July 22, 2026 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript

July 22, 2026 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee

Autoscroll:

uh call into the capital improvement planning committee for july 22 2026 at 6 30.
the meeting may be recorded and if it's recorded it will be made available to the public on way cam as soon as possible after the meeting uh pursuant to chapter two of the access 2025 this meeting will be conducted in person and or via remote access in accordance with applicable law If this meeting has only remote access, no in-person attendance by members of the public will be permitted.
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 remote, public comment will be limited to two minutes per side. And I don't think we have anybody else, do we? No, no, no. So we're all in person, but we are technically hybrid in the sense that there is a link available on Penn's website for folks to join us. Thank you. If you want to. For the agenda, 630, call the meeting to order. 635, public comment and a member's response. 640, discuss capital planning process and timeline, including but not limited to, the capital improvement plan. submission form outstanding capital project status and questions and responses related to the comparison of the five-year plan to the annual meeting town meeting warrant versus CIPC's fiscal 27 through fiscal 2031 report amended as of April 29 26 730 discuss the proposed town building working envisioning group 750 discuss use of transfer transcription tool to produce future meeting minutes 805 discussion succession planning CFPC chair and vice chair roles finance and school committee designees a 20 review on vote to approve minutes of July 6 available and a 25 setting time of next meetings and 830 that you adjourn any announcements of any kind we move on to the first agenda I'm discussing capital planning process and public comment is there anybody in the policy no by line thank you to discuss the capital planning process and timeline, including but not limited to the CFPC submission form. I guess we can stop there in terms of questions and responses. I have not received any questions or responses. Sent it and sent another reminder, which I copied. I believe I copied you on. I've gotten zero response. And I haven't received anything from John or anybody else. Yeah. I meant from the town manager and the finance director, because we basically put it in their hands and I got no response from them. So I think my recommendation, Brad, now that you're acting chair, would be for you to send an email. Make sure you copy Carol Martin on it as well because she's our select board liaison. I mean, it'd be great to get that back sooner than later, but I think most of the substantive questions are likely to be flushed out when we get the CIP forms resubmitted. Yeah, I meant the CIP. There's been no response on the CIP form. Oh, the CIP form itself? Yeah. Can we talk about the Q&A first? The Q&A relative to the five-year plan, or are we talking about the... I think I agree with you. I think what we said last time was the Q&A will get flushed out if they fill out the new CIPs. That's not what we were talking about. We were talking about comments on the CIP form. I was talking about the CIPs. And as I understand, the form has, has it been sent out to the various departments? That's the other question. I don't know. We would normally be, you would normally be copied as chair. Right, and I have not seen anything suggesting that they've been sent. Right. But we've received no questions. When we left our last meeting with our manager and the finance director, we had gone through the form line by line. We had all agreed there was some edits that needed to be made, which I made and sent out. But we had left it at, if there's any questions or anything you want to change before you send it out to the departments, let us know, right? I sent them a new copy with everything in it, and I've gotten no response, no acknowledgement, no nothing. That's fine, as long as that means they then sent that out. But I don't know. Yeah, I guess that's my question, is I'm not sure quite where we are in the process. If the time manager hasn't sent it to the... He's in, I don't necessarily want to get up out of my seat, because I'm not sure he's... you know, prepare to focus on our stuff right now, but certainly we could go ask them. Yeah, I don't think we should get up and do that right now. I think, like I said, I recommend Brad send an email following up on my last email, say, you know, has this gone out? Could you provide a copy of what you sent out? Because he should be sending it out with a memo to them. My guess is that hasn't gone out. Did I read it right, though? In the notes, I thought I'd read that the forms are due back to us or to town manager by the end of the month. We wanted it back by the end of the month, but it hasn't gone out yet. Did we say the end of July? The town manager said that his intention was to have sent the memo out by the end of last week, assuming there were no... Assuming Kelly got them what they needed, which we did and then the intention was the memo was say fill this out and get it back by the end of the month so my only problem throughout this process is now we have to if we have to wait now two weeks to our next meeting you know we really need to know so right either maybe real time you can send an email to the town manager and say did you send the memo out or right after the meeting just because we need to yeah I mean I sent them another no I appreciate that so my concern is a time cable within October when we needed things It's the 22nd. Being optimistic, hopefully you went out and you just didn't get a copy of it. Well, that's the important thing. They did go out, they didn't notice, and it's summer and they're like, ah, I've done this like a thousand times before, not realizing maybe all the telephones, but probably get to still follow up. Just in case. Right. Oh yeah, no, I can do it. Can I get it? Yeah. I'll get it. Yeah. The status of it. So just to keep everybody in the loop, assuming the time manager responds, I can forward that to everybody, the response. We just can't comment on it. Is that correct? Yeah. I think at this point, all we really need to be sure of is that it went out to keep the process moving along because there's nothing we can do until we get the cips completed and returned at which point we can yeah you can you to answer your question yes you can forward it to the rest of us we just can't talk about it right but you can you can send it to civic group so that we know that it happened right so it's been sent to departments and i also ask diddy uh asked that it. That'll be in the memo. Yeah, it gives you the memo and attachments and you know for that. I did after our meeting I did follow up with Tom Holder and Kirstein,
copied them with the form we reviewed at the meeting which hadn't yet been updated. which when you sent that around, did that go to CIPC members or just the voting members? It did not because they requested that they wanted to look at it. So in addition to sending the form we discussed at the meeting,
Michael Fayette was here. I suggested to both of them if they had the time they look at the WACAM tape, which I've fleshed out some of the questions that came up. and encourage them if they had any other input or questions to let us know. And I got an acknowledgement back from both of them that thank you for sending that along. And at least they're both aware that there's a new form. So that's the three primary submitters that still leaves. And I think the IT director probably got a little bit of it. when he was in so that leaves the police chief and the fire chief I think are the other two department heads that generally submit.
And you tested that my macro worked you um could you you weren't or did you could you question that whether Yeah, I had to email Kelly. I got a message that wouldn't allow me to manipulate or cause the macro that Kelly installed in the Excel spreadsheet to actually work. And once I figured that out, I did try it. So I can't remember, I added a tab or deleted it. I think I added a tab at the end and hit the button and it all seemed to work. I assume they only fly in the ointment because I don't think we protected the sheet, leaving only open the input areas. It's possible if someone messes with where, like, the dollars requested, if they mess with that and move it a row down or column to the right. I think I put a note in there, not like in the instructions. that you could expand rows, but not to insert rows or columns, because it would mess it up. I mean, I could fix it if they did that. And just out of curiosity, when you have a macro linked to certain cells, if you were to insert a row above the macro, unlike typical Excel formulas, which will, if you do it right, they'll follow. It'll follow. So it kind of depends on how you do it. If you did it on one sheet, it's not going to follow because the macro set up to look at certain rows on sheets. So is there a way to do it? Yes. I think you would screw it up in this case. I did think about locking everything down, but I was reluctant to go through the effort of locking it until I heard back from the town manager and the finance director on any changes that were needed. If everybody's kind of good with it, I would lock down everything so that basically all you could do was fill in the inputs and you'd be able to increase the size of rows or columns to make stuff fit. But I didn't want to go through that effort. Well, it just means when we get the information back, this first round we'll just have to do a double check that the, I thought it was great the way your table was working. And we just have to double check that it's all adding up, which inevitably we do anyway. So if I get a question or John gets a question about the actual form and filling it out or I assume I should probably direct those questions. You can direct them to me. That's fine. Okay. You can direct them to me. But I was and I told you this Brian I think I was pretty pleased. A long time ago I could have coded the macro myself I'm a little out of practice so I used chat GPT or not check it I use Copilot because that's what I had and I just told it what I wanted it to do and it created the code to consolidate so basically it picks up the information off of each of the sheets and puts that summary together and it'll exclude its program to exclude the ones that the summary sheets that are already there and only pick up anything that isn't of a certain name. So I tested it on all the departments, which all had different number of things, all had different file names, and it worked on each of them. So I think it's in pretty good shape, but I was pretty pleased with what else we might be able to ease in the report process. things that I was doing manually last year that I'm going to see if we can
program and it was pretty straightforward like I literally just in narrative form said I want to take this information from multiple tabs and put it in the summary and then I went back and said oh and I'd like to bold you know the last row and I'd like to put an underline on the row before and it did all of that stuff so all the formatting so if you wanted to create a consolidated table for all the tabs would you have to bring all the tabs in you definitely could do it that way but i'm going to see if i can figure out how to do it without doing that you'll have a list of work workbooks and it'll just basically open it'll open i think i should be able to do where it opens all the workbooks pulls all the information from all the workbooks and consolidate them the only issue with any of this that it's great if kelly can do it but if no one else on the committee can do it yeah well that's encouraging in that it didn't take much actual knowledge to do it because you could as long as you know how to open where the macro like code is once i got into the code and looked at the code the code made sense and i could logically kind of track what it was doing and i assume i've never bothered to do any of that putting myself and obviously now with ai if you could literally say i want a table that does xyz and hit a button and it does what you said it did it just created all the yeah it does and you can tell it like you know you can say to it like oh no i actually i want you know i think i said i wanted data from columns you know a to i and then i went back and there was other stuff i did and i'm like oh no never you know i want to change that make that you know a to j and it just rewrote it rewrote the code and i just copied and pasted in the new so it wasn't like i didn't in the old days i would have had to walk through the code and be like oh where do you need to change those lines um so it's
it might be a question for the town managers that'd be an example where it'd be great if there were a staff person wherever they are it finance department town manager's office that and they have a number of people that are technologically advanced folks deal with the website and things like that but it'd be nice if they could get somebody that had that sort of AI and I'm sure they're focused on how can they use AI to create efficiencies and this might be one area so that again whoever's on the committee you know you may or may not have somebody that is capable of dealing with it. I think that's a good idea. We report to the time manager and be helpful if the time managers staff could provide that kind of assistance. It saves you hours. It saves a lot of hours. It was a lot of hours it saved in actually setting it up and a lot more hours it saved in having to manually go create the summaries right and particularly as we saw last year and we'll see again this year when things changed right so like oh with that we're going to take that request out and add this one in or we're going to change that amount like not having to go back through manually picked um subject to double checking baby testing once of course of course but i would still rather i would still rather have it populate and check it than populate it all and check it and check it
so i guess in terms of our first agenda i might get in touch with uh the town manager um probably first thing tomorrow morning i'll try to maybe tonight um and let everybody know what uh what the status is on on form and it being sent out do we need to review anything further in terms of the you know the annual economy warrant versus our I think what Brian was saying is like I think our key questions that we're hung up on around like things that finance director put in the plan that department managers had told us right they me or we're duplicates i think that'll flush itself out when they respond um to their new requests so it's probably might as well just wait for for those to come um so i don't i don't know that there's too much more there to do but i think we might he might find time to reach out to brian keveny and see toward the end of august if there might be one of our meetings that he could pencil in attending just because at a minimum, you know, we want to be sure we're starting with the right place. And the biggest component of that is the way he reflected town building improvements proposed and what we did. And my guess is my perspective to this committee is likely going to end up taking the same path this cycle that we did last year because i don't think we're going to we'll talk about maybe in the next agenda i don't think we're going to have any further guidance on what's happening to that building and i think the approach we took last year was michael pay just tell us what you really need right and we're just going to put everything else in a bucket and leave it there whereas brian has it in the fiscal 25 year plan He's got the debt for it in the operating budget forecast at the moment, which is fine. It's conservative. Yeah. So, but, so again, it'd be great if we could get those questions answered. But there one item in there that kind of buried in there Brad about the project status Just make sure you got my email I did get your email I ask Brian Keveney to send me because I wasn sure you would be able to get anything yet from the town manager No The June 30 financial balances by capital project, which is really the basis that we used last year to create the project status table that was in our memo, which I think we're inclined to try to to use again this year and subject to scrubbing the numbers a little bit and adding in the projects that were approved at the recent town meeting. I think it's a point where then the data has to be manipulated a bunch of different ways to, if people are inclined to look at a table that looks like the one that was in the report last year. So what I offered the WIS was if you don't feel comfortable, although I think it would be good if you're comfortable and you want to manipulate it much as I did and create the tables yourself and then we can all review them. It also works. So in the interest of advancing the ball, I offered to do the manipulation part, creating the table part, but part B of that is working with the assistant town manager to check on, other than the financial status, check on the project status. that was a piece we really didn't get to last year. We relied solely on drawing conclusions from how much money was spent or not spent. In a perfect world, you know, the manager with some external system is tracking project status, which in turn also would help the finance director in determining what projects are ready to close out or what projects might, you know, be in need of more money. So those are, I think, two different steps to that overall process. So that's something I assume through your outreach to the community's office is you're trying to do that as well. I'm just not sure what level of tracking she's been able to do because she's a bunch of other stuff going on, but until you ask the question. No, I mean, I was still planning on pulling the report together and connecting with kelsey and michael once they get back to me are you comfortable taking the numbers i sent you right yeah so i and thank you for sending me the table because i had asked for an early read ahead before we meet face to face and haven't seen anything yet um so but kelsey she was out on on feature she was on vacation out of the office uh at the beginning of july so i'm assuming she just came back to, you know, a bunch of stuff she had to catch up on. So I did think them, again, will start to up the urgency for longer that continues to delay. But I did go through the file you sent me, and it looks like there is still a number of outstanding items from like 2018-19 on there, for things that nothing's changed within the past year, which begs the question of again what works happening here. So we have a list of questions um after ready to go and I can get on the calendars. If you need help manipulating the data, get it sorted and put it in the table form, just let you know there's a fair amount of hands-on work to kind of get it to the point where we need to get it and then you have something you can review and... Yeah right now I just mushed it all together. I know it was kind of chunked out by you know town versus school versus I figure out there was two other categories and I just went together. So okay all I could do is offer my service. No and I know and I appreciate that. Three times it's the same sales three times rejected. It's all yours. It was nice to get some data. I'm assuming I'm going to get the same report. I would imagine I'm going to get something different from Pelsier. It's possible she would get from Brian Keveny what I sent you directly from Brian Keveny. But I'm hoping she'll have the voiceover of Appendices. Possibly. But it didn't happen last year. Yeah, and the final Excel workbook I sent you, if you go all the way to the right, is when I first started putting that together. And it was a former assistant town manager who became an acting town manager. who had an Excel database where he had narrative for text for each project. And so some of that's there, but a lot of those projects aren't completed. But I think that's kind of what we're looking for, a little bit of color on certainly the larger ticketed items. And, you know, I'm sure Brian Kennedy could have closed out a bunch of the thousand dollar items, but i think his fleet process was just looking for can i find four or five you know large dollar projects and as we learned in our last meeting ended up closing out a couple projects that he you know probably shouldn't have closed out but he was just looking for you know wanting to pay for a new capital request so so anyway um again i for almost a month now six weeks i've been just expressing my concern that if we don't, if we only meet once every two weeks, if we don't advance the ball on this stuff, we're not going to, we're going to get crunched and have difficulty meeting the October 15th deadline. So that's why I offer, I don't want to do the work, but I want to make sure we're doing everything we can do would have caused everybody that's supposed to be giving us input to sort of get it to us. And now we just have to become pests, I guess. We are rapidly approaching crunch time. It's not past it. But Kelsey is back because she's actually meeting with her tomorrow morning on something unrelated to this. So I know she's back. Yeah, I just... I assume she was, but... I just know from a few meetings I watched that the office is stretched and got all sorts of projects with different priorities. And I suspect this is, in spite of the deadlines, I don't think this has probably found its way above.
There's a lot of procurement, for example, it's time sensitive, too. So just understand when you talk to her. No, no, I get it. I mean, we all have lists. Yeah, and if she can't get to it, in my view, if she can't get to it, then we're in no different spots. We were last year. We'll just have to rely really on the dollar and draw our own conclusions. And maybe there's a project or two that we want to ask specific questions of. Yeah, or we ask the questions about those specific projects when we bring folks in to do to go over their their new requests we identify on the list that might be the path of least resistance it might be the left of least resistance and least amount putting on to kelsey like if we if we've got the numbers from brian we identify the bigger longer outstanding balances and rather than all of them and ask the question you know of the department managers when they're here yeah and we're thinking about department managers the angle end of august being september is when we we're going to be in some united time yeah
and it's like end of august beginning september i think that's fine but yeah and that may be the best way to go about it i think when we were doing this last year we were probably not quite at a place where we could say, hey, these are the, we were drinking more fire hose. So I think we weren't as fixated on, okay, these are the ones that are open, one of those are going to be done. Yeah, and if we, if we're going to do that, then I think we'd be good to be in a place where we could identify what those projects are and get in advance of them meeting with us, give them a heads up that we're going to be looking for input on this when you come and meet with us. If we hit them cold, some of them will know the status, and maybe all of them will know the status. It's a crazy idea for next year. We put our projects that are outstanding into the front end of the CIP, like here's your outstanding stuff. Can you give an expectation when this is going to be done where it is? Just put it in the form.
That's a good idea.
I'll make the minutes. I hear you and I feel bad, right? Because I know that the temp staff has a lot that they're trying to do. how do we streamline this and make it less less number of touches what's less number of people that happen to get the same product because hopefully that's what she's going to do right if we find out that the folks haven't gone out yet like they might want to have a chance to do it do we want to try to do that this year but in the existing capital product first time I don't want to do anything to slow this down like I want them to get it out you're talking about what seven departments adding a list of once you pivot off of it pretty no i think we need to get them going on because they're going to be completing cip points for every request for five years yeah versus historically they've only submitted cips for the upcoming capital so really that if it's not out we need that to be in their hands them working on it i think if two to three weeks from now we're in a position where we can identify from your work on the financial numbers which projects and then we can just identify by department we can then just send that as a follow-on quest to the department managers say oh by the way don't let this hold up what you're doing as soon as you've done that yeah i i'm i'm worried as brian is we're asking for five years of cip forms which we've never done before we've only gotten one and so well and then if we're going to just follow up after they send in the floor i know but i don't want to i don't want to redirect focus at all i will like focus on the getting the five years of stuff in because the status of the outstanding projects in my mind all i want to know is secondary to getting what your future request looks like well let me ask a clarifying question then when you say send out immediately after they get their forms done? You're talking about like still September time frame or are you talking about after October 15th? No, if they're if and when the memo went out or goes out if they're still obligated to get it back in by the end of July whatever it hasn't gone out I guess will be it'll be mid-August that sometime after mid-August or end of July or mid-August and we've had an opportunity to look at the outstanding capital projects from a financial perspective we could then put together an agreed upon list that we want input on and that could go out sometime you know mid-august so they could then come prepared when they meet with us at the end of august or first part of september isn't it still the same timeline they're still going to be getting hit up twice to do five years of capital yeah we just don't want them to be distracted i don't want them to be distracted i want them to do the five years but i still think we're asking for them to do it all at the same time no i think they're following up they're going to finish let's say the due date to get the capital to get the five years of capital back is 8 14. on 8 14 you're going to say okay now can we talk about like you've put it you've handed that in right first assignment done now let's talk about your outstanding capital and that's in our control so unless and until we are in receipt of their built-in CIP forms, we don't have to unleash those questions. So following that thread, is the idea then to just like let Michael and Kelsey know that we're going to move out without connecting with them first? I think I would ask Kelsey, just on the off chance she has been, has asked all these questions as a database. Sure, but I mean just talking with the street back in, obviously. But you guys, as of June 30th, there should be a new list of the status of the projects or it's a list of the financial it's it's it's how much money is left in each project it's not the status status it's not where is this right like what's holding it up when's it going to be finished right so you know you you'll see a project that has an appropriation of a hundred thousand dollars and it hasn't spent any of it and it was appropriated three years ago that would probably prompt the question what's going on with that line in them. You might see a project that had two and a half million dollar appropriation and it's got fifty thousand dollars left and you know there's enough information from what we did last year where we listed the top x number of projects that had money left. If you see significant progress and it was the material appropriation but you have very little left, I don't really think we would need to spend a lot of time on it. Right. So that's the kind of thing but in order to be able to do that we need we need the June 30 numbers which Liz now has put in a form that we could all look at it and at least individually identify which ones we might want to ask about and we could talk about those in the perfect world that are in the next meeting or the one after that and then that's where the kind of ultimate list comes from. And meanwhile, if all else fails, we have the table of the financial balances in each capital project account that can appear in the memo as it did last year. And again, I'm not downplaying the amount of work that's involved because there are kind of 100 plus projects on that list they sent to you, I think. Yeah. And there's, yeah, I think it's more like 200. Yeah. So it's, yeah, there's a fair amount of stuff to look at. Yeah, what I was looking at, I was only filter on the things that didn't make sense. Like things that were, again, nothing's changed within the past year. So to ask a dumb question then, does Kelsey or does the time engine know the status of projects? I think they probably know the status of some of them, probably not all of them. And in most cases they would need to go to the department manager who's running it to know exactly where it is. There's probably some they're more they're more to dialed into. Right. Yeah, like you're kind of like a two and a half million dollar project. Right. But I don't think that's true for everything so i think they need the input of the of the manager that's running the project the answer is i don't know what they know um you know a year and a half ago they were two years ago they had licensed bought um you know a software tool that was intended to track the projects uh i think they abandoned that and i'm not sure if they were planning to find something to replace it but the intent of that was to have an active database that once populated could then be maintained and all of that based on the very first meeting or two we had of this committee when kelsey attended we were told that kelsey was the proud owner of that oversight and the impression i got from her was that she was working on trying to come up with some way to track that I just don't know whether that's happened or not. Obviously, if you can't get that question answered, that would be my first question is, what do you have? And if all you get is the same list of numbers that I sent you, then I think plan B is plan B. Well, by default, then you have two other departments. Yeah. And if that fails, that we don't get enough information, because ultimately that's just going to give us comfort that and or we have leverage over what we decide we're going to recommend or not recommend if things are still on it. I don't think that's going to be the case. I think we will see progress. Like I said, if there's a $1,000 item that's still $1,000 and there's a lot of those, it could be $40,000 and still I'm really not that interested in that. At some point it'd be nice to clean that up. I don't view that as our job. I mean, that's the planner's office. We're the planning director. Right. We're more concerned with where there's a backlog of projects in a particular department, which implies that funding additional projects would be maybe not the best idea if there's already a backlog, right? You're going to tie up very precious resources in the near term. You're not going to tie them up when there's a long backlog of projects. I'm not expecting it. No. We saw good progress last year, and we've heard from Michael Thay. I think he feels he's pretty much up to date. Homeholders generally always pretty on top of their projects. Those are the two that really have the most ownership of what's on that list. I mean, there's library projects, there's school projects, but a lot of that stuff tends to fall under one of those two individuals. Has anybody been over to the high school? Has equipment gone on the ground? Has anybody been over to the high school before the Suffolk started? I thought that had to get done this summer.
High school? I'll check it out! Just do a little drive back to the back parking lot. I mean the money hasn't been borrowed for it yet so I don't know they can. I know I thought though it was had to happen this summer that had to be shoveled in the ground this summer. But I think that that was their hope. But if they gotta wait to borrow for it and that's not happening until. There's a mechanism that the general fund can provide funds if they're ready to go but yeah it's a process that Brian Keveney's got to go through so um
so I'm hearing two actions one of them next meeting I can bring a list uh that we can review of outstanding projects um things that caught my eye we can kind of I don't know if you yeah give us the I could give us the summarize it right take what you got from Brian summarize it for for us and come with your questions and let us see it. And listen to that in advance. Yeah, we can send it in advance, we can respond to it. And then in the meantime, I can also just follow up with Kelsey and Michael again and say, hey, kind of just other alternatives moving forward to get status that we can connect with department managers when they come in to review. So let them know you have the June 30 numbers.
So move on to the next agenda item? The next one is to discuss the proposed town building visioning group Brian you ask that we put that on there and And there was a I guess that was from the select board i don know yeah i just wanted i wanted to make sure we were able to have a discussion um i don have any formal but i had forwarded for all of you from a select board meeting packet from a couple meetings ago a excel spreadsheet that michael playa put together in advance of him meeting with the select board. The good news is he met with them. The bad news is about a third of his meeting there was no audio on the Zoom tape. But he was asked to give the select board at a very high level without having yet spent a lot of time were a gut rehab of this building done, rough guess what would it cost? So that's what this spreadsheet reflects and so you'll see things in it like pretty substantial dollars to lease space elsewhere on the theory that instead of doing something phased they move everybody out for a year or two while they rip it down the studs and whatever they do put it back together um doesn't mean that's necessarily what would happen there's ways you could probably phase the work uh that would save some money and michael well i emailed michael to ask that question and he said look I was asked to do this, it's back in the envelope. And so the very first question Bill Whitney had was, I don't see any contingency in here, which you would typically carry 10, 15, 20% contingency for passage of time, you know, unforeseen whatevers. And he immediately acknowledged, yeah i agree with you but that's this is not a budget this is just the first high level cut so i know we've both the finance committee in prior years and then this committee have asked my plan you know we need to try to put in context your request in your five-year plan against future spending on this asset i think this starts to flush some of that out And that's assuming that whoever makes the ultimate decision concludes we want to do a gut rehab of this building. All the square footage. I ask questions like, do we really need, where Children's Way used to be now that it's been moved to Loecker, do we really need the basketball court? We've got plenty of schools that have basketball courts. we slice that whole section of the building off and maybe build something new that you know just trying to start to think and we're part of a planning effort so i'm just testing michael out to see how what level i just look i haven't begun to think of those things anything's possible could the school committee or the school department which pretty much takes up all the second floor could they find space at the high school or could you build something at the high school or could Do you add a temporary office trailer or two for housing people? All those kinds of questions, that's all TBD, right? So after that meeting, the select board agreed that they'd have Tom Fay on behalf of the board draft a charge for a working group, which Carol Martin had told us when a couple of meetings that she met with us, that it made sense that maybe pull together working group of some sort of subcommittee advisory committee to not only explore what I just talked about but what other alternatives to staying in the building are there at least somewhere you could build something new somewhere else and so the second document I think I forwarded to all of you is in draft form and I watched the meeting last night Tom unfortunately wasn't there. They didn't make any specific edits. I think they wanted to wait for their next meeting when Tom was there. But again, Bill Whitney, whose background is in the real estate business and planning. So he gets what you have to do, trying to decide, do I stay, do I lease, do I build new? There's a process for that. I've been through that process. I used to work. In a real estate brokerage firm, we used to hire ourselves out to consult with clients like us, the town, to look at all the permutations and options that for no other reason than if you were currently leasing somewhere you needed to be able to leverage in your negotiation. You need to be able to say, well, we can build new somewhere else rather than leasing from you and try to get enough lease concessions. So there's not a unique process to go through, but it's involved. So the only kind of bill had on this, and he had provided time and input, was that, and I think Doug Levine said he thought it was kind of picked up in the first paragraph, but I think they both agreed it could be clearer. it seemed more focused solely on this building than the intention that it also identify and explore other options. So then ultimately the select board presumably will be getting a recommendation from the town manager. This working group presumably worked with the town manager, providing advice to the town manager. town manager it's not a it's not a advisory committee or subcommittee they intended as a working group and it's not even clear based on their discussion meeting last night that actually the town manager will um be you know running it and carol martin suggested that maybe michael fae asked who is on here uh way on facilities director that he actually run the meetings that Michael would be more of an AC member, ex officio member. Ultimately, he's got to make his own recommendation to the select board who ultimately would have to make the decision of what they want to do. And so it was decided, at least through last night, that this is going to be a working group. So it's not open meeting and minutes and all that stuff. But Bill's point was that he wanted that to be a little clearer that you know we really want to investigate other options and not be a theta complete the other thing he had mentioned when they met with my player which i totally agree with i think it's in here not as strongly as i would have liked to see it you know item three identify the town's space needs at this time and in the future you know bill mentioned the peripheral needs versus wants i mean as that discussion ensued and kelsey's heading up the space needs analysis so that's another thing that's on our plate. They already had ideas for how to use up all the children's waste space and other spaces on the second floor. And I was listening to the discussion and say, well, I know everybody can always find ways to use up space, but shouldn't we really be trying to figure out how much space do we really need? My gut is we have now even more space than we really need in this building. It's a highly inefficient building and and why would you immediately start marching down the path of reconfiguring not that they're doing this but and bill was listening in that discussion my sense was he kind of said i'd be really interested in needs versus wants right which is really what they need to be doing how much literally down to the what's the functions that we're trying to house how much square footage do we need for that function what's the typical average square footage for an office staff person okay a planner might need more space to lay out okay those kinds of discussions rather than just saying we've got a bunch of empty space let's fill it up you know with stuff um so the good news is it looks like it's on their radar it looks like once they approve the charge they'll get going. It calls for a report back by later than February 26th, so there's no way we're certainly by time our reports do going to know anything other than maybe they met a few times. There's no way that our manager's going to know when he's going to submit his capital budget five-year plan what the outcome of this is. So I think that discussion about how to treat this building with brian keveny is why i say at a minimum that's something we should talk to him near term so we can both agree on how we plan to reflect that in our report and how that would show up in the town managers about your plan yeah to me there's definitely an overlap between what the working group is doing and sort of our our task i mean we are capital improvement planning so i mean this is more detailed but i guess i've always envisioned that there's supposed to be someone involved in discussion about capital improvements well it takes a question and i i was watching this on yeah they are live later on june um you know you don't see a slot here for anybody from the cap long term from the capital improvement planning committee should there be even if for no other reason than they could be unreceived and plug that in for me update this group on a going forward base because that is a long-term planning item right maybe they even should be participating as an active member so we should talk about that and if there's a consensus that as a committee we think we should be represented i would think that would be something if there was a majority that felt that way that you could bring back carol martin and say hey we understand this is still a work in progress as a charge here's what we think um
i think it would be at a minimum good to have somebody sitting in meetings because they're not public meetings so we can't just yeah i don't i don't feel strongly that the person has to be a contributing member of the committee it'd be nice if someone could listen for exactly because it's not going to be recorded and it's not going to be public so that you know what's going on. I don't view this committee's job as this committee as deciding what projects should be done as much as you've told us what projects you want to do. We've got to fit them within constraints and spread them out across time and that's my view of it but that could be different than others. But given how big of a nut this is in the plan, it seems like you'd want someone at least listening along the way. And in the meantime, given that they're not looking to come back with a report until February, my view of this is I would not put anything in the near term plan that isn't similar to what Michael Fahey did last year. Like, nope, elevators have to get done. You can't, like, that's got to go in. Let's put the things that have to get done and put the rest of this, right, whether it's in year five or year six, because you're not going to know until February. And even then, I would, I'll be surprised if there's a conclusion by February. But I think it's worth mentioning to Carol, do you want, they think it's a good idea to have a CIPC member at least listening on what's going on so that there's there's feedback or just that concerns about. So you know how often is a meeting? Do they want any staff? It'll likely be during the day. Probably during the day I can't imagine more than weekly but um and so i guess that or commit out to it like okay you're not public what can you do or if you're not if that's not the case they're going to be a progress kind of a progress update along the way or is this embargoed until february so if there's one person from this committee that goes to those meetings that doesn't trigger any uh open meetings like i was i was participating on the finance finance committee on the finance director's budget working group so i'd go to the meeting when i was on fincom i would go to the meeting and then i'd come back the next fincom meeting and it on the agenda would be a standing item for 10 minutes update on the more substantive issues so that you know and i would think you know bill whitney has been particularly outspoken about his view that he thought this committee was all focused on long-term planning. This building is long-term planning, right? And he said this at one of their meetings that he felt that our focus or our need or us as gatekeepers, at least initially, is the capital budget for the ensuing year and then the five-year plan somehow we have more authority or power over the process um we're advisory to the town manager so i'm not sure that's the case but i can't imagine you know a year from now a year and a half from now going to suckboard going to town meeting saying you know we'd like uh authorization to spend you know 20 to 25 million dollars for x whatever x turns out to be or more and they're not being something somewhere in there that the capital improvement planning committee had had that on its radar and had been part of the input so um i guess my question is do the two of you feel it important enough to to ask brad to at least inquire of carol um martin would they consider so i don't think we need to be on the committee because I don't think our job is to influence. I do think it would be good to know the status of what they're discussing. We could be an ex officio member. Well, so I would say, so if, you know, some sort of out brief notes, be great if somebody could come in person, just kind of, you know, I'm not expecting that to happen, but some sort of status on how things are coming along would be helpful. But at the end of the day, I don't, again, we're here to advise not to, make the decision so I don't think we need to be a part of that committee. Just so I'm clear, not part of the committee but do you think that someone should attend the meetings? That's sort of a different, not necessarily a member of the working group but... Not a voting member but able to hear... Authorized attendee. guess like you're just a fly on the wall do you ask questions i'm trying like a little bit it's it's really fly on the wall um and you're just there to observe then i don't think well the problem is not every because it's not subject to open meeting law right your out brief is limited to what gets summarized and so the only issue is even if they were inclined to put a member of this committee on the working group and this came up with the budget working group but it didn't dissuade me from giving updates to the finance committee anyway because the discussions in a working group are not public and if they might meet in this room or the sub board but the public can't come and sit and listen they're generally maybe people take notes but not in any organized fashion there's no typical reporting but here there has to be a report at the end so I assume there'll be somebody charged with cobbling together months of discussion and ultimately recommendations in a report. But one of the concerns the finance director had on the budget working group was me going back to the finance committee meeting, which are in public, and reporting, hey, this week we discussed this and this. Now, I would typically say, is there anything here that you would prefer not at this moment being discussed in public? Typically, there wasn't, because inevitably it was going to be in the budget anyway. But I don't think there's no reason to send somebody if the rest of the committee can't benefit from whoever's going to those meetings. You raised an interesting question though, and that is, say we agree that we should send somebody, and then we report back at our next meeting on what's going on in the working group, which is not public. You're making it public. You're making it public. You're making it public, but you're still not, that group is, we make stuff public all the time that isn't, that we happened at, you know, town manager, finance director, that happened, you know. that comes up as a topic in our meeting we make it public but it doesn't subject that committee to open meeting law doesn't they don't have to they don't have to do minutes they don't have to post their meetings the turnover documents my question is with the members of the working group say well we're not subject open meeting we can have these candid conversations and we don't want we don't want our meetings that's the valid point that's a possibility in this instance i'm just saying that when that came up in another working group that i participated in ultimately it was important that we be able to share as much information as we could back at the finance committee to stay ahead of the curve um now what do we do with the information so recognizing it's going to be a work in progress right until they get the report even if we go to meetings we'll get information and then just for the sake of argument you know let's say they want two basketball courts right and but it's still a work in progress it's not the final reports and you come back here and said yes they want two basketball courts and it's like okay then what yeah i think it's more about it's interesting yeah like from us like being a citizen of this town it's interesting but for this committees i don't think we do anything with information until they've kind of made their determine like the final ruling on what they want to do the only thing i would say is you may hear more color on why certain things can't wait and should be earlier in the plan and other things can right and just that's that's the stuff along the way that i'd rather not have to have michael fea have to repeat himself right the the us if that's being discussed which i would imagine it would be um
you know there's reasons not not to get involved right yeah we just there was a point we can just wait until somebody deposits on us information that we're we're allowed to uh think about but um to me that diminishes uh the potential for this committee to do long-term planning We can sit here and talk about the town building and our ideas. I just gave you two of my own ideas, if you're left to my own devices. There a parcel of land on the other side of the parking lot that I was looking at online Can that be utilized Is it in the wetlands You know there are issues about the reuse of this building if it not being used for town building There's some there are some underlying legal issues that date back to the original deeding of the property of the town that apparently relate to it needed to be used for recreation purposes and somehow as a school it was determined to fit into that as being used as a town building. Who knows? But you know you need if you're going to do something other than use it as a town building, you're going to lease it to somebody to build housing or sell it to somebody, you need clear title. And so you'll see on this charge, the good news is it's on the charge. They need to advance the ball um um you know there's a there's a pretty in-depth analysis that actually a former town moderator and he actually was former town council many years ago who's now deceased peter gossels had done on the underlying legal title of this property and the planning board has a memo which is available publicly have a copy of the property has nothing else to do with their life but uh it is pretty darn and there's steps you know if the library has a similar issue uh where the property was deeded in a way that you know you can't do certain things with it but there's also a way you can go to the state legislature i think and ask to get out from under
you know restrictions that were put on more than x number of years ago as part of a deeded process. And it's involved and no guarantee. And I know the library had to look into that after their plans for building a new library didn't get past the town meeting. But that issue pops up every once in a while when they continue to look at their space needs. So again, you know, it's curious to me back to your point, When this article got brought to town meeting, part of the debate on town meeting floor was, what's the makeup of the committee? And I think the charge references certain professional backgrounds, including architects, engineers, people that actually would be involved in the kind of hands-on planning for facilities, for example. we've done none of that because we've been hyper focused on doing collecting data and putting it in the report yeah which in my view got tossed in there for the end of the development of that bylaw that we would be part of the capital budget process and I think that's where Bill Whitney has been hung up because I think he remembers the genesis of the capital planning committee was really looking out over 10, 15, 20 years with the kinds of people with the backgrounds that have planning experience that could bring to bear and help town staff and other boards and committees work through these processes. If we're not going to be doing that, then we're not fulfilling part of the charge. That goes back to a question I've almost had, because my background is construction my background is not finance I mean yeah I can I can I know exactly what's going to happen with a committee like this I was on the committee for the high school exact same vision committee so that's my background construction not finding that's kind of what I thought uh the CIPC in part was going to be doing but and I think ideally we would be right if we were if we had the right. Well, I think we've great advanced time and information, we wouldn't be spending so much time on logistics of getting this together, and I think we'll get better at that. Well, that's why I think this committee should be represented on working because that was the debate on town meeting floor. In fact, one resident got up and I think wanted to add a certain profession, the list, because she thought it was deficient. And again, it was a type of profession that would be the type of person who would be sitting in the room getting input because they have experience with project management or. Well, there is a member. I mean, I agree with you, Brian, but there is on that charge for the working group, there's a member of the permanent PMC, right? Agreed. They generally have building development background, some have project management background, but if not on this committee, then I question the bylaw and I question ultimately what's the worth of this committee and maybe this is as good a segue in to have that conversation at least initially chair to chair with you because carol was intimately involved with developing the bylaw and i was a little surprised that someone from this committee wasn't represented just because i would have assumed that she would have or bill for that matter because he's been vocal about this committee not appearing to be doing much in the way of long-term planning so anyway if again if Well, I think maybe this maybe a dialogue I think it's probably a good idea to have somebody's done meetings and frankly I'd be willing to volunteer myself on it but it all depends on when meetings are. Yeah, I think it's worth having a discussion. My opinion is worth having a discussion with Carol. like did you think about this what's the view on this we thought right including bill's comments right in in their meeting right the intent of this committee was supposed to be focused on more long term although i did point out after hearing that meeting that's agreed but the bylaw says both yeah bylaw bylaw does not just say long term it says which is a report which carol pointed Yeah. But I think it's worth raising. And I think given the other reasons worth raising is this is a $22 million. It'll be more than that. And I know it'll be more than that, but even at $22 million. So it's a big enough number, right, in the capital plan, but it's going to be a big part of the discussions that we have over the next couple of years of this committee. I know why you wouldn't want to i don't know why you want that why you would want that completely blind should we uh take a vote then on whether we want um
yeah i don't know we need a vote right now i would just encourage if you're comfortable i would encourage you to start by simply having a dialogue to play back to carol what you heard tonight in your own view so and yeah you have the experience with the high school i mean that's exactly what this is different considerations perhaps but it's it'll be the same thing there was tear it down or build a new one that was kind of the two options but yeah that's fine i'll be glad to get in touch and then you know she can't commit obviously the stock board but if she's so inclined or says oh geez you know we you do raise a good point obviously before they solidify this charge before their next meeting, two or three weeks. If you can get to where she at least could then bring that to their attention and they could talk about it. They may have some of the good reasons that we talked about tonight. I don't think that's a good idea, but I think it dilutes. I'd be glad to do that. Anyway, that's why I put this out there for a discussion. Is there anything else that people wanted to, I don't know how much you had time to either look at the charge or look at the very high level budget? I looked at both. I have the same, I'm with you, the number would be, I'm fairly certain the number will be bigger than that when all is said and done. But I think Bill's comments in the meeting are what I'm most concerned with. We don't start with, well, the building is this big and we could fill it up this way. It's what do you need space-wise for your needs? You can outline your wants too, but your wants should be on a separate list. and if they do that first right then I think they're in the right they're in the right direction they start with I've got this much space and I'll cost this much to renovate it and that's how much should we do it or shouldn't we do it that's not really the question I think that should be answered it's what do we need and then what are the alternatives to do that right is it renovate right is it bring this building up to code don't renovate right just live with sort of the the configuration that it's in completely reconfigure the building right remodel it um to to those new needs build a new building somewhere lease a building somewhere right procom of each of those but i don't you got to start with what do you need yeah i think bill even which I think is again a good idea, recommended the town spend a few dollars and higher of probably one of the larger brokerage firms, real estate brokerage firms, again, who have consultants that do this, help their clients through this process, and be part of the
working group. I think at least one member, and I've always told him, in a perfect world, you could find an alternative that worked, have town functions at town center. Again, in the interest of bringing people, more people, to there. And unfortunately, the most likely spot of doing something would probably be the stop and chop were it to fail. And anything's possible. It's not the
most highly trafficked stop and shop I suspect. It defies economic logic that it isn't hasn't failed. Yeah I go to sometimes over at Native on Route 9 and it's just a totally different experience. Yeah the one in Framingham. So anyway that's that and I'm sure that will come up and you have a new ownership there who's been in front of several boards and committees who seems open to to considering out of the box concept.
Okay, well, I'll get in touch with Carol on that. Appreciate that. Okay. The next item is discussed use of transcription tool to produce the future of meeting minutes. John was kind of leading the charge on that. I don't know if we have anything that we can really contribute on that tonight. I don't think so.
Next one is discuss succession planning, CIBC chair and vice chair roles, finance and school committee designees. I don't have any updates. The only thing I could tell you is that I attended my first, second finance committee meeting a week ago, and we had a topic that included appointments. This committee was one of them. And Carl Barnes is now the chair of the finance committee, his elected chair. And he's well aware that you weren't looking to be reappointed. And I simply let them know that, at least from what you had reported, is there was an individual who possibly might be interested that had spoken to you and Carol Martin, that carl should connect with carol martin to determine what her view is of the process going forward yeah um so uh the finance committee is aware that they need to figure out how to identify kelly's replacement um so and then the only other nothing new on me and then the only other thing and since I don't think Liz you were here for a couple meetings and so you missed our I should watch the tape you missed our discussion about chair and the vice chair role
they're acting and the intention was to both wait for you and then put you in the role they wanted to just put you in the role
but also see who comes forward to um Kelly's slot and then eventually my slot because that individual might have certain experience and interest.
Brad wasn't totally willing. He was doing a great job.
Yeah, so other than that, we'll roll that over and see if there's any additional information.
Okay, let's move on to review and want to approve the minutes of July 6. uh oh can i just let me just read the uh i want to double back to the 640 agenda i'm just meeting your process and decline why no yeah it is part of the capital planning process if i could just 30 seconds more i did encourage or i did speak to the rest of the finance committee members uh and suggested that we get going on reviewing the four years of the five-year plan that are in the warrant that that I was happy to provide them meeting the meeting updates on our progress and suggested that I think I suggested that where they're interested to speak directly with department heads we wanted to do so in a coordinated manner so I will I will try to be a link between this committee and the finance committee with respect to the capital five-year plan and the budget to try to ensure that that goes smoothly this year so okay thank you
thanks uh thanks for the minutes uh any comments on the feel like
If there are no comments, can I have a motion to have the meeting minutes approved? So moved. Second? Second. All those in favor? Aye. Unanimous. Meeting minutes are approved. Thank you. Next, setting time for the next meeting. I raised it at the last meeting. The next meeting is scheduled for August 5th. August 5th. I'm going to be out of town so I will not be able to attend.
And I guess the first question I have is, are we going to have a quorum? Can everybody else make the meeting of July, August 5th? Hi, Tam. Hi, Tam as well.
And if John's not here, perhaps what we should do just so we can keep making forward progress is take a vote to identify an acting chair in the absence of both the chair and the vice chair. Okay I see what you're called Chip because I know I raised it last time and I was going to be here I think John said he was available but your point's a good one um so do we have a volunteer to be acting chair if people are uncomfortable i'll share if you guys i'm here you want to move that can we move that uh yeah well i i move that i mean the acting acting chair if john and the acting chair and the acting vice chair are here um at the august 5th meeting Second. Are those in favor? Aye. Aye. Okay. Just to avoid a procedural issue. I will. So the question is, if you're having a bunch of these conversations, whether you should deposit that on John or deposit that on Kelly in the period that you're sure you're going to be here August 5th? Yeah, to preference one way or the other, whether I send it to John. Well, I'll send it to you. You're going to be the active chair. So if I get in... Well, if John's here, he will be. Okay. Oh, that's right. That's right. If John isn't here. So I would say first, John, are you going to be here? And then if not, or if there's a possibility that his schedule changes... before you send it to them just so we don't have you send it to two different people. Okay yeah I'll get in touch with John and ask him then. I'll put together the agenda and send that to... Yeah you can still submit the agenda as long as you just submit it before. If you're going with the boilerplate and I mean you might just think about adding wording to cover some of the updates we talked about you could post that tomorrow and then if it needed to be edited it could be edited for the meeting this so we know it didn't fall through the cracks they have to do it tomorrow what do you want to add up well the things we talked about tonight I mean I guess most of them probably if you have the same languages under the 640 item and probably just add a few more words saying you know including up updates from chairs discussions with select board chair and town manager
and uh i suppose you could leave the um town building working vision group on there just yeah it's one of the items because we may have some feedback
and then gross can if you want to I don't foresee unless Kelly you feel different I don't foresee the need at the moment to keep the succession planning item on there but no harm in leaving it there I think I'd be inclined to leave I leave it there just in case there's a change, like just in case something happens at one of these meetings. Okay. But you can probably shorten the time off to five minutes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's 6.30 start time, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's it. unless anybody has any other topics or if we've missed anything. If not then I will take a motion to adjourn. So moved. All in favor? Aye.