And with that is the first step is the feasibility study. And I'm happy to put together, you know, like a one pager of the process and the steps that the MSBA runs. But the first step is to, you know, we can't do anything for the MSBA. We can't do anything for the MSBA. So we're just going to keep that as a reference. And then the cycle of the statement of interest, it is only a one time per year process in April. So again, we are, we're hopeful because we have been in communication with MSBA. They know that we've done our due diligence and homework this past year. So we're very hopeful that, that we would be selected. No, we're not. We're not. We're not. We're not. the condition of our buildings. Yeah, so Christine, I just want to, based on past experience, I want to reiterate what I think you said and connect it with what Brad was saying. We're going to make an application. When you make the application, in order to be considered, they need to know that the town is committed to the feasibility study, which is why they do that in April time frame, right? So you're going to start that in April of 27, so we're going to vote at town meeting in May and be able, and the idea of being able that we could tell them we've secured the funding, right? But you have, you only have a limited amount of time, right? When they're, once you put the application in, it's within a certain amount of time to have a commitment from the town on the feasibility study, right? Correct. That's why we're going through this process now. Right. So if they apply and then the town doesn't vote to approve the feasibility money, then we would get deprioritized by MSBA because we're not ready to go. The other question I posed to the finance director, if you go back a couple years, the amount was a million dollars and it's floated around in the five-year capital plan. Or somewhere too. I feel like it's, it's floated in that range, but for a number of years, he, the finance director reflected it as did the finance committee as being funded with excluded debt by itself. It's, it's below at least, and there's now, there's a question of what the threshold is for putting an excluded debt question valid. There's some now that believe that, that, that you sort of really have to do it if it's more than 4 million or 5 million. But it doesn't mean that you can't do it if it's less than that. So anyway, I asked the finance director for the benefit of this group, given that it's moving up in the request and it's also moving up in dollar terms, given the impact it has on the, on the levy, which according to him, and I haven't checked his model yet, but he tells me that in spite of the fact that the feasibility study is. Connected to a long-term building project, a building project would be, you know, borrowed over 20, maybe even now 30 years. He says you have to amortize the loan off in five years. So, you know, at $2 million, it's 400 grand a year principal, which would hit the tax levy. And so his latest reply to me, which I can't remember if I think I forwarded to the rest of them, I didn't know, I'll forward it after the meeting, was that at the. Moment. He's thinking that needs to go in as excluded debt and as an, and typically when that's done, that would be handled through a separate warrant article. So I'm mentioning all of this because Kirsten, I think that question came up at the school committee meeting. And it's important, you know, to get that pinned down before articles have to be submitted starting, you know, December 15th or whenever the board opens the warrant, but it's also important to know if that's where the finance director wants to head with this and we'll make, we'll make our own recommendation, but that could have implications on sort of the override discussion that's ongoing, because that could then be a ballot question that's got to be there for excluded debt, which then you're explaining to the town meeting, you know, the long-term process, why this is needed. So that, that of all. This, that's the only thing that I think, you know, we really need to be on the same wavelength, the finance director, um, and, and Kirsten, you and the school committee need to be in the loop on that so that you're not caught off guard. Um, absolutely. Thank you.
So do we have any other questions on the, um, the $2 million? No. I think I understand as best as I'm going to at this point. Yeah. I mean, in a, in a perfect world, I asked Kirsten, you know, where, where did she get that number from? And that came from her understanding from the architects that did the initial, uh, um, long-term study, uh, that that's kind of the quote going rate. Um, it's a lot of money and in a perfect world, it'd be nice to have something a bit more granular. Um, so if it were possible to go back to the architect and say, well, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this boss, risk analysis, we, we, we used it, but like, you know, is, is it, is that something that needs to be done if you're going to pass this grant? Uh, insight and. Okay. You told us it's going to be approximately 2 million. Can you, can you just give me a little more sense of what, who did they get all that money from architectural firm or does that include all sorts of different, uh, third-party folks that get involved with. Well, they're very much involved with the number of construction projects with the MSBA outside of Wayland so that they know through their experience and what they have done. Yeah. Well, that was very important. So are there other sin things that any other businesses want to know? Well, I'm looking to see this as much as possible. most recently, that that has been the cost structure for the large-scale feasibility. Because what we went through was really a planning study to determine what's needed for the long-term facilities. And what they would be doing, or whomever the architect is that was selected, if we were selected with MSBA, would then engage in the full feasibility study, which would look at the specific project that they have invited us into to consider. Yeah, I guess I'm just asking if you could ask them, based on the fact they've done this for other projects, is of the $2 million, is there a breakout of what that gets spent on? So, is there $100,000 paid to some firm to do an environmental study? Is there $50,000 that goes to XYZ firm to do a survey? You know, all the things that are involved in, quote, a feasibility study. I assume an architectural firm doesn't do everything and get all $2 million. So, I'm sure, you know, they wouldn't have a budget specifically for Wayland, but if they can share its public information, I assume if they could share an invoice or a summary of costs, actual costs that were incurred by some district that could evidence. I can certainly ask for a high level. I mean, they won't be able to give us granular details on specific areas, but, you know, high level cost centers in that type of a study, I'm sure that, you know, they can give me some kind of delineation.
Or reference the two or three other communities that they've worked with that have paid the $2 million or it's a million and a half escalated to $2 million. Yeah, they can just point us to the town. So, we can call up and say, hey, would you mind sharing? We're just looking to get, we'd like to be in a position to both understand where that money would go for what and then be able to explain it to people. So, that would be helpful. I'm just anticipating that question will come up somewhere along the way.
And the reason, the reason it moved from FY30 to FY28 is because the architectural review is completed? No, it's because we are going to be submitting a statement of interest to the MSBA to be considered for a project. Well, you're ready now to do it because. Right, but you're ready two years earlier than. Well, we've submitted statements of interest prior to, but we did not have the full scope of a long-term facilities plan. So, that has amplified the ability for us to be considered. So, we could have continued to submit statement of interest year after year, but right now. The likelihood that we will get invited in is much has a higher respondent rate because we have done the work. So, this item was, if you go back two or three years, this item had been included in fiscal 27, I think. And then. Pushed out. And then it got nudged because again, it wasn't before your time, Christine. The last year Susan was here. It wasn't still clear as to exactly the timing of that. And so, the finance director and his plan to the financial committee pushed it out. I'm not sure on what basis he pushed out last year person. You may not remember. I asked you whether before we finalized our recommendations, whether you felt fiscal 30 was the right place for it. And I can't remember if it was you or maybe the chair of the school committee said to me, you know, there was some understanding with the finance director when he pushed it out, that it was. He understood that it might need to be moved up. Just because. You know, their, their hope was they would get to the point where they've now gotten. So to answer your question, Kelly, I don't think. In my mind, I don't think fiscal 30 was anything more than a. Deferred placeholder that the finance director came up with. We didn't change it. I'll be at a gave person an opportunity last year to change it. I'm not sure. I think. I think that that was the reason that. She would have been able at the point I asked. Didn't necessarily move it up to fiscal 28, but yeah. I understand. I. Yeah, which is the more reason that. You know, excluded that might. Have to be the way. That we consider going just because. Again, it's going to have a dramatic impact on the tax levy. We did. Cause right now we had it funded. with levy debt i don't remember what we recommended
i i think we i think we included as ex i excluded that i don't have to look it up yeah anyway but it's it's in the town manager's plan the finance committee's tiger plan right now at the moment is levy debt um but um so and again that just causes uh political logistical issues next spring
i think the other the other uh topic was the um ball field renovations right
which was which is sliding in there for 20 fiscal year 28 at 2.7 million dollars 29 but 29 sorry yeah went up by 200 000 first name is that you or mike thea sorry i didn't submit or change anything other than the feasibility study so if you're asking about facilities related yeah michael said he uh he didn't know so someone maybe recreation someone um got to either well i guess we can throw back to michael and ask who completed that cell in the in the five-year plan but it went up by a couple hundred thousand yeah but i i think we i thought we asked him about this it was basic because um that's the one of the ones that we submitted that was from the library it was a project uh we that uh those credits are the one-time credit uh and one in the uh uh and the concept of city loan um although they're just saying that's where we'll be able to salvar you're only able to start paying the money uh to support the relatives because when you're going to uh to take uh to the community uh uh at least at this point in time you know if you're coming into the community you're going to have a ton of money but i think it's something else the other part of the plan was um but you're going to have a ton of money but i think it's something else the other part of the plan was um Someone in that finance committee said that they had heard that the athletic director was interested in also getting lights put at the field. And my understanding is that would be somewhat expensive. So maybe that's something you can.
You know, it's a school project and ultimately has to be approved by the school committee, which they did last year. Right before the FinCon considered it. Right. But so we have the definitive knowledge of whether the athletic director is going to come to you, you know, two years from now and say, oh, this thing's up in the queue. Oh, by the way, I want lights and they cost half a million dollars. If that's something you could find out if that's something he said and how strongly he feels about that and then report back, that would be helpful.
Absolutely.
And then the only other question, again, it's a Mike, pay a question, which I didn't hear back from today as I was going through the descriptions in the CIPs. There's two fairly sizable school roof request in thirty one and thirty two. And one of them is described as district wide new roofing roofs, whatever, and the other specifically mentions Clayton Hill. Oh, but the description in each of the CIPs. Specifically references Clayton Hill. So my question to him was, is that is Clayton Hill eight million dollars with two phases of four million or was the description in the district wide roofing or was it a duplicate request or something else? So again, I can just share what he has explained in his terminology using district wide is that would be for any other sections. So I would say that would be for any other sections. Of any of any of the other buildings that might be in disrepair in a given year. Because it may not be a full remove replace situation, but it could be there was snow that came through a section or a wing of one of the other buildings. And that would be, you know, certainly a few hundred thousand, if not a million dollar repair type of. Thing, so that's what he has shared in the descriptions of using a district wide category for those unknowns that could really certainly happen. And Clay Pitt Hill is definitely on the schedule for needing a full replacement. Again, not knowing what type, what project we might be getting involved with the MSBA. So that's the projection. Out would be the Clay Pitt Hill roof and then a district wide category for any of the other buildings that had significant disrepair that needed to be rectified in a particular year. I'll wait till he responds to my email. My guess is he'll tell me that the description in the district wide CIP is just not accurate. And I probably know the answer to this, but.
But for the fact we were looking for the MSBA to help out with all of the new buildings and a renovation of the middle school. Are there any of these large ticket repairs that the state will help fund? The only other projects they do are roof repairs, boiler and windows. Those are considered accelerated projects. So those are typically an annual cycle to submit. And it's not out of the question. But typically, if you're going for a larger scale project, you're not going to get selected for the smaller project.
And if you recall, they did, we did get MSBA funding on the local roof a few years ago.
Because she would take their eye off the ball. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do we have any other questions for Kirsten?
No.
All right. Well, thank you. We appreciate your, your time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
Used one person there we go. All right. So I apologize that I did not send this out beforehand. We can start with SENIX. I think we're going to have to go in. On this next page. GOPOL juntig andни it tonight. I had some updates today that I wanted to share that we included. What this paper shows is the capital funding that IT has had, how much we've spent in the past year, both on encumbrance and all. So if you look at the column that identifies the initial funding, when I came in last year, we had $1.1 million in capital funding. So far to date, I have spent $498,000. I currently have $415,000 encumbered, leaving me an ending balance at the end of 26. Two. $218,000 current date. I have $218,000 left in my capital items here. Okay. So the purpose of this document is to show you that I am spending down capital dollars. Okay. As you can see, and we discussed, at this point in time, I have $500,000 awarded for 27. I plan on spending every dollar of that. I have a question about that. Certainly. I thought we talked to you about this when you were in two or three months ago. So the first item, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but there was an error in the warrant in terms of the descriptions that were under the headers that you show here. And I thought at the end of our last discussion with the town manager present, the conclusion was that because of the description in the warrant of the $250,000, it could only be spent on... Video monitoring and management, which you're saying is cameras, $100,000. These other items seem more like potentially cybersecurity remediation, modernization infrastructure. And likewise, the next item, which is supposed to be for public safety, regional emergency system stuff, had the description that was supposed to appear under cybersecurity remediation, modernization. So my view, and I thought what we talked about was none of the... None of the $150,000 would be spent for what it's described here as being potentially going to be spent for. It could only be spent on cybersecurity remediation. So I guess I'm still both confused and concerned. And we just asked that you don't need to do it tonight, but you just kind of talked to the town manager. I know I thought he had said he had some conversation with town council. And I thought... The issue was, you know, was there a wide enough berth under the $250,000 to not just do, quote, cameras, but to do other things, albeit related to the video monitoring, as opposed to thinking that you could... Yeah, spend the money as well. No, just so I'm sure is what you've described here, as I just interpreted it, which is a combination of video monitoring and then cybersecurity stuff, and then public safety, regional... Regional emergency is the second item. But that's where you think you're able to go. And I would just like to hear that you... Yeah, I... Can you confirm that with the town manager or the finance director of both? Because I was anticipating you were going to have to ask, and I think we encouraged you at the last time we met with you, because you were going to be stuck. Not necessarily your fault. I was anticipating you were going to potentially ask, were some of the dollars you thought you were getting in fiscal 27's budget in fiscal 28 to be able to sort of catch up? Yeah, I... Here in the comments, what I was trying to identify is what I anticipate that I will need. However, I have not confirmed this with Michael, with the town manager yet. So I was just putting this in as a sense to give you a picture of what that might look like. I think, to Brian's point, I think we have to get that confirmed. I will. Because, if you can only use it for the things that were in the description, then we anticipate your requests need to change to make up the shortfall on cybersecurity. Yeah, and there might be some of that $250 that, unless you decide you're going to spend it on morbidly stuff, You're going to return it... You could return it and use it towards funding the cybersecurity. Yeah, that's the part that... to clarify because I don't believe that I would have a $250,000 need for the camera project. Yeah, because you had asked for $150,000 last year. We recommended it because we thought it was a life safety type thing. And the town manager did not include the $150,000 for video monitoring in his plan. So it got all bollocked up. And again, it wasn't your issue. It was more of a FinCom issue of not getting the right descriptions in the right places. But to Kelly's point, time is of the essence to figure out what's going on here, particularly if you're going to have to ask for some more money to be able to do the stuff that you need to do it on. And hopefully, if you needed $150,000 for cameras, you got $250,000. Then you're saying, return the $100,000 and we'll do the item for the cybersecurity because you need an additional $100,000 for cybersecurity, right? And then you need the public safety regional system because it wouldn't have been funded. If we had to do these projects in accordance with the description, that's where you're short. So we know that. We build it into this year's plan because, quite frankly, by the time town meeting comes, it won't be that much longer before you've got the money and can run with it. But if we don't clean it up and get it in here for this town meeting. So I can do this for 27 or is this for 28 that I would make these changes? That's part of the question. The question is one for the town manager and the council. Okay. What are you able to spend that money on? Are we sure what you're able to spend it on? If they go with the interpretation of you have to spend it on what the description and the warrant is, then you're going to need, you're not going to need $250,000. $250,000 for cameras, right? You're going to have something left over. We're not going to be able to appropriate that until FY28, right? Which is going to affect your planning, right? And how you do things. But it's also, I don't know how far along you are in the process, but it's not that far away. Well, I would like to talk about that. That's one more question. In fiscal 28, in your TIPs, which I think for these two items, you had staged money in. So in fiscal 28, in last year's plan, you had another $150,000 for cybersecurity remediation, blah, blah, blah, and $100,000 for public safety, regional emergency system, which suggests that you needed $250,000 for the latter item, $150,000 in fiscal 27, $100,000 in fiscal 28. And over those same two fiscal years, you were looking for $250,000 last year for cybersecurity and $150,000 in fiscal 28. And you ended up needing $250,000 as part of the fees for 400. So I think what we're saying is, in addition to what you've got in there right now for fiscal 28, which was in there in the plan, is there a chunk of this money that you just cannot spend, what you're currently describing, and thinking you're spending it on? In which case you would have to increase the funding of those two line items to get you up to where you need. It's going to delay your ability to do some of the things before. Yes. here to find other money, right? That's not our call, right? We're making a big deal out of it because we want to make sure the call actually gets made so that we know what to put in here, but it's not our call. It's town council and the town manager on the interpretation of what those monies can be spent for, but if they come in with a strict interpretation, then either, like Brian said, they have to find money elsewhere, not in the capital budget, because we can't change the FY27 appropriation or it's got to wait until FY28's approved. I understand. Okay, thank you. I just thought we had to resolve that and I'll email you the meeting at which we discussed if you want to refresh your memory. That would be helpful. You can listen to the conversation and then go talk to the town manager. You said... That would be very helpful. And the only reason we had such a big conversation about it, because I had asked this question at the town meeting, could we want to reopen the capital budget? The following night to fix this and the town manager said no. I think we can work around it. And at that point, I said, I don't know how you work around it. But I know you were not well that night. But anyway, so we beat that one to death, but it's important because we don't want to find out after the fact that you can't spend it and then you didn't ask for more money. Yeah, I want to be very clear for the public, right? This is not this committee saying, we don't think it should be spent. We're just trying to make sure that it's done through appropriate means, right, that are allowed under the code and the vote of town meeting. And if we don't get an answer on that and they come back later and say you're restricted and we didn't reflect that in your FY28 request, you're going to have another year of waiting. And so that's why it's important to get it resolved and get it reflected in the FY28 request. it needs to be so uh just to talk about the cameras for a minute i am not moving forward with the camera work at this point in time until we have a camera policy established okay that camera policy is in process it has a first draft that's being reviewed it's going to go through several iterations so i don't have an estimate i would like to get this done by november 1st but that is i i can't i i can't tell you what that date will be because there are many iterations for that camera policy so until then i really can't tell you whether or not the funding will be used for cameras or i can use all the camera all the funding the second uh line item for the regionalized system um this is um this project was supposed to be done last year you were supposed to be done this year um the uh the mrec had applied for 25 million dollars they received five million dollars okay which severely impacts this project so right now the go live date is july 1st of 27 however that's in question as to how much funds we will need and i'm trying to get that answer for you so that i can come back and say well i think it's going to cost this much okay i don't have that information today and i'm really pushing hard on mrec to get that um firewall i'm i'm well into that project at this point in time so i would like to follow up with before i get into uh the 28 requests i would like to talk a little bit about technology and the capital and finance process in government it and the cost of it are increasing at a ridiculous rate especially with the war that's going on and technology companies last year in 25 we paid roughly 45 000 for software i had an invoice i had a um the cost would the i was getting invoiced in may okay the vendor would not tell me how much that was going to cost until may 14th when that was due june 30th that cost went from 45 000 to 128 000 in one year okay so i can come and ask for money and tell you this but i don't have any confidence that in 28 it's going to cost that much money and i can ask for money and tell you this but i don't have any consumer service i'd like what's down there if it costs that much money then what would can we do
okay i don't have any students there about 怎樣 but think i can get that how we do it today um in difficult times uh i haven't gotten nothing from the county umm the county did head that on and then we went on the other wall tomorrow morning because said he had been there festival today he had been there until players want to see him i they did them so they wanted to sit down again on the vendors and the state providing them. The other aspect of these grants is they come up and I can only take advantage of them every other year. Okay. So right now we're in a whole year. And I have to wait until 28 before I can request more money. Is the back to the escalating cost of the software and other related IT stuff, does the state have any bulk of the money that I can take advantage of? Is there any purchasing contract that you can work off of, or? Having worked at the state, yes. I'm taking advantage of any enterprise licensing that I can through state contracts. So this is also an aspect that I'm pursuing and take advantage of. So, Nick, given what you just said about processing and what you're going to do in the future, do you have any changes in your existing requests that go out into the out years? And I understand no one can predict what the future is, but do we already know that those baselines are blown based on where things are today? That's difficult to answer. Okay. I can tell you, you know, there are two aspects to this. I can come in and say that I need $500,000 a year, and that's what I need. Right? I can go to FinCom and go to the town meeting, and I only get $150,000 approved, right? Which is kind of where we're at at this point in time. So, you know, to be honest with you, I don't have enough experience to be able to tell you that this is going to be $450,000 in 28, or it's going to be $500,000 in 29. I can put estimates out there if you think that is appropriate for me to do. I think it's appropriate if ... Because we got a number in here somehow, right? If when we came up with that number, and maybe it's ... Well, I didn't come up with that number. I don't know, but if we came up with that number, and we've seen double-digit increases in technology costs, and we know that that number is already bad, right, I don't want to play pretend, right, and say in a plan that we need, you know, $340,000, I'm going to use the telephone, right, to replace the telephones in 29. But if you went and priced them today, it's $600,000, because then we're not going to be able to do the project, or we're only going to be able to do half the project. So I'm not asking you to, like, go pick them out of thin air, but if you know that the costs are already up, it's almost, in my experience, unlikely that they go back down over time. I just don't want to have ... I know we try to get as close as we can on 28, but I don't want to be unrealistic about 29 to 32 if we know that that's not enough. Yeah, I think a few of the numbers in the five-year plan you inherited, and you didn't change them last year, which is fine. We're still trying to figure out, you know, where you needed to go. I think, you know, we all have our own experiences in this, and we heard Dave Bernstein tonight, and I'm happening for, I'm sure, a lot of people, you know, are focused on this stuff. You know, it's akin to life safety, but it's not an actual life, although I suppose ... It can be if it's your water supply. Yeah, it could be. So I think the narrative on what it is has to continue to be, you know, brought forward in a truthful way, to Kelly's point. I know the finance director historically has been loath to allow department heads to make substantive changes to the five-year plan once it's been approved, but if you're, you know, particularly when you have a change in position, and maybe there's a change in, you know, technology changes every day, right? It means something new you're trying to fend off. You know, at some point, to your point, Kelly, you have to face reality in that some of these costs, you're either going to do them, as Dave Bernstein said, we did come within a whisker of the town losing billions and millions of dollars, you don't want to be on the wrong side of that decision of oh, you know, an extra 50,000 or 250,000 could have plugged a hole that, you know, could have cost the town millions of dollars, right? Yeah, my concern is, and we've had this in a couple other places, right, where we were so off on the amount, right, and it's because we kept the plug number, right, for five years that when it came time to do the project, Right. right. right. right. do part of the project, right? And then part of the project in the IT world usually doesn't leave you protected, right? Part of the project means you're still vulnerable in that area. So it's a little different than when there wasn't enough money to replace all these windows and they only replaced half, you know, one side of the window. So that's what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about telling the town it's a certain amount of money, telling them it's to complete, you know, an improvement to secure a vulnerability and still having the vulnerability after you've spent what isn't an insubstantial amount of money. So that's... We're going to fix the town building. We need a million. Oh, we need a million next year. Oh, we need a million next year for the same. We fixed the town building last year. Well, we're still fixing it. Yeah. So it needs... I mean, especially in 2032, it's not in our... This is a budget cycle, right? So those numbers shouldn't be the same as 2028, I would assume, right? Yeah. I can't... I can't imagine a laptop in five years at the same price. Right. So there's opportunity, right? I mean, again, I think the point is, if you know, based on what you've seen already, that hardware is up 20%, the hardware is up 20%. How would you feel about... I'm not all for giving an open checkbook, but I can almost see an article that's posted in the Capital Budget, an article for, you know, IT, identify all the things that really need to be done. Do it as excluded debt. It could be a million dollars, million and a half, and basically tell the town, there's a lot of work. It's going to take three to four years, kind of like a building project almost. And we need the financial commitment sort of upfront. And as long... In my view, as long as there could be a governor on what it gets spent on, so it doesn't all get spent right away in your back a year later. Is that an approach that anybody would feel comfortable with? I have to think about it. I think I would start with, like, what's the realistic... Or you could double. Yeah. I'm not trying to say make it up. You know, I'm just saying, like John just said, right? I know right now, I'm going through it at work, right? Laptops are costing an exorbitant amount more than they did. We're looking at changing our refresh cycle because they're so expensive, right? If I know that, then... I know that if I've got 50,000 in 28, 50,000 in 2030 is not going to replace the same number of laptops, and 50,000 in 2032 is not going to replace the same number of laptops. And oh, by the way, the cost wasn't even 50,000 in 28, it's 70,000. So I'm just asking to take the step back and say, because you did inherit some of this, to say, what is it going to take? And then I would be open to having the conversation about, we need to do an acceleration of that based on what we know. Like if Nick, you said, well, I really need FY28 and 29 projects to get us secured, right? Based on the current threat environment, then I'd be open to that. But I would want to know what those projects are and today's best estimate of what they're going to cost with an inflator. And if we look at trend on technology costs, and they've been going up 10% a year, don't use five. For next year, it's probably not going to happen. Because then you get locked into saying you need to pick one, right? That's what keeps happening. Yeah, I just, this makes me very, very nervous. Yeah, they get crowded out. I mean, there's lots of projects on the list. We had over 150 plus projects over a five-year plan. And again, I know you're trying to toe the line to sort of ask for what do you think will fit within everybody else's ask, but I think what I'm hearing is that people here in a town meeting when the subject came up, and again, there's only so much you really want to be sharing with the town in terms of the current state. But I'm just saying a different approach might be, you know, worth thinking about in the very near term here. All I'm saying is if we're stuck with where we are, we've got to get it done. And I understand there's no science to it, but what I hear from Nick is that you could double what he's asked for a year, and you still wouldn't be providing enough money to accomplish what he thinks needs to be done. There's lots of what you can get done, right? Nick's made a lot of progress in a year, which I'm thankful for, but that was part of my concern last year was there was over a million dollars sitting out there, right, already appropriated and not being spent. And you don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. You could add more to that, but what are you doing first, right? So you've made some progress there. You've got encumbrances on a lot of what you haven't. So I feel a little bit better, right, knowing that those have made good progress. But I just, I'm afraid that, you know, we're being unrealistic about what's going to be able to be done. And we've seen other projects, right? I mean, we're not trying to spend money, but we've seen other projects move half a million or a million because the cost change, right? And we have to have the commerce. Our job is to have the conversation, then prioritize, right? So we need to know what you think the true cost can be based on today. I mean, that's the best you can do. I mean, and I look at this and say, listen, if you're telling me the telephone replacement is $340 and you need another half a million for cyber, I said, then push the telephone, live with it, right? I'm not saying you should. Just right in my head, of course, saying, right? No more telephone. That's a whole other thing. I think you're really, but again, but if we're saying these are the priorities, then let's prioritize and take the money and retool it, right? Just because there's telephone for $340. $340. What's more important? I mean, if you have no network and telephones don't matter because I assume they're all IP based. And for all. But I assume this gets it there, right? So doing this, yeah. Yeah. And understood. And I appreciate the conversation. And I will go back and get back to you within a week as to what I have planned. Because honestly, I have, right now I have 15 projects going on. I have 15, 12 of them are priority and significant. They're not small projects. They're going to take six, nine months to do these projects. And they're significant for our environment. It will have an impact as far as cybersecurity is concerned. So I appreciate the opportunity to go back and take a look at this. I will get back to you within a week as to what I believe to be. Yeah, I guess I was looking at this from a cost conscious perspective. Well, we'd like you to be cost conscious. But also, if you're listening. First check, we want you to be cost conscious. But sticking our heads in the sand and saying, you know, I know costs are up 20%, but I'm not going to put it on the schedule and I'm not going to be able to do the project isn't the right answer. It's put it there and then say, well, I think I prioritize cybersecurity over telephones, right? It's making a better, more educated decision about what's going to be prioritized based on the threat involved in that project. Okay. To me, it's almost like the health safety if you retire. Exactly like that. The health phones, for an example, don't have the same health safety implications that some of the other things do with the threat levels. They'll take the fire alarm, the one from 350 to, hey, we can't have your place, we have to change the whole system. It's now half a million, right? I mean, overnight. Yeah. It's pretty straightforward. We don't like it, but it's straightforward. Or else they're not going to say, like, Do you need one to every room? Yeah. We're not, we need that. I mean, again, this is your budget, right? Obviously, the same thing, but we're more, I mean, dollars are more important in terms of how it flows in terms of like total budget, but in reality, it's your big tool, I mean. Okay. I will ask the question though, particularly on, right, so from a capital standpoint, Mm-hmm. And capital, town's capital policy, there's a rule about, you know, the cost of the project, and there's a rule about the lifetime in order for it to be considered capital, and the lifetime is at least five years. Are we on a five, five-year plus replacement cycle for laptops and PCs? It's a rolling, so the way I'm looking at laptops and what I've done before is it's a rolling replacement. Okay. So, we don't replace all the laptops at once, right? We replace 50 this year, we replace 50 next year, you know, it's a rolling project. So, the 50 you replace this year, when do you replace it again? More than five years? Three to five years. Three to nine? That's the, my only issue, right, with laptop replacement is whether or not it should be in the operating budget and not in the capital budget. I'm sure they sent you here. Yeah. Well. That's my issue, because I don't, they're not, Yeah. They don't last, typically, you know, you're pushing it on five years. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, and, you know, we can talk about budget for just a moment to give you a picture of this. I have three products currently. Munis is $160,000, OpenGov, which is our permitting, was $181,000, and VMware was $128,000. My budget this year is $628,000, or $730,000. $730,000. That's almost half of my budget, but three products. And those products are contracted on a multi-year basis? Yes. Okay. Their annual costs. But the annual cost is fixed at the beginning of the contract, or? At the beginning of the contract, and the most I can do is three years. Okay. And that's locking, you know, locking in at current rate, or an incremental increase. That is unfortunately not within our purview. It's not within our purview. You know, I just say, oh, I'm listening. Yeah. There is Brian's on the FinCon as well. Oh, good. So it's in his purview. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. No. Okay. Back to coming back to us in one week. I assume you would do it anyway, but I think it's pretty important that, well, hopefully your boss is the town manager. Yes. So I think it's pretty important that whenever you are proposing a retool, that you make sure he's totally supportive. Because we don't want to have you come back. You say, okay, great. You guys are open to it. Yeah. We recommend it. The town manager goes, where did you get those numbers from? No, we're going to go back to the old thing. So you need to have the same conversation with him. You can share with him the feedback you heard at this meeting. And you might want to do that before you spend a lot of time retooling your numbers, just to say, do you agree with where they're coming from? If so, I'll go do that. Give it to you. Make sure you're comfortable. Then I'll send it back. Yeah. The alternative approach, Nick, right? Yeah. Yeah. The answer to that is no, is, okay, well, that's fine. Financial reality is that I'm going to need more than $150,000 for cybersecurity in 28. And I'm going to have to put an additional ask somewhere in the five-year plan to make it up because I can do it in stages. And it'll still be effective at closing the threat. It doesn't have to be that the number at a particular year goes up. But I still think you have to manage. Right. To the overall threat environment in the, in the schedule.
Okay. Okay. Any other, we're talking about the telephone system. I'd like to like, what's, what's the, what's the telephone system replacing is that like across the board or. Yeah, across the board. Our current phone system is over 10 years old.
And it's, it's already voice over IP. I thought that, or what, what, what technology are we up for? Just, I hate $340,000 for telephones. Make me one. Right. Well, the, the company that, um, the company that we currently utilize is under chapter 13. Yep. Really? Yeah. Chapter 11, right? Chapter 11. Yeah. Yeah. Chapter 11. So we have to come up with a different solution at some point in the near future, they're no longer going to support. That system. So, you know, it's the, the industry is just crazy. It really is with what's going on. So the, the 340 is based on, on what then? 340 is the estimate that might be. Can carry on both of these old.
Yes. But that, that would suggest that 340 is not anywhere near the right number. I, to be honest with you, I don't know. All right. And the reason I don't know is I have so many projects going on right now and being able to identify some of these things five years out, three years out, um, what can I get done in the given year? Um, how many projects can I have running? Um, it's, um, yeah, I, I don't, I'm the phone project's not. I am my priority list. Yeah. I would say it's not high. I would think it's not high. That's why I would, again, ask, you know, if there's stuff that is higher, that we're making sure that that's incorporated before we're incorporating phones. I mean, I understand they're in chapter 11. I mean, I also would question whether or not landline for the entire district is the entire town is still necessary. I mean, I, I haven't, I haven't had an inline for work. In. Six years. Um, but I'm a landline person, so I know, I know I had to find the same way my copper doesn't mean we can't have, uh, you know, a certain number of landlines in order to, you know, I still have, I still have an, a rotary phone. I can plug into the Jack in my house. I can still access it, but I don't use it. Is the pay phone still up? I believe it is. Yeah. Um, I think that's something we should think about. So the three 40. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are the phones in condition that they can last for another couple of years or that's when push life could be pushed again. Yeah. It could be pushed again. As long as we have support and that that's, that's where we get into the, the crux of the issue, because if they go, you know, if they go bankrupt and we don't have a vendor that is supporting the product, meaning we're not getting security updates on that product anymore. Um, we're just going to go thrifting and get a bunch of rotors. We're going to go through that process, get cars, and then we'll see where we can come back to and they're good things in the long run. We're only going to get to up to a hundred million in the long run. You know, at that point, you know, we're just like, when I'm doing, that's something that I need to sort of think about. Sure. You, you're going to, you're going to be thinking about, about how, you know, able to move these devices out of the way for a couple of years, you know? And so that's, that's the most important thing. Yeah. And then there's, there's, there's a big risk factor. Yeah. Because it's it's a much more difficult and complex situation to understand. And then you come back into the area homes and put them back in. So, well, we don't.
down and they're increasing at an exponential rate we don't know what those costs will be you know right now the issue is um these uh data farms data center farms right we can't get chips businesses can't get chips because they're all going in data centers so the chips cost is gone yeah it's the it's the um not just the chips it's that all of them are actually
all right well hopefully we'll hear from you in a week yes you will yes thank you okay some of your cips didn't have descriptions and they i think they tend to be the older asks can you just re-look at the ones we submitted um unless like the ones i was looking at but then updated yeah no they all have it so maybe maybe maybe you're just really sorry you just resend all of us here but you're going to be your most up-to-date before yeah thanks okay thank you thank you very much thank you so moving on the uh next topic is to discuss the potential content for the draft and see if you can report to the town manager
yes i guess the first question is do we have enough information
got enough uh due diligence in terms of the forms we received to be able to start putting one together well i think we could probably start with looking at last year's report sections and just yes we like this we want to keep it it may we may walk through the whole thing and be like yeah we like the format we just need to update it um but i would pay particular attention to the things we said we wanted to improve and you know are are any of those things that are report related i mean we know one of the things on the list was improving the cic form which we did that's not going to go into other than to say we did it it's not going to go into the report right specifically um but i think it's worth flipping the report and having the discussion about what we're keeping and what we need to do because we've got to get down to business now i'm creating this stuff
anybody feel differently no it's yes i mean we thought we had a ton of time again right there's still a lot against it but the report will be
final report will be longer than last year's report because we have to incorporate the agenda right
i mean it might be that i thought you mean the second addendum we did yeah it was the five years sure so it's going to be uh you know maybe we split the report into the current year focus and then five-year focus or do you just do a five-year focus with the knowledge that 28's in the five-year plan um i still like the current year and five-year focus because the current year is ultimately what the town meeting votes on right whereas the five-year plan goes to town meeting but doesn't it doesn't actually get binding vote does it not a town meeting right so i i still like separating it because if i'm going to town meeting and i wanted to that's where i focus my attention yeah i mean i thought the report that you you drafted i thought the report was really well done so i mean i can't see throwing out the the sort of the format that was used but uh i'm trying to think where we document what actions were next next or need an improvement yeah or yeah i'm kind of uh page four let me look at last year's not this year's well we did sort of a closer we did like folder well you talk about doing uh to be able to post more to match the report say what do we want to do to improve it for next year's uh well on page four we have future process improvement targets yeah we did the first two yeah
we haven't рас feito anything yet we're on page four
not so much on the third bullet
what was the third bullet um getting uh updates on previously approved projects speaking of which i had sent one of the myriad of summaries that i did for myself that i shared with all of you to brian kevini we've received updates on open capital and closeout potentials. And he excerpted from the instructions from the town manager that does say right in it, before submitting your CIPs, please. And he must have sent them a copy of that MUNA schedule, I suspect, and said, review this, and typically they would send that back in. I take it we didn't get any of that. So the question is, should we be – and so I said to him, not knowing whether we had, that, geez, I just assumed that because we were so early in the process that you were likely going to be dealing with closeouts later in the year. But that doesn't mean we can't – if the instructions were to do what they do every year, which is look at their open capital and highlight things that are potentially going to happen in the future. So closeout candidates, we couldn't send an email back and – or if that's supposed to come from the town manager, say, hey, CIPs he didn't get. I didn't get it. Yeah, I assume you would have. I mean, I could go back through my email and make sure I didn't, but I don't think so. So we at least probably should either do it ourselves or ask the town manager to send that out and say, hey, you're all supposed to do this. Please do it. Whether it gets to us in town. I don't have time to do anything with. Who knows? But at least Brian Keveny will need it a little further in the year to deal with closeouts. And – Yeah, I don't think it's terribly realistic to have closeouts ready for October 15th. Yeah, I agree. So I'm not going to focus. Yeah, I get the sense that, you know, I mean, rightly so if the instruction letter says – and it's in their – it's been in their prior years. And I will assume, therefore, albeit when it's been in there, Brian's been sending it – the town manager sent that letter out in, you know, mid to late October. And so there was more time pressure for them to call through that. They were further on in the process. So they maybe had a better handle on which process would be closed out. So to Kelly's point, it is a little bit unrealistic that we dumped on them. And we had to. You know, you've got to get this CFE's back as quickly. That they just forgot about that or didn't have time for it. But – so I want to mention that. But that's part of the third bullet on page four. And then the other issue we had, and I don't know what to do about it, but despite it was its best efforts, the person in the town manager's office that was charged with, as we understand it, tracking – helping track projects isn't available now to speak with. So whether that – it's – has happened, is in process, someone else is going to pick it up. So I think that'll be, you know, probably a continued item in our list.
We didn't do anything on item four. So I just looked in my email, provided the search work, which always a crapshoot. It wasn't in Michael McCall's instructions to – that I see. Yeah, I looked at it and I thought I saw it in there. There's – It's just a small – Let me look again. Small little paragraph. In the Michael – I think it's in his – It's not in his email. It's in the formal instruction memorandum that was attached. I think it's on the first page. Oh, okay. I didn't – It wasn't highlighted in the email. I looked at his email. Yeah.
Oh.
We did the second-to-last one. Yeah, but the problem is it says, before submitting any CIP requests for FY28 and beyond, please provide an update of all existing capital projects, including CPA projects, using the new CIPC form. It wasn't in our form. So he's referencing – yeah, so that – So he asked them to fill something out that wasn't there for them to fill out. Yeah. I thought he used to provide them with the UNIS report, but – so anyway – Yeah. Your report should include the appropriation total, total expenditures to date, confirmation of procurement, and projected completion dates, additionally provide an explanation detailing why projects three years and older are not completed. So he gave instructions, but it is confusing because it says – You should see this in our – To use it in the form. So you may – they may have read it and said, okay, I'll fill out the form. So that instruction number for next year has got to be changed, and then – Yeah. And then – I mean, we could – Yeah. Just send out the summary we have, it's very similar, and add the columns, you know, like it's similar to what Nick's done, right? Here's where I'm at, here's what's encumbered. Yeah. And add a TBD on the – add a date field for when you expect a project to be done. We could do it that way. They just – Yeah. I mean, to me, we know what the financial information is at June 30th. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what it's like, because we already talked about it. But we're not really sure what the financial information is. I would be most interested if they could at least flag the ones that are completed, ready to be closed out. Okay. I mean, let me just – So here's a little – Sure. I'm not sure what – You want a proper – Okay. I think we should sign it off. We should sign it off. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So we should have it, we should have it like that. We should – So it would be a – Yeah. Yeah. It would be possible to do it this – Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we would do our best to make sure that we – Okay. Yeah. Yeah. He wants that whole munisness. Are there any of these that are, can you look at your list, are there any of these that you anticipate may be ready for closeout prior to a meeting? If so, what would be the balance? That would be better than having nothing, and at least, again, I don't know if we're going to have enough information to have it make a difference in what we have to do here. I just asked. But at least we could push it back out to them and so take Liz's latest. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. What could we take, because Liz has already done a lot of work on that. I would just send them the Brian Keveny munis file at June 30th. Yeah, because I don't want to focus on like, we want to focus on what there's big numbers left, but each department doesn't have that many projects. They couldn't look at it and be like, oh yeah, I'm done with that one, or I'm almost done with that one. I think that's the right term. Yeah, the only problem with the munisness list, it doesn't identify specifically by department. It's pretty, most of them are pretty clear based on the little description that's in them. So I can send you the Excel file Brian sent that has the June 30th. But didn't Liz, she had the munis report. I thought that she was tracking. That's the basis for the tables and things she put together. Right. But what we're asking them, we were more focused on, some of the larger. No, but I guess the question is, if she's already done it, by which department is, would that be more helpful to them to send out? Yeah, if she's already done it. Hey, as a reference, take a look at this. Departments in there. Don't we have the combination of the data? Just take a filter off. Yeah. Yeah, she did put it. It was in there, right? Well, I thought so.
Anyway, I mean, we still send the munis report and just say, hey, for reference, we put this together, which if you don't know which one you can look at here. I will. I will find what I think we're all asking for to be what we send out. And I'll send it right to you. Okay. Add that to the agenda. And I'll just add a column that moment looking for them to fill in about this project, ready to be closed out just to get that ball rolling. I think it would certainly in the email ask on any of the more substantial ones, if they want to write any color. Which we haven't really been able to get that information yet.
I'll send that to the two of you. Uh, at least.
Back to the future process improvement targets. Um, fourth bullet, we really didn't do much on the pit bullet. We did at least put together for departmental head use quantitative rating system. Uh, as I summarize for myself, all the forms, I could see in one place, how people did on their rankings. Uh, some got it. Some didn't. Yeah. Um, so it either needs to get a build up the education or instructions, but it is helpful actually, I think on some items that we'll probably talk about when we get into our deliberation about what's in what's moved, whatever. Um, well, it's probably more important for PPW and facilities. facilities. We have three projects. They did a pretty good job. And then the last one, we're starting to nudge into that territory. We collected some information on longer-term and at our meetings with department heads, we either have received or will be receiving some spreadsheets of longer-term stuff. So back to the, if you're just looking to kind of come to agreement on what the report broadly will look like, it's sounding like we're going to take the initial version of the report we did last year in the addendum, push them together, but still keep the primary initial focus on fiscal 28. And then the five-year plan will come behind that with all generally the same kind of tables and information. I was going to suggest, and I'm happy to, once we start figuring out who's going to do this, I'd like to see two or three items maybe elaborated in a little bit more detail, town building. We have, you know, I have in mind what might appear to be the future there based on, you know, information we've collected over the last few months about the new committee, Michael Paya's, you know, high-level estimate of what it would take to do a good rehab and building, that type of thing. Maybe a little write-up section on the long-term school process, try to summarize and put the dollars that appear, which, you know, raise the hair on the back of your neck. So is she going to give us that one-pager? I don't know if we actually asked her. I don't know if she's going to give us that one-pager. I don't know if she's going to give us that one-pager. Did you ask her to do it, or she just said she would? I think it was more, I think it was more like the application process. Yeah. But, I mean, that could be good to highlight in our report. I think it's, I think it's worth, I was going to say, I think it's worth to highlight it in our report with the processes. This is not something most people in town have experience with. We did it with the high school, but it was different because it was one building. We went for one building specifically. We didn't, we didn't have a series. It wasn't pick your, pick your building. Yeah. And it ultimately wasn't, and that was many years ago, it wasn't at the end of the day a totally saluted process. No, it failed the first time. So we need to officially ask her for that one. Yeah. I can ask her without covering it. Yeah. I also think as a part of that, I think the discussion on both the town building and the school, I agree with doing both of them. We should have in those discussions, what is in the plan relevant to those buildings. And I think for the schools, we should do it by building. If we can. It's difficult when there's district-wide. I mean, we could do both specific and then a district-wide for schools. Yeah. I just think it's, I think it's important even for my own knowledge, right? Like what do these totals look like by building? Is there one of these that sticks out as like, I don't know. Can we do that though, from what we have? In some cases, we may be able to. Yeah. Yeah. There's probably a chameleon here. I mean, there's Flores High School, like we still know it's high school. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's useful knowledge anyway. Yeah. And I'm not quite as optimistic as Christine sounded that if, you know, we build a new school, a whole bunch of stuff falls off the plan because... You still have to take the school down if you're not going to over-fix it. Yeah. So... Yeah. So, school building and school... Depending on where this IT thing goes, I think that may be worthy of a small little paragraph. Yeah. I agree. And then it's just one that I'm going to keep harping on. Yeah. I'm going to keep harping on until I find out the right answer. It's the Chapter 90 funding of highway improvements. I think there's two you got to keep harping on. Chapter 90 and then these capital projects from last ATM that had the wrong descriptions. Yeah. So, whether Chapter 90 warrants... I mean, I think it's... Maybe there's a process, little process section or something. I don't know. It's... Sorry, I was... If it gets... If the answer is, you know, brought forth before we issue the report, then I could see it not being in there. Yeah. But if it's not... Still not addressed. Yeah. So, potential inclusions, we're saying Chapter 90 question, answer, and... Yeah. And that type of thing. Maybe that's more... The misquoted warrant. Maybe that's more on a list type thing at the end of the report. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, if we don't really know, we don't want to... I think we're going to have to talk about... Okay. ...the issue with last year's warrant because it affects... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It affects what we ultimately... It's likely... I don't know. I shouldn't say likely. It may affect what the requests are this year, so I think there's... Well, unless the town council comes out with some... Unless town council says you're using it. Right. Please, no. We can still not... There was an error. It was voted... I almost think you should bring it up, but... Document that it was documented. Yeah. Document it was documented. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Document that it was documented. Yeah. And again, it's a footnote, right? But there's still... Hey, these issues were done. It was voted. They could still be spent with... the wider array as well you know and so we didn't change that on the plane um i thought there might be i don't have anything specific right now but there might be some things that we could um that were appropriate in the first year of the committee that we could clip out or alternatively um you know just provide links to our webpage where we might have a copy of the bylaw last year we may have included the bylaws and exhibit i think uh we included it as an exhibit but it was brand new yeah so i'm just thinking as we go through this we might be able to streamline a little streamlining a little bit yeah i don't want to provide context for the person that doesn't know it's the later appendix but i you think it's handy to have i think it's handy to have um i mean the weight doesn't really matter right yeah it can be i mean it's electronic it can be as long as you want to but if you want to put it to the back and change the order i'm fine with that i just to be honest when i was doing this it was really handy for me to be able to have the words all in one place because some of our rationale links back to policy and i think it's good to have it cited and maybe i'm just um because i got asked a lot of questions about it and presented under charter and mission and again whether it's worthy of our report and just these are things that have come up across the last 12 months as i've reported several times and it's still on his mind to phil whitney for one wants to revisit uh why the cipc is so focused on five-year plan and not really spending his time with a longer-term plan well that would be because of the words that are in there no he gets it i think he's he's i think he's heading down a path of seeing if there's a majority of the select board who might be inclined to want to agree with him and then propose a change of bylaw language he hasn't said that but that's the only way you could change what our responsibility is right so um so you know because we haven't really gotten too far on long-term planning beyond five years i think we need to say something like that and um um and whether we attribute something to mr whitney specifically or just say you know we understand the select board you know maybe discussing the current bylaw and this committee's responsibilities but but for now i'm not inclined to do that i don't know yeah i mean if anything i would say we've requested from departments longer-term views and you know do we get i mean i think that you know it's i don't think i don't yeah i don't need to get into whether they're making the lifeboard level or something i'm going to say it again public consumption though select boards welcome to do whatever they want um i've never in my professional career built any forecasts where i skipped um so yeah and then the only other and then yeah the out years are clearly important but i mean the five years and making sure we get it accurate is is i think for the town's purposes well you can't do the out years if you don't have a solid foundation on what the first year is what... five are going to be. Yeah, we struggle to get to five. Right. I mean, even two to be honest. What's happening next year? I don't know yet. That's okay. I mean, that's why we're here, but I think until we get into it, I don't know if our process is going to be exactly the same as it was last year, in terms of how we deliberate. If we could, under this topic, spend a couple minutes on I mean, to get to the report, we have to deliberate what we want to put in the report, right?
I'm concerned that I don't want to go down the same path we did last year, where we end up not having clear understanding from the finance director of what financial parameters we should be operating with, because you know, we adopted the ones the finance committee follows last year that led us to pick and choose projects because they wouldn't fit financially, and that caused us to push a lot of things out, and almost all but not all, but almost all of the variances between what we recommended and what is in the five-year plan that town meetings saw are timing differences, because the finance director made different assumptions on how things would be funded, some of which are not. Some of which were outside the bounds of those parameters. And I don't think it's going to be helpful if he simply reports to us, well, here, don't go above $4 million, whatever the number, don't go above $4 million in levy debt in any year. I just don't know. I personally think we need to be inviting him, and when we talked about a more collaborative approach, I think we're ready to invite him in possibly even the next meeting, maybe not get him on Wednesday, but maybe the following week, and just literally walk through. He's got what the asks were, right, from the schedule that I sent him, and it's set up to be able to start deciding are we comfortable with some or all of the asks, and if not, what are we going to do with them? But we also need to know what our funding bands are, because that would dictate where they can fit in the five-year plan, and it just, you know, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It seems to me we've got to do that with him. Otherwise, we're just going to end up with a bunch of variances, and that's not helpful. No, I agree with that. I don't disagree. And that sounds like probably at least a two-hour working session, so if you invite him, you need to prepare him. He's got to either come prepared with his own recommendations for our consideration, or we could do it the other way, but I think he's going to control it. I don't think you can do that this week. Yeah, because we have a meeting. I think we at least have to have a conversation. The next meeting, we'll be starting our deliberation. We talked about this after you left last week, but that's what we had talked about, was meeting with the rest of the department heads tonight, and then getting started on our deliberations, which I think we can do and get a rough idea of where we're at and what our big decision points are, and then we can meet with Brian, so I would say asking him for his availability next week. So let me ask you a question. The agenda you posted for Wednesday has the same discussed potential content for draft report, but I guess under the review and discussed departmental capital request submitted, that's where we'd be talking about how we feel prior to this. So again, my only concern is that as I started to do this myself, how do I deal with all the moving around? If you look at one of the spreadsheets I sent you where I set it up to allocate in the financing buckets,
you know, 60 to 70 percent of what was in the five-year plan has changed in some form. Numbers are in the same year, but have gone up a little bit. Some have gone down by a lot. There's still a bunch of new projects, but some of them, to help pay for them, others have been pushed out. So there's still a lot more movement that I'm sure the finance director is particularly happy about. And I know he's going to be looking for, as he did last year, new requests that are a net ad, which we have a net ad of over $4 million in fiscal 28. Two or three items account for 70 percent of that number. But, you know, how do you deal with that? Okay, excluded debt, if there's everybody on board, that excluded debt is going to take out the MSBA item so we don't have to worry about exceeding the levy. But I could sit here and have that negotiation with myself. I can come to the meeting on Wednesday and four or five of us could have, four of us, you'll be out, John, right? We could have that discussion and we're not going to get very far because if we say we're not going over $4 million in levy debt, it's going to force us to start, you know, potentially pushing things. So, I just... Well, I think we can, though, say you know, here's what's consistent, and this is what we talked about after you left last week, right? Here's what's consistent with last year's plan. Here's what's changed amounts. And here's what's new. Of what's changed amounts and what's new, right? What do we feel has to make it into the plan from a priority standpoint? And of what's new, same question, but it's going to be a harder one because the amounts are bigger, right, on the new stuff. What can make it in and what's the implication? It means some earlier projects got to come out. It means we have to go beyond the parameters. It means it's excluded debt, but I think we can break that discussion because I know we've got to get Brian in here, but I know his response last year, time and time again, was you start with the last year's plan, and then you look at the changes. That's my concern. The last year's plan is not a two-year plan. That's exactly my concern. And so we just have to, and I would if you're a community, I would just copy the town manager so he's in the loop on what we're looking for. And we need that to happen right away because we have no sense talking about a report until we... And there's a couple of big ones, and then we probably have a direct conversation, hopefully. Well, I had the one on the MSBA with him via email, and he got back to me fairly quickly and appears that he may change his mind or someone else, may change their mind and say, no, we don't want to do a debt exclusion question next April because we are possibly dealing with an override question, not a foregone conclusion yet, but so there's other powers. And that could change that. That's out of our control, right? Yeah, but this is just, what is your current thinking? If his current thinking is this is how we're going to approach it for now, great. Then at least we have an action. We know where we're going. The whole town building discussion, again, we approached it differently last year than he did. And in fact, when I started looking at the... I sent you an email, Kelly, I wanted to get Exhibit H. I know. I got to look for it. I have the spreadsheet. It's attached to the report. I was just trying to get bigger numbers. And what I wanted to do is like on town building, it didn't appear to me that, you know, Michael Payne last year gave us, at least as to the roof, he kind of spread them out over three or four fiscal years. Everything else we kind of put off to the side. This year, he has some of the roofs in there, but I'm not sure he has them all in there, similar to last year. And then he sort of brought in the septic. Well, that's because he started with the septic. And then he sort of brought in the septic. And then he sort of brought in the septic. And then he sort of brought in the septic. And then he sort of brought in the septic. The town manager's plan, which didn't spread them out. It just did the... So he just followed that. So that one item dictates where and how we're going to reflect both us and the town manager items related to town building. Because that was a contributor to the variances.
Now, at the end of the day, if we can't get on the same page, then we just... issue our report as we did last year with what we think is our recommendation. And if there's variances, there's variances, right? So I guess I'm thinking about how clearly we need to meet with them and set up a meeting. We have a meeting on Wednesday. It's too soon. We have a posted agenda for Wednesday, which is pretty similar to the one we have today. So this is almost skipping forward to setting times for meetings. So on Wednesday we will, is the purpose then to discuss internally where we are in terms of what we've looked at, what our thought process is, where we want to go. And then the next meeting after that is the 16th. But it sounds like from my hearing, we think we should be setting something up sooner than that. Oh, so we're not meeting on the 9th? I didn't have my calendar.
I didn't have the 9th. 16th? John, you were on the 16th. Yeah, you're on the 16th. I didn't have anything on the 9th. Did you? I don't have anything. Okay. Well, I just assumed we were Oh. That's fine. We went back to our regularly scheduled. Yeah, I'd love to have John here for one of these substantive discussions. Do we want to try for the 9th? Yeah.
I mean, I don't know if that'll be 9th. I mean, before. We're keeping it on Monday. I know that tends to work. I mean, it's after the holiday, but. Yeah. When they get a Monday holiday, do they work late on Tuesday or is it exempted from work late week? Well, the holiday is the 7th. Right. I was going with like the, you know how Monday is the day that they stay late? Like, is that just gone for the week?
9-16 is a Monday. 9-16 is a Wednesday. Yeah. So I would say try, well, you got to send a note to Brian and see what he can do. But I would say try for 9-9. That's Wednesday? That's the Wednesday. If not, can we do the 14th, which is the Monday? We already have a meeting scheduled for the 16th. So I would say it's 9-9, 9-14, and 9-16 if we can get quorum. Yeah, I'm going to be tough on Monday. Yeah. But 9-9. 9-9 would be our preference. I would offer that. You could offer that, and then he says no, right, follow the alternative. Yeah, which would be the 14th. Yeah. It would be the Monday from 14th. Yeah, that may be. No, the Labor Day is the previous. Yeah, 14 is. Yeah, I would try for 9-9. Yeah, at 6-30. And we're still planning a meeting on the 16th. Yes. Yeah. And so what exactly do we want? Does Brian need to receive from us? Yeah, we've been a lot of... What he has at the moment, I don't know if he got all the detailed CIPs. Were they supposed to send a copy of that to the... He did from the department. We were supposed to get it from the department managers, but I also sent him the summary file of all the CIPs and the... Oh, so this stuff he sent us. Yeah. Okay, so he has it.
Yeah, and I... I'll check now. I sent him... I'm pretty sure... I can't remember if I copied on all the three summaries I sent out to you. I thought I sent him the one that basically I used his template from his Excel capital budget file that he usually provides to the FinCom. And he has basically five tabs in there that list all the projects and then across the page has the funding sources. And so to the extent that... To describe what I sent you, I basically updated it for all the requests we received. To the extent the requests were in the five-year plan already with no change to numbers, I left them exactly wherever they appeared in his schedules where they were in the five-year plan, but the numbers went up or down. I left them in the same funding columns, but moved the numbers up or down.
And then I created a column, that is yet to be allocated. And that's either because we have to decide whether we're going to recommend the projects in that particular year or at all. That's really where we're going to need his help. And where we decide to put those may affect some of the other funding sources. So I think as we work through this with him, I would think we would want to just walk through each one of those Excel spreadsheets for each fiscal year. Right. Which I can update once we have our conversation on Wednesday. If we know, I'll just give you an example. I'm not trying to lobby you on this. I'm not inclined to do the high end of the septage facility just given its amount of money and what's going on in fiscal 28. And it was in fiscal 29 in Michael Svea's last year request, or in our recommendations, I think one of both wasn't in the town manager's plan. So I was looking to either pull that out completely and put it into the purgatory bucket and just say, that's town building. All we said, we'll deal with our moves. Amen. So if a majority of us said, yeah, we think we agree, then I would simply update what I sent Brian Keveny before we talked to him. And that wouldn't appear there. But we would have a discussion with him about what's involved with town building. Just as an example.
I mean, do we think we're going to get that deep into every project or I think it's going to be more of the bigger projects. We have to, I mean, how are we going to, we have to make a recommendation on every project. But for him, I mean, again, it's more of a, I mean, I agree. We should, but I don't want to send him something and then have him. Hey, well, that's nice, but well, I'm going to change like I did last year when I changed 25 projects. Yeah. So I, you know, I think we have to get that granular. Now, now we could say, we're going to talk about whether we are for or against certain requests. And if so, what years we think they should be in update those schedules in advance of meeting with them, send the schedules to him and say, assuming you were to agree with what we're recommending in the years we're recommending, can you allocate it? And then send it back to us. And then, and meet with us to talk about any particular issues you have or, or, or let him, let him go ahead and move things around. Well, we may have to meet with him once. I mean, I know whether or not we would be able to, but yeah, I mean, we're back to the circle, which is we need his guidance, what he's thinking, but we can't give him guidance. And we know the project. So, I mean, I think we just didn't get him in to have a conversation of here's the big ones we're seeing a little bit about these are the major changes and we get through them all. Right. But I think let's prioritize the questions based on the ones that we know are deal breakers. I mean, there's some in there that we know that they have to be like, they're just too big. You know, we can't take them normally. That would be my take. How about this? Why don't you reach out and see if you could join us on Wednesday night for 15, 20 minutes to talk about just from a high level, how is it we should work through this in collaboration with him over the next two weeks? Yeah. Maybe. I mean, there really isn't much of the report you can do because all those tables are going to be driven by what decisions we make. Right. And then your text is going to change as you describe things. So, yeah. If we have to deliver a report by October 15th, the reports pretty much got to be done by the week before that. Yeah. And so, you know, it's going to be third week of September before we know it. Right. And we haven't yet talked about the elephant in the room as to how is this report, which, Kelly, you did a great job last year drafting. I did a small piece of it, a few tables. But how is this report going to get done this year?
That's a question. Yeah, to your point, you've got to agree on where you're headed with the numbers before you start drafting. I hope, right, given that we drafted it, like a big part of the battle is what do we put in this and where does it come from and how do I get it? That's done. I will say, right, in my head, my goal is to get a report out by October 15th. I'm not convinced by any means it won't need a revision, right, soon after. Because. Of time constraints when we've already improved significantly over where we were a year ago, but I'm also not opposed to issuing it and then reissuing it based on further discussion. So. Right. I don't want to do I don't want it to be wildly different. But I think to your point, John, there's a couple of big items here that. I don't know that we're far enough along that that the towns. Far enough along on a couple of them. That that you'll be set and done by the time. We issued this report, but I'd like to have the vast majority of them gone through and if it's. Okay, now let's keep debating, right, what to do with. With the school feasibility study, that's what we got, whatever we can do that, but. Let's try and get Brian in here and see if we can nail him down. That's the first problem. The question on that is, I agree that if we can get them. In here, you know, for a short period of time in the second, that's fine. I have to revise the agenda. Which you can do up in almost any time, but he's going to have to give me the answer. Please mark so I can get. He's an ex-officio member, so I think. You don't have to. We'd be fine. But I guess, well, I guess, I guess if the agenda is broad enough for the seconds that that would work. Yeah. Yeah, the 640 agenda item is the. Yeah, just we're still reviewing the request. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're. He's a. Member. So, okay, okay.
Okay. And again, we'll, we'll. If we all have the benefit of hearing him for 15 or 20 minutes, we'll figure out pretty quick whether there's a path forward. Right. Or it's him, or we're just going to have to. So I sent it to everybody who just found it. Including Michael and Diane on August 17th. Okay. The only. Difference. And what's been submitted since then is I had filled out the form for Linda because originally she gave me Brian's forms filled out. So I just took what was there. And so it's missing, I think the description, but it's got the amount and maybe the rating. Yeah. So I can update that and put it in. But that's really the only difference. Um, I don't think that's. And for that one item. So.
And then, I mean, we are, talk to it about some changes. We've talked to facilities about some changes. changes, right, that I, in terms of making sure the, if the transfer station, garage, there was a couple other ones we talked to Michael, I thought about, but whether or not they needed adjustment. But. Yeah, I mean, both he and Tom may be, may be looking for some more detail on some of the out years. So, but again, that may or may not be forthcoming. So. Yeah, we got to run with what we have. But they have had it now for several weeks. Okay. All right. Well, should we move on to reviewing and voting on the minutes of August 24? Before we do that, can we just talk about one more thing on the report? Sure. We talked last year about reconciliation. And we got to the report that we would need a reconciliation with the prior year. So obviously, last year, we didn't have that in this level of detail. So we just want to iron that out, because that's something we can start working on a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I'd be happy to volunteer to, I don't think it needs to be, unless you feel differently, granular. I mean, I have it granular from something I did several months ago that you all have, which I identified each and every one of the minutes of August 24. So, I don't think it needs to be in every variance. But if we could just do a table and keep it a little bit higher level. I think if we can keep it higher level, if the question was whether we're reconciling last year, which things we're reconciling. We're reconciling our recommendation last year to where it ultimately landed, right? And or reconciling where we landed to this year's recommendation, which maybe we did have that in the report last year. So, sort of a two-step reconciliation, right? What was the second one? The second one was reconciling the ATM five-year plan to what we ultimately land at for this year. I would think we'd want to do that, right? We're going to want to show how it, on a high level, how it did change. And then call out. Oh, I'm sorry. The second plan, which is the, yeah. So, I think I have that. Yeah. So, the first is our recommendation last year. To the town manager. To the town manager. Ultimately, what went to town meeting, right? Right. But you have. And then what was the final plan? And how does that now relate as to those items in this year? Yeah. Which I'll build that. I mean. You have seen that already. I started it and then I just didn't finish it. So, I'll fill that out. I'll do something for the first one. Again, not granular by project. I think it's just high level. I think what I did for the finance committee, which we haven't discussed yet, was, you know, high level, but then tried to call out all the timing differences and basically say, we generally agree it was just different years because. Yeah. We put different financing constraints on ourselves. And then. We didn't put any financing constraints on ourselves. We put, we followed. We followed the, you know, there's a lot of, you know, it's not a big deal. And then. But there, there are a handful of items that, again. Yeah. You know, would be called out. So, I will work on that one. Before we do minutes, are we going to approve the annual report? Where do we get that off our. If we can send out the one with all the accepted changes. Is there a sign in that? I mean, people aren't ready for that. Yeah. I mean, I, I went through. I thought it, I thought it's good. But I don't, we do it today or we would defer to. When is that through? End of September? yeah i think it's september so we want liz here we're not going to it doesn't like we're going to have five people here okay all right so that's true because john's not going to be here i mean i'm clearly okay with it i submitted it but oh no oh i i approve approval of the annual report i second it as circulated by john on 8 30. i second it and those in favor be authorized john or did that just send that on to the town manager's office correct
well done how excited i guess i'm done
i can take that off the agenda um all right we already talked about next meetings um so i guess we can review another to approve the meetings of august 24 which have been um circulated any comments
i did not have anything noted
ron any comments on the minutes under a minute oh wait whose minutes were they they were uh brian's okay all right then i might watch the paper for the last 20 minutes okay all right uh can i have a motion to approve the minutes of august 24. second all in favor aye sir just you skipped over succession planning um the only reason i'm pressing is because i'm beginning to get overloaded um you all some of you work so you're overloaded already but um you know fincom it's meeting every week and it's just intense at the moment and i'm more concerned about the number of nights i'm out um so i'm gonna hang in here as long as i can until the report's them, but that's the reason I'm pressing because I'm going to turn into a pumpkin on October 15th. So no, I understand. Yeah, no, I appreciate the extra effort.
So there's no updates on? No, no, no, nothing's changed on my end. Nothing's changed. Okay. Okay. Oh, other than, I'll tell you, it's 31st. So tomorrow, my understanding is there'll be a vacancy on the FinCom Appointing Board. And one of the members is stepping off, would be an idea, subject to them stepping away from volunteering in general, would be an ideal candidate for this committee. So. So the town moderator is still on and the chair of the select board is still on. So. I believe the person stepping off retired from town service some time ago and then agreed to do that. So I, I don't think so. Throw that out there. Formally warm body. Yeah, I think she has, that was her swan song. So we'll see what happens. Okay. Well then can we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. 7.51 PM. All in favor? Aye. Aye. 7.51. Thank you. Thank you.
if this meeting has remote access which does one may watch or participate remotely with the meeting link that can be found on the agenda 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 in person or remote as applicable and public comment activity limited minutes the tranquilization commission committee began reading benchmarks for 날in sn拭 I'll frequently go through the agenda 5 30 called order and review the agenda 5 35 public comment and members response 540 review and discuss departmental capital requests submitted this year as well as outstanding capital project with various department heads 6 40 discuss potential content for draft CIPC reports at the town manager seven discussed proposed with town building working envisioning group seven discussed proposedällund women and men supporting adoption on the improvement of land agent have been working hard to submit to the meeting so this meeting will take place during the next 2 or 3 p.m. if you want to reduce your attendance at the meeting at the meeting point there are still some inventor days until 9 00 p.m. it will be due back to the committee to be approved so that you can expect an였습니다 and revive the meeting even at 630 announcement come through the meeting at the meeting all time again像 Phoenix plans representative right for a TAMIMN gears brotha oh and bringing care to 7-10, discuss preparation of annual report. 7-20, discuss succession planning. 7-25, review and vote to approve minutes of August 24, if available. And 7-25, setting time for times of next meeting, 7-30, adjourn. And in person, we have Brad Carver, myself, John Klein, Nick Lombardi, Brian Herlihy, Chief McPherson, Kelly Lappin. And online, we have David Bernstein. Is there anybody else, Rob? No, that's us.
So for public comment, Mr. Bernstein, I understand you have a comment.
Can you hear me? Yes. Great. Several years ago, under a different town administrator and a different IT manager, Waylon came within a hair's breadth of losing several million dollars as a result of a sophisticated phishing attack. After discussion at the next town meeting, I offered an amendment to increase the IT budget by the 50K that the IT manager stated was required to prevent recurrence. If you attended our last town meeting, you saw IT manager Lombardi and I engage in a discussion of how much more was needed to ensure the protection of Waylon's IT assets. But my amendment was correctly ruled out of order because our bylaws now prohibit such actions on town meeting floor. Therefore, I am imploring you to ensure that elements of our IT and DPW budgets required to protect our assets are fully funded. As the paper I sent you points out, AI lowers the cost and skill needed to conduct creditable, affordable attacks at municipal scale. And IT infrastructure isn't the only target. In the month of July, more than 100 municipal water systems in the United States were attacked. So I understand that Waylon is under extreme financial pressure. I get it. But we cannot allow our assets or the mechanisms that we depend on, like clean water, to be held hostage or to be lost. So please. Please find a way to fund these at the appropriate level. And I trust the managers involved to state what those levels are. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bernstein. We are going to be reviewing those requests this evening. And we'll take your comments into consideration.
Anybody else? I don't believe there is. No, there's not. Okay. I saw Kirsten join briefly. I don't know if she's on the other side. Panelist? Okay. Hey, Kirsten. I think that unless there's any objections or comments, and I think perhaps the best way to approach it is to proceed first with Chief McPherson. I think what you have is fairly straightforward, at least from what I've looked at. And so why don't we begin there? And I think that what we've done is where you've had changes from previous years, perhaps you can focus on those and do what. Okay. So for this next year, this is the year 28, we asked for expectation equipment of $85,000. That was the jaws of life. I do believe that has been in there. We wish you a compliant fit testing machine, 30,000, and then the fire command vehicle for 90. I will point out that the cardiac monitor and the fire command vehicle were the things that got switched around. I don't know. Last year, I had included that. I know the first draft didn't have that change. That was changed last year based on usage of the command vehicle and funding that was received for the cardiac monitor, which we're in the process of buying. Yeah. And I think I told you, Neil, via email, we had it as you requested it. When we submitted it to the town manager, they reversed it inadvertently. So we had raised that with them after town meeting, but that wasn't the intent based on our discussion. That's perfect. So as you can see, none of these are really regular capital expenditures for equipment that has come to the end of its useful life. And that total is $205,000.
Okay. If you didn't want to continue on and just as I said, no changes that you had from previous year.
Oh, okay. There was no other changes that left. Oh, that's okay. Everything else is the same. I think virtually everything is the same. And then just added the, the final year as you requested. Yes. Got it. Got it. Do you have schedules of, I'm sorry, go ahead. It's immaterial that the cardiac monitor fiscal 30 went up by $5,000. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay. Do you have schedules that go beyond 2032 in terms of the useful life of various pieces of equipment? I do. Is that something you could share with us? Cause we are trying to stretch out the, the capital plan to more than just five years. So if you'd have that, that would be helpful. And we're not looking for perfect chief. We're what we're trying to get an idea of it's known. If it's known useful life, we know some things might stretch a little longer. Others might come in shorter, but at least it starts to give us a cadence of what a longterm pattern looks like. Right. If we know it has to be reversed, maybe include more items, but in the longterm question section on the general tab that we're the two, large vehicles, right? Yeah. And I think those are the biggest things that I've mapped out. Some of the ancillary stuff I've not mapped out as clearly past the five year mark. But for example, the ladder truck is one of those things that, and pumpers are big expenditures. So those are the things for vehicles because of their costs of trying to map out their useful, effective life, right. And based upon the number of years that they will be good for. So I do have that for another five years built out already. I can send it to you tomorrow. Yep. That'd be perfect. That, that's most important. Um, I would say by the time we get to next year, we're going to want to start to next year's process, start to map out the cadence of everything else or the other stuff, because very often you're very good about it. Chief. When you come in, it's because things have met the end of their useful life. Well, we probably knew what the rough end of the useful life was the day we bought it. Right? Sure. So we can, we can get a better idea of the overall financial needs to, to replace that equipment. Um, the longterm. Right. And I should point out if I may to that, you know, obviously we always look at England's revenue. We're not in the business of making money, but I would say to you that the reimbursements, we just increased our England's rates recently. And I think that the revenue is generally up. All right. And a lot of the items that are purchased, the smaller items, and that's certainly up to you in finance have been funded out of that England's fund. So the good news is for the smaller items, which is the majority of what we have other than vehicles. And I think that there will continue to be, uh, a good inflow of, of funding, for some of those items. Since you brought it up is we raised the rates, but I know we were getting a lot of pressure from insurance, um, on recovery. Are we, we're not getting more pressure after we raise rates. Um, so I'll answer that this way, that there is insurance companies will pay reasonable and customary rates. Private insurance will pay higher, reasonable and customary rates. And Medicare, Medicaid and mass health, right? The majority of our business is mass health, Medicare, Medicaid. So we get less on that grouping in the middle of the majority compared to the private insurance. Yeah. So obviously there is certain increases that they will allow on a yearly basis. Even Medicare, Medicaid increases, I think it's like 2% per year or something of that nature. Uh, so we're just trying to capture whatever we can get up to what is reasonable and customary. And we hadn't moved our rates, I think for like five or six years. Um, so I think there is still going to be some increased revenue. I would say that even before that rate increase, that it fluctuates from year to year. But I think the amount that we've been recovering and overall revenue, um, it hit actually was, was ahead of the year before it's been on an upward track. Yeah. So set a different way. We upped our rate there within reasonable and customary. So we expect most likely private insurance will pay, but we're still beholden on Medicare, Medicaid, and mass health to whatever they dictate the rate is. Yep. Absolutely. Okay.
Uh, you may also have any other questions. What'd you think of the form easier this year? So I think there's a, I just had to look through it and I thought that the fact that it did a lot of the workforce, that was very nice and easy, nice format for presentation to summarize your results. So I think that's awesome. And again, I thank you for all the support in the past and the residents, for their support. And I think this is a great effort because having been a finance major, um, in college of absent that I understand the importance of capital budget and trying to iron out some of those curves and challenges when you don't do that. So I applied your effort in doing this. I think it's a great worthwhile endeavor. Thank you. Anything you wish changed or, um, you know, I'm going to guess there's some things weren't really applicable to your items, right? They tend to be more focused on building items, but anything you looked at and said, why are you asking for this? And do you really need that? The only thing I would comment is when it comes to prioritization, it is harder for me to prioritize when I'm talking about a cardiac monitor and an aesthetic jaws in my mind that I might be biased. I will accept that, that to me, those are both high priorities. So you probably saw a lot of my scoring was pretty consistent in terms of it being a top priority. And I didn't feel badly about rating all of that. But again, a lot of the things that we're purchasing are, are for, are for emergency purposes. That's fair. And if you read our report last year, you would notice that we prioritize to health and safety in the ranking of the overall time. So we understand that, um, we still ask because the money does run out at some point. And so if we put life and safety first, that's, that's going to be fine for your stuff, but somewhere down the line, right there, there's not going to be enough. So I appreciate that though. And one last time, we'll just be through that. Clearly the costs go up. Yeah. Year over year. Yeah. So even though we may have put $50,000, when this comes up in five years, it's unlikely that costs is may still be 50,000. So I try to pick realistic numbers and give a little bit of. Yeah. You escalate you're including an escalation and assumed escalation in an item that you're putting out five years. Right. And if you understand that actual escalation will be different, but you're putting an assumed escalation. You're not using today's dollars. That is correct. Okay. Just. And I think that's what we want. You want that, that cushion in this. Okay. One additional question. So on the JCC side, any app, there was nothing in 2032. Is there anything needed that we didn't already have in by last year? I don't, I know the police chief, please chief submits. They say that you talked about it, but I don't have it in front of me. Okay.
I think we asked. Yeah. He didn't either. That's another question. Greg, um, I don't think you were at the slug board meeting when the questioning came up. I think that's the Whitney raised a question when they're approving a consent calendar that included, I think something to do with an ambulance. And I thought he said something about some sort of lawsuit that, um, it was dealing with pricing pricing in Massachusetts of, of that type of vehicle. Is that anything we should be interested in terms of money? So what I can say to you is that, um, I think that there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of evidence that there's, I believe two class action suits that not a Wayland is involved with. And the first one is with fire truck manufacturers. So there is, uh, a suggestion that there has been some collusion and that's the allegation. So that that is being pursued. That's being done through town council. I can't say what and when that will. And I think the second one that, uh, Michael and I have discussed is relative to PFAS. Okay. And PFAS and firefighting gear and, and potential health implications in a firefighting gear. So I think that's something that we should be looking at. And I think that's something that we should be looking at. And I think that's something that Michael and I have discussed is relative to PFAS. Okay. And PFAS and firefighting gear and, and potential health implications in firefighters. So that is the second thing that is a class action suit that don Wayland has chosen to, I think, participate in both of those. Okay. Good tip. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You were on the next step. With a hands with, with a hands with the, with the, She has one item. Yes, thank you. Kirsten, I was here first. Okay.
Yeah, I mean, this should be quick. It should be very quick. Okay. So I sent you the quotes. Yes, you did. Yes, I had sent that earlier with the initial request. I guess it didn't get transferred. No, it did. Yeah. I have one question. Why John Deere? No, well, the current tractor is John Deere and all our implements are John Deere. So we can't, you know, all we're buying is a tractor. We're not buying the mowing deck. And we ended up, you know, I mean, it was a bit of, it wasn't the smoothest process. The last time we purchased this, the cost went up by the time the procurement officer purchased our John Deere. So we couldn't get the tiller. And so somehow we ended up with an auger. Which we've never used. So they did tell us we can turn in, we can use its traded value. And so that's why what you're looking at is this quote. It's a 56,000 is the cost of the tractor itself this year, right? And we're hoping that we can at least get some traded value for, you know, this implement that we have no use for. And again, I don't know what it would be. I have no idea how they would cost that in two, three years from now. But I think we've pretty much run the end of the life of this. We do have, I hire, I have a contract with a small engine equipment company that comes out twice a year and sometimes more if needed to service all our equipment. So that's a lot of the little stuff, the mowers, the brush mowers, you know, everything. And he does do the John Deere, also the tractor, you know, cleans it up in the fall and it's ready for winter. The one thing we do. I have a problem with is because it's stored in a, I don't know if you've seen it. It's on a common, we have a metal shed that we put it in as if we're storage, but that doesn't keep the mice out. So we do have a little bit of a problem of chewing on things. Just hungry little guys. I have a question for you, Kelly, you might know. When, I want to refer to trade-in. When we go for an appropriation, should we be looking at it from a gross? I think. It has to be gross costs because the trade-ins, the trade-ins come in back to free cash. That's my understanding. Oh, that's dealt with under the.
Okay. So the number that's in here is your inflated assumption of the gross. Yeah. I mean, it's only 9,000, less than 9,000 more than it is today. And that's, so that's in two years, right? FY 29, we're looking at, so I'm hoping we can live along the current tractor. Yeah. Until. Until then, but it's, it is, it's an essential piece of equipment for us. The conservation department manages 200 acres and four of the biggest properties are old agricultural fields. So they're flat, they're easy to mow. And we do use them for trails. You know, we, we use the, for cow comm and sedge, that's the tractor gets used for trail management, you know, on a weekly basis almost. And in spring and fall, we use it for field mowing. So it does. It does. It does get well used. One question and one comment. Question is process. Why is this coming in this year, as opposed to it having been included last year? Did we just miss the cutoff for getting something in or did the tractor deteriorate over? Well, no, because it is really well maintained and it doesn't have a ton of hours on it. Like maybe it's something a farmer would use. We assume that we could. We could have it for 10 years before we'd have to buy a new one. But like I said, then we developed some of the mechanical issues. It's been out in Lancaster towed out there by DPW to get fixed. It's came back and had to go back again, or they, they had, they came out here to fix it again. So it's been this, this ongoing process over the last two or three months that we've had just, you know, fairly extensive mechanical issues with it. And at some point you have to realize, do we keep paying that? Or do we just, you know, realize that what we really need is probably a replacement. Mm-hmm. And I know DPW told me they use, they tend to replace every eight years, but we were hoping that we could, we could push it a little bit further because again, you know, we do use it probably, we have one person using it, you know, so it does get less hours than probably what DPW does. But like I said, I think at this point we've kind of get to hit the point where it's like, Ooh, I think it's probably time to replace it. So I'm just, I'm anticipating the finance director will ask the question in his review, you know, where was this? So I'm just, I'm anticipating the finance director will ask the question in his review, you know, where was this? And, you know, sort of last year's. Yeah, it wasn't anticipated that we would need it. And this is the only capital asset that falls under the ComCom's purview. Yeah, for the most part, yeah. And my comment is. Well, and the other, and the attachments. Yeah, yeah. They were bought at the same time. Yeah. When we purchased the original one. My comment is, Linda, I believe is the only one that got her board to approve this request before it came to us. You got to say Gold Star along with the ComCom. And, you know, what you don't know also is that the last time I asked for this, that I was, I was told I had to reduce my budget by $15,000 for three years in a row to pay the town back for the tractor. So technically, I'm not sure you guys actually. By the finance director? I don't know who that is. That's outside our purview.
Technically, you didn't pay for the first one either, because. Definitely outside our purview. I have no other questions. Yeah. So it was. But like I said, if anybody enjoys our property, you have to understand that we do that with one and a half people. We do 1,200 acres with one full-time staff and a part-time staff. So having, having equipment like a tractor is really, really essential because you can't do that. I mean, before I started, they were doing that by hand with brush hogs. Okay. And it's just, I mean, you can't do that. I mean, it's, it's, it's so labor intensive. So this, this is important, very important piece of equipment. And for us. So. All right. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Be in 12 years.
This is the other reason I'm going out. Now, right. Yeah. All right. Let's move on to Kirsten. Hello, Kirsten.
As you know, we already talked to. Good evening. Good evening. I'd like to. I talked to Mike Bale last, last week and went over a lot of the school items, but.
You know, we'd like to give you the opportunity to discuss any items that Mike did not discuss or any changes since then. I know you made a presentation of the school board. I will not school with the site for last week.
So. So that was the school committee that we. That they had approved the 28 submissions and really the only submission was the change from the fiscal year. Ask of a feasibility study from 30 to 28 and at the going cost for a feasibility, the size that Wayland public schools would need. And that is based on the architect study that we. Just completed last last year. And the rationale for that change is that we will be submitting a statement of interest with the Massachusetts school building authority in April their next submission timeline. And what they require in order to invite you into the program is validation that you have the town funding to conduct a feasibility study. That would be the. The first part of the process that they invited us into a project, so if we are not invited into a project, this first cycle, then we would not have need, and we would not request that that amount be bonded. We would be able to notify the town prior to that happening. The, the process is typically fairly quick. Once it gets. Started the applications are in April, and typically, by the end of June, early July, they have made their notifications for what districts would be invited and then they make sure that you have that support from the town or community to engage in that process. And with the process, that feasibility study portion is also a portion that would be eligible for. A portion that would be eligible for. A portion that would be eligible for. A portion that would be eligible for the reimbursement process. Once the project was identified. So, even though it is a bit of a sticker shock at the upfront, that would be kind of wrapped into the total project costs for a new construction build. And that leads to the 2nd, soft submission. That was just a. Tbd placeholder in each subsequent year. Thereafter. Thereafter, depending on if, and when we are able to secure a construction projects, and the hope is to be partnering with so that we do get that reimbursement. Portion Christine, that the reimbursement on the 2Million, though, is only only if you were to be accepted right as as a project, right? It's it's if they were to say, no, it's some cost. It's if they were to say, no, it's some cost. It's if they were to say, no, it's some cost. It's if they were to say, no, it's some cost. Its你才不是收入? We're not set to. I think so, are we set on your endorsement? And then we'reまた upfront. We're not no bill of that social life. Is that the only betty elders risk is if you Lois to the town? Right? Like, well, I think she said we wouldn't spend it. Would we unless we might for rent if they invite you in, that means that you're invited. In to all right, to conduct a project. Okay. That it doesn't mean that that the town the town didn't vote. So, you're invited in. But if the. Town approves the 2M in spend. the $2 million? No. If the town declined to support the construction, that's correct. Okay. So I don't have the CIP. You're saying that on that line item, you inserted, after the $2 million in fiscal 20, you inserted TBD in the other four fiscal years? Correct. Because we don't know what that cost would be. And it's more of an informational to put all the boards and groups on just to understand that we are looking for these construction projects. So the $2 million is for one of potentially several long-term projects, correct? Yes, but that's the most immediate one. So they're going to be spread out across multiple years. I just don't know when a construction actual, like a build project would occur. So rather than leaving it open to one particular year, I populated the entire five-year lookout just with a TBD. Right. So this $2 million is for a project when everyone gets prioritized. And the TBDs that you put in are potential funding for construction of that project. Correct. As opposed to more feasibility money for subsequent school building projects, correct? Correct. At this juncture, yes. Okay. So TBD, just for everybody in the committees, that TBD was in the summary that came from facilities on their summary that was manually inserted, but there's no corresponding CIP. So when I summarize the CIPs, it doesn't populate a TBD. I mean, I can put it back in there, but Okay. I think it would be more productive to put, even if we're making up a number, a placeholder, if it goes. Yeah, I think much like the town building, I suspect we will hopefully have time to add a section on the long-term Yeah, the big long-term projects that are up in the air. Yeah, Kirstine. I looked at minutes for the school committee. I know there are... four or five different options that the architect ran through in terms of which buildings for which grades, etc. Has the school committee staked out a position yet on which one, which option they want to proceed on? So we, the school committee and the district, are not at liberty to decide on a project. That would be up to the MSBA. So they, that would be part of the overall process, that they would look at all of our data, the... Okay. That would be part of the overall process, that they would look at all of our data, the... the architectural study that we conducted, all of our historical enrollment patterns, all of that information, and they would identify what project they would be willing to support. So we're basically in a holding pattern until we submit that SOI and hear from the MSPA. I want to pull on that a little bit further. So when we submit the feasibility study, are we submitting an application that includes the four, I forgot how many options there was, five options, and they're picking which path and then which building is going to go first? Or are they, we're picking up your... We're picking a path and the building, and they're picking the building that they want to go first.
I'm sorry, I lost you there. Yes, so for example, I don't have it in front of me, but I think one of the options dealt with, do you put kindergarten through second grade in one building, third grade to fifth grade in another building, middle school, and we got the high school. And the focus seems to be on the elementary schools, getting those rebuilt, and the renovation of the middle school. So I think what you're asking, Kelly, is if, and each of those options seems to have a slightly different configuration, all of which include building and or renovating buildings. So are you asking, is the town going to put in its application a single path and then leave it to the MSPA to decide which of the buildings in that path happen first? Or are you going to present the architect's full study with all five of those options? Or are you going to present the architect's full study with all five paths and let the MSPA decide which of the five options they like or fit within there? So we have had preliminary conversations with MSPA. Dr. Fleischman did have a conversation, and this was the process that they identified and laid out for us. So yes, the process itself was that we would likely submit multiple statements of interest, and we would identify the priority level. At this, at this juncture, every project is a priority one. So every project we are saying is needed, and that's where their decision would be identifying what would be the most value and the most, the best investment for their funding, for their funding share. I guess I'm still not following, though. Is a project a building? Or is a project a series of buildings? It's one building at a time, but you have to submit multiple in order to be identified for the different options that you have identified with the previous architect and the work that was done this past year. Right. So you'll put in a statement of interest for, for argument's sake, maybe I'll just pick one of the options. Two new elementary schools and renovation of middle school. Each of those will go in as a separate application? Yes. And is there any, as you went through all those studies, is there, is there any basis on which one has to get done before the other for that path to make sense? Or can they all be done in whatever order the MSBA decides it makes the most sense for their, you know, purposes?
Well, I think that's where, you know, that's where we are at in terms of being invited into a project is that they would identify what, you know, we're saying we need, we need all of these projects, which one would you support and partner as a reimbursement cost share? And that's what, that would be the project, the construction, whether it be a merging of buildings or one building or an addition. Or a new construction, whatever the project that they identified to move forward with is what we would be engaging in as the first, first construction project. So these are going to happen over a number of years. The first one is likely going to be between, you know, three, three years from the starting point. So we're hopeful that we actually get accepted into the feasibility that would then be another year out before. Or those results are compiled and identified for what a total cost of a, the construction would be. So it's in phases that are very, very specific and it is delineated and driven by the MSBA. Maybe what we should do is, this kind of gets into the, I mean, it's immediate because it's a fiscal 28 request, right? But based on looking at the architect's set of options. And likely timelines and things, I think it's optimistic, my opinion, it's optimistic to think that the first building where, where we to be, or as you say, it's cool to me when we're included in the MSBA for funding that I think it's optimistic that, that you'd actually be building something four years from now, maybe. I would hope so. It clearly is going to be in the future. I think it's going to be in the, in the 10 to 15 year long-term plan. So, you know, it seems to me that this is probably, there's a lot more that this committee could get into from a long-term planning perspective. Obviously the schools have done, you know, lots of work on this, but, you know, maybe, maybe a separate meeting at some point and have Kirsten in and, and, you know, even possibly, I don't know if they cost money to have them in, but have the architects that put the fee ability together. I mean, you all have a copy of it. You can read those options. You can watch their presentations. But I think for tonight's purpose, you know, I just feel we'll get bogged down if we, I mean, it's relevant to how do we feel about, you know, recommending spending, you know, 2 million in fiscal 28 and accelerating it from fiscal 30. But I just think beyond that, it's, it's, it's more in a long-term discussion, my view. I think it's also important that that also, you know, will take away some of the facilities capital requests that are ongoing that we have to continue on. So that's also what we're hopeful is that, you know, by building a new school, building whatever size that, that will help alleviate that long list. Facilities, capital projects that are related to the schools because of the deferred maintenance on those. We want to make sure that, you know, obviously that side would be being reduced over the course of the long-term once construction is done. Clearly an elementary school X, if Michael's got slotted in, you know, four or $5 million to do a new roof. Right. Uh, four or five years out, but you know, that, that elementary school X is going to get replaced with a new building. You might be able to figure out a way to pass the roof for a couple of years, right? That's kind of what you're saying. Yes. But, but you've got, you've got the money in your plan now because you just don't know when the town will get accepted into the MSBA process. Well, is that what I'm hearing? I may be phrasing it another way. The $2 million you're, you're requesting it. That's just the price of admission to get into the program for the MSBA. Yeah. So it's not like we can actually pay a fee to get in. That would be nice if we could just do that, but it's what we would have to be responsible for and show that we are ready and committed to doing a project. And with that is the first step is the feasibility study. And I'm happy to put together, you know, like a one pager of the process and the steps that the MSBA runs. But the first step is to, you know, we can't do anything for the MSBA. We can't do anything for the MSBA. So we're just going to keep that as a reference. And then the cycle of the statement of interest, it is only a one time per year process in April. So again, we are, we're hopeful because we have been in communication with MSBA. They know that we've done our due diligence and homework this past year. So we're very hopeful that, that we would be selected. No, we're not. We're not. We're not. We're not. the condition of our buildings. Yeah, so Christine, I just want to, based on past experience, I want to reiterate what I think you said and connect it with what Brad was saying. We're going to make an application. When you make the application, in order to be considered, they need to know that the town is committed to the feasibility study, which is why they do that in April time frame, right? So you're going to start that in April of 27, so we're going to vote at town meeting in May and be able, and the idea of being able that we could tell them we've secured the funding, right? But you have, you only have a limited amount of time, right? When they're, once you put the application in, it's within a certain amount of time to have a commitment from the town on the feasibility study, right? Correct. That's why we're going through this process now. Right. So if they apply and then the town doesn't vote to approve the feasibility money, then we would get deprioritized by MSBA because we're not ready to go. The other question I posed to the finance director, if you go back a couple years, the amount was a million dollars and it's floated around in the five-year capital plan. Or somewhere too. I feel like it's, it's floated in that range, but for a number of years, he, the finance director reflected it as did the finance committee as being funded with excluded debt by itself. It's, it's below at least, and there's now, there's a question of what the threshold is for putting an excluded debt question valid. There's some now that believe that, that, that you sort of really have to do it if it's more than 4 million or 5 million. But it doesn't mean that you can't do it if it's less than that. So anyway, I asked the finance director for the benefit of this group, given that it's moving up in the request and it's also moving up in dollar terms, given the impact it has on the, on the levy, which according to him, and I haven't checked his model yet, but he tells me that in spite of the fact that the feasibility study is. Connected to a long-term building project, a building project would be, you know, borrowed over 20, maybe even now 30 years. He says you have to amortize the loan off in five years. So, you know, at $2 million, it's 400 grand a year principal, which would hit the tax levy. And so his latest reply to me, which I can't remember if I think I forwarded to the rest of them, I didn't know, I'll forward it after the meeting, was that at the. Moment. He's thinking that needs to go in as excluded debt and as an, and typically when that's done, that would be handled through a separate warrant article. So I'm mentioning all of this because Kirsten, I think that question came up at the school committee meeting. And it's important, you know, to get that pinned down before articles have to be submitted starting, you know, December 15th or whenever the board opens the warrant, but it's also important to know if that's where the finance director wants to head with this and we'll make, we'll make our own recommendation, but that could have implications on sort of the override discussion that's ongoing, because that could then be a ballot question that's got to be there for excluded debt, which then you're explaining to the town meeting, you know, the long-term process, why this is needed. So that, that of all. This, that's the only thing that I think, you know, we really need to be on the same wavelength, the finance director, um, and, and Kirsten, you and the school committee need to be in the loop on that so that you're not caught off guard. Um, absolutely. Thank you.
So do we have any other questions on the, um, the $2 million? No. I think I understand as best as I'm going to at this point. Yeah. I mean, in a, in a perfect world, I asked Kirsten, you know, where, where did she get that number from? And that came from her understanding from the architects that did the initial, uh, um, long-term study, uh, that that's kind of the quote going rate. Um, it's a lot of money and in a perfect world, it'd be nice to have something a bit more granular. Um, so if it were possible to go back to the architect and say, well, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this is, you know, this boss, risk analysis, we, we, we used it, but like, you know, is, is it, is that something that needs to be done if you're going to pass this grant? Uh, insight and. Okay. You told us it's going to be approximately 2 million. Can you, can you just give me a little more sense of what, who did they get all that money from architectural firm or does that include all sorts of different, uh, third-party folks that get involved with. Well, they're very much involved with the number of construction projects with the MSBA outside of Wayland so that they know through their experience and what they have done. Yeah. Well, that was very important. So are there other sin things that any other businesses want to know? Well, I'm looking to see this as much as possible. most recently, that that has been the cost structure for the large-scale feasibility. Because what we went through was really a planning study to determine what's needed for the long-term facilities. And what they would be doing, or whomever the architect is that was selected, if we were selected with MSBA, would then engage in the full feasibility study, which would look at the specific project that they have invited us into to consider. Yeah, I guess I'm just asking if you could ask them, based on the fact they've done this for other projects, is of the $2 million, is there a breakout of what that gets spent on? So, is there $100,000 paid to some firm to do an environmental study? Is there $50,000 that goes to XYZ firm to do a survey? You know, all the things that are involved in, quote, a feasibility study. I assume an architectural firm doesn't do everything and get all $2 million. So, I'm sure, you know, they wouldn't have a budget specifically for Wayland, but if they can share its public information, I assume if they could share an invoice or a summary of costs, actual costs that were incurred by some district that could evidence. I can certainly ask for a high level. I mean, they won't be able to give us granular details on specific areas, but, you know, high level cost centers in that type of a study, I'm sure that, you know, they can give me some kind of delineation.
Or reference the two or three other communities that they've worked with that have paid the $2 million or it's a million and a half escalated to $2 million. Yeah, they can just point us to the town. So, we can call up and say, hey, would you mind sharing? We're just looking to get, we'd like to be in a position to both understand where that money would go for what and then be able to explain it to people. So, that would be helpful. I'm just anticipating that question will come up somewhere along the way.
And the reason, the reason it moved from FY30 to FY28 is because the architectural review is completed? No, it's because we are going to be submitting a statement of interest to the MSBA to be considered for a project. Well, you're ready now to do it because. Right, but you're ready two years earlier than. Well, we've submitted statements of interest prior to, but we did not have the full scope of a long-term facilities plan. So, that has amplified the ability for us to be considered. So, we could have continued to submit statement of interest year after year, but right now. The likelihood that we will get invited in is much has a higher respondent rate because we have done the work. So, this item was, if you go back two or three years, this item had been included in fiscal 27, I think. And then. Pushed out. And then it got nudged because again, it wasn't before your time, Christine. The last year Susan was here. It wasn't still clear as to exactly the timing of that. And so, the finance director and his plan to the financial committee pushed it out. I'm not sure on what basis he pushed out last year person. You may not remember. I asked you whether before we finalized our recommendations, whether you felt fiscal 30 was the right place for it. And I can't remember if it was you or maybe the chair of the school committee said to me, you know, there was some understanding with the finance director when he pushed it out, that it was. He understood that it might need to be moved up. Just because. You know, their, their hope was they would get to the point where they've now gotten. So to answer your question, Kelly, I don't think. In my mind, I don't think fiscal 30 was anything more than a. Deferred placeholder that the finance director came up with. We didn't change it. I'll be at a gave person an opportunity last year to change it. I'm not sure. I think. I think that that was the reason that. She would have been able at the point I asked. Didn't necessarily move it up to fiscal 28, but yeah. I understand. I. Yeah, which is the more reason that. You know, excluded that might. Have to be the way. That we consider going just because. Again, it's going to have a dramatic impact on the tax levy. We did. Cause right now we had it funded. with levy debt i don't remember what we recommended
i i think we i think we included as ex i excluded that i don't have to look it up yeah anyway but it's it's in the town manager's plan the finance committee's tiger plan right now at the moment is levy debt um but um so and again that just causes uh political logistical issues next spring
i think the other the other uh topic was the um ball field renovations right
which was which is sliding in there for 20 fiscal year 28 at 2.7 million dollars 29 but 29 sorry yeah went up by 200 000 first name is that you or mike thea sorry i didn't submit or change anything other than the feasibility study so if you're asking about facilities related yeah michael said he uh he didn't know so someone maybe recreation someone um got to either well i guess we can throw back to michael and ask who completed that cell in the in the five-year plan but it went up by a couple hundred thousand yeah but i i think we i thought we asked him about this it was basic because um that's the one of the ones that we submitted that was from the library it was a project uh we that uh those credits are the one-time credit uh and one in the uh uh and the concept of city loan um although they're just saying that's where we'll be able to salvar you're only able to start paying the money uh to support the relatives because when you're going to uh to take uh to the community uh uh at least at this point in time you know if you're coming into the community you're going to have a ton of money but i think it's something else the other part of the plan was um but you're going to have a ton of money but i think it's something else the other part of the plan was um Someone in that finance committee said that they had heard that the athletic director was interested in also getting lights put at the field. And my understanding is that would be somewhat expensive. So maybe that's something you can.
You know, it's a school project and ultimately has to be approved by the school committee, which they did last year. Right before the FinCon considered it. Right. But so we have the definitive knowledge of whether the athletic director is going to come to you, you know, two years from now and say, oh, this thing's up in the queue. Oh, by the way, I want lights and they cost half a million dollars. If that's something you could find out if that's something he said and how strongly he feels about that and then report back, that would be helpful.
Absolutely.
And then the only other question, again, it's a Mike, pay a question, which I didn't hear back from today as I was going through the descriptions in the CIPs. There's two fairly sizable school roof request in thirty one and thirty two. And one of them is described as district wide new roofing roofs, whatever, and the other specifically mentions Clayton Hill. Oh, but the description in each of the CIPs. Specifically references Clayton Hill. So my question to him was, is that is Clayton Hill eight million dollars with two phases of four million or was the description in the district wide roofing or was it a duplicate request or something else? So again, I can just share what he has explained in his terminology using district wide is that would be for any other sections. So I would say that would be for any other sections. Of any of any of the other buildings that might be in disrepair in a given year. Because it may not be a full remove replace situation, but it could be there was snow that came through a section or a wing of one of the other buildings. And that would be, you know, certainly a few hundred thousand, if not a million dollar repair type of. Thing, so that's what he has shared in the descriptions of using a district wide category for those unknowns that could really certainly happen. And Clay Pitt Hill is definitely on the schedule for needing a full replacement. Again, not knowing what type, what project we might be getting involved with the MSBA. So that's the projection. Out would be the Clay Pitt Hill roof and then a district wide category for any of the other buildings that had significant disrepair that needed to be rectified in a particular year. I'll wait till he responds to my email. My guess is he'll tell me that the description in the district wide CIP is just not accurate. And I probably know the answer to this, but.
But for the fact we were looking for the MSBA to help out with all of the new buildings and a renovation of the middle school. Are there any of these large ticket repairs that the state will help fund? The only other projects they do are roof repairs, boiler and windows. Those are considered accelerated projects. So those are typically an annual cycle to submit. And it's not out of the question. But typically, if you're going for a larger scale project, you're not going to get selected for the smaller project.
And if you recall, they did, we did get MSBA funding on the local roof a few years ago.
Because she would take their eye off the ball. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do we have any other questions for Kirsten?
No.
All right. Well, thank you. We appreciate your, your time. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
Used one person there we go. All right. So I apologize that I did not send this out beforehand. We can start with SENIX. I think we're going to have to go in. On this next page. GOPOL juntig andни it tonight. I had some updates today that I wanted to share that we included. What this paper shows is the capital funding that IT has had, how much we've spent in the past year, both on encumbrance and all. So if you look at the column that identifies the initial funding, when I came in last year, we had $1.1 million in capital funding. So far to date, I have spent $498,000. I currently have $415,000 encumbered, leaving me an ending balance at the end of 26. Two. $218,000 current date. I have $218,000 left in my capital items here. Okay. So the purpose of this document is to show you that I am spending down capital dollars. Okay. As you can see, and we discussed, at this point in time, I have $500,000 awarded for 27. I plan on spending every dollar of that. I have a question about that. Certainly. I thought we talked to you about this when you were in two or three months ago. So the first item, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but there was an error in the warrant in terms of the descriptions that were under the headers that you show here. And I thought at the end of our last discussion with the town manager present, the conclusion was that because of the description in the warrant of the $250,000, it could only be spent on... Video monitoring and management, which you're saying is cameras, $100,000. These other items seem more like potentially cybersecurity remediation, modernization infrastructure. And likewise, the next item, which is supposed to be for public safety, regional emergency system stuff, had the description that was supposed to appear under cybersecurity remediation, modernization. So my view, and I thought what we talked about was none of the... None of the $150,000 would be spent for what it's described here as being potentially going to be spent for. It could only be spent on cybersecurity remediation. So I guess I'm still both confused and concerned. And we just asked that you don't need to do it tonight, but you just kind of talked to the town manager. I know I thought he had said he had some conversation with town council. And I thought... The issue was, you know, was there a wide enough berth under the $250,000 to not just do, quote, cameras, but to do other things, albeit related to the video monitoring, as opposed to thinking that you could... Yeah, spend the money as well. No, just so I'm sure is what you've described here, as I just interpreted it, which is a combination of video monitoring and then cybersecurity stuff, and then public safety, regional... Regional emergency is the second item. But that's where you think you're able to go. And I would just like to hear that you... Yeah, I... Can you confirm that with the town manager or the finance director of both? Because I was anticipating you were going to have to ask, and I think we encouraged you at the last time we met with you, because you were going to be stuck. Not necessarily your fault. I was anticipating you were going to potentially ask, were some of the dollars you thought you were getting in fiscal 27's budget in fiscal 28 to be able to sort of catch up? Yeah, I... Here in the comments, what I was trying to identify is what I anticipate that I will need. However, I have not confirmed this with Michael, with the town manager yet. So I was just putting this in as a sense to give you a picture of what that might look like. I think, to Brian's point, I think we have to get that confirmed. I will. Because, if you can only use it for the things that were in the description, then we anticipate your requests need to change to make up the shortfall on cybersecurity. Yeah, and there might be some of that $250 that, unless you decide you're going to spend it on morbidly stuff, You're going to return it... You could return it and use it towards funding the cybersecurity. Yeah, that's the part that... to clarify because I don't believe that I would have a $250,000 need for the camera project. Yeah, because you had asked for $150,000 last year. We recommended it because we thought it was a life safety type thing. And the town manager did not include the $150,000 for video monitoring in his plan. So it got all bollocked up. And again, it wasn't your issue. It was more of a FinCom issue of not getting the right descriptions in the right places. But to Kelly's point, time is of the essence to figure out what's going on here, particularly if you're going to have to ask for some more money to be able to do the stuff that you need to do it on. And hopefully, if you needed $150,000 for cameras, you got $250,000. Then you're saying, return the $100,000 and we'll do the item for the cybersecurity because you need an additional $100,000 for cybersecurity, right? And then you need the public safety regional system because it wouldn't have been funded. If we had to do these projects in accordance with the description, that's where you're short. So we know that. We build it into this year's plan because, quite frankly, by the time town meeting comes, it won't be that much longer before you've got the money and can run with it. But if we don't clean it up and get it in here for this town meeting. So I can do this for 27 or is this for 28 that I would make these changes? That's part of the question. The question is one for the town manager and the council. Okay. What are you able to spend that money on? Are we sure what you're able to spend it on? If they go with the interpretation of you have to spend it on what the description and the warrant is, then you're going to need, you're not going to need $250,000. $250,000 for cameras, right? You're going to have something left over. We're not going to be able to appropriate that until FY28, right? Which is going to affect your planning, right? And how you do things. But it's also, I don't know how far along you are in the process, but it's not that far away. Well, I would like to talk about that. That's one more question. In fiscal 28, in your TIPs, which I think for these two items, you had staged money in. So in fiscal 28, in last year's plan, you had another $150,000 for cybersecurity remediation, blah, blah, blah, and $100,000 for public safety, regional emergency system, which suggests that you needed $250,000 for the latter item, $150,000 in fiscal 27, $100,000 in fiscal 28. And over those same two fiscal years, you were looking for $250,000 last year for cybersecurity and $150,000 in fiscal 28. And you ended up needing $250,000 as part of the fees for 400. So I think what we're saying is, in addition to what you've got in there right now for fiscal 28, which was in there in the plan, is there a chunk of this money that you just cannot spend, what you're currently describing, and thinking you're spending it on? In which case you would have to increase the funding of those two line items to get you up to where you need. It's going to delay your ability to do some of the things before. Yes. here to find other money, right? That's not our call, right? We're making a big deal out of it because we want to make sure the call actually gets made so that we know what to put in here, but it's not our call. It's town council and the town manager on the interpretation of what those monies can be spent for, but if they come in with a strict interpretation, then either, like Brian said, they have to find money elsewhere, not in the capital budget, because we can't change the FY27 appropriation or it's got to wait until FY28's approved. I understand. Okay, thank you. I just thought we had to resolve that and I'll email you the meeting at which we discussed if you want to refresh your memory. That would be helpful. You can listen to the conversation and then go talk to the town manager. You said... That would be very helpful. And the only reason we had such a big conversation about it, because I had asked this question at the town meeting, could we want to reopen the capital budget? The following night to fix this and the town manager said no. I think we can work around it. And at that point, I said, I don't know how you work around it. But I know you were not well that night. But anyway, so we beat that one to death, but it's important because we don't want to find out after the fact that you can't spend it and then you didn't ask for more money. Yeah, I want to be very clear for the public, right? This is not this committee saying, we don't think it should be spent. We're just trying to make sure that it's done through appropriate means, right, that are allowed under the code and the vote of town meeting. And if we don't get an answer on that and they come back later and say you're restricted and we didn't reflect that in your FY28 request, you're going to have another year of waiting. And so that's why it's important to get it resolved and get it reflected in the FY28 request. it needs to be so uh just to talk about the cameras for a minute i am not moving forward with the camera work at this point in time until we have a camera policy established okay that camera policy is in process it has a first draft that's being reviewed it's going to go through several iterations so i don't have an estimate i would like to get this done by november 1st but that is i i can't i i can't tell you what that date will be because there are many iterations for that camera policy so until then i really can't tell you whether or not the funding will be used for cameras or i can use all the camera all the funding the second uh line item for the regionalized system um this is um this project was supposed to be done last year you were supposed to be done this year um the uh the mrec had applied for 25 million dollars they received five million dollars okay which severely impacts this project so right now the go live date is july 1st of 27 however that's in question as to how much funds we will need and i'm trying to get that answer for you so that i can come back and say well i think it's going to cost this much okay i don't have that information today and i'm really pushing hard on mrec to get that um firewall i'm i'm well into that project at this point in time so i would like to follow up with before i get into uh the 28 requests i would like to talk a little bit about technology and the capital and finance process in government it and the cost of it are increasing at a ridiculous rate especially with the war that's going on and technology companies last year in 25 we paid roughly 45 000 for software i had an invoice i had a um the cost would the i was getting invoiced in may okay the vendor would not tell me how much that was going to cost until may 14th when that was due june 30th that cost went from 45 000 to 128 000 in one year okay so i can come and ask for money and tell you this but i don't have any confidence that in 28 it's going to cost that much money and i can ask for money and tell you this but i don't have any consumer service i'd like what's down there if it costs that much money then what would can we do
okay i don't have any students there about 怎樣 but think i can get that how we do it today um in difficult times uh i haven't gotten nothing from the county umm the county did head that on and then we went on the other wall tomorrow morning because said he had been there festival today he had been there until players want to see him i they did them so they wanted to sit down again on the vendors and the state providing them. The other aspect of these grants is they come up and I can only take advantage of them every other year. Okay. So right now we're in a whole year. And I have to wait until 28 before I can request more money. Is the back to the escalating cost of the software and other related IT stuff, does the state have any bulk of the money that I can take advantage of? Is there any purchasing contract that you can work off of, or? Having worked at the state, yes. I'm taking advantage of any enterprise licensing that I can through state contracts. So this is also an aspect that I'm pursuing and take advantage of. So, Nick, given what you just said about processing and what you're going to do in the future, do you have any changes in your existing requests that go out into the out years? And I understand no one can predict what the future is, but do we already know that those baselines are blown based on where things are today? That's difficult to answer. Okay. I can tell you, you know, there are two aspects to this. I can come in and say that I need $500,000 a year, and that's what I need. Right? I can go to FinCom and go to the town meeting, and I only get $150,000 approved, right? Which is kind of where we're at at this point in time. So, you know, to be honest with you, I don't have enough experience to be able to tell you that this is going to be $450,000 in 28, or it's going to be $500,000 in 29. I can put estimates out there if you think that is appropriate for me to do. I think it's appropriate if ... Because we got a number in here somehow, right? If when we came up with that number, and maybe it's ... Well, I didn't come up with that number. I don't know, but if we came up with that number, and we've seen double-digit increases in technology costs, and we know that that number is already bad, right, I don't want to play pretend, right, and say in a plan that we need, you know, $340,000, I'm going to use the telephone, right, to replace the telephones in 29. But if you went and priced them today, it's $600,000, because then we're not going to be able to do the project, or we're only going to be able to do half the project. So I'm not asking you to, like, go pick them out of thin air, but if you know that the costs are already up, it's almost, in my experience, unlikely that they go back down over time. I just don't want to have ... I know we try to get as close as we can on 28, but I don't want to be unrealistic about 29 to 32 if we know that that's not enough. Yeah, I think a few of the numbers in the five-year plan you inherited, and you didn't change them last year, which is fine. We're still trying to figure out, you know, where you needed to go. I think, you know, we all have our own experiences in this, and we heard Dave Bernstein tonight, and I'm happening for, I'm sure, a lot of people, you know, are focused on this stuff. You know, it's akin to life safety, but it's not an actual life, although I suppose ... It can be if it's your water supply. Yeah, it could be. So I think the narrative on what it is has to continue to be, you know, brought forward in a truthful way, to Kelly's point. I know the finance director historically has been loath to allow department heads to make substantive changes to the five-year plan once it's been approved, but if you're, you know, particularly when you have a change in position, and maybe there's a change in, you know, technology changes every day, right? It means something new you're trying to fend off. You know, at some point, to your point, Kelly, you have to face reality in that some of these costs, you're either going to do them, as Dave Bernstein said, we did come within a whisker of the town losing billions and millions of dollars, you don't want to be on the wrong side of that decision of oh, you know, an extra 50,000 or 250,000 could have plugged a hole that, you know, could have cost the town millions of dollars, right? Yeah, my concern is, and we've had this in a couple other places, right, where we were so off on the amount, right, and it's because we kept the plug number, right, for five years that when it came time to do the project, Right. right. right. right. do part of the project, right? And then part of the project in the IT world usually doesn't leave you protected, right? Part of the project means you're still vulnerable in that area. So it's a little different than when there wasn't enough money to replace all these windows and they only replaced half, you know, one side of the window. So that's what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about telling the town it's a certain amount of money, telling them it's to complete, you know, an improvement to secure a vulnerability and still having the vulnerability after you've spent what isn't an insubstantial amount of money. So that's... We're going to fix the town building. We need a million. Oh, we need a million next year. Oh, we need a million next year for the same. We fixed the town building last year. Well, we're still fixing it. Yeah. So it needs... I mean, especially in 2032, it's not in our... This is a budget cycle, right? So those numbers shouldn't be the same as 2028, I would assume, right? Yeah. I can't... I can't imagine a laptop in five years at the same price. Right. So there's opportunity, right? I mean, again, I think the point is, if you know, based on what you've seen already, that hardware is up 20%, the hardware is up 20%. How would you feel about... I'm not all for giving an open checkbook, but I can almost see an article that's posted in the Capital Budget, an article for, you know, IT, identify all the things that really need to be done. Do it as excluded debt. It could be a million dollars, million and a half, and basically tell the town, there's a lot of work. It's going to take three to four years, kind of like a building project almost. And we need the financial commitment sort of upfront. And as long... In my view, as long as there could be a governor on what it gets spent on, so it doesn't all get spent right away in your back a year later. Is that an approach that anybody would feel comfortable with? I have to think about it. I think I would start with, like, what's the realistic... Or you could double. Yeah. I'm not trying to say make it up. You know, I'm just saying, like John just said, right? I know right now, I'm going through it at work, right? Laptops are costing an exorbitant amount more than they did. We're looking at changing our refresh cycle because they're so expensive, right? If I know that, then... I know that if I've got 50,000 in 28, 50,000 in 2030 is not going to replace the same number of laptops, and 50,000 in 2032 is not going to replace the same number of laptops. And oh, by the way, the cost wasn't even 50,000 in 28, it's 70,000. So I'm just asking to take the step back and say, because you did inherit some of this, to say, what is it going to take? And then I would be open to having the conversation about, we need to do an acceleration of that based on what we know. Like if Nick, you said, well, I really need FY28 and 29 projects to get us secured, right? Based on the current threat environment, then I'd be open to that. But I would want to know what those projects are and today's best estimate of what they're going to cost with an inflator. And if we look at trend on technology costs, and they've been going up 10% a year, don't use five. For next year, it's probably not going to happen. Because then you get locked into saying you need to pick one, right? That's what keeps happening. Yeah, I just, this makes me very, very nervous. Yeah, they get crowded out. I mean, there's lots of projects on the list. We had over 150 plus projects over a five-year plan. And again, I know you're trying to toe the line to sort of ask for what do you think will fit within everybody else's ask, but I think what I'm hearing is that people here in a town meeting when the subject came up, and again, there's only so much you really want to be sharing with the town in terms of the current state. But I'm just saying a different approach might be, you know, worth thinking about in the very near term here. All I'm saying is if we're stuck with where we are, we've got to get it done. And I understand there's no science to it, but what I hear from Nick is that you could double what he's asked for a year, and you still wouldn't be providing enough money to accomplish what he thinks needs to be done. There's lots of what you can get done, right? Nick's made a lot of progress in a year, which I'm thankful for, but that was part of my concern last year was there was over a million dollars sitting out there, right, already appropriated and not being spent. And you don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. You don't have to do that. You could add more to that, but what are you doing first, right? So you've made some progress there. You've got encumbrances on a lot of what you haven't. So I feel a little bit better, right, knowing that those have made good progress. But I just, I'm afraid that, you know, we're being unrealistic about what's going to be able to be done. And we've seen other projects, right? I mean, we're not trying to spend money, but we've seen other projects move half a million or a million because the cost change, right? And we have to have the commerce. Our job is to have the conversation, then prioritize, right? So we need to know what you think the true cost can be based on today. I mean, that's the best you can do. I mean, and I look at this and say, listen, if you're telling me the telephone replacement is $340 and you need another half a million for cyber, I said, then push the telephone, live with it, right? I'm not saying you should. Just right in my head, of course, saying, right? No more telephone. That's a whole other thing. I think you're really, but again, but if we're saying these are the priorities, then let's prioritize and take the money and retool it, right? Just because there's telephone for $340. $340. What's more important? I mean, if you have no network and telephones don't matter because I assume they're all IP based. And for all. But I assume this gets it there, right? So doing this, yeah. Yeah. And understood. And I appreciate the conversation. And I will go back and get back to you within a week as to what I have planned. Because honestly, I have, right now I have 15 projects going on. I have 15, 12 of them are priority and significant. They're not small projects. They're going to take six, nine months to do these projects. And they're significant for our environment. It will have an impact as far as cybersecurity is concerned. So I appreciate the opportunity to go back and take a look at this. I will get back to you within a week as to what I believe to be. Yeah, I guess I was looking at this from a cost conscious perspective. Well, we'd like you to be cost conscious. But also, if you're listening. First check, we want you to be cost conscious. But sticking our heads in the sand and saying, you know, I know costs are up 20%, but I'm not going to put it on the schedule and I'm not going to be able to do the project isn't the right answer. It's put it there and then say, well, I think I prioritize cybersecurity over telephones, right? It's making a better, more educated decision about what's going to be prioritized based on the threat involved in that project. Okay. To me, it's almost like the health safety if you retire. Exactly like that. The health phones, for an example, don't have the same health safety implications that some of the other things do with the threat levels. They'll take the fire alarm, the one from 350 to, hey, we can't have your place, we have to change the whole system. It's now half a million, right? I mean, overnight. Yeah. It's pretty straightforward. We don't like it, but it's straightforward. Or else they're not going to say, like, Do you need one to every room? Yeah. We're not, we need that. I mean, again, this is your budget, right? Obviously, the same thing, but we're more, I mean, dollars are more important in terms of how it flows in terms of like total budget, but in reality, it's your big tool, I mean. Okay. I will ask the question though, particularly on, right, so from a capital standpoint, Mm-hmm. And capital, town's capital policy, there's a rule about, you know, the cost of the project, and there's a rule about the lifetime in order for it to be considered capital, and the lifetime is at least five years. Are we on a five, five-year plus replacement cycle for laptops and PCs? It's a rolling, so the way I'm looking at laptops and what I've done before is it's a rolling replacement. Okay. So, we don't replace all the laptops at once, right? We replace 50 this year, we replace 50 next year, you know, it's a rolling project. So, the 50 you replace this year, when do you replace it again? More than five years? Three to five years. Three to nine? That's the, my only issue, right, with laptop replacement is whether or not it should be in the operating budget and not in the capital budget. I'm sure they sent you here. Yeah. Well. That's my issue, because I don't, they're not, Yeah. They don't last, typically, you know, you're pushing it on five years. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, and, you know, we can talk about budget for just a moment to give you a picture of this. I have three products currently. Munis is $160,000, OpenGov, which is our permitting, was $181,000, and VMware was $128,000. My budget this year is $628,000, or $730,000. $730,000. That's almost half of my budget, but three products. And those products are contracted on a multi-year basis? Yes. Okay. Their annual costs. But the annual cost is fixed at the beginning of the contract, or? At the beginning of the contract, and the most I can do is three years. Okay. And that's locking, you know, locking in at current rate, or an incremental increase. That is unfortunately not within our purview. It's not within our purview. You know, I just say, oh, I'm listening. Yeah. There is Brian's on the FinCon as well. Oh, good. So it's in his purview. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. No. Okay. Back to coming back to us in one week. I assume you would do it anyway, but I think it's pretty important that, well, hopefully your boss is the town manager. Yes. So I think it's pretty important that whenever you are proposing a retool, that you make sure he's totally supportive. Because we don't want to have you come back. You say, okay, great. You guys are open to it. Yeah. We recommend it. The town manager goes, where did you get those numbers from? No, we're going to go back to the old thing. So you need to have the same conversation with him. You can share with him the feedback you heard at this meeting. And you might want to do that before you spend a lot of time retooling your numbers, just to say, do you agree with where they're coming from? If so, I'll go do that. Give it to you. Make sure you're comfortable. Then I'll send it back. Yeah. The alternative approach, Nick, right? Yeah. Yeah. The answer to that is no, is, okay, well, that's fine. Financial reality is that I'm going to need more than $150,000 for cybersecurity in 28. And I'm going to have to put an additional ask somewhere in the five-year plan to make it up because I can do it in stages. And it'll still be effective at closing the threat. It doesn't have to be that the number at a particular year goes up. But I still think you have to manage. Right. To the overall threat environment in the, in the schedule.
Okay. Okay. Any other, we're talking about the telephone system. I'd like to like, what's, what's the, what's the telephone system replacing is that like across the board or. Yeah, across the board. Our current phone system is over 10 years old.
And it's, it's already voice over IP. I thought that, or what, what, what technology are we up for? Just, I hate $340,000 for telephones. Make me one. Right. Well, the, the company that, um, the company that we currently utilize is under chapter 13. Yep. Really? Yeah. Chapter 11, right? Chapter 11. Yeah. Yeah. Chapter 11. So we have to come up with a different solution at some point in the near future, they're no longer going to support. That system. So, you know, it's the, the industry is just crazy. It really is with what's going on. So the, the 340 is based on, on what then? 340 is the estimate that might be. Can carry on both of these old.
Yes. But that, that would suggest that 340 is not anywhere near the right number. I, to be honest with you, I don't know. All right. And the reason I don't know is I have so many projects going on right now and being able to identify some of these things five years out, three years out, um, what can I get done in the given year? Um, how many projects can I have running? Um, it's, um, yeah, I, I don't, I'm the phone project's not. I am my priority list. Yeah. I would say it's not high. I would think it's not high. That's why I would, again, ask, you know, if there's stuff that is higher, that we're making sure that that's incorporated before we're incorporating phones. I mean, I understand they're in chapter 11. I mean, I also would question whether or not landline for the entire district is the entire town is still necessary. I mean, I, I haven't, I haven't had an inline for work. In. Six years. Um, but I'm a landline person, so I know, I know I had to find the same way my copper doesn't mean we can't have, uh, you know, a certain number of landlines in order to, you know, I still have, I still have an, a rotary phone. I can plug into the Jack in my house. I can still access it, but I don't use it. Is the pay phone still up? I believe it is. Yeah. Um, I think that's something we should think about. So the three 40. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are the phones in condition that they can last for another couple of years or that's when push life could be pushed again. Yeah. It could be pushed again. As long as we have support and that that's, that's where we get into the, the crux of the issue, because if they go, you know, if they go bankrupt and we don't have a vendor that is supporting the product, meaning we're not getting security updates on that product anymore. Um, we're just going to go thrifting and get a bunch of rotors. We're going to go through that process, get cars, and then we'll see where we can come back to and they're good things in the long run. We're only going to get to up to a hundred million in the long run. You know, at that point, you know, we're just like, when I'm doing, that's something that I need to sort of think about. Sure. You, you're going to, you're going to be thinking about, about how, you know, able to move these devices out of the way for a couple of years, you know? And so that's, that's the most important thing. Yeah. And then there's, there's, there's a big risk factor. Yeah. Because it's it's a much more difficult and complex situation to understand. And then you come back into the area homes and put them back in. So, well, we don't.
down and they're increasing at an exponential rate we don't know what those costs will be you know right now the issue is um these uh data farms data center farms right we can't get chips businesses can't get chips because they're all going in data centers so the chips cost is gone yeah it's the it's the um not just the chips it's that all of them are actually
all right well hopefully we'll hear from you in a week yes you will yes thank you okay some of your cips didn't have descriptions and they i think they tend to be the older asks can you just re-look at the ones we submitted um unless like the ones i was looking at but then updated yeah no they all have it so maybe maybe maybe you're just really sorry you just resend all of us here but you're going to be your most up-to-date before yeah thanks okay thank you thank you very much thank you so moving on the uh next topic is to discuss the potential content for the draft and see if you can report to the town manager
yes i guess the first question is do we have enough information
got enough uh due diligence in terms of the forms we received to be able to start putting one together well i think we could probably start with looking at last year's report sections and just yes we like this we want to keep it it may we may walk through the whole thing and be like yeah we like the format we just need to update it um but i would pay particular attention to the things we said we wanted to improve and you know are are any of those things that are report related i mean we know one of the things on the list was improving the cic form which we did that's not going to go into other than to say we did it it's not going to go into the report right specifically um but i think it's worth flipping the report and having the discussion about what we're keeping and what we need to do because we've got to get down to business now i'm creating this stuff
anybody feel differently no it's yes i mean we thought we had a ton of time again right there's still a lot against it but the report will be
final report will be longer than last year's report because we have to incorporate the agenda right
i mean it might be that i thought you mean the second addendum we did yeah it was the five years sure so it's going to be uh you know maybe we split the report into the current year focus and then five-year focus or do you just do a five-year focus with the knowledge that 28's in the five-year plan um i still like the current year and five-year focus because the current year is ultimately what the town meeting votes on right whereas the five-year plan goes to town meeting but doesn't it doesn't actually get binding vote does it not a town meeting right so i i still like separating it because if i'm going to town meeting and i wanted to that's where i focus my attention yeah i mean i thought the report that you you drafted i thought the report was really well done so i mean i can't see throwing out the the sort of the format that was used but uh i'm trying to think where we document what actions were next next or need an improvement yeah or yeah i'm kind of uh page four let me look at last year's not this year's well we did sort of a closer we did like folder well you talk about doing uh to be able to post more to match the report say what do we want to do to improve it for next year's uh well on page four we have future process improvement targets yeah we did the first two yeah
we haven't рас feito anything yet we're on page four
not so much on the third bullet
what was the third bullet um getting uh updates on previously approved projects speaking of which i had sent one of the myriad of summaries that i did for myself that i shared with all of you to brian kevini we've received updates on open capital and closeout potentials. And he excerpted from the instructions from the town manager that does say right in it, before submitting your CIPs, please. And he must have sent them a copy of that MUNA schedule, I suspect, and said, review this, and typically they would send that back in. I take it we didn't get any of that. So the question is, should we be – and so I said to him, not knowing whether we had, that, geez, I just assumed that because we were so early in the process that you were likely going to be dealing with closeouts later in the year. But that doesn't mean we can't – if the instructions were to do what they do every year, which is look at their open capital and highlight things that are potentially going to happen in the future. So closeout candidates, we couldn't send an email back and – or if that's supposed to come from the town manager, say, hey, CIPs he didn't get. I didn't get it. Yeah, I assume you would have. I mean, I could go back through my email and make sure I didn't, but I don't think so. So we at least probably should either do it ourselves or ask the town manager to send that out and say, hey, you're all supposed to do this. Please do it. Whether it gets to us in town. I don't have time to do anything with. Who knows? But at least Brian Keveny will need it a little further in the year to deal with closeouts. And – Yeah, I don't think it's terribly realistic to have closeouts ready for October 15th. Yeah, I agree. So I'm not going to focus. Yeah, I get the sense that, you know, I mean, rightly so if the instruction letter says – and it's in their – it's been in their prior years. And I will assume, therefore, albeit when it's been in there, Brian's been sending it – the town manager sent that letter out in, you know, mid to late October. And so there was more time pressure for them to call through that. They were further on in the process. So they maybe had a better handle on which process would be closed out. So to Kelly's point, it is a little bit unrealistic that we dumped on them. And we had to. You know, you've got to get this CFE's back as quickly. That they just forgot about that or didn't have time for it. But – so I want to mention that. But that's part of the third bullet on page four. And then the other issue we had, and I don't know what to do about it, but despite it was its best efforts, the person in the town manager's office that was charged with, as we understand it, tracking – helping track projects isn't available now to speak with. So whether that – it's – has happened, is in process, someone else is going to pick it up. So I think that'll be, you know, probably a continued item in our list.
We didn't do anything on item four. So I just looked in my email, provided the search work, which always a crapshoot. It wasn't in Michael McCall's instructions to – that I see. Yeah, I looked at it and I thought I saw it in there. There's – It's just a small – Let me look again. Small little paragraph. In the Michael – I think it's in his – It's not in his email. It's in the formal instruction memorandum that was attached. I think it's on the first page. Oh, okay. I didn't – It wasn't highlighted in the email. I looked at his email. Yeah.
Oh.
We did the second-to-last one. Yeah, but the problem is it says, before submitting any CIP requests for FY28 and beyond, please provide an update of all existing capital projects, including CPA projects, using the new CIPC form. It wasn't in our form. So he's referencing – yeah, so that – So he asked them to fill something out that wasn't there for them to fill out. Yeah. I thought he used to provide them with the UNIS report, but – so anyway – Yeah. Your report should include the appropriation total, total expenditures to date, confirmation of procurement, and projected completion dates, additionally provide an explanation detailing why projects three years and older are not completed. So he gave instructions, but it is confusing because it says – You should see this in our – To use it in the form. So you may – they may have read it and said, okay, I'll fill out the form. So that instruction number for next year has got to be changed, and then – Yeah. And then – I mean, we could – Yeah. Just send out the summary we have, it's very similar, and add the columns, you know, like it's similar to what Nick's done, right? Here's where I'm at, here's what's encumbered. Yeah. And add a TBD on the – add a date field for when you expect a project to be done. We could do it that way. They just – Yeah. I mean, to me, we know what the financial information is at June 30th. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what it's like, because we already talked about it. But we're not really sure what the financial information is. I would be most interested if they could at least flag the ones that are completed, ready to be closed out. Okay. I mean, let me just – So here's a little – Sure. I'm not sure what – You want a proper – Okay. I think we should sign it off. We should sign it off. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So we should have it, we should have it like that. We should – So it would be a – Yeah. Yeah. It would be possible to do it this – Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we would do our best to make sure that we – Okay. Yeah. Yeah. He wants that whole munisness. Are there any of these that are, can you look at your list, are there any of these that you anticipate may be ready for closeout prior to a meeting? If so, what would be the balance? That would be better than having nothing, and at least, again, I don't know if we're going to have enough information to have it make a difference in what we have to do here. I just asked. But at least we could push it back out to them and so take Liz's latest. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. What could we take, because Liz has already done a lot of work on that. I would just send them the Brian Keveny munis file at June 30th. Yeah, because I don't want to focus on like, we want to focus on what there's big numbers left, but each department doesn't have that many projects. They couldn't look at it and be like, oh yeah, I'm done with that one, or I'm almost done with that one. I think that's the right term. Yeah, the only problem with the munisness list, it doesn't identify specifically by department. It's pretty, most of them are pretty clear based on the little description that's in them. So I can send you the Excel file Brian sent that has the June 30th. But didn't Liz, she had the munis report. I thought that she was tracking. That's the basis for the tables and things she put together. Right. But what we're asking them, we were more focused on, some of the larger. No, but I guess the question is, if she's already done it, by which department is, would that be more helpful to them to send out? Yeah, if she's already done it. Hey, as a reference, take a look at this. Departments in there. Don't we have the combination of the data? Just take a filter off. Yeah. Yeah, she did put it. It was in there, right? Well, I thought so.
Anyway, I mean, we still send the munis report and just say, hey, for reference, we put this together, which if you don't know which one you can look at here. I will. I will find what I think we're all asking for to be what we send out. And I'll send it right to you. Okay. Add that to the agenda. And I'll just add a column that moment looking for them to fill in about this project, ready to be closed out just to get that ball rolling. I think it would certainly in the email ask on any of the more substantial ones, if they want to write any color. Which we haven't really been able to get that information yet.
I'll send that to the two of you. Uh, at least.
Back to the future process improvement targets. Um, fourth bullet, we really didn't do much on the pit bullet. We did at least put together for departmental head use quantitative rating system. Uh, as I summarize for myself, all the forms, I could see in one place, how people did on their rankings. Uh, some got it. Some didn't. Yeah. Um, so it either needs to get a build up the education or instructions, but it is helpful actually, I think on some items that we'll probably talk about when we get into our deliberation about what's in what's moved, whatever. Um, well, it's probably more important for PPW and facilities. facilities. We have three projects. They did a pretty good job. And then the last one, we're starting to nudge into that territory. We collected some information on longer-term and at our meetings with department heads, we either have received or will be receiving some spreadsheets of longer-term stuff. So back to the, if you're just looking to kind of come to agreement on what the report broadly will look like, it's sounding like we're going to take the initial version of the report we did last year in the addendum, push them together, but still keep the primary initial focus on fiscal 28. And then the five-year plan will come behind that with all generally the same kind of tables and information. I was going to suggest, and I'm happy to, once we start figuring out who's going to do this, I'd like to see two or three items maybe elaborated in a little bit more detail, town building. We have, you know, I have in mind what might appear to be the future there based on, you know, information we've collected over the last few months about the new committee, Michael Paya's, you know, high-level estimate of what it would take to do a good rehab and building, that type of thing. Maybe a little write-up section on the long-term school process, try to summarize and put the dollars that appear, which, you know, raise the hair on the back of your neck. So is she going to give us that one-pager? I don't know if we actually asked her. I don't know if she's going to give us that one-pager. I don't know if she's going to give us that one-pager. Did you ask her to do it, or she just said she would? I think it was more, I think it was more like the application process. Yeah. But, I mean, that could be good to highlight in our report. I think it's, I think it's worth, I was going to say, I think it's worth to highlight it in our report with the processes. This is not something most people in town have experience with. We did it with the high school, but it was different because it was one building. We went for one building specifically. We didn't, we didn't have a series. It wasn't pick your, pick your building. Yeah. And it ultimately wasn't, and that was many years ago, it wasn't at the end of the day a totally saluted process. No, it failed the first time. So we need to officially ask her for that one. Yeah. I can ask her without covering it. Yeah. I also think as a part of that, I think the discussion on both the town building and the school, I agree with doing both of them. We should have in those discussions, what is in the plan relevant to those buildings. And I think for the schools, we should do it by building. If we can. It's difficult when there's district-wide. I mean, we could do both specific and then a district-wide for schools. Yeah. I just think it's, I think it's important even for my own knowledge, right? Like what do these totals look like by building? Is there one of these that sticks out as like, I don't know. Can we do that though, from what we have? In some cases, we may be able to. Yeah. Yeah. There's probably a chameleon here. I mean, there's Flores High School, like we still know it's high school. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's useful knowledge anyway. Yeah. And I'm not quite as optimistic as Christine sounded that if, you know, we build a new school, a whole bunch of stuff falls off the plan because... You still have to take the school down if you're not going to over-fix it. Yeah. So... Yeah. So, school building and school... Depending on where this IT thing goes, I think that may be worthy of a small little paragraph. Yeah. I agree. And then it's just one that I'm going to keep harping on. Yeah. I'm going to keep harping on until I find out the right answer. It's the Chapter 90 funding of highway improvements. I think there's two you got to keep harping on. Chapter 90 and then these capital projects from last ATM that had the wrong descriptions. Yeah. So, whether Chapter 90 warrants... I mean, I think it's... Maybe there's a process, little process section or something. I don't know. It's... Sorry, I was... If it gets... If the answer is, you know, brought forth before we issue the report, then I could see it not being in there. Yeah. But if it's not... Still not addressed. Yeah. So, potential inclusions, we're saying Chapter 90 question, answer, and... Yeah. And that type of thing. Maybe that's more... The misquoted warrant. Maybe that's more on a list type thing at the end of the report. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, if we don't really know, we don't want to... I think we're going to have to talk about... Okay. ...the issue with last year's warrant because it affects... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It affects what we ultimately... It's likely... I don't know. I shouldn't say likely. It may affect what the requests are this year, so I think there's... Well, unless the town council comes out with some... Unless town council says you're using it. Right. Please, no. We can still not... There was an error. It was voted... I almost think you should bring it up, but... Document that it was documented. Yeah. Document it was documented. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Document that it was documented. Yeah. And again, it's a footnote, right? But there's still... Hey, these issues were done. It was voted. They could still be spent with... the wider array as well you know and so we didn't change that on the plane um i thought there might be i don't have anything specific right now but there might be some things that we could um that were appropriate in the first year of the committee that we could clip out or alternatively um you know just provide links to our webpage where we might have a copy of the bylaw last year we may have included the bylaws and exhibit i think uh we included it as an exhibit but it was brand new yeah so i'm just thinking as we go through this we might be able to streamline a little streamlining a little bit yeah i don't want to provide context for the person that doesn't know it's the later appendix but i you think it's handy to have i think it's handy to have um i mean the weight doesn't really matter right yeah it can be i mean it's electronic it can be as long as you want to but if you want to put it to the back and change the order i'm fine with that i just to be honest when i was doing this it was really handy for me to be able to have the words all in one place because some of our rationale links back to policy and i think it's good to have it cited and maybe i'm just um because i got asked a lot of questions about it and presented under charter and mission and again whether it's worthy of our report and just these are things that have come up across the last 12 months as i've reported several times and it's still on his mind to phil whitney for one wants to revisit uh why the cipc is so focused on five-year plan and not really spending his time with a longer-term plan well that would be because of the words that are in there no he gets it i think he's he's i think he's heading down a path of seeing if there's a majority of the select board who might be inclined to want to agree with him and then propose a change of bylaw language he hasn't said that but that's the only way you could change what our responsibility is right so um so you know because we haven't really gotten too far on long-term planning beyond five years i think we need to say something like that and um um and whether we attribute something to mr whitney specifically or just say you know we understand the select board you know maybe discussing the current bylaw and this committee's responsibilities but but for now i'm not inclined to do that i don't know yeah i mean if anything i would say we've requested from departments longer-term views and you know do we get i mean i think that you know it's i don't think i don't yeah i don't need to get into whether they're making the lifeboard level or something i'm going to say it again public consumption though select boards welcome to do whatever they want um i've never in my professional career built any forecasts where i skipped um so yeah and then the only other and then yeah the out years are clearly important but i mean the five years and making sure we get it accurate is is i think for the town's purposes well you can't do the out years if you don't have a solid foundation on what the first year is what... five are going to be. Yeah, we struggle to get to five. Right. I mean, even two to be honest. What's happening next year? I don't know yet. That's okay. I mean, that's why we're here, but I think until we get into it, I don't know if our process is going to be exactly the same as it was last year, in terms of how we deliberate. If we could, under this topic, spend a couple minutes on I mean, to get to the report, we have to deliberate what we want to put in the report, right?
I'm concerned that I don't want to go down the same path we did last year, where we end up not having clear understanding from the finance director of what financial parameters we should be operating with, because you know, we adopted the ones the finance committee follows last year that led us to pick and choose projects because they wouldn't fit financially, and that caused us to push a lot of things out, and almost all but not all, but almost all of the variances between what we recommended and what is in the five-year plan that town meetings saw are timing differences, because the finance director made different assumptions on how things would be funded, some of which are not. Some of which were outside the bounds of those parameters. And I don't think it's going to be helpful if he simply reports to us, well, here, don't go above $4 million, whatever the number, don't go above $4 million in levy debt in any year. I just don't know. I personally think we need to be inviting him, and when we talked about a more collaborative approach, I think we're ready to invite him in possibly even the next meeting, maybe not get him on Wednesday, but maybe the following week, and just literally walk through. He's got what the asks were, right, from the schedule that I sent him, and it's set up to be able to start deciding are we comfortable with some or all of the asks, and if not, what are we going to do with them? But we also need to know what our funding bands are, because that would dictate where they can fit in the five-year plan, and it just, you know, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. It seems to me we've got to do that with him. Otherwise, we're just going to end up with a bunch of variances, and that's not helpful. No, I agree with that. I don't disagree. And that sounds like probably at least a two-hour working session, so if you invite him, you need to prepare him. He's got to either come prepared with his own recommendations for our consideration, or we could do it the other way, but I think he's going to control it. I don't think you can do that this week. Yeah, because we have a meeting. I think we at least have to have a conversation. The next meeting, we'll be starting our deliberation. We talked about this after you left last week, but that's what we had talked about, was meeting with the rest of the department heads tonight, and then getting started on our deliberations, which I think we can do and get a rough idea of where we're at and what our big decision points are, and then we can meet with Brian, so I would say asking him for his availability next week. So let me ask you a question. The agenda you posted for Wednesday has the same discussed potential content for draft report, but I guess under the review and discussed departmental capital request submitted, that's where we'd be talking about how we feel prior to this. So again, my only concern is that as I started to do this myself, how do I deal with all the moving around? If you look at one of the spreadsheets I sent you where I set it up to allocate in the financing buckets,
you know, 60 to 70 percent of what was in the five-year plan has changed in some form. Numbers are in the same year, but have gone up a little bit. Some have gone down by a lot. There's still a bunch of new projects, but some of them, to help pay for them, others have been pushed out. So there's still a lot more movement that I'm sure the finance director is particularly happy about. And I know he's going to be looking for, as he did last year, new requests that are a net ad, which we have a net ad of over $4 million in fiscal 28. Two or three items account for 70 percent of that number. But, you know, how do you deal with that? Okay, excluded debt, if there's everybody on board, that excluded debt is going to take out the MSBA item so we don't have to worry about exceeding the levy. But I could sit here and have that negotiation with myself. I can come to the meeting on Wednesday and four or five of us could have, four of us, you'll be out, John, right? We could have that discussion and we're not going to get very far because if we say we're not going over $4 million in levy debt, it's going to force us to start, you know, potentially pushing things. So, I just... Well, I think we can, though, say you know, here's what's consistent, and this is what we talked about after you left last week, right? Here's what's consistent with last year's plan. Here's what's changed amounts. And here's what's new. Of what's changed amounts and what's new, right? What do we feel has to make it into the plan from a priority standpoint? And of what's new, same question, but it's going to be a harder one because the amounts are bigger, right, on the new stuff. What can make it in and what's the implication? It means some earlier projects got to come out. It means we have to go beyond the parameters. It means it's excluded debt, but I think we can break that discussion because I know we've got to get Brian in here, but I know his response last year, time and time again, was you start with the last year's plan, and then you look at the changes. That's my concern. The last year's plan is not a two-year plan. That's exactly my concern. And so we just have to, and I would if you're a community, I would just copy the town manager so he's in the loop on what we're looking for. And we need that to happen right away because we have no sense talking about a report until we... And there's a couple of big ones, and then we probably have a direct conversation, hopefully. Well, I had the one on the MSBA with him via email, and he got back to me fairly quickly and appears that he may change his mind or someone else, may change their mind and say, no, we don't want to do a debt exclusion question next April because we are possibly dealing with an override question, not a foregone conclusion yet, but so there's other powers. And that could change that. That's out of our control, right? Yeah, but this is just, what is your current thinking? If his current thinking is this is how we're going to approach it for now, great. Then at least we have an action. We know where we're going. The whole town building discussion, again, we approached it differently last year than he did. And in fact, when I started looking at the... I sent you an email, Kelly, I wanted to get Exhibit H. I know. I got to look for it. I have the spreadsheet. It's attached to the report. I was just trying to get bigger numbers. And what I wanted to do is like on town building, it didn't appear to me that, you know, Michael Payne last year gave us, at least as to the roof, he kind of spread them out over three or four fiscal years. Everything else we kind of put off to the side. This year, he has some of the roofs in there, but I'm not sure he has them all in there, similar to last year. And then he sort of brought in the septic. Well, that's because he started with the septic. And then he sort of brought in the septic. And then he sort of brought in the septic. And then he sort of brought in the septic. And then he sort of brought in the septic. The town manager's plan, which didn't spread them out. It just did the... So he just followed that. So that one item dictates where and how we're going to reflect both us and the town manager items related to town building. Because that was a contributor to the variances.
Now, at the end of the day, if we can't get on the same page, then we just... issue our report as we did last year with what we think is our recommendation. And if there's variances, there's variances, right? So I guess I'm thinking about how clearly we need to meet with them and set up a meeting. We have a meeting on Wednesday. It's too soon. We have a posted agenda for Wednesday, which is pretty similar to the one we have today. So this is almost skipping forward to setting times for meetings. So on Wednesday we will, is the purpose then to discuss internally where we are in terms of what we've looked at, what our thought process is, where we want to go. And then the next meeting after that is the 16th. But it sounds like from my hearing, we think we should be setting something up sooner than that. Oh, so we're not meeting on the 9th? I didn't have my calendar.
I didn't have the 9th. 16th? John, you were on the 16th. Yeah, you're on the 16th. I didn't have anything on the 9th. Did you? I don't have anything. Okay. Well, I just assumed we were Oh. That's fine. We went back to our regularly scheduled. Yeah, I'd love to have John here for one of these substantive discussions. Do we want to try for the 9th? Yeah.
I mean, I don't know if that'll be 9th. I mean, before. We're keeping it on Monday. I know that tends to work. I mean, it's after the holiday, but. Yeah. When they get a Monday holiday, do they work late on Tuesday or is it exempted from work late week? Well, the holiday is the 7th. Right. I was going with like the, you know how Monday is the day that they stay late? Like, is that just gone for the week?
9-16 is a Monday. 9-16 is a Wednesday. Yeah. So I would say try, well, you got to send a note to Brian and see what he can do. But I would say try for 9-9. That's Wednesday? That's the Wednesday. If not, can we do the 14th, which is the Monday? We already have a meeting scheduled for the 16th. So I would say it's 9-9, 9-14, and 9-16 if we can get quorum. Yeah, I'm going to be tough on Monday. Yeah. But 9-9. 9-9 would be our preference. I would offer that. You could offer that, and then he says no, right, follow the alternative. Yeah, which would be the 14th. Yeah. It would be the Monday from 14th. Yeah, that may be. No, the Labor Day is the previous. Yeah, 14 is. Yeah, I would try for 9-9. Yeah, at 6-30. And we're still planning a meeting on the 16th. Yes. Yeah. And so what exactly do we want? Does Brian need to receive from us? Yeah, we've been a lot of... What he has at the moment, I don't know if he got all the detailed CIPs. Were they supposed to send a copy of that to the... He did from the department. We were supposed to get it from the department managers, but I also sent him the summary file of all the CIPs and the... Oh, so this stuff he sent us. Yeah. Okay, so he has it.
Yeah, and I... I'll check now. I sent him... I'm pretty sure... I can't remember if I copied on all the three summaries I sent out to you. I thought I sent him the one that basically I used his template from his Excel capital budget file that he usually provides to the FinCom. And he has basically five tabs in there that list all the projects and then across the page has the funding sources. And so to the extent that... To describe what I sent you, I basically updated it for all the requests we received. To the extent the requests were in the five-year plan already with no change to numbers, I left them exactly wherever they appeared in his schedules where they were in the five-year plan, but the numbers went up or down. I left them in the same funding columns, but moved the numbers up or down.
And then I created a column, that is yet to be allocated. And that's either because we have to decide whether we're going to recommend the projects in that particular year or at all. That's really where we're going to need his help. And where we decide to put those may affect some of the other funding sources. So I think as we work through this with him, I would think we would want to just walk through each one of those Excel spreadsheets for each fiscal year. Right. Which I can update once we have our conversation on Wednesday. If we know, I'll just give you an example. I'm not trying to lobby you on this. I'm not inclined to do the high end of the septage facility just given its amount of money and what's going on in fiscal 28. And it was in fiscal 29 in Michael Svea's last year request, or in our recommendations, I think one of both wasn't in the town manager's plan. So I was looking to either pull that out completely and put it into the purgatory bucket and just say, that's town building. All we said, we'll deal with our moves. Amen. So if a majority of us said, yeah, we think we agree, then I would simply update what I sent Brian Keveny before we talked to him. And that wouldn't appear there. But we would have a discussion with him about what's involved with town building. Just as an example.
I mean, do we think we're going to get that deep into every project or I think it's going to be more of the bigger projects. We have to, I mean, how are we going to, we have to make a recommendation on every project. But for him, I mean, again, it's more of a, I mean, I agree. We should, but I don't want to send him something and then have him. Hey, well, that's nice, but well, I'm going to change like I did last year when I changed 25 projects. Yeah. So I, you know, I think we have to get that granular. Now, now we could say, we're going to talk about whether we are for or against certain requests. And if so, what years we think they should be in update those schedules in advance of meeting with them, send the schedules to him and say, assuming you were to agree with what we're recommending in the years we're recommending, can you allocate it? And then send it back to us. And then, and meet with us to talk about any particular issues you have or, or, or let him, let him go ahead and move things around. Well, we may have to meet with him once. I mean, I know whether or not we would be able to, but yeah, I mean, we're back to the circle, which is we need his guidance, what he's thinking, but we can't give him guidance. And we know the project. So, I mean, I think we just didn't get him in to have a conversation of here's the big ones we're seeing a little bit about these are the major changes and we get through them all. Right. But I think let's prioritize the questions based on the ones that we know are deal breakers. I mean, there's some in there that we know that they have to be like, they're just too big. You know, we can't take them normally. That would be my take. How about this? Why don't you reach out and see if you could join us on Wednesday night for 15, 20 minutes to talk about just from a high level, how is it we should work through this in collaboration with him over the next two weeks? Yeah. Maybe. I mean, there really isn't much of the report you can do because all those tables are going to be driven by what decisions we make. Right. And then your text is going to change as you describe things. So, yeah. If we have to deliver a report by October 15th, the reports pretty much got to be done by the week before that. Yeah. And so, you know, it's going to be third week of September before we know it. Right. And we haven't yet talked about the elephant in the room as to how is this report, which, Kelly, you did a great job last year drafting. I did a small piece of it, a few tables. But how is this report going to get done this year?
That's a question. Yeah, to your point, you've got to agree on where you're headed with the numbers before you start drafting. I hope, right, given that we drafted it, like a big part of the battle is what do we put in this and where does it come from and how do I get it? That's done. I will say, right, in my head, my goal is to get a report out by October 15th. I'm not convinced by any means it won't need a revision, right, soon after. Because. Of time constraints when we've already improved significantly over where we were a year ago, but I'm also not opposed to issuing it and then reissuing it based on further discussion. So. Right. I don't want to do I don't want it to be wildly different. But I think to your point, John, there's a couple of big items here that. I don't know that we're far enough along that that the towns. Far enough along on a couple of them. That that you'll be set and done by the time. We issued this report, but I'd like to have the vast majority of them gone through and if it's. Okay, now let's keep debating, right, what to do with. With the school feasibility study, that's what we got, whatever we can do that, but. Let's try and get Brian in here and see if we can nail him down. That's the first problem. The question on that is, I agree that if we can get them. In here, you know, for a short period of time in the second, that's fine. I have to revise the agenda. Which you can do up in almost any time, but he's going to have to give me the answer. Please mark so I can get. He's an ex-officio member, so I think. You don't have to. We'd be fine. But I guess, well, I guess, I guess if the agenda is broad enough for the seconds that that would work. Yeah. Yeah, the 640 agenda item is the. Yeah, just we're still reviewing the request. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're. He's a. Member. So, okay, okay.
Okay. And again, we'll, we'll. If we all have the benefit of hearing him for 15 or 20 minutes, we'll figure out pretty quick whether there's a path forward. Right. Or it's him, or we're just going to have to. So I sent it to everybody who just found it. Including Michael and Diane on August 17th. Okay. The only. Difference. And what's been submitted since then is I had filled out the form for Linda because originally she gave me Brian's forms filled out. So I just took what was there. And so it's missing, I think the description, but it's got the amount and maybe the rating. Yeah. So I can update that and put it in. But that's really the only difference. Um, I don't think that's. And for that one item. So.
And then, I mean, we are, talk to it about some changes. We've talked to facilities about some changes. changes, right, that I, in terms of making sure the, if the transfer station, garage, there was a couple other ones we talked to Michael, I thought about, but whether or not they needed adjustment. But. Yeah, I mean, both he and Tom may be, may be looking for some more detail on some of the out years. So, but again, that may or may not be forthcoming. So. Yeah, we got to run with what we have. But they have had it now for several weeks. Okay. All right. Well, should we move on to reviewing and voting on the minutes of August 24? Before we do that, can we just talk about one more thing on the report? Sure. We talked last year about reconciliation. And we got to the report that we would need a reconciliation with the prior year. So obviously, last year, we didn't have that in this level of detail. So we just want to iron that out, because that's something we can start working on a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I'd be happy to volunteer to, I don't think it needs to be, unless you feel differently, granular. I mean, I have it granular from something I did several months ago that you all have, which I identified each and every one of the minutes of August 24. So, I don't think it needs to be in every variance. But if we could just do a table and keep it a little bit higher level. I think if we can keep it higher level, if the question was whether we're reconciling last year, which things we're reconciling. We're reconciling our recommendation last year to where it ultimately landed, right? And or reconciling where we landed to this year's recommendation, which maybe we did have that in the report last year. So, sort of a two-step reconciliation, right? What was the second one? The second one was reconciling the ATM five-year plan to what we ultimately land at for this year. I would think we'd want to do that, right? We're going to want to show how it, on a high level, how it did change. And then call out. Oh, I'm sorry. The second plan, which is the, yeah. So, I think I have that. Yeah. So, the first is our recommendation last year. To the town manager. To the town manager. Ultimately, what went to town meeting, right? Right. But you have. And then what was the final plan? And how does that now relate as to those items in this year? Yeah. Which I'll build that. I mean. You have seen that already. I started it and then I just didn't finish it. So, I'll fill that out. I'll do something for the first one. Again, not granular by project. I think it's just high level. I think what I did for the finance committee, which we haven't discussed yet, was, you know, high level, but then tried to call out all the timing differences and basically say, we generally agree it was just different years because. Yeah. We put different financing constraints on ourselves. And then. We didn't put any financing constraints on ourselves. We put, we followed. We followed the, you know, there's a lot of, you know, it's not a big deal. And then. But there, there are a handful of items that, again. Yeah. You know, would be called out. So, I will work on that one. Before we do minutes, are we going to approve the annual report? Where do we get that off our. If we can send out the one with all the accepted changes. Is there a sign in that? I mean, people aren't ready for that. Yeah. I mean, I, I went through. I thought it, I thought it's good. But I don't, we do it today or we would defer to. When is that through? End of September? yeah i think it's september so we want liz here we're not going to it doesn't like we're going to have five people here okay all right so that's true because john's not going to be here i mean i'm clearly okay with it i submitted it but oh no oh i i approve approval of the annual report i second it as circulated by john on 8 30. i second it and those in favor be authorized john or did that just send that on to the town manager's office correct
well done how excited i guess i'm done
i can take that off the agenda um all right we already talked about next meetings um so i guess we can review another to approve the meetings of august 24 which have been um circulated any comments
i did not have anything noted
ron any comments on the minutes under a minute oh wait whose minutes were they they were uh brian's okay all right then i might watch the paper for the last 20 minutes okay all right uh can i have a motion to approve the minutes of august 24. second all in favor aye sir just you skipped over succession planning um the only reason i'm pressing is because i'm beginning to get overloaded um you all some of you work so you're overloaded already but um you know fincom it's meeting every week and it's just intense at the moment and i'm more concerned about the number of nights i'm out um so i'm gonna hang in here as long as i can until the report's them, but that's the reason I'm pressing because I'm going to turn into a pumpkin on October 15th. So no, I understand. Yeah, no, I appreciate the extra effort.
So there's no updates on? No, no, no, nothing's changed on my end. Nothing's changed. Okay. Okay. Oh, other than, I'll tell you, it's 31st. So tomorrow, my understanding is there'll be a vacancy on the FinCom Appointing Board. And one of the members is stepping off, would be an idea, subject to them stepping away from volunteering in general, would be an ideal candidate for this committee. So. So the town moderator is still on and the chair of the select board is still on. So. I believe the person stepping off retired from town service some time ago and then agreed to do that. So I, I don't think so. Throw that out there. Formally warm body. Yeah, I think she has, that was her swan song. So we'll see what happens. Okay. Well then can we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. 7.51 PM. All in favor? Aye. Aye. 7.51. Thank you. Thank you.