September 9, 2026 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript

September 9, 2026 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee

Autoscroll:

We call the Appropriate Planning Committee meeting to order. It's September 9, 2026 at 630. It's an in-person only meeting. We're in the Weyland Community Center, Room D. The meeting may be recorded, and if it's recorded, it will be made available to the public on WeyCamp as soon as possible after the meeting. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Act of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person in accordance with applicable law. When required by law or allowed by the chair, a person's wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so at the meeting location. Public comment will be limited to two minutes per person. I will review the agenda. 630, call to order. 635, public comment. 640, review and discuss departmental capital requests submitted this year, including outstanding capital projects with department heads as needed. 7, discuss potential content for draft CIPC reports to town managers. 815, discuss proposed town building working group and visioning group, including CPIC involvement, if any. 820, discuss preparation of annual report. 820, discuss succession planning. 825, review and vote to approve the minutes of September 2. 825, set time for next meetings. And 830, adjourn.
And where we'll pick up is where we left off last time, and that was reviewing the... No announcements, no public comment? No announcements, no public comment. Thank you. Pick up where we left off, and that is reviewing the submissions by the various departments and the allocations of the submissions between the various excluded, levy, cash gaps, and other categories. And I know that we have some spreadsheets and... because Brian, do you want to start with walking us through what you prepared? Yeah, so what you should see in the Excel is the original template that I had sent out with the fiscal 28 reflecting the results of our discussion at the last meeting. And then clean that up, and you'll see a new version of that tab as the first tab for fiscal 28. Okay. And then... Okay. So, our job tonight is to work on fiscal 29 through 32 in a similar manner that we did last week. Just walk through them, I presume, one by one. But I would... If it's all right with everybody else, I'd like to look at the first tab and do two things. In the version you now have, I slide in a couple of additional proposed changes for our consideration based on some additional thinking and research that I did. And since John said, you know, we're going to have to do a lot of work, we're going to have to do a lot of work, we're going to have to do a lot of work, we're going to have to do a lot of work. So, if John wasn't here, it seems appropriate to give you an opportunity to then... I watched the full video, so... Yeah. To give you an opportunity if you had an issue with anything we've done, and then Brad, maybe you could just report what I think we all saw in the e-mail on the two open questions on the TPW-related articles. So, with that, the three items I was focused on, of the five that were sort of in the pending, I think, are the following. The pending category was the Route 20 Rehabilitation Design Item sidewalk improvements, which wasn't pending. And the Town Hall roof, those three I was looking at together. And the reason I was looking at those three together is because we were based on our constraints of trying to not exceed the borrowing amounts in the last year's warrant. We sort of took care of everything except for the town building roof and the PC item, which we were waiting for feedback, which we'll talk about in a minute. Oh, the other thing I added in to all of the templates was after our meeting, the camera was a day after, two days after, Brian Kennedy sent us all an e-mail where he had responded to a request, responded to a request I had made a week earlier to look at the submissions that we got. And what I was primarily interested in was for him to sort of offer up by year kind of a sense of sources of funds. It looks like what he did is he went through as he traditionally would, and he, based on whatever information he had or didn't have, he slotted those requests into whatever buckets and years he thought was appropriate and sent that on to us. I haven't really looked at what he did with the individual requests, but what I did do is I took his bottom line dollars that he thought he was comfortable funding that with and included that as another data point as we go through our own analysis. Because I think our job is to come up with our own prioritization based on what we've heard from department heads, is what we talked about last year. So if others want to get into more of what he did or didn't do on specific projects, you know, have at it. I don't, I don't, I'm glad that's what you did because that's what I was going to recommend. Yeah, I was happy that he at least responded and whether he came under pressure, I don't know. But, so anyway, back to those few items. So we needed to find some funding source for the $700,000 of town hall roof. And as I thought about it... Just to pause there, right, in case everybody didn't see it, the email back from Michael Fay on that question was that he would prefer that that proceed and it was consistent with what I thought he had told us before, which was that it needs to be, that section of the roof needs to be shored up. Can't defer. Right. He had yielded to doing a phased roof approach, but he wants to keep on track on the phasing. So as I thought about it, I think I said this last week, I kind of view that myself as a need. As compared to the Route 20 rehabilitation design item, which I think I described, I view as a want. It's going to be there forever. It's been there forever. And whether that happens in this year, another year, whatever. But anyway, I went back to fiscal 25 and for various reasons that I can explain to you if you care to know, there was an initial $250,000 appropriation approved at the 2024 town meeting for fiscal 25. It was an FY26. Okay, a 25-town meeting for 26. And that ended up getting funded. I'm pretty sure it was the FinCon that proposed it be funded with the so-called reserve for real estate receipts fund. Reserve, I don't know if I get it right. It's the real estate sale. Real estate receipts for sale reserve fund. It's a weird name for what it is. And anyway, at the time, that whole request had the town manager put out in fiscal 28, 29 despite the fact that it was a priority that the select board had because it just wouldn't fit. And toward the end of the process, FinCon was fine with it being up there. And toward the end of the process, select board put pressure on the town manager. The town manager in turn came back to FinCon and said, you know, we'd like to move $250,000 up to fiscal 25, fiscal 26, whichever year. And then I think requested the other piece of it be moved up. And it was $450,000. And I believe the FinCon said reluctantly, because it was after we had finished what we were doing, that's fine, but we don't have a funding source for it. So if you want to do it, it's going to have to come out of this real estate reserve account, which the FinCon has the ability to recommend that. Select board operates under the assumption somehow that they control that fund, which they don't. But ultimately, the town manager agreed, and that's kind of how it got funded. So if you look at the warrant, that first $250,000 was funded out of that account. So from my perspective, that suggested to me, well, at least there'd be some symmetry to looking to that account if it had enough funding in it to fund that item, which would free up a half a million dollars of levy debt that we could put toward the roof. So I checked with Ryan Keveny, and it had been depleted down into the few hundred, hundreds of thousands of dollars by virtue of an appropriation last year for the State Brook Dam at $1.4 million. But the town ended up getting state and federal grant funding for the whole project. And so albeit that was appropriated, it's unlikely that it's going to be spent, or if it is spent, it's being spent in anticipation of reimbursement of the grants. So that balance, he didn't get back to me, but it's going to be probably $1.7 million or so. So there's plenty of funds in that account. So what you'll see, what I was going to suggest we consider recommending, would be to weed that item in because it was toward the top of the DPW's priorities. It would keep it moving forward. But if there was an objection to that as a funding source, my view would be it's a want. Unless you can come up with another funding source, we don't see anything that we could fund it with. So, you know, it would have to go into purgatory. In my mind. And then we're still short a couple hundred thousand on the roof. So I looked at the sidewalk improvement design, which is currently we was in the five-year plan. We didn't object to leaving it in there. But you'll recall last year we, I think, pretty much all ranked the sidewalk improvements on the low priority scale. At least the majority of us did. And we pushed a number of them out. In the next four years, three of the four years have $250,000 in them for sidewalks. So anyway, I thought either A, would I suggest we take it out? And then I said, nah. Took it out last year. How about that? Well, it wasn't in the, it didn't get in the town manager's plan for fiscal 27. But it was in the out years they thought. Yeah. It's still in the out years where we had pushed a lot of them out. Right. But I think it is fiscal 27. Then I said, you know, we've got this capital stabilization fund that has, you know, a couple million dollars in it. And at some point, we've got to use it for something. And so I said, why not? And last year we put a, we put, used it for a couple of items. And eventually the town manager chose not to use it for the items that we suggested using it for. Yeah. So it's not in there last year. So I said, well, if we move that one in. If we fund that one in from the capital stabilization fund, we pretty much have taken care of the roof, levy deck, and those two items could stay in with two different funding sources that appear in the fire plan. So that was a method to my madness. But I wanted to see if that resonates with any of you. Or if you have some other thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. Number 20, rehab design. I'm comfortable with what you've done. I didn't think of that. But I'm comfortable with that being out of real estate proceeds. Ultimately, I don't think it's our decision. Obviously, it's not. This is a recommendation. But I would agree, it's a want, not a need. And we've got a lot of needs that I think both based on our own opinions and on those of, that what we've heard from the departmental managers rank above that half a million dollars. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing. I think both based on our own opinions and on those of what we've heard from the departmental managers rank above that half a million dollars. The other thing, because I was prepared to take it out and push it out further in time, and the reason being, while I do value whatever grant or matched funding we can get from the state, the $250,000 that was, as I recall, because I was on FinCon at the time, was the $250,000 that was, as I recall, because I was on FinCon at the time, was the $250,000 desperate, must-have-this-right-now-last-minute-add-to-the-plan, as of September, has not been touched yet. So that was, Tom Holder did provide back status update on his outstanding capital projects. He has a number of projects that can be closed. Most of them are zero balance as of September, or have, in total, it was like $4,000. $4,000 to be returned. He does have quite a few projects that he anticipates will be done by the end of the year, but that particular project was one that is just getting started. So if it's just getting started and we're currently in FY27, right, is that going to be ready for expenditure in FY28? Yes, that's going to be ready for expenditure in FY28. That money's been outstanding already for two years, or a year and a half. So I was comfortable pushing it out, but I'm equally comfortable if it's real estate or nothing, right, in our opinion, you guys can do whatever they want in terms of priority ranking of what needs versus wants. Yeah, I think, I don't disagree, pushing out is an option, but as we'll... We'll get into FY29, I'm not sure there's a lot of room. We'll run out of, yeah. Which is why I kind of gravitated back toward... Yeah, I agree. And just, I noticed on the EDC agenda that they're discussing an RFQ that's going out for... For the 250, to use the 250. Yeah, to use that, and once they do the initial work, I'm thinking we'll probably just continue on, so... Yeah, that's fine. How about the two of you, do you... No, I think those make sense, to do it that way.
I'm not... I'm not... I'm not that familiar with that, the fund you were talking about, the real estate fund. Yeah, the town sells real estate that it owns, those proceeds go into this fund. As I said, the select board feels like they control it, and they were prepared last year to use $350,000 of it to fund due diligence on the Holiday Road site, for example. So they may ultimately object, but that's fine, because it's their... They're the ones that instigated the Route 20 work, so... Well... Well, the town manager's going to have to find some other funding source. When you say they think they control it, I mean, ultimately, town meeting controls it. Oh, we ultimately control what town meeting sees, and not my finance committee. Yeah, the finance committee. The finance committee, when I'm sitting there, that item comes up. If the town manager, knowing what I now know, if this is what we recommend, if they bump, the town manager bumps something else that we felt was a need here, I suspect I'll be voicing this discussion, and basically... I'm going to say the FinCon should push back on that, and basically say if you want that item, it's either to come out of that fund or get deferred. But for our purposes, yeah, all we can do is make a rational recommendation, and at least, as I said, there's consistency with where the $250,000 got funded from. Yeah, just one point of clarification. I understand FinCon ultimately owns the capital budget that goes to town meeting, but... The Board of Selectmen could always submit an article, right, to spend money, which is what the holiday road was, and spend it on that fund. And FinCon would be able to have an opinion on it, but they wouldn't necessarily be able to prevent that from going there. Yeah, I would think, based on just what I've heard, the Select Board of Certain Members certainly want to push Route 20 development for tax purposes, you know, for development purposes. So I would think that, I mean, it's not necessarily going to impact how, well, we decide, but I would think the Select Board probably has an opinion on it. Yeah, no, it's one of their priorities, and ultimately the issue for them will be, is there another project that they would prefer to use the funds in that real estate fund for? But that comes out of them establishing their own priorities. The town manager does what he does. That'll end up at FinCon, and FinCon has to go through the same deliberation. If the town manager accepts our recommendation, great. They still get it derailed by the Select Board, or FinCon can derail it. And then ultimately, town meeting has to... As far as the real estate fund, in terms of replenishment of the real estate fund, I understand that the Snakebrook Dam money may not be spent, right, because the grant has come in, or it may be spent and then reimbursed.
Is there anything, any anticipated proceeds from anything else, going into the real estate fund? Is it 212 Concord Road? Could be, depending on whether they do a dollar a year lease or not. But we don't know, yeah, we don't know where that project ends up. Yeah, and I think, you know, from time to time, the town will review its real estate inventory. There's a lot of odds and ends around it. Conceivably, it could be sold, and it could be proceeds that end up in that account. Okay. But there's nothing... Nothing in that. I'm aware of imminent... Yeah, okay. On the sidewalk... Do you have a view on that? That sort of trade-off? Could I interrupt you for just one little second? Keep that for us. How long are you going to be here? 8.30. 8.30? Yeah. Okay. I'm just having an unusual situation where I'm supposed to have a group. I'm not. I'm just going to have one student. So I'm going to quandary if I'm okay alone with a minor, but I'm going to be in that room. So I think maybe as long as you're in this area, I can hear you from there. I think. We'll be okay. Yeah. We'll be here until at least probably 8.30. Yeah, yeah. And I'm going to be out of here before that. I'm sure you'll be okay. Thanks. Thanks.
Yeah. No, I mean, I think it makes a lot of sense. I mean, I guess if I was going to say proceeds from real estate, to use it back to some sort of real estate improvement, it works nicely together, so I'm sure. Why not? Yeah. There are restrictions, but I think it does need to be used for real estate improvements. But the fact that it was used... Yeah, I think all in all makes sense. I mean, you know, there were some things I heard you guys debate. I remember some details, but we approved them anyway, so I think I'm comfortable with everything. Did we hear back from Nick? I know he sent a note that we were reviewing it. Can we finish on that? So we still have to bridge the other... But that was for this year, though, right? Don't we have that? Well, we still have to bridge... Just send us one item. We still have to bridge the other $200,000. The sidewalk. So Kelly was just about to talk about her new other sidewalk proposal. Yeah, so I don't have a problem with the idea of moving it to cap stabilization. The problem I have is a philosophical one with cap stabilization that I don't think there's a good plan for how cap stabilization gets used. And so my concern there is that I thought I heard you say or someone say that there might have been a finance director proposal to pay... Debt. Debt service for the septic, $2 million septic loan is currently in the financial forecast as being reimbursed from the cap stabilization fund as an alternative way around having to have done it as a debt exclusion last year. So it's a one-for-one offset. And in his presentation, the site board basically showed the balance and that fund was $2 million plus. And it was accruing a couple hundred thousand dollars. So it's $2 million a year in interest income. Yeah. And the debt service starts around a couple hundred thousand on that $2 million loan and then it works down. On the two, wait, which $2 million loan was it? This is... Septic. The septic. The septic. High school septic. It had been recommended for the guys. I haven't had that in WRA. I'm like, the cap stabilization's not going to cover that. Yeah. Yeah. It had been recommended by the FinCom and the town manager for debt exclusion. The board selected to not do that but came up with this alternative approach. Which, unfortunately, will require a vote every year at town meetings. Requiring a two-thirds vote to withdraw money from the cap stabilization fund. So if you bury it in the capital motion, you're asking for a two-thirds vote anyway because it has debt associated with it. But if you're using that fund to fund part of the general operating budget, which normally only requires a majority plus one, you're going to either have to have a separate article approving the withdrawal from that fund or a separate motion under the operating budget because you don't want to ask for a two-thirds vote on the operating budget. So I'm hopeful, for some other reasons, that that'll get cleaned up and they'll reconsider making the high school debt excluded debt or taking it for valid to do that. But nonetheless, the thought on that was the debt service is about equal to the interest income initially and then it starts going down. But to your point, you've made that point at the finance committee several times while you were there. And I thought, did we say anything in our report here last year about the recommendation that a plan be developed? And if not, maybe we stick it in our report? I don't think we did. The select board did create a policy, but it's pretty open-ended. I would call it a policy, not a strategy around doing it. And so my concern is a strategy where I'm going to use the interest income and pay some small, which field maintenance is in there. You can do a couple of small things. But what I don't want to see happen is the balance of the cap stabilization just draw down because that wasn't really the intent of building it up. So the primary purpose, as I recall, is that it was intended to cover overages on projects that ran out of appropriation? Well... Or... It was intended to smooth, as a vehicle to smooth capital spending from one... It's the operating impact of capital spending from one year to the next. So if you had to do the timing of projects, and it was a large project that caused sort of an ebb and flow, that you could use cap stabilization to smooth out the impact in the operating budget. So the idea of using it to pay debt service, I'm not opposed to. So overall, do I have a strategy for that or am I just willy-nilly deciding it? So I'm okay with this as an initial recommendation. So you're more okay with that than just pulling it out? I am for the time being because the way that I would look at this is it's clearly spiked out for the town manager in our recommendation. Should they not feel that that's an appropriate use or that they don't want to use capital stabilization, it's easy to identify it and pull it out. And if we want to say something in our report, I wouldn't be opposed to. There were a number of projects we felt we'd like to move forward, but viewed them as lower priority than others. And so we used capital stabilization and the real estate fund as places that if you wanted to proceed, that's where they should come from. So we can call it. I think if we call that out in our report, that's fine. And if ultimately others don't agree with us, hopefully they either find another place for it or they pull it out altogether. Or if by some magic there is surplus capital that develops across, that they'll use surplus capital. And that would probably be my recommendation to the extent there's surplus capital. We would recommend using surplus capital before using... For something, yeah. Yeah, for those before using capital stabilization. So maybe that goes in the report, too. Okay. So on those kind of disclaimers in our report, I'm fine with that. You guys? No, that explanation to me makes perfect sense. It makes sense. Again, the question I was going to ask was, again, if we're discussing things that improve real estate value and kind of overall for real estate proceeds fund, would something like the library grounds improvement be a better fit than what we just talked about? From moving the 250 over, right? Because it benefits the entire town, so to speak, and it's equivalent value. I don't know if that's a more appropriate usage. For the 250 isn't from the real estate fund. It's from the cap state. No, I'm saying instead of doing that, take the 250 of library ground improvement, which is 275, which is in free cash, and move that to... I thought we took that. I thought that was the one I... Oh, maybe we didn't. Actually, it's interesting you said it because I don't know. I saw it. I thought we were taking that out. I wondered whether it should be deferred. Yeah. I couldn't remember the discussion about the library grounds, but my thought was... No, my... Well, it was in the five-year plan, and we generally left everything that was in the five-year plan in the five-year plan, subject to having to come back to have this conversation about how we deal with the town building roof. Why NIT? So, I mean, that could... But again, if people have... Take that item, but if people have a different... To Kelly's point, ultimately, whatever we do is likely to be re-looked at and re-prioritized in some manner. Yeah. I actually agree with John on that. In my head, we had already taken the 275 out. I would rather flip that, leave the 250 for sidewalks where it was and put the 275 for library grounds in cap stabilization because to me that... Cap or real estate? Or defer? Or defer. Either cap or deferred. Okay. I would leave the 500 in real estate, my reasoning being that that is... I don't have to... You know where else you can get 500 from. Yeah. And I put that higher likelihood above. I would agree. I don't think the library is so low if someone agrees to it. I mean, it's one of those... Yeah, it still never got good... I'm going to go back and look at the description. Yeah, it's just general. It's not, I mean... There wasn't a detailed description on it last year and there still isn't, right? Yeah. It's like the high school field of why does this do this together? I know there's another library expense for the children's room and downstairs and that makes perfect sense. But this one, I thought... Yeah. Didn't seem terribly... Yeah. I'm comfortable pushing this out for the Permanent Territory to say let's make room for that. The library trustees advocate for, to Michael, for their... improvements. And I have no problem switching those. But I know once the proposal for a new library and the old highway garage site failed, I think the library trustees have been doing their best to make do with what they have. And so if they were sitting here, I think they'd argue this is still far less money than what the town would have needed for a brand new building. I don't want to take it out. Yeah. You know, you're just saying switch that one. I don't like it in CAP because it's a one-off versus sidewalks is kind of like... And on going expense. And we're not going to be able to take it out of CAP so it's going all the way. No, I have no problem with that. I'm just looking at next year. There's really a... There's a little... No, there is no room next year. So, you know, you'd be deferring it. No. That's why I think putting it in CAP stabilization. But... Yeah. The only thing in CAP stabilization I want to mention... It cuts against my argument to use it for this purpose. It goes to, I think... I don't know if your question was specifically on the ITPCs which had to do with useful life or it had to do with when is it coming back just to tell us how much more money they need. We know it's more. Right. Yeah. So, that's what I was thinking is let's say he comes back with just the... There's either $150,000 or $250,000 of appropriation that he thought he was getting in a... I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. He's misapplied it. But to prove that now it's got to slot in, you know... Well, but some of that should be... Could be turned back. Or should be turned back on the one product. So, say that that's, you know, $150,000 to $200,000. So, we need a funding source for that assuming it's coming back our way. Well, then I would go and push the library out and fund IT, which is much more critical. I mean, if that's... But I think at least putting it this way everything else is settled. Yeah. I think we cross that bridge when we get the IT request. Okay. All right. So, I think that's what I was thinking. All right. So, I'm going to change... Go ahead. As a follow-up on that, if we get to that point on the library, I would like a more thorough description of what that 275 is for from... Right. And I know we said we would accept what we got this year because we crunched some for time, but there's not much of a description there for what those improvements are. Well, I think we asked last year if we could get that 275. Yeah. So, I think that's what I was thinking. All right. So, I think that's what I was thinking. All right. All right. And is there a more thorough description of what we got this year for the library? We didn't, and I don't think Michael knew last year because if you remember there was some... Right. There was a duplicate item. So, it's... It should be an easy question to answer. Okay. So, the summary... I... I'm going to... I'm going to push the 500,000 on Route 20 off into the Real Estate Reserve Fund. Leave Sidewalks as it was. The town hall would be... The roof would be levy debt and put the library pending a yet further conversation once we hear back from Nick. Correct. Okay, does that sound appropriate? Yes, it sounds good. And then the only other two pending items were both things that we, I think, generally speaking, were not uncomfortable with, particularly because they were in the enterprise funds and fee base, even though town pays, or it's water anyway. But we wanted to know if the DPW had approved, and I think we got an email back from Tom Holder saying not yet, but that he plans to talk to them at the next meeting. September 22nd. He was beginning to talk to them, so that's 9-22. For the tie-in or something? That was for the asset management plan. Asset management, this was a new request, and then the transfer station roll-off went up by $80,000, and by itself was in the plan, just at a lower amount, but we were more interested in the fact that there's been some discussion at the Board of Public Works about pushing the transfer station back into the general fund. I heard that. And or just given the overall financial picture of the town, how sustainable it is having an operating transit fund or transit station. So I think we wanted to get at least the comfort that the Board of Public Works thought these are still two important projects that get funded in fiscal 2018. Is that it? Yeah, I think the added question, right, which I think the Board of Public Works has to wrestle with under their function, is how they're going to, you know, whether transfer station is a separate, somewhat of a separate question, but on the water fund, right, can, how are they going to sustain these projects, right, based on their fund balance and rates?
There has been a concern expressed by the finance director about the ability to do just that. So those will stay pending until we have to finalize. Hopefully we'll at least find out what kind of discussion occurred on the 22nd of September.
And then, you know, we'll hear from Nick on the use of life issue. Did we ever get any other updates, though? We didn't, right? I think he said yesterday that he was going to send it today, but I don't think I saw it unless you did. I didn't see any of it. Yeah. He needed to travel over all that food. That's correct. Okay. So that's 28 that we already went through, so I'll create a version two of that tab on the next Excel workbook you get, reflecting those changes. So with that, Kelly, you want to maybe walk everybody through what I've changed, and I'll chime in if somebody says why did you do that. On FY29? Yeah, start with 29. All right.
I'm trying to highlight. Yeah. Sorry, because I haven't looked at this yet. I think I used the same highlight that Liz adopted. So you're assuming I remember the color code. I'm sorry. It should be at the bottom of each of those tabs.
The greens are what you moved in. I doubt it weren't allocated into. Yeah, the greens are what you moved in. The gray is, oh, I've got two shades of gray. All right. Let's do this. Why don't we start in reverse, though, first? Why don't we look at the bottom of the page just to see everything I did, where did that leave us? Yeah. And.
So I didn't understand when I was looking at this the first time. Obviously, I understand what the warrant is. The 9-3 input was sort of the first round before you placed the unallocated in column F. No, that's Brian Keveny's input. Oh, Brian Keveny. Yeah. Brian Keveny's input. Okay. Duh. Okay. So he showed it in his as excluded debt. Got a 2.7 right, so. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Excellent. So the issue there is really just it went up and I think we were all comfortable that it probably was low to begin with. Yeah, that's fine. And my only issue continued to be having heard that I think I'm being lied to. I think I'm being lied to. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm being lied to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You were aware last year that the last spring that the FO director had some design of putting whites there as well which could be half a million, or a million dollars. Half a million dollars. And I think we asked Herstein to go back and try to find out, so. That's my only open issue on that end. I think excluded debt. My only open issue is that that's based on a number rolled forward from 2017. Right, that's all they get, that's all we get. I only get that. Yeah. I think it says something there, right. So, why is his number for Levitas so much lower than the ARPA did before? Again, I didn't look at how he put different projects in different places. I just didn't want to go there. So, in a sense, his numbers in total are data points, but I don't think we should get... I guess my view would be if they're higher than the five-year plan and we are coming up short, then I suppose we at least make an argument that he didn't seem bothered in his own... If he found funding in those buckets. But if they're less, I would be trying to go no higher than what was in the five-year plan. Yeah, I'll go a different way with you, Brian, though. The reason he may, and whether he thought about this or not, drop Levitas down is because he's concerned about... Override capacity. You know, it's possible. I said it's possible. I didn't say definite. So, I'll agree with you. I think we should... Why don't we just assume that it's there because it's there, but let's stay focused on... I think we agree the more it was our basis, the more... We can ask that as a question as well. So, really the only item that... We're slightly over on the levy debt based on where I put things. So, as I said, if you want to walk through the items that I moved around and if you have some other thoughts. Yeah, let's... Why don't we take it by going through what you put into levy debt, right, that wasn't already there. So, you put the H17 sweeper for DPW at $525,000, which was... Tom Holder had moved that request in from FY30 to FY29. That was based on the condition of the equipment. It wasn't levy debt in FY30 and FY20. Correct. And it was more expensive. It moved in a year, but it got more expensive. More expensive because he needed a special vacuum pump and a rudder. Yeah. Yeah. It vacuumed up. Yeah. And then the fire alarm upgrade in facilities for $530,000. That was one, if you recall, was in FY28. And Michael Fayette moved it out in order to make room. For the middle school fire alarms, which was more urgent because it's no longer supported. So, I'm supportive of both of those moving in. I don't have an issue with it. I think... I do think we have an open... We're going to have to have a question, though, of Brian Keveny, since we did ask for his input and he gave it. As to why he dropped his levy debt number for FY29 down so much. From... From Plan. What's up with the typo? I don't know. Yeah. Um... Because I have... I have two questions for him. Which is... The next one is... He upped free cash to $3.4 million. And I thought... He's told us at FinCom that he expects... I know it's another year out. But that free cash to be tighter. Yeah. $2 million is FinCom high end. Right. So, that one. Which we're already over in the five-year plan. Right. But, yeah. $2 million... I mean, I'm covered it with other projects. Sorry. Self-shirt came down. Something else changed. So, we didn't... I mean... Yeah. So... All in all... I really... I'm fine with it. But I think it's a question for Brian Keveny on his allocation. And then on the general fund projects that you moved to. Yeah. So... So... So... So... So... So... So... So... Yeah. So, the high school projects that you moved in. So, was the John Deere tractor for conservation. And $100,000 for cybersecurity compliance. Which, again, I'm not sure where that's ultimately going to land. But... And then high school building improvements. That was nearly $500,000. moved into... 476 was in free cash in the five-year plan in fiscal 28, but again, we were tapped out on levy debt. Yeah, and the things that came out of there, because some stuff had to come out to make room for that, right? It was sidewalks came out. This was per the request.
And the clay pit fire alarm upgrade, again, that was Michael Fayette trying to rearrange fire alarms in order, so he sort of made room partially for it to begin with. Yeah, and he said he just couldn't handle doing more than one project per summer. Yeah, he can't tie up all the schools. He can't tie up all the buildings at the same time. He can only tie up one. So, free cash, we were kind of right on the warrant. Again, levy debt's over by $143,500.
Is that a rounding error for people? That is a debt. Yeah, for what we're doing, that's good. It sounds like people are subject to those two questions that Kelly posed. I have a question. It's unallocated for the town hall roof. Oh, I'm sorry, yeah. Because we didn't have enough levy debt, I guess we have to have the same conversations. Is there any other item that is already in here? I'm sorry, levy debt. What's our levy debt? So, it's $935,000 which was lower than what we had in our plan. So, it seems like he broke that up more than what we had. But we had phased it in our prior year recommendation. Right, and I think he phased it. I think he looked at... I thought he broke it. Yeah, he did a little more research and broke it down. But I guess my question is, you've got the visioning committee that's out there. Your report is supposed to come out in the springtime.
And we don't know exactly what they're going to say. Does it make sense to even include the three-time... Put them in a purgatory. That's what I would do. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think so. I understand why the 700 has to happen, should happen because it's a structural issue and I don't want to wait for that. Like Michael doesn't. For this, I'm with you. I think there's sort of three potential outcomes, right? One, the visioning committee has a plan, knows where they want to go and that answer is either we're moving away from the town building or we're staying in it. If we're staying in it, then this phasing approach probably needs to stop and we need to... We need to plot, commit to doing what we need to do. Right. If we're not staying in it, we may still have... Well, we're not staying in it, but it's going to take five years and we've got to... You know, we can't have the roof leaking. We need to do these projects, but I don't know how we define that until we've got... Right, you know, because it could be that we don't need to... If they're going to stay there, they may have some other plan for the... It's hard to say, but I guess I'm just saying until you really know what the committee has to say, you don't know whether that 310 is going to be expended in the manner of some other... Well, and if any of the... If an option, right, that they pursue is in any way selling the building, which I know there's lots of obstacles to, I think the important thing for us to remember about all the town buildings, right, somebody would say, well, it needs a roof. It's going to need a roof either way. That is true. However, the town pays because we have to use, right, all municipal bidding process. We ultimately pay far more for a roof than a private entity. Oh, okay. So that's the difference. It may need a roof, but we're not going to do the most economical way of putting a roof on there. So I think it should be limited to absolute loss until we have a... I mean it there.
Okay. I'm good with that. I'm good with that purgatory. Pull that out and put it in purgatory. Yeah. And so in the report, it would be a similar sort of comment that they had last year that we don't know what really, what's happening with the building and therefore we're dropping and blowing it. We saw a little more color on the town building probably in the paragraph this year. It doesn't sound as eminent as what we're doing this year or for 2018.
And I think we had a table on the report that had the purgatory projects. Yeah. Yeah. I think we can stick with that. The only other one, same comment as in FY28, I know we placed the wastewater, the concrete tank for $300,000. But that's the same concern. I have the same general concern as like how is the board of public works view these in terms of the ability to pay for all these and sustain them through rates. Yeah. And that one gets the other wastewater users.
But it's, I could have left it in unallocated for the rest of the year. No, I think, I think it's fine to put them in. We might just need to put a note in the report about. It just depends where we are relative to the feedback from the board of public works sounding again like we should have. Because they oversee the wastewater. Right. It might just need a note of, you know, supportive of, you know, we don't have any concerns with the need for complete, you know, doing the project. But it's subject to, right, the board of public works approval and, you know, ability to collect the necessary funds via the rates. Yeah. Okay.
All right. Going, going. Gone. So that'll be a revised tab when we see this next. I'm sure we can do a quick check to make sure I transcribe all these. So again, going through the same concept in the next one. So I'm 30 now. Yeah. We're on, that's like 30. Okay. So let's, So look at the totals. This one all seems to actually work out where we had some, potentially had some excess levy debt, which is, um, strange. It just, again, the cash went up and levy went down. It just makes me wonder if he flip-flopped at some of that. No, I, I, I, these numbers are all so close between who they're wanting. Well, but Brian Keveny's are not. Oh, Brian? That's what, that's what you're saying. He's doing the same thing. But I don't, I guess I need Brian to explain, Keveny to explain like how free cash is going to sustain itself at three and a half and 3.6 million dollars of drawdown every year. Like, do we suddenly have, I mean, the budget's getting bigger, so in theory, the percentage of free cash generated is, is bigger, but he, I thought he said in several public meetings that, you know, they're managing things so tightly that there's less likely to be free cash available.
So, when we're done this, we'll decide who's asking Brian Keveny these questions. Yeah. Yeah, okay. But, based on the warrant anyway, we're fine. If the people didn't have any issues, although there's the water one again for the same reason we're just talking about. There's also the sending of the roof to the country.
The roof is 500,000. Another, and another, that would be another predatory? Yeah. About 500,000? Yeah, to be consistent with that, I don't think so. Well, I just think. Okay. Also, I didn't, you know, in IT, they did have this 50,000 for the laptops and I guess we're waiting to see whether. Yeah, I left that there. Yeah, the big drop here, I forgot, was the MSDA came out of a million dollars. Yeah. Yeah, it moved. Why does it seem so? It moved two years sooner. Yeah, so we shouldn't spend that. And the street sweeper moved up.
Yeah, so we, I, we shouldn't. Yeah, so I'll put the 500,000 on the roof for the same reasons in the purgatory. Yeah. PC state where it is until we hear from you back. Yeah. The only other question I had was. Yes, can we just walk through the projects though that got put into each of these so that we make sure. So, we talked about the roof already. And then, the, the fire alarm, which was moved from, you know, it's the cascade. I'm fine with that being in. Yeah. Levee.
And, and free cash. You put the sidewalk improvements, which is consistent with what we did. And I'm quite 28. Ultimately. And you've got cyber security at 100. Free cash as well. Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah. So same, it's the same general questions.
But in this case, I understand.
I understand why free cash should be lower. Because if that million dollars is being spent two years earlier for the, and it's being spent, two million dollars being spent. No, my levy debt is lower. See, I meant levy debt. Sorry. I meant levy debt. You can pull it down to move it forward. Yeah, you wouldn't want to, you wouldn't want to go back through that. You wouldn't want to go back through the same dollar amount because the time you already spent the money, right? Your overall expenditures would be higher if you kept that at the same level that it was. Except if you wanted to exclude it, which means you couldn't do it. Yes. I'm just talking about from a tax point of impact. You'll find me repeatedly saying. Can you just remind me, I see wastewater in 29 and 30 for 300 grand. Is it a two year project? It's three year. It's a three year project. There's three, there are three different. Tanks. Tanks. And as they take one offline and clean it out, they redo the concrete, whatever. Yeah. And he, I think that's the one where he said the concrete is disintegrating. No, I remember that. I just forgot the phasing. I must have missed the phasing somehow. Okay. Okay. Okay. One question about I guess some of the schools, the elementary partitions, 350,000 or is it? Well, no, 500,000. Uh, that's 350,000. 350. Yeah. At what point does the school redo come into play in terms of whether you include it or not? Kind of like if not building at some point, you know, the report's going to come out and at what point do you say, well, why am I putting 350 in there? It may not be needed if they're going to tear that school down or. In that best case scenario, my sense is that one school is seven years out. Okay. It's a possible scenario, but there are certain, I don't disagree though, right? So there's, there's a lot of components here. It's, it's probably pretty far out, but there is a, the unknowns. You don't know if it's going to go forward and get approved. You don't know today which building you're going to do first, right? And so you'd have to get some comfort around what the school is going to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To has nothing to do with those things. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is also where the district-wide designation is blessing and curse, because I understand the use of it allows money, right, it allows Michael to keep working, right, to pivot, if, in particular, he can only get in one building every summer, and if they flip which building he's got to get into, it allows him to pivot. So I understand that. The flip of that is the visibility of where things are going, and how to, you know, well, hey, don't give it in that building, because we're going to go for a building project, gets harder. Yeah, this one jumped out at me, because it's strictly elementary school, but... Yeah, I agree, I agree. I mean, it's like, Clay said, you know, I'd say, hey, that's probably a bigger conversation, we should, you know, sort of like that. And for us, it's family, probably, like, Brian said, five, seven years old, but, you know. Yeah, that's the problem, is the most... Some of the things that they want to do, they're at the break, and you're not going to get another two years out of them, much less seven, so... But I do think, like, you know, we talked town building, I think, as much as people have to work on it, it's tougher, I think people are less tolerant of the schools, and the kids kind of suffering with... Well, the disruption, the number of people you're disrupting is far greater. Yeah. So I think it's a little bit different. In that respect. I would, we, probably not the October 15th report, but in a future revision, I do think it would be helpful to lay out, and maybe it's a graph of where the money, from a facility standpoint, what buildings we're putting the money into, and then maybe have a district-wide category for, like, hey, this is being... And we can talk to Michael Arts in his notes on each project of, like, what... What buildings was this? Like, spent versus... Yeah, like, what are we expecting to spend across the buildings? And if we lay that out and we see, well, look, Clay Pit's got a big spike on it, are you guys sure? Yeah. Right? That it's not going to be that one? I think that's a worthwhile exercise, but not for this go-around report. All right, so I think 30 looked really good. It is.
So, we're going on. Yeah. We'll have another bite at this the next meeting.
Okay, 31. Let's go to the bottom. So, again, we have drifted down on levy debt. So, excluded debt is because... Well, that's because I parked the $4.2 million roof over into excluded debt, given the size of it. Okay.
It's open for debate, but, you know, knowing the pressure on the operating budget... I think it should be an excluded debt, and that's a very good example of what we just talked about, and whether or not that goes forward is going to be dependent. I don't know exactly what... So, that's $4.2. Wasn't there another Clay Pit Hill? Next year. Yeah, next year. And I asked the question, are they... The descriptions were the same. Yeah, yeah. The titles were different. He said he's going to pick one depending on what happens. Yeah, so I think we decided the first one, the description should have referenced district-wide improvements, and the second one was all specifically targeted at Clay Pit. But, nonetheless, given the magnitude of it... It's a big number. It should be... I think it should be excluded. And it had to be in levy in the five-year plan because it was $2.4 million less when we got put in there. I agree. That should be excluded.
All right. Anything else on this one? I think there's nothing unallocated on this one. Yeah, I'm just looking up. 45, that was new, right? The one in red.
The rest of the tank, that wasn't too many. The wastewater turned.
It was $800. It was $805. A thousand higher. Yeah, it went up $805. I didn't propose to put that on the list of things the Board of Public Works should be giving us their view on, but certainly we could try to have it on the plumb holder and tell them to put that on the list. I think what Brian Coveney will ultimately ask for is a spend plan, a rate... a revenue versus spend plan for all these, for the water and wastewater. And the good news is they've got a fair amount of revenue coming in from commercial users, the largest one... On wastewater? On wastewater, and they continue to feel they have excess capacity. And wastewater is separate from water, so it's not affected by the MWA. Right, it's separate. I'll go with that then. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, I'll leave that there. Yeah, I'm just looking at where we landed.
So we're excluded debt going up by $4.25 for the roofs, but our levy debt's only going down by $1.89, and that's because the roof project went up, right? Yes.
Yeah. Because the price went up.
Yeah. So from a taxpayer impact standpoint, we're up $2.9 million in spend. But it's also fiscal 31, I'm sure. Yeah. And it's district-wide, so that's a kind of semi-educated under-out-of-the-air. Yeah. Okay. Good to see that. Yeah, I suppose it's also excluded debt, so it's a separate... If we did it that way, it's a separate article. We'd have to be buy-in to move forward on it. So not that there isn't buy-in on the capital budget. Or not. I mean, you could do excluded debt in the capital budget.
Traditionally, if it's a... I would... Traditionally, if it's a...
something being pretty much a larger project, that typically would be handled in an article. Whether it's capital budget or article, it's still a separate vote at the battle box. And so it's still getting spiked out from a... Oh, yes. From a discussion. A wider voter pool is making a decision on that one. Right. That's not to say that it couldn't still happen. It would then have to fit in the levy debt, and they just need to scale back the project. But my guess is you're going to be seeing over the next number of years, in addition to operating overrides, you're likely going to be seeing debt exclusions. Because, again, the debt exclusions are a temporary increase in the tax levy versus the operating overrides are a permanent increase in the tax levy. And as a taxpayer, generally speaking, if you had a choice, then you're going to have to do both. You probably want it to be temporary. Right? Okay. Right? That's my 32. The 32, two things. One at the bottom, since there was nothing in the warrant, I put in... The FinCom guidelines maxed the high end as something we could benchmark against. And then I just pushed everything out into what I thought were appropriate categories. The biggest one, which is the... Somehow hooking the wastewater facility at town center up with Dudley Pond area homes and the old highway garage, which is pretty long, way away. Um... Just sounds like an interesting idea to explore, but even in a five-year plan, I didn't feel that's anywhere close to being baked enough to work its way into a plan. So I kind of viewed that one as purgatory. Maybe not even purgatory. I mean, based on our other priorities, town building, schools, roofs, yeah, it's... We'd have to know a lot more about it. Well, yeah. That may be another DEP issue, though, right? Because there's an issue with septic systems are long. Yeah, I mean, you might recall they talked about, was there a way to... Tie it in the high school, right? Yeah, they rehabilitated the high school wastewater treatment facility that didn't work, but they somehow tied Dudley Pond, which actually made more sense to me because it was closer to Dudley Pond area. But Dudley Pond area just has, you know, not great septic systems with stuff leaching into the pond. And then the highway garage, the old highway garage site is challenged with PFAS at the moment. But I view it as an aspirational, interesting idea. Yeah, it's probably one of the study number there versus the full aim of a $200,000 study. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not even sure there's the capacity, they'd have to get the federal permit modified to do more discharge in the river. So it's one of those things that's probably worth putting on the long-term, you know, project list. And I know Tom said their hope would be if it actually made sense, they could find other funding for it through Clean Water Act grants or whatever. So can we talk about, I know you put that, so you've got the wastewater expansion in purgatory, right? Yeah, so my concept here was, we'll go back and talk about the town's current financial policies that the Select Board adopted last fall. If you read the language in the policy, and it's been read by different people different ways in the last 12 months, I think the majority view is that, it's wording says, if you have a project that's over $4.5 million, you should be using excluded debt. It doesn't say, if you have projects that are less than $4.5 million, you can't use excluded debt. And in the history of the town, the town has certainly, as I said last meeting, bundled a number of projects that were half a million, a million, a million and a half, two million, and could be school and town related, and they bundled them, and they might total, four to six million dollars, and have done that as an excluded debt question. They usually bundle, though, projects that go together, I thought. Not necessarily. Not necessarily. I remember bundling the town building projects, the air conditioning. Yeah, that's one that has been done, so the $5.4 million that likely would be spent over a number of years, yeah, that would be an example where pieces of it are less than what you would normally do in excluded debt question form. But $5.4 million for sort of a connected, interconnected project. But again, if you look back in time, you'll see that there's, you know, I'm not going to say a station two, but you'll see two or three different town projects totally unrelated to a school project, and then, you know, there's this debate, do you bundle them, do you put them on a manual basis, voters can pick and choose which ones are, the town is generally bundled it, all for one, one for all, right? But I kind of did this in anticipation of something that I raised at the Financing Day last night, that we might want to be, the town might want to be considering, or the powers that be might want to be considering, including FinCon, since it's looking like we're going to have to do an excluded debt question for the MSBA, $2 million. Might we want to go back and pull in the high school septic, you know, that has no operating budget impact, based on how they're proposing to fund it, but administratively would be a whole lot easier than for the next 20 years, counting on getting a vote at town meeting. That was kind of a side thought, but there's two or three large projects that were approved in, town projects, that were approved in the last couple fiscal years that, you know, were done as levy debt, as they should have been at the time, that my view was, if you're going to go to the ballot for $2 million, why don't you bundle up $5 to $7.5 million as excluded debt, and pull, you know, $400,000 or $500,000 more out of the operating budget. So we talked about that at the Financing Day. I just posed that as a concept. It's not gone any further, to my knowledge. But this is kind of the same thing as the same concept. We have eight to nine years of structural operating deficits that grow over that period of time. And so I was just applying the same logic. Now, you all may not like that logic. It's just fine. But that's why I did what I did. I'm fine with the logic. I agree, right, temporary exclusions. I prefer temporary exclusions over operating budget exclusions. The thing is, I think we have about five years here. We have four of them, right, that have excluded debt, which means you're out of the ballot box, right, four out of the five years anyway. Well, otherwise, we're going to be, I mean, we're still going to be at the ballot. Maybe we get by this year, fiscal 28, unknown yet. But we will definitely be there from fiscal, fiscal 29 through 36, every third year probably. And again, if you look back across the towns of history, you'll see far more excluded debt questions going to the ballot than operating overrides. And my view is if it's done as part of a strategy to address eight to nine years of structural deficits and explained that way, that would be my argument as to, you know, how to do that. The alternative to it is, of course, you'd have to push back on the projects and say, you know, we just don't have the financial resources to do those, which is also fine in any of these projects. I prefer it from a taxpayer standpoint because you're putting a discrete choice in the hands of taxpayers. Not that you're not when you're doing an excluded operating vote, but you're putting a discrete choice of this is one way that we're going to end up right over the levy. If we do this as levy debt, do you care about this enough to spend the money, right? And it's a discrete choice. I don't have a problem with it. It's more of a, you're not avoiding an excluded, like the work that goes into an exclusion, right? Because it is work to do that. You're doing it four out of five years plus whatever, whatever years you're going to also need an operating budget. So you're still looking at it so you're still looking at quite a few, right, going out to the town and asking for additional money. That's all. That's the only way the tax, the only way the residents are going to continue to get the level of services that they want. Yeah, I agree. These are the two mechanisms state law provides to get around what otherwise has become an antiquated, at least numerical, Numerically antiquated, yeah. Concept I like, but it's... Yeah, what's interesting about 31 and 32, it's within that there's 10 minor roofs just in those two years. I mean, that's... Yeah. And when you get out to this year... It's not even that exciting. Exactly. And when you get out to this year, now you're getting maybe a little bit closer. You'll know a lot more on where the town ended up and its efforts to get into the MSDA pipeline. And something like the Clayton Hill roof, which is 31, could be the first example where if they chose whatever the plan is for that school, this may not be needed, for example. So anyway, that was a concept. And I guess my... If people thought that made sense, then maybe in the report, we simply just don't plop them in there as excluded debt and not explain kind of why, but that we... There's a group of residents, volunteers saying, you know, our thinking is this probably makes sense if it's done in conjunction with a strategic approach to dealing with the town's structural deficits for the next eight to nine years. In some of these, you know, the $4 million might have... And by the time you get out to 31, the $4 million is probably $5 million. That probably would have been not as excluded debt anyway. Yeah, the $4 million and the $2 million, I didn't... So the two school projects, bundling them together, makes total sense to me. And it links well with, to the extent there are decisions being made about moving forward on certain school projects, though that may morph, right, to reflect that knowledge. It was the one and a half for the public safety roof that I thought I was less comfortable having in there, but it's fine. Your rationale and what the policy says is all fine. It certainly can be. Yeah. Well, the other issue I had was, you know, the $5 million FinCon guideline, that's the max. And all the other years we just dealt with were all kind of in the $3 million... In the threes. ...range. And then, yeah, Brian's in there... Yeah, that's fine. ...two and a half. I don't feel super strongly about it. Yeah, it's such a squishy year anyway, but... Yeah, I'm okay with it. Yeah, there's going to be a whole lot of discussion in the next four years as to... I mean, and roofs are somewhat subjective as we think in four years. I mean, there could be a lot of room there, too. So... Yeah. I know some are bad, but, you know, it goes back to whatever the other plans are. Yeah, but you don't really don't get an award for doing a roof early. No. Right? Like, there's no benefit. Yeah, you can drag it out if you have to, unless... And then we have Nick holding us up in 2031, $50,000. That's probably one piece... Well, yeah, I'm waiting to see his whole... Yeah, I'm waiting to see his whole... That's going to cause a relook at everything. Yeah. I think. Unless he comes back and says, I talked to the town manager and he thinks I can use what was appropriate for what I wanted to use it for, and he told me I wasn't spending any more money. That's a possibility. I don't know... I think it's possible. Well, that's possible. I think they should be prepared for public comment and debate on the town meeting floor. I know one person that I think should be prepared for public comment and debate on the town meeting floor. I know one person that I think should be prepared and debate on the town meeting floor. I know one person that I think should be prepared to go to the town meeting floor. Yeah. Exactly. As it should be. Right? As it should be. All right. So, why don't I clean these up and recirculate this before the next meeting. Can people just pay close attention that I've got everything in the right places for me to make that many changes so I should be fine and... tracking these in the minutes in a bit of detail, so it gives the public an opportunity at least if they want to look at a set of minutes to see what kinds of things we're looking at. Okay.
Should we move on to our next agenda items?
I'm sorry, back to the Brian Kennedy question. Does anyone want to volunteer? I get it. Just help me out with these. Yeah. I think the question is, first, thank you for providing your input on where you think the funding sources for the capital plan or for the capital projects should be. The CIPC is curious to know, I don't know if curious is the right word, why levy debt has been decreased From what appeared in the five-year plan. From what appeared in the five-year plan. And you can just give the numbers. Great. And free cash has been increased. Was that intentional on your part or was it a result of Was that intentional, right. Yeah. Was that intentional or, you know. Yeah. For some other reason, I guess. I mean, we're really looking, what I'm looking for, the answer might be is, yeah, I need to get the debt down because that's what hits, right, the operating budget. And, you know, that's why we took those down. But. And again, I think it is appropriate that we make the effort to be collaborative. And. And, you know, if he says, yes, it was intentional, I'd prefer you don't go over those amounts in spite of what was in the five-year plan. And we'll have to go back through those years. And, you know, again, without having spent any time on where he put things. Yeah. I suspect he just. Remembered it. Believed in them or pushed them out. Right. And I think we would need to be, you know, take a different approach. But. Got it. I mean, I guess that's even practical in the weeks we have left. Yeah. Yeah. And all you can do is send, you know, a response in time for us to complete our report. That's okay. Yeah. And if we don't get a response, then at least in the report, we could acknowledge that we had received input from the bank. Input from the finance director about funding sources. And had questioned reduction from the five-year plan in a couple years. Which could affect our recommendations. I mean, did that affect? Yeah. It's. And it really is two-sided. Right. I would understand the decrease in levy debt in order to manage, you know, the operating budget. Yeah. And the increase in free cash, though. Yeah. I'm not. Separate. Not sure how that's supported. Unless there's something about free cash. Right. With change. Yeah. I couldn't tell you how much time you really spent on it. Yeah. I just don't know if it was. He wasn't going to do anything. Wasn't going to do anything. And then someone said to him, do something. And he. You know, he had no. Similarly, there's no input from the department heads. He has access to the CIP. And he just. That's the spectrum. He's. He's used it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's used to doing this, so he probably just mapped it out as he usually maps it out on whatever basis he. Yeah. But if he did that, it would have started it with what he had before. Usually starts. Yeah. Which is, I think, what raised the question. Yeah. And that's. That way. You pose it that way. We've been trying. Trying to track to what was on the Pfizer plan. Looks like you reduced bloody debt a couple of years. An increase in free cash. An increase in free cash. Was that intentional? Right. Can I ask. Just to know if you're an expert. Yeah. Sure. I don't know if this fits in this part of the agenda. I think it does, because we're talking about funding sources. Can I ask that you raise at their next opportunity with FinCom, whether or not they take a revised view of their guidelines, particularly both those categories, right? One being what the ranges for levy debt are for the next five years, given concerns about the operating budget, and two, what is an acceptable range for free cash. My concern there is that their guideline is relatively low and has been. We've been using more free cash than what's in their guideline now for a number of years. We'll have time to update that guideline, because ultimately I think they own that. I'm giving the next meeting will be a preliminary update on the process we're going through here. I'll put a placeholder out. I think we'll have time to get into that question at that meeting. That's okay. There's a couple of new people. I'm not sure how much. Are there any existing members that ever talked about those guidelines? So there probably will be a meeting or two after that. That's fine. I just think it's time for it to be discussed, particularly with everything we're facing right now. Because ultimately we're going to be faced, you know, reviewing whatever comes our way. So you're going to like blame yourself. That's what I'm saying. I just want to vote. Well, Elizabeth, I raise it because, not only because I'm concerned about it, but because it was one of the points of difference in what we presented last year as a plan. Right? We stuck with the guidelines that were in the various policies. And then ultimately what was recommended by the town manager did not. And while revised pretty significantly, what went to town meeting did not either. Yeah. Actually, I will admit, I was probably going to mention that anyway, because the first thing I want to be talking with them is the giving reasons for the variances in fiscal 28 between our report and the budget that's in the warrant. 90% of which is timing issues. But the timing issues were driven by what you just described. We were holding the line on not exceeding those funding sources. And I also say we should plan to talk about that subject. Because what we hope to talk about capital a little bit at each meeting, leading into November, we hope to get a capital budget to review. And hopefully by that point they'll kind of know when all the items could be coming our way. But I will sensitize them that we still expect there to be potentially variances between what we recommend here and what shows up in the town manager. So, okay. Happy to do that. I'd say we have the FinCon member come and speak to the FinCon to that effect. But I looked online and the FinCon representative is now vacant on the town website. Meaning me? Your name's not there anymore. It just says vacant.
I feel kind of vacant a lot of the time. When you said who's here tonight, I didn't hear you say it. Vacant? Vacant is here. Oh, that's right. I didn't say who was here. I don't think you needed to. Yeah, but I'm happy to do that. That's one of my objectives. Because they got crunched last year on all fronts. And the goal is to get back to the prior history and allow them to think how to get the capital budget reviewed and approved before the end of the year. Well, it allows you to ask good questions versus just being forced to close enough. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Discuss potential content for CIPC report. I guess we've been doing that a little bit as we've been going along. I don't know if you want to have a more substantive conversation or finish our process and go through that. Yeah. Let's talk about it a little bit. I think there's a number of charts that I put together. I'm happy to do those again using what Brian's already put together and consolidating that all to create the various exhibits that need to go in there. I'm hoping, to the extent I have time, to try and automate, Brian, some of what you did so that it's repeatable next year, right, so that it sort of flows out of the files that are received. If that's possible, I'm going to try to do that because I'm trying to get you guys set up for making this a little easier in the future. A couple things I think are not in the current report. I don't know. I just want to talk about adding. We got more information from the department managers this year because even though they didn't all completely fill out the CIPs, many of them did fill it out and we did get more information. I would like to add to our report in some fashion their ranking information. I think it... It might be helpful, right, as a reference point. I don't think... I'm not delusional enough to think a whole bunch of people are going to go read this, but I think for purposes... And for purposes of FinCom's ability to review that data, ultimately, we will give them the full CIP file so that they have all of the data to the extent they want it, but I think that summary data, I know, Brian, you did it in one of your files where you just summarized the ranking. And I found that really helpful when looking at the projects, to just look at that. Yeah, just have the numbers and an explanation of what the rankings are. Right. And I think it also has been assistive to the folks that we got that information from that it was important information enough to find its way into the report. Yeah. And I think in a handful of cases here, given what we've just gone through, it did have some impact on our... on our discussion about where we put certain things. I also think, as it should, I think it impacted, you know, if I'm talking to Michael Beah, right, and even Tom, it impacted how they placed things too, right, when they thought about how it ranked. I think Michael's the one that said he was, you know, even I didn't necessarily think about how that played out until he put it on paper. And so whether we used it, they used it, I think it's beneficial to everybody. And I know it was one of the questions from FinCon last year, right, when they asked, you know, why did you... How did you come up with this? Right, because it's different than what the town manager came up with. And I said, right, we didn't just take last year. We... This is how it ranked. This year was a combination. We took last year, but we also looked at the relative rankings in deciding how to judge it. And so, you know, I think that's one of the things that we're trying to tackle some of these things. So I think that's all. So we're talking about including some of the ranking. You're talking about sort of methodology we used and explaining the process that we're doing. I see two things happening. One, I think an appendix with the template, the CIT form template included in the back of the report. So you can see this is what we asked people to fill out. And two, I think in the exhibit, I forget if it's exhibit H or G, right, where we list out all the projects, for example, this is what we asked people to fill out. And two, I think in the exhibit, I forget if it's exhibit H or G, right, where we list out all the projects, right, we add a couple columns to put the rankings in there along with the amounts. Yeah. And I think, I think that's fine. And, but as you can see from what I, when I summarize it for you, again, the DPW and facilities, I think, are pretty good data. Some of the other ones, you know, not, not necessarily as much. So it's just a question of, will that require at least, you know, some of the other ones not necessarily as much. So it's just a question of, will that require at least some of the other ones not necessarily as much. So it's just a question of, will that require at least some of the other ones not necessarily as much. So it's just a question of, will that require if we put in what, what they gave us, but do we, you know, put in a certain explanation as to why those numbers look odd. Because, you know, like, fire, fire in to a police but, you know, number one ranking and everything. No, that, that's not even consistent with us saying that life safety is the highest priority. The numerical one they did. And they put one in for every one of them. Yeah, they didn't necessarily follow the instruction. Yeah, and we could go back to the chief on that. I know he explained that. I would go back to him and say, listen, if you only had X amount of dollars, what would you put first? There's still a first. And the alternative is, right? Put a footnote and not put the number and put a footnote and just say, given it was the first year, certain individuals, whatever we say. I agree there's going to be a little bit of cleanup or potentially notes on the data, but I still think it's better. We didn't do this in a, you know, put earmuffs on and close our eyes. Yeah, no, I think it's important. Yeah, we could just say, if it's all the same, just leave it blank and just say, for those who prioritize, it's shown. Yeah. Be done. Or to the extent of police and fire, which I recognize that they're all ones, we could put something in, you know, as expected, police and fire ranked everything in the highest priority due to life safety or something. Well, it seems to me you could say that, you know, we had the opportunity to meet with all the department heads and to the extent there were any issues with it, I guess they provided clarifications or, you know. Yeah, it's just, I'm just saying that visually it looks odd. I agree. And so it's just plenty. You'll know it when you see it. No, I saw it. No, I don't know how to address it. Yeah. I was less concerned about it in the case of police and fire since so much of their projects are, the fire projects are funded by ambulance funds, right? Not much else. And we stated, right, that's going to come first anyway, so you, right, in terms of our ranking of what we're going to spend on, right, that wasn't, we, you needed it on the facilities and DPW because that's where you start. You don't have to run out of money. Yeah, I don't think Nick gave us the rankings. Yeah. Oh, no, he did. He did. Yeah, I think he did. Well, he, again, he gave us the, everybody gave us the ranking matrix numbers, although, again, some of them are, the numbers don't quite make sense, but it was that priority strength which was intended to be a. To avoid, yeah. To avoid people hearing as I, a ranking matrix is all the same. Lower on that, on the form. I think there's one category that is backwards. Do you have a printed copy of it right there?
I'm not going to pull it out.
Could have put it here somewhere. No, I didn't. I don't know.
I got it. Okay. So, the very last, so we have, you know, project requirements, strategic alignment, value of residence, urgency, timing, enhancement. The last category is enhancement. Description is completing the project will provide a benefit to the citizens above existing service. A one is maintains existing service. A five is expands existing service. And in this, if you remember in this category, like higher, this is higher score is more important, right? I would argue that that is flipped, that the higher score goes to maintaining an existing service, right? Need versus want. Expanding service. There's a priority in that, yeah. Yeah, so that's one. I think it's flipped in terms of priority. So, if that CFP is going to become an exhibit, that may need to be, you need to include the actual form it went out and then you footnote that item and then, you know, just fix it for the future. Can anybody put a five in that category? I think there are some. Oh, there's one. Oh, there's one. Yeah, I think there's some. I think you could actually flip the scores, like just do the inverse of them and get the right score, but. Change their rating to match the. Yeah, I think the, because I think the rating should flip, but. I'm all for using the actual data and just putting them here. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. It doesn't. I don't, because it was only the one category, I don't think it has a big impact on the overall scores, but. Okay, so what other, so that's. You said there are several. Yeah, so I think the ranking should be in the report. We've talked about a few other things tonight that I think it goes to narrative, right, around. So it's not necessarily charts, but narrative around. Okay. Why we've done what we've done relative to cap stabilization and real estate funds. Debt, why we've done what we've done relative to debt exclusions. Talked last week about a little section about, since they gave us long-term project input, a little section that just either narrative or. Yeah. Identifies the things that they need less. Yeah. My pie in the sky, and that's not pie in the sky, I just don't think we're going to have enough time to get to it. I'm not going to have enough time to get to it. It's information on debt projections. And the reason I want that is because I don't know. A lot of people, and they may not read this, but I'd like to have it at our fingertips. Relative to this potential for these school projects, right, not the ones that are on the planet, but building schools. I think there's some financial reality of what's in our debt load as it is. And I'm not talking about excluded debt versus levy debt. I'm talking about purely impact on taxpayers. Yeah. That needs to start to materialize in the form of visuals. But I don't know that I'm going to get to that before. Do we have that, though? I get an exhibit, I've gotten an exhibit every year from Brian Coveney. I haven't gotten it yet, and the thing is it may not be available. It probably won't be available before our report, depending on when debt issuances are. And so, yeah. And so it doesn't need to be in our report, but I do think it's a very important part of this discussion in the future of how much debt, whether excluded or levy debt, is taken on, and specifically when. Right? So a discussion that we're going to do an MSBA, right, do an excluded debt to do the feasibility study. And then, you know, Kirstine had said, I've got TBD, right, in the plan. Which didn't carry over, because she didn't actually put it in the CFE's. She put it in the summary. To, for a school building to come in the Fiverr plan, and I, you know, I'm like, it can't go there. Right? So, just, that's the picture. And maybe for this year, we have a little section of long-term planning, or long-term projects. Maybe the first part of that. Maybe the first part of that is whatever information we gather through the CIP forms. And then maybe another paragraph that says, hand-in-hand with this, of course, is the capacity to finance, you know, what ultimately is going to appear in our longer-term planning. Which the committee, as the committee goes forward, hopefully there'll be more time to begin to build out a, you know, 15-year plan of some sort. Yeah. So, I think that becomes more where I would see it more granular on the, on the financing capacity. And I think, again, it's undoubtedly going to require the finance director working with the committee to, you know, you have to kind of decide what it is you want to ultimately present in the report. And then you're going to have to probably rely on, on him to give you what you need. Yeah. It's really the finance director and the, the advisor, right, the town's advisor that need to produce it. But I, if this were my large school project, that would have been my first step, is to understand where that is. Like, what that, what that cadence looks like. Because proceeding with feasibility, right, before knowing where you can go. Where you can conceivably slot it and not overtax, right, at a, at a level that you're not going to get approved. Right. It's, you can go forward with all that, but if you, it doesn't fit, it's not going to get approved. So, that's my take on it. But I, I don't think it'll happen for this year, but I'm putting it out there for purposes of the minutes. But I think it's something that has to happen as part of long-term planning. Okay. Thank you. Um, as we were talking about things in the report, so, Liz sent me, um, her updated, um, open capital Excel workbook. Reflecting some edits I had given her on, uh, town and school. Um, identifying certain projects that were town and school that she didn't have the right identification, which she acknowledged she had her best. Um, and, um, yeah. The other open question was whether, um, the, uh, summary reflected, uh, the more recent approved projects, um, all of the anticipated debt borrowing that perhaps hasn't yet been borrowed. Um, because, again, we're using, we're using the ending balance at June 30, uh, financial balance, uh, quote, unspent funds, right, uh, as a proxy for, uh. Uh-huh. We're using it for where the project stands, because we don't have information on where the project actually stands. And so an example of one that I, there's two or three that I identified that pretty clearly didn't include that debt. So there, there's a fire truck that was approved at, you know, a million six something. And, and there's $50,000 as a unspent, uh, balance, but we haven't spent any money other than $50,000. Right? And so, um, she's been asking. So the reason why Brian had me, for most of the projects, he slotted in the bond anticipatory note financing because we actually borrowed that money because he didn't have the capacity so he could begin spending it. But on the fire truck, the chief told him to hold off because of timing, bidding, whatever. And so he didn't want to prematurely borrow for it. He's likely going to be borrowing for it in November when he does the permanent bonds. Even if he doesn't know exactly what the cost is going to be. So it was that example. And then the other one was related to high school improvements. So I was able to match a debt plan that he had given to Sutford last spring and identify all the recent capital projects and what borrowings were going to be. I was able to match those all up to projects that he had included in his summary except for two. So on Liz's spreadsheet, I updated those two, which just increased those pending balances. And then there were three other items that the amount that Brian brought in in the quote revenue column, which again I think was largely borrowing bond anticipatory note funding. The numbers just didn't make sense to me. Fire sensor, the appropriation was $350,000 and he brought in $405,000. That's a lot. That's a lot. That doesn't make sense. No, but $405,000 is the amount on another project. Yeah. So when I sent him the three projects, he said, oh, I guess I put the numbers in the wrong rows. So he corrected them as I could have corrected them. But I wanted to be sure. So I fixed those in Liz's spreadsheet and sent those back to her early this morning and just said, I fixed them in the data tab. I highlighted what numbers I think should be changing in your tables but just got them all set up. I set them up. I tried to manually change some numbers and it told me I couldn't do it. Oh, they're kind of pivots. They're pivots. They're pivots. They're pivots. So I was able to highlight. She was something ahead of. Yeah. To whatever update. Whatever update. But I wanted her to be comfortable. And then the other thing, I had asked her to add the columns of the original appropriations that we had on that open capital table by a year. And she slid it in fiscal 27 because she had them warred. And then she said, I was having trouble figuring out how to tie all the numbers up. And I said, well, all the other numbers are static because they're the original appropriations. I said, but. And I went to my file from last year and I just copied the tab. I had to trail back from where I got all the numbers. And I put that in her file. So I know she was traveling, I think, for work. So. I'm hopeful that when she looks at that and then hits the button that she has to hit, that it'll update the tables for the report and that should be done as to the tables. And then the question is, as with all this, we're going to have a bunch of tables, but we have to identify how we're going to draft the text of the report and whether that's going to be a single person taking a shot at it or we're going to carve the report up into sections. And I have everybody take a stab. And, you know, we have a lot of text in the last year's report that likely could be used and updated to match the numbers in the tables. But kind of need the tables, right, done first so we can rebuild them around it. Yeah, so I'll say this. I will update tables. Yeah, I'm willing to work on the drafting piece of it. I know that I'm going to. Not have the descriptions exactly right, but I'm more than willing to try to take a stab at part of the narrative. It's going to need, it'll need the work, of course, but I'd be glad to do that. I did look at last year's report. I'm not sure exactly how much we can use from last year because there was a lot of description of it. There was a lot of start of, like, hey, we're a brand new committee. This is what we're doing. This is how we decided to do it. But I think you can go through it section by section and say, is this still relevant? Is some of this need to move? Does it still need to exist, like, sort of the makeup of the committee and the committee's charge? Yes. Does that move to an appendix, right? That's no longer a part of the lead-in? It comes out, right? Right? Well, yeah, it can only be abbreviated. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think when we talk about the, you know, of course, the process, the CFPC form, you know, the stuff we've talked about, kind of describing what our process was, and then I think you get into the tables and the descriptions of what the numbers are. And I'm happy to take, you know, last year I did the debt section, and Kelly edited some of the text that I had drafted, you know, whether it makes sense to... You did the outstanding, you mean the outstanding project? Outstanding project. Yeah. Whether, you know, it makes sense that Chief Liz wants to take a stab at that. You know, we talked about it in a couple of news sessions long-term, so, you know, maybe you should go through it prior to the next meeting. And if you see either things that are in the report that are logically maybe segmented in one or two... It's also something we can work on now, avoid the tables, the generic. Yeah. And at least get it in a construct where then we could talk about conceptually what do we think is missing, are there things in there that... Right. Yeah. And then we have a few weeks to begin to fine-tune that. Did we say we're going to have the annual report as an appendix to this? I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think in the town's annual report. I don't think in the town's annual report. I don't think we need that. But we're here on September 9th, right? That's due on 10-15, which is a Monday, right? Or a Tuesday. I think the next... Or... We have a 10-16. Yeah, 10-16. You don't have to start off here. So technically, obviously, if we were sort of almost done at our meeting before 10-15, and we could sort of approve reports subject to finalized editing and then just have it go off... Well, we have a meeting on the 16th. We have a meeting on the... Or 23rd, the 30th, the 7th. The 7th. The 7th. The 7th. And 9th, 6th, and 8th. Actually, every week. We have a meeting on the 14th of October. Oh, the 14th. Yeah. 9-23, 9-30. We actually have a meeting scheduled every week. 10-7? Yes. Every week. 10-1, 10-3. 16-23, 30-7, 14. Yeah. And I think our thought was by the end of September, we want to be in reasonable shape on a draft. I think we want a reasonable draft done by the 30th meeting. We do clean-up by the 7th, right? Substantial clean-up by the 7th. And final approval. And final approval on the 14th. Yep. Great. At least as a target. Yep. So the question would be, do you think you'd have time to at least make a first pass through maybe just embedding comments, questions that you could circulate before the meeting on the 14th? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 16th. 16th. 16th. So that could be the subject of a discussion. Yeah. And you can even go so far as to kind of at each section, like make a suggestion. Like I set out through the table so you can put my name on all of like, comment on all the tables. Yeah. You know, it's Liz for the capitals. Like, you put who you think, right? Right. Voluntalist. Right. And then we can look at it next meeting. Yeah. Yeah. I know, I'll take a stab at it. I'll try to get that done before the meeting. You're not at the next meeting, right? Yes, I'm in a very strange schedule. Every other week I'm traveling, so 1630 is a problem. Those both right now. The alternate weeks I'm fine. All the more reason to give you sections to do. There's a lot of playing time. Yeah, I'm enjoying them in an alternate time universe. Hopefully, the other thing we need to discuss on the 16th would be one, looking at the cleaned up versions of what we talked about tonight, and hopefully we've gotten input back from Nick on IT, so we can work that. I'm going to do a lot of work on the tables, just to have them all automated. That's the problem. I had stuff automated last year that worked off of me manually inputting everybody's projects. I would like to link it up with this new thing, so that it feeds through. Not that I'm going to add in more meetings since I'm traveling, but I think on the 14th I'm available as well, in case we get to another meeting for some reason. Okay. You mean on October 14th? On September. Okay. In case we want to pull in another meeting for some reason. I don't necessarily need to, because we have a meeting on the 16th. I know you're just on the 16th, but yeah, I'll try to get a report out. It could probably be more substantive if I get a report out that everybody can look at and review. It's going to have a lot of blanks, as we talked about. Yeah. I believe the FOIA, maybe you're going to leave all this stuff on the agenda, just because we're not exactly sure what we're going to talk about. You can drop the annual report. Have we approved? Did we approve the annual report? Yeah, we did. Okay. You can send that. You sent it out? I will tonight. Okay. I just found the email address I was supposed to send it to you. I was going to ask, but that's probably the one you sent me. Awesome. Thank you. Do I need to copy us on there? You can. Just the committee one? Yeah. But that's all approved. We approved that two meetings ago. Yeah. Part three. Yeah. I don't remember. We've had a few filler meetings. We've had a few. Yeah. Another agenda, and we discussed the town building working vision group. I guess we talked about it a little bit today, but I'm not sure there's anything else we need to really discuss on that. I mean, do we want to keep leaving it in there? Do we have enough? I mean, I know we can leave it as a placeholder, but do we extend it? Yeah. I don't think there's anything else to talk about now. I think we can leave it off for now. Yeah. We'll take it off. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. The original concept was, did we want to get a seat at the table, or at least a mechanism to know what's going on? I think Carol Martin's view was, I think, Michael Fay, as an ex-officio member, we reach out to Michael Fay and say, hey, one, have these meetings started, just to make sure they're working? And then two, would you be opposed to showing up? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're going to make sure that they're working. I mean, we're going to make sure that they're working. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's even been populated. Yeah. The problem with some of these groups, and it sounds like a concept, but if you- Then you've got volunteers for them. Yeah. Yeah. So if at some point down the road you might have a every month standing agenda, we'll assume Michael's available for a 20 minute update. Yeah. Yeah. I think we could. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I'm sorry, I think we're out of time. We're out of time? Yeah. Okay. This is my other question. Paul, I think we have a question. We'll see where we are. 20 minute update.
Succession planning, any updates on that? Vacant's not here, so we can't talk about it. I'm gonna get myself a new desk sign. I mean, I'm just gonna say vacant. Okay.
Review and approve minutes of September 2. Okay, so I have a couple of minor edits on page three. And I don't think I signed off to people. Okay. So under the review and vote to approve minutes of 831, I've inserted, in the second sentence after K. Lapin, I inserted, noted one edit, and then, and then it goes on, moved to approve the minutes, and at the end I put comma has revised. Does that make sense to you? Mm-hmm. Okay, that's the only change I have. Any other edits, changes? Motion to approve the minutes of September 2. Second.
Second. All in favor? Aye.
And I think we've talked about them. Next meeting's now gonna be at 6.30. I'll get the agenda out for the next one, the next couple days. Can I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. I just thought we were gonna reach it. What's the meeting the time? 825. So generally,