February 25, 2026 – Finance Committee – Video & Transcript

February 25, 2026 - Finance Committee

Autoscroll:

In the absence of our chair, who is exposed tonight, I'm going to give my best impression of Al Haig and take over. This meeting is being recorded and will be made available to the public on WACAM as soon as possible after the meeting. Pursuing Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, the meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with applicable law. When they watch or participate remotely, put the meeting link that can be found at, and it's really long, but I'm telling you you can find it by clicking on the link. Website calendar glitching for public meetings on the town's home page. When required by law or allowed by the chair, persons wishing to provide public comment or otherwise participate in a meeting may do so at the meeting location, in person or remote access, and public comment should be limited to two minutes per person.
With that, I call the meeting to order. We have a quorum. As I said, the chair cannot be here tonight. The agenda is really pretty straightforward. We're going to talk all things that we can about the operating budget and the capital budget with special emphasis on high school baseball project. We have some visitors tonight who give us some information for us, and then following that, we'll review and perhaps vote on one or more articles. Pretty much it. So are there any public comments? Do we have anybody from the public? In that case, we have minutes from April. Thank you very much. We'll have a chance to look at them. I gave her some very modest comments. I did. I added you to all the votes. Sorry. I added you to all the votes. I added you to all the votes. I added that. Okay. That was one. I had a. All right, I'm just trying to. In the first big paragraph during the meeting, several inquiries, near the end, this is probably two-thirds of the way through, but about the PFAS, and McCall noted that chemicals containing PFAS are no longer used, I'd say, by the town. There are probably still some out there.
I'm sure there are likely many still out there. And then at the end of that, Bill Whitney, I think his point was, should be just noted there. So I just added at the end, he inquired about the disruption of the playing fields, and I added, and I'll just read it, and then he'll go back. And noted that doing an add-on while you're at it project is often not cost-effective, just for the record. And then on the next page under the continued review and discussion, the second paragraph starts with inquiry regarding the 90 million or 90,000. And then in the last paragraph in that section, PGDC emphasized that he had requested a clear budget, and with recent updates and levy capacity. And then you probably caught this one, topics not reasonably anticipated. We had the next meeting, February 23rd. Yes. Which, yes, I caught that. And then also, you said following the meeting, A, the thought moved. You just take that following the meeting, because it was still part of the meeting. Okay. Any other comments or suggestions for the minutes? Motion to adopt the minutes, as amended. I abstain. You're a town engineer, and a few other good folks on the monitor. Welcome, Abby. Welcome, everyone. Hi, how are you?
We won't keep you any longer than necessary, so why don't we just dive right in when you're ready? Sure. Am I able to share my screen?
All right. So, hi, I'm Abby Charest. I'm here with Catherine Brenna and Mike Fea from Facilities and Recreation. I also have our engineering team, although they had just said Abby Charest for all of them, but we have Ryan Morrison. He's been working with Catherine on the field, and Dan Roop. He's been helping me on the wastewater side of things. So, for the ball field drawing, let me just pull that up.
I think that we have that here now.
Again, my project is really having to do with the wastewater treatment for the high school here, but in being able to cut down from the original $5.5 million project, I became aware that we would be able to do not just the wastewater project, but also include the ball field project for a total of $4.5 million being under the $5.5 million capital item in there. So, instead of just doing the treatment plant, we were able to get into that budget, refurbishing these ball fields here, where we have a varsity ball field on this side, a JV ball field on this side, and then Catherine's worked with the team to make sure that there were possibilities of striping the fields in all kinds of alternative ways so that we could not only accommodate the baseball in the spring, but also accommodate the other sports and the other seasons. Additionally, they've been working with me on drainage in the area. One of the reasons that I'm also interested in this project is I know that area has a lot of stormwater and drainage issues. We have some issues that we're dealing with off the turf field originally. Additionally, this gets wet in the back there, so I've worked with the team to deal with some of the drainage issues. Some of the questions that I've had have to do with sort of literal and figurative overlap of the project. Literally, there's not an overlap in terms of the fields and the actual projects, but figuratively, we will have myself out there, we'll have engineers out there, we'll have a contractor out there, and there's about a quarter of a million dollars in savings if we do the projects both together and at the same time. I also have a breakdown of the budget, but why don't you ask me any questions about this field design before I show that? The field will be shifted in a way where they'll be able to sort of share resources between the JV and the Varsity, but not necessarily totally relocated. You can kind of see underneath the darker project lines where the original ball fields are. You can retrace the original versus the new, I can't quite see. So I think the original is in color, right? So I think this is a satellite image of what we have now. Yeah. And over it is the proposal, right? That's correct. So what do you see, the light-colored infields or the current? Okay, the light-colored infield is the current and the gray infield is the new? Yeah. That's correct. Yep. Abby, if you zoom in a bit more, it might be even clearer. Okay. On the screens.
When I zoom in, you see the original very clearly. And then the darker lines here are the. Okay. So it's the same, just relocating, you know, relocating, but essentially the same geographic. Essentially.
Yeah. Most of the issues we have right now are just in terms of maintaining that area. They have to go out there and try to maintain those fields. They're very bumpy and we're hoping to do this project sooner rather than later so that we can save some of those operation and maintenance dollars that they've been utilizing every year for that. Additionally, they've had to use some dollars to play varsity baseball games on other fields and things like that because they're not always able to use these fields. And what's the difference between, there was a 90K proposal to do some restoration and then there's a 10K per year roughly maintenance. Can you explain those two? There's about 10K regularly in maintenance. And additionally, this year, they were going to spend another 80,000 to 90,000 trying to get a little bit more useful life out of the fields. And Brian, where is that budgeted? Is that the town manager's field maintenance or is that in facilities or is that in schools? The contract was signed for the maintenance back in the fall. It's the contract was signed to have the town manager's capital budget on the contract. So it would have been town manager. So that 100,000 that we have in the fields maintenance and part of the capital plan, would that be removed? No. The $100,000 is an annual appropriation into the capital budget. It would go to something else if this project were done.
I'm asking. That's a question. That's a question. I think April was asking if the 90,000 that you'd planned to use to get the fields in better shape this year was coming out of the town manager's 100,000 annual budget. That wouldn't be my call. Yeah, that's not my call necessarily. I work on the wastewater and things like that. That was for Brian. In terms of Brian. I'm not sure. I would have asked another way. If this project goes forward, do you also need to spend the 90,000 on the fields? Or is that, does that not, does that not? Catherine, you want to take that question, Catherine? I agree with Abby. It's potentially not my call either. It's possible that you could spend the 90,000 now to get through this coming season with the three feet of snow that is currently on this field. And generally baseball season starts in the middle of March. I don't think that we're going to, they're not going to start the work in March. But we're still in fiscal 26. We're talking about fiscal 27 anyway, right? Oh, so fiscal 27, that $100,000 would be spent in other areas of town. Right. So it would be, it would be for other fields. We wouldn't use the 90,000 to fix this field. It would be spent toward other fields. I guess that is maybe your relevant question is, but would the plan be to do all of this off season or does the budget include something to have people play while this construction is going on? The, this would, the plan would be to get this bid in the summertime, start in the fall. Hopefully we need to get through two growing seasons. So we could count the fall as a growing season. And the spring would be, need to be the second growing season, then they would not be able to use the ball field at that time. And I don't, I don't, I don't have money in there for the athletic department to change the games. The project numbers I have are just construction dollars.
Do we know directionally how much it would cost for, would the plan be to just skip a season or do we know directionally how much it would cost to play a season somewhere other than this? Catherine, do you know what they would do in terms of? I don't, I don't think it's big money. I think they would probably just schedule all their away games, you know, and other. Oh, that's right. And that's what they, they did mention that. Right. And they would practice, you know, in other green space areas, potentially at the middle school or, or, or find space while this field is offline. Which they're doing now anyway, because of the field is in disrepair.
Okay. So I get nominal transportation costs, but no, not a significant amount of money. I would say it's not. With the two growing season requirements of fields, essentially whenever we start, we're talking about almost a year before they can really play on it. So that's for 2028. Spring 2028. That's right. And Abby, where is the, sorry, the wastewater, or the subject on that map?
That is here.
This is the old wastewater treatment plant here, and the fields would be in this area here. Okay. The leach field. The leach field. The leach field. Yes, I'm sorry. The wastewater leach field. So the treatment comes into here. We'd have a small treatment process, and then the leach fields would be in this area here. I think one thing that we heard about at the last presentation on this was additional lights. Is that part of the plan? I don't believe that the lights are part of that. Here, let me stop sharing this one, and I'll pull up the budget on that. I would encourage any plan to include lights, just because ever since the school start times changed later in the day, that lights have become more important in order to get games in. So if there's any room, even as an ad alternate on a plan or anywhere, to include lights in this type of project. And the athletic director supports that. I agree. I think that part of the issue right now is we are in this spot where we're stuck, where we can't really go forward quite yet with the finalization. So we're all at kind of a conceptual design plan. I can zoom out a little bit and show you. We have a fair bit of contingency in this project currently. And my estimate is that we could get some lighting in there once we hone in on what the actual design is.
And this is just for the fields? This has nothing to do with waste water? This is just the fields. And these numbers, the $2 million for wastewater and the $2.5 million for the fields, do those assume the $250,000 in savings? Or is it $2.25 for this if we do it at the same time as the wastewater? Oh, that's a great question. Ryan, are you on here? I am. Hopefully I'm not on mute. It does not assume the $250,000 in savings. So you'll see down below, like we have engineering soft costs in there. We haven't factored in the fact that if we bid these together, we could save some money there. And we haven't factored that into the earthwork costs yet. But I'm going to assume as we get into design, we're going to find other areas that may need to pick up some funding too. So like you said, they're pretty conceptual in both the plan and the OPC.
I think we have another question on the contingency. It seems like, I think, was it a 20% contingency? 20%? Yeah. Is that typical? Is that adequate? Are we just to give us a sense of where that lies? If we were well into design, we wouldn't carry a 20% contingency. But because of where we are in the design phase, that's typical for us to carry a 20%. Sometimes we would even carry more, given the level of design. We just have recent bid prices for natural turf fields. So I felt a little bit more comfortable about being able to give you a more realistic number here. Now I'm going to ask a basic question. What's contractor O2P?
What is the contractor? The second line. It says subtotal and underneath that contractor. Overhead and profit. Yep. Contractor overhead and profit. I'm not sure that people will be able to answer probably more of the baseball coach. But I've heard conflicting answers to they having to move games off site. That in the one hand, I think you even mentioned it here, oh, they're having to play a lot of the games off site. And I asked at the last meeting, you know, how many games have they had to move? And I think the coach or one of the people just said, oh, we've had to move a couple. But basically they haven't had to move games. So I guess I'd like to have a clearer answer at some point of exactly how many games, you know, are they moving the whole season or are they moving occasional game when they have a hard rain?
Probably not. Yeah, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. I think the times that they have to move tend to be more due to weather and rain and drainage issues. I think that it's more the consistency of the play of the game is what they explain. So even when they are there, they're concerned about the level of play that they're able to get. They're worried about that hot and that sort of thing. But anyway, there's some confusion about are all the games being moved or is there an occasional one being moved? I think it depends on the year and how much rain they get. It depends also on the alternatives that they have. I'll just speak on behalf of the athletic director and the baseball coach that in some cases there's nowhere to move the game and they're kind of forced to hold the games on this home field when it's not necessarily their preference or in some cases even safe to do so. One of the stories that the high school baseball coach told us is that the high school students had made the playoffs for the first time in a very long time and the kids were excited about having their first playoff game be two hours away in Longmeadow, Mass because they found their home field to be embarrassing and a detriment to their play. So that's just kind of the sentiment that's what's happening out there in the field. That sometimes there are no alternatives, but even when there are, they're preferred to go on the road. Can you scroll up a little, please? I wonder what I'm wondering looking at this as somebody who doesn't really know much about any of this. It seems like there's kind of a mix of, I'm wondering if there's sort of a middle ground option we considered that's sort of, this seems like it's a tear everything out and redo it all. Is there any more middle ground option we consider where we address, you know, some of the drainage issues and some of the sort of must fix items, but we don't necessarily replace kind of each and everything.
I'll let Ryan speak to that next. But from what I saw with the drainage plans, once we're taking out the soil and putting in some of the drainage, and at that point we've ripped out a lot of the earth that, you know, we've already kind of gotten to the place where we would need to redo the fields. But Ryan, why don't you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, I think you kind of nailed it, Abby. If you're going to strip material off the site in order to put a drainage layer in to allow the facility to drain, you're going to end up pretty much disturbing everything and tearing up the field. That being said, I guess we did talk about an opportunity where maybe you don't do it all at once and you do the project in a couple of phases, but when you tear up that field, you're going to be shutting that field down for a year. And so if you don't go and take care of the field and you only take care of half of it and then come back in a few years and replace the other half, it'd be kind of a shame for the folks that, you know, you're shutting down the field for a year, maybe in a five-year segment, so. But basically, so what I'm hearing is, because when I look at the budget, I look at the drainage section and I look at the earthwork section and I say, hey, is there a world where we do the drainage and the earthwork and not some of the rest of the costs? And it sounds like you're saying, although that looks like it might be a thing on the sheet, you know, it's not a thing in reality, right? Doing drainage and earthwork would necessitate a lot of the items further down the list? Yeah, you're going to tear up. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say, it's kind of the foundation. So you have to take it out and you build a foundation and then you build the new fields on it. But once you've sort of, you know, taken out the old and then put the new foundation foundation and you'd have to build up the fields on top of it, right? Makes sense. Can I ask maybe what to build? Probably not a special, but how many people use the fields in a given season or given year or across the different games that will be played? Like what's the number? I can speak to that a little bit. I don't have exact numbers in front of me. I know that Chris Fay has reported that the baseball program at Wayland High School is the biggest it's been in a long time. I wouldn't say he has close to probably 80 players that are playing in their program there. When the Wayland High School varsity, junior varsity freshman teams aren't playing there, we have little league groups. Little league can, it varies from season to season. It can be anywhere between 250 to 300 kids that play in little league total. I don't know how many of those kids would actually be assigned to this field. Obviously, at any given time, you're only going to have one team at a time. But from March until September, it is requested every available hour. So Monday through Friday, the Wayland High School athletics are on the field. And then evenings when they're done and weekends, the youth groups are there. It's every single day. Well, the dimensions of the field would be different for the younger kids and the mound and all that would be all different. So they actually have to have a different baseball field for depending on what age. Yeah, we have little league size fields around town. These two that we're looking at here at this site are two of only three 90-foot diamonds that we have in the whole town. So all of the little league kids who age into this 90-foot diamond, which I would say would be like the major leagues and above. So it's not all 250, 300 little leaguers that would be eligible for this field, but it is their older age groups. And then you've got the other. Yeah, and then, Catherine, what are some of the other uses they use that area for? I used to field hockey and football. All of Wayland High School athletics use it. So football, lacrosse, soccer, and then the youth groups. Whenever Wayland High School athletic programs are in there, we assign or permit youth groups. There's never a time where these fields are not being used. We have everything from field hockey. We have cricket. We have ultimate frisbee. We have lacrosse. You name it, these fields are being used. Soccer is obviously a big one. The numbers are growing. We have a field permit scheduler in the rec department and is currently negotiating with all the youth groups on how to find enough field space. We just don't have enough field space in Wayland to accommodate the amount of users that we have. And by moving these baseball fields, it opens up the green space that you can get more people on the field, whether it's practice or a game, in a more efficient and safer way. It needs to be done.
Can I just ask about the numbers quickly? And this is just because it's on this sheet and it's right there. The subtotal shows 1.478. There's another section up above. And then 1.2. Oh, sorry. 2.22. Yeah. Thank you.
I do like the question on the lighting. I'm curious how much that would be from an ad standpoint to this contract. About $5.50 per baseball field or $400 per multipurpose rectangular field. That's not including service upgrades. Like I don't, obviously at this point, we've not done any evaluation of what you have for service out there. I know the track has lights. It's possible that we could pull from wherever that service is, but that would be something that would have to be evaluated. So it was $5.50 per diamond, basically, the 90-foot diamond. What about the other fields that are? If it was a multipurpose rectangular field, you're somewhere in the $400 to $450 range. And the reason for that cost is there's an extra pull on a 90-foot diamond. And there's more light fixtures because hardball sports require a higher lighting level than large ball sports just because what you're looking for is much smaller than the lighting levels are different on the fields. And is that something, just from like an actual sort of physical standpoint, right, is that something that the plan really could accommodate? I'm just thinking about how the fields kind of overlap and imagining, you know, having an outfield baseball white post in the middle of the right thing you're, right, because of the way the fields overlap. What we've been calling the JV field, that could be a bit difficult. And it would be some combination of the 550 and the 400, whether that's, you know, you'd add more light poles to cover the rectangular field. On what we call the varsity field, you probably could light that for that 550 version. It would just add a couple of extra fixtures to a couple of light poles to cover that rectangular use. It would be something, obviously, we would have to talk to the manufacturers about. All of it could be lighted. It's really about what are the costs. To give you a basis, I tried to give you what a standard field would cost. But obviously, there's a little bit of specialty there that would increase costs here. So am I correct in thinking, we're talking $550,000, right? Correct. Yes. $550,000. And there were four fields, right? Two diamonds and two square fields. So we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of like $1.8 million to this plan to add in order to get the lights? I think it's to get all the lights. I don't know that we necessarily need to light all the fields, right? Is that true? We don't need to light all the fields? It's not necessary or even always recommended to light all grass fields. I think it would be advantageous for the way that we in Wayland use the varsity baseball field to have that field lit. We do have other lit fields in town. Contituate Ballpark is lit. High school turf is lit. And the local field is lit. But those are the only grass fields in town that we have lit. Most high school practices go until 6 or 7 p.m. at night. And we could light some of the grass fields in the back there by the water. But most youth groups are not starting practices after 7 or 7.30 at night. So the amount of use you'd get out of light poles back there might not be what they would be closer to the baseball fields. So what I'm hearing you say is we don't need to light them all. At a minimum, for sure, one diamond baseball for 550 and maybe ideally one of the rectangular fields for 400. So really, we're looking at 950,000 probably in lighting costs, maybe like slightly less if there's some overlap.
Yeah, I mean, just from what we spent at the local field, it wasn't quite extensive. I think it was 300 for lights at the local field, which is a rectangular field. And there might be some savings just knowing that the current stadium was built in 2020, 2021, and those light towers were replaced. And so most of the infrastructure that exists now that we would pull off of is fairly new.
And, Captain, you don't think the rectangular fields would be needed for, like, soccer and lacrosse for lights? Oh, sure, they would need it. And I think if soccer and lacrosse were here, they would say absolutely go for the lights. But when you have to balance the cost and the value, like I said, we could put lights there and light a field at 8 o'clock at night behind the high school. But most second graders are not starting a practice under the lights at that hour. So it's... Yeah, I was thinking more for, like, high school and, like, middle school. Those tend to be later. But they're not playing here, generally. Okay. Okay. The other thing that could be done, and we do this at other facilities, is we go ahead and work with the company to put together an athletic field lighting design now. And let's say the money was... There was enough money around to light one of the fields. We can run the underground conduit and pick the light pole-based locations for the future lighting poles. And when the school does have the funding or the town has the funding, you can put more light poles in at a later date without having to rip up the field. So just as a secondary option, if the funding's not available to light all the fields and we want to pick some and provide the opportunity to light more later. I mean, I think it's just a matter of the fact that the plan before us and the numbers before us don't include the lights. I think what we're hearing is lights make the field functional, and we obviously want to make sure that the plan and the numbers represent the goal of the project. and a fully functioning field. I think what our... We were also tasked with staying in that budget and coming up with a phased plan. So my assumption was what Ryan was just saying. We would really lean towards putting in the infrastructure and making it possible to move forward in the future. If we had to use some temporary lights, or my preference would be to, at minimum, at this project, try to work down with the contingency and the overlap of the two projects, try to get the varsity field lit, and then phase in other projects as necessary. And just to check, these fields are currently... So it's not like we're going... That's right. That's right. So this current proposal has that option for the ground... Or this proposal has the groundwork for being able to light the fields eventually? No. Design for underground conduit? We did not adjust lighting in this estimate at all. So there was no groundwork... Or there was no consideration for lighting at all in this current setup. How much would that add on just to do the design work for the lighting conduit? Even if we don't do it now, but just to have it installed so that if we add it later, it's available? That's a little difficult without doing a little bit research about understanding what you have to pull from it. I'd be kind of just pulling a number out of nowhere. So my apologies, but I'd need to do a little bit more research there. Could you give us something even sort of order of magnitude? Is this tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? It's likely to get you set up for the future of all of the lights. It's probably in the hundreds to hundreds of thousands, so $100,000 to $200,000 if I had to take a guess. I was thinking, Ryan, that what my assumption was is in the overlap of the two projects, we could get that lighting infrastructure in. Yeah, your quarter million saved at beyond the engineering efficiencies as well as the contingency coming down as we sharpen the pencil or at the 20% contingency. So you have a nice bit of change there. And I think it's a good idea to put it as an ad alternate. We've done that for other communities. Yeah, same. I agree. And you brought up before the local fields, and you worked a long time to get those approved. But then we weighted with PFAS issues on those fields. Have we looked at, and someone brought this up the other day, and it sounds like we haven't been using PFAS-related cleaning products there, but have we done any tests? What's the likelihood that we could run into something similar there with this project? They've done a lot of field work in this area and a lot of PFAS testing. I can't speak to the specifics of it, but because it's in the Happy Hollow Zone 2 area and because we had to do the ground testing for the initial high school wastewater drainage fields, they did a lot of work in terms of groundwater flow and soils in the area. So we aren't anticipating anything based on what we've seen in the pits. Okay.
And just to level set, the other point here, which I think Phil brought up, is our ongoing maintenance of these fields. So if the project moves forward, my understanding the last time we spoke is that essentially we fix a drainage issue in terms of maintenance around,
and I guess I'm trying to be very specific here because I'm sure there's probably some ongoing maintenance you'll have in the fields from an athletic standpoint making sure the lines are there. My apologies, I'm not a sporty person, but whatever you need to be able to play. But the divots and things like that, there is a recoup in that yearly expense and that's expected, you know, we're expecting these to be able to essentially to be in good shape for a decade, I think is what I recollect from our last conversation. Is that still the case? Yes. I mean, I think from what we heard was every decade, some of the, on top of the foundation needs to be done. So that progresses. But this foundational drainage work, it should last, yeah. I mean, I'd say 40, 50 years on that and then you just resurface the ball fields on top of that about every 10 years. Circling back a little bit, the 10,000 is the standard maintenance that we would probably have before or after this particular... It's the 90,000 number that... And it's the 90,000 that is like every 10 years to do a major upgrade or a major renovation. Is that... Am I correct? I think that 90,000 is a little high to predict for an infield. We've done infields for as low as 6,000 to 15,000 before. This one is just in such bad shape that it requires that level of work right now. We recently did the JV baseball field infield somewhere in the last 5 or 10 years and it wasn't quite so much. So as long as... You know, if you start with a good product and keep care of it, it shouldn't be $80,000 in 10 years. You should get much more than 10 years out of it. What will the 90,000 actually accomplish? In other words, will the field be now playable or, you know, is it halfway there? Okay. It'll significantly improve the infield experience for this coming season. All right. All right. Thanks.
Anything we haven't touched on that we should... Asked about. I guess the only thing I'm questioning now is how comfortable we are with these numbers. How do we have the Finance Committee and people presenting it to us? Because I think these numbers are based on a 2017 study and been updated for inflation or... I mean, how do we get to... No, we actually took those numbers and took that design concept and created a new design and came up with new construction dollars. So this is actually based on the new design plans that we have. Ty and Bond created this for this time around and Ryan's bid out a number of projects recently, including one in Hopedale this past fall. So we have a lot of recent contractor bid pricing that's reflected here. So not... The things that are not reflected here that, you know, are, I guess, just an unknown is what's part of our proposal to do this work and do this study is to look at soils. And so we'll do test pits in the facility in the area of the fields to understand what level of underdrainage. And so that's kind of an unknown for us but for the most part we've covered it with a drainage system that's pretty substantial in our costs associated here. We didn't break it out because we don't have a full design together but these costs cover a pretty substantial drainage system associated with the field. And so we think we can make something work for this price range whether we've got to take small things in or out to make this work in the 2.5. We'll figure that out when we get into design but they're based on 2025 bid prices.
Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? comments?
I guess one question when we talk about like how developed this proposal is and the level design we have for it so far as somebody who's kind of new to this whole process is this where we would expect it to be in terms of the level design and planning that has gone into it or is this less design than it would usually be at this point in the process because we're sort of tacking it down to the wastewater maybe later in the process than we would normally do it? I think you wouldn't get much farther than this unless we had a plan going forward. You know, I don't think you want to spend too much engineering dollars to get bid type documents. this is a plan to get you there. So this is at a level what I would call planning level design where this is about where we are with the wastewater in terms of design as well. So this is where we are and that's where I am right now at a four. You know, I need to move forward with design plans and I just need to know should I move forward with design plans for just the wastewater or at this point do I move forward with the design bid documents for both the projects together? You know, I'll just make an observation because I'll probably make it later on is that, you know, we're talking about $90,000 will, you know, get our infield in good shape and we probably don't have to spend that every 10 years but we just have to spend some money to redo the infield every few years and then it looks like we occasionally have to move a game if there's like a bunch of thunderstorms or really bad weather but for the most part we're still able to play on these fields.
You know, you can spend a lot of $90,000 before you get to 2 million so I'm just wondering, you know, there seems to be less expensive options for getting the field maybe not to the point that the players aren't a little bit embarrassed that, hey, there are better fields elsewhere but it seems like that, you know, you wouldn't have to spend 2 million to get the field safe.
Anyway, like I'm not necessarily expecting a response, it's just an observation I'm making. Yeah, no, I mean, I wish, you know, the athletic director was here to address that more completely but I was under the impression that the $10,000 a year is kind of a normal average on operation maintenance but that even with the $80,000 to $90,000 that there will still be significant costs over time. Catherine, I don't know if you can speak to this but I think even the $80,000 to $90,000 right now only gets you a field of a couple years where you have to put in another investment. But still, you could do that $80,000 or $90,000 20 times to get up to the $2,000,000 so that's 40 years if you do it every two years. So anyway, I'm just doing... No, that's fair but for me it's really some of the drainage issues that I would like to solve. It solves some of the drainage issues we're getting off of the turf field. It solves the back field problems so we kind of get a nicer area out there all together as opposed to... And that's really my comment about having to move games because obviously if the drainage is really bad and it isn't just a thunderstorm it's like it's always underwater and we can't ever play there then that's a whole different story than hey, if you have a thunderstorm we can't play there.
I think that they have no other option but to play there so if there was another option I think they would opt not to play there but there's nowhere else to put them right now and so I think that they're stuck and I just don't think that this field is in condition we could put a band-aid on it for $90,000 every few years but it's still not at the level that you see for a high school baseball facility. Okay, fair enough.
And sorry just to go back if we were to recommend kind of both projects we would want to have that $250,000 savings as a support argument can you just give us a little more sense of what's in that $250,000 how do we describe the $250,000 savings where is that coming from? And you had that breakout Let's see you have that document handy Ryan I'm working on it I can speak off the top of my mind while you look for it and then there's one item I think I'm missing then so we when we were tasked with trying to figure out where the cost savings would be we recognized two places one engineering soft costs and two earth work and general contractor costs and so as far as engineering soft costs if we do these projects separate we would have field staff out in the field for both projects and if we do them together you can have the same field staff that's observing the wastewater project observe the athletic field project and so there's some savings there additionally if we were to combine some of the bid documents and contractual documents and only having one contract and bidding period there's there's some essentials for savings there additionally earthwork both of the projects require earthwork and require earthwork equipment to come out on site and so there would be some savings associated with having earthwork equipment out on site they'd be able to you know only transport and mobilize one piece of equipment one contractor would do like the stripping of the athletic field we do recognize that there are two different types of contractors that will do the fine-tuning work for both of these for the wastewater project the wastewater team would require that someone who was doing that project would have experience in that field for five years or more and I'm just making that number up but similarly for the athletic field will require that the contractor that works on the athletic fields has experience working on athletic fields and so likely what will happen is the GC or the way we see these savings occurring is that the GC will do the earth work and then the subcontractors for each particular project would come in and do the fine-tuning work and so we had allocated I think Dan if you found that email it was like 100,000 for earth work and then you want to step in yes sorry I'm having trouble to share my screen but looking on my phone email we've got potential cost savings if combined the construction cost general conditions shared insurance administration staffing approximately 20% savings or $100,000 and then another $100,000 in earth work efficiencies approximately 10% then the soft costs engineering combined design development construction drawings about $7,000 combined bidding phase services saves approximately $5,000 and then some construction observation savings so that's where we're coming up with $250,000 thanks Dan and I also think and maybe Mike Faye I see that you're on the call maybe you can speak to this too in addition to those types of savings I think there's a town feasibility and sort of staffing here that we would be able to save in you know I'm out there I'm working with the engineers now I'll bid this document I'll be working out there so to have the project done from a town standpoint we have this energy to go forward now from a town standpoint if you know I move off of this and the wastewater you know facilities would normally then step in and then bid this separately and have their people in
same time that's yeah that's correct this is the town manager one thing I'm on my phone I had to explain to some finance committee members I couldn't be in the room but it was hard to see where the wastewater project will intersect with the fields if at all but one of the representations made to me was we do need the $90,000 to make the fields playable for this season if we push the project into another year it is possible that the wastewater repairs would cut into the field and negate those repairs that we make for the $90,000 so that if we were to do these combined and forego making those $90,000 of repair for this season that would also be money we would be seeing That gets back again to a question that I think we've asked and we get inconsistent answers earlier in this meeting we said that the two projects are independent geographically that there is an interaction with respect to some of the savings that you just described but physically there's no connection and now I hear Michael saying maybe there is a connection No what I prefaced was saying I can't see I know Ms. Charest laying that out and I couldn't see it but prior to the CV it had been suggested to me that there may
somebody can clarify if they want yeah I can clarify that if we go forward with just the wastewater we can manage the fields and the impact of the grading just on that wastewater project where we won't touch the $80,000 to $90,000 but if we end up grading that whole area then there might be some savings in moving that earth so it ends up being that it's completely possible to keep them separate but that in moving all the earth I think that that's where some of the dollars are also saved it's less material Mike you have to bring in
location a we could potentially move some of that to location b versus having to buy it new for location b if it was done down the road so there can be some efficiencies there that makes sense just a bigger sandbox rather than two smaller sandboxes that's right one of the other questions I
there no irrigation over there is that part of this project or is it needed to be part of this project I'm just curious what our salt has been for the irrigation sorry Catherine go ahead that project was already repaired and funded through the rep revolving user fees it's completely repaired and the water lines are operating right now so it shouldn't be part of this project they should be able to tap into those lines to extend any irrigation just one last question for me and it's really circling back to what Rob and others were saying earlier about the lighting how much more detail on the lighting can you get us in the time frame that we have you know between now and mid March in
the lighting and to talk about schematic lighting layouts to give you an idea of what the costs are associated with that for sure that would be great thank you are you talking about adding on to the $2.5 million project I guess speaking for myself based on the numbers that we're seeing here and the numbers that Ryan is telling us for how much lighting costs it seems like we'd be very lucky to be able to light one of these
numbers on lighting costs and I have one additional question as well Brian this might be for you I just want to make sure I was looking back at the report that Kelly Lappin sent from CIPC and I just want to make sure I
like this has come to us it was sort of a late add on but it has not gone through the formal CIPC process I think it has it it it's in their plan it's in their plan of fiscal 29 I see thank you for
but they didn't have enough information to decide if it was a 27 item right okay thank you I been introduced by email I am the rep I guess from the finance committee so you know if you have any questions or need to meet with me or anything I'm available to be part of the process I guess my questions now are just how feasible is this project really in terms of going forward are we asking more hypothetical questions are we interested in these dollar numbers but if it's not really something that we are interested at all in proceeding with I do want to proceed with the wastewater project as soon
willingness and interest in going a little bit farther with some of the design would be great and we can get those dollars but if it's really more of an academic study I would like to proceed with the wastewater design above my pay grade but that's what we'll be discussing I think going over the next year yeah we've kind of got a deadline of March 15th so we as have to make a decision but this has been very helpful thank you yes and thank you for time bond for working so quickly on that design and the numbers for them and then we can get those lighting numbers to
thank you thank you thank you I just have a question about how this goes Brian kind of because of the select board meeting on Monday does this need to be like has the wastewater project been approved by select ward as excluded debt no they got the presentation just
Monday okay so that hasn't been formally approved that's correct okay and so this is still in the plan but also not formally approved because we haven't formally capital budget has not been formally approved in
on the one Monday for two million dollars I don't know if the window is closing where they have to get this on the ballot within a certain days the town meeting calendar had last Monday the 23rd I don't know whether that's a real deadline or
inform and make a decision I think it's 35 days before the election but they also have policy about getting the referral which I made to them but their policy also says they want to hear from you so there's some timing requirements I don't have access to them but they still have time to vote on the wastewater I don't know if they ask you for recommendation how long that turnaround time will be and pack the deadline for the ballot question and the other question is on I think what we've done excluded debt projects they've been presented as an article and we don't have an article for this so well I mean last year's plan last year's plan had the town building repairs as an excluded debt article but because we didn't get this plan from CICP until just last Tuesday you know we compile our own capital budget based on really the work papers that I saw from Brian early we literally just got their plan last Tuesday for the first time time so the time to submit the article passed by January 15th so the if the CIP had not been involved this year I'm assuming we would have submitted an article by January 15th for the town building because they were in the plan last year this both of these projects well the wastewater was brand new to this year so we probably would have responded quicker and ask for a separate article because I do believe that separate articles are a better route gives the town meeting a chance to talk about it
over by the other projects having it as a standalone article forces the conversation so that's the reason why these were not submitted as articles it was the timing of when everything was done but procedurally we could still do excluded debt there's a vote on excluded debt and then it's voted as part of a capital budget without being part of an article it doesn't excluded debt doesn't mean to be an article that's correct okay i just want to make sure
whether it's excluded debt is their decision yeah okay i mean we've recommended it i just noticed this is maybe what carl was he just read his email yeah but let's not discuss it right now okay because it's just going to put more work on you or somebody who's going to have
if you guys decide michael decides to move forward with this and put this as part of your capital budget which it already is can it still be put in front of the select board to vote on excluded debt we
policy i did make the request to consider the two ballot questions they would normally then seek an opinion from the finance committee they got one on the waste water project but they haven't received anything from the school so that would affect some of the timing if I
but I think it sometime in March based on the election sorry I just wanted to understand that aspect of it because it's going to definitely impact the budget quite a bit and I'm assuming if it's not excluded debt they would need to be a rework of projects or is that
as levy debt not as excluded debt regardless of what we call it it probably is financed at the same time so it doesn't go into the budget until the debt expense won't go into the budget until
levy limit by the amount of the debt service for one project or two projects I guess I understood from the output of our conversation that the impact was pretty minimal given that we're already anticipating override for fiscal year 28 that that that that that that's what I understood is like really the output like where we landed is we were sort of up against a timeline that was
but even the choice here like one's better based on the moody conversations and things like that the timelines open that's great but I also understood that like at the end of the day we're already anticipating going over the levy limit so it just potentially impacts maybe how much we want to have yeah and I think right it would give us a little more room in the levy you're saying is that material given all the other challenges probably it's modest and I guess it's just the process of how we do it because I just feel like we've usually done excluded debt projects as an article there's discussion it's fully vetted I guess the concern with doing this is if we put
it if that happens kind of go down that line if the town supports it you would think that at the ballots that they would support it at town meeting but I
from sort of a process perspective question number one it feels like it is even a good idea right question number two is if we all think that yes this is a project we think should be moving forward and I think we start getting to
excluded if we do that it's another I don't know if there's a ballot question anyway if there's not then we're asking people to there is a reason to go to
I have not seen this personally but you can you can bring an article to town meeting the funding source being excluded debt town meeting votes it and then you go to the ballot let's just assume let's just make it up that you put in this your capital budget the 2.5 is excluded debt you go to the Maytown meeting it's approved then you go to the November ballot I believe there's an election and it fails the town would be hard pressed to issue the debt knowing that you know a couple of things Moody's discourages not using excluded debt for large projects these clearly are two projects that Moody's would view as large projects to be funded by excluded debt the
$450,000 of levy tax that would increase your override number now I got a call from the town of Mansfield this week because they saw that we had revoted the DPW debt and they went through an override last year I
relatively new down there I believe but there was a tremendous amount of projects funded by levy debt in the 2 million 2 and a half million 3 million and they have buyers remorse saying why did we do this you know it's these things should have been excluded debt in the case of Weyland we did go back and leave out the DPW debt so again here's two that you don't want to make that mistake on Moody saying everything needs to be excluded Weyland is not a huge town $5 million projects don't come along every now and then there is no policy for amounts less than 5 million we have issued numerous projects in this size I can name them if you want so to answer your question you could go to town meeting and issuing a budget as excluded debt town meeting votes it if it fails in November at the ballot then I don't think the select one would issue the debt but then the wastewater project can't get underway is that
right why I thought we heard that that be excluded debt but if it didn't pass oh I see what you say so the town manager again so would be the annual town election being on the 28th you look at the town meeting calendar I believe it says that March 24th is the last day to notify the clerk for a ballot question the select board has a meeting I believe on the 23rd the 16th they would have to take a vote to they're going to vote on the high school wastewater project well they haven't on the agenda for the second but if I'm doing this right they would have to vote at the later preferably earlier on the 26th a recommendation from the fincom at least the week before so that means by mid March probably by the 9th they would want to hear from you about this I just bear in mind I'm spitballing this I haven't talked to the chair or anything in the select board but I'm just doing a rough calculation they would probably need to hear from you by March 9th by
March yes okay so that's more time than well and I do say that you know I think what people were thinking is the fact that when we did the special election the clerk in that instance asked for 45 days because we were calling a special election so some people have confused that we need 45 days the statute says 35 days notice the clerk is already preparing for an election so she probably has a little more leeway but we also like to run the actual wording and the question by town council because it is part of the proposition two and a half override statute we want to make sure the
does seem like something we'll probably want to do at some point we can save 10% of the cost doing it now versus doing later that seems like this isn't like a totally spur of the moment project right the plans for this were drawn up 2017 right it's kind of been waiting for the right so on my end I generally be on board trying to fit this in that would seem field logistics right it seems worth digging into those logistics and trying to fit it into me so my generally I'm with you like I my reason for asking the number of players on the field and stuff is really trying to understand the per student per player cost you know comparing the cost of just doing essentially a band-aid fix this is about four times the cost and that includes the cost savings right
appreciate that the only part that I hesitate around is we just did this new process right where these projects are supposed to go through see and be vetted and I'll just say for myself I'm a little bit uncomfortable with the idea that we would recommend something where they're really putting in the effort to understand and do
I'm more inclined to really follow what CIPC has brought forth because they've had the time and opportunity to really dig in and so that's the part that's probably just the toughest for me is it feels like a little bit like we've circumvented a process that
can I make a presentation to you and the new code that went in said that town meeting cannot consider any capital project that hasn't been already presented to the CIPC and Mr. Holder did explain this project to them and again the CIPC got a late start this year we've incorporated a lot of their recommendations they've recommended the levy debt we're presenting it as excluded debt and we're asking that this additional project be done at the same time for some savings they have this project in I believe FY28 in their plan if I'm not correct I don't have it in front of me 29 so they have considered it but it is something that you can act on it is something that we could consider but again we were presenting it because DEP has issues with us continuing to pump over at the high school so that's why the wastewater got brought forward and the pitch that was made to us was there would be some savings realized if we did the two at the same time which
and we tried to incorporate the staff changes after we saw CIPC and we also took staff consideration on these two projects and coupled them together as it stated that so that's how that all came about so it's an unusual year because it's the inaugural year of CIPC and their committee didn't get formed until later they anticipated and they got a late start but we're still trying to make it all work together you know did they have obviously they didn't have the information that we have now we just got sort of this updated design work
have you know were the two projects presented to them together as you presented them to us did CIPC that are we you know sort of on this progression that we have more information than they had at the time so I think as I recall when CIPC was here she said that they
was first presented to us they just felt the project was not ready for them to endorse right you are getting more information through time bond than they did because you know Ms. Brenna who was on the call
I don't think CIPC had the latest and greatest and it may behoove us to go back and share that with them okay so at the time it sounds just to recap it was just conceptual in terms
your actual plan that is correct okay do we think that's in the works I haven't been able to speak to Phil
or do do it it is a bad idea no doing the two projects I'm skeptical I think looking at the cost per student if you assume 300 little leaguers 80 players over 10 years 30 100 students you're looking at a dollar between like around 150 per student to do sort of the band-aid approach up to like 650 per student to have presumably christie field to me the 250 was including the little league that won't be used but didn't they say that they would be using some element they
are other correct so i was being very conservative with those numbers but i think from my perspective it seems like a reasonable investment in letting people have a safe and also a very positive experience i again the only hesitation i have truly is a process one of you know we're moving in a direction of we established this new process and did we follow it and i don't want to be put in a position of
new knee-jerk reaction i have i defer the hard work that they put in brian if we issue this debt tomorrow two million dollars roughly what would the interest rate be three and a half three and a quarter i was guessing a little high but that's great so at three and a half percent that debt service which is what gets added to the taxes is seventy thousand dollars a year but we do like you kind of amortize it down too so it's higher higher up right right brian what's what would be the first interest payment is always higher than the remaining interest payment because you're doing it when you catch up the first year is always like a big chunk because there's a you issue and
then it starts to then it evens out after that the first payment is large why is that because it's like you're paying a year and a half worth yeah you've been sitting on the money you've had their money for a year without making any payments so we
so you calculate the interest on the principal and you're paying back like whatever it is I don't know how long this would be but you're you're paying back some of that every year as well it's like usually it's level principal that the principal portion space the same and then the interest is just based on the remaining principal balance but
you're probably talking 20 years 20 years so I guess just kind of in terms of the overall discussion it sounds like we are generally supportive with
and then the second I think we're getting into now is just kind of a nuts and bolts numbers perspective if we do want to move forward with it now you
if we want to do this and it's not and we can't make it excluded debt what are the implications on budgeting moving forward before we do that though sorry sorry let me interrupt before we do that the reality is if we're leading in direction we're we're more supportive of this moving forward is there
ideally it would be excluded debt and I think we just got confirmation that we have the time to do that correct I guess it sounds like sorry Brian I know you have a lot of things and to me it's like we sort of know if we're going to move forward with this we would ideally move forward with it as excluded debt and
the problem with the levy debt is it will have to factor into any calculus for an override because we'll be carrying that we override numbers and as was touched upon briefly the other night our state revolving fund application was passed over so you know if we don't want to have all this levy debt and figuring out
that for the water project we're not talking about the wastewater we're just talking about the baseball fields right the wastewater already submitted and for sure that will be excluded sure yeah one thing I would also add when you're asking for buying I will commit to getting a summary from Ty and bond ms sharest and getting it over to ms lapham for her committee so I think we need to get some more information on the lighting part because that's going to add to the cost and
the future that eliminates the argument that says we're getting a savings because we are right we'd be getting more of our money once you put the lighting in then you are if you're doing I mean it all depends how you count what your baseline but the lighting will be absorbed by the savings I
additional money set aside for lighting no that just came up tonight yeah yeah okay no I just wanted to make sure okay all right that just came out tonight okay I
I just sort of from a practical asking the voters we'd be this would be included with at ATM included with our budget with recommendation but then people would be going to the polls we're asking them to vote on excluded debt for two projects likely in the fall if that's how it works out after you know we're also asking them for the big article for the water 38 and meeting and then we're also looking for an override probably sometime next year too it just I don't know how that when that override question comes up if that's likely a separate vote Ryan but I'm just thinking parsing this out and explaining it to voters and we started off the
people have an understanding it just seems like a lot of votes and we're asking for a little bit more each time I guess I guess the vote would be April 2027 or March 2027 for the override vote number and we'd be preparing probably two budgets for fiscal 28 okay and just to clarify CIPC recommended this project as excluded debt in 2029 yeah that's what I thought okay thank you and the number then was 2.5 Michael do you know this question when there's a ballot vote for the residents is the amount actually stipulated in the ballot or is it just the amount contemplated at the time in other words would they be voting would the article simply say vote approval to fund the wastewater by excluded debt or does it the 2 million dollars on the ballot question I would assume it's the same as what the DPW would want was yeah I'd have to look at the DPW question but I think we may have put the dollar in
the dollar just said the remaining amounts required to pay for the bond issued just a couple of updates on the budgets the three open items right now is the health insurance I should have that early Friday morning as well as the Vogue education I'm still working with Keefe Tech on that one but that one's coming close the fire contract is the one that may take us into next week before we get that number we have to figure out the amount of money we need to put in the budget for 27 related to the fire salary so that may be the final piece that comes in but you will have at least the health insurance and the Vogue Ed
the levy capacity with is that in there now yeah that's right in the thing right now it's 7 730 so it'll go up with the health insurance savings to close to a million or so so that's what we're kind of looking at but I got to finish doing
discussion we've been for not there yet we're running also about a half you spend a few minutes on articles so you want to just I think we should do I think we should chip away at the articles that's fine with me that's fine okay actually I'll have you two that I know because I'm going to take one of the oh you're taking one okay and need to be done by possible let's make it happen so I'll be prepared after you go yeah sounds lovely all right so article f I believe I sent to everyone did everyone get it perfect so it is the revolving fund expenditure limits the numbers came from Brian Kevney I also see here the article f the f was removed do I actually adjust the title I don't think so right
times when I've seen a blatant typo you do it I've put a marginal comment that said you might want to do this okay I'll do that so very similar to last year I did add a line item in our committee comments just around what the revolving fund expenditure limits actually do I took that line it is repeated I took the line from the arguments in favor just as an explanation otherwise the other thing I did is I compared the numbers that were presented for fiscal year 27 to the numbers that were presented for fiscal year 26 there were some minimal changes council of aging was unchanged the school department professional element dropped the recreation dropped slightly and then the recreation athletic fields increased slightly just a quick knit in that athletic field spending cap increased from 190 in fiscal 2022 other than is thank you sorry otherwise the article frankly is very similar to what I wrote last year and at this time again we're not aware of any arguments opposed for this article and the source of revenue and or expenses have not changed for any of these revolving funds either nope I'll move to approve article f I'll second oh sorry article f 2027 revolving fund expenditures sorry so I can present on article r which is acceptance of general law chapter 53 section 18b which would authorize the town actually not only authorize require to print and mail to every household where there's a registered voter information on what is going into the town election ballot so for example this excluded instead of simply having a yes or no box on the ballot and the technical wording of the question today it's prohibited from doing specifically a concise summary of a one-sentence statement describing the effect of yes or no the statute tries to and then arguments much like town council has got a lot of power under this town council request we think is the best war against it and if nobody steps up the town council is required to prepare there could be a lot riding on that the reality is being a lawyer myself I can tell you that legal language is often dense and hard to understand and so I think I personally think I happen to see I look at a lot of other towns communication even annual choices and hopefully there's no guarantee that you know legal counsel who are writing this there's no guarantee that we get that clear concise non-legal use language right well if there's a requirement that they provide it whether you agree with that it's concise and clear is a different question it has to be written by town council or can anybody write it I mean you're recommending town council be the requirement I would think it's at least reviewed by town council town council so the very clear and concise statement that one sentence or a couple sentences town council provides the 150 word arguments yeah the summary must be written by city solicitor town council or council for the city town or district according to the letter of the law so there will be some nominal costs to pay for town council and the mailing itself there's nothing in here about what truck so it's going to be mailed to each household again what do this the annual issue I mean this is a fetch once you do it it's unlikely anybody's going to want to undo it that theoretically I don't know the answer to that you mentioned in just speaking about it about other towns taking this on is there a movement to do that
in the fincom comments if you've found that there seems to be a trend or that other towns are doing it without doing more homework I could actually provide a couple of their representative I don't know the total amounts I might be able to find that information but it's okay I don't know if anyone else might be available if anyone might be able to help you with that the manager's office I don't know if they have any information I can ask and then I guess the other argument in favor and we were just talking about this but would be helpful in light of the likely prop 2.5 override anticipated in fiscal 28 and beyond it's just getting more information out to people if people think that's a good idea I can certainly add it I mean there's there'll be information all over the warrant about the possibility of the next year so that it was surprising it's relevant to this article if this were the only statement to that effect I wouldn't want it in this article but I think it's going to be like I said it's going to be all over the warrant and I think we'll be discussed a lot already so yeah I think it makes sense I don't know you might have to combine something because
have to go when when they've already voted and we have a final just send that to me and I'll make sure that it's I do a final review and submit it and you're doing the votes you're recording the votes I know I sent you two that I didn't have final votes or I didn't have the votes listed or the ones for the ones that we agreed that there was negligible impact I hadn't listed it I didn't list it on mine so I just wanted to make sure that you caught those on the two that I submitted you put them into your you circulated that it's in the worksheet sorry and I've got to submit that worksheet again and I think that I have I have an updated one because I took Phil's that he had if you want me to send it to you and I updated it with everything too so I'll look for yours again and make sure those are in the spreadsheet and then he said Phil have one I just wanted to make sure that no sorry Phil had the spreadsheet he sent out a spreadsheet because Carol had sent out the updated version of it so that's the one I'm talking about sorry all right so I will make sure that I have yours I think there was something in there that I needed to ask you about but I'll look for those and I'll resend the spreadsheet to everyone great thank you oh sorry so I'll move to recommend article R sorry I said yes I'm typing at the same time I think those are the only articles for tonight since I pulled the other one that I had in that case I'd like to propose that on Monday so we're going to have a discussion about the differences between the CRPC plan and the town's plan Wednesday oh on Wednesday Wednesday the 4th okay and so on Monday at Monday's meeting I think to just spend as much time as we can dive to the budget and lie down by lie down and talk about what we think talk about like and don't like because you know we should have a more final budget by Friday so if you can't spend any time with it over the weekend that would be great there's a lot of the budget does it make you said budget like do you mean like school versus omnibus yes or some subsection thereof I guess like looking at it for me it's probably not practical for me to do an in-depth review of all of the budget but you mean for the operating budget for the operating budget itself yeah I guess I'm wondering and again I don't know what we've done in the past but having different people kind of focus on different sections you've got more experience than I have no I think in the past people have individually looked at the budget composite and then you know it's kind of different views you're kind of looking at line items what's changed rationale why and Brian's provided some answers to
okay this is where we are looking at the tax page and here's our year over year increase how does that feel what does that look like do we have every I guess my other question is is everything in there for I guess things are coming from free cash too so articles we won't have any additional in the past some articles were funded with additional tax so it was kind of an additional line item but now we're doing most of those with free cash or you know with funding water bills for the
itself and sometimes there are other line items like if you had articles that would add to the tax when you look at the tax sheet you'll see it but mostly obviously the biggest piece is the operating budget so it's kind of just going to feel for and there are a lot of things that can't change there are contractual so we don't have a lot of control over them but
so one way to look at this is not so much which sections of the budget but you might want to focus on
when you have no idea when you look at the budget that we present and that we show it's schools is one line so we should understand and Christine just sent the PDF file the original file and the PDF which is a little bit easier to read so we may have more questions on
but we still typically try to explain the significant changes in the report but in terms of what we're looking at for that budget it's sort of like you can look at the school budget you can look at the operating budget holistically and line by line and just be prepared to talk about that I guess my perspective on the budgets right now again very high
because I feel like I understand the deltas between the two and the reasoning behind them if you ask me
the changes and why they were made from last year but I have gone through a significant portion of the budget to make sure that
two different questions making sure that you understand all the changes happening and then are those reasonable to you and therefore do they add up to a reasonable rate of increase in the general tax I think Rob I mean this is draw all of stuff so this is our chance well that's kind of where my question is coming from is like that piece right if I assume that last year's budget was good I feel like I have a good grasp of what has changed this year and why that all hinges again on that assumption that last year's budget was
so and there's also there's all those subcommittees right so it's a third set of eyes on it I do feel like the subcommittees have
just going to say I sent a spreadsheet to everyone today with the comparisons on projects of like was it
up Robbie