February 10, 2026 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript
February 10, 2026 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee
Yeah. I'm calling to order the meeting of the Capital Improvement Planning Committee. It is 6 p.m. and we are in the former council on aging room at the Whaley Town building. This meeting is hybrid, although all members are here in person.
So I'll go ahead and read the disclosure anyway. This meeting may be recorded, and if recorded, it will be made available to the public on WICAM as soon as possible after the meeting.
Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with the political law.
You may watch or participate remotely with the meeting link found on the town's website or even from here in person. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in the meeting may do so at the meeting location in person or via the Zoom link. This public comment should be limited to two minutes per person.
So we're going to go members in attendance. We have myself, Kelly, we have John, Brian, and Brad. As I said, Liz was not able to join us tonight. She just let me know that. And then, yeah. So agenda, 6 p.m. is call to order, review, agenda for public announcements. I do not have any announcements. 6.05 is public comment, members' response. 6.10 is review, continued review of the FY 2027 requests that were recommended for inclusion in the FY 27 capital budget, as well as FY 28 through 31 departmental requests that determine whether to include FY 28 through FY 31 capital plan, including funding sources. 7.40, discuss and vote addendums, if any, to the committee's report to the town manager. This is really addendums to add FY 28 through FY 31. 8.45, review and vote to approve minutes of February 4th. 8.55, topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair prior to posting, if any, and setting time of next meetings, 9 p.m. adjourned. Do we have any attendees other than Rakeem? No. It's just Rakeem? All right. So no follow-up comment. All right. So Rakeem announcements. And since we are all clear in person, we don't need to do a roll call vote. All right. So earlier today, I sent you a draft, well, not really, but an addendum to the original report, which was really just the tables that I added for really adding FY 28 to 31, but I did keep 27 in there because I think it's good to see the year over year and it's consistent with prior FinCon reports. I did just add one more table and sent it to you, which was a debt table. I'm not settled there yet, but I would like to go over it and kind of what we want to do there, if anything. So a couple, we can, we'll get to the report next, but I think the thing I wanted to cover first might be best summarized in the report. And that is looking at the things that were either timing unknown or not placed, which was tables 13 and 14 in the report. And if you join, I suppose, during the Zoom and put it up on screen as well in a minute here. I just want to talk through each of those projects since they were relatively short lists for a couple things. One, right, does it, does it need to be called up differently? And so I'll use the example of the redundant fields project, right? I don't want to necessarily put that on a not placed list. I want to pull it out and say, we determined this project, right, is redundant. On some of the others that weren't placed, I think it's worth a discussion of, particularly given some of the smaller ones, if they should be fit in somewhere, and also, in some cases, I don't have a problem, personally, with 2031 projects that didn't make it in, that are going to ultimately end up probably in 2032. But some of the earlier ones, I just want to make sure we go after them one by one and say, is that really, based on what we heard last week, what we intend to do? So, why don't we start with the Timing Unknown lists? Let me, you guys can start discussion. I think you all have it, and I'm going to pull it up on screen while we're talking. Just for everybody's benefit, I sent out a version 16 of the Excel spreadsheet a few hours ago. So, as I, after reviewing what you sent out, I realized that I had a couple of formula issues.
Which is what I was going to tell you when I stopped before. There was one minor item that I had flagged for myself anyway. But, so 16 is now consistent with what's in your tables.
You guys can go ahead and start discussion. And I would say, which I think I said in the email when I sent out version 15, which was picking up our discussion from our last meeting, I did take the liberty of populating, particularly in 2031,
putting in maybes and, we'll say maybes and funding sources. So, not every item has been discussed. Yeah, I know. There are people I'm going to give an opportunity to look at something differently, particularly the maybes. Yeah, and for purposes of the tables, I did not include the maybes in the tables in the year they were maybes for. They're in most cases in the next year. But we can talk about whether there's a couple. Chat about, when we get to it, I want to chat about kind of what we did for 27, where we flagged a couple of what we felt were highest priorities of the maybes. Yeah. Such that if there was extra resources that we were recommending to the town manager that public safety HVAC and the elementary school HVAC would be the next two up, in our opinion. But we haven't really done that in 28 through 31. So, I don't know if that's something that you and the other folks here want to do or not do. Yeah, personally, I thought about it and decided I didn't think it was an effort worth going through, given that town manager and VINCOM are going to change FY27, which is going to then cascade. So, I thought it was good that we did it for 27, but I don't know that I want to add too many more of those in the out years. And I also think it's most important for the first year, because that's the, even from our discussions with the department managers, that's what they're most focused on, the timing of. I'd agree. Yeah, I mean, we've run a mark in this medium, so they're already where they're going to sit. There are no. So, you know, the priorities will change in a year. I don't think there's any value in us saying you're next. You're either in the list or not from that standpoint. So, I'd agree. I'd agree. So, I'd like to do it. Yep. Well, one last thing to do. Yeah, so I know you're pulling up table 13. I mean, the only thing that jumps up to me,
and I know you talked through this, so it's not, this is just the table that refers to it, but like for the field, they're requesting it for 27, but it was originally requested for 29, right? That's the only thing that comes. Yeah, I have, that was the one that I've most wanted to talk about because I feel like leaving it off entirely doesn't make sense. Potentially, we can talk about it. I understand why we didn't put it in 27, even though it was moved from 29 to 27, but I'm having a harder time with like, it's not in the plan at all. And the question is, where does it fit? And then, is it, and this goes to something you said, Brian, last week, which is, I don't know that I think it fits in levy. It's also below policy for excluded, but is there a combination of school projects, right, that makes sense to have be excluded, given the constraints of Prop 2.5?
I don't feel like what we did with the septic is the wrong decision. I can understand other opinions about, hey, we just moved DPW to excluded debt. Why are we adding new debt? But, you know, Michael said it last week, too. If we're going to have policies, and then the first thing we're going to do is not follow them, then I don't know why we have policies. So, that's the one I want to consider where it might go. Yeah, I mean, I don't know why we wouldn't leave it in 29, personally, just because that's where it was. And this has essentially become a pull-in request based on opportunity. Yeah, and even there, it's Brian Keveney put it below the line in fiscal 29 twice. Below the line as excluded, meaning as excluded? That article excluded one at $2.5 million, one at $2 million. That said, Recreation Through Facilities put it in as a fiscal 30 request in their CIP submission. That's how it got in the request twice, and then DPW brought it in, and fiscal 27 connected to septic. So, I don't disagree that, you know, it's been on the radar screen for a long time, since the original article is to do other work at the high school. It's been technically in the plan.
So, I wouldn't personally be opposed to, you know, slotting it in, in 29 or 30. But I agree with your earlier comment, Kelly, I don't think we need to show it twice. And we've acknowledged that there may still be, although I think as time passes, if they don't, if the town manager doesn't decide to include it in the fiscal 27 budget, and potentially then ask the select one to put a ballot question on, if it then were to kick to 28, it kind of loses the, as we talked about last week, it loses the benefit of the argument that there's economies and potential savings by doing it at the same time as septic's being done, because it won't be, right? Yeah, unless a septic gets delayed. Just unless the septic gets delayed. Yeah. Right. Which, anything's possible, but... Like, we fund that, we approve the septic, but the septic doesn't get done, because there's, and there's lots of reasons that could happen, right? Yeah, I mean, there's, they've done a lot of work on it, there's pressures on to get it done. It's not terribly sophisticated construction of, but yeah, I mean, things happen. But to wait for a whole nother year, particularly if you've gone to town meeting and got approved for the septic, I think there's going to be pressure on them to get that project done, so, so, yeah, so I, I mean, I don't disagree that it's a little misleading to show the requested years, 27. I'd be inclined to put it in 29 or 30.
And one thing I was going to ask you, we're looking at tables right now. Are you envisioning any editing to the text for the paragraph that dealt with 28 through 31 to reference the tables? What I was envisioning, and you guys can, we can talk about this more and we get to that item now, but I was envisioning not touching the original report and having any additional text be in the addendum with these tables, so that it is very, because I don't want to have to have a, like, what did you change in the report? I want it very clear, right? We wrote a report, it ended at table 10, we submitted, and then we've, we've added an addendum, and this is the follow-on information. So if we need to tie them together, I think we tie it together in the addendum.
So maybe drop a footnote at the front page where you added to your header the original title plus addendum. Yeah, I did it, I thought I did it in the, that are. I don't have the first page with me, but, I mean, you referenced addendum, but I'm just thinking maybe drop a footnote there, that, in the sense that you just described what you just said, that in lieu of, because the original, so we would leave up on the website, we'd leave the original report, and we'd have a revised report, and people can see that. Yeah, the header says, and amended February blank, to add addendum one.
But I can add a footer as well, I don't know. I'm going to just explain why, why we didn't go back. So anyway, so we've, we've mentioned in the original report about the field. So I guess if we slot it into a year here, whatever year you all decide, it would seem to me we probably would want a sentence or two as to why we're doing that and just reiterate, if, if it, as noted in the original report, if there's additional information, information, whatever, and timing is appropriate to, you know, put it together with the septic project, great. But we are what we are with what we've seen. And, and that keeps it in, keeps it on the plan. I mean, doesn't mean it'll get built, but at least it keeps it slotted in for a particular year.
Yeah, I think you already said it, but, right, the concept designs were done in 2017.
By, by 2029 or 20, you know, 2030, it'll have been 12, 13 years. It's not as if this was a, you know, we've been waiting one or two years, right. It was, it was ready to be done then. But as I recall, the decision was, they didn't think they could get approval for the full, not. Yeah. And I think 29, if I was a betting person, I think the ballot in the spring of 27 will include an override, proposition two and a half operating override, probably a three year, enough money to cover three years.
So if we put it in 29 and were to recommend excluded debt with, again, maybe dropping a footnote saying, given policy that it's less than 5 million, town manager might want to consider bundling it. And it doesn't have to just be school projects. It could be school in town. There's some merit to doing school in town. So I'm just, if everybody's coming out to vote for the field, the whole thing would get, you know, get through. But timing wise, that would put that vote in spring of 28. So, or yeah, spring of 28. So, yeah, in 29 to John's point is where it kind of was in Brian Keveney's plan. And so assuming everybody's supportive of the field being addressed, you know, sticking with what five-year plan was. And if somebody wants to still come forward and make the case and provide the information, great. But, you know, we could be supportive of still doing it in the year that it was slotted, which is, by the way, one year earlier than the recreation request. So then would it come out of that table? It would go into table 12 because it would be in the article. Table 11 and 12, yeah. Well, no, 11 doesn't have articles. Oh, it doesn't have articles, yeah. It doesn't have articles. Yeah, so you'd put it down. It would go in 12 as an article. Yeah, and it's maybe there, if you put it in that table, what you could do, given the confusion with the four and a half million that was in the warrant last year, you could drop a footnote off the number that disposes of the duplicate, although it's not exactly the same number. And that way you could take the duplicate out, which you can do anyway. Yeah, I think I just need to write a little bit of a paragraph on the duplicate. Yeah, because it's a big number. Yeah. If people are comparing year to year, you know, in the warrant.
Okay. And I like that. I also like that it's alone in 29 in the article, so it'll stick out, but that's not either here or there, I guess. Yeah, I mean, then the rest of it, I mean, almost everything on here has some sort of committee, well, or will, right? On the rest of the unknown list? Yeah. Or at least a study. Yeah, the transfer station, garage replacement, there's a study going on. Route 20, Southland Landfill Project, there's a visionary committee. Town building, the select board has tentatively agreed that, based on when I met with them last week, that there should be a visioning committee for that. And the elementary feasibility study, I think there is a group working at space needs, right? So, yeah, I think that might make for a relatively easy paragraph right around these are all. Yeah, although I would say the fields are supposed to have some sort of town manager working group that's addressing fields in general. I'm just saying these are ones that are not slaughtered because the committees, these are all have or should have. We don't have the direction, a sufficient direction on a project. Yeah, I think the difference. And that's the same for the field. All the other ones have, though, wider than just town staff. They have, right, town residents. Agreed. Yeah. So the town manager, I don't know, did the town manager opt to add any town residents to his field working group? No idea. The field's coming off of this, so it won't matter in this case. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fields will come off, and then what will be left, I think, is a little tidy, right, for a paragraph about these are all things we don't know. And I'm not...
We can even just say it's further review or has committee. I was planning to say, like, these are amounts that were requested, however, right, all of these are sort of in progress with committees, and the project is not defined. The project nor the expenditure are not well-defined, right, future path, whatever, something like that. Yeah, scope is not well-defined, because I don't know that, right, on any of them, we think, oh, yeah, that's a good number for that, right? Yeah. Or it's just the study that's about the whole project. Yeah, that's the other big point. A bunch of these have lots of millions of dollars beyond what's in this table. Just look at the school, the elementary school. Yeah, and then the town building, and potentially the greenfield station, too. And the 20 landfill project, because we don't know what it is in. So I think that's an important, and just sheer magnitude of those dollars dwarf. And maybe that's even a better way to say it, is all these projects likely have additional spend beyond this, so full scope is not... Yeah, okay, I like that. Everybody agree good? Agree good, yes. That's the approach I'm going to take there. Okay. So you didn't want to use the word purgatory? No, but every time I looked at it, I thought it. Good news. What's in the purgatory room? That would be a good table. That's how manager wasn't happy with that, Tony. No, no. No, we did not. We went in a non-denominational term. I appreciated it.
So were there any other... The one thing I would say that this is one of the minor corrections, it's in version 16. I inadvertently had labeled, in fiscal 28, had inadvertently labeled the $75,000 item for the design of the force main tie-in for this building as timing unknown. Where I should have labeled, which I'd now label it as no, with a footnote. Yeah, and that was the one I think I based it on... The following year, in fiscal 29, I then brought it in as a rollover item. Yeah. So you got it right in the third table. You got it right in the third table. Right, right. Yep. I just wanted to make that comment here. Yep.
That's because it was relatively short money, I think. And again, for the record, the funding source table I tied back to my Excel workbook. And I didn't go back yet and tie in the per-department items, but I just kind of looked at them for reasonableness, and they seemed to be reasonable. Yeah, I tied it based on totals. I tied it based on funding source. I don't think I double-checked departments. So it's worth doing. I will note, when I was reconciling, when I was sending a reconciliation to the town manager and the finance director and the FinCon chair, I did catch in the earlier part of the report where I had blocked FY27 from what was in last year's plan for FY27. I had taken that prior year straight from the warrant. The warrant had, I believe, an error in the departments, and it had to do with the 450 for the transfer station garage. It got moved around, and it netted to the right number. They had put too much in facilities and too little in DPW, but I didn't pick that up when I was originally doing that reconciliation. So I did point that out to them and gave them the walk, right, the detail to walk it. No one responded to me, so. I forgot I had seen that along the way. Not sure how that happened. Oh, I can imagine exactly how it happened. At the very last minute, people were like, oh, move that out of this category. Move it to this one. Oh, then it doesn't balance, right? It's the last-minute edits to the report. Okay, so table 14.
Actually, before we sketch, table 13. Let me ask you a question. The funding source label ARTEB, article borrowing. That's article excluded borrowing. Oh, the E is. It's excluded borrowing. Does it make sense to put a. . . I can put a key or I can spell it. Oh, you have the ones up above done, so we just need the ARTEB. All the other ones are up above in table 12. Yeah, and listen, I don't know if it needs to be on here, so that was going to be my. . . That's why I want to go back to table 13. What needs to be here, I don't know that we need to put the funding source on this table. I think this is probably fine to just have probably the year requested, the department, the description, and the amount, because I think I can address the timing unknown in the title. I don't think we need it as a column. I would agree. I don't know why we would add it until it's defined. Right.
Agreed. Yeah. I mean, likely anything in this list is going to be big, so. Yeah, and I guess for me, the point of the list is, like, there's stuff that we didn't put in here, and we didn't do it just because we don't think it. . . We did it because we don't think the scope is defined, right? Well, it's a lot more transparency of what's going in the line. Yeah. Let's go. Okay.
Table 14. So this was everything, and then we can go a couple different ways. Start here and then backtrack if we need to. This was everything I didn't see placed by 2031, and I will point out the sidewalk improvements. That's a little bit of success. One half of the dozen. I think it's one half dozen. There were multiple years of sidewalk requests, and I might have tagged the later one in and not the earlier one, which I can change. Sorry, I showed it in my Excel spreadsheet. You got the earlier one. Because we had ranked. I did it based on ranking. So we had ranked. First time it appeared low, and that just carried along with it. Yeah. Later on, we ranked one of the sidewalks medium, which is the one that you picked up. So that's why I put that. So I would say on Table 14, from the first line item, 2027, sidewalk improvement all the way down to 2030, I think those were all labeled ranked low, and that low stuck with them throughout the four years. Yeah. And then 2031 is, I think, all mediums. I don't think we had any low rankings. Yeah. So I just want to look at. Are you here for the zoning meeting? Yeah. Yeah, they're in a large hearing room, the other end of the building. Yep. You'll be very disappointed if you stay here. That's a good one. That's a good one.
All right. No, thank you. So I think, as I said, I think all the 2031 ones were just mediums that we didn't recommend. And as you said earlier, they would, the way this has been going is those would just kick into 2032 and presumably get done. Yeah. Unless the decision is made to bucket a bunch of these items. Yeah, so my question on that is, do we show it as not placed or do we show it as things we pushed into 2032 and might go a little bit of both ways. I don't like showing a column for 2032 that's not complete because it's going to look like it trends off. We can leave it in the list and say we anticipate, right, the 2031 projects would likely be considered and potentially picked up in 2032 and just leave it at that. Yeah, I don't want to say, you know, projects not, somehow we just say not aligned through 2031 will be put in future years unless, unless reprioritization or something. Just something, yeah. And I agree with that for the 2031 projects. Yeah. Is that I still feel some of those other ones where resources available in some of the earlier years, they, you know, likely should be addressed. Although I would say the 150, there's a couple items here that can come out. Can we just go down the list, right? So sidewalk improvements, I think what I heard from Tom last week was a little bit of like, you can delay it, but like, don't, if you completely don't do it, right, we're going to start falling behind on repairs. But there must have been others. I mean, we just must have slotted. There was one other. There's only one other. And that stayed in. Because he, no, we moved it. It was 2029. And I think he put it in 2030 or 31.
Yeah. It was requested in 29 and moved to 30. And again, that's just because the way our average ranking came out. I just wonder, I mean, just from the simplicity, I feel like this one, I mean, it'll probably get pulled in, I'm guessing. But for now, just for consistency, we put this one in 2030 or wherever it is and take the 2030 and push it forward. I mean, it just doesn't, it's just a weird optic. Like, yeah, that's what I would prefer to do. Because that's what's funny. So on your project list, which isn't in front of people right at the moment, what you would do is you would, I'll actually show it. I would swap. No, it's in your project list. You would change the request for the one that's in 2030. You would change that to 2027. That's the year requested. Yeah, I would just swap the projects. I would make them. And this one would be 2029. And it's not placed list? Correct.
You have a 2031 in here also. Not placed. So are there three? It's a difference. I think there's only two. On this list there's two. There's two on here. No, because he requested it every other year. 27, 29, 31. Is there one in 31 too? Yeah, there is. Oh, there it is.
So at a minimum, I would do what we just said, change the 29 in your 2030 project list to 27 request. Yep. Or both. And then 27 and table 14 in 2029.
Yep. Okay. The JCC furniture, this is $75,000. I don't have a hard time. Do we just put it at 28 or something just to fit it in? Which one? Just let that wear. No, I'm just kidding. Where can it go? Again, this is no different than us asking capital to get done appropriately, right? Yeah. Yep. I just don't want to be like, you know, chairs breaking on the floor. I mean, by then they should have a whole system, right? And so we've, you know, you've kind of maxed out use of free cash and based on the upper range in 28, 29, you have $75,000 of room in free cash in 2030. Yeah. I'm okay with 2030 for now. 2030.
Right? Yep. Yeah.
Free cash. I mean, I guess at least the rid of the 227s, which is better. Yeah.
Library grounds improvement. I'm okay leaving it. I'm okay leaving it here. The one after that, he said to delete, I thought. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. That one came last week because he said the HVAC piece is already done of the tie-in. So this is the one he told us to delete? Yeah, I thought so. Okay.
Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to add that to my fields paragraph. Like these are things further requests that we received. Same on the next one. Yep. 75 was kind of part of the duplicate. Yeah. I did want to confirm that. That was, there's no design. So I just didn't know, like the, the original phase three stadium plan had a proposal. Was that conceptual or does there still need to be a design that's going to cost? No design money was requested.
True. But they, yeah, they just escalated the amount, right? The two and a half. Yeah. I mean, I think in this case, REC was adhering to what they've heard over the years, which is two year design, one year and come back the next year for the construction. But I don't think the five year plan had any design funds. Yeah. It happened to have an extra two million. Yeah. And the two and a half was escalated to be done for 27. And we've done a lot of pushing out without any escalation, which I can live with on some of the smaller ones. But the reality is it'll be different than that. But you leave it at two and a half and. That would. I think. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Such an unknown. Yeah. When I retire, I'm going to go to the fields for a little bit of food rising. All right. So this 22 million five is coming out. Yes. This one is the other one. And the 75 you're going to take out. Yep. 75 I'm going to take out. Okay. Does the IT belong on this list or in 13?
Which one? The telephone system replacement. I mean, is that defined or is it like, I mean, it can be, I don't have strong opinions. I'm just kind of. But we had, we had, there was about a half a dozen IT projects in the five-year plan from last year, which the IT director wasn't able to really comment on because he was focused on what other things did he need to request money for, which we generally improved.
I'm okay leaving it. Yeah. It's with the priority versions. When I start hearing that the phones aren't working here anymore. Really? Okay. Well, if it's town, I mean, so I would argue is that, is it centralized here in this building? Because that would just add it to the telephone list. I don't. I'm good with it. All right. And then the lower level of rehab, the additional funding of 60,000 for the library. I can't remember, but I seem to, I thought I remembered a conversation with Michael and he didn't know what that was. Okay. Just leave it here. So I'm going to leave it here. But because it was requested for 2030, if it was because they were over budget on what they're doing now, you'd be requesting it sooner. Right?
I have two library ones, so I have two different years.
Yeah. The grounds, it's two different things. So I got him to, at some point, one is the parking lot. That side of it and the other is the actual grounds around the library. I think that would be a great bond to your project.
All right. And on the 2031 list, is there anything?
Yeah. So when you look at your sources in table 12, you know, we're over, one of my concerns, we're now looking at it all, summarized, is free cash is $3,076,000 versus $2 million upper level. Yep. Again, assuming there's a little bit of leeway due to potential surplus capital when you get out there. I have two questions. One, should we pick an item to move into levy borrowing to get it up to closer to $5 million? 2031? 2031. I think we should. Is there anything we could use the capital stabilization fund for?
Well, if we got it down to the $2 million high end, we'd be up to $2 million. But we only have $300,000 of levy debt room.
We'll have the 2030 project list here. Roops, roops, roops.
Sidewalk improvements at one that's $250,000 since we're fiddling with sidewalks. I mean, maybe it's a good time to have that conversation of, not that we shouldn't necessarily be recommending putting a package of the first excluded debt, but I was thinking about this last night, just. That might be the year. That might be the year. Or just, I'm looking across this and there's just, and I know schools are being, school overall has a long plan, right? But I'm looking at just things that probably shouldn't be broken in general, like air conditioning. Like some of the stuff is, do they roll that off as a school excluded debt or something? Do we do that, though? Does it make more sense to do that in 29 with the field? Like, we've got, we've pushed a lot of things, right? Does it make sense to pull a few things back that we'd rather, right? Like HVACs that are broken back to 29 as an excluded debt package? Yeah. I mean, it was just more of like, you know, we're pushing all these things that are just going to cause more, more costs in the, in the town in the wild run. And, and frankly, at the cost of schools and kids, I mean, it's just people that we don't necessarily want to affect it. So my thought was, yeah, maybe there's, maybe there's something that should be done there just with an excluded debt for schools. If that's the choice, I think that's, to me, the most palatable, but. I guess the question is, some of you mentioned last week when I raised that point, I mean, we don't control the decision on what goes on the ballot, a select board, town manager would probably have to be the first one to make a recommendation. So do you, do you just do a small fiddling in 2031 and then somehow in the text say, we realize that we're over policy limit and, and we have a number of items that got deferred into 2031 that could have or should have been done or into 2030 that could have or should have been done earlier. You know, you know, town, town manager and select board might want to consider bundling. Yeah. I don't have a problem with recommending it, even though it's not ultimately our decision, but I don't have a problem recommending it in the report. I mean, we, we, my opinion is we should do everything possible to make sure this is within policy and excluded is the one thing you can do outside of, right? So how would you reflect that in the, um, I don't know. That would change the schedule. I would add a line. I don't recall we've ever had, um, an item in the capital budget that was large enough by itself. I'd have to go back and look, some of the years would be bundled. It may be in some of the prior years that that table, funding source table, instead of one line borrowing has two lines, borrowing, excluded, borrowing, levy. It was in the, it'd be down in the article. It was there. I took it out because I didn't have any. I'm not sure you need to do an article just because you're using excluded debt because, you know, then you're putting at risk. But you'd rather get the items, the large, the large, the large, excluded non-article. Yeah. I mean, the large item like the field should be an article, but if you're going to take a million dollars worth of small things. If you go back, um, we did do it. Um, when Louise was here, there were a couple of years that we'd put another line, another line item, line item under borrowing that was excluded borrowing. Yeah. So maybe that's where you'd do it. Um, I'm pretty sure. So you put the field in the article section, but you've had another borrowing line and then, um, question is which year.
So you're thinking 29, I mean, 29 would give you the ability to at least go after a few of those smaller, low priority items. Yeah. I just, I'm trying to avoid. They make a lot of changes. Let's pick off a couple of big ones. Yeah, I'm, I'm hesitant to say we shouldn't make changes now and put it at different places because Hey, it's a bigger conversation that I'm almost inclined to say we leave it where it is and make a recommendation saying, you know, just like we do with the town building. Hey, we made this observation. There's a lot of frankly, maintenance or items that should be done in a sooner timeframe just based on what's happening that likely has cost or something. So we recommend revealing the five year plan for this type of, you know, school related project that maybe could be bundled, something like that. Right. Yeah, I think we can, you know, because we're recommending the field in fiscal 29, be done with excluded debt. You might want to then review things that were being carried over from 29 to 30, which could be like, I mean, it could be some school sidewalk. I mean, it just, it's creating such a problem, pushing everything where you go, it's only going to get to work because there's all this stuff we don't know about yet. So it's almost, we need to create a hole somewhere in the budget to allow for us to do it. Yeah. And 29, as I said before, I think 29 is probably the right year to do it. I mean, it's possible that an override could be avoided, operating override could be avoided fiscal 28, but I just doubt it. I think they've exhausted the maybes you have for 25, sorry, 29 that we've done in 30. High school building improvements is into 28, but no, it says maybe as well. So maybe, maybe, so that's the whole thing. I don't think I have anyone in the courtyard. Yeah. That's half a million right there. Right. Weston. Weston. Weston. Weston. Sorry. Well, that's not getting there. Uh, ceiling repairs, same, another quarter million. So there's a million, million that passed with 2 million already in 29 that we didn't approve. Some are maybe, some are no's on top of the field that's not in there. I mean, that alone is 4 million. Well, the field's not 4 million. I mean. Oh, 4 and a half by the 2 and a half. Yeah. I'm just saying there's 2 million of obvious ones that we pushed. Yeah. Roughly. And that doesn't include the stuff that's already in 29 that you could roll into that. There's another 431, 250. So there's another 750. So you're pretty much at 5 million. Yeah. There's one area that the maybes that are the five shaded maybe items in fiscal 29. Yeah. I think that's, those are some of the things I took the liberty to pick, pick some items. I'm not sure. Sorry. But I mean, based on this, I mean, it looks like if you put the field in there, there's roughly 5 million in 29 that's school related. Some approved and half a chunk of it not. And if you, if you went for all of that, that obviously then frees up. Yeah. 30 and 31. Yeah. Maybe 29's are random. That's one point. Yeah. But you have some of those also in 29 already approved from a school. So if you hold that all, right? Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense to you, Brad? Yeah, it does. It does. And the town has done, as I mentioned last week, over the years, it has done a few bundled excluded debt questions, the sum of which all added up to a large enough number to have it make sense. So we're saying take the maybes. And potentially some of the school related no's. Some of the school items and put them in excluded borrowing. In the field. In the field. But the field I would show is an article, an excluded article, because that would still be an article. Yeah. In the table. Yeah. It would be excluded on two lines, right? Yeah. We're not changing. We're leaving all the numbers on the table, adding the high school field below. And then in the text saying, based on what we're seeing in the deferral, we think it might make sense to look at a bundled debt exclusion question, the field plus a couple million dollars, two and a half million dollars worth of them. Yeah. Which frees up 30 and maybe even some 31. Yeah. Which in turn would allow the free cash issue that I point out. The 31 would probably go away. Yeah. And we really don't want to adjust that and pull it back and have it leave. Yeah. Well, I think we could take an item and, like I said, move one, at least one item to get the levy debt up closer to 5 million. Which you're doing. 2031. And just, you know, want to see if there's anything that, you know, we use the capital stabilization fund for the rationale for using it for any of those items. I just would like to get the 2031 free cash number. Closer to 2 million. Closer to 2. You have the radio system, stormwater. But I think you could do that if you took your 2029 maybes and pulled them out of where they're in 30 right now, pulled them into 29. Oh, it's too big. There's a half-million-dollar tractor truck and a $175,000 sweeper. So that's the million dollar. In the last four and five years, I would assume so. But, you know, you can't put that all on levy debt because then we'd blow through the levy debt limit. But those are carry forwards in 30. We have some borrowing capacity in 30. So we could take those two trucks and stick them in 30 and borrowing. You can borrow for trucks, right? Yeah. Maybe take the five-year borrowing. Yeah. Because I'm sure Tom would appreciate that for DPW. So he requested in 30. We could put those in 30 using borrowing. It's $975,000 out of $3,076,000. And then if you still want to get that down to $2 million or below, you could take... You still need a million? That makes sense so far, Callan? Yeah, so we're taking the two big DPW trucks for 2031 free cash and putting them in 2030 borrowing. And then we need one item for a couple hundred thousand dollars that's in 31 free cash. Radios is $200,000. That you could move to borrowing. And you have the trackless. And you still have more. Two more vehicles you could move, I suppose. How about the EV chargers? Yeah. Yeah. Because that was one, actually, I have that highlighted because I thought it was a lot of money to have in free cash to the end room. So we'll move the EV chargers to levy debt. Far. And in 31, this is a good little 2030 of the debt. So I suspect when you jumble all that together, we should be okay in 30, okay in 31. And then we have this other text discussion about still bundling stuff that found its way into 30 and 31, pulling it forward back into 29. Yeah, I think we'll just make, I think we just make a general comment that we've included the field as an article, excluded article, but notice it doesn't, it doesn't comply with policy. However, some of the other levy items could be pulled into. Because they've been deferred. Or items that have been deferred can be pulled in. Yeah, I think that'd be perfect. Yeah. Just for my benefit, is it helpful for me to continue to update my Excel spreadsheet with these changes? It is just so that I have a second. Double check. Double check that I did what we said. Okay. Since you were here last week, are you okay with all these things? Yeah. All the other funding sources look generally okay. Yeah. Yeah, free cash. No, it's a little bit over. I'm popping something over to... Levy debt. Levy debt. Levy debt. Mm-hmm. How much are you thinking? 28? I want to get it under $20. What's it, uh... 28 and $270. It was a $370,000 swap loader. That's in what year? 28, carry over from 27. Yeah. It's consistent with that. 29, you know, $100,000. $100,000. $100,000. DPW custodial equipment. That's really not stuff to borrow for. I'd rather... For the generator. It's $400,000 though. Yeah, we've also got a $500,000 HVAC that I didn't... I wasn't totally above in... in 29? In 29? In 29. Oh, public safety building. Yeah. It probably wouldn't be bad to be a little bit under the policy limit in 29 if that happens to be a year where people want to bundle things. I would rather be under on free cash because that's the one that I don't... Right? Not right at the top of the free cash limit. So if we move that, we're in the range. Yeah. Great. So that's the HVAC upgrade of the public safety building. Yeah. And a boiler, I think, right? Yeah. That's levy debt. That is. Live it to levy debt. Yeah. And, you know, of course, when we get to those years, right, you make a more fine-tuned decision. Yeah. The only pushback... We recommend whatever you want. The only pushback I'm sensing is going to, at the moment, and it's coming largely from the chair of FinCom, who is on the budget working group, who saw the effort made to figure out how to, you know, reduce the deficit in our unused levy, which was done partly through the debt exclusion question in the special election in the fall. Yeah. His view right now is, well, we went through all that effort to convert levy debt to excluded debt, and now we're still coming in with new levy debt. But in the projections, I haven't talked to him about it, in the forecasting that Brian Kennedy did that the budget group saw, Brian had built in to the forecast the debt, levy debt service that was in last year's five-year plan, right? Right. So that's already built into those numbers, so... Right. And the other thing, because I gave this in quite a bit of... Are you here for the CBA meeting? Yes. A large hearing room at the other end of the building? The other end? Yeah. Oh, large hearing room. I thought it was getting exciting. CBA hearing? Large hearing room? Where is it? Large hearing room, the other end of the building. Oh. We might give you a better answer in this room, but... But it won't mean anything. That's fine. I understand that, but I gave that a lot of thought. I was like, but it's already built in, one. Two, the purpose of excluded debt is not supposed to be, you shove everything there, it's supposed to be, right? Not only our policy, but like, hey, this is a larger project that we want the temporary relief. Not everything under the sun goes in. Obviously, we can do it, but it's... Yeah. I agree with you. I think the pushback, it wasn't a very large pushback, the number of people who voted, but historically, the pushback on the DPW debt, which is why it ended up in levy debt, was that there were residents who were concerned that, two things, free cash balance was getting too large, and secondly, their view is Proposition 2 1⁄2 is intended to be a governor, and to the extent that you put on the ballot and get approved, excluded debt, it goes outside the Prop 2 1⁄2 limitation. And so... Too much room. Yeah. And so those folks... And that's... There's still that... What happened to be... You know, I worked hard to get it moved forward and onto the ballot. I share the view of, you don't want to put everything you can into excluded debt because it takes the pressure off managing your budget to... And 2 1⁄2 may not be the right number now, but nonetheless, that discipline is removed. The decision, and I know what I heard, why they did it, to put the DPW building in levy debt, right, was that it had already failed, right, at a previous vote, and they were afraid if they had to do an excluded debt vote, it wouldn't pass, right? But the secondary effect of that was years of past 2 1⁄2 levy capacity, right? Because... I'm not missing it up. Maybe it was the free... What created... I might be misspeaking. What created the room in the levy? Was it the return of... From this... No, no. Before this year. Back... Because we went years without needing an override while other towns needed one. Yeah. It was a large return of free cash effectively to residents, which lowered the amount of taxes raised in that year. Right. Which automatically meant you weren't eating up... Right. That levy capacity. Levy capacity. And that helped for a number of years. Then we got a bunch of new growth from the actual apartments, and that helped for a few years. Right. But as it's turning out, there was some concern, again, for those that voted on the way against, especially with the ballot question in the fall, that the town was going to use that $700,000 levy capacity that was freed up and increased the budget. Well, it just so happens that they managed the budget, based on what I've just seen, to end up with new levy capacity, unused levy capacity, roughly $750,000. So, we haven't used it yet. Come fiscal 28, it'll get used up because the forecasts were showing, you know, $2 million plus structural deficits. Right. For a decade. But that $2 million plus structural deficits included levy debt based on last year's five-year plan, which you'd have to look at my spreadsheet to see what each of the year's levy debt numbers were. Right. I don't, you don't have that in here as a, you know, reconcile it in the report by year. But it's, if you have a spreadsheet open, it's, I put it down at the bottom of each of the yearly tabs, what the five-year plan was in terms of uses. Do I open any more storage? I don't think I have cards of that out of mine. Yeah, in 2019, it looks like 2.5. In levy debt? Yeah. How about 28? 3.3. 3.3. And 30. I mean, I guess I don't want to get too hung up on it, because ultimately they can take the plan and pull it into, like that, we can put the footnote in, they can ultimately take the plan and move it to an excluded rate if they want. But... Yeah, that's a town financing policy decision. I mean, they could change it anyway, just based on... Yeah, we're living within the constraints of the financial policies. Right. So... No, I mean, I like the way this is, I mean, as it's gone, I like our recommendation for the school piece. I think it's palatable, right? Versus just buying something shiny, right? We're just fixing a bunch of broken things. Lovely night. You're here for the zoning meeting? Yes. Large hearing room. Other end of the building? Large meeting. On the other side? Yeah. Yeah, before you get to the gym. Oh, I see. Yeah, to start charging by referral. What's the big issue on the zoning? Veritas. Oh. Development. Development. Yeah. So can... Before we leave this, can I just then make sure we're both on the same wavelength? So... Table 12, when you re-jigger it. Levy debt is going to go up from 4 million to 87. By the... By 370. 370. 370. The cash go down. Yep. Fiscal 29. We're going to move... 500,000. So... 30. Your cash is all right. We didn't... We didn't do anything to fiscal 30 levy debt? Uh, no. We moved... Oh, no. We brought the two trucks back. From... From... From 31. 31 through cash to 2030. Right. Correct. Okay. Yeah. So we're... I mean, on levy debt, we're skating the top of the... Sort of the top of the guideline the whole way. But... The... The alternatives are either you take some out and bundle it. Which we can talk to. Right. Or... You defer it. Yeah. Those are your options. Right. Yeah. And then... And then on free cash, I was... I'd watched part of the finance committee meeting. Um... You heard from the zoning meeting? Yeah. Other end of the building in the large hearing room. Um... The way the finance director presented the free cash to the FinCom. Um... Um... Try to keep this short. Certified balances of 11 and a half million or so. Um... Because of what he did with the financing, which was put off permanent financing for six or seven million dollars. That... That effectively was being advanced from the general fund. And to do that, you have to set aside part of your free cash through the end of the fiscal year. At which point, he's going to issue temporary debt. And so, when the FinCom saw that free cash, 11 and a half million, then he pulled out six and a half million. All of a sudden, you know, one of the members said, well, we don't have a lot of free cash left. But, you know, how much are we planning to use for the fiscal 27 capital budget? At which point, he said, well, no, the six and a half million dollars seem to be pulled out. That will be back in there by June 30. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think that sort of calmed people down. Yeah. It's not out. It's just... It's like held in reserve. It's restricted, right? Restricted. But the other... The other thing that he's doing is, assuming the FIRE contract isn't settled for the... Well, this most recent three-year contract. He's got a half a million dollar reserve in the fiscal 26 budget. And normally, that would go to free cash if it didn't get used. This year, he's proposing to an article to take that money if it doesn't settle through arbitration. And instead of letting it get into free cash, he's going to put it in the general stabilization fund. So, that's been one of the items that's been growing free cash. And other items that have been growing free cash is interest income on unused cash. And that was driven higher over the last two or three years by borrowing ahead of spending money on the Council on Aging Building and Walker Field. Well, that money's been spent. Interest rates have come down. So, I think there's a number of factors that I think are going to put constraints on free cash. So, we don't really... Other than excluded debt, you don't really have any choices other than to drive toward the top end of both ranges if you want to get things done. Or done both, right? Yeah. Pushed out non-priorities when we can. Yeah. Yeah. Done all three of them. Right. And the only choice after that, right? If you don't like the plan is you either excluded debt packages or you defer. Yeah. Where we could use the cap stabilization fund, which we've used a little bit here. Yeah. I'm reluctant to use it too much. I would rather... And here's why. In the plan versus we get to that year and... We need a source. You need a source because I'm afraid if we use it in the plan, we've got no levers. FinCom has no levers for you get to a given year to do the capital plan and you don't want to spend it in debt and you don't have enough free cash. You've got no other levers left. So, I would like to leave it, right, available because there isn't anything else available. Yeah. So, plug the current year problem. Yeah. Yeah. And if you plan on using it, you no longer have a plug, right? And largely, I think its intention was projects that had previously been funded and then they ran out of money, which we have occasionally. Yeah. It was intended for more than that. It was intended... Potentially level funding debt. Level funding debt, which we never got to, right? And now, when you're coming up on an override, chances of doing level funded debt, which just for you guys' benefit is our debt service balance fluctuates, right, year to year, depending on what we threw in and what comes, what's rolled off. So, at one point, when the capital stabilization fund was first being discussed, there was a discussion of, when you have years where debt service drops, don't take the drop. Just charge through budget, the level amount, right? Whatever is excess over what you have in your plan goes into cap stabilization, which is a good budgeting technique because you don't have these ups and downs. And what's happened with the ups and downs, more so, right, the downs, when it goes down, magically, when it goes down, it's not as if you see a decrease to taxes. That gets eaten up in the operating budget, right? How much operating budget went up. So, there is... So, you lose it towards the projects. It goes somewhere else. It goes to regular operating extensions, right? And so, it's... I wish we could have gotten there because I think it's a much more managed way to do it. And it's not dissimilar, probably, to where a lot of us run our houses, right? Save up for the project ahead of time. Yeah. I hope. So... Okay. Just to finish up on Table 14. So, we're gonna leave all the 2031 requests as not placed. And you'll just add something in the text that says, Yeah. Absent these finding funding sources, you know, in 2031 or sooner, we would assume these would roll over and be dealt with in 2032. Yep. The only one in my spreadsheet, I didn't change it yet. Kelly, on the last item, the $75,000 designed fee for the middle school fields. Yeah. I had labeled it timing unknown again. I don't think we necessarily addressed that item last week at our last meeting. You've included it here. I don't know what the ultimate cost of the field is, but it's got to be probably 3 million anyway. Yeah. I didn't want to do... I guess my reasoning for not doing timing unknown is that we're trying to get to a place where... We're designing before we construct. And so, if it's 75, okay, it might be 200, but I feel like leaving it as a... Okay. I'll change that then to just a no, which gets it into the not placed list. Okay. You're easy. Hopefully, when you get my updated Excel sheet and you do what you're doing, all the numbers will buy out. Okay. I've got it done now. We're going to get 17. I'll have 18 already. It is really helpful to me because when I'm blurry-eyed, right, looking at this spreadsheet and this spreadsheet, it's helpful to have something to protect your sanity and make sure... That's great. ...start talking to myself somewhere halfway through it. My family thinks I'm losing my mind. Okay. I had a question. Do you want to move on to Appendix X? Yeah. I have it in looking back to table 15, but let's go to Appendix H. This is the way it's always appeared. Yep. When it shows up on the town's website. Yeah. It doesn't usually have funding source. I added it. And I also added the requested year. Yeah. I, just to double-check everything, I sort of did a subtotal of each year, so I could then tie it back to make sure I didn't miss anything. Do you have any... Is there enough room to stick a subtotal in by year, just because that'll tie to your tables? Yeah. Okay. So, some of these funding sources will change automatically, I assume. Thank you. And then I'll just copy and paste them in the new table. Okay. That's good. Yeah. So, yeah. Historically, we did not include the funding source for the requested year. I thought it was helpful because it ties to the tables. And the requested year, I thought, was helpful for transparency on, like, what did they ask for and what did we ultimately decide? It makes it really easy to see what effort went into it, what went where. Yeah. No, I'm not getting it. Yeah. And I don't know if I should add a key to something sourcing like that. So, the $2.5 million will end up in this list in 2029? It will. Yeah. In terms of, what did you decide on year requested for that item? You put 2027 slash 2029? You mean, because it was requested twice? Yeah. I think we have to put 27. And I think the reason we have to put 27 is because it was, there was a conscious request. I think the more conscious request was to do it with the subject. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This request was 27. The previous request was 23. Yeah. Which will be in the text. Yeah. That's good. You had a couple of stray and dollar signs in this form. Okay. In this table? Yeah. First of all. 2031 townwide road reconstruction. All right. I'm going to throw a dollar sign on the total. Vicki? Yeah, it's okay. It's too straight, actually. My favorite is looking through the spreadsheet from last year and finding all your auditor tie-out notes. As an auditor, you try to proof numbers two or three different ways. It's not that. It's the actual format of the tie-out, right? Because the world I live in today, I was like, oh, look, there's a little auditor tie-out note there. Okay. Any other comments on Appendix H? Nope. Nope. Okay. All right. So, table 15. It's all going to update now anyway, right? Yeah. And I would say, don't assume that that's right to begin with. It's more the format. I don't think that. But first, I need to get back to when you shared, which I think I never shared. I don't have a computer. You said you sent out what you're putting up there. I did. Right. When we got, when I got here, but it's, it's going to be somewhat familiar to you, Brian. You're just, you're just plugging all the, I want to describe for these guys what you do. Yeah. I'm changing it a little bit. My computer is about to object to having this meeting open. I mean, the capital spreadsheet was very bad. There are two panelists. I don't know who the other one is. Oh, you're on Zoom. Sorry. All right. Yeah. I'm on, I'm on Zoom. Okay. I can share. I think so. I might have to stop sharing and see if I can't tell if Word is frozen. Should I try it? No, I got, I, it's not Zoom. It's, it's Word that's reciting that doesn't work today. So Brian, I'll talk about a concept you've seen this before, but I've changed it a little bit and I'm trying to make sure it ties to what the actual policy says. So first there's a metric right in the debt policy that says our total debt, which includes enterprise fund debt, um, will not exceed 10% of the projected total operating budget in including the enterprise funds and target six to 8%. That's her debt service. Debt service. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so don't assume these numbers are correct because I was fiddling with it right before, but I wanted to get the format out so that we can just, um, talk about it. So the top line of this is total debt service, including enterprise fund debt service. The next line is saying, how much did it change from the year before? Right. What percentage change? And then what's the projected operating budget? How is that as a percent? And is it meet the policy? Right. Or not. The other meant one of the other metrics is the levy debt. Relate against the general fund. Um, revenue, which is basically the operating budget without the enterprise funds, right? I think. Um, and so you're comparing that metric is three to 5%. So how much levy debt service do you have relative to the general fund revenue? So those are the two, they're very similar tables because it's both debt service. There's probably a couple other things I need for metrics outside of debt. Yeah. Can I ask you a question back on the first? Yep. So the first one, the operating budget there, you're saying includes, um, enterprise fund revenues? Uh, budget. Yes. Whatever their budget is. Does that, and the debt service, that first section, is that, um, that's including the water fund? General. Yeah. Water debt. Yeah. So it's sort of all the debt and all budgets. Yeah. And then the bottom is just general fund debt. Just general fund levy debt. Right. No excluded debt in any of those. No. Not many of those. And from what I can tell from reading the policies, and I wouldn't mind somebody doing a read, right? There isn't anything that constrains excluded debt, except there's a guideline on capital spending and what capital spending should be in a given year, right, as a percent. But that's not a debt. Right. Metric. Yeah. Which makes sense because that's a ballot. Right. Kind of thing. Yeah. So a couple of things here, right? I need to double check everything, right? Make sure everything's flowing through. This is just, I need to caveat, right? It's all estimates. And I need to get better numbers on operating in general fund. I used something that's, I think you sent me a month ago. Um, so I just want to make sure I'm using the latest and greatest numbers. Um, but I thought it was interesting and I think I have it in the right place. The general fund metric, we're on the low or even below the low end of it. But I do think that's because I also moved, I think I removed the DPW building into excluded. And do you have, um, to get into the weeds here, in fiscal 27, do you, did you include a bond anticipatory note interest? I did. And in 28, did you include the extra six months of interest on the permanent borrowing that got deferred? It, I'll have to double check, but the formula is supposed to, that I've used in the past has 1.5 on the interest. So I just have to make sure it's on, it's correct. But I'm sure that what, because what, what, what Brian had been including in 27, obviously all that, uh, all the general fund debt components of it got pushed out until fiscal 28. Yep. Other than the bands. And then for Brad and John's benefit and the public's benefit, fiscal, fiscal 27 capital that we've recommended be financed with levy debt, um, mechanically doesn't give rise to debt service until the following fiscal year. Yes, correct. So anything that we recommended be levy debt, fiscal 27, and Kelly's model would be showing up in that line fiscal 28. With one exception, which is the MWRA project is coming in in FY 29, because that's the terms of that borrowing. Right. That'll be up in the upper table. Yep. And you can, and, and, you know, the upper table, and you're going to have to be careful on the operating revenues, because the operating revenue is going to have to go up substantially. I don't know how you did your projections. I just did it. So for projections after this year, I just did a three, three and a half percent. Yeah. So there's going to have to be a spike. But that's, that's conservative though, in that metric. I mean, if you pass it with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I wouldn't, I didn't want to fiddle with it too much because then you have to explain what you fiddled with. Yeah. Um, whether that's worth an explanatory note, but yeah, as long as you're using it on the low end, um, and you have the debt, it's zero interest, but there is some, there are some fees. I think that's a hundred basis points or so of annual fees that have to be paid on the 38.6 million. Yeah. Basic points of fees. Yeah. They have a model. Um, you could email Tom Holder, um, or just go with what would be conservative. If you think it was 75 basis points, but if you went with a hundred, you're probably okay. Okay. And that's pretty much an annual, that's the annual cost of that financing plus a 20 year immunization of the 38.6. Yeah. Cause I almost had a heart attack because I had not adjusted the MWRA, um, interest. Oh, it's just being zero to be zero. And the 20, 29 number was like 14 point something million. Well, we're getting a good deal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you have conservative revenues, you're, you'll get the, the extra cost in there, but that'll, that upper one's got to be below 10%. Yeah. So 29 is 9.3. Yeah. So don't take any, take all this with a grain of salt. Cause I don't really want to. So you might, you might not need, you might not be able to be too conservative on the operating budget revenue side. If you pop over 10%. Yeah. We'll see. Right. I want to scrub it all the way through. But anyway, so the, the various, the four years we were just talking about, so you have more or less four and a half to 5 million in levy debt. Uh, Kelly's model basically projects out the, you know, debt service. Um, yeah. And it's not perfect to, um, to what Hilltop would do, but it's good enough. Yeah. Right. And, um, I do start with Hilltop's debt schedule for current debt. So that's, that's the base. That's the existing. And then I layer on the projected. How granular do you get, do you do shorter lives on certain assets and longer lives? I do. So, um, I, I do my best, although I will tell you. Inconsistent. When you look at the historical, it's very inconsistent from one year to the next. And I know there's a limit, right? There's policy limits of, um, at the state of what you can borrow, uh, term wise for different projects. Um, what we ultimately do ends up being between the Hilltop, the financial advisor and the select board. And as far as I can tell, they do it based on what the bond market's looking like, right? What interest rates are looking like they may shorten, um, the time period. Um, so I look at history and try to be a little bit on the, a little bit on the conservative side, right? Don't push the, the, um, the length too much. Um, but I did a few of the projects, Brian, Kevin, he had had Hilltop, um, do a schedule for, they like the salt shed was on there. So I was like, all right, well, I'm going to use whatever term they have for the salt shed, right? Cause they've already looked at it. But, um, I think I default it to 10. I take it down to five for anything that's like vehicles or equipment and then up to 15 for longer term assets, right? Buildings or, um, uh, bigger, bigger project stuff. But I don't go beyond that unless there's a specific, like there's certain things we do 24. Right. Um, but like the, I think the council on Adrian, um, like a building, but try to be as conservative as I can. So, but how do you maintain this? It extends a lot, right? I'm not sure the debt, the debt discussion. Well, if your question is, if your question is who's going to deal with this when Kelly's not on this committee? Um, that's a good question. Right. Much less. I mean, this is, uh, it's, it's a, it's a check to make sure we're getting guided, but the reality, there's a lot of assumptions in here. There's a ton. We need to make sure that no one thinks this is actual real. Yeah. I was about to ask. Yeah. Good news. It was an actuary. The first thing I do is caveat the crap out of it. I guess I was going to ask the following. Um, you ask a good question. It's a good question. It's the same question that the finance committee asked when Kelly went off the finance committee because this table appears and it has appeared historically in the FinCom report. And somebody had to deal with that last year. And one of the members agreed to deal with it and immediately picked up the phone of Kelly and, and, uh, Kelly got stuck, you know, working on it. But, um, I guess for our purposes now, um, I guess I, I think it's helpful to have this information because we want to be sure that decisions we're making and our recommendations when you do the math comply with the policies, which is part of the reason you're doing this. Right. Um, but the extent we're seeing at the moment kind of looks like we'll probably be okay. Um, I worry about the time it's going to take for you to kind of rework this and be comfortable versus getting the addendum done, making a statement that based on our preliminary. That's why I wanted to talk about it. Review. We think we're okay. I'm comfortable not including it and making that statement similar to what we did in the first part. Yeah. Um, but I do think it has to be, right. We want to be, I want to be comfortable with it regardless. Right. But that's that we making that statement. It's similar to what we did for FY 27 and why I didn't put in specifically, right. Here's what we're at. Right. For all the metrics. Just like, yeah, we met the metrics. Um, yeah. But from your description, I think you've been conservative in the right places and we're passing. And, um, as to your question, I think long term, longer term, this is the kind of thing. I think the finance director should be responsible for. I mean, because he's subject, you know, the finance director and time manager is subject to the same policies, whatever they produce. So they're going to have to have formulas and calculations, you know, calculations. But there's also no guarantee. They're going to follow our recommendations. No, of course. But, but we don't want to, we don't want, we, we, we don't want to put forth recommendations that we know fail. Yeah. No, I mean, I can see doing it as part of the master schedule, right. I mean, we probably have to go back and start like, as we assign levy debt, we should just pick the degree, you know, whatever bond schedule we want to go with it. Right. So it wouldn't flow normally versus us having to build a separate problem. Otherwise it just becomes, otherwise, you just kind of pick and choose it. Right. In a, in a perfect world, which we're not at yet. Right. When we pick the category of project, right. Which is one of the tables I have here. Right. Which I also want to just double check. You'd have a simple schedule that goes, well, if it's a building repair, that's if it's a vehicle, it's this, and that you just, that's the default for this. And we're not plugging. Plugging your bond rate. Just call it out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, very much because I already have it built out. But the problem FinCom ran into, which is a good question, right. Is somebody has to understand. Right. And be able to follow the math. Right. To, to understand what it's doing. Cause if you just look at it, you're not, you're not going to be able to. Yeah. It's not material, but an example would be the bond anticipatory note interest. I just asked about that. Wasn't really built into Kelly's model. And so you have to kind of hard code in the extent, you know, that there is some ban interest involved, which is usually pretty low. You have to hard code that number in to make sure you, you know, in this case, that would be getting hard coded into fiscal 27. Yeah. There might be something in 26 because it bands were outstanding. Some bands were outstanding in 26, but you got to put a number in there. And so it's kind of points out last year, the person that had to pick that up. Yeah. You know, it's a behemoth of an Excel workbook. And so there's no way she was going to. You were trying to make me feel better than you just went the other way. And you have to understand conceptually what bond anticipatory note interest is, and you have to be aware of it. I would say the spreadsheet's a behemoth, but there's not that many pages that are actually doing anything, right? There's a lot of data that I've pulled in to have it to reference. But one bad sell, as I found last year. Yes. One bad sell. And what comes out the other end, you know, it's set up so you hit a button and out the other end comes these nice looking tables. But then you step back and you look at the numbers and say, okay, well, this number should agree with this in the operating budget. And when it doesn't, you have to then go back and say, okay, why isn't that? And that's what happened last year. So, you know. There were problems with this table from the get go though, because my, and my understanding of it in the past was not correct, which was, we don't, the method, the policy even back in previous days was, there was an operating budget and a general revenue target. It was 10%. But if you look at the warrant, we only ever talk about the operating budget being the general fund operating budget. We don't talk about it in terms of total reading the policy. Now it's very clear. They were separate. I think they changed that. Yeah. I think they changed that. So there, so there were problems from the get go. I, I'm comfortable taking it out for this report. Um, and I would also, you know, I'll continue to work the file to try and make it a more user friendly in case somebody wants to use it in the future. Um, I never got to the step of locking everything that shouldn't be touched. That was, that was next on my list. So for example, like you, you should be able to, in theory, you should be able to, nothing we're doing affects 2027 general fund debt service. Yeah. You should be able to ask Brian Kebany based on his operating budget that they just presented to the FinCon. There's a debt service number in the budget, but it includes both levy debt and excluded debt. But you should be able to ask him of the amount he's got in the operating budget for 27. How much is the levy debt service? And it should have it from till top. What 26, 2027 is. I'm just saying what we found last year was what, when I went to try to tie things into the operating budget, now, whether the operating budget wasn't. Oh, okay. The operating budget. And that was the first thing I wanted to do. And because there's another table, there's another table somewhere where you could see what the levy debt service, or you could see the excluded debt service. Yeah. And subtracted from the total debt service. And that number wasn't agreeing with this table. And that's kind of what sent me off down a rabbit hole. But anyway, back to our purpose for tonight. And there may be another use of this, depending on what the FinCon decides to put in their report, whether they're relying on you to produce this for them. But it sounds like, you know, we're all comfortable, but based on what Kelly's describing, we think we're, what we're done here. And as anything we did tonight, doesn't look like what we've done tonight materially would affect. We've increased levy debt a little bit. And feel, I don't think it'll change it. Well, that's excluded debt. So that, it's just those items we moved, you know. We've shifted years. We moved a million. Yeah. I think that'll be fine. Yeah. That's, that's relatively small. So then, then Kelly, just make a statement in a sentence that we evaluated and we're comfortable that, you know, we read the test. But thanks for doing that. It was great. It was nice to see it. Yeah. Yeah. It took me two days. No, that's, that's already built out. That didn't take very long. It was just fixing the operating from general fund that I didn't have built out there. Yeah. But we, we need this because, or we need, we need something over the longer haul. We can't just guess that it's going to pass. You have to, somebody has got to be able to do the math. Especially when you get to a 10 year, right? Yeah. And it ultimately too, there's a difference from, you know, I'm going to project it out on a very simple basis. And when they go to actually, um, sell the bonds, they often don't structure it on a simple. So it's not necessarily just a straight line, right? Even amortization. Sometimes they, they tranche it. Um, so it's important that that you make a plan. And then when the actual bonds get purchased, that that's flowing through because it, it'll change, changes the out years. Okay. I mean, not that it mattered for this conversation, but so in your model, you can, is there a line really for actual carry through versus projected? Yeah. I have separate. So I have the table from, um, Hilltop, which is the actual, I pull that in as its own section in the model. And then I pull in all the projects we assigned to in the various. So you were just projecting the. I'm only projecting the future ones on top of the existing schedule. So that's bad. And I don't, I don't remember for sure, but I know you said you corrected them all, but there was a, my recollection that in what the FinCom member was doing, when I looked at the tab of pulling the debt service, it was supposed to be comparing. Maybe it was without, it was supposed to exclude something and it wasn't excluding something. And I can't remember if it wasn't picking up principal and interest or. Uh, I don't. You may want to just look back at my notes. It's one of those front tabs, um, that I had to fix because it was pulling from Hilltop, but it was pulling from the wrong place. And again, I highlighted where I thought the problem was. Meaning it was pulling just principal or just interest. It should have been pulling both. I think that was, that may have been the issue. And again, it also may have been doing something with, um, maybe water debt or something. I, I know I left notes. Yeah. I saw, I'll look in the version. First, second, third tab. Yeah. Okay. Anyway. Um, and obviously there's a lot of assumptions in there. I'm still using four and a half as the interest rate. Yeah. They borrowed it. They borrowed it. Three something. Yeah. It was pretty low. Yeah. Um, Brian didn't think I was being conservative. Yeah. So when the bond issue came through, I was like, that's good. Hmm. Um, okay. Sounds like a lot, but when you move the interest rate, it doesn't. It doesn't do too much, except when you throw in a $38 million project, and then all of a sudden, what's the difference? Well, we just throw interest on that. Just fees. Other than the fees. Yeah. Yeah. We, and we have in the past, um, refunded bonds that have been previously issued. So like the high school bond got refund, got redone. And when rates were really low. So it got redone at like one and a quarter. Um, and that made a big difference. I don't know that we'll see that kind of municipal bond rate again anytime soon. But, um, there are, there, it's not permanent necessarily. There are opportunities, but there's, there's rules on how, when you can do it. Like from when the issuances, it's quite a while between the issuance and when you can refund it. Yeah. Okay. We're back to, okay. So are we comfortable? Are we ready to take a vote? Are we have more stuff we want to talk about? Yeah. And are you comfortable with a similar approach to last time where you are trusting me to do the edits? Well, so the only, the only thing we're not seeing is whatever text you're going to put in. But it doesn't sound like you're going to be putting that much text. I'm trying to put much, but I would like one other person to read it. Are you okay doing that again? Yeah, be glad to. And I said, I'll get you an, we'll get everybody an updated Excel spreadsheet, which you'll then have. Um, all right. Can I get a motion to amend, um, add the addendum to the report with the edits that we discussed tonight? Um, and Brad reviewing my edits. So motioned. We got a second. Second. Uh, at the tail end of that, did I hear you say and submit it when it's ready? Submit it when it's ready. Submit it when it's ready. Submit it when it's ready. You, you, I'm going to change what I said to and submit it when it's ready. Okay. Do I still have a motion? So motion. I still have a second. Thank you. Uh, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Passes. Okay. And so when that gets submitted, uh, back to what's on our webpage at the moment, um, what you're going to submit will effectively be the whole report again, plus the addendum. Would you like them both posted about the historical perspective to post this additionally? I'll send. Oh, how do we do it last time? I'll, I'll, I'll, once I get the final report from you, I'll send that to, um, town manager's office. They'll post it on the website. Perfect. Um, but yeah, you send it to all the same people. And I, I think you sent it to the, uh, chair of the FinCon before. I did. And I don't know that he necessarily distributed it to his members because I alerted Pam to the fact that it had been posted on our webpage since January 20th. It sounded like she wasn't aware of that. Um, so does anybody have a problem of how are you sending it to all FinCon members? Just send it to all FinCon. Not the way it's supposed to need to work, but it's fine. Um, on the Slack board, they're pretty good at, uh, and your meeting tomorrow, um, I'm not going to, uh, you're not going to address this other than to say, yeah, I can address it in generalizations. Right. Um, right. When the, the fact that we've had to move a lot of projects out to be able to fit within the guidelines, um, that we did have a few other projects that we've determined were redundant, um, requests. And ultimately very, they'll have to be rejiggered once, um, the town manager, the finance director and FinCon decide on FY27. But, um, you might, um, if you have time, you might want to work in the concept of bundling. Yes, I can. Just because again, they're, they're going to be coming at you with why, you know, why, why didn't you recommend excluded debt for the $2 million septic project? Um, when they'll say, because that violated the policy. Yeah. You can do what you want. Yeah. You can do what you want, but, but there may be a time maybe in fiscal 29 that bundling a large project fields and other things have been getting deferred might make some sense. Yes. Then I will. Something like that. But that, that almost, not a gain time decision, but that has to be a decision made in the context of. Part of the override planning. Every other, right, financial decision including override. So I don't think it's something we're equipped to make that decision on. No. Even if it was, right, they wanted it from us. Okay. I'm going to stop sharing. Um, and, um, just, uh, since we're still on this topic, um, I watched a few minutes of the select board meeting on Monday night and, um, town manager during his report mentioned that he had, I guess he was requested by our legislators for any possible projects or earmark funding in the state budget, which they asked about from time to time. And so I thought you'd be interested to know that one of the items he, uh, put on his list was a new generator at the library and the council on the Asian building. So. Okay. So we'll see what happens with that. Um, but something to do with the town website. I don't know. Oh, that was in there too. Okay. So I suppose anybody wants to ask for funding towards clean water. Seems like that's something that should, I mean, I know they're getting, I know we have the, yeah, there was a third item, but I forgot what it, it was something that was in our budget discussion. So the news, I think he was listening. Okay. And, um, and yeah, the more you can get these things taken care of, they do tend to respond to emergency related type things that don't otherwise are eligible for grant funding. Yeah. I do think, and I don't know, I know the former police chief was seemed quite good at, um, applying for and getting grants, um, based on my time on with several other police chiefs. I don't recall that being the case as much as it was with cheaper. Um, I don't know if there's a, you know, more concerted effort around, particularly as part of the budget, you know, working group and, and the constraints we have, right, around really looking at the projects and sitting down and, and seeking out more grant funding. You may want to remember to bring that up tomorrow. Yeah. Because again, the discussion last night when they, or Monday night, when they, last night, when they met with the town manager, finance director, they, they were interrupting a bunch of items looking for, knowing what's coming financially, looking for what, what else can we do? So in this arena, um, something like that would be, you know, excluded debt, um, grants, um, state funding, um, um, you know, oversight. Um, I think, I think he met, town manager mentioned at the FinCon meeting last night, they didn't get into capital per se, but I think he mentioned the potential for a visioning, uh, uh, committee for, well, this building, what, what's its, you know, future. Yeah. But you might want to highlight that one as well. Okay. It's in, it's in the report, but. Okay. And, um, I think they, um, just things we talked about, uh, last week. I think the Slack board had drafted a charge for yet another visioning committee for the Route 20 quarter work that they've been talking about, which we spent some time with Tom Holder on, eventually we agreed to include the second piece of that funding, uh, wanted it, but they had the planning board in who kind of that's, that's their area. And I'm pretty sure that that discussion ended up with the Slack board was going to hold back, not creating another committee and let the planning board, I think the planning board basically were saying the reason why they haven't been able to move on with, you know, they had hired an outside consultant to do some of the visioning part of it. And, uh, the reason they hadn't been able to move that ball forward is because they were stuck with these three dover amendment reviews, which are extremely complicated and time consuming. And because they believe that there's some changes with bylaws that have to occur to be able to do what some of the visioning is. Um, and I think the conclusion was the Slack board was going to not move forward in a new committee at the planning board, try to figure out how to move it forward, but have others, you know, the EDC economic development committee to support, um, you know, work on. So it wouldn't surprise me that, um, you know, that we might hear more about that. Although we recommended the funding in the year Tom wanted it. The other visioning committee is the, uh, 20 South landfill. And, um, again, it wouldn't surprise me that, that there'll be pressure on the town manager to get some money in the capital budget for that, uh, where we put that on. We don't know what the scope and timing is yet. Uh, but we'll see what happens. I mean, you know, we don't have that information. So yeah, I, I got messages from Slack board both on, um, town building that they were moving forward. Um, next plans they were going to meet with Michael, uh, and Faya, right. To understand the needs of building needs and head towards hopefully a visioning committee. And then I also got, um, a message that the visioning committee on the landfill would be coming forward soon to select board, but obviously select board hasn't chosen a direction. And I let him know that, you know, we're going to put it on a list of things that isn't slotted because it's not defined yet. So I don't think anything, you know, no real new news there. Yeah. So I think all those things were consistent with, um, our discussion last meeting. Um, we have one other item, but I'll wait till the end of the agenda. Okay. Okay. All right. So we are, we are on minutes. Any, um, February four, two edits, um, on page two, uh, in the third bullet, the second line, and then the second paragraph in the third bullet in the first line, uh, I'm going to insert the word south after route 20, which, uh, is the, uh, more accurate description. It's on the south side of route 20. It's on the north side. Correct. Got it. Other than that, unless anybody else has any questions or edits? Nope. I have any. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes of February 4th? Motion to approve the minutes. Second. Can I second if I wasn't there? Uh, you actually can. You can vote on it too. I said it. Great. As revised, I assume that. As revised. Uh, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. All right. Topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours prior to posting. I don't have anything, but you're allowed to bring one up. You are. I'm going to let you. Okay. So, uh, at the select board meeting, um, there was a brief summary of a meeting that the chair and bill chair, Carol Martin and the Whitney had met with the school committee, um, a week ago to talk about the holiday road, uh, warrant article. Yep. And you might recall when Carol met with us, um, uh, basically she said the thrust of what they were doing was to try to find opportunities for new growth. And, um, and therefore I think our conclusion was that that's kind of where the wording of the article landed. It didn't sound and ultimately that parcel was transferred to the select board by town meeting and eventually sold to a developer. It wouldn't result in the town capital assets. So it really wouldn't be within our purview. But if something changed such that they decided that it could be used for conservation land or for school building or whatever, then it probably would be within our purview. Uh, and so, um, the report was they met with the school committee, the school committee is noncommittal as to whether they would or wouldn't, uh, agree to transfer custody, which needs to happen before they bring it to town meeting, which you're not doing this town meeting, this town meeting. They just want to ask for money to do some engineering work or tests and other things. And, um, the chair of the school committee apparently asked them same question. I think I asked Carol, if you're going to do testing, might you talk to the schools just to see if it turns out they might want to use it? Are there, is there testing that you could do at the same time so you don't have to do it twice? So apparently the chair of the school committee brought that up and said, you know, we'd like to possibly see schools referenced, the school use referenced in the article. And, uh, I think after listening to Bill Whitney's update at the psych ward meeting, it's not clear to me that he feels that they will know where the school is headed or not headed on their feasibility study for building a new elementary school, um, in time to necessarily feel comfortable including schools as a reference. And, uh, therefore I don't know if that's not referenced, whether the schools will say, well, we can't support that at this time because we don't want to leave the public into thinking that, you know, we have no use for that. But if they do add schools to the language, then my question is, does that put, kick it back to something that we need to review and recommend or not recommend? Anyway. Um, it's a good question and we can add it to an agenda. It may be an exegener because the schools are meeting tomorrow. I'm not sure that it changes and I gotta go back and read the language again, but I don't know if the study, if, if a study itself, right, is a planning and it's not, especially if they do a broad, like, I just want to see what I can use it for. It could be any of these 10 things. I don't know if that necessarily lands in capital versus I'm going to do a study for this specific thing, which is going to, and, and I'm going to build, right. This project there. So it's part of design of a, of a, of another, um, of a capital project. So I'm not clear on that, but I think we should talk about it again. Okay. I just wanted to raise it that it's, it sounds like it may be two more weeks or so. Before the select board knows, um, what they're going to do. And I believe the school committee has it on their agenda for tomorrow night to talk more about. I would love if somebody, not me, could do a little research on how other towns just treat studies. Right. Cause we do, we do them all the time. Um, and studies for you time, but from a committee, like ours or, or do they treat, do they treat that like initial feasibility study as capital or is that before capital? Because I do think some, it's planning, not, not project, right. It's not part of the project yet. Um, so I'd like to have a little more, if there, if there's a norm. Yeah. I can check this. So the task is how do other towns handle the costs of just initial studies or planning? Yeah. Is it part of their, cause a lot of towns have capital planning committee. Right. In their, in their purview. And obviously we're, we have to be subject to the words that are in our bylaw, but this is where. Well, let me ask this. We're probably now venturing the field from our agenda, but if Brad happens to on his own time, sorry, I don't think we can commit as a committee to, we're not going to do that. Sorry. Thank you for the reminder. Um, but you, but you might, I'm sure the next agenda is probably going to include those other items that you had been included. Yeah. I'm going to put that back. Updating articles. Yeah. Future reports. Okay. Anything else, um, on announcement for things not anticipated. All right. So I'm going to cancel. I had a meeting room held for next week, but I'm going to cancel that. Um, and then, um, I was successful in getting us a room starting March 4th. Um, which is a Wednesday at six 30. And every other week after that, and the only date she couldn't give me was, um, Wednesday, April 15th, but was able to give me Tuesday, the 14th. So we're every Wednesday, except for that one day. All at six 30. All at six 30. Um, we'll be in the select board meeting room through the end of April. And then, um, in this room after that, but how far out did you go the end of the fiscal year? She didn't say, I said, as far as you're, as you have a calendar open for. Um, so I'll just refer to every other week. So the fourth, April 14th will be. Yeah. April 14th. So get your taxes done ahead of time. So it's probably more for me than the rest of it. All right. All right. Well, I have, are we ready to adjourn? Yeah. All right. Can I get a motion to adjourn at seven 59. So moved. All right. Second. All in favor. Aye. Excellent. Thank you. Good job.
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So we're going to go members in attendance. We have myself, Kelly, we have John, Brian, and Brad. As I said, Liz was not able to join us tonight. She just let me know that. And then, yeah. So agenda, 6 p.m. is call to order, review, agenda for public announcements. I do not have any announcements. 6.05 is public comment, members' response. 6.10 is review, continued review of the FY 2027 requests that were recommended for inclusion in the FY 27 capital budget, as well as FY 28 through 31 departmental requests that determine whether to include FY 28 through FY 31 capital plan, including funding sources. 7.40, discuss and vote addendums, if any, to the committee's report to the town manager. This is really addendums to add FY 28 through FY 31. 8.45, review and vote to approve minutes of February 4th. 8.55, topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair prior to posting, if any, and setting time of next meetings, 9 p.m. adjourned. Do we have any attendees other than Rakeem? No. It's just Rakeem? All right. So no follow-up comment. All right. So Rakeem announcements. And since we are all clear in person, we don't need to do a roll call vote. All right. So earlier today, I sent you a draft, well, not really, but an addendum to the original report, which was really just the tables that I added for really adding FY 28 to 31, but I did keep 27 in there because I think it's good to see the year over year and it's consistent with prior FinCon reports. I did just add one more table and sent it to you, which was a debt table. I'm not settled there yet, but I would like to go over it and kind of what we want to do there, if anything. So a couple, we can, we'll get to the report next, but I think the thing I wanted to cover first might be best summarized in the report. And that is looking at the things that were either timing unknown or not placed, which was tables 13 and 14 in the report. And if you join, I suppose, during the Zoom and put it up on screen as well in a minute here. I just want to talk through each of those projects since they were relatively short lists for a couple things. One, right, does it, does it need to be called up differently? And so I'll use the example of the redundant fields project, right? I don't want to necessarily put that on a not placed list. I want to pull it out and say, we determined this project, right, is redundant. On some of the others that weren't placed, I think it's worth a discussion of, particularly given some of the smaller ones, if they should be fit in somewhere, and also, in some cases, I don't have a problem, personally, with 2031 projects that didn't make it in, that are going to ultimately end up probably in 2032. But some of the earlier ones, I just want to make sure we go after them one by one and say, is that really, based on what we heard last week, what we intend to do? So, why don't we start with the Timing Unknown lists? Let me, you guys can start discussion. I think you all have it, and I'm going to pull it up on screen while we're talking. Just for everybody's benefit, I sent out a version 16 of the Excel spreadsheet a few hours ago. So, as I, after reviewing what you sent out, I realized that I had a couple of formula issues.
Which is what I was going to tell you when I stopped before. There was one minor item that I had flagged for myself anyway. But, so 16 is now consistent with what's in your tables.
You guys can go ahead and start discussion. And I would say, which I think I said in the email when I sent out version 15, which was picking up our discussion from our last meeting, I did take the liberty of populating, particularly in 2031,
putting in maybes and, we'll say maybes and funding sources. So, not every item has been discussed. Yeah, I know. There are people I'm going to give an opportunity to look at something differently, particularly the maybes. Yeah, and for purposes of the tables, I did not include the maybes in the tables in the year they were maybes for. They're in most cases in the next year. But we can talk about whether there's a couple. Chat about, when we get to it, I want to chat about kind of what we did for 27, where we flagged a couple of what we felt were highest priorities of the maybes. Yeah. Such that if there was extra resources that we were recommending to the town manager that public safety HVAC and the elementary school HVAC would be the next two up, in our opinion. But we haven't really done that in 28 through 31. So, I don't know if that's something that you and the other folks here want to do or not do. Yeah, personally, I thought about it and decided I didn't think it was an effort worth going through, given that town manager and VINCOM are going to change FY27, which is going to then cascade. So, I thought it was good that we did it for 27, but I don't know that I want to add too many more of those in the out years. And I also think it's most important for the first year, because that's the, even from our discussions with the department managers, that's what they're most focused on, the timing of. I'd agree. Yeah, I mean, we've run a mark in this medium, so they're already where they're going to sit. There are no. So, you know, the priorities will change in a year. I don't think there's any value in us saying you're next. You're either in the list or not from that standpoint. So, I'd agree. I'd agree. So, I'd like to do it. Yep. Well, one last thing to do. Yeah, so I know you're pulling up table 13. I mean, the only thing that jumps up to me,
and I know you talked through this, so it's not, this is just the table that refers to it, but like for the field, they're requesting it for 27, but it was originally requested for 29, right? That's the only thing that comes. Yeah, I have, that was the one that I've most wanted to talk about because I feel like leaving it off entirely doesn't make sense. Potentially, we can talk about it. I understand why we didn't put it in 27, even though it was moved from 29 to 27, but I'm having a harder time with like, it's not in the plan at all. And the question is, where does it fit? And then, is it, and this goes to something you said, Brian, last week, which is, I don't know that I think it fits in levy. It's also below policy for excluded, but is there a combination of school projects, right, that makes sense to have be excluded, given the constraints of Prop 2.5?
I don't feel like what we did with the septic is the wrong decision. I can understand other opinions about, hey, we just moved DPW to excluded debt. Why are we adding new debt? But, you know, Michael said it last week, too. If we're going to have policies, and then the first thing we're going to do is not follow them, then I don't know why we have policies. So, that's the one I want to consider where it might go. Yeah, I mean, I don't know why we wouldn't leave it in 29, personally, just because that's where it was. And this has essentially become a pull-in request based on opportunity. Yeah, and even there, it's Brian Keveney put it below the line in fiscal 29 twice. Below the line as excluded, meaning as excluded? That article excluded one at $2.5 million, one at $2 million. That said, Recreation Through Facilities put it in as a fiscal 30 request in their CIP submission. That's how it got in the request twice, and then DPW brought it in, and fiscal 27 connected to septic. So, I don't disagree that, you know, it's been on the radar screen for a long time, since the original article is to do other work at the high school. It's been technically in the plan.
So, I wouldn't personally be opposed to, you know, slotting it in, in 29 or 30. But I agree with your earlier comment, Kelly, I don't think we need to show it twice. And we've acknowledged that there may still be, although I think as time passes, if they don't, if the town manager doesn't decide to include it in the fiscal 27 budget, and potentially then ask the select one to put a ballot question on, if it then were to kick to 28, it kind of loses the, as we talked about last week, it loses the benefit of the argument that there's economies and potential savings by doing it at the same time as septic's being done, because it won't be, right? Yeah, unless a septic gets delayed. Just unless the septic gets delayed. Yeah. Right. Which, anything's possible, but... Like, we fund that, we approve the septic, but the septic doesn't get done, because there's, and there's lots of reasons that could happen, right? Yeah, I mean, there's, they've done a lot of work on it, there's pressures on to get it done. It's not terribly sophisticated construction of, but yeah, I mean, things happen. But to wait for a whole nother year, particularly if you've gone to town meeting and got approved for the septic, I think there's going to be pressure on them to get that project done, so, so, yeah, so I, I mean, I don't disagree that it's a little misleading to show the requested years, 27. I'd be inclined to put it in 29 or 30.
And one thing I was going to ask you, we're looking at tables right now. Are you envisioning any editing to the text for the paragraph that dealt with 28 through 31 to reference the tables? What I was envisioning, and you guys can, we can talk about this more and we get to that item now, but I was envisioning not touching the original report and having any additional text be in the addendum with these tables, so that it is very, because I don't want to have to have a, like, what did you change in the report? I want it very clear, right? We wrote a report, it ended at table 10, we submitted, and then we've, we've added an addendum, and this is the follow-on information. So if we need to tie them together, I think we tie it together in the addendum.
So maybe drop a footnote at the front page where you added to your header the original title plus addendum. Yeah, I did it, I thought I did it in the, that are. I don't have the first page with me, but, I mean, you referenced addendum, but I'm just thinking maybe drop a footnote there, that, in the sense that you just described what you just said, that in lieu of, because the original, so we would leave up on the website, we'd leave the original report, and we'd have a revised report, and people can see that. Yeah, the header says, and amended February blank, to add addendum one.
But I can add a footer as well, I don't know. I'm going to just explain why, why we didn't go back. So anyway, so we've, we've mentioned in the original report about the field. So I guess if we slot it into a year here, whatever year you all decide, it would seem to me we probably would want a sentence or two as to why we're doing that and just reiterate, if, if it, as noted in the original report, if there's additional information, information, whatever, and timing is appropriate to, you know, put it together with the septic project, great. But we are what we are with what we've seen. And, and that keeps it in, keeps it on the plan. I mean, doesn't mean it'll get built, but at least it keeps it slotted in for a particular year.
Yeah, I think you already said it, but, right, the concept designs were done in 2017.
By, by 2029 or 20, you know, 2030, it'll have been 12, 13 years. It's not as if this was a, you know, we've been waiting one or two years, right. It was, it was ready to be done then. But as I recall, the decision was, they didn't think they could get approval for the full, not. Yeah. And I think 29, if I was a betting person, I think the ballot in the spring of 27 will include an override, proposition two and a half operating override, probably a three year, enough money to cover three years.
So if we put it in 29 and were to recommend excluded debt with, again, maybe dropping a footnote saying, given policy that it's less than 5 million, town manager might want to consider bundling it. And it doesn't have to just be school projects. It could be school in town. There's some merit to doing school in town. So I'm just, if everybody's coming out to vote for the field, the whole thing would get, you know, get through. But timing wise, that would put that vote in spring of 28. So, or yeah, spring of 28. So, yeah, in 29 to John's point is where it kind of was in Brian Keveney's plan. And so assuming everybody's supportive of the field being addressed, you know, sticking with what five-year plan was. And if somebody wants to still come forward and make the case and provide the information, great. But, you know, we could be supportive of still doing it in the year that it was slotted, which is, by the way, one year earlier than the recreation request. So then would it come out of that table? It would go into table 12 because it would be in the article. Table 11 and 12, yeah. Well, no, 11 doesn't have articles. Oh, it doesn't have articles, yeah. It doesn't have articles. Yeah, so you'd put it down. It would go in 12 as an article. Yeah, and it's maybe there, if you put it in that table, what you could do, given the confusion with the four and a half million that was in the warrant last year, you could drop a footnote off the number that disposes of the duplicate, although it's not exactly the same number. And that way you could take the duplicate out, which you can do anyway. Yeah, I think I just need to write a little bit of a paragraph on the duplicate. Yeah, because it's a big number. Yeah. If people are comparing year to year, you know, in the warrant.
Okay. And I like that. I also like that it's alone in 29 in the article, so it'll stick out, but that's not either here or there, I guess. Yeah, I mean, then the rest of it, I mean, almost everything on here has some sort of committee, well, or will, right? On the rest of the unknown list? Yeah. Or at least a study. Yeah, the transfer station, garage replacement, there's a study going on. Route 20, Southland Landfill Project, there's a visionary committee. Town building, the select board has tentatively agreed that, based on when I met with them last week, that there should be a visioning committee for that. And the elementary feasibility study, I think there is a group working at space needs, right? So, yeah, I think that might make for a relatively easy paragraph right around these are all. Yeah, although I would say the fields are supposed to have some sort of town manager working group that's addressing fields in general. I'm just saying these are ones that are not slaughtered because the committees, these are all have or should have. We don't have the direction, a sufficient direction on a project. Yeah, I think the difference. And that's the same for the field. All the other ones have, though, wider than just town staff. They have, right, town residents. Agreed. Yeah. So the town manager, I don't know, did the town manager opt to add any town residents to his field working group? No idea. The field's coming off of this, so it won't matter in this case. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fields will come off, and then what will be left, I think, is a little tidy, right, for a paragraph about these are all things we don't know. And I'm not...
We can even just say it's further review or has committee. I was planning to say, like, these are amounts that were requested, however, right, all of these are sort of in progress with committees, and the project is not defined. The project nor the expenditure are not well-defined, right, future path, whatever, something like that. Yeah, scope is not well-defined, because I don't know that, right, on any of them, we think, oh, yeah, that's a good number for that, right? Yeah. Or it's just the study that's about the whole project. Yeah, that's the other big point. A bunch of these have lots of millions of dollars beyond what's in this table. Just look at the school, the elementary school. Yeah, and then the town building, and potentially the greenfield station, too. And the 20 landfill project, because we don't know what it is in. So I think that's an important, and just sheer magnitude of those dollars dwarf. And maybe that's even a better way to say it, is all these projects likely have additional spend beyond this, so full scope is not... Yeah, okay, I like that. Everybody agree good? Agree good, yes. That's the approach I'm going to take there. Okay. So you didn't want to use the word purgatory? No, but every time I looked at it, I thought it. Good news. What's in the purgatory room? That would be a good table. That's how manager wasn't happy with that, Tony. No, no. No, we did not. We went in a non-denominational term. I appreciated it.
So were there any other... The one thing I would say that this is one of the minor corrections, it's in version 16. I inadvertently had labeled, in fiscal 28, had inadvertently labeled the $75,000 item for the design of the force main tie-in for this building as timing unknown. Where I should have labeled, which I'd now label it as no, with a footnote. Yeah, and that was the one I think I based it on... The following year, in fiscal 29, I then brought it in as a rollover item. Yeah. So you got it right in the third table. You got it right in the third table. Right, right. Yep. I just wanted to make that comment here. Yep.
That's because it was relatively short money, I think. And again, for the record, the funding source table I tied back to my Excel workbook. And I didn't go back yet and tie in the per-department items, but I just kind of looked at them for reasonableness, and they seemed to be reasonable. Yeah, I tied it based on totals. I tied it based on funding source. I don't think I double-checked departments. So it's worth doing. I will note, when I was reconciling, when I was sending a reconciliation to the town manager and the finance director and the FinCon chair, I did catch in the earlier part of the report where I had blocked FY27 from what was in last year's plan for FY27. I had taken that prior year straight from the warrant. The warrant had, I believe, an error in the departments, and it had to do with the 450 for the transfer station garage. It got moved around, and it netted to the right number. They had put too much in facilities and too little in DPW, but I didn't pick that up when I was originally doing that reconciliation. So I did point that out to them and gave them the walk, right, the detail to walk it. No one responded to me, so. I forgot I had seen that along the way. Not sure how that happened. Oh, I can imagine exactly how it happened. At the very last minute, people were like, oh, move that out of this category. Move it to this one. Oh, then it doesn't balance, right? It's the last-minute edits to the report. Okay, so table 14.
Actually, before we sketch, table 13. Let me ask you a question. The funding source label ARTEB, article borrowing. That's article excluded borrowing. Oh, the E is. It's excluded borrowing. Does it make sense to put a. . . I can put a key or I can spell it. Oh, you have the ones up above done, so we just need the ARTEB. All the other ones are up above in table 12. Yeah, and listen, I don't know if it needs to be on here, so that was going to be my. . . That's why I want to go back to table 13. What needs to be here, I don't know that we need to put the funding source on this table. I think this is probably fine to just have probably the year requested, the department, the description, and the amount, because I think I can address the timing unknown in the title. I don't think we need it as a column. I would agree. I don't know why we would add it until it's defined. Right.
Agreed. Yeah. I mean, likely anything in this list is going to be big, so. Yeah, and I guess for me, the point of the list is, like, there's stuff that we didn't put in here, and we didn't do it just because we don't think it. . . We did it because we don't think the scope is defined, right? Well, it's a lot more transparency of what's going in the line. Yeah. Let's go. Okay.
Table 14. So this was everything, and then we can go a couple different ways. Start here and then backtrack if we need to. This was everything I didn't see placed by 2031, and I will point out the sidewalk improvements. That's a little bit of success. One half of the dozen. I think it's one half dozen. There were multiple years of sidewalk requests, and I might have tagged the later one in and not the earlier one, which I can change. Sorry, I showed it in my Excel spreadsheet. You got the earlier one. Because we had ranked. I did it based on ranking. So we had ranked. First time it appeared low, and that just carried along with it. Yeah. Later on, we ranked one of the sidewalks medium, which is the one that you picked up. So that's why I put that. So I would say on Table 14, from the first line item, 2027, sidewalk improvement all the way down to 2030, I think those were all labeled ranked low, and that low stuck with them throughout the four years. Yeah. And then 2031 is, I think, all mediums. I don't think we had any low rankings. Yeah. So I just want to look at. Are you here for the zoning meeting? Yeah. Yeah, they're in a large hearing room, the other end of the building. Yep. You'll be very disappointed if you stay here. That's a good one. That's a good one.
All right. No, thank you. So I think, as I said, I think all the 2031 ones were just mediums that we didn't recommend. And as you said earlier, they would, the way this has been going is those would just kick into 2032 and presumably get done. Yeah. Unless the decision is made to bucket a bunch of these items. Yeah, so my question on that is, do we show it as not placed or do we show it as things we pushed into 2032 and might go a little bit of both ways. I don't like showing a column for 2032 that's not complete because it's going to look like it trends off. We can leave it in the list and say we anticipate, right, the 2031 projects would likely be considered and potentially picked up in 2032 and just leave it at that. Yeah, I don't want to say, you know, projects not, somehow we just say not aligned through 2031 will be put in future years unless, unless reprioritization or something. Just something, yeah. And I agree with that for the 2031 projects. Yeah. Is that I still feel some of those other ones where resources available in some of the earlier years, they, you know, likely should be addressed. Although I would say the 150, there's a couple items here that can come out. Can we just go down the list, right? So sidewalk improvements, I think what I heard from Tom last week was a little bit of like, you can delay it, but like, don't, if you completely don't do it, right, we're going to start falling behind on repairs. But there must have been others. I mean, we just must have slotted. There was one other. There's only one other. And that stayed in. Because he, no, we moved it. It was 2029. And I think he put it in 2030 or 31.
Yeah. It was requested in 29 and moved to 30. And again, that's just because the way our average ranking came out. I just wonder, I mean, just from the simplicity, I feel like this one, I mean, it'll probably get pulled in, I'm guessing. But for now, just for consistency, we put this one in 2030 or wherever it is and take the 2030 and push it forward. I mean, it just doesn't, it's just a weird optic. Like, yeah, that's what I would prefer to do. Because that's what's funny. So on your project list, which isn't in front of people right at the moment, what you would do is you would, I'll actually show it. I would swap. No, it's in your project list. You would change the request for the one that's in 2030. You would change that to 2027. That's the year requested. Yeah, I would just swap the projects. I would make them. And this one would be 2029. And it's not placed list? Correct.
You have a 2031 in here also. Not placed. So are there three? It's a difference. I think there's only two. On this list there's two. There's two on here. No, because he requested it every other year. 27, 29, 31. Is there one in 31 too? Yeah, there is. Oh, there it is.
So at a minimum, I would do what we just said, change the 29 in your 2030 project list to 27 request. Yep. Or both. And then 27 and table 14 in 2029.
Yep. Okay. The JCC furniture, this is $75,000. I don't have a hard time. Do we just put it at 28 or something just to fit it in? Which one? Just let that wear. No, I'm just kidding. Where can it go? Again, this is no different than us asking capital to get done appropriately, right? Yeah. Yep. I just don't want to be like, you know, chairs breaking on the floor. I mean, by then they should have a whole system, right? And so we've, you know, you've kind of maxed out use of free cash and based on the upper range in 28, 29, you have $75,000 of room in free cash in 2030. Yeah. I'm okay with 2030 for now. 2030.
Right? Yep. Yeah.
Free cash. I mean, I guess at least the rid of the 227s, which is better. Yeah.
Library grounds improvement. I'm okay leaving it. I'm okay leaving it here. The one after that, he said to delete, I thought. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. That one came last week because he said the HVAC piece is already done of the tie-in. So this is the one he told us to delete? Yeah, I thought so. Okay.
Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to add that to my fields paragraph. Like these are things further requests that we received. Same on the next one. Yep. 75 was kind of part of the duplicate. Yeah. I did want to confirm that. That was, there's no design. So I just didn't know, like the, the original phase three stadium plan had a proposal. Was that conceptual or does there still need to be a design that's going to cost? No design money was requested.
True. But they, yeah, they just escalated the amount, right? The two and a half. Yeah. I mean, I think in this case, REC was adhering to what they've heard over the years, which is two year design, one year and come back the next year for the construction. But I don't think the five year plan had any design funds. Yeah. It happened to have an extra two million. Yeah. And the two and a half was escalated to be done for 27. And we've done a lot of pushing out without any escalation, which I can live with on some of the smaller ones. But the reality is it'll be different than that. But you leave it at two and a half and. That would. I think. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Such an unknown. Yeah. When I retire, I'm going to go to the fields for a little bit of food rising. All right. So this 22 million five is coming out. Yes. This one is the other one. And the 75 you're going to take out. Yep. 75 I'm going to take out. Okay. Does the IT belong on this list or in 13?
Which one? The telephone system replacement. I mean, is that defined or is it like, I mean, it can be, I don't have strong opinions. I'm just kind of. But we had, we had, there was about a half a dozen IT projects in the five-year plan from last year, which the IT director wasn't able to really comment on because he was focused on what other things did he need to request money for, which we generally improved.
I'm okay leaving it. Yeah. It's with the priority versions. When I start hearing that the phones aren't working here anymore. Really? Okay. Well, if it's town, I mean, so I would argue is that, is it centralized here in this building? Because that would just add it to the telephone list. I don't. I'm good with it. All right. And then the lower level of rehab, the additional funding of 60,000 for the library. I can't remember, but I seem to, I thought I remembered a conversation with Michael and he didn't know what that was. Okay. Just leave it here. So I'm going to leave it here. But because it was requested for 2030, if it was because they were over budget on what they're doing now, you'd be requesting it sooner. Right?
I have two library ones, so I have two different years.
Yeah. The grounds, it's two different things. So I got him to, at some point, one is the parking lot. That side of it and the other is the actual grounds around the library. I think that would be a great bond to your project.
All right. And on the 2031 list, is there anything?
Yeah. So when you look at your sources in table 12, you know, we're over, one of my concerns, we're now looking at it all, summarized, is free cash is $3,076,000 versus $2 million upper level. Yep. Again, assuming there's a little bit of leeway due to potential surplus capital when you get out there. I have two questions. One, should we pick an item to move into levy borrowing to get it up to closer to $5 million? 2031? 2031. I think we should. Is there anything we could use the capital stabilization fund for?
Well, if we got it down to the $2 million high end, we'd be up to $2 million. But we only have $300,000 of levy debt room.
We'll have the 2030 project list here. Roops, roops, roops.
Sidewalk improvements at one that's $250,000 since we're fiddling with sidewalks. I mean, maybe it's a good time to have that conversation of, not that we shouldn't necessarily be recommending putting a package of the first excluded debt, but I was thinking about this last night, just. That might be the year. That might be the year. Or just, I'm looking across this and there's just, and I know schools are being, school overall has a long plan, right? But I'm looking at just things that probably shouldn't be broken in general, like air conditioning. Like some of the stuff is, do they roll that off as a school excluded debt or something? Do we do that, though? Does it make more sense to do that in 29 with the field? Like, we've got, we've pushed a lot of things, right? Does it make sense to pull a few things back that we'd rather, right? Like HVACs that are broken back to 29 as an excluded debt package? Yeah. I mean, it was just more of like, you know, we're pushing all these things that are just going to cause more, more costs in the, in the town in the wild run. And, and frankly, at the cost of schools and kids, I mean, it's just people that we don't necessarily want to affect it. So my thought was, yeah, maybe there's, maybe there's something that should be done there just with an excluded debt for schools. If that's the choice, I think that's, to me, the most palatable, but. I guess the question is, some of you mentioned last week when I raised that point, I mean, we don't control the decision on what goes on the ballot, a select board, town manager would probably have to be the first one to make a recommendation. So do you, do you just do a small fiddling in 2031 and then somehow in the text say, we realize that we're over policy limit and, and we have a number of items that got deferred into 2031 that could have or should have been done or into 2030 that could have or should have been done earlier. You know, you know, town, town manager and select board might want to consider bundling. Yeah. I don't have a problem with recommending it, even though it's not ultimately our decision, but I don't have a problem recommending it in the report. I mean, we, we, my opinion is we should do everything possible to make sure this is within policy and excluded is the one thing you can do outside of, right? So how would you reflect that in the, um, I don't know. That would change the schedule. I would add a line. I don't recall we've ever had, um, an item in the capital budget that was large enough by itself. I'd have to go back and look, some of the years would be bundled. It may be in some of the prior years that that table, funding source table, instead of one line borrowing has two lines, borrowing, excluded, borrowing, levy. It was in the, it'd be down in the article. It was there. I took it out because I didn't have any. I'm not sure you need to do an article just because you're using excluded debt because, you know, then you're putting at risk. But you'd rather get the items, the large, the large, the large, excluded non-article. Yeah. I mean, the large item like the field should be an article, but if you're going to take a million dollars worth of small things. If you go back, um, we did do it. Um, when Louise was here, there were a couple of years that we'd put another line, another line item, line item under borrowing that was excluded borrowing. Yeah. So maybe that's where you'd do it. Um, I'm pretty sure. So you put the field in the article section, but you've had another borrowing line and then, um, question is which year.
So you're thinking 29, I mean, 29 would give you the ability to at least go after a few of those smaller, low priority items. Yeah. I just, I'm trying to avoid. They make a lot of changes. Let's pick off a couple of big ones. Yeah, I'm, I'm hesitant to say we shouldn't make changes now and put it at different places because Hey, it's a bigger conversation that I'm almost inclined to say we leave it where it is and make a recommendation saying, you know, just like we do with the town building. Hey, we made this observation. There's a lot of frankly, maintenance or items that should be done in a sooner timeframe just based on what's happening that likely has cost or something. So we recommend revealing the five year plan for this type of, you know, school related project that maybe could be bundled, something like that. Right. Yeah, I think we can, you know, because we're recommending the field in fiscal 29, be done with excluded debt. You might want to then review things that were being carried over from 29 to 30, which could be like, I mean, it could be some school sidewalk. I mean, it just, it's creating such a problem, pushing everything where you go, it's only going to get to work because there's all this stuff we don't know about yet. So it's almost, we need to create a hole somewhere in the budget to allow for us to do it. Yeah. And 29, as I said before, I think 29 is probably the right year to do it. I mean, it's possible that an override could be avoided, operating override could be avoided fiscal 28, but I just doubt it. I think they've exhausted the maybes you have for 25, sorry, 29 that we've done in 30. High school building improvements is into 28, but no, it says maybe as well. So maybe, maybe, so that's the whole thing. I don't think I have anyone in the courtyard. Yeah. That's half a million right there. Right. Weston. Weston. Weston. Weston. Sorry. Well, that's not getting there. Uh, ceiling repairs, same, another quarter million. So there's a million, million that passed with 2 million already in 29 that we didn't approve. Some are maybe, some are no's on top of the field that's not in there. I mean, that alone is 4 million. Well, the field's not 4 million. I mean. Oh, 4 and a half by the 2 and a half. Yeah. I'm just saying there's 2 million of obvious ones that we pushed. Yeah. Roughly. And that doesn't include the stuff that's already in 29 that you could roll into that. There's another 431, 250. So there's another 750. So you're pretty much at 5 million. Yeah. There's one area that the maybes that are the five shaded maybe items in fiscal 29. Yeah. I think that's, those are some of the things I took the liberty to pick, pick some items. I'm not sure. Sorry. But I mean, based on this, I mean, it looks like if you put the field in there, there's roughly 5 million in 29 that's school related. Some approved and half a chunk of it not. And if you, if you went for all of that, that obviously then frees up. Yeah. 30 and 31. Yeah. Maybe 29's are random. That's one point. Yeah. But you have some of those also in 29 already approved from a school. So if you hold that all, right? Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense to you, Brad? Yeah, it does. It does. And the town has done, as I mentioned last week, over the years, it has done a few bundled excluded debt questions, the sum of which all added up to a large enough number to have it make sense. So we're saying take the maybes. And potentially some of the school related no's. Some of the school items and put them in excluded borrowing. In the field. In the field. But the field I would show is an article, an excluded article, because that would still be an article. Yeah. In the table. Yeah. It would be excluded on two lines, right? Yeah. We're not changing. We're leaving all the numbers on the table, adding the high school field below. And then in the text saying, based on what we're seeing in the deferral, we think it might make sense to look at a bundled debt exclusion question, the field plus a couple million dollars, two and a half million dollars worth of them. Yeah. Which frees up 30 and maybe even some 31. Yeah. Which in turn would allow the free cash issue that I point out. The 31 would probably go away. Yeah. And we really don't want to adjust that and pull it back and have it leave. Yeah. Well, I think we could take an item and, like I said, move one, at least one item to get the levy debt up closer to 5 million. Which you're doing. 2031. And just, you know, want to see if there's anything that, you know, we use the capital stabilization fund for the rationale for using it for any of those items. I just would like to get the 2031 free cash number. Closer to 2 million. Closer to 2. You have the radio system, stormwater. But I think you could do that if you took your 2029 maybes and pulled them out of where they're in 30 right now, pulled them into 29. Oh, it's too big. There's a half-million-dollar tractor truck and a $175,000 sweeper. So that's the million dollar. In the last four and five years, I would assume so. But, you know, you can't put that all on levy debt because then we'd blow through the levy debt limit. But those are carry forwards in 30. We have some borrowing capacity in 30. So we could take those two trucks and stick them in 30 and borrowing. You can borrow for trucks, right? Yeah. Maybe take the five-year borrowing. Yeah. Because I'm sure Tom would appreciate that for DPW. So he requested in 30. We could put those in 30 using borrowing. It's $975,000 out of $3,076,000. And then if you still want to get that down to $2 million or below, you could take... You still need a million? That makes sense so far, Callan? Yeah, so we're taking the two big DPW trucks for 2031 free cash and putting them in 2030 borrowing. And then we need one item for a couple hundred thousand dollars that's in 31 free cash. Radios is $200,000. That you could move to borrowing. And you have the trackless. And you still have more. Two more vehicles you could move, I suppose. How about the EV chargers? Yeah. Yeah. Because that was one, actually, I have that highlighted because I thought it was a lot of money to have in free cash to the end room. So we'll move the EV chargers to levy debt. Far. And in 31, this is a good little 2030 of the debt. So I suspect when you jumble all that together, we should be okay in 30, okay in 31. And then we have this other text discussion about still bundling stuff that found its way into 30 and 31, pulling it forward back into 29. Yeah, I think we'll just make, I think we just make a general comment that we've included the field as an article, excluded article, but notice it doesn't, it doesn't comply with policy. However, some of the other levy items could be pulled into. Because they've been deferred. Or items that have been deferred can be pulled in. Yeah, I think that'd be perfect. Yeah. Just for my benefit, is it helpful for me to continue to update my Excel spreadsheet with these changes? It is just so that I have a second. Double check. Double check that I did what we said. Okay. Since you were here last week, are you okay with all these things? Yeah. All the other funding sources look generally okay. Yeah. Yeah, free cash. No, it's a little bit over. I'm popping something over to... Levy debt. Levy debt. Levy debt. Mm-hmm. How much are you thinking? 28? I want to get it under $20. What's it, uh... 28 and $270. It was a $370,000 swap loader. That's in what year? 28, carry over from 27. Yeah. It's consistent with that. 29, you know, $100,000. $100,000. $100,000. DPW custodial equipment. That's really not stuff to borrow for. I'd rather... For the generator. It's $400,000 though. Yeah, we've also got a $500,000 HVAC that I didn't... I wasn't totally above in... in 29? In 29? In 29. Oh, public safety building. Yeah. It probably wouldn't be bad to be a little bit under the policy limit in 29 if that happens to be a year where people want to bundle things. I would rather be under on free cash because that's the one that I don't... Right? Not right at the top of the free cash limit. So if we move that, we're in the range. Yeah. Great. So that's the HVAC upgrade of the public safety building. Yeah. And a boiler, I think, right? Yeah. That's levy debt. That is. Live it to levy debt. Yeah. And, you know, of course, when we get to those years, right, you make a more fine-tuned decision. Yeah. The only pushback... We recommend whatever you want. The only pushback I'm sensing is going to, at the moment, and it's coming largely from the chair of FinCom, who is on the budget working group, who saw the effort made to figure out how to, you know, reduce the deficit in our unused levy, which was done partly through the debt exclusion question in the special election in the fall. Yeah. His view right now is, well, we went through all that effort to convert levy debt to excluded debt, and now we're still coming in with new levy debt. But in the projections, I haven't talked to him about it, in the forecasting that Brian Kennedy did that the budget group saw, Brian had built in to the forecast the debt, levy debt service that was in last year's five-year plan, right? Right. So that's already built into those numbers, so... Right. And the other thing, because I gave this in quite a bit of... Are you here for the CBA meeting? Yes. A large hearing room at the other end of the building? The other end? Yeah. Oh, large hearing room. I thought it was getting exciting. CBA hearing? Large hearing room? Where is it? Large hearing room, the other end of the building. Oh. We might give you a better answer in this room, but... But it won't mean anything. That's fine. I understand that, but I gave that a lot of thought. I was like, but it's already built in, one. Two, the purpose of excluded debt is not supposed to be, you shove everything there, it's supposed to be, right? Not only our policy, but like, hey, this is a larger project that we want the temporary relief. Not everything under the sun goes in. Obviously, we can do it, but it's... Yeah. I agree with you. I think the pushback, it wasn't a very large pushback, the number of people who voted, but historically, the pushback on the DPW debt, which is why it ended up in levy debt, was that there were residents who were concerned that, two things, free cash balance was getting too large, and secondly, their view is Proposition 2 1⁄2 is intended to be a governor, and to the extent that you put on the ballot and get approved, excluded debt, it goes outside the Prop 2 1⁄2 limitation. And so... Too much room. Yeah. And so those folks... And that's... There's still that... What happened to be... You know, I worked hard to get it moved forward and onto the ballot. I share the view of, you don't want to put everything you can into excluded debt because it takes the pressure off managing your budget to... And 2 1⁄2 may not be the right number now, but nonetheless, that discipline is removed. The decision, and I know what I heard, why they did it, to put the DPW building in levy debt, right, was that it had already failed, right, at a previous vote, and they were afraid if they had to do an excluded debt vote, it wouldn't pass, right? But the secondary effect of that was years of past 2 1⁄2 levy capacity, right? Because... I'm not missing it up. Maybe it was the free... What created... I might be misspeaking. What created the room in the levy? Was it the return of... From this... No, no. Before this year. Back... Because we went years without needing an override while other towns needed one. Yeah. It was a large return of free cash effectively to residents, which lowered the amount of taxes raised in that year. Right. Which automatically meant you weren't eating up... Right. That levy capacity. Levy capacity. And that helped for a number of years. Then we got a bunch of new growth from the actual apartments, and that helped for a few years. Right. But as it's turning out, there was some concern, again, for those that voted on the way against, especially with the ballot question in the fall, that the town was going to use that $700,000 levy capacity that was freed up and increased the budget. Well, it just so happens that they managed the budget, based on what I've just seen, to end up with new levy capacity, unused levy capacity, roughly $750,000. So, we haven't used it yet. Come fiscal 28, it'll get used up because the forecasts were showing, you know, $2 million plus structural deficits. Right. For a decade. But that $2 million plus structural deficits included levy debt based on last year's five-year plan, which you'd have to look at my spreadsheet to see what each of the year's levy debt numbers were. Right. I don't, you don't have that in here as a, you know, reconcile it in the report by year. But it's, if you have a spreadsheet open, it's, I put it down at the bottom of each of the yearly tabs, what the five-year plan was in terms of uses. Do I open any more storage? I don't think I have cards of that out of mine. Yeah, in 2019, it looks like 2.5. In levy debt? Yeah. How about 28? 3.3. 3.3. And 30. I mean, I guess I don't want to get too hung up on it, because ultimately they can take the plan and pull it into, like that, we can put the footnote in, they can ultimately take the plan and move it to an excluded rate if they want. But... Yeah, that's a town financing policy decision. I mean, they could change it anyway, just based on... Yeah, we're living within the constraints of the financial policies. Right. So... No, I mean, I like the way this is, I mean, as it's gone, I like our recommendation for the school piece. I think it's palatable, right? Versus just buying something shiny, right? We're just fixing a bunch of broken things. Lovely night. You're here for the zoning meeting? Yes. Large hearing room. Other end of the building? Large meeting. On the other side? Yeah. Yeah, before you get to the gym. Oh, I see. Yeah, to start charging by referral. What's the big issue on the zoning? Veritas. Oh. Development. Development. Yeah. So can... Before we leave this, can I just then make sure we're both on the same wavelength? So... Table 12, when you re-jigger it. Levy debt is going to go up from 4 million to 87. By the... By 370. 370. 370. The cash go down. Yep. Fiscal 29. We're going to move... 500,000. So... 30. Your cash is all right. We didn't... We didn't do anything to fiscal 30 levy debt? Uh, no. We moved... Oh, no. We brought the two trucks back. From... From... From 31. 31 through cash to 2030. Right. Correct. Okay. Yeah. So we're... I mean, on levy debt, we're skating the top of the... Sort of the top of the guideline the whole way. But... The... The alternatives are either you take some out and bundle it. Which we can talk to. Right. Or... You defer it. Yeah. Those are your options. Right. Yeah. And then... And then on free cash, I was... I'd watched part of the finance committee meeting. Um... You heard from the zoning meeting? Yeah. Other end of the building in the large hearing room. Um... The way the finance director presented the free cash to the FinCom. Um... Um... Try to keep this short. Certified balances of 11 and a half million or so. Um... Because of what he did with the financing, which was put off permanent financing for six or seven million dollars. That... That effectively was being advanced from the general fund. And to do that, you have to set aside part of your free cash through the end of the fiscal year. At which point, he's going to issue temporary debt. And so, when the FinCom saw that free cash, 11 and a half million, then he pulled out six and a half million. All of a sudden, you know, one of the members said, well, we don't have a lot of free cash left. But, you know, how much are we planning to use for the fiscal 27 capital budget? At which point, he said, well, no, the six and a half million dollars seem to be pulled out. That will be back in there by June 30. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think that sort of calmed people down. Yeah. It's not out. It's just... It's like held in reserve. It's restricted, right? Restricted. But the other... The other thing that he's doing is, assuming the FIRE contract isn't settled for the... Well, this most recent three-year contract. He's got a half a million dollar reserve in the fiscal 26 budget. And normally, that would go to free cash if it didn't get used. This year, he's proposing to an article to take that money if it doesn't settle through arbitration. And instead of letting it get into free cash, he's going to put it in the general stabilization fund. So, that's been one of the items that's been growing free cash. And other items that have been growing free cash is interest income on unused cash. And that was driven higher over the last two or three years by borrowing ahead of spending money on the Council on Aging Building and Walker Field. Well, that money's been spent. Interest rates have come down. So, I think there's a number of factors that I think are going to put constraints on free cash. So, we don't really... Other than excluded debt, you don't really have any choices other than to drive toward the top end of both ranges if you want to get things done. Or done both, right? Yeah. Pushed out non-priorities when we can. Yeah. Yeah. Done all three of them. Right. And the only choice after that, right? If you don't like the plan is you either excluded debt packages or you defer. Yeah. Where we could use the cap stabilization fund, which we've used a little bit here. Yeah. I'm reluctant to use it too much. I would rather... And here's why. In the plan versus we get to that year and... We need a source. You need a source because I'm afraid if we use it in the plan, we've got no levers. FinCom has no levers for you get to a given year to do the capital plan and you don't want to spend it in debt and you don't have enough free cash. You've got no other levers left. So, I would like to leave it, right, available because there isn't anything else available. Yeah. So, plug the current year problem. Yeah. Yeah. And if you plan on using it, you no longer have a plug, right? And largely, I think its intention was projects that had previously been funded and then they ran out of money, which we have occasionally. Yeah. It was intended for more than that. It was intended... Potentially level funding debt. Level funding debt, which we never got to, right? And now, when you're coming up on an override, chances of doing level funded debt, which just for you guys' benefit is our debt service balance fluctuates, right, year to year, depending on what we threw in and what comes, what's rolled off. So, at one point, when the capital stabilization fund was first being discussed, there was a discussion of, when you have years where debt service drops, don't take the drop. Just charge through budget, the level amount, right? Whatever is excess over what you have in your plan goes into cap stabilization, which is a good budgeting technique because you don't have these ups and downs. And what's happened with the ups and downs, more so, right, the downs, when it goes down, magically, when it goes down, it's not as if you see a decrease to taxes. That gets eaten up in the operating budget, right? How much operating budget went up. So, there is... So, you lose it towards the projects. It goes somewhere else. It goes to regular operating extensions, right? And so, it's... I wish we could have gotten there because I think it's a much more managed way to do it. And it's not dissimilar, probably, to where a lot of us run our houses, right? Save up for the project ahead of time. Yeah. I hope. So... Okay. Just to finish up on Table 14. So, we're gonna leave all the 2031 requests as not placed. And you'll just add something in the text that says, Yeah. Absent these finding funding sources, you know, in 2031 or sooner, we would assume these would roll over and be dealt with in 2032. Yep. The only one in my spreadsheet, I didn't change it yet. Kelly, on the last item, the $75,000 designed fee for the middle school fields. Yeah. I had labeled it timing unknown again. I don't think we necessarily addressed that item last week at our last meeting. You've included it here. I don't know what the ultimate cost of the field is, but it's got to be probably 3 million anyway. Yeah. I didn't want to do... I guess my reasoning for not doing timing unknown is that we're trying to get to a place where... We're designing before we construct. And so, if it's 75, okay, it might be 200, but I feel like leaving it as a... Okay. I'll change that then to just a no, which gets it into the not placed list. Okay. You're easy. Hopefully, when you get my updated Excel sheet and you do what you're doing, all the numbers will buy out. Okay. I've got it done now. We're going to get 17. I'll have 18 already. It is really helpful to me because when I'm blurry-eyed, right, looking at this spreadsheet and this spreadsheet, it's helpful to have something to protect your sanity and make sure... That's great. ...start talking to myself somewhere halfway through it. My family thinks I'm losing my mind. Okay. I had a question. Do you want to move on to Appendix X? Yeah. I have it in looking back to table 15, but let's go to Appendix H. This is the way it's always appeared. Yep. When it shows up on the town's website. Yeah. It doesn't usually have funding source. I added it. And I also added the requested year. Yeah. I, just to double-check everything, I sort of did a subtotal of each year, so I could then tie it back to make sure I didn't miss anything. Do you have any... Is there enough room to stick a subtotal in by year, just because that'll tie to your tables? Yeah. Okay. So, some of these funding sources will change automatically, I assume. Thank you. And then I'll just copy and paste them in the new table. Okay. That's good. Yeah. So, yeah. Historically, we did not include the funding source for the requested year. I thought it was helpful because it ties to the tables. And the requested year, I thought, was helpful for transparency on, like, what did they ask for and what did we ultimately decide? It makes it really easy to see what effort went into it, what went where. Yeah. No, I'm not getting it. Yeah. And I don't know if I should add a key to something sourcing like that. So, the $2.5 million will end up in this list in 2029? It will. Yeah. In terms of, what did you decide on year requested for that item? You put 2027 slash 2029? You mean, because it was requested twice? Yeah. I think we have to put 27. And I think the reason we have to put 27 is because it was, there was a conscious request. I think the more conscious request was to do it with the subject. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This request was 27. The previous request was 23. Yeah. Which will be in the text. Yeah. That's good. You had a couple of stray and dollar signs in this form. Okay. In this table? Yeah. First of all. 2031 townwide road reconstruction. All right. I'm going to throw a dollar sign on the total. Vicki? Yeah, it's okay. It's too straight, actually. My favorite is looking through the spreadsheet from last year and finding all your auditor tie-out notes. As an auditor, you try to proof numbers two or three different ways. It's not that. It's the actual format of the tie-out, right? Because the world I live in today, I was like, oh, look, there's a little auditor tie-out note there. Okay. Any other comments on Appendix H? Nope. Nope. Okay. All right. So, table 15. It's all going to update now anyway, right? Yeah. And I would say, don't assume that that's right to begin with. It's more the format. I don't think that. But first, I need to get back to when you shared, which I think I never shared. I don't have a computer. You said you sent out what you're putting up there. I did. Right. When we got, when I got here, but it's, it's going to be somewhat familiar to you, Brian. You're just, you're just plugging all the, I want to describe for these guys what you do. Yeah. I'm changing it a little bit. My computer is about to object to having this meeting open. I mean, the capital spreadsheet was very bad. There are two panelists. I don't know who the other one is. Oh, you're on Zoom. Sorry. All right. Yeah. I'm on, I'm on Zoom. Okay. I can share. I think so. I might have to stop sharing and see if I can't tell if Word is frozen. Should I try it? No, I got, I, it's not Zoom. It's, it's Word that's reciting that doesn't work today. So Brian, I'll talk about a concept you've seen this before, but I've changed it a little bit and I'm trying to make sure it ties to what the actual policy says. So first there's a metric right in the debt policy that says our total debt, which includes enterprise fund debt, um, will not exceed 10% of the projected total operating budget in including the enterprise funds and target six to 8%. That's her debt service. Debt service. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so don't assume these numbers are correct because I was fiddling with it right before, but I wanted to get the format out so that we can just, um, talk about it. So the top line of this is total debt service, including enterprise fund debt service. The next line is saying, how much did it change from the year before? Right. What percentage change? And then what's the projected operating budget? How is that as a percent? And is it meet the policy? Right. Or not. The other meant one of the other metrics is the levy debt. Relate against the general fund. Um, revenue, which is basically the operating budget without the enterprise funds, right? I think. Um, and so you're comparing that metric is three to 5%. So how much levy debt service do you have relative to the general fund revenue? So those are the two, they're very similar tables because it's both debt service. There's probably a couple other things I need for metrics outside of debt. Yeah. Can I ask you a question back on the first? Yep. So the first one, the operating budget there, you're saying includes, um, enterprise fund revenues? Uh, budget. Yes. Whatever their budget is. Does that, and the debt service, that first section, is that, um, that's including the water fund? General. Yeah. Water debt. Yeah. So it's sort of all the debt and all budgets. Yeah. And then the bottom is just general fund debt. Just general fund levy debt. Right. No excluded debt in any of those. No. Not many of those. And from what I can tell from reading the policies, and I wouldn't mind somebody doing a read, right? There isn't anything that constrains excluded debt, except there's a guideline on capital spending and what capital spending should be in a given year, right, as a percent. But that's not a debt. Right. Metric. Yeah. Which makes sense because that's a ballot. Right. Kind of thing. Yeah. So a couple of things here, right? I need to double check everything, right? Make sure everything's flowing through. This is just, I need to caveat, right? It's all estimates. And I need to get better numbers on operating in general fund. I used something that's, I think you sent me a month ago. Um, so I just want to make sure I'm using the latest and greatest numbers. Um, but I thought it was interesting and I think I have it in the right place. The general fund metric, we're on the low or even below the low end of it. But I do think that's because I also moved, I think I removed the DPW building into excluded. And do you have, um, to get into the weeds here, in fiscal 27, do you, did you include a bond anticipatory note interest? I did. And in 28, did you include the extra six months of interest on the permanent borrowing that got deferred? It, I'll have to double check, but the formula is supposed to, that I've used in the past has 1.5 on the interest. So I just have to make sure it's on, it's correct. But I'm sure that what, because what, what, what Brian had been including in 27, obviously all that, uh, all the general fund debt components of it got pushed out until fiscal 28. Yep. Other than the bands. And then for Brad and John's benefit and the public's benefit, fiscal, fiscal 27 capital that we've recommended be financed with levy debt, um, mechanically doesn't give rise to debt service until the following fiscal year. Yes, correct. So anything that we recommended be levy debt, fiscal 27, and Kelly's model would be showing up in that line fiscal 28. With one exception, which is the MWRA project is coming in in FY 29, because that's the terms of that borrowing. Right. That'll be up in the upper table. Yep. And you can, and, and, you know, the upper table, and you're going to have to be careful on the operating revenues, because the operating revenue is going to have to go up substantially. I don't know how you did your projections. I just did it. So for projections after this year, I just did a three, three and a half percent. Yeah. So there's going to have to be a spike. But that's, that's conservative though, in that metric. I mean, if you pass it with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I wouldn't, I didn't want to fiddle with it too much because then you have to explain what you fiddled with. Yeah. Um, whether that's worth an explanatory note, but yeah, as long as you're using it on the low end, um, and you have the debt, it's zero interest, but there is some, there are some fees. I think that's a hundred basis points or so of annual fees that have to be paid on the 38.6 million. Yeah. Basic points of fees. Yeah. They have a model. Um, you could email Tom Holder, um, or just go with what would be conservative. If you think it was 75 basis points, but if you went with a hundred, you're probably okay. Okay. And that's pretty much an annual, that's the annual cost of that financing plus a 20 year immunization of the 38.6. Yeah. Cause I almost had a heart attack because I had not adjusted the MWRA, um, interest. Oh, it's just being zero to be zero. And the 20, 29 number was like 14 point something million. Well, we're getting a good deal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you have conservative revenues, you're, you'll get the, the extra cost in there, but that'll, that upper one's got to be below 10%. Yeah. So 29 is 9.3. Yeah. So don't take any, take all this with a grain of salt. Cause I don't really want to. So you might, you might not need, you might not be able to be too conservative on the operating budget revenue side. If you pop over 10%. Yeah. We'll see. Right. I want to scrub it all the way through. But anyway, so the, the various, the four years we were just talking about, so you have more or less four and a half to 5 million in levy debt. Uh, Kelly's model basically projects out the, you know, debt service. Um, yeah. And it's not perfect to, um, to what Hilltop would do, but it's good enough. Yeah. Right. And, um, I do start with Hilltop's debt schedule for current debt. So that's, that's the base. That's the existing. And then I layer on the projected. How granular do you get, do you do shorter lives on certain assets and longer lives? I do. So, um, I, I do my best, although I will tell you. Inconsistent. When you look at the historical, it's very inconsistent from one year to the next. And I know there's a limit, right? There's policy limits of, um, at the state of what you can borrow, uh, term wise for different projects. Um, what we ultimately do ends up being between the Hilltop, the financial advisor and the select board. And as far as I can tell, they do it based on what the bond market's looking like, right? What interest rates are looking like they may shorten, um, the time period. Um, so I look at history and try to be a little bit on the, a little bit on the conservative side, right? Don't push the, the, um, the length too much. Um, but I did a few of the projects, Brian, Kevin, he had had Hilltop, um, do a schedule for, they like the salt shed was on there. So I was like, all right, well, I'm going to use whatever term they have for the salt shed, right? Cause they've already looked at it. But, um, I think I default it to 10. I take it down to five for anything that's like vehicles or equipment and then up to 15 for longer term assets, right? Buildings or, um, uh, bigger, bigger project stuff. But I don't go beyond that unless there's a specific, like there's certain things we do 24. Right. Um, but like the, I think the council on Adrian, um, like a building, but try to be as conservative as I can. So, but how do you maintain this? It extends a lot, right? I'm not sure the debt, the debt discussion. Well, if your question is, if your question is who's going to deal with this when Kelly's not on this committee? Um, that's a good question. Right. Much less. I mean, this is, uh, it's, it's a, it's a check to make sure we're getting guided, but the reality, there's a lot of assumptions in here. There's a ton. We need to make sure that no one thinks this is actual real. Yeah. I was about to ask. Yeah. Good news. It was an actuary. The first thing I do is caveat the crap out of it. I guess I was going to ask the following. Um, you ask a good question. It's a good question. It's the same question that the finance committee asked when Kelly went off the finance committee because this table appears and it has appeared historically in the FinCom report. And somebody had to deal with that last year. And one of the members agreed to deal with it and immediately picked up the phone of Kelly and, and, uh, Kelly got stuck, you know, working on it. But, um, I guess for our purposes now, um, I guess I, I think it's helpful to have this information because we want to be sure that decisions we're making and our recommendations when you do the math comply with the policies, which is part of the reason you're doing this. Right. Um, but the extent we're seeing at the moment kind of looks like we'll probably be okay. Um, I worry about the time it's going to take for you to kind of rework this and be comfortable versus getting the addendum done, making a statement that based on our preliminary. That's why I wanted to talk about it. Review. We think we're okay. I'm comfortable not including it and making that statement similar to what we did in the first part. Yeah. Um, but I do think it has to be, right. We want to be, I want to be comfortable with it regardless. Right. But that's that we making that statement. It's similar to what we did for FY 27 and why I didn't put in specifically, right. Here's what we're at. Right. For all the metrics. Just like, yeah, we met the metrics. Um, yeah. But from your description, I think you've been conservative in the right places and we're passing. And, um, as to your question, I think long term, longer term, this is the kind of thing. I think the finance director should be responsible for. I mean, because he's subject, you know, the finance director and time manager is subject to the same policies, whatever they produce. So they're going to have to have formulas and calculations, you know, calculations. But there's also no guarantee. They're going to follow our recommendations. No, of course. But, but we don't want to, we don't want, we, we, we don't want to put forth recommendations that we know fail. Yeah. No, I mean, I can see doing it as part of the master schedule, right. I mean, we probably have to go back and start like, as we assign levy debt, we should just pick the degree, you know, whatever bond schedule we want to go with it. Right. So it wouldn't flow normally versus us having to build a separate problem. Otherwise it just becomes, otherwise, you just kind of pick and choose it. Right. In a, in a perfect world, which we're not at yet. Right. When we pick the category of project, right. Which is one of the tables I have here. Right. Which I also want to just double check. You'd have a simple schedule that goes, well, if it's a building repair, that's if it's a vehicle, it's this, and that you just, that's the default for this. And we're not plugging. Plugging your bond rate. Just call it out. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, very much because I already have it built out. But the problem FinCom ran into, which is a good question, right. Is somebody has to understand. Right. And be able to follow the math. Right. To, to understand what it's doing. Cause if you just look at it, you're not, you're not going to be able to. Yeah. It's not material, but an example would be the bond anticipatory note interest. I just asked about that. Wasn't really built into Kelly's model. And so you have to kind of hard code in the extent, you know, that there is some ban interest involved, which is usually pretty low. You have to hard code that number in to make sure you, you know, in this case, that would be getting hard coded into fiscal 27. Yeah. There might be something in 26 because it bands were outstanding. Some bands were outstanding in 26, but you got to put a number in there. And so it's kind of points out last year, the person that had to pick that up. Yeah. You know, it's a behemoth of an Excel workbook. And so there's no way she was going to. You were trying to make me feel better than you just went the other way. And you have to understand conceptually what bond anticipatory note interest is, and you have to be aware of it. I would say the spreadsheet's a behemoth, but there's not that many pages that are actually doing anything, right? There's a lot of data that I've pulled in to have it to reference. But one bad sell, as I found last year. Yes. One bad sell. And what comes out the other end, you know, it's set up so you hit a button and out the other end comes these nice looking tables. But then you step back and you look at the numbers and say, okay, well, this number should agree with this in the operating budget. And when it doesn't, you have to then go back and say, okay, why isn't that? And that's what happened last year. So, you know. There were problems with this table from the get go though, because my, and my understanding of it in the past was not correct, which was, we don't, the method, the policy even back in previous days was, there was an operating budget and a general revenue target. It was 10%. But if you look at the warrant, we only ever talk about the operating budget being the general fund operating budget. We don't talk about it in terms of total reading the policy. Now it's very clear. They were separate. I think they changed that. Yeah. I think they changed that. So there, so there were problems from the get go. I, I'm comfortable taking it out for this report. Um, and I would also, you know, I'll continue to work the file to try and make it a more user friendly in case somebody wants to use it in the future. Um, I never got to the step of locking everything that shouldn't be touched. That was, that was next on my list. So for example, like you, you should be able to, in theory, you should be able to, nothing we're doing affects 2027 general fund debt service. Yeah. You should be able to ask Brian Kebany based on his operating budget that they just presented to the FinCon. There's a debt service number in the budget, but it includes both levy debt and excluded debt. But you should be able to ask him of the amount he's got in the operating budget for 27. How much is the levy debt service? And it should have it from till top. What 26, 2027 is. I'm just saying what we found last year was what, when I went to try to tie things into the operating budget, now, whether the operating budget wasn't. Oh, okay. The operating budget. And that was the first thing I wanted to do. And because there's another table, there's another table somewhere where you could see what the levy debt service, or you could see the excluded debt service. Yeah. And subtracted from the total debt service. And that number wasn't agreeing with this table. And that's kind of what sent me off down a rabbit hole. But anyway, back to our purpose for tonight. And there may be another use of this, depending on what the FinCon decides to put in their report, whether they're relying on you to produce this for them. But it sounds like, you know, we're all comfortable, but based on what Kelly's describing, we think we're, what we're done here. And as anything we did tonight, doesn't look like what we've done tonight materially would affect. We've increased levy debt a little bit. And feel, I don't think it'll change it. Well, that's excluded debt. So that, it's just those items we moved, you know. We've shifted years. We moved a million. Yeah. I think that'll be fine. Yeah. That's, that's relatively small. So then, then Kelly, just make a statement in a sentence that we evaluated and we're comfortable that, you know, we read the test. But thanks for doing that. It was great. It was nice to see it. Yeah. Yeah. It took me two days. No, that's, that's already built out. That didn't take very long. It was just fixing the operating from general fund that I didn't have built out there. Yeah. But we, we need this because, or we need, we need something over the longer haul. We can't just guess that it's going to pass. You have to, somebody has got to be able to do the math. Especially when you get to a 10 year, right? Yeah. And it ultimately too, there's a difference from, you know, I'm going to project it out on a very simple basis. And when they go to actually, um, sell the bonds, they often don't structure it on a simple. So it's not necessarily just a straight line, right? Even amortization. Sometimes they, they tranche it. Um, so it's important that that you make a plan. And then when the actual bonds get purchased, that that's flowing through because it, it'll change, changes the out years. Okay. I mean, not that it mattered for this conversation, but so in your model, you can, is there a line really for actual carry through versus projected? Yeah. I have separate. So I have the table from, um, Hilltop, which is the actual, I pull that in as its own section in the model. And then I pull in all the projects we assigned to in the various. So you were just projecting the. I'm only projecting the future ones on top of the existing schedule. So that's bad. And I don't, I don't remember for sure, but I know you said you corrected them all, but there was a, my recollection that in what the FinCom member was doing, when I looked at the tab of pulling the debt service, it was supposed to be comparing. Maybe it was without, it was supposed to exclude something and it wasn't excluding something. And I can't remember if it wasn't picking up principal and interest or. Uh, I don't. You may want to just look back at my notes. It's one of those front tabs, um, that I had to fix because it was pulling from Hilltop, but it was pulling from the wrong place. And again, I highlighted where I thought the problem was. Meaning it was pulling just principal or just interest. It should have been pulling both. I think that was, that may have been the issue. And again, it also may have been doing something with, um, maybe water debt or something. I, I know I left notes. Yeah. I saw, I'll look in the version. First, second, third tab. Yeah. Okay. Anyway. Um, and obviously there's a lot of assumptions in there. I'm still using four and a half as the interest rate. Yeah. They borrowed it. They borrowed it. Three something. Yeah. It was pretty low. Yeah. Um, Brian didn't think I was being conservative. Yeah. So when the bond issue came through, I was like, that's good. Hmm. Um, okay. Sounds like a lot, but when you move the interest rate, it doesn't. It doesn't do too much, except when you throw in a $38 million project, and then all of a sudden, what's the difference? Well, we just throw interest on that. Just fees. Other than the fees. Yeah. Yeah. We, and we have in the past, um, refunded bonds that have been previously issued. So like the high school bond got refund, got redone. And when rates were really low. So it got redone at like one and a quarter. Um, and that made a big difference. I don't know that we'll see that kind of municipal bond rate again anytime soon. But, um, there are, there, it's not permanent necessarily. There are opportunities, but there's, there's rules on how, when you can do it. Like from when the issuances, it's quite a while between the issuance and when you can refund it. Yeah. Okay. We're back to, okay. So are we comfortable? Are we ready to take a vote? Are we have more stuff we want to talk about? Yeah. And are you comfortable with a similar approach to last time where you are trusting me to do the edits? Well, so the only, the only thing we're not seeing is whatever text you're going to put in. But it doesn't sound like you're going to be putting that much text. I'm trying to put much, but I would like one other person to read it. Are you okay doing that again? Yeah, be glad to. And I said, I'll get you an, we'll get everybody an updated Excel spreadsheet, which you'll then have. Um, all right. Can I get a motion to amend, um, add the addendum to the report with the edits that we discussed tonight? Um, and Brad reviewing my edits. So motioned. We got a second. Second. Uh, at the tail end of that, did I hear you say and submit it when it's ready? Submit it when it's ready. Submit it when it's ready. Submit it when it's ready. You, you, I'm going to change what I said to and submit it when it's ready. Okay. Do I still have a motion? So motion. I still have a second. Thank you. Uh, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Passes. Okay. And so when that gets submitted, uh, back to what's on our webpage at the moment, um, what you're going to submit will effectively be the whole report again, plus the addendum. Would you like them both posted about the historical perspective to post this additionally? I'll send. Oh, how do we do it last time? I'll, I'll, I'll, once I get the final report from you, I'll send that to, um, town manager's office. They'll post it on the website. Perfect. Um, but yeah, you send it to all the same people. And I, I think you sent it to the, uh, chair of the FinCon before. I did. And I don't know that he necessarily distributed it to his members because I alerted Pam to the fact that it had been posted on our webpage since January 20th. It sounded like she wasn't aware of that. Um, so does anybody have a problem of how are you sending it to all FinCon members? Just send it to all FinCon. Not the way it's supposed to need to work, but it's fine. Um, on the Slack board, they're pretty good at, uh, and your meeting tomorrow, um, I'm not going to, uh, you're not going to address this other than to say, yeah, I can address it in generalizations. Right. Um, right. When the, the fact that we've had to move a lot of projects out to be able to fit within the guidelines, um, that we did have a few other projects that we've determined were redundant, um, requests. And ultimately very, they'll have to be rejiggered once, um, the town manager, the finance director and FinCon decide on FY27. But, um, you might, um, if you have time, you might want to work in the concept of bundling. Yes, I can. Just because again, they're, they're going to be coming at you with why, you know, why, why didn't you recommend excluded debt for the $2 million septic project? Um, when they'll say, because that violated the policy. Yeah. You can do what you want. Yeah. You can do what you want, but, but there may be a time maybe in fiscal 29 that bundling a large project fields and other things have been getting deferred might make some sense. Yes. Then I will. Something like that. But that, that almost, not a gain time decision, but that has to be a decision made in the context of. Part of the override planning. Every other, right, financial decision including override. So I don't think it's something we're equipped to make that decision on. No. Even if it was, right, they wanted it from us. Okay. I'm going to stop sharing. Um, and, um, just, uh, since we're still on this topic, um, I watched a few minutes of the select board meeting on Monday night and, um, town manager during his report mentioned that he had, I guess he was requested by our legislators for any possible projects or earmark funding in the state budget, which they asked about from time to time. And so I thought you'd be interested to know that one of the items he, uh, put on his list was a new generator at the library and the council on the Asian building. So. Okay. So we'll see what happens with that. Um, but something to do with the town website. I don't know. Oh, that was in there too. Okay. So I suppose anybody wants to ask for funding towards clean water. Seems like that's something that should, I mean, I know they're getting, I know we have the, yeah, there was a third item, but I forgot what it, it was something that was in our budget discussion. So the news, I think he was listening. Okay. And, um, and yeah, the more you can get these things taken care of, they do tend to respond to emergency related type things that don't otherwise are eligible for grant funding. Yeah. I do think, and I don't know, I know the former police chief was seemed quite good at, um, applying for and getting grants, um, based on my time on with several other police chiefs. I don't recall that being the case as much as it was with cheaper. Um, I don't know if there's a, you know, more concerted effort around, particularly as part of the budget, you know, working group and, and the constraints we have, right, around really looking at the projects and sitting down and, and seeking out more grant funding. You may want to remember to bring that up tomorrow. Yeah. Because again, the discussion last night when they, or Monday night, when they, last night, when they met with the town manager, finance director, they, they were interrupting a bunch of items looking for, knowing what's coming financially, looking for what, what else can we do? So in this arena, um, something like that would be, you know, excluded debt, um, grants, um, state funding, um, um, you know, oversight. Um, I think, I think he met, town manager mentioned at the FinCon meeting last night, they didn't get into capital per se, but I think he mentioned the potential for a visioning, uh, uh, committee for, well, this building, what, what's its, you know, future. Yeah. But you might want to highlight that one as well. Okay. It's in, it's in the report, but. Okay. And, um, I think they, um, just things we talked about, uh, last week. I think the Slack board had drafted a charge for yet another visioning committee for the Route 20 quarter work that they've been talking about, which we spent some time with Tom Holder on, eventually we agreed to include the second piece of that funding, uh, wanted it, but they had the planning board in who kind of that's, that's their area. And I'm pretty sure that that discussion ended up with the Slack board was going to hold back, not creating another committee and let the planning board, I think the planning board basically were saying the reason why they haven't been able to move on with, you know, they had hired an outside consultant to do some of the visioning part of it. And, uh, the reason they hadn't been able to move that ball forward is because they were stuck with these three dover amendment reviews, which are extremely complicated and time consuming. And because they believe that there's some changes with bylaws that have to occur to be able to do what some of the visioning is. Um, and I think the conclusion was the Slack board was going to not move forward in a new committee at the planning board, try to figure out how to move it forward, but have others, you know, the EDC economic development committee to support, um, you know, work on. So it wouldn't surprise me that, um, you know, that we might hear more about that. Although we recommended the funding in the year Tom wanted it. The other visioning committee is the, uh, 20 South landfill. And, um, again, it wouldn't surprise me that, that there'll be pressure on the town manager to get some money in the capital budget for that, uh, where we put that on. We don't know what the scope and timing is yet. Uh, but we'll see what happens. I mean, you know, we don't have that information. So yeah, I, I got messages from Slack board both on, um, town building that they were moving forward. Um, next plans they were going to meet with Michael, uh, and Faya, right. To understand the needs of building needs and head towards hopefully a visioning committee. And then I also got, um, a message that the visioning committee on the landfill would be coming forward soon to select board, but obviously select board hasn't chosen a direction. And I let him know that, you know, we're going to put it on a list of things that isn't slotted because it's not defined yet. So I don't think anything, you know, no real new news there. Yeah. So I think all those things were consistent with, um, our discussion last meeting. Um, we have one other item, but I'll wait till the end of the agenda. Okay. Okay. All right. So we are, we are on minutes. Any, um, February four, two edits, um, on page two, uh, in the third bullet, the second line, and then the second paragraph in the third bullet in the first line, uh, I'm going to insert the word south after route 20, which, uh, is the, uh, more accurate description. It's on the south side of route 20. It's on the north side. Correct. Got it. Other than that, unless anybody else has any questions or edits? Nope. I have any. Can I get a motion to approve the minutes of February 4th? Motion to approve the minutes. Second. Can I second if I wasn't there? Uh, you actually can. You can vote on it too. I said it. Great. As revised, I assume that. As revised. Uh, all in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. All right. Topics not reasonably anticipated by the chair 48 hours prior to posting. I don't have anything, but you're allowed to bring one up. You are. I'm going to let you. Okay. So, uh, at the select board meeting, um, there was a brief summary of a meeting that the chair and bill chair, Carol Martin and the Whitney had met with the school committee, um, a week ago to talk about the holiday road, uh, warrant article. Yep. And you might recall when Carol met with us, um, uh, basically she said the thrust of what they were doing was to try to find opportunities for new growth. And, um, and therefore I think our conclusion was that that's kind of where the wording of the article landed. It didn't sound and ultimately that parcel was transferred to the select board by town meeting and eventually sold to a developer. It wouldn't result in the town capital assets. So it really wouldn't be within our purview. But if something changed such that they decided that it could be used for conservation land or for school building or whatever, then it probably would be within our purview. Uh, and so, um, the report was they met with the school committee, the school committee is noncommittal as to whether they would or wouldn't, uh, agree to transfer custody, which needs to happen before they bring it to town meeting, which you're not doing this town meeting, this town meeting. They just want to ask for money to do some engineering work or tests and other things. And, um, the chair of the school committee apparently asked them same question. I think I asked Carol, if you're going to do testing, might you talk to the schools just to see if it turns out they might want to use it? Are there, is there testing that you could do at the same time so you don't have to do it twice? So apparently the chair of the school committee brought that up and said, you know, we'd like to possibly see schools referenced, the school use referenced in the article. And, uh, I think after listening to Bill Whitney's update at the psych ward meeting, it's not clear to me that he feels that they will know where the school is headed or not headed on their feasibility study for building a new elementary school, um, in time to necessarily feel comfortable including schools as a reference. And, uh, therefore I don't know if that's not referenced, whether the schools will say, well, we can't support that at this time because we don't want to leave the public into thinking that, you know, we have no use for that. But if they do add schools to the language, then my question is, does that put, kick it back to something that we need to review and recommend or not recommend? Anyway. Um, it's a good question and we can add it to an agenda. It may be an exegener because the schools are meeting tomorrow. I'm not sure that it changes and I gotta go back and read the language again, but I don't know if the study, if, if a study itself, right, is a planning and it's not, especially if they do a broad, like, I just want to see what I can use it for. It could be any of these 10 things. I don't know if that necessarily lands in capital versus I'm going to do a study for this specific thing, which is going to, and, and I'm going to build, right. This project there. So it's part of design of a, of a, of another, um, of a capital project. So I'm not clear on that, but I think we should talk about it again. Okay. I just wanted to raise it that it's, it sounds like it may be two more weeks or so. Before the select board knows, um, what they're going to do. And I believe the school committee has it on their agenda for tomorrow night to talk more about. I would love if somebody, not me, could do a little research on how other towns just treat studies. Right. Cause we do, we do them all the time. Um, and studies for you time, but from a committee, like ours or, or do they treat, do they treat that like initial feasibility study as capital or is that before capital? Because I do think some, it's planning, not, not project, right. It's not part of the project yet. Um, so I'd like to have a little more, if there, if there's a norm. Yeah. I can check this. So the task is how do other towns handle the costs of just initial studies or planning? Yeah. Is it part of their, cause a lot of towns have capital planning committee. Right. In their, in their purview. And obviously we're, we have to be subject to the words that are in our bylaw, but this is where. Well, let me ask this. We're probably now venturing the field from our agenda, but if Brad happens to on his own time, sorry, I don't think we can commit as a committee to, we're not going to do that. Sorry. Thank you for the reminder. Um, but you, but you might, I'm sure the next agenda is probably going to include those other items that you had been included. Yeah. I'm going to put that back. Updating articles. Yeah. Future reports. Okay. Anything else, um, on announcement for things not anticipated. All right. So I'm going to cancel. I had a meeting room held for next week, but I'm going to cancel that. Um, and then, um, I was successful in getting us a room starting March 4th. Um, which is a Wednesday at six 30. And every other week after that, and the only date she couldn't give me was, um, Wednesday, April 15th, but was able to give me Tuesday, the 14th. So we're every Wednesday, except for that one day. All at six 30. All at six 30. Um, we'll be in the select board meeting room through the end of April. And then, um, in this room after that, but how far out did you go the end of the fiscal year? She didn't say, I said, as far as you're, as you have a calendar open for. Um, so I'll just refer to every other week. So the fourth, April 14th will be. Yeah. April 14th. So get your taxes done ahead of time. So it's probably more for me than the rest of it. All right. All right. Well, I have, are we ready to adjourn? Yeah. All right. Can I get a motion to adjourn at seven 59. So moved. All right. Second. All in favor. Aye. Excellent. Thank you. Good job.