April 14, 2026 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript

April 14, 2026 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee

Autoscroll:

I'm going to call the meeting of the capital improvement planning committee to order. It is April 14th, 6 30 PM. We are, it's a hybrid meeting. We are in all in person in the select board meeting room. Um, see, let me do the OML statement. This meeting may be, may be recording if recordings will be made available to the public on wake him as soon as possible after the meeting pursuant to chapter two of the acts of 2020, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law. You may watch or participate either in the room here at the select board meeting room in the town building or remotely. And the link is available on the town's website, uh, when required by law or law by the chair, which I will allow persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so here or online. Public comment should be limited. To two minutes per person. And we are hybrid, but all of the members who are attending are here in the room. John got sent on a work trip and couldn't make it. Um, and so it's myself, Kelly, Brad, Brian, and Liz are here in the room. Uh, and then let's go through the agenda. So 6 30 was the call to order and review the agenda for the public announcements to do the agenda. 6 35 is the call to order. Public comment and members response 6 40 review of the article submitted for email town meeting to assess if any impact on the capital plan, including, but not limited to article DD holiday rose. If any, um, Bill Whitney was going to try and join us tonight remotely. So if we see him in attendees, we'll move them over and do the topic at that time. Um, suppose we could discuss before as well, and just be ready for questions for him if need be. Uh, and if you want to discuss a topic at that time, please feel free to do so. Um, I can't hear you. Um, um, we are going to go through the agenda. Um, so we're going to say seven o'clock. Discuss next steps to advance future CIC report process improvements, including, but not limited, including those, but not limited to those outlined in our report. Um, which may include revisions to the capital improvement plan, the current version of the submission form. And I do want to discuss, um, project plan for the remainder of 2026. I started to sketch something out. And I just want to talk through it with you guys and get. Um, I send anything along to the town manager, finance director, or anybody else. Eight o'clock, discuss succession planning, the finance and school committee designees. 8.15, review and vote to approve the minutes of March 18th. 8.25, topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair, 48 hours prior to posting, if any, and setting the time of the next meeting. And 8.30, adjourn. So public comment, Robbie? Is there anybody there? Okay. All right. Holiday Road, Brian. Yeah, Robbie, can you just click on panelists? Is that also where we can? Analysts. That's us. Okay. That's us. Okay. Thank you. So Brian, do you want to give an update on Holiday Road of what you know so far? And then when Bill gets here, we can ask questions that we have. Yeah. So select board spent 45 minutes or so last night on their agenda, largely dedicated to receiving public input. And not all, but most of that input came from residents of Holiday Road or Orchard Lane. Bill started out the session or the agenda item, giving a brief overview of the article and what the selectmen's support. It's intent is and isn't. And attempted to dismiss early on the notion that they were somehow looking to put 50 to 60 unit apartment building or 50 to 60 townhomes in that area. But made the point that while the support started out being the ones that were pushing the issue of doing some preliminary diligence, given that the properties in custody of the schools that that they ultimately agreed to let schools co sponsor the article and the work is intended to cover a scope that would entail a school building, possibly, and no decisions have been made. According to Bill, who's also on the long term school building advisory committee. No decisions have been made by the school committee yet. On one or more options that might entail using that site in some capacity. I'd say most of the comments that were received were existing state is better wooded area, or preserving as much of the wooded area as possible is better.
If if housing is ultimately something that stuck board in the town wants to do, trying to keep it within the current zoning, which would be If housing is ultimately something that stuck board in the town wants to do, trying to keep it within the current zoning, which would be 40,000 square foot lots, whatever number could fit. With a sub road or something consistent consistent with sort of the neighborhood neighborhood. The water as Bill has said on multiple occasions, utilizing the conservation cluster by law. Which would preserve some portion of the 13 acres, a large portion of 13 acres. This sort of buffer open space and then cluster. you know, townhome, so you get some density there. Slackboard's clearly focused on new growth. Schools, in turn, are focused on do we really need it? It's part of a long-term strategy. So anyway, one commenter was attempting to pin the Slackboard down, that in any housing scenario, they wouldn't go further than current zoning permits, and they weren't prepared to do that until they evaluate what's there. One comment that I think got traction, which is not surprising because it's been utilized at the Nike site, the 212 petition with, is possibly creating an advisory task force group of some sort, including one or more of the neighbors to, again, or was it? Input along the way. And an interesting question, which is one that I was going to ask myself, which I would give him the opportunity, probably not at town meeting.
You may or may not be aware that as part of the MBT zoning, the town approved last year's town meeting, certain areas in town that could build multifamily, as of right. And one of those areas is down where Longfellow is located on Route 20. And there's an office building, right? As you turn into that drive, there's an office building that kind of is on the Wayland side. It's covered by trees along Route 20, but it's a two, I think it's a two-story office building. And one, when you make the right hand turn into Longfellow. If you're coming from Wayland, make the right, it's on the right side. And anyway, it's, you know, I might not be able to stress this enough, but you have five acres in the county and you're of course, with a five, five-foot one-by-five-foot building in the state and several, million Santa Monica residents and people that are coming to Longfellow. Number one, that's always the point that we've got to get to the point when we make the decision in terms of building that is just about as consistent as possible, and to make sure that there's a length of time that's consistent with the plan, that's consistent with the state's, that's consistent with the state's vision, that's consistent with the state's vision, that's consistent with the state's vision and the city's vision, that's consistent with the state's vision and the city's vision, a state to allow up to 52 feet and up to 32 units per acre and they've been told by the owner of that property uh who as an aside happens to be a wayland resident a former member of the select board um that from a financial standpoint i'm not sure if there's any affordable units that are going to be part of the plan but they've been told planning board was told it's not economic to build what they're allowed to build at the moment uh so they need a little bit more height and they point out that oxbow got a variance from the zoning board to go up to the little 50 feet but it was on the units that are set furthest back from the ones that are sitting down the road right yeah so it's not as noticeable but anyway uh so i'm only bringing this up because a commenter brought up and said well i noticed that the stock board voted i think it was thought it was i think it was two against and three two in favor and three against i think the rezoning of that property and appointed which you'd say well wait a minute if you're basically the point the commenter was making which is the point i would like to make too which is if you're saying we need to look at this and you're in in response to the neighbor's comment you're looking to sort of have some bulk but downsize it as best you can why wouldn't the site board instead be spending all their energies trying to go ahead and approve on route 20 a little taller building given the topography there it's kind of sunk down a little bit at this sort of guarded by the trees and um there was something about maybe the fire might have a problem getting their apparatus up but i think planet works so that's not the case so the commenter was saying why why are you spending time here in this residential neighborhood when you should be spending all your time trying to get that article approved at town meeting because you can get done much quicker and get potentially more units with less disruption and um the company was the only one that spoke to it just said i'm you know that's the gate that didn't say gateway but that's the entry point from sudbury to whalen and i just don't like the notion of a 50 store 50 foot um building right on route 20 as you're entering into whale and i'm like are you driving by the dump and sudbury drive but yeah and the gateway the gateway it's a commercial area scenic uh area
in fact i think alta oxbow actually made it look a lot better before even though there were a lot of complaints initially once they finished you know i think it looks yeah better i do agree she wasn't there last night but they discussed the same issue week before a couple weeks before and brensley made the point uh maybe this bill or both uh why they may not have an issue with the height ultimately uh i think lee stan was thinking that the town should use that as leverage to get you know more affordable units built in but you know the more affordable units you put in the less well if you're putting if you're going on race in order to make the economics work right but okay so anyway the only reason i bring that up has nothing to do with us is that as to spending money on a feasibility study the commenter was saying we don't quite understand there seems to be a disconnect given your rationale uh the non-neighborhood commenters um at least one nine neighborhood commenter was just questioning the amount of money uh if it was simply to determine would anything be built there if he didn't he didn't think 200 000 was necessary to reach that you know conclusion so um you know i thought i thought it was good comments from the public support seemed receptive um and um i think it's a majority vote at town meeting and there's no i i didn't say right to the end no one i think asked the specific question of exactly what is the money being spent on which was ours so i want to ask yeah i want when bill comes so i just double checked he's going to come at 7 30 with the plan um uh it's pretty good i think uh and some people have not yet uh i think it might be the same time it's a shame i think there's no an opportunity to get that um that's the only thing that's in the past they missed that in the return tax so that's what the chair told me so you can i think that's the main question is right what's the basis for the 200 what does that include right which is what we want to know because that sort of informs whether or not we take position on it what that position may be i think the last meeting i said that the only thing i knew as to where the 200 000 came from where was it where the 200 000 came from and where is it what do you mean so i'm trying to keep that in mind when you've been on the phone wurden you know what that looks like to me with it $100,000 came from. Where is it being? The funding source was intended to be the reserve from sale of real estate, which to my knowledge only had about $200,000 less than it. The only point I want to bring up tonight is a million four of that reserve was appropriated last town meeting paid for the part of the Snakebrook Dam Foss. We just got another grant. We just got a federal grant. They already had gotten an $800,000 state grant. And now they got a million four federal grant. I believe the town has to spend the money and then seek reimbursement from the feds. So I think they still need to use the appropriation, but eventually the money will turn it back. And it's just not clear whether that money is going to go back into that particular reserve. They also have ARPA. And they have some ARPA funds that they've been using. They have to use the ARPA funds up by the end of this year. Okay. So, so anyway to the extent that $200,000 was a governor was governed by that reserve only having $200,000. It's possible that reserve actually could theoretically be million six. I don't want that to be the governor. I mean, when we go to town meeting, it's going to go at the amount. I mean, they're only going to, we're going to approve the amount in the article. It's not going to, they're not going to be able to go above it. And obviously if they run out of money, depending on what they have to come back. Yeah. I just don't like it. When we do it that way. Kind of interesting. You mentioned that, you know, that parcel off of route 20 near Longfellow, what has any money been spent on that in terms of like a feasibility study or not? Town property. That's a private, it's basically where the office, but I'm assuming they'll either, I'm assuming they're going to demolish the office building, build a brand new multifamily 60 units plus. You think they still need to study that? Well, they would, but that's private. Okay. I would have to pay for it. Right? The reason because you all know would develop it. Yes. The only reason that came up was because in order to develop the way the owner would like to, they need.
Right. Whereas the property at the holiday road. Belongs to the town. The control of the schools. Right. And so town has to pay if they want to do a feasibility. Cool. study one of those original thoughts we talked about right was a feasibility study to see what it could be used for as because once you know that you know how to market it if we're going to sell it right but it's the town owns that land versus yeah i guess presumably i thought maybe the town is going to buy that land no no i only brought it up as the parent parallel there was a parallel argument yeah inconsistent the art for one second are focused on the only thing on holiday road um were housing ultimately to be where the schools to ultimately decide that they don't need it and then it has to be transferred through a town meeting vote which required two thirds vote to transfer custody from the schools to the select board and then a shepherd vote to allow the select board to dispose of it ultimately you or at least it um uh one of the uh commenters questioned whether the select board would were planning to rezone the property equivalent to oxford where they put an overlay on it which permitted as of right whatever the parameters were and uh it's the second time i've heard bill say it which maybe he doesn't know he said it but um he said well you know if that if it was rezoned it would require two-thirds vote this is a zoning change and uh that used to be true until four or five years ago but through some state legislation they dropped the form the voting uh uh threshold for 50 percent for uh multi-family housing for how residential housing um and so uh you know the other approach would be a 40b development i mean either you stay within the single family lot zoning you stay within the cluster zoning or you do an overlay which would require a 50 approval at town meeting or you do a 40b and the only issue with a 40b is that you probably get it through the town committees um but that's subject to um potential legal challenge uh you know by the other squares if you do an overlay and it's in the zoning as of right um they'd comply i you know i don't think there's a legal So it's good on a legal basis to challenge the project. I just have one question about that Holiday Road property. It's not necessarily relevant to what we have to decide, but is the access only through Orchard Lane or Holiday Road? Because when I look at the map, it doesn't look like there's any access through Route 20 at all. Yeah, right now it's Orchard Lane or Holiday Road. That's what I thought, which makes it kind of awkward. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the map of the Orchard Lane, I think I sent you all the... You did. I think Orchard Lane kind of goes in a U-shape. And it's always been referred to historically as the Orchard Lane property. So maybe in the town's GIS system, maybe it has an address of 25 Holiday Road. But yeah, you've got to come in. I don't know if you can get to Orchard Lane. The access would likely be from East Road, which is the little road that comes off of 126. Yeah, 126. Do you... Turn on East Road and then Holiday Road's on the left. Yeah. I suppose if you keep going straight, that may be where you get to Orchard Lane. I didn't think you could connect to Orchard Lane from there. I thought you can only connect to Orchard Lane from... From the back. From training field. Yeah, I don't think they're connected there. I think the address is Holiday Road, which is on one side. But at least where you see the property, if you come in from Orchard Lane, you can see it when you go on the back side of Orchard Lane. So I don't know. I haven't... I haven't tracked it historically as to... Were that a school, for example, you know, with the school traffic, et cetera, what would be the best route? But, you know, you look at Clay Pitt, you look at Loker, Happy Hollow, they're all in residential districts. They all have to address, you know, lines of traffic.
So anyway, thought it was informative, but I didn't hear any answers to the questions that we had. Yeah. All right. All right. I'll address the traffic. I've worked here for 10 years, and I still have to look at the sign to see whether or not I can turn left. It was a good session. And I think for those that go to town meeting, you'll probably hear a repeat of some of that.
All right. So when Bill... If when Bill joins us, I think the two questions, right, were... Do we have more detail on the estimate of what the 200,000 buys? Like, is that based on a... You know, a list of services, or is that just the cap on what you're willing to spend? And then confirming where that's being intended to be funded from.
Okay.
Next on the agenda was to talk about our next steps in making progress on our future process improvements. I did let John know what he was voluntold for. And I, you know, said, you can let me know if you'd like to negotiate a trade with somebody. But otherwise, I didn't hear back, but he was headed out on a work trip. Okay. So why don't... Can we talk first about dates? Because I started to sketch this out. As I started to sketch it out, I kept looking at it and being like, oh, I don't know if that's enough time. But then you start to back up and you run out of time. So working backwards, report needs to be final by the bylaw, October 15th. From the time we got our last call, sort of, our last information from the department managers to when we actually produced the first draft was really only a couple of weeks. And then we did another subsequent update about a month later. So sort of six weeks end to end. But we were working a lot while we were talking to the department managers as well. So I just started to work back with the idea of if it's due the 15th, I'd really like to have a report in good shape by the first, right? And be doing by October 1st and be doing sort of, you know, tweaks around the edges, right? To get done. And I think in order to do that, you're really looking at having at least a good solid first draft by the middle of September.
And if I back up from there, when does that mean I need information? So assuming we have a beautiful new form and we send it out, which we'll get back to that part. And we get what we want, from the department managers, how much time from when they fill it out and we talk to them. I think that's the most labor intensive scheduling difficulty, right? Is how much time do we need to accept the information ingested enough to ask questions and schedule those meetings? And the problem is we end up like, I'm already back into summer, right? And so getting people, we'll hear both us and the department managers will be, I think, challenging. So I don't know if it's like sort of a whole summer exercise of like, well, bring people in as they're available and get their information rather than trying to condense it in a tight timeframe, which brought me to sort of a July for like, you really have to have information from them by July 1st in order to kind of do some back and forth in that. In that time period. Yeah, I would think so, because assuming they fill out the reports, submit the report, we have questions, I'm assuming that we're gonna get, I'll get back to you on that, which means there's gonna be additional follow-up. Yeah. And it can be hard, if that's during the summer with vacations and all and getting everybody in the same room at the same time. Well, and I don't know, if we have to get everybody in the room all at the same time either. I am a little bit optimistic that because we've been through one cycle, there's stuff we already know, we've already talked about that we don't have to hash over again. And similar to what Brian Coveney has said, I'm hoping we can focus on what's different. And so I'm gonna go back a little bit further and there's sort of a gap in between here, but if I start from the end, I think, I think that's a good start. If I start from the other end, which is annual town meeting is May 4th. After annual town meeting, I wanna be able to reconcile, which we can do with what we have, reconcile where we ultimately landed as a town. What did we vote on, right? As FY27 appropriations, what was in the plan that we submitted versus what we accidentally landed at right in the warrant, reconcile that. And I think there's some work we can do then sort of right in May, which is working through like, why are these different and where, how do we re-slot things? And can we get to a mutual agreement with the town manager and finance director on the reshuffling before we get the new information? Yeah, I think you'd have to do that reconciliation. Yeah, so I'm thinking if annual town meetings May 4th by the end of May, I wanna be reconciled and in agreement or at least know where we disagree, right? On the plan as it stands, what the items submitted prior to this town meeting, right? And then between the end of May, which is really, so it's really a month, like the month of June, right? Is the time for department managers to be like, oh yeah, well, since we submitted these, these things have changed, right? If the process runs that long, right? I still think you're going to end up, we're going to get to the end of this and there's going to be a whole bunch of stuff that's still moving parts, but at least we will have gone through the bulk of it prior. And, you know, we could do a final report 10, 15 and then. And? The finance committee in turn is looking for capital in mid to late November. And so if something happens between October 15th and the town manager, if he were to accommodate them with that schedule, then we could certainly, again, better reconcile that out with the town manager before he presents because the finance committee in their report that's in the warrant, which is online at the moment, it's not in your mailbox yet, had a couple of recommendations relative to our role. And I don't tell if you've fed them the recommendations, but, you know, getting closer between what we produce and what the town manager produces. And I think there's still- I said that in their meeting, so yeah. But it was, it's obvious that that didn't happen this time for all the reasons. But I also think that there are at least maybe all the FinCon members, although it may not be relevant, the five of them at the moment have expressed possibility that they're going off. There's three terms up. Pam's not gonna serve. She's already there an extra year beyond when she wanted to be a chair for health reasons and she's hearing to have to step off. So it's unclear what's gonna be happening. I'm gonna crawl back under my table somewhere. Lose my number. But anyway. Anyway, I watched their little segment where they're rehashing this past cycle, and they were very hopeful of going back to the quote old days, FinCon, where the first thing they would get would be the capital budget. Now, I was watching a tape, so sometimes you want to make a comment.
If you want to do the work, you want to do the homework, the Finance Committee had access to our minutes. If the Finance Committee had access to the WACAM videotapes of our meetings, they could have been right up to speed on where we were coming up. But the point I was going to make is some or all of them, I think, are still a little confused that we are advisory, the town management. They're not necessarily to look to us as, here's what we think, Finance Committee. They're to look to the town manager, ideally. The town manager is proposing something that's fairly close to what we recommended. This year, what happened, because we were a bit apart and we were much lower, I think they, by default, started saying, well, the CITC kind of came out here. We kind of feel that's a better place to be, which is fine. Our reports are public, right? Anyway, so I think some of the work they could have done without being presented with a formal budget, same on the operating budget. Yeah, I hear you, Brian. I think. They wanted to meet with department heads, too. Yeah. They can do whatever they want. I just, that'd be three, potentially three separate times department heads would have to meet. Yeah, I would think that would. That's not right. The intent of the committee was to take that so they wouldn't have to do it. They would have had members of the community, right, had done that pre-vetting. I think the piece that was missing, and they said one of them, right, the piece that was missing was that we weren't aligned with town manager and finance director, which was a matter of more time. Time right now. But also, like you said, and I said it several times, the town manager said it several times, our role was not direct to the finance committee, right? Our role was to the town manager as advisory. So it's a little bit difficult the way it's set up. And I'm not saying it's wrong, because I think it can work. That I can't do what you want me to do, because I don't, right, I don't answer to you, and ultimately the town manager and the finance director are going to submit to you, submit a budget to you. So it's hard. I get why they want to meet with town department managers, because they're not getting that directly. I think that was the reaction. I understand that. And the only way to solve that is, like you said, well, they could spend. They could spend all their time watching the meetings, right? But they don't get to ask questions directly, right? They could read the materials, or they could, you know, we not exist, and you do it the way you used to do it. But I don't think, my personal opinion, I think you agree, if the solution is, well, you've got to meet with the department managers, too, I think that's overly taxing on the department. I think that's something to just keep in mind and put on the list to extend somewhere in your timeline you're going to do it before a meeting. Yeah, it's great. We want to try to get that. We want to get everybody on the same page on that. But the other question I have for you as the FinCom appointee, do you feel, whoever's sitting in your role as FinCom appointee, do you feel that by virtue of being the designee of the FinCom, the FinCom should be asking you to visit with them from time to time throughout the process to give them the benefit of not having to look at them? I think that's one. I think that's one way to do it, right? I think ideally that's how it would have worked. I think if we weren't, if I didn't feel like we were scrambling so much to get something together, I think that's how it could work, right? So I think that it's certainly how it could work, but I don't know that when the idea of designee was thought of, it was necessarily that you would be the direct link liaison, right? More that somebody who has... You know, FinCom's thought process, right? Who has experience on FinCom is making sure that somebody on this committee understands what ultimately is going to get done with the information afterwards, which they actually had in both of us, because we've both been on FinCom. So I don't know that it was a direct, like, similar to the question on school committee, but it was like, you're here to represent the interests, right? I don't know about that one. Yeah. I'm just... Yeah. I just... I'm giving you... All of this is the benefit of, ultimately, the finance committee is the last stop before they need to take a position and get in the warrant. And they were extremely frustrated this year, not different from prior couple years anyway. But I think they also acknowledged that, you know, this process and then the interaction with the town manager, finance director, will likely be better the next go. And I think, Kelly, your point about doing that reconciliation exercise, I think that's the piece that we ran out of time, because if that piece, we had a couple weeks to work that piece through, or alternatively, the town manager and finance director had attended a few more meetings, so they could have raised their hand. They would have raised their hand in real time, and we would have, you know, either agreed or disagreed. Like, we may have moved right in one direction or if we had had that. So, I'm not sure if I think, you know, following ATM, which is May 4th, we do the debrief as soon as possible right after that, or if we do the reconciliation and then do the debrief so that we can bring with us sort of like, here's the starting disconnect. I'm just not sure if I want to do it before or after. And I think, and again, I'm happy to help out with the reconciliation. You know, I believe... You know, it's printed in the warrant and the FinCon report is the town manager's five-year capital plan, even though I still can't find any evidence that the finance committee voted on it, but town doesn't vote on it. But, you know, if you think we could get that done over the course of the next two to three weeks, I think that probably makes sense, because it would also evidence that if it works, that, you know, we in town management, the financial record can actually work together and say, we think we can repeat this going forward. I just worry that if we don't get on, if we don't get on the FinCon and the SEC board and the town manager, financial record schedule for a meeting, then the closer you get to June 30th, now you're... No, so I'd like, I'd like to get on their schedule for a meeting mid-May.
So, but I also recognize... They might want, like, a bit of a breath once town meeting's over. So I'll give them a sort of aiming for mid-May, but give them a little bit of leeway there to get that scheduled. We have a meeting scheduled for May 13th, but... How does Brad and Liz feel about the ordering of that reconciliation and then meeting with the other parties first? Does that make more sense? I think for a more informed conversation, if you have a case, I'll keep in mind. You know what questions you want to ask versus, I don't know.
It would work, right? But I think, one, you just come with more information, so you might be better prepared to ask the questions, you know, and let the dialogue go where it needs to. I agree. I'd like to see, I'd like to see the reconciliation before the meeting, because I think that kind of gives a template to what to talk about. I think that makes the most sense. The danger is if we don't have it and we go into the meeting, it's sort of a, like, let me get back, right? Let me get back to you. How far apart we are. That reconciliation, I mean, you know, it was, because you did it, it was pretty tedious just to do fiscal 27. The other four years, things are all over the place, so it's going to be equally tedious times four. Yeah, I think for all the years, it's just 26. I think you need to do it for all years, but I'm wondering if we can do it, I'm wondering if it needs to be as tedious in the out years or if it can be sort of dollar amounts. Like, the dollar amount differences in the funding sources and then some sort of high-level themes on the projects being pushed or pulled. But it's hard to, I tried to do that, though, with 27, and then I was like, well, now I'm down at, like, the nth level detail because it's hard to get it reconciled. I thought what you did was fine. I mean, what I could do, I'm happy to do it because it's the way I did it when I found the bank. I can take the town managers, which is what appears in the warrant, five-year plan. And put it into that Excel workbook that we started out with as the town manager, five-year plan, side-by-side, put our five-year plan with all the items down the side, and at least it'll visually expose where the differences are. And there's going to be a lot of them just surely by timing. It's less dollar differences than it is just sheer timing. So I'm happy to at least do that if that would be helpful. I think just side-by-side would be. Yeah, I think it's helpful. I know it's less dollar. I think dollars by funding source is. And funding sources are the other. Yeah, by funding source is helpful. The specific projects, it matters, right, in that first year because that's what's actually going to get voted and done. But as you get further out, it's sort of the big picture. I guess the other way is by department, like how much is each department getting, right, comparatively. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. The big difference you would have seen between what we put out and what they ultimately have landed at was they put back or they attempt. I don't know if they actually landed there at the end, but they put back a lot of DPW. So it's just hard for me to know without doing, starting, like, playing with it. Brian, once you start to look at it, like, what's the message here? I think the message is we stretched the timeline a bit longer. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. did well the biggest the the biggest item is that we took the 5 million or so that was pushed off from fiscal 27 to we don't know when on this bill we put in purgatory whereas the town manager's five-year plan has that in slotted in fiscal 28 which is going to stick out like a sore thumb when you just compare the numbers so as i'm saying if you just compare the numbers on a summary basis not on a project by project basis you should be able to say with a you know a couple of bullet points for each year like what's the big difference here the big difference is town buildings and purgatory in one and not in the other right um and then i think there is also a difference of like i think across the years we scraped some stuff out and pushed it into that last year um but i also think that doesn't necessarily the project by project is not the the most important part of the conversation right with fincom to me the most important part of the conversation is how much are we can we afford are we willing to spend in a given funding source and what are the reasons that we would find acceptable to exceed that right because right now i've heard every reason under the sun for all kinds of things to get pulled in but you you eat through you eat through the all of our capacity and and i just i don't know how we do i don't know how the town manages that knowing what they're facing from budget standpoint right and an override standpoint and now and we'll talk about it i think did we put it on here brian we were going to
specifically about the i guess i didn't on um alone for uh we can talk about it in the context of i mean yours so you okay we get to that oh well we are we did thing to ask we've past it we're going back to it let me go back to it we can talk about it would i mean i would normally do that side by side um anyway kind of at the start of the process so why don't i just do that i don't i don't yeah even if i'm the only one who looks at it i i i find it helpful but to your point kelly i think you know maybe you're better serve to look step back from it bigger picture Bottom line totals, can we call out the two or three or four major differences in each of the four remaining years? Because they already have all the minutiae for fiscal 27. And I think that should be sufficient. And then the question is, can we get the town manager and finance director with benefit of time to say, okay, we now have a better idea of why you did what you did. Whereas the finance director's general view was a five-year plan is meant to sort of stay static. You have four years plus you have one on. And obviously he had to bury that a bit for fiscal 27. I think the other four years, for the most part. You know what they were in the prior year, five-year plan. Plus a few items that got pushed off. Like this building chunk of this building. That's I think where the finance director came up with the town manager's point. Yeah, I think so. I think that's a philosophical. Difference though, that we have to iron out between us. Town manager and finance director and Fincom. Right. Of what's your, what are your guiding principles? Are your guiding principles that. I. I set it and I only tweak it around the edges. Or is it something along the lines of prioritization things changed? Yeah, I said it. I, and I agree with Brian Keveny, by the way, I, I, I think it should be. Relatively similar to the plan. You know, more so the closer year it is than the out years. But I also don't think that it's rigid. In that. Just because I had it in. FY 28. Doesn't mean that when we talked all the. The department heads, something else. Wasn't of a higher priority from a need standpoint. So the idea that whoever got theirs in first. Gets to have it is I don't subscribe to, right. I that that's, I think the fundamental, like that isn't my, for me personally, the deciding factor, the deciding factor is okay. Was that a boiler where are we not going to have heat in an elementary school? Right. Versus we're going to, you know, put up some new street signs. Or pave a road or like there's, we have to, if we don't do that prioritization, I don't know why we're here. Yeah. I mean, that's like, otherwise I, I, I, I think, you know, some members of the board of select men were like, well, I thought the committee was going to do long-term planning. Yes. I'd like to do long-term planning. Yeah. Need to do short-term planning in order to get to long and get it and get a process in place to allow us to do that. So I guess. Didn't do what on a going forward? So we have our recommendation, not, not necessarily 27, but on the out years. So we have our recommendations, the, the time managers and we'll see the reconciliation, there's going to be some differences, but our starting point for next year, I'm assuming, tell me if I'm right or wrong, are our recommendations not accepting what the time managers. If we can, if we can come to agreement with town manager, we can, oh, we can agree, like to take ours and their. Reconcile the differences to have a meeting of the minds and agree on the mutually agreed place before we layer in, right, because if we can come to an agreement on philosophy and practicality, right, up front, then we're not going to, I don't want to be doing that in July or August when we've gotten new information. I want to layer that on top and say, okay, we talked about, this is what we agreed on. Should this be moved in favor? Should project. Yeah. We moved in favor of project Y that just came up based on. We get. Yeah. We get. We may, at that point, we may decide, okay. From this new starting point, hopefully mutually agreeable. It may not be, but, um, and if it isn't, then we would start it with some. Something that we agree with. Okay. What our final product was more likely. It'll be something in between that and the town manager report, but I think we have to absorb whatever's approved because otherwise. Yeah, that's your starting point, but everyone may. And 27 is going to be approved at time meeting. So that'll be with, that'll be cast in stone, right? I mean, so that's going to affect, 27 definitely is affecting our other four years. Yeah. Are we talking about 28 and beyond then about getting? That's what I was talking about. 27 will be done. It is what it is. We plug those numbers in. And then, so the idea or the goal would be that we, we agree with the town manager on, on the out years. And then, then we start the process of dealing with the department. Yes. And then parallel to that. An update on where capital projects stand. So like we have what we put in our report of where, what was outstanding. There was a lot of improvement. We want to see, did that improvement continue? You layer in 20, 27 projects that have been approved, right? So. So because that may color our eventual decisions on, on new stuff that comes in, right? Like how, and I would like to this year with more of the benefit of more time. Scrutinize at a departmental level, a little bit more of how much is outstanding in a given department versus new requests. Right. And hopefully, you know, we have, unfortunately had, unfortunately, unfortunately we had a lot of new department heads in the last year before this. And so I feel like most of them had really had the benefit of time of getting to know what they had, what they had on their hands, where it was standing. I do think they've made pretty significant project progress for what they were handed, but I would like to have a better sense, you know, the it director just to pick on him. Right. He was almost brand new when he came in here. Right. I would expect by the time we're doing it with someone, he's got a much better handle on. What he has. And so I would like to have a better sense of, you know, the IT director just to pick on him. Right. And, and along with that, Brian, I know. I don't, I didn't look in detail. No Brian Kevin. He said there were certain. Projects that the school and the IT director. Gave. Gave back previously approved projects. I think that's important to kind of understand, even though 27 will be approved by town meeting. Done. There were some funding sources that we didn't have the benefit of. I just like to make sure we understand like, well, what project was it that was approved in the past that we now didn't need or finished with a lot of money left over. Cause I think that also colors. Yeah, definitely. Do you want to request from Brian? His final. Budget workbook. I think that information should be in there. Yeah, I think I got one that wasn't maybe quite final final. So just ask to get to make sure we get the final. Yeah. Along that line. But it's. We know if I can talk to Kelsey yet about getting. I know not until after May 4th. After town meeting. So. After town meeting. Okay. With that approach. I think we left it off last meeting. You're going to confirm. I haven't bothered him. But I can. But I would say after town meetings over. You should be okay. I'll ask. As soon as. There's no one else in the attendee. Attendee. Not yet. So in that. Continuum from the. Six through October 15th. Nothing in there. Sounds like long-term plan. Well, it's going to be on the form though. Well, the revised farmer. That's what we need to talk about. We need to talk about the form and we need to talk about what goes. Cause in order to do long-term planning. We need the departments to collect the info. And I want everybody to keep in mind that today. They only give us the IP forms for. One year. So we're going to ask them for CIP forms for. Five years. So in order to do long-term planning, I don't think you need. Necessarily CIP forms. I think you need. Big picture. Right. If you talk to Michael. Okay. What's the arc. Of. Buildings. Right. That need. And we know. Town building needs attention, right? That's his, his art. But then. School committee has schools on a long-term arc. So like that's got a big, big number associated with it. So from a long-term planning. Right. Right out of the gate. Town building and school buildings. Where, where do those. Fit and the schools have a huge range of number. And they're all huge, all big numbers too. Like. How. Where could that even go? Right. From a. Financial planning standpoint. Right. And I get confused. Cause I saw the, in the way of the post that, you know, the numbers they were throwing around and you want to choke, but. They have a, they have a committee that is basically doing that. Analysis and. Planning. So I'm, I'm trying to think. How do we overlay what the school's already doing in terms of. There. And 15 year plan. I don't, we don't redo. We're not going to. We're not. I mean, my mind, we're not going to redo what they're doing. But I think what we need to look at is what the long-term. And that's, it goes hand in hand with this meeting with FinCom. What's our, what's our capacity. What does it mean? If you build. $600 million or $800 million worth of buildings. What does that, what does that mean? Just do the math. Right. Are you planning to do that over. If it's 600, you're going to do that over six years. You're going to layer in a hundred million a year for six years. Okay. And then amortize that over. 30. You can't do that. That won't work. Right. So are we going to layer it in. One building every. 10 years. Like what's what's I think we need for long-term. My. My goal would be getting from. They're putting together an advisory committee. For this building. Right. They were going to talk about that. And then the school. It's like, what are you thinking? Right. Bill said last night. As he's on that. As I said. I believe he said that the school committee has narrowed. At the moment has narrowed down to a couple of the multiple options that were presented. I'm not sure which ones. Because they're multifaceted. And that they're hopeful school committees, hopeful of making. A decision. Which option to pursue sometime. By fall. With the goal of getting an application submitted to the MSBA. Next spring. Because ultimately as to where you can go with any of this, it's going to be dependent on. Money we get. And the numbers are not unique to Wayland. All of a sudden I started looking at other stories of other. Community. Lincoln. Who did 300. Plus million something. Now they're having trouble with getting support for an override. For the operating side. So. And, you know, just huge numbers. But anyway. Yeah, my guess is sometime in the fall. School committee may begin to have a look at better sense on. What set of options and that in turn comes with. The buildings locations years. You know, rough cost estimates. So. I think. Brian to answer your question, because I do think it needs, I don't think it's necessarily if that's, if that's their timing. Right. Potentially in the fall. It may be the thing we're layering in. Cause it's really not necessarily the departmental impact input we need on those, on those big items. A little bit on this building. But what's the vision. And how does that slide? Oh, hi, Bill. I thought you were coming. On zoom. I didn't expect that in life. I like to. Spend his time in this room. Perfect. So that he can sweat off extra. Today's a, today's a warm day, not a cold day. Make sure you sit by a microphone. Anyway. Yeah. You can come up. We're going to finish up on this. I mean, those two major projects. As any long-term planning. The word. Next, the infrastructure. I'm sure water, once we get past this large project, water still will have lots of millions of dollars of pipes and things of that nature. But obviously, there's always streets to pay. But those two projects are going to have to work everything else in the next 15, 20-year horizon. And I thought we were going to have an opening in our capacity as the high school rolled off. But I wasn't anticipating $39 million worth of water pipes that had to be done. So that sort of eats up. Not all just pipes. I was in front of it. Right. I'm sorry. But it eats up a lot of that. What was going to be a period capacity is already gone. So it's a real challenge. Because I thought that 2031. Well, we have the capacity. We just it's the taxpayer capacity. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm talking about my wallet's capacity. You're slightly off the newsroom. Not the levy capacity. We have that. I'm just I'm talking about the desire and ability to pay and whether or not that influences. Because something like that, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars is the difference between like, I'd like to stay here. And, you know, maybe when my grandkids come around versus like last kid out of high school, I'm out of here. Right. That's a significant enough difference for people to make it. It's a different decision. So, okay. Interesting. Just from just looking forward to long-term planning. I don't recall that. I mean, they've been working on that project for at least three years. But prior to that, I don't. And largely it was written by PFAS, I think. But that project was never on anybody's radar screen that I know of. And so you could do all the good long-term planning you want. All of a sudden, regulation changes and poof, you know, $138 million. $138 million later, you know. Well, that took me down like five notches. Thanks, Rob.
We're still doing good work here. But then somebody could just blow a $38 million hole in your plan. Okay. Bill, thank you for joining us. Brian gave us an update. He had watched your meeting last night. So he kind of gave us a background update. But I think there's two things we wanted to, you know, talk about that we don't think has been covered in any of the meetings. And so questions that we had for you. And one was, do we have a sense or do we have an estimate of what exactly the $200,000 of funding on Holiday Road buys? Like, do we have a scope of work for it? Or is it sort of, we've got $200,000 and we'll get as far as we can? It's, I would say, something in between. You know, we've arrived, identified a series of tasks. And as you might expect, when you bring somebody on board, there's, you know, some initial data gathering and they learn things and that may lead to additional work. So for example, we would propose to do some conceptual site planning to test options for reuse alternatives that would look at siting of structures, provision of open space,
where a school might logically be sited if the school committee were to target the site as one for new elementary school and possibly other uses. So I would imagine that there would be a series of sketch alternatives that would be developed. We've talked about having a kind of advisory group or task force, to review these things as we go along. So those would, you know, be some general sketch alternatives. And then as certain ones were identified as being promising, then it might be doing additional work. We'd want to do a site survey. We do some preliminary site engineering to inform the availability and sufficiency of utilities to the site, as well as distribution on the property. Stormwater management. It's obviously an important consideration, as is wastewater management. We'd want to do geotechnical analysis to determine the possible presence of contaminants, to understand the nature of the soils, to understand the elevation of the groundwater that influence, or the presence of ledge, all of which would affect where in the site. Improvements to the property. It would also help inform decisions about wastewater treatment. Can you do a Title V system, or do you need to do a treatment plan depending on what's built there? We do a phase one environmental assessment, which is essentially a review of, pardon me, any information that's available about past uses of the land, and then depending on what that revealed, we'd need to go to a phase two to actually do soil borings, which we probably wouldn't want to do anyway, to establish things that can like the composition of the soil, its varying capacity, the groundwater elevation. We'd want to assess the possible presence of wetlands. It would understand the implications of the sites being in a zone one, capture zone, and zone two protection area, with respect to the bulblind pond well field. I do traffic analysis based on in a way, it's interesting. It's a little bit complicated. And then if you're in a zone, you're in a zone that's on the ground surface. You want to assess the possible presence of wetlands. We'd want to understand the implications of the sites being in a zone one, capture zone, and zone two protection areas with respect to the bulbing pond well field due to traffic analysis based on, you know, when and where and when the sewer comes into the site. or whatever uses are considered. There would obviously be legal fees associated with understanding some of the regulatory requirements, the preparation of an RFP ultimately. We'd want to assess the potential range of revenue expense to the town. So, you know, I've done some just preliminary outreach to a geotechnical firm with which I work.
Prior to my full-time volunteer service.
Prior to your favorite job is what I use. Exactly. Maybe not the best paying, but most gratifying. And also, Tom Holder has put me in touch with Tiger Bond, who have done a lot of civil engineering for the town. They're, you know, I've explained to everybody that I'm an ambassador without portfolio. I have no authority to do this, but just could they. And so, you know, I would expect a couple of hours in order to give us a sense of a general scope of work and budget. I expect we'll have that by the time of the town meeting. Okay. You know, and then there are, depending on what you come up with, there are various, you know, consultations you'd want to do with other boards and commissions, wastewater management perhaps, certainly planning board, you know, and I think we'd want to look at such alternatives, as single-family lots, extending the existing R40 zoning, which might generate, you know, 10 building lots, or perhaps a cluster zoning approach where you could have kind of zero-lot line development, townhouses, probably not something of the scale of Alta Oxbow, but something more in character with the neighborhood. Needed an appraisal to anticipate the market value. And, you know, having the benefit of all of that information, I think you can start to make some recommendations as to what improvements the town might consider in order to make the site attractive to a developer. Query, would you build an access road with sewer and work with utilities to extend the electric and tell data and gas to the site, or would you leave that to a developer? Okay. So, it really kind of started out as an allowance, but as you get into it, you can see that it could be very helpful to have the availability for those funds in order to sort of tone in and better define a scope. I guess I... Yeah, it's a pretty healthy laundry list of due diligence. It is. In establishing the 200,000, I told this committee last week that I thought where that number came from wasn't that there's 200,000 left in the reserve from the sale of real estate funds, and that's kind of the limit of the money that you wanted to spend. It actually worked the other way. You know, we talked about what a reasonable budget would be. Our one benchmark was quite some time ago, the town meeting approved $360,000 to study the then septage site that became the site of Volta Expo. So, when we had the discussion with the finance committee about this $200,000 proposal, I think Pam Roman asked, do you think that's enough? So, and then... Do you think it's enough? You know, I think you take it as far as it will go. If you find that, you know, there are unexpected impediments to developing the property, you don't spend the money. But that's the other question I'm going to ask. This is, again, a long list. Yeah. Do you anticipate that you would order that list in such a way, to the point you just made, that if after the first 15,000, 30,000, you hit a roadblock, you just wouldn't do everything? Yeah, no, I think that's right. Do you think you would schedule the work? No. Yeah. So, is the idea that you would approach, say, Ty and Bond or whoever, and say, we're thinking about developing this, we're thinking about developing this property, and you say, I've got $200,000, what can you give me? Could you give me for 200? Or are you trying to lay out the priorities? I mean, they'll have access to town meetings, so they'll know how much we have. Right, right. For danger. No, I think you tell them, conceptually, the kinds of information, where you want to be. You ask them for a scope of work and a fee proposal, an expense proposal. And so, I think there's, kind of, an urban planning or site planning or architectural component. I think there's an engineering component. I think there's a geotechnical component. And you do the phase one environmental assessment. You know, the phase one could be $2,500 or $3,000. And if it says, you know, this was only used as farmland or a woodlot, then, you know, you don't have to do the phase two, or at least at that point. So, but it's just... And I should say that, given that this has been co-sponsored with the school committee, we're obviously going to be consulting with our colleagues on the school committee and their scope. You know, to that end, I've been in touch with their consultant at HMFH, which is, you know, Cambridge-based architectural firm that specializes in schools and IRA. And they have provided, you know, they have provided me with the kind of scope that the MSBA would require in order to do what they call a feasibility study. And it's a lot of the same information. So I think that the information that is available would be useful to the school committee and its consultant should MSBA, you know, take this on as a project, but also to establish a recommended reuse that would be the subject of future time meeting action. So we don't currently have a proposal or an estimate from Dimebond or... Well, I expect to have that by the end of the week. I have something from Haley and Aldrich now. I've talked to the environmental consultant. I haven't gotten a price on the survey as yet. But again, I think you sort of get that you sort of get the phase one scope of services. You find out, try to get your arms around that, and then you proceed as appropriate. Brad, at the last minute, you mentioned the historical review. Yeah, I know that... Artifact review. Some sort of archeologic review, whether that's part of the review. I know that's going to be a question that historic commission is going to have, is there going to be an archeological assessment? Because, you know, there are a number of Native American sites in Wayland which aren't disclosed, and I don't know if this is one of them or not. There are vernal holes on the conservation side. Are those the kind of showstopper things or at least slow you down? Well, those are the things you want to understand. Would those be part of that laundry list? Yeah, I would say so. Again, I think you sort of proceed from the general to the specific. And if school committee says, you know, we're really not interested in Holiday Road as a site for a future elementary school, then that, you know, sort of tells you. So it's not going to be a steel-framed building. It's not going to have the deeper foundations that probably a stick-built townhouse or single-family house would have. It's a lighter load. You worry less about the soils and so forth. I think back when I was on the Nike site, I was on... Before the Slackman, and then morphed into the Nike site, we did it to... There were two different committees. One was an initial design and we went through feasibility studies similar to what you're describing here, which then ultimately ended up selecting a developer to develop and respond to the RFP. And then another committee oversaw sort of the development of both the housing and the athletic soccer field. So I think the process seems right. I guess one of the other questions I have with you, I assume some of this stuff doesn't go stale. Assuming you get a reputable surveyor and he does the job right, that survey should be good for a year from now or five years from now? Yeah, unless some regulations change or something like that. I'm just wondering... I'm just wondering if this is tied ultimately to going to MSBA and they have certain requirements, if that... You know, you said at the meeting, which I reported here, they're hopeful, possibly, of getting that application filed... April of next year, right? ...next spring. If that got delayed, would any of what got done with this work go stale so you'd potentially have to do it again or hard to say? You know, Brian, I'm not an expert in what the MSBA requires and how fresh the studies have to be. If you do soil borings that go down to, you know, groundwater, it would be hard to imagine that the groundwater level will change materially in a year or two. Soils are kind of what the soils are. But, again, I'd have to refer to people who've worked with the MSBA, as I have not. Yeah, at the Center on the Housing Trust, when we were working with... trying to get some grant money through the consortium operated through Newton, we had done a phase one. And eventually, I think we... I don't think we had to do a phase two, but there were some issues with the gas station across the street. But time had passed. And when we went to get our grant application in, they said, oh, that study is more than a year old. We've got to do another one. Now, granted, it was phase one, so it wasn't that expensive. But that would be the only question or concern I might have with the school aspect of this, which I think it has to be in there because it's under their control at the moment. I think it's a fair point. But having done it once, you might find it's cheaper to do it this way. It's more of an update by the profession. Yeah, actually, looking at the list of things, I think it might materially change over a few years. It might be like a traffic analysis. But those aren't... I can't imagine those are terribly pricey to redo. We were talking before you arrived about the access of that particular site and whether it had ever been discussed. Maybe I'll ask the question. You're on the school building advisory committee. When they talked about this site, did they talk about access issues? They really haven't. It's just... Right, it's... Their work has been really sort of identifying, as you probably know, first, what the kind of state of the art is of school design and current thinking of pedagogy and how that translates into open classrooms and the fact that special education was not accommodated when the school was built in the 60s. And then just the sort of physical ability of a site to accommodate a second school under construction while you maintain the original school, move into it and take the other one down, much as was done to the high school. I think they found that Claypitt Hill had that capacity, whereas Happy Hollow and Wilkert did not, due to the presence of wetlands. So, you know, I get this sense, and I don't know if it's right, that if you've got an established location in North Wayland, like Happy Hollow, or like Claypitt, where people are accustomed to going there, that the routes are established,
you can know that the access to and from the site is adequate. But I wouldn't second-guess the school for me. I do want to fill in the thread about the 360K that we have as an estimate from the Oxbow. So a couple of just clarifying questions. Did we use the full 360K? Was that the budget or were those the actuals? No. It just seems that the 200 is going to be late. I'm glad we have off-roads to say, hey, yeah, it's so far along. But let's say we don't have any, right? We just keep hitting all the things like, yep, this makes sense, makes sense, and then we hit our 200K. Then what? You can only spend what you've got, obviously. Having worked in real estate in the private sector, I am personally highly attuned to the need to conserve capital. And so I just think it would be irresponsible to keep spending. If, you know, you hit a roadblock. If you didn't hit a roadblock, you take it to as far as you reasonably can and you make a judgment at that point, you know, is this going to be sufficient to inform recommendation of the town meeting and perhaps the issuance of a request for development proposals for a specified use? And see who comes up or comes to response. Kind of final point. I guess that is, you know, what happens if you get to a point where, you know, everything looks really good. You hit 200,000, but you need another 50 or 100,000 to do the further analysis. And everything looks great, but we need an extra 100 to kind of put a lid on it to make sure it's a good problem. The good news, I suppose, is that town has owned this for 70 years? Since, what, 56? Since 1956, yeah. It's not going anywhere, right? Yeah. The folks seem to be in a real rush. And the select board seem interested, obviously, in new growth. But worst case, I mean, I suppose the select board could call a special town meeting for asking for a bit more money. Well, I think this goes back to some of our earlier conversations on this committee was, you know, is this a phase one that's going to get us so far? But is there going to be a phase two, a phase three? Trying to think about the entirety of comprehensive. That's why you're here. That's what we think our role is. Yeah. I think, you know, the more information you give to a prospective developer, the less risk they have and the more aggressive, frankly, they can be as far as, and accurate they can be as far as pricing, financing, and coming up with compensations at the time. So arguably one could say, here's this 13.7 acre site. It's undeveloped. Do your due diligence and we'll receive proposals. But I think the town, you know, first the decision has been made to do that. Obviously it's still, as Brian points out, the care control and custody of the school committee where it was residing for 70 years. And so, you know, I think that would be a nice problem to have. I think for Bill's benefit, we concluded last, was that December when Carol was with us? Yeah. That at the time it was a select board article. We were really focused on it for potential housing. The RFP developer builds it, town doesn't own it. I think we all generally agree that that didn't seem like something that would fall within our purview because it wasn't ultimately going to be a town asset. Once the schools kind of got plugged in there, that becomes more of the issue you're talking about. Although the article language also references active and passive recreation. So I think what Liz is alluding to, we grappled with, for example, there was a capital request from the DPW for some additional pair work to the cap on the old south landfill. And we said, you know, do we really feel comfortable putting that in the capital plan until we know, understanding that there was an advisory group working on that? How does that, you know, will that actually be a cost that, that needs to be spent? And I think, I think that's kind of what you're saying here, but it's an example. Or active or passive recreation. It would be the three town. Capital assets. My immediate concern is we have a. A touch point that says 360 K it's bit dated. So you have escalation that you would tack onto that. And maybe those aren't, are not actuals. Maybe it was more, maybe it was less, but it sounds like the 200 K is going to be light. So. Again, I understand we can do up to a point. Hopefully you can. Lean some useful information. Maybe it's enough to make a decision. Maybe it's not. But it's just, you know, if, if we should be asking for the 360. What I don't want to do is have partial information that then becomes. Useless. You might have expiration dates. I'll allow you to go another five years, but it's just. If we can have a, you know, a conversation about, do we need more? Should we be asking for more than let's maybe. I don't think they can ask. Yeah. It's about what we can do. Okay. We'll just make a decision. And then we can. I think it's, I think it's a good idea to, you know, I think the town meeting, I think the town meeting is going to be 10% more. Right. At town meeting. So they could in a motion say, oh, we've gotten all this budget information collected. And we think it's two 20. Yeah. I think at this point. Right. The article is what it is. And the town will vote the merits. Right. The question is. For our purposes. Right. Are we comfortable. Are we one? I think we've talked before, right. Do we think that because this extended beyond sort of just. You know, Is the, is the property saleable, right? To, it could, could the town build something there potentially, which is, I know way off a lot of what ifs, right? But does that make it the planning for a potential capital project? And we looked at other projects where this type of work was included in the capital and the overall, and the feasibility was included in the capital project cost. And ultimately if we were, if it was a school, right. And you were doing it and you were doing it all at once, you would include it in your submission for reimbursement. Language of the capital policy that you read or meeting that you include feasibility studies. Right. Capital. So we landed, but once we went beyond, you know, looking at what, how the property could be marketed to a project that potentially the town is spending money on to build something there, potentially, there may not happen that leaned us towards, you know, the capital project or the capital project or the capital project or the capital project or the capital project or the capital project or the capital project. The question is, can we, do we have enough information that we would vote on it and it would be built an addendum, right? We'd throw another page on, on the report that we already have done. Right. Just, and that's just fulfilling our responsibility in the capital. Bylaw. No, I guess I would analogize it to, you know, if you're a. For profit or nonprofit developer, you have an idea of a project. You want to do your due diligence and you want to do sort of conceptual planning. You want to kind of get your arms around it and understand the broad parameters of a finance ability or, you know, I suppose feasibility is one way to put it, but I, I think of it more as planning than is, you know, the established precedent to doing a town sponsored project. You know, it's conceivable that you might say, Hey, if the town building, if the town is not going to be able to do it, then we're going to have to do it with the property. And then if it's not going to be able to do it, then we're going to have to do it with the property. And then if it's not going to be able to do it with the assets, then we're going to have to do it with the assets. And then in the end, if the town builds the access road and provides the utilities. For a cost of X and we're able to sell the property for three X for four X. Back to this group and say. Don't you love it? I think I can say it a little differently because. I know. I've heard the chair of the EDC. Comment on this, but I also served with the developer in town. Committees. And you know, property and get permission to hurt the property, to do site plans, and really to figure out whether he can do what he wants to do, and if not, he has an out in this contract, right? I think doing most of or all of this work reduces the risk to a developer, so that if you were to simply put that property out as it is now, RFP, you would get people bidding on it, right? But unless you gave them abilities to do their own testing, to evaluate the risk, they're not going to buy it, not knowing if it will perk, for example. So unless you're prepared to give them the right to go on your property and perk the property, they're going to price it accordingly, if they're even willing to bid on it, to take that risk. Spending some money up front is not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing. It lowers that risk to a potential future developer. And I think what Bill was just saying, that could lead to, therefore, higher financial offers when the time comes, because you've eliminated a lot of the risks that they might otherwise have to shoulder. Now, that's if it's going to be sold to an outside entity to develop it. It's also sounding like in order to get in the MSBA process, you have to do some of this work as the price of entry. Is that a fair statement? Yeah. Once you submit this statement of interest, there's some back and forth. And then if they decide to take you on, then they will scope you for what they call a feasibility study. So if it was just focused on schools, basically you just said this work wouldn't necessarily have to happen in advance of getting an indication from the MSBA that they're willing to scope you. Yeah. Right. Though the MSBA might say, or the town might say, do we know that this site has no environmental issues? In your application, you could effectively... Yeah. So...
Yeah. So we're really talking about it. It gets a little confusing because you've got one scenario where it's not going to be a town asset, whereas others there are. Or it could be a combination. You could have a cluster development where a portion of the site is, is really private, private, and then the balance of the site could be subject to the conservationist and stuff. Well, I remember it. I thought I heard you say last night, I thought I heard you say one other meeting. I think you were asked the question, would you confine, would SEPRA confine itself to the current zoning, i.e. 40,000 square foot lots, or the existing cluster by-law? And you appropriately declined to confine the options until you do the you do this work. I thought I heard you say that if it's more than current zoning allows, absent doing a 40B, but if it was done through some sort of zoning change, overlay, whatever, I thought I heard you say that would require a two-thirds vote. And I just wanted to make sure you remember that. Well, not for multifamily, right? It's 50%. But I thought I heard you say two-thirds last night in a different meeting on the Route 20. I thought I heard you maybe said, I could be wrong, on the zoning relief.
You're right with respect to multifamily zoning. I understand it would be 50 plus one, but in order to transfer care and custody from the school committee to the select board or some other entity, it's two-thirds. It's the SJC. So ultimately, a two-thirds vote would be required. It's on me. Should this go forward? Other than the budget, do we have a second item? Are we getting more detail on the budget? The second was on the source of the funding, which I think we talked about already. It's the real estate. Did the article specifically call out the real estate? It's the broad language. We can specify that in the presentation. Are you anticipating it will be the real estate reserve? Yes. At least that won't. It will increase taxes.
It's your point of, is it enough? We had a public forum last night, lots of people in the neighborhood showing up and someone suggested we could do a feasibility study for 10, 000. That was a good meeting. Again, I was just... I don't know how much these costs, but if we again just going back to the . He just seems like a glaring. This is what it cost us before. almost, it'll get you half. There's a bit more environmental. I know it's right next to the facility. Bigger site, different. And again, maybe we were okay with that. Good enough doesn't have to be 100%. But is it enough that, to your point, is enough risk mitigation that, you know, a potential developer is going to bite? I don't know. I think the other point that I know I've heard Kelly make over and over again at FinCon and here is we really don't like when you go to town meeting and ask for some money. I happen to have had to ask town meeting at least three times for more money for the public safety building. And it's not fun. Trust me. But to the extent that this committee wants to know that something is properly budgeted for before we say we think this is, you know, we're okay with this, then I think... That also goes to your point is if it's short, you know, how much short. And again, it sounds like you'll think you'll have a general sense before town meeting whether you're going to have a budget you can work with or not. And I guess the question is just hypothetically, if your sum of all your estimates comes in at 250 or 300, what would you anticipate saying or doing at town meeting? Saying, we'll take the 200. Better now we're back for the other 100? Or would you say, we're going to pull back and come back for 300 later? Personally, I would opt for the former. You know, costs don't go down, as you well know. And there was some discussion of putting up this whole discussion off a year. But if folks are acutely aware, as are we all, of the town's budget situation, and to the extent that we can... I think we can probably let you go. But I think for me personally, I understand now, I would just, as a resident, would like to see the scope gated right into segments of what objective we're trying to achieve. If there's like 10 or five of those things make up the, this is worth pursuing or not, I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say no. Go that far and stop. Right? There's five more that tell me if I should go. Like, there should be a gate so that we're not like... Two phases, two and a half phases in, and the half of the third phase that we did gets wasted, right? And like a lot of other studies here, right? We spent money. It doesn't go anywhere. We don't do anything with it. I'm fine with piecing it if it's a objective-based upfront. This is how I intended to piece it, versus I went until I reached it. I went until I reached it. I went until I reached it. ran out of money which you won't know until you get estimates but that's that's my opinion from how we plan and spend money in town no it's very fair question you know developers
always have to advance risk capital right as they propose a project and think about it and so they spend their money on due diligence more detailed than this you know particularly in the permitting process for them to do more detailed design work again i think i think what we want to do is lay out a series of options test some of those options see what is responsive to the needs and desires of the town have that informed by some of the engineering information that tells you you know can you indeed do this are the utilities available is the environmental not going to be an issue can you you cut down all those trees under the town's uh new tree regulations well maybe we ought to work on a non-star starter right there uh i'm not being i know you're not maybe we'll do a dover amendment yeah i'm gonna agree for you from answering that question because i don't think it can be answered in in a way that doesn't cause more issues um it doesn't cost money you go down and talk to the conservation commission i know what the answer is if i go down and talk to conservation um all right have we gotten all of our information i think so yeah so you love it right you love more detail yeah yeah yeah dollars thank you for your time oh thank you thank you for coming out happy to do it thank you for uh you need a do you need an address for the minutes from bill woodridge you know it good luck in the election bill thank you thanks for a good piece you're running out of posts i haven't looked at them there are two vacancies and two candidates okay you never know maybe i'll get lucky
yeah thank you thank you okay all right we want to go back to our age old they got a position or do we need to take a position and let's let's discuss that first because i go back and forth i know i know what the bylaw says but i'm still a little stuck on this like it's just like an idea like it hasn't gotten to uh yes we want to build the school school building there can we build a school building there it's sort of like we don't know what we want to do we need to know i'm still i'm still saying whether it is a capital project yeah yeah i mean the way bill was phrasing it and i think that's more what he prefers would be to have a developer take it off our hands if that's the case then it's really not in our purview no you think that project are you contrasting it with school committee has taken a vote for building a school there but we need to do a bunch of you need to make sure we can we're moving on this page you're saying you're highly confident that that's what's in there yeah i'm trying to do that as a capital project because in the definition i agree but the problem with this one is it's like preliminary really yes it's the study before the study we really don't know and that's what i was trying to tease out of like what's the objective here right and we don't really have a clear it's sort of like foil the ocean which is not a bad thing because you want to you want to know what you can do with it but i'm having a hard time with i think if if left to their own devices we wouldn't be talking about this now because the real intention is to tee it up for sale and development right yeah that's i get back at school maybe currently controls right but um you know i guess i could get comfortable not feeling we need to stake a position because it is such a preliminary set of work although i would say a lot of this work would have to be done even if the school committee had already staked out we're putting a school there or we still have to do all this work right and so we're spending precious precious resources on something that is not operating and that could lead as we talked about in other scenarios could lead to a town capital ask itself so i'm not uncomfortable taking a position yeah i'm in between and i think my tips kind of a precedent it's the press it's the precedent question right i'm comfortable doing it either way but it's the precedent question of okay once we do it i think we have to be consistent with that going forward well there's yes there's that precedent question but there's also the other one of it's it's still very ill-defined i mean you're impressing him in terms of you know the cost what's it actually going to cost and then bill doesn't know honestly he says i don't know and so there's one i don't know if it's a capital asset could be could maybe not um and there's no definition really of how that money is going to be spent and if it's sufficient so i i so that's the thing i know what my answer is if we're voting on it that i don't have i don't have ambiguity well you just yeah what you just said could easily be a justification of voting not to recommend it because you don't have that detail at a point where you you know you're trying to say the town meeting you have enough information when if we don't well there's whatever we did with the fields we didn't have sufficient information um but isn't it is there a difference between not recommending and not taking a position there's it's two questions two separate questions right first is are we taking a position the answer is no then it doesn't matter what you what you think on the other if the answer is yes then we have to say take the vote on our position i i'm what i'm i go back to again is it's if it's not capital it's not operating either right it's not recurring operations of the town so that's in the ethos right we i mean there are others i'm sure there's other things that fall into that category but um it it has the potential that's spent to lead into a larger project that's where i think i'm coming out is that a the work even if it was clear what was going there was a town asset the work that he described would have to be done before you could proceed um the fact that doing this work would also allow you to assess whether all those different scenarios and my gut is all those scenarios will be possible um i mean unless there's some real surprise underneath that this lighthouse has been built there there's no real environmental activities let's think about it this way if uh in the tree cutting off bill came in the school committee came in and said we we absolutely want to use this for a school absolutely want to use it for school so it's going to be a capital asset whatever whatever's going to be put there but we want to spend two hundred thousand dollars and we said well what are you going to spend two thousand two hundred thousand on well we'll go as far as we can with the money i mean each of us are going to happen and we should we recommend it or not right well i think that's the recommendation question so can we get i want to get a i want to get consensus on do you think we have to give an opinion on it and i am i am back to yes i do think we have to give an opinion i think until we definitively know it's not going to be used for potentially capital assets we have to treat it as capital okay brad i'm leaning towards not taking a position
brian i'm waiting for taking a position i get a motion on taking a position i you can say i move so you can just say so moved the committee take a position on it and so then do we need any more discussion or can we vote all right second second second yeah brad sorry wait i mean i can't second it yeah i made the motion he said so the sessions all right all in favor right hi hi no yeah three one okay so now as a in the minutes i'm going to just toss in a sentence for historical perspective that we discussed briefly that this could be a precedent setting vote of this committee precedents are meant to be changed by making committees right have a similar discussion but at least the first one that we've been presented with this is i'll put a little bit more meat around the bones to the discussion but anyway the recommendation part of it this is the agenda yeah report yeah
next vote is whether or not we would recommend its inclusion in the capital plan which it would be in the 2027 capital plan because it's going into this town meeting i'm going to go first just to because it dovetails with another issue that was on our agenda for later um if i were voting strictly as a one of you as a non-designee member i'm a little bit torn i totally understand and get it out you know but once i finally took the decision to bring it into the budget that was probably the most important because i would also have hit by doing this work you know in advance of offering it to a developer assuming that's where it ended up de-risks the property somewhat that could therefore lead to more bids better dollar proposals etc so and i work in real estate as did bill for a long time that that kind of makes sense to me it's going to be used for school just the to happen this year until we kind of have a better sense of where that whole process is going and whether MSBA is going to let us in. And so why spend money when you don't have to spend it right now? And I'm not sure the schools were intending to spend money, quite honestly. They were kind of late to this party. So I'm kind of torn, just putting aside I'm the school designee. I could see myself voting either way, and there's a pretty good chance I might vote no if I was not the school designee. But as I'll talk about later, I feel like as a school designee, and the schools are a co-sponsor of the article, it would be sort of unfair of me, and I did this on the ball field, and that's what I'll talk about later. I think it'd be unfair of me as their designee to vote against MSBA. So I would likely vote to recommend it. And so you have my personal view on one hand, and you have where I'm likely going to vote, which would be to support it as the school designee on this committee. You can take that for what you want to take it, but I feel I will have discharged my duty as a school designee member, but maybe not get my vote properly cast. Anyway. I can go next. So I do not recommend it at this time. I just think there's insufficient information. As I said to Bill, my concern is that we have this, you know, 360K number. Maybe again, it's actual, maybe it's budget, but it's significantly less than the 200K. It's quite a few years old, too. That's what I mean. You have escalation that's going to grow that to something closer to probably half a million, depending on how many years it's passed. If it gets better clarity, you know, it sounds like we're getting a couple quotes in, then, you know, I don't know if there'll be sufficient time to review that revised estimate. But my concern is it's going to come in, and yes, we're going to blow right past the 200K. And where does that leave us? I don't think we have a good answer for that question. So at this time, I do not recommend moving forward with approving.
So you guys are going to think my position is totally strange, but if I have to take a position on it, you know, if I have to take a position on it. You don't have to. You've got to stand. No, no, I mean, but I think that it's that parcel land needs to be addressed one way or another. And the first step on that is going to be expending some money to figure out what to do with it. And I agree with you, Liz, I'm not sure I think 200,000 is light on it, but that's the proposal that's on the table. So I would recommend it.
And I'm going to say almost the exact same things, but land in a different. Place so I I support what the select board is doing and I actually support the school committee as well, looking at what to do right, what our future plan is and where they're going to put things. I support the select board trying to come up with the ways that we are going to fund budgets, both capital and operating in the future.
So I'm supportive of the idea of this. My concern remains the same. And it's similar, as Brian said, I've brought up in the past, I think we are going into a project with a long list of things we'd like to get out of it without a defined, clear objective and gates around what we're willing to spend and for what end, right? So this is the objective I want to achieve. I'm willing to spend $50,000 to achieve that objective, right? And I think it's feasible to do that, right? So I'm afraid we're going to spend. Good money and the only way we're going to get to a usable product is to spend additional money. And just like I've said on lots of other projects, this building included, I don't think it's fair to residents to go to a town meeting and ask them for money without a full picture of what it's going to cost them and what it's going to get them. And I, I don't think that we have that. We maybe have an idea of what we'd like to get. But we don't. We don't know if it's possible at the dollar amount we're putting forward and we don't know as of today how much more it might take. And so I'm I'm uncomfortable with doing that. I feel like we've done that many, many times. So I would vote for the benefit of those of you that volunteered but never heard Robert's rules of order. If someone makes a motion to recommend its second, we vote and that vote comes out to two as we don't have a fifth number here. But we would vote that is the equivalent of a no vote that that that motion fails. The second is that the fifth and last, so that would mean this committee does not recommend that so just saying that way, anybody votes, but that's that's how it works. So anyway, so we can take the official vote. Now if we make a motion. So, Brian, to clarify, if someone were to make a motion. Not for us. Most likely to stay at the floor. And it becomes a motion. So it's really. Oh, okay. to approve. I think generally the way people always do it is you've made an affirmative and it can happen. Let's say it happened to be a one to three, one in favor of three, you're still generally making an affirmative to recommend. So can I get a motion to recommend and then we'll vote on that motion? That we recommend the expenditure of the 200,000. It needs a second. That we move. We make it, we make the motion just be made in the affirmative. I thought you said that we recommend the 200. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm submitting a motion. I will second. And then he'll second it. Yeah. Brian will second. All right. And so I'm gonna do this one by one. So I'm gonna vote no. Okay. Okay. I vote no as well. Brian. Yes. Yes. Two to two. That's what I'm saying. I mean, I got the point about making a decision. I actually came up in a meeting at work or a meeting at work because somebody made a motion and assumed that because the person made the motion that their vote was the same as the motion, which is like a shortcut. I'm like, yeah, but you can make a motion and then vote against the motion. That's not implied that because you made a motion, you're gonna vote for it. So like we're short cutting that rule. So your view is that you, I don't wanna put it on you. I'm happy to do it or someone else can do it. You created one paragraph addenda. Yes. The report. I don't know if somebody else can do that because I am trying to get out of town. Either of you two want to. I don't think it's. When do we need to buy? The shorter the better. Just before town meeting, I think. Should it indicate though that the vote was two, two and therefore it was not recommended or. I'll see you on reference. Or that it was just not recommended. I mean, I insist you cite the vote and just say based on this vote, the CPC does not recommend it. Okay. You don't need to say what was the name of that about. Robert's rules. Or you can wait until Brian writes the minutes and then probably based on that. You could do that too. Actually the fact that it's two, two and not recommended is actually not a bad resolution.
I like that it actually indicates the difficulty. Given my prior comments before we started, it's probably what ended up. Elsewhere. If I didn't feel the way I did on my golf, but anyway, there's what it is. Conscious is clear. You'll sleep well tonight. Unless I'm not. That's just any of this or read anything. But I, you know, Brian you're always very good at this explaining why, why you're doing what you're doing. It's it's one of the biggest struggles I had on the FinCom and I have it here too. It was like, I support a lot of projects that just aren't ready. Right. Yeah. That's one of the biggest struggles I had on the FinCom and I have it here too. It's like, I support a lot of projects that just aren't ready. for prime time right i just want them to be ready just because you support something doesn't mean that it's it's ready to go right so i'll get the minutes out and you can pick and choose from the language and i think the format of the addendum i think for this addendum you you kind of february addendum you basically took the entire first report and then added to it this one just be a simple add-on rather than recreating the whole report again and um yeah i think we could probably just post it as a as a addendum one page addendum beginning say for the initial report and an addendum there to date it's some of those see yeah yeah i think it'd be nice if we could just keep it to one page and not bury it at the back complete at the back then once we have that we could probably really look at that at the next meeting Yeah. And then put it up on the website. I was going to say worst case, right. We've taken a vote. If at town meeting we're asked, we can say what we voted. Okay. All right. There's one thing and we're running behind here. So I want to go back to wanted to talk about, but I might table it because I don't know that there's anything we're going to do about it. The fact that we filed an appeal. So on, if this is on review of the articles for town meeting, we filed an appeal on the zero interest debt for the MWRA project, because we were denied initially, we were denied again. So they're going to have to look at what the financing options are, but the bottom line is it's going to be more expensive because there's going to be interest involved so they can spread it. It was originally what a 0% interest 20 year loan. The likely, I would guess, spread it longer. I mean, there was a 0% interest. There was a 75 basis point annual fee. Yeah. So it had one point. Yeah. Effectively 1% ish of, of costs, but municipal rates, I'm not sure where they are right now, but. You're going to have to four. Not one. So there's inevitably going to be higher costs associated with that project. Which will be extended out many years. The, the other. The only reason I wanted to spend two minutes on it is that, because we didn't take a position on it in our report. As we supported our report, we supported that project involved specifically on that project. But when we were seeking state grant money, loan money, we had to include an additional 10% contingency. So the 38.6 had been 35 million, something, which included a, a contingency of 20, 30%, but to go into this program, you have to tap another 10% contingent. So now that we're not seeking that money, I asked the question and I think that I think the article write-up references it, but not clearly. And I made that point to Carl Barnes, the vice chair of the FinCom that there's really an extra contingency of 10% built in right now. It just says, in the write-up that there's a 10% contingency built in, which is not really accurate, but instead of making a motion asking for 38.6 million, see the way they could ask for 35 ish just because they wouldn't have otherwise asked for that, except for that. My only other concern, and I know they studied this saying every which way from Sunday, if you now tack on that much for interest costs,
I just, my gut still tells me for design. Well, my gut still tells me that they're there. They're either, it should be sufficient. They'd say there isn't, but there should be sufficient room at Baldwin pond bill. The second permanent, they don't want to use permanent key fast treatment center up to this point, they said there wasn't sufficient room to do that. But of course the town can take land if it needs to, and there's golf course right there. So, yeah, you could, you know, but the town also appropriate money. Yeah. You could buy a house that was out in front of Baldwin on four or five years ago. So my gut is there's gotta be room there to build, and it could conceivably be cheaper rather than spending 20 something million to tie into the MWRA. And this built two new, maybe there's some economies of buying equipment and things, and it could be less than 35 to 38 million. But that's just my personal view. I don't know that would get any traction. And you still have the risk that I suppose if other regulations change in the future, they're really looking at, you know, it's extremely costly for 15% of the water that we're going to be drawing unless there's an emergency you're spending, you know, 60% of the money is going for the MWRA connection, which is really fully a backup, but largely a backup point. Yeah. For insurance. But at the end of the day, you know, I don't, I'm not proposing we look at it. At this point, I don't think we can, I don't think there's really anything for this committee to do. Right. I think certainly you can give your opinion right at town meeting as a resident. I don't know that I think we should, we put a recommendation forward based on the information we had at the time. I suppose if people felt strongly that their recommendation, would have been different with this knowledge, we could revote it and do an addendum, but I'm somewhat reluctant to do that because there's so, there's so much work and data that's been spent and such a long process and to coming to this conclusion, like as opposed to other things, where like I don't feel like it's been studied, like this has been right hashed and rehashed and I don't feel comfortable doing that personally. Um, I don't know if anybody else feels differently. I just want to make sure we had three minutes discussion on it, given that that was a substantive change to what had been presented. I will say it, this happening was one of my concerns in having too much in the capital budget for this, for this year and coming years, I was concerned that we weren't leaving enough room for that contingency, both from a financing perspective, but also, the things we don't know about yet, right? If we're pushing to the top of the limit of what we can do from a capital standpoint, you've got no room for anything else. So that unfortunately came true because it's hoping it wouldn't be shaped that. Okay. All right. Uh, so we have one more topic before we get to minutes and topics not reasonably anticipated, which is succession planning. We do that. I assume that the CIP form will be put on the next agenda. Yeah. I'm sorry. We went way over on put it on the next one, but I sent it to everybody. I didn't see it because I just, I just did it. So please take a look and bring your feedback to our next meeting for Brad. Um, the other question I had is I, uh, I did some, I was assigned the one to the matrix ranking system and I kind of wanted to take it in bytes. So I, I found four or five different communities, a couple of which actually use the same system. One is far less convoluted than the other one. Um, and so I was wondering if it would make sense for me to send that the other towns information, either to everybody or to you and you can send it to everybody. I know Brad, you asked the question to me of like, you had looked at a couple of different ones because ultimately I have a question of our ranking versus I, I think there's two rankings that need to happen. One is I would like each of the departments to rank their projects in order, which is just a, when you submit your CIPs, put them in order, right. Separate from our ranking, which is a, how do we, how do we make all of this work right across the departments? And I think the reason that's important is I would like to consider without having to have everybody in here, you know, if we've got to move stuff around, we have our opinion, but what's, what's the, what's the department head's opinion of the order of their own items. So I think that's a simple enough, you know, just put them in, in order of spend. That'll be part of the form process. Yeah. But I think your ranking, I think the ranking of like Millis is ranking versus that. I think that's really what we wanted Brian to do, because that's what we're going to take the information from the forms and then, and then we're all miracle. But so I'll just strictly, rather than creating, something and saying, here's what I think we could all look at kind of the more convoluted approach versus that more simplistic. And then if I get a sense of direction, then I can be specific, something ultimately creating a workbook or something that people can type in numbers and it calculates everything. Yeah. One thing I would ask Brian is just make sure when you look at what, what Brad did from a form, like whatever that ranking system is, are we getting the information? I am. I know simple, versus complex, but are we getting the information needed to give that ranking versus, you know, Hey, I just did what I thought. And I have great, I mean, have we collected the data needed to do that? No, you'll see it. It goes, it's a five year, it's not a 10 year form. So it goes up five years. Well, and I think I recognize that, but let's go back to the earlier point made of, you know, I thought, see, I can see what's going to be doing long-term planning strategy. How, when do we start to incorporate that? And especially going back to, okay, if we've got six months or so to send out their forms to the apartments for them to fill out their budgets, send it back, have conversations, make meaningful decisions. You know, if we're going to be tacking on, Hey, by the way, in addition to the five year detailed planning, you need to do, tell us what your, your 10 year plan is. And again, I think this makes for a more comprehensive, you know, we have to do a school. We know we have to do town building. What else do we have to do that? We're not yet. So again, you can kind of see the full picture. I think we need to start poking them to, I agree what I'd like to see us do though, rather than like, we're going to give them the form for the five years. I don't want them to fill out beyond five years. What I'd like is, and it can either be when they submit or when they come to see us, right? Okay. You've given us five years of projects is near six through 10 more of the same, right? I need roads. I need trucks. I need water pipes. Right. And it's going to be roughly, in that same, because I'd like to get to a place where we're kind of trending. Like we understand the trend of the given departments. Cause I do think there is one,
but asking the question of outside of sort of this normal flow of things, what are the things, what are the big things, right? That we're not anticipating this building, a major water, like it's, it's the big projects because otherwise it's going to be pretty,
it's, it's going to be somewhat consistent. It's really the big items. Like Brian said earlier schools in this building dwarf, everything else in comparison. So I think if we ask that question and I think a lot of it's going to focus on Michael fair because that's where those, those really big costs usually come from when you don't have plastic in your water. But I think we have to ask it as a narrative question when we may. So maybe when we create the form, we send the form out when we ask, you know, an overarching, like, can you give us a sense of any large projects that are out of the ordinary? Like you look across the next five years, is there anything sitting on the horizon of your six, seven, eight, that, you know, is, is something you want to let us know about? That's my opinion. I don't know if there's a better way. It's kind of falling off the radar. I think it was like $12 million worth of decarbonization initiatives that, you know, you know, maybe there's grants available, but that's nowhere on the radar screen. You know, a number of the athletic field needs are outside the fifth year of our plan at the moment. And they have the recreation has a 10 or 15 year plan. So they have the information. So I think that would be a reasonable approach. At least start collecting the biggest items because the other stuff is generally all sequence. The only other thing on the rank ass say, one of the things I found, and I think it just would help short circuit is a couple of them still do a sort of let's identify the high ranked items. And they don't need to be numerically ranked. And so if you just say like we did, health safety is automatically high or high ranking. There's no need to go through a whole numerical exercise. Those are going to get done. It's really that next tranche of, maybe projects that now you have to distinguish. And that's where the numerical exercise, that's what the number of communities do. And it just cuts down the number of goes in. Yeah. This automatically goes in, which is essentially what we did. And then we run out of money. Right. Although I wouldn't, I would like to put a little more scrutiny right around timing of replacement, right? Like, so just in a month, like, okay, yep. That's the health safety item, but we're, we're replacing it every four years. Is that typical or is fine? Like I would like to have a little scrutiny around what's, what's the average, you know, I'm curious with, I'll give an example, discussion about moving towards like an electric car for police cars. Okay. Does that mean if the end, what I had always heard is the reason we replaced them every three years is because they're running all the time, right? If it's an electric car, is it still running all the time? My car, it shuts off when I stopped. So does, is, does it still a three-year replacement cycle or is it a longer replacement cycle? Those sorts of things of understanding the, the yes, I want to do health safety with high priority, but that doesn't mean I want to do it shorter timeframe than, than is warranted by the usable life. Right. So I'll send that to those around before the next meeting. Okay. Time on the agenda. If the next meeting, you're the one after that, we can talk about that. Okay. So the succession item, Brian, you want to see, I saw the one that asked, but then I, so I figured it makes sense to put both of the two designees on there. One, just because I believe our first meeting Kelly said to be serving two is one year appointment. So they staggered initial appointments to get into a three-year rotation. And I believe you reported it at least that time. Uh, you were only intending this for one year. Uh, so I thought since I'd be talking about my situation, it was only fair to, uh, see if you had given any further thought to that, that for the benefit of the others. Um, uh, but also more importantly, uh, I remember, I think asking you somewhere along the way as to whether you felt, uh, that you somehow needed to represent the finance committee's point of view. And I think my recollection is you said, well not really, because really the finance committee shouldn't really need to have a point of view on this committee. They're, they're the ultimate reviewer. Uh, but also you may just not have you being a designee that way. Uh, so you can speak for yourself, but for me, um, there are a couple other committees in town and I'll just use the CPA committee as an example where, uh, recreation has a designee member by according to bio. And I can't recall a time where subject of an athletic field funding came up
on the CPA where the recreation member voted against it. They're there doing the bidding of the recreation commission. That's been my view. Um, and in my case, uh, I, when I offered my services to the school committee, they hadn't been able to find someone to fill their seat. Um, I told them I'd be happy to serve for a year while they continue to look for somebody that they were comfortable with. And, uh, at the end of the day, they said, no, we're happy to appoint you for two, the two years, which is my term. Um, but I didn't go in for an interview. They didn't ask me to come in for an interview, the chair and a couple of members knew me from other interactions. And, um, they disappointed me, uh, had they interviewed me, I would have, um, either expected them to ask me where I would have prompted them to ask me, um, what happens if I'm confronted with a project, uh, that, um, as I said tonight, I don't happen to think is something I would approve if I was not a designee member. Uh, but yet I represent the school committee and that's a school project. And then what I would have told them had that come up in an interview is I don't see anything in the five-year capital plan. That was who it was in the FinCon report year before that, uh, I feel particularly uncomfortable supporting for the two-year term that I agreed to serve. Okay. So I show up, so we didn't have that interview. They didn't ask me that question. I didn't prompt them. I show up, lo and behold, first thing that comes forward in the first couple of months, uh, we want to bring this ball field forward into the fiscal 20 step. And, um, well, I had no, I had no issue with it when I was on the FinCon being in a five-year plan. And I think as I articulated, when we discussed it, I had no issue with it being in our five-year plan, but felt it belonged where it was sitting fiscal 29. And so, uh, I felt uncomfortable, um, as, as I felt, I should be representing the school committee, um, advocating for that project. And I didn't advocate for that project. I didn't necessarily speak against it so much. We were basically just asking a lot of questions. Like we don't have enough information. And that was giving me a little bit of an out because how can I vote for something if I don't have the information? Right. Uh, but, uh, at the end of the day, we did finally get the information before we issued our report. And, uh, I believe I was the one that said change anybody's mind. And it didn't. And, um, so I brought that and I copied you on my email. So some full disclosure to the chair, and then ultimately to the full school committee that I felt a little conflicted and uncomfortable that I effectively maybe hadn't been appropriately representing them on this committee and that they should feel totally free to say, thank you for helping us out. You know, we're going to find somebody else. Uh, they eventually got around to talking about that. I'll be at briefly a couple of meetings ago. And, um,
you know, I think there's more discussion. There's more discussion to be had and hopefully including me and the chair and I chair spoke me. And I agree that it probably made more sense to do that after town meeting, because they're going to be two new school committee members elected. Two of them aren't going to, uh, aren't standing for reelection. And, um, you know, uh, hopefully I'll meet with them and tell them what my discomfort is. And, uh, uh, basically it suggests an offer to them again, that, uh, I'm perfectly happy to step aside and let them, you know, identify somebody that they feel more comfortable with having, because they were reading between the lines. They were caught so much surprised that they thought that field was in, they knew it was in the town manager recommended budget. I had updated them that the FinCom was expecting reservations. I followed back up after FinCom voted not to include it and that the town manager then pulled it out. But even with all that background, um, I, I could sense at least a couple of the members were, uh, they didn't necessarily call me out on it, but I could sense that, um, they, they were hopeful that it went the other way. And, uh, if I, if I truly have been advocating for them, I might've been able to work harder to get the information sooner and might've been able to be able, but anyway, at least I would possibly cast my vote in favor, um, which I didn't do. Right. Um, so, uh, sitting here today, I'm leaning towards stepping down, uh, the end of my first year. And, uh, I want to, I want to reserve that until I'm able to get input from the school committee themselves. I suppose if they say, you know, well, we don't see anything else. Like we just saw with the fields and the next year. So, you know, we don't let's go forward and then keep your fingers crossed that someone doesn't propose to bring the school, the fields forward. Again, there was some other school project that I feel uncomfortable. It was just like tonight. I could have easily voted against that article, as I said, but I felt compelled to, and I didn't know how the rest of you are going to vote. So, um, so, uh, I didn't want to think I might kind of have the same openness. I serve a series of one year terms. And at the end of each year, I'll put everybody on notice. I'm not sure I'm going to stand for reappointment. And so, um, not knowing what Kelly's doing and I'm not looking to put you in a difficult spot. Um, I just wanted everybody to be on notice and, uh, and give the school committee plenty of time, uh, to identify, um, you know, a potential placement that would step in for the second year of that two year term. Uh, but I could be back if the new school committee says, we hear you, we understand, do your best. Um, and I'm comfortable with that. Then I'll be back to serve out my term. So I just didn't want to hit you with that by sending in a resignation letter in June. And I don't show up and you're like, what happened to the Berlin? I've never, I've never stepped aside from a committee. I really don't like, which is why in the FinCon, I would only, I only volunteered for one year, filling out one year terms. I had the opportunity to fill out a three year term. And I just, I couldn't commit. And you might say, well, if Kelly goes off, you can take her three-year term. And likewise, I am not in a position to be able to commit two years. It was a stretch for me for other reasons. Um, yeah, I wouldn't be in a position to commit for a three-year term, but get that out there as well. So anyway, that's my stick. So there's no conclusion tonight, but if anybody has any questions to any of that, I guess just more of a statement, but just because either of you represent another, maybe, I don't think you get up the assumptions would be, should be that you're going to just rubber stamp, whatever they throw at that's your view. I'm not sure. That's the view of, but it's just fair enough when you do. So that was their job and ask those questions ahead of time. It's my opinion, but I agree with you, Liz, but I that's, that's our view. That's my view was certainly my view. I had that discussion with, withרך of, and I see that it's not just a matter of the, of the committee, but in terms of the startup, the business role. It's not an employee. It's an employee of a company. It's not even when you look at it, it's a, it's not a company that's going to be called on a public plan. It feels like a company that's a big, you know, like there, there's a lot of, there's a lot of work to do to get it done. And I think that's the point, that's the point of the two. I mean, that's the idea that we have to make as well, but it's not at all. And that's the thing too. I mean, I always say, I'll never be able to keep this company. the town right um at at the appointment of the select board we are just we've been given the ability to to you know say who we want but ultimately the select board is the appointment it's a designee with a select board appointment so i didn't feel that conflict i thought my role which we already talked about earlier could be done better and i hope to do it better was to make sure that we were addressing the the topics right not necessarily catering to the concerns and bending to the concerns of fincom but understood you know what their concerns would be which i i think i inherently from six years being on the fincom kind of understand that but certainly they could have said hey kelly we don't like this we hope you give us more information about this topic so i saw it more as that rather than i'm gonna do this the way you know to to support their end um thinking position on on various topics so that's that's my position but we had a pretty open conversation about it in my interview so i was never conflicted about it um going forward i would say i i'm not i'm highly unlikely to continue um as you guys saw during the year i often was needing to do work at one and two in the morning um and that doesn't look like it's going to change and that's just not sustainable um so i i don't see how that's workable now granted i think next year this coming year we will be better than last year because it'll improve so i won't say it definitively but i just that's that's really weighing on me um right as you've seen some of my brought balls lately um right i i don't like being in that position that's not who I am and I've been in that position now for the better part of a year that I just don't feel like I can do a good job at all the jobs and so I don't want to I don't want to do that if that continues. I should add because it's been on my mind a lot you know I'm I know I'm the vice chair and when I first started on the committee of course I had no idea what committee is all about until we started and you know my background is litigation trial work in the construction area but you know being here for the full year which I've thoroughly enjoyed I really like it I want to stay in the committee. I don't have the fincom background with you guys and and I don't I don't see how I'm just being candid how I can step into the role as a chairperson without the sort of financial background that you guys have I mean it's it's it's been amazing what you guys have what your knowledge base. Say you can step into the so a lot of the role of chair is is not The FinCom stuff is helpful, but that's not necessarily necessary for the role of chair. In fact, a lot of chair is the coordination and the writing and that piece. As long as you have, and you will, right, have a FinCom designee who has that background, I think you'll be well supported. But I also think whoever's chair next year, and I said this earlier, the division of work has to be more divided up across the committee. So I don't think it's necessary to have FinCom experience to be chair. I think it's necessary to have some FinCom background on the committee. And I think the finance, in a perfect world, one of the ex-officio members, the finance director, should be supportive of this committee when you find yourself in a situation, don't have the same level of prior experience of members in the finance. And the municipal finance side. And because Kelly and I are both on here, he really didn't have, I still would have preferred he was more plugged in, but we really didn't need him to be there as helping our financial side. It's unfair to have this discussion without John here. I've seen and heard some good things from John in terms of, I think having the two of us here for the first year. Hopefully, I've talked more than I should have, but trying to offload experiences and background and things, and now you've been through it one time, that that is giving you a good base to work from. But I generally never wanted to be a chair and wasn't chair of any of the committees I've ever served on over the last company years. I thought I could do all sorts of other things. But the one thing I have not. I was vice chair of the committee and had to chair a couple of meetings and the reason and I'll just tell you why I haven't ever won a service chair, because I'm not commenting on you, I'm commenting on generic roles of the chair. I view the chair role, as I think you just said, as a facilitated role to the meeting. This year, it's included the background from Kelly as well, right? But what I think and be able to talk about. Talk as much as I talk at a meeting when I was vice chair of the Fincom and had to chair a meeting, I couldn't but I couldn't do that myself. So I can't do that. I have to control myself, control myself and basically elicit and get the information. And that's not a role I really wanted to be in because I wanted to be able to say what I wanted to say when I had the opportunity. And so all the members I've ever served with, albeit I've been asked them. At the time, I've at least agreed I ended up having to do things like minutes and other things and maybe volunteer for more projects with at the time. But I assumed Kelly would be, you know, she said she was going to have no idea that the Fincom would then pick whether they will or won't be a prior Fincom member. Don't know. But it seems to me, even if I'm back here, you or John. Likely are going to have to decide amongst yourselves if I'm going to be back here, who would be willing to chair and vice chair the meeting just because I wouldn't do it if you said, sorry. I mean, if Brian will do minutes and do some of the analysis, then you'd be happy to chair vice chair. That's that's the value. Well, I think why it's important to be talking about this right now is because. Between now and June 30, it's not a lot of time for the Fincom to be put on notice. And you can do that yourself and for me to, right after town meeting, talk to the school committee about their preference. And that allows Fincom and the school committee to aggressively look for someone to represent. If two of us go off, represent us on this committee. I think I mean, obviously you've got the Fincom experience and I hope you will be staying on. You've done a great job and you've done been amazing what you've done. Also, you've been great just leading the committee, but I think you do need one, if not two Fincom members on this, just because of the knowledge of the whole financial process. I mean, it's something that I've never done before. And I'll mention it just because I hear your concerns. I'm going to mention it to the to the chair of the select board just because when I get to. Appointments, right, so that's something that you but but but I think it's good to give the two designating heads up that there is not to put her inside. There is a member going out to Fincom who has picked up good capital experience. I don't know if I know she's not planning to seek a report on the Fincom, but I don't know if she's stepping away from volunteering. And I didn't think it was April, April. I didn't think it was my job to stick my nose in the process. Don't think that April's witnessing of my experience will help that case at all. I don't know about Pam. I mean, she is again stepping aside for volunteering for a little while. So but anyway, this won't be the last conversation about this, but in my case, it was appropriate to copy one of those. To me. Yeah. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's definitely the answer. I think that the question at the end of the day, it's how should you know that if you do not want to participate in this case. I think it's probably a good idea to go to the school district, go to the school committee, go to the student council. We all have to take the lessons and be together as a committee of the school district and be a part of the conversation. It's always been a good idea for us to take to the school district. But it's a good idea for us to take it. order like the rec committee and they may may think you have might be sympathetic to their position but I guess I've always viewed my position as being that I'm required to rep in the town and I think my own view is the school committee hopefully is operating with with that perspective as well and I think over the years they have but at the end of the day they their focus is schools right well I will thank you for I want because I will mention it I'll have a conversation just to make sure because I do agree with you the experience is necessary I just want to make sure my arm doesn't get twisted too far behind my back what do you mean from me no from the people I can twist if you love them a certain chair of a certain committee is really good at the other thing I will say if it if it happens at the school committee then I reach an agreement in our understanding that maybe maybe better serve um typically you know I can keep serving unless I resign so and even if my term expired I can keep Kelly could keep serving after June 30th even though she's not seeking reappointment until they find an appointment appoint somebody that's the way town rules work but in my case I have another year so um yeah I have a partnership with a student I have a partnership with a student I have a partnership with a student I have a partnership with a student I have a partnership with a school haven't necessarily, if they go off, I haven't necessarily concluded it will be a hard stop if that would have. That's a strategy. That would be helpful. If I'm not like Pam Roman on this year and she ended up serving the full year, so. Okay. Minutes. Any edits to the minutes of March 18th? I gave them a read and I didn't have anything. Excellent, as always, Brian. And then topics not reasonably. Yeah, I do need to vote, huh? All right. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes of? So moved. Second. All in favor? Get this figured out. All in favor? All right. Topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours prior to posting, if any, and setting next time of next meeting. So one thing I just want to say, because Brian saved the day with getting an agenda in for this meeting, because I was off on what day of the week it was and what day of the week that this meeting was. I had it in my head it was Wednesday and was going to do it Monday morning. And when I got to my email Monday morning, Brian's like, it was due Friday. So he got one in and then had provided some edits that I put in as revised on Monday. So thank you, Brian, for catching me on that. I've asked Brad going forward two things. One, I'm going to, set my deadline a day ahead of the meeting deadline. So the, you know, it's due 48 hours in advance. I'm going to go 72 hours. And Brad is going to ping me if I haven't done that via text, just so that I don't have that happen again. I don't text. That's why I didn't. I don't text. That's why I'm having, no, Brad, Brad's going to text me. I get it. That's, that makes you feel better. I, I, on Thursday of last week, had a full conversation with somebody where she was like, and it's Thursday. And I'm like, no, it's not. It's Wednesday. She's like, it is Thursday. I'm like, no, it's not. It's Wednesday. So I was off on my days in general. So going back to Wednesdays, right? Yeah. We were going back to Wednesdays going forward. So the next meeting is the 29th, May 13th. Is that right? And then May 13th. Yes. I understand. Yeah. So that was in the next two. And the one after that, that is the 27th, which is, is that is Memorial Day week, right? Yes. Last Monday. Yes, it is. So all three of the minutes. Yeah. Put all three in the minutes, just in case. I don't know if anybody's, you know, doing holiday vacation, extended vacation. Okay. So that's everything. If I can get a motion to adjourn. Motion. Second. All in favor. We're all in favor. Yeah. Okay. All in favor. Aye. Aye.