August 5, 2026 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript
August 5, 2026 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee
Today is August 5th, 630. This is an in-person and remote access meeting for the Capital and
Prison Planning Committee of the Town of Wayland. This meeting may be recorded and if recorded will
be made available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible. After the meeting, the public will
be excluded from executive sessions. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Act of 25, this meeting will be
conducted in person or remote via accordance with the applicable laws. If this meeting has only
remote access, no in-person attendance by members or the public will be permitted. If this meeting
has remote access, one may watch or participate remotely with the meeting link provided.
When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or
otherwise may participate in the meeting and do so at the meeting location, in-person or remote.
Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. First up on our agenda, 630, call to
order and review agenda for public announcements. So just to clarify, this is a hybrid meeting, so it
is both in-person and online.
Okay.
It's just stating that. It's like there's a lot of years.
Okay.
You just have to say it.
Okay.
You're probably going to do it, but you need to identify that one of our members is participating.
Who are members that's online?
Liz Lusky is online.
And Brian Carver is absent today.
Brad Carver.
Brad, thank you. Sorry. It's been a while.
Great.
Pretty much in-person. Any questions? Public comment? Anyone else online? No. Okay. No public comment. Nice and easy. 640. So discuss capital planning process and timeline, but not limited to the CIP capital improvement plan submission form and questions regarding the form, guidelines, receipt of form for department heads, outstanding capital project status, questions, responses related to comparison of a five-year plan in the annual town meeting warrant versus CIPC's fiscal 27 versus 2031 report. 10 amended April 29th, 2026. Would you have a document to share? Yeah. Why don't you, you gotta just run through the rest of the adjournment. Oh, oh, resolve it. Yeah. You can, you can summarize. 715 discuss proposed town building and working group and visionary group, including CIP improvement. 730 discuss preparation of annual report. 750 use the transcription tool discussion to provide future meeting minutes. 805 succession planning. 820 review and vote minutes. Control July 6th. On 22nd. That got amended. I thought I pretty much knew what it was this morning. I guess I had to go through. 825 setting time of next meeting. 830 adjourn. Now we can start. Which I guess you're going to pay attention to this year.
Okay. 640 discuss capital planning timeline. Is there, I don't know where we left off. So I don't, did, did Brad forward the time? Managers email out to department heads. I have, so I will, um, let me get on. I will forward that. Um, the town manager did send it out. I don't remember exactly when it was, um, but gave a deadline of August 6th, which was this week. Um, yeah, it was August 6th was the deadline, but he, it was sent out. Probably a couple of days after our last meeting. So they were given a couple of weeks.
Um, so he, he offered in that email. Um, if there were any questions on use of the form to reach out to me or to Brad, um, I've only had one reach out and that was from the library. And they were just clarifying that they should work with Michael Faya on their facility request. And I said, yes, should, as it has been in the past. Um, and I said, really, any, any requests you have should be worked with the relevant department. So I gave the example, you have a nice, if you have an IT request, you should work that through, um, the IT director. So that's the only question I've gotten. I don't know if I, um, I didn't see it thus far. Hopefully that's a good sign.
I'm logged in. If you want to send me that. Yeah. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. And then I'll get that in one second. Um, but the only other thing I had on that topic was I did start to work on, um, building out the code to take everybody's requests and summarize them. So right now they're, they're broken. So I have like a document that I have in each file for each department to summarize their relevant department, right. That's in the file. But I did start to build out an ability to, um, scrape from all of the departmental files into one file and then, and then create a master summary. I just, I hit a snag and, um, haven't gone back to it, but I know how to fix it. It's basically got snagged. It got a, it got snagged where the file names are too long. because I asked it to add to add the first three letters of the department so that tab name so that when I pulled it all into the file you can identify it but the file that the tab name is too long I can't do it so I've just got to have it trim that down and then tweak this summary a little bit so that it summarizes by department and pulls it all together so very cool that should be ready hopefully by the time we start getting these requests you know if the town manager asked them to send that information back to the town manager he asked them to send it directly to us us being the chair let me hear I'm going to get I'm sorry Friday on the 7th this is the deadline at noon send to Brad and to Kelly using the email addresses above and copy the town manager assistant town manager and the finance director electronically by email he let them know that we'll be scheduling meetings starting in August do until we see what we have yeah only that one one one one one one one one yeah I mean I'll double check tomorrow and Friday there anything like my please at 11 at 11 30 on Friday um but hopefully that's yeah I think there's basic information and process they're used to yeah I wouldn't expect much questioning there and i mean 95 of the projects have probably varied over the just realignment yeah there's lots more information yeah i i wouldn't based on the way the email is written by michael i wouldn't be surprised if we get back the same forms with not everything filled out um and that is the way his email written i think it's focused more on adding the next year and adjusting the projects but um i didn't want to i didn't i want to immediately send an email clarifying email i figured like let's because quite honestly i think it's most important we get the projects and then we can um we can follow up if we need to i would say if if you get whomever sends the first set back and you see yeah then obvious issues then you could send out a quick email to everybody saying so if all went according to plan that information is in by this friday correct and by our next meeting which is the 24th of august we're going between those two dates um
submissions be we can your roll up yeah my hope is that i would be able to roll it up
i mean in an ideal world i get to roll it up this weekend um if they're not all here send that out with the yeah send that out to everybody so that yeah
excitingly early yeah and if that were the case then it um it will be up to brad um decide you know whether we're going to use the 24th meeting to try to schedule department heads really some of them in yeah i would say we we try to schedule right based on the order of receipts or if we've got some in um if we're missing i'm assuming we're going to end up being missing some of them so we should just start scheduling with the people we do have just get right back to those people say are you available i mean the alternative is to say out a preemptive email to people saying you know we understand from the town man send it out like tonight or tomorrow we understand how managed email that the information we requested is due this friday for one year uh we anticipate scheduling department head meetings starting with our next meeting on the 24th yeah would you please let us know you know whoever's sending it uh what your availability for that date is just to put them on notice yeah i can send that email how busy are they i mean with the school year starting i mean how busy is september from a little bony typically is it worse than the ulcer i have no choice we're not going to get a report done by october 15th if if we can't yeah i mean that would be the biggest it'd be the biggest problem for christine but um most of i think last year the school's x facilities had two or three you know sort of new requests um again i haven't heard yet and i can reach out to christine in particular after this meeting and just say hey um other than facilities requests michael faye will be putting in are you anticipating other requests in the five-year plan for example she may want to move the million dollars that's in the plan for the msba feasibility work based on their long-term planning process maybe i can you know coax out of her
she would probably be the one that would be the most um if she does operations as well and yeah should be up to her eyeballs with that stuff and there's tremendous pressure being put on her to come up with a primary operating budget forecast for the town's forecasting and you know this this probably is a little further down yeah but again i wouldn't anticipate that there'll be non-facility requests other than these two or three items i'll i'll email her after the meeting
uh outstanding capital projects that is i see an email this attachment opening capital we want to review that i don't know so that's liz's right i think so i think liz the one you sent to prime before you do that glad to share my screen and we can go from there one quick question was before we get into that um kelly where uh i assume you would have told us if any responses came to the questions on the variances that we'd asked we did not get anything so i think before we set up the last meeting john was if that isn't forthcoming i'll be able to answer many of those questions by reviewing the questions that we've asked and i think that's a good way to wrap up the meeting i think that's a good way to wrap up the meeting um i think that's a good way to wrap up the meeting i think that's a good way to wrap up the meeting um i think that's a good way to wrap up the meeting when we're reviewing the cip submissions and we might have some language questions that we could just ask the department make sense okay thanks okay liz
good yup okay um so just give me a show when you can see my screen make this bigger everybody can read it yeah well it's there there. I can't read it, but I'm going to pull it up on my computer. So, I mean, this is the data, so we're not going to spend a lot of time on the data. I would say, I'm assuming this is a canned report. So, Brian, this is the one you had sent me. I think it's supposed to capture everything through the end of June. But again, I'm just assuming this is a standard report that comes out of whatever accounting tool our town uses. Kelsey and I are still not able to connect on this. So, I do have some general questions on what the categories are. So, and I don't know if Kelly or Brian, if you know this, but, you know, approved amount, presumably that's just, and just to treat this as education for a second, but the approved amount is for what the request was in its entirety, I'm assuming. Prior year balance. What I'm not sure is, is this to go, like what's been spent today or what is the residual balance that has not been spent? And then no matter how I take in time. I'm going to tie this. Nothing gets back to the approved amount. So, I would have expected to see this is what we spent. This is a to-go to get you back to the approved amount, but that doesn't. I believe that prior year balance is prior year being June 30, 2025.
And that would be inception today, presumably, not just what was spent in 2025? That would be what's left. That's what's left of the, so the first column is what was appropriate. Appropriated by town meeting. You mean column F? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then the prior year balance is what's left to be expended from the appropriation. So, the difference between those two numbers is what was spent. Yeah. What's been spent today. Cumulatively from inception through June 30 of 2025. Okay. That is helpful.
And then just going along. So, revenue, I'm guessing, is this like ambulance kind of, although it doesn't really tie up to specific ambulance, but what is the revenue column for capital? Do they have revenue that they're using to cover their own requests? I'm looking to see what they are. Hold on. Couldn't say revenue funding or source. Yeah. Well, no. RE fund is the real estate. The real estate fund is enough. Brian? Yes. So, it means they moved, they moved dollars in from the real estate fund. Is that why that's like that? Yeah. I'm not sure. I kind of just ignored that column. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, my interest was what, and I, just before the meeting, I sent out Liz a few and copied the others. Yeah. So, this is taking it from June 30, 2025 to June 30, 2026. That's kind of the timeframe. So, this is just a one-year pop period of performance? Middle four columns are internal accounting related in terms of actual expenses, i.e., cash expenses. Middle four, meaning I through L? No. J. J through M. J through M. So, that activity is interesting, but I kind of ignored it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, even the prior-year balance to column N, which is the 6-30-26 balance, again, that's interesting. Except, what I was really looking for is what progress was made since November 18th of 2025, which is the data that we used to create the tables that were in our . And so, I sent out a spreadsheet just before the meeting that, right with that in mind, says that, yeah. Basically, it has all the same projects you've got listed here, but it shows, instead of prior year balance, it shows the November 18, 2025 unexpended balance, and it compares it to the column N balance, and then I just have a variance, which almost all of them are negatives, or some are no change. But that, to me, that just is kind of, we already went through all this process through November 18, the last year. Well, I mean, I get that you've been doing this forever, and why it's like you understand like the back of your hand, but you are leaving the committee, so I want to make sure I understand it so that, so I understand you don't think that these columns are important because you understand what they are already, but just. We can walk you through what it is. Can you unhighlight them? Because when you did that, I can't, now I can't see them. I can't see what they are. The revenue one is a misprint. No, I know what it is. So, the prior balance, so this is a straight additive, right? Oh, I'm sorry, the prior balance wasn't popular. Prior balance wasn't popular. So, you brought in the funding. So, they brought in the funding. So, in that case of row six, right, there was a zero prior balance. The amount approved was $100,000. So, the revenue is saying, all right, we funded this. This is a project for $100,000. What was the year? Can you scroll over to the left? It was a new one, I think. 25 or 26. Yeah, 26. Is that a fiscal 26? Yeah, fiscal 26. Yeah, correct. That's why that's that way. Right. So, it's a new project. So, that's why those have, and if you look down, I think you'll find that that's mostly what they are, right? 26 projects. Correct. So, you started prior balance plus the revenue minus the expenditures. So, that's, in theory, what was spent during the year, right? It should be. They're just, yeah, yeah. Cash expense. Cash expense. Incumbrances, I can defer to the accountant, but it's an accrual for, we know, so we've spent it, but we haven't paid for it yet. So, we have a contract and we have a little bit more to spend. Right. Like, we've agreed with someone to provide the services. We're under contract, but we haven't paid the bill yet. Correct. Okay. So, from an accounting standpoint, you have to. You have to subtract that out when you're figuring out where you are at June 30 of 26. Okay. You've got to have all the encumbrance come out because it's already, that money is already earmarked, right? So, if you were to take column I plus column J minus K minus L, and you don't know what column M is, do you, Frank? No. You go down to the $130,000 item and scroll to the left. Is that a write-off? For the description. Is that a write-off? Yeah.
Maintenance? Field maintenance?
No, I'm sorry. I was looking down. If you go back over to column M, Chad's software, let's see.
So, if you go down to line 11, yeah, scroll that road, scroll to the left so I can see the description of it. Software safety records? Yes. I think he, I think this is. Yeah, it started at $140,000. Yeah, I mean, it's possible that could be where he reflected closed out projects, maybe. Yeah, based on what some of them are, Bernie. But the amount of the closed out. The amounts are either what the balance is or within a dollar. Yeah, or he left a little bit. Yeah, Mike, yeah, if he knew there was a bill coming in. So, you know how he had capital closeouts that he used to fund some projects? See, that's what I think that column is. So, that's a subtract. Yeah. So, it's. And just, I do plan to ask Kelsey all these questions as well. Funding and then take away. Funding and then spend. Right? So, that brings you to where you are, June 30th, right, of 26 from a financial standpoint. So, what form is, I assume column N has a formula in it? I think these are all just hard-coded numbers. Okay, back to what Kelly's saying, Ben. It's, the formula would be column I plus J. Minus K, minus L, and plus or minus, it's minus, it's minus column M, and hopefully that math looks like a formula. And then if you go back to that with this formula in column N, do they have the formula here? Yeah, I plus J, K, L, M, M. Yeah, okay, so, but, but again, this is a full year picture. Now, the fact is, if we're going to use. Back to, to the point was before we were talking about, if, if we're going to use these June 30th, 26 numbers as the basis for whatever it is we end up putting in this report. Yeah. Then this time next year, presumably you'll be doing a full fiscal year. Yeah. And you'll be looking at the same chart. Yeah. You're saying because we showed 11, because we showed as of November last year, we've got to do a partial. We don't have to, but it just. Yeah, it would be, it would logically, it would make a little more sense just to say, since our last, since our first report. Yeah.
And it just depends what, what's going to show up on the tables. Yeah. But the other, but what this also, and this is the same last year, what this doesn't show you, on any of these line items is, okay, so we have a bunch of balances, a lot of expended appropriation. So, it's a bunch of variables and, you know, these are all there. But that's not the important part of, of having the sort of, of vegan and organic, organic promotions, and that's the sort of thing that we should be thinking about. So, we've got to be thinking about, what do we need to do to put all of these things together? And do we need to be thinking about some certain things that are, that are, that are, that are, you know, back to the, back to the roots of of being a residential, you know, a residential, you know, residential property. Do we need to be thinking about some sort of having a private property that's not going to be tacos. Yeah. Or are there, you know, some sort of projects on here from like we'll just say 2020 that's six years if i have to get six separate reports to then tally it all up just seems like there's got to be something that you know in the accounting tool that can say yeah this is what was approved and this is what we spent today versus uh here's yours it's there you just take you take column f minus column i right sorry column f minus column i'm sorry column f minus column n you could add a column if you want to get cumulative cumulative spent or encumbered okay and that's the to-go balance still right this is just yeah okay and n is what's left so f minus n is what was spent cumulatively and so you know you could put um you could add a column you could add a column to the right of the column and just put you know percentage yeah and divide and by yeah what's left the appropriation um now tell you percentage-wise what's left yeah well that is helpful i mean i made some assumptions when i was pulling together pivot tables about what it could be they weren't the right assumptions um so some of this you know last year what was spent today versus um you know the to go those are incorrect um but the idea was is you know with this information was to go. And I know, Brian, you had the reports that you sent out or the ones that went in the warrant. And I think with a little bit of clarity on some tasks or I should say projects that don't have a fiscal year assigned to them, or at least not in this report, should be easy to create. Yeah, so you would know what they, you use last year's file from Brian. It's got the fiscal year assigned to everything. Well, so I do have a question because we have like a 2014 report in here that wasn't in your file. Presumably, I guess that was one of my outstanding questions. Like what happened to 2014's 30K to go? The conservation project you mean? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, there may have been one that I just dropped. Yeah, conservation. I may have dropped it just because if it doesn't show up in the table, it was such an outlier that I may have dropped it from the table. Is it because there was only $700 left and it was, yeah, only $700 left and it would have made the table another. Yeah, so I think that was the only one I may have dropped. Yeah, there were a couple of two or three new items that I don't know really the background on them. Appeared, but they may have been part of the fiscal.
It's possible he brought in one or two fiscal 27 items. I thought he told me he didn't typically didn't typically show up in Munis until July 1. Okay. Next fiscal year. But again, just by frame of reference, when you look at what I sent out, I took I took your data. Brian Kevin, these data, I brought it over to my table from my spreadsheet from last year, and it didn't line up perfectly. So I had to go through and you'll see, you know, a bunch of items in the June 30, 26 columns that have no associated item in the left column. And almost all of those basically have insignificant balances. That's because I hit those I hit those rows in last year's worksheets, just because, again, I could have just deleted them. But I know that Brian typically doesn't get rid of that stuff. And so I ended up aligning everything. So I knew that all the items that were in last year's report I can could account for in your report. And then there's extra extra line items. And those are the ones that, you know, either have minimal balance or again, there's three or four that. Have a substantive balance that we just need to find out where they came from. So going back to your comment about 2014 conservation, and there was only a balance of 700, so you didn't include it. Are there any other is there like a limit then like anything less than 1000? We don't show. No, I think that was the only one just because it was the I won't swear to it, but I think because it it was 2014 and then the next oldest appropriation that was still showing up was the number of years after that, wasn't it? No, I think it was 2015. Because I had another. Let me pull up your 2015 16. Well, in here, it's 16. But I think in the warrant doc, there was some $15, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's looking at your chart comparison, everything, everything that was missing is a couple of dollars or yeah. And I don't I don't have our report handy. But again, whatever is in that table, but what I just sent out today, did I have the conservation item? So we did have. It's my fault. I may have I may have added it to one of the other columns. I can't remember. I think so. The blocks that are in red are what we was included in the warrant.
And I just assumed to be something to go back and look at, but like the 2015 dollars and I don't know if that's conservation, to be honest with you, since it's close number, but I just assumed it was to go back and verify that it got closed out within, you know, the past year and that's why I wasn't showing up. Yeah.
But the answer is I other than hiding a bunch of rows that were actually in my workbook, which is hidden, that had next to no balance or zero balance, I was able to line up and what I sent out late today, all the items that otherwise come up to what are in these various tables you have up on the screen. I mean, it was just one line, say, for things less than $1,000 and just give one line. We had to move on to the account. Accountants generally in the type it was down to the pen, but that's you're doing a lot of audited financials and you can deal with the reality. But I just find. If you start doing that, sometimes it makes it harder to make sure you've caught everything. You know, it's easier just. Right. You're cutting them off and closing them. No, I think through this process, that ultimately should be one of our recommendations, which is if I notice the 30 or 40 line items that we need you to clean up and get those in them. So and that was kind of the thought with this report is I wanted to see what was outstanding in my mind, anything beyond seven years really should be done at this point or being closed out or what's the story there? So maybe. That's part of the question. The other thing was and I kind of did $1,000 threshold. So and maybe, you know, my calcs, I have to go back and check them just because now that I know what the balances were for, I got to make sure that that math ties. But the idea was anything were less than $1,000 was spent within the past year. It seems like there's no activity there and should it get closed out? I think that's another place to ask questions. I mean, some of this, if people are spending money, they're working the projects, then peace, OK, they're they're doing. Exactly what they need to be doing. But again, for the things that are sitting idle, that was a place where I thought we could focus.
You know, especially if things were old and not moving, so. Yeah, my only comment that was that I don't disagree with you, but for what we have to do and our focus, I think this was the case last year and one of our disclosures was the top, you know, five projects, whatever it with the largest on expended balance that were more than
that weren't in the last two fiscal year. So we kind of got the point that what was approved in the last two town meetings likely either hadn't started or wasn't very far along. So we then did a little disclosure said of all the other fiscal years, what are the top, you know, five or eight projects? And if you add up those dollars of those five or eight projects and you compare it to the. Outstanding amount of all the other projects it took represented like, I forget, 80% or something. And so, you know, spending any time of any significance. Beyond that, even though they are old projects and I would agree it shouldn't be there at some point, just didn't seem to me like a particularly good use of. They're not all old. I mean, this one's from 24, this one's from 25, another 24. So there's some more recent ones with small balance. But I mean, we also talked about, you know, having conversations where why, you know, maybe we should reconsider giving for folks more capital if they're not spending on their current projects. So are there trends there? And this was a way of slicing the data to see if there's any trends we should be, you know, bringing up when we have conversations with the committees or the departments.
Yeah, and we may find, I mean, that's a good question. The department is, you know, out of curiosity, if we assume. X percent of these projects that are older and don't have that large of a balance on expended, is there a reason why you keep them around? And there may be a legitimate, you know, reason. Maybe there's a hold back on a contract, for example, and or, you know,
they might think they can use it for the latest and greatest version of something, depending on how it was described when it was appropriate. You know, I don't know, but I think that would be a good question for all of the department managers, which would then help bolster recommending to Brian Keveny that from an accounting perspective, and the question is, who controls the write off? Do the department managers have to give their OK before the accounting group can basically say this is a closeout and we're taking the money back? So understanding that process would be helpful. I think on the good news front, it looks like, as I think Michael Fay, anyway, advertised, it looks like continued progress was made, whether it's between June to June or November 18th to June 30, 26. It looks like they were continuing to make headway and at least spending money. And, you know, and then the question is, you know, is the town manager's office,
you know, keeping track some way of the actual status of the project, not from a financial perspective, but OK, this one's done or this one's done, except they're waiting for X.
You know, to me, that's that should be a town staff function, which hopefully is tracked in a way that the CIPC could then, you know, just access the information. Yeah. And not have to bug people about it. That's some weird. Maybe we figured out this out last year, but why are there negative prior balances, prior balances?
There were. Right. And again, Brian Kennedy did say to me that although generally is the case with the newer projects, that sometimes if he hasn't floated bonds, he hasn't brought the debt in. And if they've started spending down the appropriation, which again, I'm never quite sure how I know how they can do it. Last year, because they got they got approval from the select board to use general fund funds prior to floating the debt. And so if they're spending down, but he hasn't posted up either the transfer from the general fund or hasn't posted up the debt, it'll show a negative balance, meaning we've outspent our program. You shouldn't see a negative that's created by someone overspending. What was appropriate? No, no. And I can see where like row 167, which is the water project, the water FY 25 water main design and construction. The the approved amount was 1.2. Prior year balance was is a negative 1.1. Says to me they had started spending, but then somehow the revenue is 2.4.
And extended another 1.2. So is that maybe grant funding?
Yeah, I think we should add the same. We had this question last year. I mean, I started to think we should. You know, each one of those items that might be negative might have a different answer, different story. And, you know, some of them he had to go back and post up what was debt funded. Um. To the extent we were trying to use this. These figures for assessing where where was the project in its timeline. And again, he alerted me that he hadn't necessarily done that with the data that he sent. Yeah, I mean, the negatives all got funding. But yeah, it's just some of them got. Actually, quite a few of them got more. Funding than the approved amount. And strangely, they look like they're in several cases, double. The approved amount. As for the veracity of the data, that's yeah, that's something we have to identify. Yeah, I think we got items that we need to ask the finance director about.
You know, we're not going to get all the data out there. And that's something that we should be in. I don't know if we're going to be able to find that. I don't know, we're looking for some kind of new data to sort of. We're not going to get any data out there. I don't know what the future looks like. But we're going to be able to get it out there. So, yeah, we're. We're doing that. And we're going to do that. And we're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. So, you know, once you go back and. You know, make the changes you're going to make. Based on our discussion tonight to your workbook, we could. um have negative balances yeah i can set a separate tab for all the negative balances that are identified for prior balances and then and just send a copy of your workbook to the finance director and say hey please tell us what gives here and i'm sure what we'll get is a revised version of this original data with an explanation most of which will be debt related but not necessarily in all cases but i'm pretty positive that everybody in the town knows that they can't spend more than on a line item can't spend more than they were appropriate and sometimes what i think we found last year also sometimes the accounting department may not have enough information when they code the entries to you know so they might get information from the water department they might they might book that in the accounting system to the wrong project right and so it makes it appear like you know they spent a million dollars but they were only appropriate 500 000 it may appear they overspent and then when brian sees that says oh obviously we booked it to the wrong account and they'll reverse that entry yeah i think there might be some reversal entries here yeah so so i think what happened last year we we also got some data like you sent this year i scrubbed it had a bunch of questions before you guys ever saw it he redid it those line items that didn't seem to make sense so that by the time you guys saw it i think it had been scrubbed this year i just i mean fixed in the system or he just in the accounting system yeah okay yeah yeah this is kind of getting into the weeds but how often do they update the status for either spend or i mean that something that happens monthly with the departments or is it quarterly yeah i would assume every time they need a check to go out the door they have to ask for the check that triggers an accounting uh entry in the system and the offsets of the check going out the door and taking it out of the cash account is to reduce the amount of unspent appropriation yeah but again if somebody either codes it you know you see all those numbers on the left if somebody holds it off one digit or whatever or they don't code it and someone in the accounting department says well i gotta put something in here to get the check triggered um so yeah i mean and and typically once the books close you know this is a little premature for brian to give me the june 30 numbers when he did right because typically when they're closing the books it's mid july to late july at that point you know he's uncovered a bunch of different things yeah and uh you know i bet if i said can you resend me your june 30 munis report for the unix open capital i would bet some of these things have probably already been corrected so um why don't i request that from him tomorrow just as a starter and i'll just i'll take his data and i'll put it against the first set of davis and just see if there are any variances i think that probably makes sense just not to waste time asking him questions if he's already gone through that process yeah okay and i'll send that to you once i get it okay brian you said the books closed was it july what's the day july june 30 is the end of the fiscal year and then they they keep the books open for a couple weeks for cleanup hopefully clean up most of what they need to clean up okay and then it should be done fully baked by what mid july i'm assuming yeah they're both by mid july or so okay like a two-week buffer yeah and then you know inevitably then they start preparing all the way for the audit auditors to come in and so it's not impossible as they're doing that they they find other things that require sort of don't get booked in last year's fiscal year they roll them into the beginning balances but anyway that's into the weeds um all right i'll get him to send me that and um won't ask a bunch of questions yet and uh see if he dealt with some of these items sorry john say that again i'm just gonna see if there's anything else on this topic but yeah i think we should add in um even though this date is as of june 30th no reason why we can't make it as of july 1 and add in the fiscal 27 projects i think we should add in um the projects that were approved at uh annal town meeting none of which should have spent any money if they're as of july 1. um so is that you could either do that manually to your um the source data that you're then using for all your pivot tables which would be uh you know grabbing your warrant and just typing them in uh the alternative is brian probably hasn't loaded up already so yeah if he's got them loaded i'd rather have the unique identifier that are tacked on so that way so if you don't if you guys don't care if you i mean if you're keen to keep june 30 as the date you want to tie into then they wouldn't typically appear if and he can run this like last year ran it november 18th he ran it several times along the way if it's like a but i mean it's only 181 lines so it's not huge um it's not like you know a report that's going to take overnight to run but i would imagine if he's already entered them or if they somehow july 1st then i'll just tack them on to yeah because they're going to come with more information including the approved amount you know the description whatever i added i think the unique id which i think are all unique ids maybe maybe not uh but there's going to be a series of other information that comes with that would be helpful if it's just you know exported and then it completely syncs up with whatever's in the accounting tool okay i'll just whenever davey grabs it as a once he grabbed it he can't go backwards um right which is again what we found last go around um because the account system keeps it just keeps going right so uh whenever he sends me i'll do a quick side by side to see what variances pop out of that and then that can form the basis for any further questions that we have for him um and then uh and then the i think it just depends on whether we really think we're going to get anything in the next two three weeks because we have to at some point start in earnest drafting a report um uh as to whether the town manager's office is going to have any further color or i think what we agreed at the last meeting was we would take this information and at least agree amongst ourselves um you know which are the most important that we want to understand and we want to understand and we want to understand and we just ask the department heads but i think we we didn't want to send that out before they sent in their cip forms yeah we do at the last meeting so and to that point um i mean i kind of talked about what i thought would be concerning things that haven't showed any progress or minimal progress over the past year things that are just largely outstanding but i guess other folks in the room what else would we want to kind of poke at i mean is it just maybe like like i just i just just heard kicks right looked at the percentage spent percentage of the balance versus yeah versus the original appropriation at the beginning and the end of the year and look at the difference like how much could it move right and so there's a lot of projects there was good progress on a lot of projects that were significant right 40 50 97 percent movement but i think it's a lot of projects and an interesting thing about that was that just before we were able to come out i just they they 숨ed that paying for it and the fact that they moved you know in 10 years and they've been you know successfully independent you know there's the voluntomies and most so you've been able to live the olabilir development that you spent their 50 50 60 years to tell me when did the integration began just pick the ones like that were less than 10 right that didn't move that much um less than 10 percent and that gave me you know 80 projects you know i would do some of those are and the thing is most of those those are not 20 26 projects right they're 18 19 20 like they just haven't moved much 5 time and so there might be a comparison variable so their lunch positive person there of these are the ones that are smaller than 10 and 20 plans their 18 19 what that means are coming out that is sort of our ownET Ehler hefty regimen any these are the ones that are small like you said brian you excluded me like these are small they haven't moved much because there's not much there to move um so if you pick the ones that are a material balance right that have bigger numbers
yeah those are the ones we should ask set a question down and set a dollar threshold right and then just say and oh by the way there's another 50 projects that really haven't moved much in the past year can you tell us kind of why that would be and if they have legitimate reasons why they hold on to the money that would be great but again i don't think we're going to have the time to get down into thousand dollar balances with these i agree it's just the person where the where the money is but you know there's like i t probably had last year they updated it we know they had you know four-year-old appropriations because of the switch in the i.t director and one or two of those got closed out even though the project still needs to get done um those would be the kind of things that you know i think we would be interested in yeah there's a couple still here like i just did less than ten percent movement and bigger than a hundred thousand dollar balance and the fy23 network and wireless replacements on there the district wide core network is on there um and we already know the answer we already know the answers which we discussed those yeah
but uh yeah so do we want to leave it to liz to liz do you feel comfortable doing what kelly's doing which is yeah well what i captured was less than uh you know more than 100k balance to go and then less than 10 percent movement in the past yeah and it doesn't have to be that effort but like when you look at it like picking off the the like okay the ones that stick out that haven't moved that have significant balances but like for example one of those is this the council on aging building right that was an 11 million dollar spend that's got 100 and something left i'm not questioning that because that building just opened and it probably needs to retain right something that's not a big deal as a percent of the overall project but that's so it becomes a little bit of a judgment judgment based
but again looking forward to our report if if we if we choose to go with the same amount of disclosure in kind of the same verbiage and kind of the same tables um maybe that's a way to please kind of bring focus on those items that we're ultimately thinking that we will we think are important enough to you know right now so brett sorry are you asking me to recreate the tables from the warrant not the warrant in in our report through the town manager yeah the same the tables that were in yeah you show those tables you show those tables before you put up they were in red boxes yeah these tables yeah that's not the warrant those were tables that we used in our report sorry yes yes let's see yeah so my point is if if at least the majority of the cfdc is comfortable that that was useful information and not the right information. And the verbiage that kind of goes along with it will be dependent on the handful of projects that we identified. Then my view would be Yeah, if, as soon as we know the data is good, or as good as it's going to get, then sort of working on getting these tables put together. So we could just plug them into the report, I think would be kind of well spent. Yeah, I still think the way I was very happy with that section of the report, right, the only thing we lacked, in my opinion, was knowing why right, certain things were were held up. But I think the data piece of this, like for what we're presenting to the town was helpful, as is. So we may we if we don't get it from the town manager's office, we may get it from the department heads. So we might have an extra parent. Right. So I think just because we're in a crunch report, you know, again, there's no magic to creating these intentions to create with the data we have the exception of 27 not being added. And once we get Brian's updates, it's at least get a version of this for the next year or so. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. It's not the exact per se. But yeah, yeah. I agree. I mean, the only thing we may want to look at that we didn't look at before is the year over year comparison of what you know, like some narrative of where these are. Yeah, I would say 2017 got really cleaned up. Yeah. Primary goal, right? First objective is to be able to have updated tables for our report. Secondary objective is what in here? Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. Question, right? Dig a little bit deeper on why is that standing? We're going to put that together, that list together when we talk to the department managers. To the extent there are germane answers, right, that we think are relevant to share, we'll add that as a narrative.
And then remember, we have a recommendation section on our last year. We We had a recommendation for ourselves. That had a recommendation on the... I'm thinking like the Finance Committee's report that goes in the warrant. At the end of it, it has correct names. So one thing we might do, if we're seeing the same things, which we are, as last year, maybe we add another small paragraph that says our second time through this, we think our staff should do... X number of projects with very small balances that should be reviewed and potentially written off, something like that. Yeah, I agree. So just add a little bit more than what we were able to do last year.
So is that something, Liz, you think you'll be able to... And I think in terms of timing, that we probably should hope to have that by early September-ish. So, I mean, I can recreate these reports. In terms of tweaking what we want to see, then, I mean, that's something I think we're just going to do real time. I mean, we discussed... I have some ideas... Not idea. Based off of our conversations today, I know how I'd want to change some of the information or some of the pivots to show that granularity that we're looking for. Brian, I might reach out to you as I'm going through this just to understand some of the specifics. And I'll point to... This is one that came up, but... You know, is this supposed to be the number of projects that is represented in this set of data? And if it is... And if I heard you right, if we're showing what was in June, the June 30th file, there shouldn't be much of a disconnect there, but that's like... There's 181 projects in the June file, but this is only showing 141. Is that really... There's 40 projects that we didn't include? I might understand. And again, we can take this offline. Just... Yeah, there's a good number of them. When you look at the spreadsheet I sent out before this meeting, you'd have to count them up. But there's a good number that I ended up... There's a lot of $1, $2 balance projects that aren't really projects right there. I don't know why we couldn't balance, you know, closing, but... Yeah. So, you know, in what I sent you or what you have... Do we care if we add them? I'm just saying, if I'm going to do a pivot table off of the data, it's going to bring them in anyway. I think it distorts... It distorts the picture. Yeah. Because it makes it seem like there's 40 more projects that are open when they're really not. I mean, they technically are. Okay. So this gets back... This gets back to what is that cutoff where we're not including projects? Is it less than $10,000? Is it less than... Because I'll put a calculation in there so it just excludes it. I think I only got rid of things that literally were, you know, less than $1, $1 to $10, somewhere in that range. I'd have to look... I'm taking a look right now just to see how many... If I look at the prior year, which is not a perfect representation because Brian had an 11. Yeah, quite specific. But it's... There are 36 projects that are open that the prior year balance is $0 or $1. Yeah. So I'm sure we can reconcile it, Liz, but, you know... Oh, wait. Those are all... Sure. Those are all new projects. I take that back. Yeah, I'm sure we can reconcile it. So that's what I mean. If I go through this and if there's something that's not obvious, then I might reach out separately just to say, okay, what was the logic behind, you know, how you excluded or included things? Yeah, and I think if you... Again, if I sent you the version, the last version I did in November was version 5, which you have open on us in here, right? Yeah, yep, that's D5. Yeah, if you... Well, I don't want to do it now, but after the meeting, if you go back and look at the tabs where I pulled the data that's rolling up to these tables, somewhere along the way, if you go off to the left and you unhide the rows, you'll likely see a bunch of other projects come up that have zero balances or... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Minimal balance. And you should be able to see that a lot of those are also appearing in what you have. Looking at your sheets, you remove stuff that's like a dollar or less. I mean, it could be $2. And you get there... It's super small. The other way to get there is what I sent out before the meeting. I think that's most of the... That's what I'm looking at. Yeah. Yeah. So let's... Let me just say less than five bucks when we remove it. Yeah. Just keep it for the call here.
And that number may turn out... Let's see. You know, if they... Because I agree with you. All things being equal, if the table last year showed whatever it showed, 130, and granted, we'd be including fiscal 27, so that'll have X number of projects. But if you took the total plus fiscal 27 projects, in theory, that should equal what was in last year's report. Yeah. I would prefer that. I would prefer that be the case, which means just get rid of the ones that I got rid of last year. But it doesn't have to be that way. Just... Then you can... You just have to explain it to somebody. I think we'll just start with less than five bucks here, which takes us... The tables will tell us how much it is. Yeah. Keep it simple so we're not tiring back constantly. Yep. Okay. Anything else? Very helpful, this topic.
Thanks, Liz. All right. All right. Back over to you guys. Okay. The next topic is... Let's pivot. Yeah. So, it's terrible fun.
Discuss proposed town building working group and visionary group, including if we have any involvement. I don't know if there's any updates. I saw there was a... We should meet to discuss it, but that's the last I saw. That email from Carol? Yeah. Yeah. That was the last I saw. I haven't heard anything since her email. Yeah.
Okay. We're at 7.30. Discuss preparation of annual report. We talked about these tables once we get the updated data set. No, it's actually a different annual report. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. So, there's a requirement that all committees have to create an annual report and you were making... We already did that, but there's some additional requirements typically around basically making it shorter. I think it counts. It's going to be probably a half a page. A thousand words, right? Or make something like that. Just a summary. So, of our activity over the fiscal year ending June 30, 2026. So, from our... Ours would be inception in September of 25 to June 30, 2026. Yeah. So, somebody has to write that for our committee and then their committee has to review it and approve it. Yes. And it has to be done in the format... By September or something. By September or something in the format since... I think it was sent to Brad. Well, it was sent to me first and then I forwarded it to Brad. I don't think they're too picky on the format. I've written several of them in the past for the Finance Committee and for the... Yeah. They give a template. ...portal housing price. So, it's just a question if we need a volunteer to A, understand what this is and B, write it so that the committee can review it ideally at the next meeting.
So, as always, I know I could do it. It would go on and you all work and I'm happy to do it but if someone else wants to have the pleasure, I don't want to deny anybody that pleasure. I do not want the pleasure. I do think you could attempt the first attempt. This is what I'm going to do. Just take the minutes and tell AI you want a thousand words. Summarize this in a thousand words and we'll see what it comes up with. I'm happy to do that if you want to do a manual version. We can compare it out if you're so excited by it. I found one that the Finance Committee Appointing Board did in their first year. It was kind of a couple of initial year report. If you could send me that just to feed in, that would be good.
Yeah, I mean, it really was literally a nine-month history of the Board and how many times they've met, how many interviews they did. Our substance would be different, but it's you're really just trying to give and just so you all know, maybe you've never looked at it, the town produces every year an annual report and in it is a compilation of all the annual reports from all the various boards and committees and it's posted on the Select Board webpage left side. There's a tab annual reports and you can look at annual reports going back not on the website it always goes back 15 years or so. It's just town work and it's it's a it's a it's a it's a minimal it's a bylaw requirement. I suspect most towns do it and I've literally gone back and through the state library they haven't gone back to the 1800s. I've had reason and they probably haven't been involved. So anyway, that's just our small part to a 250 page thousand word list. I'll I'll forward you that. I'll I'll take this to everybody to be entertained. I can't wait. So so what's the plan? Do you want to do that first and we'll work from there? I'll send you the one I'm talking about and then we can tweak it from there.
We really we should accommodate put something in but it's not intended to determine a big project. No, no, that's a good question. This is a couple hours in front of the TV just messing around. Yeah, and I know you could just write it but I feel like if there's not an easy one to play with, right? Yeah, and it's sort of right up the alley or this is the intention of it is it cuts off at June 30. So even though other things may have occurred since June 30. Yeah, I suppose you could put it in like Kelly's not, you know, didn't seek reappointment but that was kind of until I won. So that's next year's report. It just depends on how I feed it. It's making sure when you write this you stop. All right, well I'll send that to you. Wouldn't stay around. Well that's from dinner. Your whole report had all this in it. But if you do that, that would be helpful and you get it done before the next meeting. I'll try to send it out before. Ship it out. People just don't really send their comments back. Bring it to the meeting. So good.
Anything else on that? Okay. 750 transcription tools. Same kind of thing. I haven't done the last. I started the last meeting but I haven't done it. I think I'll probably do it tonight.
This we can review it again to see. Although I did notice your last set of meeting minutes was much more comprehensive.
I don't know if you got inspired or anything. I thought you had more content or you guys had a very busy meeting. It varies. I mean again if there I try to just pick substantive items and almost a to-do list. Yeah. And or in some instances I'm trying to hold people's feet to fire that have said certain things so I go out of my way to give a bit more detail. If you read the minutes. I would say I would say I wouldn't be too concerned because on every committee right on minute taker changes right the style sort of change as long as we are hitting the substantive items for sure the votes and substantive discussions but I agree with with Brian sometimes in the next we like to you know make sure we're documenting yeah well or risk you know where accountability for things that we've we've asked you know for I have actually been making a conscious effort for here because I'm now keeping the minutes for the finance committee I'm making a conscious effort to try to shorten them up and you know I think it made some progress I thought they were good it was just a busy meeting or what and I think again the key when people read these is did I miss something that people felt was substantive did I incorrectly state something or attribute something I've tried to begin shying away in both sets of minutes from overly identifying individuals who might have brought up a point and try to deal with the more members discuss this or that but sometimes you have to attribute it to an individual but to Kelly's point yeah I mean if you go online and look at different boards and committees you'll see you can see one page for this committee if someone else was going in it's basically the votes 21 people were taking were doing minutes there are probably 22 different versions of minutes on the yeah that's true probably there's probably 20 minutes they're pretty darn detailed yeah but with that comes the risk of you know is everything yeah accurate and yeah 805 any updates in succession planning by school committee rules nothing that I don't want thanks for me sorry like then we're at 820 review and approved vote on minutes from July 22nd look at me one edit that I identified on page two in the first full paragraph and the fourth line says fiscal 28 to 30 1 should be fiscal 28 to 32 well there not just comments down here oh and just before we go to vote because because I happen to have done it here rarely do I see other sets of minutes where you'll find other than an exhibit that shows a list of materials discussed and distributed rarely do I see anybody else's minutes that might for example have in this case of the bylaw or sometimes what I've been doing is rather than overly descriptive in the text of the minutes where we've been talking about a table of numbers if it's something that I can shrink and still have to be legible I've been attaching it and referring to it it's a way that other committees will actually post their public documents so it's kind of a hybrid way of where it's not obvious from the minutes and it makes it easier to be able to say we discussed what is shown in exhibit B you don't have to , do it but good best practice so I'm going to move that we approve the minutes of July 22nd as edited somebody second second can I second it no you shouldn't second there you go you're going to do roll call vote okay Liz please yes approved yes yes yes John yes minutes are approved thank you very exciting 825 next meeting we said was August 24th perfect yes circle back when Brad is back on the meeting agenda August 24th we moved to Monday sorry did I miss that am I looking at the wrong calendar yeah no no hold up August 19th 19th 19th all right 19th okay yes good on the 19th August 19th is our next meeting yeah problem being on two committees later so motion to adjourn second we are now ended our meeting no no you gotta roll call it oh sorry Liz yes is it not my note no it's not my note it's okay Brian yes Kelly yes John yes we are
Pretty much in-person. Any questions? Public comment? Anyone else online? No. Okay. No public comment. Nice and easy. 640. So discuss capital planning process and timeline, but not limited to the CIP capital improvement plan submission form and questions regarding the form, guidelines, receipt of form for department heads, outstanding capital project status, questions, responses related to comparison of a five-year plan in the annual town meeting warrant versus CIPC's fiscal 27 versus 2031 report. 10 amended April 29th, 2026. Would you have a document to share? Yeah. Why don't you, you gotta just run through the rest of the adjournment. Oh, oh, resolve it. Yeah. You can, you can summarize. 715 discuss proposed town building and working group and visionary group, including CIP improvement. 730 discuss preparation of annual report. 750 use the transcription tool discussion to provide future meeting minutes. 805 succession planning. 820 review and vote minutes. Control July 6th. On 22nd. That got amended. I thought I pretty much knew what it was this morning. I guess I had to go through. 825 setting time of next meeting. 830 adjourn. Now we can start. Which I guess you're going to pay attention to this year.
Okay. 640 discuss capital planning timeline. Is there, I don't know where we left off. So I don't, did, did Brad forward the time? Managers email out to department heads. I have, so I will, um, let me get on. I will forward that. Um, the town manager did send it out. I don't remember exactly when it was, um, but gave a deadline of August 6th, which was this week. Um, yeah, it was August 6th was the deadline, but he, it was sent out. Probably a couple of days after our last meeting. So they were given a couple of weeks.
Um, so he, he offered in that email. Um, if there were any questions on use of the form to reach out to me or to Brad, um, I've only had one reach out and that was from the library. And they were just clarifying that they should work with Michael Faya on their facility request. And I said, yes, should, as it has been in the past. Um, and I said, really, any, any requests you have should be worked with the relevant department. So I gave the example, you have a nice, if you have an IT request, you should work that through, um, the IT director. So that's the only question I've gotten. I don't know if I, um, I didn't see it thus far. Hopefully that's a good sign.
I'm logged in. If you want to send me that. Yeah. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. I'll hang on. And then I'll get that in one second. Um, but the only other thing I had on that topic was I did start to work on, um, building out the code to take everybody's requests and summarize them. So right now they're, they're broken. So I have like a document that I have in each file for each department to summarize their relevant department, right. That's in the file. But I did start to build out an ability to, um, scrape from all of the departmental files into one file and then, and then create a master summary. I just, I hit a snag and, um, haven't gone back to it, but I know how to fix it. It's basically got snagged. It got a, it got snagged where the file names are too long. because I asked it to add to add the first three letters of the department so that tab name so that when I pulled it all into the file you can identify it but the file that the tab name is too long I can't do it so I've just got to have it trim that down and then tweak this summary a little bit so that it summarizes by department and pulls it all together so very cool that should be ready hopefully by the time we start getting these requests you know if the town manager asked them to send that information back to the town manager he asked them to send it directly to us us being the chair let me hear I'm going to get I'm sorry Friday on the 7th this is the deadline at noon send to Brad and to Kelly using the email addresses above and copy the town manager assistant town manager and the finance director electronically by email he let them know that we'll be scheduling meetings starting in August do until we see what we have yeah only that one one one one one one one one yeah I mean I'll double check tomorrow and Friday there anything like my please at 11 at 11 30 on Friday um but hopefully that's yeah I think there's basic information and process they're used to yeah I wouldn't expect much questioning there and i mean 95 of the projects have probably varied over the just realignment yeah there's lots more information yeah i i wouldn't based on the way the email is written by michael i wouldn't be surprised if we get back the same forms with not everything filled out um and that is the way his email written i think it's focused more on adding the next year and adjusting the projects but um i didn't want to i didn't i want to immediately send an email clarifying email i figured like let's because quite honestly i think it's most important we get the projects and then we can um we can follow up if we need to i would say if if you get whomever sends the first set back and you see yeah then obvious issues then you could send out a quick email to everybody saying so if all went according to plan that information is in by this friday correct and by our next meeting which is the 24th of august we're going between those two dates um
submissions be we can your roll up yeah my hope is that i would be able to roll it up
i mean in an ideal world i get to roll it up this weekend um if they're not all here send that out with the yeah send that out to everybody so that yeah
excitingly early yeah and if that were the case then it um it will be up to brad um decide you know whether we're going to use the 24th meeting to try to schedule department heads really some of them in yeah i would say we we try to schedule right based on the order of receipts or if we've got some in um if we're missing i'm assuming we're going to end up being missing some of them so we should just start scheduling with the people we do have just get right back to those people say are you available i mean the alternative is to say out a preemptive email to people saying you know we understand from the town man send it out like tonight or tomorrow we understand how managed email that the information we requested is due this friday for one year uh we anticipate scheduling department head meetings starting with our next meeting on the 24th yeah would you please let us know you know whoever's sending it uh what your availability for that date is just to put them on notice yeah i can send that email how busy are they i mean with the school year starting i mean how busy is september from a little bony typically is it worse than the ulcer i have no choice we're not going to get a report done by october 15th if if we can't yeah i mean that would be the biggest it'd be the biggest problem for christine but um most of i think last year the school's x facilities had two or three you know sort of new requests um again i haven't heard yet and i can reach out to christine in particular after this meeting and just say hey um other than facilities requests michael faye will be putting in are you anticipating other requests in the five-year plan for example she may want to move the million dollars that's in the plan for the msba feasibility work based on their long-term planning process maybe i can you know coax out of her
she would probably be the one that would be the most um if she does operations as well and yeah should be up to her eyeballs with that stuff and there's tremendous pressure being put on her to come up with a primary operating budget forecast for the town's forecasting and you know this this probably is a little further down yeah but again i wouldn't anticipate that there'll be non-facility requests other than these two or three items i'll i'll email her after the meeting
uh outstanding capital projects that is i see an email this attachment opening capital we want to review that i don't know so that's liz's right i think so i think liz the one you sent to prime before you do that glad to share my screen and we can go from there one quick question was before we get into that um kelly where uh i assume you would have told us if any responses came to the questions on the variances that we'd asked we did not get anything so i think before we set up the last meeting john was if that isn't forthcoming i'll be able to answer many of those questions by reviewing the questions that we've asked and i think that's a good way to wrap up the meeting i think that's a good way to wrap up the meeting um i think that's a good way to wrap up the meeting i think that's a good way to wrap up the meeting um i think that's a good way to wrap up the meeting when we're reviewing the cip submissions and we might have some language questions that we could just ask the department make sense okay thanks okay liz
good yup okay um so just give me a show when you can see my screen make this bigger everybody can read it yeah well it's there there. I can't read it, but I'm going to pull it up on my computer. So, I mean, this is the data, so we're not going to spend a lot of time on the data. I would say, I'm assuming this is a canned report. So, Brian, this is the one you had sent me. I think it's supposed to capture everything through the end of June. But again, I'm just assuming this is a standard report that comes out of whatever accounting tool our town uses. Kelsey and I are still not able to connect on this. So, I do have some general questions on what the categories are. So, and I don't know if Kelly or Brian, if you know this, but, you know, approved amount, presumably that's just, and just to treat this as education for a second, but the approved amount is for what the request was in its entirety, I'm assuming. Prior year balance. What I'm not sure is, is this to go, like what's been spent today or what is the residual balance that has not been spent? And then no matter how I take in time. I'm going to tie this. Nothing gets back to the approved amount. So, I would have expected to see this is what we spent. This is a to-go to get you back to the approved amount, but that doesn't. I believe that prior year balance is prior year being June 30, 2025.
And that would be inception today, presumably, not just what was spent in 2025? That would be what's left. That's what's left of the, so the first column is what was appropriate. Appropriated by town meeting. You mean column F? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then the prior year balance is what's left to be expended from the appropriation. So, the difference between those two numbers is what was spent. Yeah. What's been spent today. Cumulatively from inception through June 30 of 2025. Okay. That is helpful.
And then just going along. So, revenue, I'm guessing, is this like ambulance kind of, although it doesn't really tie up to specific ambulance, but what is the revenue column for capital? Do they have revenue that they're using to cover their own requests? I'm looking to see what they are. Hold on. Couldn't say revenue funding or source. Yeah. Well, no. RE fund is the real estate. The real estate fund is enough. Brian? Yes. So, it means they moved, they moved dollars in from the real estate fund. Is that why that's like that? Yeah. I'm not sure. I kind of just ignored that column. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, my interest was what, and I, just before the meeting, I sent out Liz a few and copied the others. Yeah. So, this is taking it from June 30, 2025 to June 30, 2026. That's kind of the timeframe. So, this is just a one-year pop period of performance? Middle four columns are internal accounting related in terms of actual expenses, i.e., cash expenses. Middle four, meaning I through L? No. J. J through M. J through M. So, that activity is interesting, but I kind of ignored it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, even the prior-year balance to column N, which is the 6-30-26 balance, again, that's interesting. Except, what I was really looking for is what progress was made since November 18th of 2025, which is the data that we used to create the tables that were in our . And so, I sent out a spreadsheet just before the meeting that, right with that in mind, says that, yeah. Basically, it has all the same projects you've got listed here, but it shows, instead of prior year balance, it shows the November 18, 2025 unexpended balance, and it compares it to the column N balance, and then I just have a variance, which almost all of them are negatives, or some are no change. But that, to me, that just is kind of, we already went through all this process through November 18, the last year. Well, I mean, I get that you've been doing this forever, and why it's like you understand like the back of your hand, but you are leaving the committee, so I want to make sure I understand it so that, so I understand you don't think that these columns are important because you understand what they are already, but just. We can walk you through what it is. Can you unhighlight them? Because when you did that, I can't, now I can't see them. I can't see what they are. The revenue one is a misprint. No, I know what it is. So, the prior balance, so this is a straight additive, right? Oh, I'm sorry, the prior balance wasn't popular. Prior balance wasn't popular. So, you brought in the funding. So, they brought in the funding. So, in that case of row six, right, there was a zero prior balance. The amount approved was $100,000. So, the revenue is saying, all right, we funded this. This is a project for $100,000. What was the year? Can you scroll over to the left? It was a new one, I think. 25 or 26. Yeah, 26. Is that a fiscal 26? Yeah, fiscal 26. Yeah, correct. That's why that's that way. Right. So, it's a new project. So, that's why those have, and if you look down, I think you'll find that that's mostly what they are, right? 26 projects. Correct. So, you started prior balance plus the revenue minus the expenditures. So, that's, in theory, what was spent during the year, right? It should be. They're just, yeah, yeah. Cash expense. Cash expense. Incumbrances, I can defer to the accountant, but it's an accrual for, we know, so we've spent it, but we haven't paid for it yet. So, we have a contract and we have a little bit more to spend. Right. Like, we've agreed with someone to provide the services. We're under contract, but we haven't paid the bill yet. Correct. Okay. So, from an accounting standpoint, you have to. You have to subtract that out when you're figuring out where you are at June 30 of 26. Okay. You've got to have all the encumbrance come out because it's already, that money is already earmarked, right? So, if you were to take column I plus column J minus K minus L, and you don't know what column M is, do you, Frank? No. You go down to the $130,000 item and scroll to the left. Is that a write-off? For the description. Is that a write-off? Yeah.
Maintenance? Field maintenance?
No, I'm sorry. I was looking down. If you go back over to column M, Chad's software, let's see.
So, if you go down to line 11, yeah, scroll that road, scroll to the left so I can see the description of it. Software safety records? Yes. I think he, I think this is. Yeah, it started at $140,000. Yeah, I mean, it's possible that could be where he reflected closed out projects, maybe. Yeah, based on what some of them are, Bernie. But the amount of the closed out. The amounts are either what the balance is or within a dollar. Yeah, or he left a little bit. Yeah, Mike, yeah, if he knew there was a bill coming in. So, you know how he had capital closeouts that he used to fund some projects? See, that's what I think that column is. So, that's a subtract. Yeah. So, it's. And just, I do plan to ask Kelsey all these questions as well. Funding and then take away. Funding and then spend. Right? So, that brings you to where you are, June 30th, right, of 26 from a financial standpoint. So, what form is, I assume column N has a formula in it? I think these are all just hard-coded numbers. Okay, back to what Kelly's saying, Ben. It's, the formula would be column I plus J. Minus K, minus L, and plus or minus, it's minus, it's minus column M, and hopefully that math looks like a formula. And then if you go back to that with this formula in column N, do they have the formula here? Yeah, I plus J, K, L, M, M. Yeah, okay, so, but, but again, this is a full year picture. Now, the fact is, if we're going to use. Back to, to the point was before we were talking about, if, if we're going to use these June 30th, 26 numbers as the basis for whatever it is we end up putting in this report. Yeah. Then this time next year, presumably you'll be doing a full fiscal year. Yeah. And you'll be looking at the same chart. Yeah. You're saying because we showed 11, because we showed as of November last year, we've got to do a partial. We don't have to, but it just. Yeah, it would be, it would logically, it would make a little more sense just to say, since our last, since our first report. Yeah.
And it just depends what, what's going to show up on the tables. Yeah. But the other, but what this also, and this is the same last year, what this doesn't show you, on any of these line items is, okay, so we have a bunch of balances, a lot of expended appropriation. So, it's a bunch of variables and, you know, these are all there. But that's not the important part of, of having the sort of, of vegan and organic, organic promotions, and that's the sort of thing that we should be thinking about. So, we've got to be thinking about, what do we need to do to put all of these things together? And do we need to be thinking about some certain things that are, that are, that are, that are, you know, back to the, back to the roots of of being a residential, you know, a residential, you know, residential property. Do we need to be thinking about some sort of having a private property that's not going to be tacos. Yeah. Or are there, you know, some sort of projects on here from like we'll just say 2020 that's six years if i have to get six separate reports to then tally it all up just seems like there's got to be something that you know in the accounting tool that can say yeah this is what was approved and this is what we spent today versus uh here's yours it's there you just take you take column f minus column i right sorry column f minus column i'm sorry column f minus column n you could add a column if you want to get cumulative cumulative spent or encumbered okay and that's the to-go balance still right this is just yeah okay and n is what's left so f minus n is what was spent cumulatively and so you know you could put um you could add a column you could add a column to the right of the column and just put you know percentage yeah and divide and by yeah what's left the appropriation um now tell you percentage-wise what's left yeah well that is helpful i mean i made some assumptions when i was pulling together pivot tables about what it could be they weren't the right assumptions um so some of this you know last year what was spent today versus um you know the to go those are incorrect um but the idea was is you know with this information was to go. And I know, Brian, you had the reports that you sent out or the ones that went in the warrant. And I think with a little bit of clarity on some tasks or I should say projects that don't have a fiscal year assigned to them, or at least not in this report, should be easy to create. Yeah, so you would know what they, you use last year's file from Brian. It's got the fiscal year assigned to everything. Well, so I do have a question because we have like a 2014 report in here that wasn't in your file. Presumably, I guess that was one of my outstanding questions. Like what happened to 2014's 30K to go? The conservation project you mean? Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, there may have been one that I just dropped. Yeah, conservation. I may have dropped it just because if it doesn't show up in the table, it was such an outlier that I may have dropped it from the table. Is it because there was only $700 left and it was, yeah, only $700 left and it would have made the table another. Yeah, so I think that was the only one I may have dropped. Yeah, there were a couple of two or three new items that I don't know really the background on them. Appeared, but they may have been part of the fiscal.
It's possible he brought in one or two fiscal 27 items. I thought he told me he didn't typically didn't typically show up in Munis until July 1. Okay. Next fiscal year. But again, just by frame of reference, when you look at what I sent out, I took I took your data. Brian Kevin, these data, I brought it over to my table from my spreadsheet from last year, and it didn't line up perfectly. So I had to go through and you'll see, you know, a bunch of items in the June 30, 26 columns that have no associated item in the left column. And almost all of those basically have insignificant balances. That's because I hit those I hit those rows in last year's worksheets, just because, again, I could have just deleted them. But I know that Brian typically doesn't get rid of that stuff. And so I ended up aligning everything. So I knew that all the items that were in last year's report I can could account for in your report. And then there's extra extra line items. And those are the ones that, you know, either have minimal balance or again, there's three or four that. Have a substantive balance that we just need to find out where they came from. So going back to your comment about 2014 conservation, and there was only a balance of 700, so you didn't include it. Are there any other is there like a limit then like anything less than 1000? We don't show. No, I think that was the only one just because it was the I won't swear to it, but I think because it it was 2014 and then the next oldest appropriation that was still showing up was the number of years after that, wasn't it? No, I think it was 2015. Because I had another. Let me pull up your 2015 16. Well, in here, it's 16. But I think in the warrant doc, there was some $15, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's looking at your chart comparison, everything, everything that was missing is a couple of dollars or yeah. And I don't I don't have our report handy. But again, whatever is in that table, but what I just sent out today, did I have the conservation item? So we did have. It's my fault. I may have I may have added it to one of the other columns. I can't remember. I think so. The blocks that are in red are what we was included in the warrant.
And I just assumed to be something to go back and look at, but like the 2015 dollars and I don't know if that's conservation, to be honest with you, since it's close number, but I just assumed it was to go back and verify that it got closed out within, you know, the past year and that's why I wasn't showing up. Yeah.
But the answer is I other than hiding a bunch of rows that were actually in my workbook, which is hidden, that had next to no balance or zero balance, I was able to line up and what I sent out late today, all the items that otherwise come up to what are in these various tables you have up on the screen. I mean, it was just one line, say, for things less than $1,000 and just give one line. We had to move on to the account. Accountants generally in the type it was down to the pen, but that's you're doing a lot of audited financials and you can deal with the reality. But I just find. If you start doing that, sometimes it makes it harder to make sure you've caught everything. You know, it's easier just. Right. You're cutting them off and closing them. No, I think through this process, that ultimately should be one of our recommendations, which is if I notice the 30 or 40 line items that we need you to clean up and get those in them. So and that was kind of the thought with this report is I wanted to see what was outstanding in my mind, anything beyond seven years really should be done at this point or being closed out or what's the story there? So maybe. That's part of the question. The other thing was and I kind of did $1,000 threshold. So and maybe, you know, my calcs, I have to go back and check them just because now that I know what the balances were for, I got to make sure that that math ties. But the idea was anything were less than $1,000 was spent within the past year. It seems like there's no activity there and should it get closed out? I think that's another place to ask questions. I mean, some of this, if people are spending money, they're working the projects, then peace, OK, they're they're doing. Exactly what they need to be doing. But again, for the things that are sitting idle, that was a place where I thought we could focus.
You know, especially if things were old and not moving, so. Yeah, my only comment that was that I don't disagree with you, but for what we have to do and our focus, I think this was the case last year and one of our disclosures was the top, you know, five projects, whatever it with the largest on expended balance that were more than
that weren't in the last two fiscal year. So we kind of got the point that what was approved in the last two town meetings likely either hadn't started or wasn't very far along. So we then did a little disclosure said of all the other fiscal years, what are the top, you know, five or eight projects? And if you add up those dollars of those five or eight projects and you compare it to the. Outstanding amount of all the other projects it took represented like, I forget, 80% or something. And so, you know, spending any time of any significance. Beyond that, even though they are old projects and I would agree it shouldn't be there at some point, just didn't seem to me like a particularly good use of. They're not all old. I mean, this one's from 24, this one's from 25, another 24. So there's some more recent ones with small balance. But I mean, we also talked about, you know, having conversations where why, you know, maybe we should reconsider giving for folks more capital if they're not spending on their current projects. So are there trends there? And this was a way of slicing the data to see if there's any trends we should be, you know, bringing up when we have conversations with the committees or the departments.
Yeah, and we may find, I mean, that's a good question. The department is, you know, out of curiosity, if we assume. X percent of these projects that are older and don't have that large of a balance on expended, is there a reason why you keep them around? And there may be a legitimate, you know, reason. Maybe there's a hold back on a contract, for example, and or, you know,
they might think they can use it for the latest and greatest version of something, depending on how it was described when it was appropriate. You know, I don't know, but I think that would be a good question for all of the department managers, which would then help bolster recommending to Brian Keveny that from an accounting perspective, and the question is, who controls the write off? Do the department managers have to give their OK before the accounting group can basically say this is a closeout and we're taking the money back? So understanding that process would be helpful. I think on the good news front, it looks like, as I think Michael Fay, anyway, advertised, it looks like continued progress was made, whether it's between June to June or November 18th to June 30, 26. It looks like they were continuing to make headway and at least spending money. And, you know, and then the question is, you know, is the town manager's office,
you know, keeping track some way of the actual status of the project, not from a financial perspective, but OK, this one's done or this one's done, except they're waiting for X.
You know, to me, that's that should be a town staff function, which hopefully is tracked in a way that the CIPC could then, you know, just access the information. Yeah. And not have to bug people about it. That's some weird. Maybe we figured out this out last year, but why are there negative prior balances, prior balances?
There were. Right. And again, Brian Kennedy did say to me that although generally is the case with the newer projects, that sometimes if he hasn't floated bonds, he hasn't brought the debt in. And if they've started spending down the appropriation, which again, I'm never quite sure how I know how they can do it. Last year, because they got they got approval from the select board to use general fund funds prior to floating the debt. And so if they're spending down, but he hasn't posted up either the transfer from the general fund or hasn't posted up the debt, it'll show a negative balance, meaning we've outspent our program. You shouldn't see a negative that's created by someone overspending. What was appropriate? No, no. And I can see where like row 167, which is the water project, the water FY 25 water main design and construction. The the approved amount was 1.2. Prior year balance was is a negative 1.1. Says to me they had started spending, but then somehow the revenue is 2.4.
And extended another 1.2. So is that maybe grant funding?
Yeah, I think we should add the same. We had this question last year. I mean, I started to think we should. You know, each one of those items that might be negative might have a different answer, different story. And, you know, some of them he had to go back and post up what was debt funded. Um. To the extent we were trying to use this. These figures for assessing where where was the project in its timeline. And again, he alerted me that he hadn't necessarily done that with the data that he sent. Yeah, I mean, the negatives all got funding. But yeah, it's just some of them got. Actually, quite a few of them got more. Funding than the approved amount. And strangely, they look like they're in several cases, double. The approved amount. As for the veracity of the data, that's yeah, that's something we have to identify. Yeah, I think we got items that we need to ask the finance director about.
You know, we're not going to get all the data out there. And that's something that we should be in. I don't know if we're going to be able to find that. I don't know, we're looking for some kind of new data to sort of. We're not going to get any data out there. I don't know what the future looks like. But we're going to be able to get it out there. So, yeah, we're. We're doing that. And we're going to do that. And we're going to do that. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. So, you know, once you go back and. You know, make the changes you're going to make. Based on our discussion tonight to your workbook, we could. um have negative balances yeah i can set a separate tab for all the negative balances that are identified for prior balances and then and just send a copy of your workbook to the finance director and say hey please tell us what gives here and i'm sure what we'll get is a revised version of this original data with an explanation most of which will be debt related but not necessarily in all cases but i'm pretty positive that everybody in the town knows that they can't spend more than on a line item can't spend more than they were appropriate and sometimes what i think we found last year also sometimes the accounting department may not have enough information when they code the entries to you know so they might get information from the water department they might they might book that in the accounting system to the wrong project right and so it makes it appear like you know they spent a million dollars but they were only appropriate 500 000 it may appear they overspent and then when brian sees that says oh obviously we booked it to the wrong account and they'll reverse that entry yeah i think there might be some reversal entries here yeah so so i think what happened last year we we also got some data like you sent this year i scrubbed it had a bunch of questions before you guys ever saw it he redid it those line items that didn't seem to make sense so that by the time you guys saw it i think it had been scrubbed this year i just i mean fixed in the system or he just in the accounting system yeah okay yeah yeah this is kind of getting into the weeds but how often do they update the status for either spend or i mean that something that happens monthly with the departments or is it quarterly yeah i would assume every time they need a check to go out the door they have to ask for the check that triggers an accounting uh entry in the system and the offsets of the check going out the door and taking it out of the cash account is to reduce the amount of unspent appropriation yeah but again if somebody either codes it you know you see all those numbers on the left if somebody holds it off one digit or whatever or they don't code it and someone in the accounting department says well i gotta put something in here to get the check triggered um so yeah i mean and and typically once the books close you know this is a little premature for brian to give me the june 30 numbers when he did right because typically when they're closing the books it's mid july to late july at that point you know he's uncovered a bunch of different things yeah and uh you know i bet if i said can you resend me your june 30 munis report for the unix open capital i would bet some of these things have probably already been corrected so um why don't i request that from him tomorrow just as a starter and i'll just i'll take his data and i'll put it against the first set of davis and just see if there are any variances i think that probably makes sense just not to waste time asking him questions if he's already gone through that process yeah okay and i'll send that to you once i get it okay brian you said the books closed was it july what's the day july june 30 is the end of the fiscal year and then they they keep the books open for a couple weeks for cleanup hopefully clean up most of what they need to clean up okay and then it should be done fully baked by what mid july i'm assuming yeah they're both by mid july or so okay like a two-week buffer yeah and then you know inevitably then they start preparing all the way for the audit auditors to come in and so it's not impossible as they're doing that they they find other things that require sort of don't get booked in last year's fiscal year they roll them into the beginning balances but anyway that's into the weeds um all right i'll get him to send me that and um won't ask a bunch of questions yet and uh see if he dealt with some of these items sorry john say that again i'm just gonna see if there's anything else on this topic but yeah i think we should add in um even though this date is as of june 30th no reason why we can't make it as of july 1 and add in the fiscal 27 projects i think we should add in um the projects that were approved at uh annal town meeting none of which should have spent any money if they're as of july 1. um so is that you could either do that manually to your um the source data that you're then using for all your pivot tables which would be uh you know grabbing your warrant and just typing them in uh the alternative is brian probably hasn't loaded up already so yeah if he's got them loaded i'd rather have the unique identifier that are tacked on so that way so if you don't if you guys don't care if you i mean if you're keen to keep june 30 as the date you want to tie into then they wouldn't typically appear if and he can run this like last year ran it november 18th he ran it several times along the way if it's like a but i mean it's only 181 lines so it's not huge um it's not like you know a report that's going to take overnight to run but i would imagine if he's already entered them or if they somehow july 1st then i'll just tack them on to yeah because they're going to come with more information including the approved amount you know the description whatever i added i think the unique id which i think are all unique ids maybe maybe not uh but there's going to be a series of other information that comes with that would be helpful if it's just you know exported and then it completely syncs up with whatever's in the accounting tool okay i'll just whenever davey grabs it as a once he grabbed it he can't go backwards um right which is again what we found last go around um because the account system keeps it just keeps going right so uh whenever he sends me i'll do a quick side by side to see what variances pop out of that and then that can form the basis for any further questions that we have for him um and then uh and then the i think it just depends on whether we really think we're going to get anything in the next two three weeks because we have to at some point start in earnest drafting a report um uh as to whether the town manager's office is going to have any further color or i think what we agreed at the last meeting was we would take this information and at least agree amongst ourselves um you know which are the most important that we want to understand and we want to understand and we want to understand and we just ask the department heads but i think we we didn't want to send that out before they sent in their cip forms yeah we do at the last meeting so and to that point um i mean i kind of talked about what i thought would be concerning things that haven't showed any progress or minimal progress over the past year things that are just largely outstanding but i guess other folks in the room what else would we want to kind of poke at i mean is it just maybe like like i just i just just heard kicks right looked at the percentage spent percentage of the balance versus yeah versus the original appropriation at the beginning and the end of the year and look at the difference like how much could it move right and so there's a lot of projects there was good progress on a lot of projects that were significant right 40 50 97 percent movement but i think it's a lot of projects and an interesting thing about that was that just before we were able to come out i just they they 숨ed that paying for it and the fact that they moved you know in 10 years and they've been you know successfully independent you know there's the voluntomies and most so you've been able to live the olabilir development that you spent their 50 50 60 years to tell me when did the integration began just pick the ones like that were less than 10 right that didn't move that much um less than 10 percent and that gave me you know 80 projects you know i would do some of those are and the thing is most of those those are not 20 26 projects right they're 18 19 20 like they just haven't moved much 5 time and so there might be a comparison variable so their lunch positive person there of these are the ones that are smaller than 10 and 20 plans their 18 19 what that means are coming out that is sort of our ownET Ehler hefty regimen any these are the ones that are small like you said brian you excluded me like these are small they haven't moved much because there's not much there to move um so if you pick the ones that are a material balance right that have bigger numbers
yeah those are the ones we should ask set a question down and set a dollar threshold right and then just say and oh by the way there's another 50 projects that really haven't moved much in the past year can you tell us kind of why that would be and if they have legitimate reasons why they hold on to the money that would be great but again i don't think we're going to have the time to get down into thousand dollar balances with these i agree it's just the person where the where the money is but you know there's like i t probably had last year they updated it we know they had you know four-year-old appropriations because of the switch in the i.t director and one or two of those got closed out even though the project still needs to get done um those would be the kind of things that you know i think we would be interested in yeah there's a couple still here like i just did less than ten percent movement and bigger than a hundred thousand dollar balance and the fy23 network and wireless replacements on there the district wide core network is on there um and we already know the answer we already know the answers which we discussed those yeah
but uh yeah so do we want to leave it to liz to liz do you feel comfortable doing what kelly's doing which is yeah well what i captured was less than uh you know more than 100k balance to go and then less than 10 percent movement in the past yeah and it doesn't have to be that effort but like when you look at it like picking off the the like okay the ones that stick out that haven't moved that have significant balances but like for example one of those is this the council on aging building right that was an 11 million dollar spend that's got 100 and something left i'm not questioning that because that building just opened and it probably needs to retain right something that's not a big deal as a percent of the overall project but that's so it becomes a little bit of a judgment judgment based
but again looking forward to our report if if we if we choose to go with the same amount of disclosure in kind of the same verbiage and kind of the same tables um maybe that's a way to please kind of bring focus on those items that we're ultimately thinking that we will we think are important enough to you know right now so brett sorry are you asking me to recreate the tables from the warrant not the warrant in in our report through the town manager yeah the same the tables that were in yeah you show those tables you show those tables before you put up they were in red boxes yeah these tables yeah that's not the warrant those were tables that we used in our report sorry yes yes let's see yeah so my point is if if at least the majority of the cfdc is comfortable that that was useful information and not the right information. And the verbiage that kind of goes along with it will be dependent on the handful of projects that we identified. Then my view would be Yeah, if, as soon as we know the data is good, or as good as it's going to get, then sort of working on getting these tables put together. So we could just plug them into the report, I think would be kind of well spent. Yeah, I still think the way I was very happy with that section of the report, right, the only thing we lacked, in my opinion, was knowing why right, certain things were were held up. But I think the data piece of this, like for what we're presenting to the town was helpful, as is. So we may we if we don't get it from the town manager's office, we may get it from the department heads. So we might have an extra parent. Right. So I think just because we're in a crunch report, you know, again, there's no magic to creating these intentions to create with the data we have the exception of 27 not being added. And once we get Brian's updates, it's at least get a version of this for the next year or so. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. It's not the exact per se. But yeah, yeah. I agree. I mean, the only thing we may want to look at that we didn't look at before is the year over year comparison of what you know, like some narrative of where these are. Yeah, I would say 2017 got really cleaned up. Yeah. Primary goal, right? First objective is to be able to have updated tables for our report. Secondary objective is what in here? Yeah, I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. I think that's a great point. Question, right? Dig a little bit deeper on why is that standing? We're going to put that together, that list together when we talk to the department managers. To the extent there are germane answers, right, that we think are relevant to share, we'll add that as a narrative.
And then remember, we have a recommendation section on our last year. We We had a recommendation for ourselves. That had a recommendation on the... I'm thinking like the Finance Committee's report that goes in the warrant. At the end of it, it has correct names. So one thing we might do, if we're seeing the same things, which we are, as last year, maybe we add another small paragraph that says our second time through this, we think our staff should do... X number of projects with very small balances that should be reviewed and potentially written off, something like that. Yeah, I agree. So just add a little bit more than what we were able to do last year.
So is that something, Liz, you think you'll be able to... And I think in terms of timing, that we probably should hope to have that by early September-ish. So, I mean, I can recreate these reports. In terms of tweaking what we want to see, then, I mean, that's something I think we're just going to do real time. I mean, we discussed... I have some ideas... Not idea. Based off of our conversations today, I know how I'd want to change some of the information or some of the pivots to show that granularity that we're looking for. Brian, I might reach out to you as I'm going through this just to understand some of the specifics. And I'll point to... This is one that came up, but... You know, is this supposed to be the number of projects that is represented in this set of data? And if it is... And if I heard you right, if we're showing what was in June, the June 30th file, there shouldn't be much of a disconnect there, but that's like... There's 181 projects in the June file, but this is only showing 141. Is that really... There's 40 projects that we didn't include? I might understand. And again, we can take this offline. Just... Yeah, there's a good number of them. When you look at the spreadsheet I sent out before this meeting, you'd have to count them up. But there's a good number that I ended up... There's a lot of $1, $2 balance projects that aren't really projects right there. I don't know why we couldn't balance, you know, closing, but... Yeah. So, you know, in what I sent you or what you have... Do we care if we add them? I'm just saying, if I'm going to do a pivot table off of the data, it's going to bring them in anyway. I think it distorts... It distorts the picture. Yeah. Because it makes it seem like there's 40 more projects that are open when they're really not. I mean, they technically are. Okay. So this gets back... This gets back to what is that cutoff where we're not including projects? Is it less than $10,000? Is it less than... Because I'll put a calculation in there so it just excludes it. I think I only got rid of things that literally were, you know, less than $1, $1 to $10, somewhere in that range. I'd have to look... I'm taking a look right now just to see how many... If I look at the prior year, which is not a perfect representation because Brian had an 11. Yeah, quite specific. But it's... There are 36 projects that are open that the prior year balance is $0 or $1. Yeah. So I'm sure we can reconcile it, Liz, but, you know... Oh, wait. Those are all... Sure. Those are all new projects. I take that back. Yeah, I'm sure we can reconcile it. So that's what I mean. If I go through this and if there's something that's not obvious, then I might reach out separately just to say, okay, what was the logic behind, you know, how you excluded or included things? Yeah, and I think if you... Again, if I sent you the version, the last version I did in November was version 5, which you have open on us in here, right? Yeah, yep, that's D5. Yeah, if you... Well, I don't want to do it now, but after the meeting, if you go back and look at the tabs where I pulled the data that's rolling up to these tables, somewhere along the way, if you go off to the left and you unhide the rows, you'll likely see a bunch of other projects come up that have zero balances or... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Minimal balance. And you should be able to see that a lot of those are also appearing in what you have. Looking at your sheets, you remove stuff that's like a dollar or less. I mean, it could be $2. And you get there... It's super small. The other way to get there is what I sent out before the meeting. I think that's most of the... That's what I'm looking at. Yeah. Yeah. So let's... Let me just say less than five bucks when we remove it. Yeah. Just keep it for the call here.
And that number may turn out... Let's see. You know, if they... Because I agree with you. All things being equal, if the table last year showed whatever it showed, 130, and granted, we'd be including fiscal 27, so that'll have X number of projects. But if you took the total plus fiscal 27 projects, in theory, that should equal what was in last year's report. Yeah. I would prefer that. I would prefer that be the case, which means just get rid of the ones that I got rid of last year. But it doesn't have to be that way. Just... Then you can... You just have to explain it to somebody. I think we'll just start with less than five bucks here, which takes us... The tables will tell us how much it is. Yeah. Keep it simple so we're not tiring back constantly. Yep. Okay. Anything else? Very helpful, this topic.
Thanks, Liz. All right. All right. Back over to you guys. Okay. The next topic is... Let's pivot. Yeah. So, it's terrible fun.
Discuss proposed town building working group and visionary group, including if we have any involvement. I don't know if there's any updates. I saw there was a... We should meet to discuss it, but that's the last I saw. That email from Carol? Yeah. Yeah. That was the last I saw. I haven't heard anything since her email. Yeah.
Okay. We're at 7.30. Discuss preparation of annual report. We talked about these tables once we get the updated data set. No, it's actually a different annual report. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. So, there's a requirement that all committees have to create an annual report and you were making... We already did that, but there's some additional requirements typically around basically making it shorter. I think it counts. It's going to be probably a half a page. A thousand words, right? Or make something like that. Just a summary. So, of our activity over the fiscal year ending June 30, 2026. So, from our... Ours would be inception in September of 25 to June 30, 2026. Yeah. So, somebody has to write that for our committee and then their committee has to review it and approve it. Yes. And it has to be done in the format... By September or something. By September or something in the format since... I think it was sent to Brad. Well, it was sent to me first and then I forwarded it to Brad. I don't think they're too picky on the format. I've written several of them in the past for the Finance Committee and for the... Yeah. They give a template. ...portal housing price. So, it's just a question if we need a volunteer to A, understand what this is and B, write it so that the committee can review it ideally at the next meeting.
So, as always, I know I could do it. It would go on and you all work and I'm happy to do it but if someone else wants to have the pleasure, I don't want to deny anybody that pleasure. I do not want the pleasure. I do think you could attempt the first attempt. This is what I'm going to do. Just take the minutes and tell AI you want a thousand words. Summarize this in a thousand words and we'll see what it comes up with. I'm happy to do that if you want to do a manual version. We can compare it out if you're so excited by it. I found one that the Finance Committee Appointing Board did in their first year. It was kind of a couple of initial year report. If you could send me that just to feed in, that would be good.
Yeah, I mean, it really was literally a nine-month history of the Board and how many times they've met, how many interviews they did. Our substance would be different, but it's you're really just trying to give and just so you all know, maybe you've never looked at it, the town produces every year an annual report and in it is a compilation of all the annual reports from all the various boards and committees and it's posted on the Select Board webpage left side. There's a tab annual reports and you can look at annual reports going back not on the website it always goes back 15 years or so. It's just town work and it's it's a it's a it's a it's a minimal it's a bylaw requirement. I suspect most towns do it and I've literally gone back and through the state library they haven't gone back to the 1800s. I've had reason and they probably haven't been involved. So anyway, that's just our small part to a 250 page thousand word list. I'll I'll forward you that. I'll I'll take this to everybody to be entertained. I can't wait. So so what's the plan? Do you want to do that first and we'll work from there? I'll send you the one I'm talking about and then we can tweak it from there.
We really we should accommodate put something in but it's not intended to determine a big project. No, no, that's a good question. This is a couple hours in front of the TV just messing around. Yeah, and I know you could just write it but I feel like if there's not an easy one to play with, right? Yeah, and it's sort of right up the alley or this is the intention of it is it cuts off at June 30. So even though other things may have occurred since June 30. Yeah, I suppose you could put it in like Kelly's not, you know, didn't seek reappointment but that was kind of until I won. So that's next year's report. It just depends on how I feed it. It's making sure when you write this you stop. All right, well I'll send that to you. Wouldn't stay around. Well that's from dinner. Your whole report had all this in it. But if you do that, that would be helpful and you get it done before the next meeting. I'll try to send it out before. Ship it out. People just don't really send their comments back. Bring it to the meeting. So good.
Anything else on that? Okay. 750 transcription tools. Same kind of thing. I haven't done the last. I started the last meeting but I haven't done it. I think I'll probably do it tonight.
This we can review it again to see. Although I did notice your last set of meeting minutes was much more comprehensive.
I don't know if you got inspired or anything. I thought you had more content or you guys had a very busy meeting. It varies. I mean again if there I try to just pick substantive items and almost a to-do list. Yeah. And or in some instances I'm trying to hold people's feet to fire that have said certain things so I go out of my way to give a bit more detail. If you read the minutes. I would say I would say I wouldn't be too concerned because on every committee right on minute taker changes right the style sort of change as long as we are hitting the substantive items for sure the votes and substantive discussions but I agree with with Brian sometimes in the next we like to you know make sure we're documenting yeah well or risk you know where accountability for things that we've we've asked you know for I have actually been making a conscious effort for here because I'm now keeping the minutes for the finance committee I'm making a conscious effort to try to shorten them up and you know I think it made some progress I thought they were good it was just a busy meeting or what and I think again the key when people read these is did I miss something that people felt was substantive did I incorrectly state something or attribute something I've tried to begin shying away in both sets of minutes from overly identifying individuals who might have brought up a point and try to deal with the more members discuss this or that but sometimes you have to attribute it to an individual but to Kelly's point yeah I mean if you go online and look at different boards and committees you'll see you can see one page for this committee if someone else was going in it's basically the votes 21 people were taking were doing minutes there are probably 22 different versions of minutes on the yeah that's true probably there's probably 20 minutes they're pretty darn detailed yeah but with that comes the risk of you know is everything yeah accurate and yeah 805 any updates in succession planning by school committee rules nothing that I don't want thanks for me sorry like then we're at 820 review and approved vote on minutes from July 22nd look at me one edit that I identified on page two in the first full paragraph and the fourth line says fiscal 28 to 30 1 should be fiscal 28 to 32 well there not just comments down here oh and just before we go to vote because because I happen to have done it here rarely do I see other sets of minutes where you'll find other than an exhibit that shows a list of materials discussed and distributed rarely do I see anybody else's minutes that might for example have in this case of the bylaw or sometimes what I've been doing is rather than overly descriptive in the text of the minutes where we've been talking about a table of numbers if it's something that I can shrink and still have to be legible I've been attaching it and referring to it it's a way that other committees will actually post their public documents so it's kind of a hybrid way of where it's not obvious from the minutes and it makes it easier to be able to say we discussed what is shown in exhibit B you don't have to , do it but good best practice so I'm going to move that we approve the minutes of July 22nd as edited somebody second second can I second it no you shouldn't second there you go you're going to do roll call vote okay Liz please yes approved yes yes yes John yes minutes are approved thank you very exciting 825 next meeting we said was August 24th perfect yes circle back when Brad is back on the meeting agenda August 24th we moved to Monday sorry did I miss that am I looking at the wrong calendar yeah no no hold up August 19th 19th 19th all right 19th okay yes good on the 19th August 19th is our next meeting yeah problem being on two committees later so motion to adjourn second we are now ended our meeting no no you gotta roll call it oh sorry Liz yes is it not my note no it's not my note it's okay Brian yes Kelly yes John yes we are