March 11, 2026 – Finance Committee – Video & Transcript
March 11, 2026 - Finance Committee
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Robin, do you know if there's anybody online here? No, I see no bandline except for WACAN. I'm sorry? Except for WACAN, then. Okay. No bandline. Okay. Well, it being 702, I call the Union and Refinance Committee to order. I don't know that we need to review the agenda since there's nobody, no members of the public are here, but just, so I'm happy to go right into it. I have no announcements. Any announcements for anybody else?
No? Perfect. There's no, there being no public comments.
Ahead of schedule. And with great thanks to April, we can take a look at the minutes of the meeting of March 9th. I thought they looked good. I had a few, just like, small changes.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure. Pull it up, because I know multiple screens open. Okay, thanks. And I can send these to you, but under continued discussion and possible vote, the committee review of the 27 budget, budget-invoiced concerns about the extra articles and projects. And, yeah, just, just, water infrastructure, senior property assessment credit. Like, I don't know what other ones there are that were had to. I think everything, most of the others are free cash. So, I just wanted, just so it doesn't sound like it's really open-ended, but I, I appreciate the sentiment, yeah, but the water, KK, the enterprise funds? Well, those are, I mean, that's like in your water rates, so it's, okay. It's, it is out of another pocket. Okay. But it's not part of the budget, the, the omnibus budget.
Is it considered, called water quality project? Yeah, which project? Is there one that you're writing out, is it called water quality? HH? Um, no. Um, I've been, I've been referring to it as the NWRA connection and happy holiday upgrade. Long-term water supply. There you go. That's perfect. No matter all that I said. Well, that's, I just looked right up. And that's why I'm like, I knew it wasn't called NWRA. I couldn't remember what it was. But in senior tax assessment, that's the other one. And then, um, and then near the end, um, before review and discussion of preliminary draft of the report, the, the two paragraphs before that. So discussion of capital budget continued. Mm-hmm. Um, I just thought in, from the second line, would like to see the review of building, buildings maintenance, HVAC particularly. I just say prioritized. I have sidewalks being done. I just say in FY27 versus in one year. It just, it's a little vague. And then I just suggested, would also like to follow CIPC recommendation, take out C1 year of, all right. So would like to follow CIPC recommendation on reducing the road improvements, expenditures to 431,000, then cross out down for a single year to, I'd say, modestly reduce borrowing and across that utilize funds most effectively too. And then, so it would be single year to modestly reduce borrowing and to utilize unused funds that have been rolling.
And then the next paragraph, I think I actually made the motion for the capital budget.
The next paragraph, C. Barnes, C. Barnes. Um, and then in the second to the last line there, your roll call vote and aim a thought seconded twice. Yeah. Sorry. That's me. Confidentation. That's okay.
Easy to fix.
Oh, yeah. Just following the meeting at the very end. Just last move to adjourn. Still part of the meeting. And then on the second page, um, you know, there's a series of questions that we were asking. And I think I agreed to track down the answers to those questions, but I need to anyway. Um, I think we should say that rather than just leave them open. I didn't. Okay. You can simply say C. Barnes agreed to track down the answers to those questions.
And this is more of a question, but since the end of the phrase, are these motions in the proper form for, I think they are, but, you know. We can, yeah, we should probably compare, um, just go back to last year. Let's see what was done.
Thank you guys. I, I, I think, yeah, I think it should be because it was kind of, as it was laid out, as Brian lays it out for the formal language, but. Right. Sounds good. I think that's all I had. Um, that's all I had. Questions with three of minutes as amended? Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye.
Perfect.
Everyone's on the outside. Yes.
Thank you, April. Um, next item on the agenda is to review a second request from the town manager. We, having talked about longer Monday, to transfer $45,841.95 from, from the reserve fund, reimburse the Department of Unemployment Assistance for approved unemployment insurance claims that have been paid by the department for former employees. And yes, this request really, there are two, one of which is that, um, several of the claims that were paid, at least have been actually paid in our, our responsibilities and talents to reimburse the, the state. Um, um, several of them came in much higher than our previous experience would indicate. So the town has been looking at reviewing those, um, those claims, um, without resolution debt, um, however, what happens is, um, the state charges interest and it compounds on the unpaid balance. So, so not paying the bills is actually increasing our costs. Second is that after the budget for that year was set, um, state changed the rules. And so instead of, it was, I believe it was 26 weeks, the state now, there's 30 weeks on insurance. And so that wasn't covered by the budget. So for both those reasons, um, the town's request, and the town doesn't have the money and enough money in the, uh, in the correct budget. And that's why they're asking for this now, um, once the claims are reviewed fully, uh, if it, if it's determined that, uh, the state is overcharges, uh, we would be looking for refunds, but, but paying them now will cut off the, the accruing interest.
Questions about that. I just, I, I, I appreciate paying the charge number, paying the fees due now. So we're not accumulating more interest on the, what's outstanding. Um, I don't, um, it just kind of looking at the numbers, um, I'm just trying to understand why would we would be in this position. We have 22 UI claims filed in 26 and we had 32 in fiscal 25. So we're down 33% somewhere thereabouts. Thereabouts, and they did say that the extension, it goes from 26 to 30 weeks. So that's sort of like a 15% increase, but we've had a 30% reduction in numbers. So I don't know if it's like a different base for different positions. So maybe they're more expensive claims. Well, according to, you know, what, what this says is that there are several, it was four claims, several claims that were much higher than we expected. They were allowed by state. I think we should pay it. I just, I'd like to hear a little bit more of an explanation as to what's sort of what the drivers are. Okay. And then I guess the other question is, are, have we adequately budgeted on insurance or unemployment insurance for the 27 budget? We'll let you know in 28. Yeah. Hopefully we don't want to go back.
Should I make a move to motion? Appreciate it. Okay. So I move to transfer for $25,841.95 from the Resort Fund to the Human Resources Budget to pay approved unemployment insurance for the second of that. We'll second. All in favor? Aye.
Thank you.
That's about the budget. We voted, of course, 48 hours ago or two to approve the operating budget. We went back. I went back to Michael and to Brian with the changes, the reasons that we did not support the capital budget and all of those changes were made. Specifically, just for the record, they, and if I forget the thing, please let me know. But they have taken the school fields project out of the budget. It's actually out of the entire fiber capital plan, which is another nuance, but we can talk about that separately in a second. They have advanced the $570,000 for the middle school HVAC system into this year. They have pushed out roughly half of the school sidewalk and road project into next year, which I wasn't concerned, April. I believe there was one more thing that I'm blanking on. The road improvements budget. Thank you. The road improvements budget. They dropped that. I think it was $300,000 to agree with SIPC's recommendation. So basically, they've done what we asked for. What I'm told is, like Ryan, and I asked him directly today, there is sufficient excluded debt being budgeted in the next couple of years that they're nervous about putting this field project back to the plan. And the words he uses, we want to revisit the whole thing sometime next year. So we have excluded debt. I think they have that in there for next year for the town building, their articles. And then I'm not sure what else looking out is planned. I think that's what he's talking about. Well, beyond that, I mean.
Well, if you look at debt by article.
So it would be excluded debt by article. And so it's separate from a, under his tab. It's a different tab. Thank you. Yeah. Next to the five-year plan.
I have to say for a project that is changing by the day, and I'm not concerned that it's not here. I think that it should be in the five-year plan. It was in the five-year. I mean, this has been going on since 2017. It was in the plan. It was pulled out of the plan. And all of a sudden, it was important enough to have been put in the plan and brought before us this year and moved up. To take it out of five years seems a little just sort of haphazard. I appreciate there's a lot going on. SIPC had reviewed it, too. I think they still had it in the five-year plan. They did. They had it in fiscal 29. So, I feel like, I don't know whether it's 29 or 30, but I feel like it should be in the five-year plan, which is, I mean, it's, it's probably debt by article because it sounds like the, the total should be. Couldn't it be put in next year if it's reevaluated and it can go back in later on, right? Well, the issue is that you'll hear Brian say, well, it wasn't in the five-year. It wasn't in the five-year, so I can't, we can't bring it forward next year. We do that all the time. Well, but as a practice, we should try to stick to, to something versus putting it in, pulling it out, and then we decide to put it in again. If we have a five-year plan and we have some expectation that we're going to be revisiting it in the next several years, it should be in the five-year plan.
I guess we don't know if we're going to be revisiting. I'm sorry? I'm not sure. I think that was the point they were making about revisiting means that we don't know if it's going to come back or not.
I think if we have, if there's an intent to rebuild this field, then we heard that it's probably something that needs to be, I mean, it's not a make or break, but I feel like if we have a five-year plan, we should try to stick to it. Maybe more intentionally is maybe, right, right now it's unclear to me if it's not in the five-year plan because we don't think we're going to do it in the next five years or if it's not in the five-year plan because we just aren't sure where in the five-year plan to put it, right? Because there's a world where the logic is, look, we've kicked this out for nine years already. This year, we had another project. There were opportunities for cost savings. We didn't do it this year. Like, let's be realistic. If we put it in 29, we're just going to kick it out in 29. And if, like, there was that assessment of, like, we're not actually going to do this in the next five years, then I think it could be out. But I don't think it should be out just because we haven't thought of it, if that makes sense. Where would you put the lighting? No, I think it should be in there. It's probably not 2.5. We should probably figure out what the number is with the lighting if you're going to do it, but now we've recognized or realized that there's a need for more than just what was initially presented to us, right? So that larger number, whatever it might be, with lighting or whatever the project really should entail. I don't feel we have enough information. You can certainly put it in as a placeholder, but I think it... Right. But I think it should be... Either way, it can go in now and be taken out later, or it can go out now and be put in later.
Two things happening. So here's the thing. You're absolutely right. It can go in either direction. However, the impact of taking something out versus putting something in, right? Taking something out is easy. Adding something in and finding $3.5 million is incredibly hard. So to Pam's point, and I think all that we're advocating for here, because I agree with you, Pam, if we were to look back at the original SIPSE plan, I think... Let me just speak for myself. Some of the issues I had with the original capital plan that's presented. Is that this new process, which includes SIPSE, they're taking a lot of time to really be very thoughtful of everything. Now, we have to vote also on a five-year capital plan. If they had a five-year capital plan that included this project, I would agree. I'm more in alignment at this point in time to make sure it's there, represented, even though it's not going to happen this year. Give them another cycle to go through right for next year for FY28. They're going to go through it again, and they're going to have this conversation with the town, with the town manager, with the directors to say, does the stair, does the scope? But then at that point, it's not under the gun. Quickly, we're taking it out. It may be moved later in the five-year plan. That to me feels... It's in there to have the conversation, as opposed to FY28, a month, two weeks before the capital's due. Someone says, I need this. It was in there in 2017, it was in there in FY27, and somehow it fell off, but there was no communication about it. This then at least allows for a purposeful conversation if it gets taken out, as opposed to us taking it out and it being forgotten about. Well, if that already happened, right? Right. If there was a conversation that happened and there was a choice to take it out, that's one thing, but that's not what it feels like. Do you know why they chose to take it out rather than delay it? Only what I just said, which I thought that email, I'm forward to that. If not, it simply says that they're going to revisit it, but I would, and I don't know this, but I don't believe that that is the result of the conversation with the schools or the facilities. I just don't think it was defined by that. Right. So it does seem like it was convinced that the two and a half belongs back in. I wouldn't put any money in for writing because that's not part of the project that was scope. They're making up these numbers. I think at this point, I mean, it's not going to change what we vote on. The excluded debt by article, which it will likely be, is not part of the five-year plan that we're looking at. So it, I think we just recommend that it be included as debt by article in the five-year plan. It's not going to change our five-year, do you know, does that make sense? The numbers that we're looking at and that we vote on do not include articles. That five-year number, for example, does not include the debt by article, the 5.4 million that we recommend that it be included as part of the five-year general plan as an excluded by debt or article by debt or debt by article. But it's not going to change the actual five-year number that we vote on. So it's a little bit of a technicality because it's, it's not a hard number that we're voting. We're just recommending it, that it be part of the five-year outlook. Fair enough. Would you put, would you suggest that in fiscal 29, your SIPC had it earlier? I mean, I think at this point I'd go with SIPC, but I, I would, I mean, I think my primary personally, my primary would be that it's somewhere in the five-year plan. And then the next step is where, if SIPC recommends fiscal 29, that sounds as good a place to start as any. Well, that is where it was in SIPC's plan. Right. So, so if it has to be, if we need to be particular, I'd say fiscal 29. And, and I can't remember, and I was going back to pull up, um, over with these breakdown. Did they have town building in there or did they suggest that a larger conversation needed to be had? I thought that, I think that was part of it for the town building. So it's like to have, well, we're rushing this project through, because I completely agree with you. We're rushing this height. They're trying to rush it through this year. To do it with the wastewater. It doesn't make sense in the current environment that we're in, but to do the town building next year, just, or in FY28 feels like they're putting town building priority, even though they don't know what they're doing with this building yet. And it doesn't seem to. It doesn't jive with kind of needs and what's been. And we're doing the repairs that are needed already. So investing in the town building when we don't know what we're going to do with this building doesn't seem proper. When we know what we could do with the fields. And that's been a project that's been pushed off for 10 years. Yeah. So would you, are you suggesting that we recommend that the town building repairs the mode out? I was looking for SIPC's recommendation to see what they would do, but I mean, from my perspective, I think we could vote on FY27 capital budget, but not on the rest of it. But I think, but that's what I'm saying. The rest of it doesn't actually include this category, this, this, like what would be in this tab, this debt by article? Mm-hmm. I think it's just our recommendation on what's included there. It doesn't, like this 5.4 million for fiscal 28 is not part of the five-year, the five-year plan that we vote on. I actually wonder if Brian, I forgot to have to do that.
It's by article. So it wouldn't, it's, it's how you present it. Mm-hmm. Um, because this really would be part of the, so you're saying then to put 2.5 million for the, in this tab, because it'd be split by article. Yeah. As I think it should be in there for the fields.
Um, and at least it's, it's in this general plan. Right.
And, and Bill, just so you know, I've always found that we get a estimate and then that estimate changes every single year. So the further out it is. I don't have a, I don't have a strong opinion. A hundred percent. But that's why I'm like with the lighting, I expect it'll probably end up when they finally go to finalize it. I think that they would actually have it as part of the thing. So that would go up. Yeah. I don't, I don't have a strong opinion. I mean, I think it's fine to put it back in. I mean, they're not here to defend why they took it out. I mean, we have an email, but. Yeah. I just. I'm kind of a closure person. So I'd like to get it done. So I'm thinking that Pam's suggestion is a very good one. They, they talked about. In talking to Brian today about this or emailing with him, he cited the amount of the excluded debt that was coming up. Actually he said next year. So he's talking, he's talking about the 5.4. Right. There's none. 5.4. In fiscal plan. He doesn't have anything else. So. Out there. I think that's where it belongs. And I, you know, like I said, you can, yeah, and I've said all along, I support what SIPC did. So that had in 29, I'm fine with them.
It's, it's kind of an add on. It's not part of, like I said, what we vote, but I think, um, I think we should just, I should make sure that it's, it's part of the outlook. Okay. Okay.
Because once things fall off, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's harder to bring them back on. Agreed. Good. Um, the other thing, I'm sorry, have we resolved that? Okay. So the other change, uh, um, that came up, um, is that, you know, and Bill, I don't know if you saw my latest email, but, um, the select one is not a proposition, a lot of foundational works through the debt forward. I believe based on both text, Carol sent me and the conversation that they're not going to, um, but they'll ask me to confirm that. And I think that's fair, fair, that being the case, well, what they're posing is to under the levy debt and pay for that levy debt through transfers from, um, that should really hit until 28, um, that's typically how it works is that unless they plan to borrow early, but. This is, um, would be. Brian had a whole packet for the select board. We can look at that because he did have exactly what you're saying. Cause he presented the select board. Yeah. Cause typically you borrow, it's approved at 26 ATM. They usually borrow. It'll be in fiscal 27 in November. And the first payment isn't until the following year. So that gets you into fiscal 28. So I don't, that, that was my question. I read that. I mean, I'm not against it, but it looked, it feels like we're looking to 28 to save it. Well, if you look at, you're probably to, to stabilize that because it would be a big bump in, in debt service in 28. If you look at the fiscal 27, uh, five-year, uh, proposed budget, uh, revenue budget. Okay. This is on his, um, yeah. In the, the latest version of the, uh, of the, of the capital budget. Of the capital or of the operating. No, capital. Sorry. He's got, he's got flat $100,000, uh, transfers. That's for the fields. So there's nothing here. So let's go back and look at the operating budget.
Yeah. It wouldn't be for, it's not, it wouldn't be for 27. That would make sense. Because we're looking at a, the, uh, 300,000 reduction in debt for fiscal 27 or death service. But we were, I guess.
Yeah. Unless they are early. I mean, that's how we've always done it historically, that it's, it's actually sort of two years, hence from the, from the, from the ATM here. That's easy. Easy enough. I can't do that. Let's see. How do I, sorry. So yeah, it would hit in 28. So this is if he did. So he proposed two options. He proposed doing a 4% 20 year loan and paying it out of calf stabilization, or he proposed a just a hundred percent funding through calf stabilization, which would draw down the fund. But I mean, yes, but the amount would still allow it to be able to. Um, over the next, whatever, five years, four years. Replenish. Replenish. And then. Caps stabilization. I think the select board had mentioned in their meeting as well, that right now we're funding it at 250,000. But if we needed more funds, we could increase the cap stabilization from 250 to 400. If it was getting too low and would throw off our rating. So that was one of the reasons that they were looking at. So it looks like it would be a 28 fiscal 28. Yes. Do we know this is really more of a discussion with Carol and just to find out what the reasons were for not moving ahead with her. Uh, I mean, there's part of me that, and I'm not that familiar with excluded debt and how all that works. I mean, I'm not sure what the downsides would, sides will be. They must've had some downsides or they wouldn't have approved it. Uh, but if it's something that we as a committee feel is important, uh, then I would lobby for it. You know, I would, you know, I, I don't have time. Yeah. I think part. I hear you on, we did make our recommendation to select board. And I think that's, I think if we had more time, we, there might, we might be able to have that conversation, but at this, I mean, this is an entirely different thing, but I mean, when we hired a sustainability manager, the select board wanted to make it a halftime position. So I personally called on the select board and they ended up making it full time. So sometimes at a minimum, a conversation with, with, uh, Carol, but yeah. Wouldn't necessarily think we have to call the select board members, but I would basically call her and say, how come? And we really feel strongly. Is there any way to get this, you know, reconsidered? And if she says, no, we're final, we have good reasons for doing it, we're no, then fine. But I, I think that's part of the conversation. They don't have to re-vote it or should be, they'd have to meet Monday to do that. They are. They are. They are. They are. So anyway, again, if it's not important to us, then, then fine. But I'm just hypothetically saying, if it's important, we shouldn't give up.
I think you also need to pick your battles. And if this is important to a majority of the many, that's, that's fine. But it's, it's not one I want to take on.
Okay. So I think based on the conversation that I heard on Monday, they, um, they want to know alternative options outside of the state. I think that their concern is, is bringing another vote to the floor on something on top. I don't know this for sure, but I would expect because of the 38.6 million is like one of the concerns. I think I was starting to write, when I was listening to this, I started to write a note to Pam on this, about this whole discussion. And there's still a vote that happens on the floor, but I can't remember what they were talking about, but there was like a two thirds vote if they do capital is stabilizing. And then I think it's majority if they do the debt.
I like to take it out of cap stabilization to take it out of the cap stabilization fund. And then you might need a two thirds vote. It's probably in the article itself. What the required vote is.
I can't remember exactly, but I remember the wording. So it's all about like how, I think they were, they were considering and they took no position in the meeting on Monday and expect to vote it. I assume on next Monday. When you say voted, now you actually have the benefit of listening to the meeting. Yes, I listened to them. I watched it yesterday to hear what they had saved on Robinized articles because there's still a lot going on with that for sure complex, but they took no position. So when he, when Brian did this presentation, I was like, oh, interesting. We haven't seen this yet. We didn't even, we didn't know. And they had asked, has this been brought to finance committee yet? And they said, no, because it was a request of what are other options do we have to fund the wastewater treatment outside of excluded debt?
So, and then they took no position on either way after that, after reviewing, not think about excluded debt and not about that. It's interesting, that's not the way I interpreted your email, but, you know, thanks to Bill, I've got a direct question going back. Are you, you know, are you going to, are you going to vote this? You know, are you saying you're not going to take a position on excluded debt? Because we'll find out tonight or tomorrow. Yeah, I don't know if, if, if they, they didn't take a vote on it at all. And they did ask the question about the whole ruling on isn't, um, excluded debt for projects more than five million. There was a comment made about that. So because it's back in Brian's budget, I feel as though he's making a different recommendation than, like his capital budget has now, than what it originally had. Um, it, right, it does, right, because he didn't have it. Yeah, he had it as excluded debt. That, because they were trying to run them. Right. So that seems like in his view, they decided not to do excluded debt, but I don't, I guess we just want to confirm that that is. I mean, yes. Ask and answer, as the litigators would say, I'm happy to do that. Um, I think, I think I know the answer, but, um, Bill's convinced me earlier today to ask the very direct question, you know, not, you know, some of those emails I get are not real clear. So, sorry, back on the cap stabilization. Appropriations from the cap stabilization fund to support capital expenditures require a two-thirds majority vote. So, I think that must have been just the discussion, is if we do decide to fund, you know, the increase in the fiscal 28 spike in, um, debt service with the cap stabilization fund, we will need a two-thirds vote. I think, I don't know if it's at town meeting. Yeah. At town meeting. So, I've got a proposal, um, and correct me if my premise is wrong, but I think this is the only open question on the capital budget. And so, we can get a definitive answer as to what they're intending to, if they're intending to take a vote on Monday, we can get a definitive answer to that tomorrow. Um, if the premise is right, and that's the only open question, I think we could defer this to Monday, to our meeting on Monday, and plan to just get it done in a matter of minutes. Yeah. I had the two and a half million for the high school, or articles. I mean, it would be an adjustment to, like, the capital file, right? It's just, yeah, it's the file, and we're recommending that be. Yeah, but that's not a select board question. No, no, no, no, that's not. It's a Brian, Kevin-y question. Yeah, I've got that one. If we're going to vote on capital, I guess, on Monday, then it, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, related to capital, though, so I just forwarded you all of the, response from Nick Lombardi from the fourth. My apologies. That includes the breakdown of the capital request he sent in. It also includes the file that I'm assuming, I believe he's using for his own master budget. Um, sorry. I just, I'm sorry. Who is this? Nick Lombardi is the IT director. Yeah. And, um, I, I think when I was comparing the amount that was originally proposed from Brian Kevney, um, which is what's, which is what's listed in the ask from Nick Lombardi for FY27, you can see sort of the breakdown of that. So that five, six, 60, right? They asked for essentially six 60. One of the things that's kind of interesting here, just to note is that the office 365 migration, the windows server upgrades are included as part of the capital ask. So a little bit, I just have to say like the hundred grand addition, which we were told were for the licenses for Microsoft and office looks like it's being asked for as part of the capital. Now, those numbers no longer are included in the capital budget that Brian most recently sent back to us. I was then comparing what we got from Nick here to what Brian most recently sent. And it looks like I go back, um, you can see that the cybersecurity remediation modernization has dropped down to 47,000 and change. The public safety and the cybersecurity were left in line with what Nick had asked for. So the 47,000, I think it's just funded by capital closer. Oh, I see. Well, then I have some questions. I'm sorry. If you could break it down to that file that I had sent, which was what I was going to go back to. But I think it just begs the question of like, what's the hundred grand in the operational? Yes. Didn't he send an email? Didn't Brian send an email? He did send an email. So I will read you the email that he sent, which is from the IT director.
So the IT operating budget increase justification. The town IT department has historically procured perpetual software licenses as a cost containment measure for going regular technology refresh cycles in favor of extended platform life cycles. While this approach reduced short-term expenses that has resulted in a substantial accumulation of technical debt that now represents both operational security risk. A clear illustration of this is our continued reliance on Microsoft Office 2016, which remains in use today. Running at data platforms has constrained our ability to adopt modern cybersecurity controls most critically. And then he goes on to talk about MFA. All that's fine, right? I think it's just tough because then when I see sort of the request, the windows, right? The Office 365 migration looks like it's being asked for as part of this $250 in cybersecurity remediation and modernization because it's listed and the price is listed actually for both Office 365 and the MFA is $50,000. And so I think we still don't have clarity on what the $100,000 increase in services was from the operating budget. And my apologies, I should have caught this a week ago when we got this email applied, but I don't mean to be persnickety, but like... That's a good question. I think what we just want to make sure is that they haven't double counted. That's it. I'm not at all suggesting sort of malfeasance on anyone's part, but I just want to make sure we haven't double counted the money.
So would it be helpful?
Should I reply to Brian and Nick and ask? Yes, I will do that. I will do that. Yeah, I'll do that first thing tomorrow.
So it's not the firewall replacement. So if you look at... Because it looks like that's part of the... Oh, it's listed capital project activity. Right. But then firewall replacement additional funds is listed under capital. So everything he put in that email is listed here under capital. So as far as like what I'm not clear on is he hasn't said, here's the projects, enumerated them, and then said these projects are listed under capital and these projects are the $100,000 in the operational fund increase. So therefore, as far as I can tell, I can see very clearly what's been requested from capital. What we're actually lacking is where did the additional $100,000 in services come from on the operational side. And then we asked that question, if I recollect, we were told it was software licenses. But as far as I can tell, in this FY27 capital ask, these software licenses are included here, unless they're different software licenses, which they absolutely could be. And for what it's worth, the things that add up to $100,000 here, the Windows server's upgrades are $100,000. So there are items that are $100,000. It could be that. It could be that it's being... Well, but it's part of the capital ask. But then it doesn't show up in the capital. Doesn't... That part's not in our capital budget. Isn't the capital amount $250 for cybersecurity remediation? Yeah. So then it's part of that. He's actually broken it down in the email he sent me. $160,000 is what I have for capital. $160,000 for cybersecurity remediation and modernization? And the emergency system $150,000. Uh-huh. And the firewall... $100,000. Where are you seeing $160,000? Yeah, where are you seeing $160,000? That's the BIP that I have. Okay. But that's not in his budget. Yeah, I'm going to be at by... There's $250,000, $150,000,000, and $100,000. Okay, and so I still haven't... So this is what was given to me at the original... The CIP requests. And the CIP requests. So that's how it's broken out. Do you think it's... Do you think it... Never mind. We can take this out. Do you think it's possible that that $100,000... I mean, if it was originally $160,000, and all of a sudden it went up to $250,000, and then the services went up $100,000, like, is it possible they're moving that money around? Between capital and the operations budget... Operating budget. Yeah, it's... I mean, as possible as possible. All right. Anyway, I will take the fall. But you see what I'm saying, right? I think we... Okay.
Again, anything else on capital for tonight?
Not here. No, I appreciate them taking our suggestions. It seems like it gave them an opportunity to reflect on the budget as a whole, or certainly the capital budget. Obviously, they made some other changes. I think I'm encouraged to, and certainly what we heard from Kelly and others, that this was their first time going through this process, and I think I'm encouraged to see, hopefully, they will have figured out the changes that they want to make to that process. So in the future, my hope would be that the capital budget that comes to us is more closely aligned between Subsea and the town. I hope it will be. I also think that one of the recommendations that we... I think this was your idea, Pam, but the idea is we need to be involved earlier, too. Yeah. Yep. And we can help drive that process, you know, so that we can help better align them. And Subsea may not be right on everything. I understand. But we can... The earlier we know what they're doing... Yeah. Right. I think their draft is due in October, normally, I think I have heard. I think that's... I think that it's in part of the... It was an article last year, so you can find it. In the write-up, yeah. But that... So it should be part of the process. And historically, like, capital has been a part that FinCom has started to look at, like, in the late fall. So that would align. And so once they finish, we can, you know, they talk with FinCom and can always start getting into that budget earlier.
Yeah. And as we... You know, another recommendation. This is not new information, but again, I don't... You know, we've got one line item for the schools in that budget. And I think one of the recommendations is that we see a much more robust town-like budget in the schools so that we can... Right. And they... What we get in the budget, like, there's the school's budget book is typically what we would get. It would be nice to see it sooner. Well, seeing it sooner, but honestly, a lot of that is qualitative discussions about... Yep. And there's... I mean, there's a lot... There are points of view. ...pensities in the back. But I think, yes, in the past, it has been more of a Q&A and an interactive process. You know, iterative and interactive process between the schools and... And they come just to better understand. May for you. And interact. All right. Well, thank you.
Articles. We got a bunch of them.
Sharan's Bridge. There's a lot. I know you put your heart and soul into this. So, mine are so complex, they're still being true. So, I actually wonder if we should wait until Monday when all the... I mean, we can vote and we can give you a synopsis of them. But if you want final wording on all of them, we can wait till Monday and I think they would go fast. But... They'd have to if we do it on Monday. But there's still tweaks being made and how they're written up.
I mean, I'll figure those tweaks there. It's more of not article content. It's more of how the wording is in what the passage of the article will do, not what it won't do. It's kind of the best way. And then there's more on more research being done on the big one of the Sherman's Bridge Neighborhood Agreement. a lot of details where you asked about that when it's in.
Maybe? Yes.
So we can talk through them if you want.
I'm just giving all these answers. Why don't we go through the articles that we're ready to and then if we don't have time at the end we can go back. Makes sense to me. And if they're going to change substantially maybe we... Sorry, the Sherman's Bridge was for saying? Yeah. That's what I'm asking. If you think they are then maybe we wait. But if you think they're kind of what they're going to be. Right. I mean, I'm speaking for myself right. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the articles call for things to be done that the town cannot do. So there's this sort of mix of like what actually happens if the town votes for this thing that says we should do a thing that we can't do. I think it's going to change a lot. But yeah. And the thing is doing a lot. Select board and all of them select board whether to fail to adopt a motion to recommend. Yeah. And even that wording was changed. Okay. I wondered I hadn't seen that before. It was in one of the write-ups that was given to me and then it's being changed. So like I said there's something like they voted not to recommend. All of them. Yeah. Right. Well, so that's that's not I question that language too when I saw it. But it's not substantive. Right. We know how the select board voted.
Not that we even need to know that to form our own opinions. But I would I would really like to go through these articles vote on subject to review if things change materially. But I do support the argument of let's do that last not the ones that are easy and if it's 11 p.m. maybe until Monday and if hopefully not if you take sure there aren't that many. because we already started talking about it last week. Article B is paying prior debts is I think exactly the same as last year with the exception of new numbers. Did you send that one around? I was reading from last year earlier. Oh yeah I think
the only added I made was there was a typo that I fixed. I said article thought previously. The one question we had was about $10,000 to keep technical.
That is a question of how that interacted with the other vote. The other vote was for current year. This was an outstanding debt from prior year. I did not get a clear answer on
either some accounting issue on our side or theirs but that $10,000 is a real bill that needs to get paid independent of the other vote we took.
I get that. I just I'll still vote on it. I just as I recall last year there was I thought the actual spending at the end of last year for or what we thought was the turn back and what the actual was considerably lower than budgeted but then I guess it wasn't that number so I'm just wondering why it took why there was
appreciate that Brian actually summed this out in another thread that went to all of us anyway though yeah so so any is is this the $5,468 940 one no there was $10,537 and 50 cents for Keith technical school that was a fiscal year 2025 liability to be paid using a fiscal year 2026 appropriation then did we find out why we did not find out why we did get an answer but yes it is a real bill distinct the
answer was no this was not part of that that was for 2026 bills that were higher than expected and this is the 2025 bill have not yet gotten an answer on why this was not paid in 2025 or why wasn't it paid in 2026 right shouldn't shouldn't the 25 bills have
so i'll move to recommend article b second i did that because i had put you down a second in the surgery here to make things easier for you april just the enterprise fund article that's a nice meaty one and actually as i'm saying this sorry i'm just looking at it that's sorry something totally separate um just someone from the stations i just want to make sure there were no changes or what it works um so this is the enterprise fund budget i
this is the total for all three of our enterprise funds the water wastewater and transfer station yes so the total is nine million five hundred fifteen thousand six hundred thirty two which is the total for all three um so you can see in the little table just part of the article water fund
um wastewater one million and the transfer station just over six hundred thousand so in and then so that's for the operating and then below that the capital um looking at some capital expenditures for the water enterprise fund excluding everything else we're doing for the long-term water supply um and then the
i first say that um this article funds the operating expenses of the town three enterprise funds and this year it includes the capital that hadn't always been done so this year everything everything related to the enterprise funds is all in one article and then i went through and talked about each fund their operating and their capital and i'll just walk through the first one the water fund the operating budget is the six million two hundred forty six thousand an increase of one point three million or twenty eight percent year over year and then i went through and talked about the primary drivers so debt service one point one million contractual service up two hundred thousand salaries up eighty thousand supplies up twenty thousand and then slightly offset lower utility expenses down by fifty three thousand when you add those together it gets you most of the way to that delta that one point three six two and then i just so i kind of changed a little for my by trying before i kind of brought all
water water meter and pfos charges and likely to approximate at least thirty percent over twenty six levels and i just noted here water rates will continue to increase significantly in twenty eight and twenty nine with the incremental one point three seven million they're adding on and significantly from the debt from the MWRA i guess i really should use the wording from that
or long term water i would do that since you're referencing the article yourself i also don't know if it feels like we should say some form of you know if we
go up additional i don't love that because it kind of mwra connection i don't think is that's not going to vote right it's out funded the authority to borrow the money but not necessarily so it's like yeah people say no we don't want you to borrow the money then the town can't proceed right like then they have to pick something else something less costly or path or whatever or do a better job with education and have a special town meeting correct right the only thing that i was curious about is there's so many acronyms in here like COLA is not spelled out i
wanted to make sure because there's a lot of things that are defined but it wasn't defined in the article so
computer rate design rate increases for other services supervisory control on data positions yeah wastewater wastewater yeah sorry for the first okay does it give anything descriptive of what scouting is maybe i can just use that i don't know how much process controls system used to monitor and control industrial processes remotely if i kind of just do a generic monitoring and control versus data services i think that would be better for the water enterprise fund capital why it's $230,000 than projected last year yeah i said that
this capital bush it's like well my bad that's okay second observation is but you can say that you should do the promotion does have any other questions or comments no i mean the bulk of even with the steps and lanes and everything the bulk of the the bulk of the increases that we're seeing which are pretty substantial jumps are really because of debt service right so would you agree with that statement i mean that's what it looks definitely for water right um waste water it is higher debt service cost right 108 and then transfer station is really the um it's the new um indirect cost has has not been there before so you get all the change for all at once fair enough but with the exception of that it's really the debt service that has already been approved for right like now it's just time to pay to bill so um exactly super minor points given that
is there a reason you put listed contractual increases before debt services in your list of drivers um probably because it came when i looked at the super minor no that's a good point i'll just swap it yep um it's probably when i looked at the income state the way they presented it um do we think we should explain the indirect expense at all for the transfer station enterprise
sorry i was finishing that change with that again um enterprise fund i'm sorry the transportation you mentioned the new indirect expense but like it's very unclear what that um i guess most people don't understand what that is okay maybe this where the fund is being charged for a higher percent than this covers um it's kind of the allocation yeah for the town resources that are allocated to like like brian's time and yep um so i'd just maybe i'll put that in like the clause you know the new indirect expense amount comma which represents you know the fund being charged for the time of town employees yeah i can look at that yeah right and just above that 81,000 we just need a dollar in salaries salaries are going up by 37,000 who knows what that could be 37,000 peanuts i wish everything came out no i'll move to recommend article enterprise on the budget second all in favor nice job it's a tough one i have another one that's also not really ready um article dd the holiday road um we can talk about that uh it's a similar industry where we can't did you send that one i know you talked about it i sent i sent it and i sent an updated version today okay updated income comments for article dd so just to kind of remind us all we're talking about so this is the article for these design and engineering studies of 25 holiday road um this is proposed by the select board to study the potential uses of the site the site is currently in the care and custody of the school committee and i think has been for about 70 years it is represented in the school committee it is a possible site for a new school in the school committee's long-term facilities plan that they just published this year um this select board put this forward there was understandably a bunch of feedback saying why is the select board doing a study on the school committee's land so there has been um an effort to get kind of a joint uh an effort to get an article that both the school committee and the select board are happy with putting forward um you know that they're both aligned on so i think there's still some my understanding of the current state of play is that there's still some back and forth on the wording but there is expectation that this will end up being you know something of a joint effort between the two groups to have one study that efficiently covers the multiple possible use cases for the site um so the draft that i sent out has the original wording that does not reference any school committee collaboration but all of my comments assume that there will be school committee collaboration i have seen a couple of drafts of new language of the article that reflect that but i was asked not to share them yet until they're actually agreed between the school committee and the soft board i had one clarifying question here just in your write-up so 25 holiday road 13.72 acre parcel land acquired by the town is it actually acquired by the town because you're correct when you say that it's under the purview of the schools so my understanding is that it was purchased by the town but then given to the schools i believe so okay all right i just wanted to do you know when that heard yeah sorry i thought i actually had that in i think it was like 1952 although we was in the 50s but i actually thought i had that date in there i thought you might have too maybe that was it might have been a prior you said it has been utilized for about 70 years just to kind of 1952 is the number that stick in my head but i actually thought i had that in there so in the arguments in favor it's been a while you finally i should include that reference when you think about putting the dollar amount in the first sentence of the comments the purpose of this article to appropriate $20,000 and then the next paragraph i think i would in the second sentence i would delete the word recently since one of those things that happened was in 2017 i'm not sure that qualifies as recently anymore i kind of yeah that's fair over a 70 year period that was kind of in the grand scheme of um but yeah no i buy that also i'm genuinely in support fewer words somewhere early on in this process i remember hearing somebody say and i have no idea who it was that the town shouldn't spend the $200,000 at all they should just sell it to somebody by his bidder presumably and let them figure it out i'm not necessarily in favor of that but is any is that argument coming up that we shouldn't spend this money at all that argument hasn't come up okay uh for many of the people who have voiced an opinion i suspect part of that is because the many of the people who have voiced opinions probably have a preferred outcome of nothing ever happens with the site ever and selling the site to someone is probably not a good way for nothing to ever happen with the site i also think frankly because it's in consideration with the school committee i think even if the select board weren't proposing this now odds are pretty good the school committee would be trying to find a budget to do something similar rather than selling but and the 200 grand for this comes from where what's the funding source there has not been a particular funding source so is it possible that this gets added into tax rates i don't think it's from someone else's budget but i think select board has a budget and i'm just going back to see what that is okay select board has a budget of 33 000 so that's not going to do it in the town office there's purchase of supplies i don't know sometimes they do studies like through your particular town department and that would be there's town office they have got purchase of supplies at 180 but that's it yeah i think it's clarifying because this could be another article that like if it voted if it hasn't already been accounted for i'm sure i'm sure right but like i would i would like people to be aware whether or not it's already yeah yeah the article itself and this is language you've seen a bunch of times is the cart launch correct taxation transfers correct borrowing right but but i guess i guess my larger question is um has it already been included in the numbers we've seen or or has it not um or is it another or is it another mwra here's another article that's totally separate and and i think i would like to know that i would too yeah right so are we gonna hold off on voting on that one or do we i don't think we the article text is okay gonna change when the school committee and select board have a meeting of the minds so if there are other your write-up shouldn't change much yeah and that's i don't think well i mean unless the school committee and the select board changes a lot but yeah that was kind of what i thought bring it back for another vote right like so just to be clear just because we vote once it does not mean that that has to be that that's a final vote that's final you could bring it back if there's substantive changes yeah but the article itself is going to change substantially so this does not in any way address the school
well are we voting my write-up or are we voting the whole thing so that we were voting the whole thing we do vote the whole thing you've sort of explained what you expect right i mean i guess it depends on what we i guess if it turns out between now and monday that the school board is super not on board i would want to see it again for sure yeah but in the absence of like something that start changing this seems like you've done okay unless you really disagree like it seems to me like you've done enough here to get us to the heart of the issue the pros and cons the cost isn't changing yeah so i i'm fine either way my expectation was we'd review this we'd get these comments and questions i'd come back and say on monday and say hey everybody nothing you know here are the six words that change yeah yeah either way is fine unless anyone feels like they can't vote without knowing the funding source i'll move to record article dd as amended second all in favor i vote no i vote no as well okay so if i were to find out that that $200,000 is already in the budget i might vote differently on monday but not knowing i would agree with that statement sorry which is why i asked because for me it does make a difference like i think it's in there but i think we need to find out yeah still passes though anything non-chairman's bridge anything well there's article o which i can give you an update on it i'm not sure again if it's ready to vote or not but that's to make some changes to the personnel bylaws and wage classification plan mostly i think dealing with non-union employees minimum wage employees and so forth and i think it's really to bring some of the increases that are inherited in the labor contracts into the people who are affected by the labor contracts carl did all the work basically to write up the pros and cons and the description we've struggled to get final numbers i pressed really really hard for both brian and the fire department to have numbers by tonight the fire department did a job and got it to me and then brian told me it's going to be two days before you can process it so i'm not able i sent you the numbers that i got from the fire department but they are unaudited by brian so again i wouldn't anticipate any changes it's basically sort of editorial you know fill in the blank in a couple places where there's numbers but it's not final so again we could do a provisional vote major changes between now and monday we voted i don't think the article is going to change i don't think the pros and cons are going to change but we don't have final numbers so just so i understand so the unions negotiate in three year increments all of their cost of living
the whatever those are valued at and then also how people move through steps and lanes so that's all and then we have a series of positions of course that are also non-union positions those people without this article would get no cost of living increase there's nothing in our bylaws nothing built in
we generally give a cola based on inflation there's nothing at all the only reason i ask is because i remember in 25 we gave we voted on an article where it was a 3% increase but that was on top of the 3% cola that they were already getting and that necessitated an article to give the 6% total raise i was just trying to make sure i think there was an adjustment like they did some study and i realized that some people hadn't yeah and that's one of the arguments opposed is that they really haven't done a study they've really just wanted to tie it to the labor didn't they just do a study and i think they just reviewed it was one of the in one of the select word packets yeah we funded it a couple years ago and i think they just presented it so but those have it doesn't and probably not in this the other thing that held it up a little bit was the fire department contract it's retroactive so they had to figure out how much was in 24 25 and 26 and then also whether or not they were going to include employees who had left in the interim and i guess michael mccall decided they were not going to include those employees and as soon
should mention that or in the write-up if we should mention that there was an independent study done but this article and the recommendations here do not take into account right because like people
totally reasonable i need to check that out okay good point thank you right on there's one blank right cola blank for fiscal 27 this is non-union positions right other than that i mean we have cola right below right above the personnel board recommendation there's there's some percentage increases there right those are the only numbers i mean are those subject change or is it literally wrong only for the blank to be filled in i'm well my educated guess would be those numbers are not subject to change but i
okay so all right sounds good so anyway we can i was trying to get it done today so because i will not be here on monday and i wanted to believe borrow of having to or other people on the committee of having to pick this up so we can certainly vote in provisional or we can you know kick it to monday but i will not be here on monday i think that's right this this must be in the 27 operator there's there are assumptions built into the 27 operating budget i'm assuming i mean they have some reserves i think yeah so they're in the reserves or maybe the non-emons are already in there i think that makes sense because we had some increases that said he'd said we're cola so okay i'll go either way my understanding here is that that the select board the liaison is carol martin she's okay with this language she is i don't yeah i don't think there's much we can re-vote it on monday if something changes i think i got most of oh i was gonna say i would like to wait i would like to see just the inclusion of like hey like just the answers about the study whether or not this is actually taking into account the study or not and and by monday you'll have the numbers anyway so we'll actually see a final write-up and then it should be a pretty quick vote if that's okay okay that's fine my sense is that study's probably not important we should that would be my assumption too but then i guess so let's walk down that path so if the study's not done so this is a request for this year does that mean if the study hasn't been included in the sort of recommendation here then it's not the 27 budget right so then so then we're sort of potentially either having we're gonna see it next year i'm sure the study will likely apply next year to him and they will do it for this i also have a silly note um in the last uh paragraph of your comments you use uh m dashes i think to separate the amounts from the groups um do you think those colons because the first glance looks like the
issues you mean okay that's for monday apologies for not being able to wrap it up today stop apologizing either go to chermans bridge or um this was really we've been out of senior email but but um i received from the board of public works a fairly long uh really article hh which would is trying to explain how the deck would be repaid the 38.6 million um let's see i'm so sorry before we go there can i make one last comment about of course oh i'm so sorry i one more comment on article oh to pam's point whatever numbers that brian keveny sends you back it would be great to just confirm that that number is already assumed in the fyi operational budget right like yeah we should just that would be just it would be great to say yep he already accounted for that um just while we're we're asking him questions anyway right while we're asking final questions i think that's an important one because if for whatever reason the cola asked is either higher or even if it's lower right it would be good to know in either direction if there's an impact to the operational budget i guess that's what i'm trying to say okay thank you that's all yeah we'll have to figure out some of the informational logistics because if i don't get it tomorrow then i'm out of pocket until okay tuesday but i will i will ask all the questions immediately thank you thank you thank you all right go ahead hh so they were reacting to a comment i made and i tried to be um try to explain the first time through this i believe it was 70 nothing to support the article um second time filled out and uh but it was a much closer vote and that was because we didn't have any information on how they're going to read how are they going to find the repayment right um i didn't ask for this that they came up with a two paragraphs that purport to explain that um my you've got it whether you've had a chance to look at it or not sense of this is what they've given us is four options borrowing over 20 years or 30 years and then a an amortization schedule that either is a level payment a principal interest more or less like a mortgage or one that has uh level principal payments where your interest is going to fluctuate um my sense is that four options is way too much and that this kind of this kind of information is going to take people's eye off the ball and that we've focused on so again i'm not asking you to look at the like do we say um you know does it approximately go there or not i'm looking for do you think information like this is hopeful or or not i think for me at least well one i think it feels more like two options to me you're right that implicitly there are four options there for them that is two um i i feel like this information is helpful because i feel like it puts a little more into reality of kind of numbers we're talking about and especially i mean maybe i'm wrong about this it feels like the last paragraph is describing to some extent directionally what this would do to water rates is that a fair assessment like we're proposing this is paid for by water rates what i think so it's still tough though i assume maybe carl some of your hesitation is like we just don't really know how this is going to play out right so we're adding a bunch of essentially contingencies about how this could play out and and i agree with rob that that is absolutely helpful information to know and have i also appreciate your comment on the fact that if you haven't been as clued in onto sort of what's been happening this is it's a lot of what could happen and not what's going to happen and i think that's tough i think it's tough to um i think in certain transparency this is the information we have and so if people can get a better sense of what's going to happen to my water rates based on this and i think that's ultimately people's questions like okay well what am i going to pay how much more am i going to pay um and it kind of gives you a sense of that you know there's some parameters on it versus just like i have no idea how much more it's going to be i think for me the last paragraph maybe even like a slimmed down version of the last paragraph i don't know that i agree with the plethora of options it's a lot because it's already complicated right but but if we think the real state are like directionally three financing paths that might happen one is we are able to get the state revolving fund on appeal one is we do the 30 year fixed payment one is we do the 20 year fixed principal to my mind i almost want to like just the last paragraph to say the water fund
which would you know which would likely increase the water fund budget by between you know x percent and 5 percent i think you could even slim it down even more though i think you could say there are three options option one is an appeal if the appeal is successful water rates go up 74 percent option two is you know a 20 year loan if we pursued with option two water rates go up 80 percent and option three a 30 year loan and if so water rates ultimately now i know i know this is being reported but i think they're making these numbers up they don't those aren't fair enough great so then in that case the direction is fine but um and i don't mean to be pejorative well i mean there's a 30 there's a 30 year out of four percent you know i think they're yeah they don't know where things will ultimately be funded but it puts some yeah i mean carl i sent an email and in my email i said i don't think i'd send carl an email because i thought i would be late for this and i have said not to include any of this because i am concerned about the same thing of how brutal are these numbers and i guess is there not an opportunity for the board of public works to speak at town meeting if they wanted to do some sort of handout or something else that they could like to me this feels like the kind of this feels like the kind of detail that i think again you could maybe make and i'm all for adding perhaps one line around directional right but other than that the amount of detail and to your point how much of this is accurate how much of this are we representing as income vetted numbers which we should not right because they are not right and to that end i would they have between now an annual town meeting almost two months to figure this out and this is the kind of stuff that will get figured out in the next two months and i think it's more appropriate that they opt to present or opt to do a handout or something else and we leave it at regardless of the options pursued you should expect water rates to increase at least this or in the neighborhood of this amount i agree i think one sentence that says depending water rates could increase between right initialize depending on funding source depending on funding source or financing or whatever right done between a and b yep funding terms right how about that carl i think it's fine i think um having said that if we say depending on the funding source a or b it'll be between a and b wouldn't any rational person say pick the funding source that gives you a so it's a little bit more funding terms because that's it's all td yeah then maybe you don't say between this and this maybe you say at least this and then you know there's we've we've identified that there's a floor we haven't identified a ceiling and and gets across the same point there's a number for people to react to and they know that it's the lowest number i think having a big number is i don't know for me having a big number it's more or just a little more transparent to that point right because we say by at least 15% and then it's like 70% talking about that it's already going to be much higher than that right we're talking about the difference between 74% and and something higher than 74% presumably they have 37% and then 59% they're saying 37 and 59 because this is i think you're talking about i'm talking about the total right but and i guess the main degree is this is 37 and 59 but if we actually got the revolving fund it would be might even be as low as like 20 for this i think 20 something i don't think so that original 74 included the estimation of the revolving of the of the loan at the 0% interest so if you take out the 37 from that 74 that 50 something increase that was or 40 something increase that was for the rest so i hear you but i would if i can come up with a rational figure or if you could come up with a rational figure i'd be happy to put something in there but seems like every time i turn around numbers change and we have almost two months to your point and i you know i'm hoping that they can come with a you know not just ranges but a proposal for the town you know people are going to ask do we have something in there about the terms of the loan no are still largely to be determined i think we just need to have something in there that says yeah we this is unknown we're looking into it but we don't know yet and there's people are going to ask why isn't it in the write-up and it's like it's not just because we didn't choose to include it's because we have no idea and there are a lot of there are a number of options out there again i i think it's it's really up to you i i'm very supportive carl of you making minimal modifications to your existing write-up for hh i i think we all recognize you've been put in a tough spot that's that's that was my point on a couple of other things but if we can improve something that's really important i'm all over it i'm happy to do that but i just think this is the wrong approach right with things that aren't substantiated i agree yeah but i guess the alternative to estimates or substantiative estimates is we don't know as a comment right um right so i i yeah something in one of the arguments i think that was something for that fact already but um i'll give you a other shot okay but i appreciate this very much really i i think we all ought to be on as close to the same page as we can on something like this the other piece that i i read to you about is just that i think in your write-up because i read it all because i thought we thought we had the final um but it wasn't clear from the write-up why we couldn't continue with just the happy hollow wells and have mwra is like a an ad hoc contention if we needed that so i think we just need to put something about that i think it's like happy hollow would only provide about 85% of the total peak demand so just to include that to ward off that question all right thank you sharon's bridge you want to do your weight on that article or my weight if anyone needs a little that's the harris whiskey in the part well we can go to the bottom well yeah i can go get it real quick um so i guess it makes sense to start with one one way of the so i'm sorry what's the return especially um i guess we have there's a zz and the uu oh i thought you had my life i have zz and yy okay uu is april's article submitted by a petitioner about putting away from around the bridge and zz is my art so you want to start with yy sure i'm sorry i'm sorry i was saying zz oh okay let's start with zz that's fine do you want to start with uu because i think uu you have more detail about the broader sherman's bridge project is uu the first sherman's bridge project article in the world okay can we start with tp do you think we're all subject to change understood well okay so tt bears the request for a second pedestrian walkway and the proposer feels that we're in the middle of a front bridge needs repair and the repairs that are being done mass dot is spending about a million dollars to do these repairs and it has been a project that has created has in the way that they put this together they have gotten a lot of people on both sides from both towns because this bridge is between Sudbury and Wayland so whatever we do still needs to be approved by Sudbury for the most part before it
now they there's there's many things from this bridge so the articles will get jumbled but I won't go into that part of it sorry they want to add a second walkway to address pedestrian safety and to be able to view from the other side of the bridge where
for preserving the lifespan of the bridge so they do not want wish to fund a second walkway specifically because it takes away from the lifespan of the bridge it's digressing from preserving the lifespan of the bridge which means it actually makes it less functional sorry I would interpret it not that it's more costly per use over the same amount of time but it gets more costly because the amount of time that we can use the bridge all of sudden is reduced I think that MassDOT is looking
would adding a second walkway jeopardize the existing DOT funding do we think or is it just that DOT said we're only paying for this part you want the rest it's on you so DOT so basically before any change happens they
they're they're not saying that they would remove funds or not move forward if there were they're saying they would not pay for the second walkway but possibly we could pay for that and still have DOT pay for the other things potentially maybe but it's not committed in the research timelines and there would be a delay okay yeah and the proposer is also saying that he thinks the cost could be under a hundred thousand Tom Holder is working on getting a breakdown but it's more in the figures of five hundred six hundred thousand for a second walkway so it's a significant increase but he's trying to get a actual reconstruction of some how on the other side he's getting an actual thing to be able to add to this article about how much that additional walkway could cost and it's not as stated of minimal cost at this point in time and if there was to be an additional walkway who pays for it is one of the other considerations there's no sidewalk on that side of the bridge so from a safety standpoint I don't see the safety part of it because there's already no sidewalk on that it would be people crossing the bridge to be able to look over the other side of the bridge the walkway is on the same side of where the current walkway is the sidewalk if used the same in each direction that's true I think that right is it for proposer's comments yes I have proposer's comments with this he this is where he says with over a million dollars about to be spent on vehicle centric renovations to
recreational value and user safety is the million dollars all funded at this point by dot okay yes right so it's really going from zero for the town up to whatever 100 or 500 okay correct but that alone doesn't get us there the funding alone doesn't get us there because we also need alignment and approval from Sudbury so we get appropriate funds for this and it still could not get done and DLT would also need to approve it I guess they don't get this right that last line before the program is there they will not fund work that digresses from preserving the lifespan so does it need to be the lifespan or from preserving the bridge the lifespan kind of confuses because it doesn't say that adding the second walkway is going to change the lifespan I guess that may make it rather than digresses that does not contribute to preserving the lifespan of the bridge it's not about the lifespan of the bridge though well I mean all the gulam stuff the million dollars is about the lifespan right the million dollars is the replacing the better trying to make the
so DOT's money is basically they're saying they're putting money in so this bridge lasts longer preserving the lifespan right or prolonging the lifespan yeah from there it's fine I think it's open to interpretation a little bit more it's how it's how
prolonging the life it's fine it's the word digress well digress is from what exactly it's not really it's digressing I guess you can make an argument it is digressing for preserving the lifespan you have a second period on your third arguments of
change because what's going to change the other cost now this will change because so one of the comments that I got just prior coming into the meeting because these articles are so complex how I say the passage of this article alone does not guarantee it's kind of saying what it won't do but it's not saying what the passage of this article will do so I need to reword it that's going to be the only substantive change that I would say except for if Tom Holder can provide a quote in time for what a second walkway would actually well if it's five or six hundred thousand where's the money coming
I think with the edits that you're talking about April those edits are just to make the point of the article more clear I don't think those actually change and for me personally the amount here does not change right because none of the money is
appreciate you'll you'll need to make some modifications to make it more clear and incorporate the feedback you perceived but otherwise I'm prepared to vote on it me too the third argument I posed I think the last could it the additional substantive changes to the bridge design and construction could that jeopardize the mass DOT funding that we're already getting right or not I asked that question because that's a strong point against to included that's true I think that mass DOT at the end of the day has a final say so it
concern I said they said that allow a second walkway based on the current it's basically what I said that DOT that mass DOT language came directly from Tom Holder I just feel like that's a strong point that maybe should be like you could jeopardize mass DOT funding or mass DOT has the final judgment on design well I do think given that and that's where part of this comes in I think the committee comments at least say you know mass DOT even the article so we've used best efforts not like to get rid of the results but I do think the point about like jeopardizing funding so critics are about an additional substitute change to bridge design and restriction at this stage to jeopardize timing and funding of this project I personally keep everything you have and then I just put another pause at the end that says to jeopardize you know roughly one million dollars of DOT funding currently expected or something yeah I have somewhat philosophical question the arguments in favor feel potentially very optimistic they were all from the proponer proposer's comments as I kind of like took a lot of what the proposer had in there to and I guess my question sort of with the exception of the third one because I really don't sorry except with the exception of the third one because I need a third one to balance yeah I guess my question is sort of like some of them don't necessarily seem realistic or make a lot of like the third one like how is incorporating a second walkway going to minimize environmental impacts because if they're if they're doing it during the design stage it would be less impact to the ecosystem that's underneath the bridge if they were to have to redo it so basically you're saying doing it as part of this project does it both okay yeah and maybe just kind of into final design yeah that's why I said into the final design would be cost effective and I guess it sounds like maybe it was for me it'd be a little better sake into this project as opposed to as a second project later it sounds like that's really what we're saying the choice between put a bridge put one on now project or do this and then do it in a couple years and then it all makes sense okay so into the current project is what I put instead of the current project would be cost effective yeah yeah I might I had that I said into the current project instead of as a second project because like the second walkway I think there's objectively worse on all of those things than no second walkway because it'll be more expensive and higher more environmental impacts and more disruption it's just like doing it now is better than doing it later for those things although worse than just not doing it is there any context on the safety concerns that's what I have I would that that first line I would take out several major because I don't know which ones they are how major they are but I just say safety concerns yeah which I'm not sure what they are but if you can yeah I was going to suggest that too yeah or we can say what the safety concerns are so like I don't know there really are several major safety concerns that are addressed maybe he said it and says adding the second walkway would address also address several major safety concerns right but we've never heard what they are just say safety concerns which yeah maybe there are some but um well if you're walking I guess if you're on one side right from subway to wayland so it's sounds like between the sidewalk could you be facing traffic on the left right if you're walking right yeah right of course and you have to cross the road there to be safe but I it's a safety concern but I think we get rid of the word of nature yeah and then the next one April I would I just skidding that down and say recreational value for the direct for the user or the recreational users of the bridge and not talk about hundreds per week yeah yeah I didn't know really I'd be dead I'd be surprised if there were hundreds crossing but it was my thinking as well people fish from it they uh they originally didn't have the proposer's comments in here so I was trying to utilize this wording in the arguments I don't think I have the proposer comments in the draft I saw um I have it on I sent it out I sent it out um later this afternoon oh okay I guess there's been so many of you sorry all right yeah sorry I yesterday's I'm so up to date last thing you pulled for me and it's pretty minor but in the first paragraph of your comments you referred them as DOT about three or four times yeah and then only in the next paragraph do you say what that is yeah so I just swap that up to say in cases where the department of transportation or in mass DOT funds municipal bridges and then just make the conforming change in the next paragraph and then I had in that paragraph also just near the end um the second to the last night Wayland and Sudbury must agree on the change I'd just say any proposed change before it is submitted um sorry um yeah most agree I think I was first just thought and then I guess I had a question in the next paragraph um two-thirds of the way through as the funding would be available during fiscal year 26
well then so we need to work rapidly so it's will not it not be available after June that's what I have to clarify from driving to him to work that part up sorry maybe we should just put the funding would be available during fiscal 20 years it just sounds like it's only available during 26 but I don't know if it that's what it sounds like it sounds like to me too which means ending with any delays would yeah any delays even you know that we've only got three months to it was done and then it jeopardizes MassDOT so it literally ties right in anything else motion to approve vertical TT as amended second okay you want to say that okay IHCB okay all in favor opposed that's what I'm going to pass around to do you want another no I'm good hey Brian who you're lying with you I'm just looking at UU since that comes after T it turns out oh yeah and I'm just kind of comparing what you have for UU to what I have for ZZ okay Carol sent me I think that one so one second Kelsey sent me mine um yeah this is a like a very complex um but the one I have is uh so I guess I guess Carol changed my wording on it so that's why I wanted to sorry yeah I guess one question UU and maybe let me check that I have the right UU so maybe so I can send out the UDRAP 1104 I mean I probably just pulled out the wrong one in my email and I'm going to send the UU so yours is much slimmed down I feel like we should probably just standardize the article I got from the draft I got from Kelsey and Jalen included much more content so UU I did slim down after talking to Carol tonight because the original version that Doug had had all the background information again so I saw that the version I have for ZZ has a lot more context on how what would actually have to happen to put the five time to put a wait moment into place if that makes sense and I don't I don't know if we want it at all right so yours sort of says passage of the circle does not so what happened I just flipped you the new version because Carol has adjusted this the version that I had had originally and so now it says passage passage so to back up UU is um a request from a proposer again to um add a five ton permanent weight limit on all vehicles using the Whelan side of Sherman's Bridge between Whelan and Sutherland um so passage of this article will establish a five and sorry the one part that I missed online and I apologize um is so on the Whelan side that would be in addition the select board shall impose a permanent 20 mile per hour traffic safety zone between the boundary of number 55 and number 61 Sherman's Bridge Road and Sherman so there's two things it's five ton weight limit and a 20 mile per hour zone so the passage of this article will establish a five ton weight limit on the Whelan side of the Sherman Bridge which is jointly owned by Whelan and Sudbury it will also require installation of three weight limit signs along Sherman Bridge Road and impose a 20 mile per hour traffic safety zone between 55 and 61 in Sherman Bridge imposing a 510 bridge weight limit on Sherman Bridge would prohibit both buses school buses and commercial as well as emergency vehicles fire trucks fire engines and heavy rescue vehicles most commercial trucks large construction heavy duty pickups the bridge is a major route for students and families traveling to Lincoln Sudbury High School high school particularly those coming from Lincoln the speed limit of the Sudbury side I don't have this girl just added this I have to get the speed limit on the Sudbury side of Sherman Bridge to understand if there's a discrepancy there the town has had no indication from the town of Sudbury that it tends to change a speed limit additionally in Massachusetts when a bridge is jointly owned by two towns both municipalities are responsible for ensuring it is low weighted according to mass mass dot and federal national bridge inspection standards mass dot has ultimate jurisdiction over bridge safety standards in the commonwealth the speed limit is based on an oral agreement and not mass dot and federal bridge inspection standards so if i'm understanding that correctly we can't put a weight weight limit on the bridge mass dot has to do that and so the passage what gives us the chance to ask mass dot to impose a weight limit if Sudbury also so this so the step before that is so basically passage of this gives us the opportunity to ask Sudbury if they are willing to consider imposing at their annual town meeting in 2027 if they will consider the same weight limit to then be able to jointly take it to mass DOP so the only thing like really that Wayland could do immediately is the speed limit adjustment is that correct or what's the process for that
there's our article i say let me direct you okay sorry okay no that's that's okay um i mean i like i said i didn't catch that in my article so i'm glad for article why why um which is about increasing safety reducing fear and reducing fear for residents and vulnerable road users of sherman bridge road and bridge um they want to establish a 20 per mile hour speed limit on sherman bridge road and onto the bridge add a crosswalk replace and augment signage to work drivers to blind drives poor sight lines of school bus stop wildlife crosswalk in presence of vulnerable road users constructing keep minimally four feet away from all vru so is the i'm i'm so sorry to cut you off but the 20 miles per hour speed limit is that in your article this article or both both okay yeah understood there are two different petitioners who each has multiple overlapping this is this is weight and uh now so we each so and then that's the april's is weight and speed limit right and i have one that's everything else okay thank you um so this this leper couldn't get them to combine them evidently it is a thing gotcha
understand um so excellent idea yes um so according to calcine jordan passenger this article alone may not impose the requested speed limit on sherman's bridge road according to massachusetts general law the select board has the authority to regulate speed limits within the town on non-state routes however the published guidance from massdot and the manual on uniform traffic control devices states that speed limits should be established after an engineering traffic study a traffic engineering study would measure how fast most drivers travel under normal conditions and typically the study would focus on the 85th percentile which is the speed at or below 85 percent of drivers are traveling sometimes the effect of such studies can actually increase the speed limit of the road research also shows that artificially lowering the speed limit without taking into account studies of the typical traffic travel behaviors of those who use the road can actually increase the likelihood of crashes because it leads to increased driver frustration passing and tailgating they've actually found that to be true isn't that what they argue about the autobahn right there's no speed limit on the mode because everyone's driving responsibly and figuring out and going how they want to go right like it's not the other and the other i have this in one of my arguments against you know people already don't obey the 25 mile an hour speed limit do we really think they're going to go slower right i mean i don't know if they necessarily go faster because it says 20 but right well they're going to do it if some people do go 20 and some people still go 40 then so if am i understanding correctly in your write-up that the select board can just change the miles per hour it's just in this case that the process within which they would typically exercise that authority is usually based on a study having been conducted am i understanding that correctly that's my understanding that is my understanding um it's basically you'd have to go against the published guidance and the manual on uniform traffic control devices sure um but essentially i think what i'm hearing is there's a way for the miles per hours to be reduced that isn't this petitioner's article it it's also just through and again an available authority that the select board has when i think that's the article is requesting that the select board do that but we don't or we notionally require the select board to do that um to me those are two distinct things is it requiring the select board to do that or is it asking i'm sorry oh that's fair i i i don't think it is clearly framed in there oh no sorry it's requesting that the select board establish yeah okay so it's requiring well what does request mean um and what is what is the passage of an article because because is it a request and then the select board could still take a vote and just choose not to do it because to me a request is you could say no to request i'm so sorry i'm saying no this is why why anyway anyway uh thank you for clarifying all that i i appreciate it i i no no you clarified because we're really looking at you you you clarified because i asked about the speed limit which is how we sort of got here is there more i i'm sorry we sort of moved off of your article is there more you want to say about you um i recognize that things may change within the article that being said i assume it's the same as with tt where it's substantively like the request itself is not going to change even if some of the particulars do is that right okay i'm prepared to take a vote on that okay who wants to motion i guess that so just to be fair essentially we're voting on here because i think the write-ups might change none trivially right but i guess what we're saying is that we're prepared to vote on whether the finance committee thinks this is a this recommends this article for approval kind of independent of the exact word
if it's changes if it changes so that much bring it back we can come up we'll come back i mean if there's minimal changes then right on correct if there's something substantive yeah i'm with pam i guess my point is i don't see a reason to hold off on monday we've got things we have to do on monday and this feels like something where let us if people are prepared let us take the vote let us move on and if you feel like there have been substantive changes bring it back and we can do another vote and another pass through but otherwise i think that what i understand is that the processes cannot change right the processes of actually implementing passage of the article aren't changing between now and monday and probably the arguments for and against aren't really changing between now monday even if some of the details do change so i'm comfortable with what i understand right now yeah so you want to make a motion sure uh motion to approve as amended article you you second all in favor all opposed okay thank you my apologies do we need to be saying the name of the article when we make the motions okay all right well you should say i was just i was just going to say yes so yeah i just realized i didn't actually say it so my apologies okay so yeah exactly sure well if you wouldn't mind sending i'll look at your language too and i'll probably add it i'm sure i'm going to have sure yeah and i think we that's i think basically we should kind of standardize right you're just if one of them has a whole bunch of programs about the details um so why why um i think there so we went through yy a bunch um where were we um talks about the act to reduce traffic fatalities which talks about who vulnerable road users are in an effort to simplify the process by which municipalities can make or amend and amend speed limits and restrictions this is however mass thought approval is still required the act only removed requirement also receiving approval from the rmv um residents want to explore ways to adopt lower speed limits or some mechanism the general laws the lot of towns do so mgl 17c allows a municipality to opt into that provision of the law reducing the statutory speed limit thickly settled over business districts from 30 to 25 miles an hour um whale and sam rick community subway framing hamilton west and wall adopted this provision however this only applies to roads and ways that meet the definition that we settled and it's not clear that sherman's ridge road sherman's bridge road feeds fits this criteria um lastly there's an option to establish regulatory 20 mile an hour safety zones however since this creates a regulatory speed limit the mutcd requires an engineering study prior to the establishment safety zone and should conform to the guidance found in the mass thought procedures for speed zoning um you know should be noted that any change to speed on within town needs to conform to mass guidance municipalities cannot unilaterally change speed limits without supporting studies in consultation with mass dot in their surrounding communities especially if they're open as one town to another um arguments in favor supporters may argue that slower traffic and increased signage would increase safety pedestrians and other road users supporters may argue that ordering the speed and will just incentivize pass-through traffic from using the road to increase to increase travel time um and supporters may argue that while passing the article will not immediately lead to all the requested changes it could further a dialogue with relevant stakeholders that may eventually lead to some or all of the requested changes arguments pose or speed items cannot be arbitrarily changed without guidance from mass thought without conducting engineering traffic studies sports low limits the municipality does not unilaterally enforce a change to a roadway that connects one town to another it is important to collaborate with suddenly before making changes that affect the neighboring municipality and opponents might argue that lower speed homes may contribute to increased accidents as drivers become frustrated with speed limits not reflect the travel conditions of the road increased accidents also endanger the vulnerable road users we are most trying to protect that last one i just just to say that lower speed limits are going to contribute to increased accidents just doesn't i mean i you might just say have no effect on driver behavior yeah like i it just seems illogical to say you you do a lower speed limit and people are going to drive faster you have more more
accidents right i guess that correlates to my comment with it i mean you have sometimes the effect of such studies can actually increase the speed limit of the road and then you see research also shows that so on and so forth i guess if you're going to cite research you're going to have to put noted there say you know where did you get that information from so both of those sentences i would i would agree with that it needs a source yeah yeah i can try to so that language came from kelsey and jalen i can ask them what their sources and include it i think just like i mean it makes the point like you can have the speed limits and it might it might not affect driver behavior at all like it may be just like it is without saying that it's going to make it worse yeah well i think if if there are sources that a lot of it will make it worse yeah that's worth including and i think if there are you know i just said could yeah you just might yeah if there aren't sources i wouldn't even include it i would just figure it out all right yeah but if you have a good source yeah because the source won't go to the source if there's not it doesn't surprise me actually that this could be true i mean i'm just thinking that if you're driving along at 20 miles an hour and i'm used to going 30 miles an hour you're gonna go 40 now no but i'm i might i'll be off the road you know i mean right i might not expect you to be going 20 but i might hit you i'm not saying it's yeah you know that we can be responsible yeah we i think we're sourcing it yeah i think in one of our meetings somebody one of the uh people in the audience cited that the 85 percentile was 42 miles an hour which if you use that it would say you know hey we're gonna have like 35 mile an hour speed limit so that's that's the point i think that they're making about it could increase it yeah to that point then i think that the accident point is just you know again if there are people who still go 45 miles an hour and some people do go 20 and then right you know that's that's where you might increase but i'll look for a source of the source i agree i'll be honest when i read that i thought that it could use a source and i just i got all this this afternoon so 100 thought for the sourcing question um the other thing i guess i should clarify is i agree that it is a little unclear just kind of reading through it again if this is a thing we can do or not because the language alternates a bit between saying we should do all these studies versus we are required to do some of these things um so i'll just double check that those things are accurate in that second article proposed
i don't think that first sentence is really quite right based on the way you wrote the last paragraph of the above is that municipalities can't be allowed you can't be unilaterally changed feelings without supporting studies in consultation um here it makes it sound like we can't do it at all
um what would you well i think so i think you either have to you can change the second sentence of that argument of those it's important to collaborate it's not just collaborate with sundry it's it's um you know getting the supporting studies in consultation with dot too yeah we can add
should be a sect well i i think maybe part of the part of the reason i don't think that's there is that i think if you'll do arguments opposed the first one says we should have the studies and the second one says we need sudbury on board that makes sense so it'd be a little duplicative to say we need the studies in both of those maybe nobody else is concerned about it i can let it go but i just think that first sentence is not correct without yeah i had the same yeah reaction yeah and there needs to be agreement well it should be affect a fact i may bring this to be an a i'll be honest i thought that was wrong and then i always get that wrong so i didn't second guess myself unless a is the verb i think you're gonna have plenty others so i'm gonna move to recommend article yy as amended um increase safety reduce fear for residents and vulnerable road users of sherman bridge road and ridge i'll second that all in favor all opposed okay moving on to zz sure um so zz ban heavy commercial vehicles so this is excuse me uh this is the request is may the town vote to request the select board to take the necessary actions to ban heavy commercial vehicles on sherman's bridge road as permitted by and in cooperation with state regulations and as needed with adjacent towns ban doesn't affect vehicles such as school buses those servicing residents government and emergency vehicles etc which is not i would argue the clearest description of what the goal is but i mean the intent is clear right um you know there are petitioners comments this is again um just something that we can't do by ourselves so the finance committee comments are largely about that right passage of this article and will not impose the requested weight limit on sherman's bridge weight limits also refer to as heavy commercial vehicle exclusions so i guess i don't i don't think there is such a thing as a a commercial vehicle ban as such right i think the implementation of that is as a weight limit as opposed to a ban of certain kinds of vehicles so if you need i've seen signage that sort of says no commercial vehicles in particular right so i don't i'm not an expert in this i've just seen signs so i'm not sure that it's not possible the vehicles you mentioned if you need emergency services would all emergency service vehicles have to be rerouted as so as to this says the ban does not affect oh i see okay thank you but i think the other one the other article did not have that exclusion the other article did not have that exclusion um um but again i think the and i i can kind of dig into this the feedback from kelsey and jalen was basically like in practice this would be a late amendment sure and then in terms of a process does this also require the select board to go to the town of sedbury to get their buy-in yes okay um which again the article does not and the article kind of references that right it references um requests the select board um to do the things in cooperation with state regulations and as needed with adjacent towns and so that's it's the same thing right it's not entirely our bridge in order to impose any restrictions on the bridge we need approval from massdot and the approval from massdot uh they will we need subbury to sign off on for massdot would approve anything um in order to submit the application to massdot we need to include an engineering study um that shows why it's required um be showing either that they're reducing safety or capac that there are large truck volumes reducing safety or capacity or that the uh condition of the bridge is is such that further heavy loads will will revolt result in severe deterioration um an alternative route needs to be identified um that either lies wholly within the community or that is endorsed by the community the alternative route is in uh this notes that separate has not indicated that it would support any change the current uses of sherman's bridge um yeah uh also says that massdot has asserted they will not support granting any sort of weight restriction or height or hcve um
heavy commercial vehicle exclusion on sherman's bridge um so arguments in favor um implementing a ban on heavy commercial vehicles will improve quality of life for residents children and wildlife um reducing the daily high stress load will increase the functional life of the bridge um supporters may argue that while passing the article will not immediately do a change it could further dialogue with relevant stakeholders that may eventually lead to a change right so i put that in both of these as sort of like sure this is not going to happen right away but if it's a thing you want to eventually happen um humans opposed are pretty similar right later sessions cannot be imposed unilaterally and must be applied for and granted um owners may argue that restrictions on traffic over the bridge may result in increased traffic on other roads in town unfairly burdening them uh and bonus may argue that massdot imposes weight restrictions based on structural analysis rather than just to limit truck traffic right so massdot generally doesn't support this just for purposes of wanting fewer trucks on your road you need you know need a structural um or safety concern you've got um extra space between argument one and two in both in favor and opposed just well that might be true yeah he he's got extra space there's extra lines he needs to reduce oh yeah sorry it's very minor but no that's okay yeah um so well just so you know carol has changed the select board does not recommend approval amendment is how it should be listed instead of the soil he's been changing that online so i know we got that from someone else so just as an fyi so five nothing the same vote zero five zero they're just adopting the language that we had pulled right my finance community does not recommend or recommends against approval that that was the language recommends against approval select board does not recommend approval exactly how she's wording it interesting i pulled ours from an old warrant but that's fine they may be going back to another generation they may have used that's fine too like i don't know i think in your second argument in favor you could say um may are you reducing the high stress load the functional life of the bridge and road can be extended that's fair but we don't really know if this is doable or not it's just sort of a recommendation that they would like uh i mean and that's so this similar to the last one right like it is possible to have such a restriction we cannot do it just by passing this article for in practice what this article would mean is it would it would it would request that the select board try to do it right so talk to sudbury talk to nasa it kind of sounds like the select board has already talked to sudbury and mass thought and they kind of said no already but you know
yeah and that's what we're kind of the first yeah the second sentence right it says passage of this article one will not impose the restricted requested on the bridge and then most of it is explaining why and what would actually need to happen to um to make the restriction other questions comments or concerns i move to recommend article cc as amended i'll second that around 10. now i think i have you already listed so we're gonna go next after this
he was still on sherman's bridge can we do a vote and then uh call the question i'm sorry okay we'll move to approve okay zz ban commercial great so all in favor all opposed i'm gonna abstain okay okay we're down to i believe yes the fun ones okay so let's go to review renegotiate the sherman's bridge um
so i just sent you did i send you guys the so you did no no you just said you just sent a new one at 908 okay thank you i want to make sure because that one's a new write-up carol's been um working on that so she has some additional information in here um so basically what this article is is that the petitioner is would like to direct the select board to recognize an agreement and the terms and conditions of an agreement that was done in 1971 um and they want the select board to direct it or they want to direct the select board to enter in good faith negotiations as quickly as possible with current residents of sherman's ridge road towards a new agreement that will better serve all parties the newly renegotiated agreement will allow the town to take some date monies for current and future work on sherman's ridge and sherman's bridge road so the proposer has stated that there is a 1971 agreement from the town that would prevent the town from accepting state monies proposed on sherman's bridge road additionally the town has been in breach of that agreement requirements um with the weight limit that they have increased since it had been supposed uh a two and a half two but isn't the weight limit by the dot okay thank you there's some contention and i have no details of this have it has been said that there used to be weight limits lens on the bridge um approaching the bridge that just disappeared understood okay i i'm just making sure i understand today who who manages that based on the other articles it's dot okay thank you i think dot manages it there's a question in the past about was there a special thing yeah so the so basically i'm going to go into comments now carol just added this the proposer advised that the town has advised that the town had an oral agreement from 1961 1971 exists that restricts the town from accepting state funds for road and bridge repairs passes through the article directs the state select board to recognize 1971 sherman bridge road neighborhood agreement and then subsequently renegotiate said renegotiate said agreement which will allow the town to accept state funding for future work on sherman's bridge and sherman's road however and i don't have however in here but based on a complete and thorough review of town records there is no such 1971 written agreement found pertaining to sherman's bridge or sherman's bridge road nor has the proposer produced the original agreement part of the town council even um if town officials had voted or verbally agreed to do something in 1971 there is no evidence of such a vote or verbal agreement that has been found towns council town council has advised that future road commissioners would not be bound by the prior vote or verbal agreement we also had in 1992 repairs that were made to sherman's bridge so in my next article it goes it talks to that so basically um the a lot of the language that i put is like what's the role of select forward and some of that has kind of been wiped out but select board generally does not have a strictly law location to engage in back and forth discussions and negotiate with residents regarding roadway changes i had had the message here the meeting law where which requires public meetings for discussion decisions and discussions and public comment is allowed at these meetings harold wiped all that out so i'm not exactly sure okay the reason why um but i also also had found a note that in massachusetts the attorney general must review and approve all local zoning bylaws so if this was to say in this neighborhood we have a restriction it'd become a bylaw and that would have to go through the attorney general in order so any questions on this renegotiation i do have arguments arguments in favor and arguments against um in favor it would be does the article uh passage forces select board to talk to these people like help me understand like passage is what exactly because i thought you sort of just said okay here's all the background but so they you can't force select board to talk to them and well i think it's like they want select board to recognize this 1991 agreement um which seems to exist but right that there's no there's no written record as to whether or not that exists and even if there was the bridge repairs that were done in 1992 most likely nullified that agreement if there had been one um because there were that's what is also written there and so basically the argument one of the big arguments is since there is no agreement there's no renegotiating there well and recognizing the agreement is problematic if you can't find it so right exactly so do we want to go through the arguments for your arguments opposed or i mean this is still being worked on because this is this is one that i felt that i had held off on a lot because i wanted town council to weigh in because there needs to be a in my opinion it's more legal yeah review of all of this than it is someone directing the select board to do something that is out of scope in some in some ways if it's not a legal obligation i think we said like i think we opted to do the write-up because there's stuff to pull apart here right and and explain even though like obviously there's no like actual monetary impact here i mean there actually is right because if this if this article would require us to not take the million dollars of um nasty of nasty
yeah i mean it seems like there's a lot and my apologies but like is the petitioner saying that they were in they were part of this meeting or they're just aware that they believe that a meeting occurred they believe a meeting occurred but they were not there this is not no one was there okay so this is not someone must have found this letter right my guess would be that like this is something about i just want to make sure this is not a first-hand account okay letter it was kind of even the petitioner will say it was an agreement at a bar in the back room somewhere there's no written agreement to this for sure i can appreciate no written but also like they're not saying i was there and i bore witness to it but they're saying that there was an agreement yeah with the residents of recorded november 91 it says 91 uh they say it was a 91 letter that referred to the 71 agreement got it yeah but there's they can't find any actual agreement from 71. yeah is that is that letter like available that in the 90s that references a 71 agreement but it is a letter in the whelan historical commission archives okay but there's no record in 1971 that they can do that understood there's no there's no primary source understood for an agreement but there's a secondary source that references an agreement okay that's what i understand yeah okay that's fine thank you and i just want to make sure i understood i appreciate it i will say i think a very important argument opposed to include is precedent because the town agreeing to be bound by things like this is probably not really a precedent we want to set it so i said formal recognition of one group's concerns risks appearing to prioritize localized opposition over town like leaves i guess i'm more thinking like basically the precedent of the town agreeing to be bound by agreements that the president of the town accepting being bound by agreements that have no sourcing that i clearly didn't follow real town procedures but i don't even think they can right like you can't you can't um i don't think you can't break the law even if you're a town and decide you want to pass a law to break the existing law right like you can't do that so like it is that's the part that like is a bit odd here is the bylaws stuff right suggests that even if they could quote unquote renegotiate they the select board cannot violate massachusetts state law right and if bylaws are their purview anything that is on the quote-unquote negotiation table cannot violate law right like they can't just say the same thing with the hud right like same thing with the um the i'm sorry what is it the you can have an an adu on your property right like we can amend and have local zoning specifications but they cannot be in direct violation like we can't pass a law to say we don't want that here right we have to follow mass state law and and i assume that the city would apply here where the town and the select board is bound by massachusetts state law for me the biggest thing is we lose a million dollars in state funding because if you abide by the 71 agreement that is in the letter even though it's a secondary source it says no state funding so you potentially lose a million bucks yeah they're saying that they would renegotiate to allow it but that's a yeah and i think it just sort of goes down the line it's worth having to comment you know it jeopardizes it right we don't lose the million but but but an argument yes may right yeah yeah
i think one of the i guess where i'm like still is like if there's no agreement and you're saying that in the comments how do you address that there's an agreement that would be opposed do you know what i mean like well i i i think and this is a stretch because but you know they probably say abide by the what was in the letter in 91 which close what was in the agreement in 71 so i mean that's legally i think a stretch which is what our account council is saying but i didn't think if i were a petitioner i would say yeah i don't have the 71 agreement but i have this letter please follow what's in the letter again i'm making their argument i'm not agreeing with it no and i agree and that's why i'm like i'm hard with the arguments favor arguments post if you recognize that there's a great because you'd have to recognize that yes the agreement existed that's right to oppose it and that's the hard part that i'm having no i think you could have an argument opposed that just says we don't believe that an argument exists existed and therefore there's no need for this article done yeah and i i guess that i think that is where i was trying to go which is that i think if by approved by approving this right that it is sort of implicitly endorsing that you know this agreement existed and that the town can be bound to to comply with agreements that you know cannot be proven to exist and didn't follow the proper procedure right so like because that's what the art of the argument you know voting for this right is is essentially endorsing that yes you believe that this existed in the town i i think that's correct like the i guess in my mind the logical way you vote yes is you believe that that original agreement existed and should find the time i don't know about fine but like and the town should acknowledge and there should be more discussion conversation about how to move forward with sherman's bridge whether or not like to there's there's some legality around then wouldn't the work in the 90s have sort of yeah i mean just hated the illegal agreement right like so so i don't think it's currently binding as much as it is do you believe it existed and what are you asking for what you're asking for is let's have a talk about what happens with sherman's bridge in which we the locals get an opportunity to voice perhaps more thoroughly our opinions give them a ton of leverage to basically get everything else they want the path the uh the speed limit and everything else that would be their negotiation
and then i think yeah arguments opposed are you don't think this agreement existed so they're thereby nullifying sort of the article itself and then hey even if it did i'm not in favor of a renegotiation yeah i just like there's no evidence to support the existence of the 1971 agreement therefore you know this article yeah or no renegotiation is necessary i mean it's just it's kind of
there's a slightly softer way to say that but well and in one draft maybe it's here too but did you um tell council say that even if there was an agreement it would be nullified because because of 1992 the future road commissioners it was taken directly from town council but carol rewarded that a little bit so i need to understand the why and how or understand that i understand it because it's basically said that future road even if there was like an agreement the future road commissioners wouldn't be bound by it um legally the why was the part that i was asking doug like so what's the why like why wouldn't they be bound by it i think i guess i think the leading this right i think what it's kind of saying is that so per town council council even if town officials voted to or verbally to do something in 1971 no evidence in the minutes such a voter verbal even has been found and i guess that to me is it right which is that like if if proper procedure was not followed because if proper procedure was actually followed there could be some right like if we take a vote until we show up in the minutes and there's no evidence to be voted like did the tree tree really fall at all um i think that's kind of what it's saying right is that like the town can't be bound by agreements reached not following proper procedure and if this isn't written down anywhere apparently didn't follow proper procedure maybe that's how i interpret it but i'm not a lawyer so
shall we take a motion for me yeah is there more conversation to you had should i take a motion yep go ahead okay i move to what am i moving to to accept recommend to recommend thank you article as amended article vb renegotiate sherman's bridge road neighborhood agreement i'll second all in favor all opposed okay okay ww so let's see which did not come in your latest it came earlier it came earlier i think it came earlier i have not touched ww
it's kind of the same request neighborhood agreement number two exactly so the title of this one could potentially change this is more of requiring that sherman's bridge itself be forever maintained as a purely wooden structure in keeping with its historical character um and they have all sorts stipulations on natural and not engineered wood um the proposer references the 1971 agreement again um and so again this language has to change because of the way it's worded of the passage it does give the history again in this one because i felt like it was a key purpose our insight is that the bid the bridge was built in restructured in 1992 so it was they they talk about 1743 but it in it being reef and constructed in 1992 it's definitely it's technically not a historical bridge any longer um in that respect it is inspected every two years by mass dmt mass drt is doing a major um improvement putting in a million dollars worth of materials for this has worked with sudbury as well as wayland and the number of evidence from both towns to determine a um acceptable product um again it's a million dollars they're putting into this bridge um the underlying person their product repair project is to replace the bridge's timber deck with a more durable aluminum material which is a southern yellow pine um and install crash tested steel backed wood and railings the results will be great new stem service of the bridge um while also enhancing safety for recreational users and litterists and reducing noise and vibration because apparently that was the thing point in time the enhanced bridge will also better protect water quality in the sudbury river can you clarify i wrote if i'm so sorry about um the request here is just in the future use all wood the mass d ot project that's going forward it sounds like they are using wood they are is a glued laminated timber is highly innovative construction material it is engineered oh it's stronger than steel and has greater strength and stiffness than fairly sized dimensional lumber but is it like the difference you're putting a laminate versus hardwood floor on the um in your house yes like lvp versus but it's more durable than the current wood and so nasty ot has because like treated wood chosen it's still wood but i think laminate is plastic that's made to look like this looks like they showed one picture where when i first brought it up it looks like it's probably like southern yellow pine and then there's like yeah metal or something in between layers and then maybe to reduce moisture and yeah if you look up southern on gluem southern yellow pine you get a better description of what they're using do you consider this wood it's technically engineered it's engineered it's not purely wooden but it's engineered wood as opposed to it's not like engineered it's made out of wood wood and other things yeah it's sort of been like a plywood kind of family the plywood is also like it sounds like okay plywood is all wood right oh it's still engineered it's an engineer yeah because it's kind of heavy and glue and stuff like that mostly of wood it's just wood that has been kind of torn apart and reconstituted with additives and can reduce the warping sure yeah normally bread wooden bridges have so like the moisture content and so they are i mean and shockingly i think i mean a couple of the issues you may have covered obviously it might be more costly to maintain the wooden bridge but i think my bigger concern would be anything that's permanent like this is something that will be in place forever is that laws and standards can change the state in 50 years could say we no longer allow wooden bridge in which case you'd have to close it uh and i don't think you want to get to the point that you might have to or you have to that that's another article yes right but but assuming it says forever so yeah and then of course that's also just the surface i mean i i'm not sure it's at all true that dot and this million dollars isn't using other um yeah okay thank you that was it for me so i also think i'm going to add um another argument opposed of um renegotiating this would jeopardize current dot fundings and asking the two fundings because um and i don't know if they're jeopardized like i think jeopardize it might be understating the case i'd maybe you know would likely result in the um are there other questions and comments okay i'm going to make a motion is that okay april yes
number two all right um motion to approve as amended article ww renegotiate sherman's bridge road neighborhood agreement number two that's second thank you all in favor all opposed okay good work folks um i know we all want adjourned but i want to i want to ask one question um and this doesn't apply to you bill because i know where you'll be monday i think the amount of work between now and monday on a lot of these articles is still there's work to be done but i think it's unlikely i think they were going to spend a lot of time on monday we have the report which else you'll see tomorrow sorry i couldn't get it to you today um we have a final vote on the capital budget article are we missing anything yes article well yeah i don't think i have a lot of good work on yeah but yeah you're right yeah i'll do some work on that um um yeah thank you so i was going to suggest or ask i should say whether we wanted to try to convene earlier than seven o'clock um i guess i'll throw that out there although now that i've been piecing together what our agenda is i'm not sure it's gonna be necessary yeah i think that's all that's remaining i think it's fine seven seven is fine for me so can you also add um i will send out a revised i know we're we haven't finalized capital budget but i have to send it in the cip write-ups on all of that so that's going to be something that will come around so you guys can do look at that word document again i'll send the final version um and just edit for yep sure um let me just look on i just want to look at our tracker for um particles too many things over here okay so i think we've counted for everything but uh so um there is a rna is submitted but there was apparently someone's passing uh um there'll be another person okay but we've so but our our piece is done yeah they can change yep um a and b i just need someone to send yeah i will do a i think went right directly to the time i don't think we will offer you the final okay okay all right so b you'll send me yeah i need to send you yeah i will finish and submit um fellow trade vehicles and do we we sent it and then they sent us another one i think they just need to i they just need to add up because like we've done our part so like i was not i didn't send anything in did you send it to them directly no i sent it to you okay
rescind debt unissued debt that was officially full okay thank you and bylaws we're going to get we're working on uh s and g we voted on those right on monday i just need to send you yeah i mean okay formatting and final comment companies sorry pam on article l their reason why they replied is because i sent it to you and cc them the final article and then they replied and said oh we've got more article uh more vehicles but but frankly you could i actually wrote them back and asked if they could add it to the final version because like we're done yeah we don't yeah it's not going to change right okay um no time s t okay you're gonna send me those dean holiday road we'll just wait to confirm some questions right um i'm waiting for you to actually write the article what's that i'm waiting on the actual article okay that's right like whatever weather's gonna be approved everything but you know yeah cpa i'm just waiting for i don't know if i'm going to get the number of um outstanding the dollars and number of outstanding projects that more than three years then somewhere in that piece um water supply hh i'm going to revise that in at least two different ways and i'm not sure sure that's what it is you know total cap i don't think we're going to want to re-vote it i would agree with that
and there is article h which is actually a budget article yes yes it's sort of a formality because we will be we have voted on the we've done half of it and we'll do the other half but you know it's a separate article yes i have one that i found out today i know i already submitted it i just want to bring it out article 00 the multi-family housing route 20 west subject sub-district i did learn today that the reason for that zoning bylaw was that the setbacks were a lot more um for the 50 building clients i don't know if we i can get that exact information i just don't know if you guys wanted to re-vote it if you stand where your vote is now or if you would feel like we should re-vote it and i can get that information for monday it's done is the issue that the 58-foot building could be a lot closer to the road because but it's also going to be considered down a hill right because so it can't be that so it's it would still be in compliance with what they did for river's edge or the setback for river's edge i believe was a little bit but they're smaller yeah i believe there's from my understanding is there's smaller buildings in front and then the higher buildings are behind it okay and there's a setback and wouldn't necessarily this could be more frontage is 50 feet in this one so setback is 30 feet from the front of the building which is what river's edge is so that's the one piece that i can i can clarify if you guys feel as though we should re-vote it that vote two is select board was uh there was one four and the rest were against okay so sorry so they were against they're taking they're taking that they're taking the 50 foot offset reducing it down to 30 feet no um 50 foot is the minimum frontage for all projects that did not change the setback did not change 30 feet um where they were changing it is back maximum building height at 58 feet um from my understanding is that the setback wasn't where they approved the 58 feet the setback was more where it was approved for 58 feet in height understood so they're extending the setback if there's 58 full buildings i think they're doing the opposite they're moving they're extending the 58 from 35 to 58 but not not incurring that same setback from the zoning bylaw that they had with the previous one that they had set they'd given 58 compliance to so in the previous one you you know the building was further 30 feet back you could be up to x feet and 50 feet back to be up to y feet and here is just 30 feet back you can be up to y feet so essentially the tall part can be closer to the road oh i understand yeah yeah it's kind of more aggressive like i i think we should re-vote that that's not what i feel like in the original article because that's not yeah that's not what i understood either i thought it was just yeah being the same height as what we'd already done it yeah but they're saying that all all that sounds like all the octo what is that where they're saying because i thought that was i think they're saying that there were two parts the 58 feet like they're already at 58 feet but april's saying that they kind of staged it so that it's like sure it's it's right there's some stuff that's has the same 30 foot setback but that's lower and then you go back and it's 50 feet so here this could be is this aren't they changed because i'm looking at the only things that i saw in the version that you voted on no you know nothing changed i just learned about that so there was more information that was brought to light as select board was digging into it more that setback part of it in the zoning board appeals but that's not part of the article correct okay so i don't know if they would if there was a normal if they expanded the set down that it would create they would allow the 58 or that's the part that i i can't exactly but but isn't that a zoning change i think they required it in that appeal to get to the 58 feet in that section of the building and that's why they got the 58 feet so this is so they got some kind of a variance from the resulting exactly so we're not changing the by the zoning bylaw in this article it would change the zoning bylaw only in terms of height and and numbers of units the correct but but you're saying sort of the background is they got this variance which is not discussed here and might affect the way that the buildings appear no the reason for this bylaw from how i understood it was the previous alta oxbow has height from 53 to 58 they've got approved through the zoning board process during the project so it was kind of like updating the zoning law to allow this for future developments what i was not aware of is according to the information that i have to find out more is that the reason they got that zoning bylaw appeal was because they adhered to a larger setback so there were smaller buildings in front of that so it wasn't as like we said close to the road and because this is going to be they consider it the gateway to whalen from sudbury um that it would be the representation of whaling as you come in so do we want to have that height of uh do we want to change that bylaw to be that close and be that height
so this allows for this would allow for more than what more than than what else right is now because of the yeah because of the the yeah the the size of land that they're sitting on and the setbacks right let's let's talk about it on one day then let's yeah but i i'm really confused because that's not what this does so there's some i need i need to understand what you're right you know what's going on behind the scenes yeah i'll get more information so monday it is yeah okay um i'm going to leave it first motion to adjourn i have one super quick thing hopefully um do we where can i find our schedule of meetings because the calendar's broken on the website and i lost track of when we're actually expecting to meet over the next month it's going to be ad hoc i don't know that we have well i mean i think the meeting on monday are we meeting on wednesday next week we need to talk about that okay but i hopefully will not be meeting with you guys on wednesday i don't know why we would right i think we could all use a break we haven't everything in as long as everything's in and so i think we need to talk about that um the rooms are reserved because we didn't know i didn't know but um i think we need to kind of think about and maybe that's one of the topics for monday calendar for right now monday and then a vast expansion we're not making us until we stay in question i think if you look at the excel spreadsheet that was our calendar it still has it might have question marks but it's got us down from mondays and wednesdays for the peace for civil future but i i think that should change yeah i'm just fine i'm glad you're wondering thank you so you motion to adjourn i did i'm gonna completely understand it
Robin, do you know if there's anybody online here? No, I see no bandline except for WACAN. I'm sorry? Except for WACAN, then. Okay. No bandline. Okay. Well, it being 702, I call the Union and Refinance Committee to order. I don't know that we need to review the agenda since there's nobody, no members of the public are here, but just, so I'm happy to go right into it. I have no announcements. Any announcements for anybody else?
No? Perfect. There's no, there being no public comments.
Ahead of schedule. And with great thanks to April, we can take a look at the minutes of the meeting of March 9th. I thought they looked good. I had a few, just like, small changes.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure. Pull it up, because I know multiple screens open. Okay, thanks. And I can send these to you, but under continued discussion and possible vote, the committee review of the 27 budget, budget-invoiced concerns about the extra articles and projects. And, yeah, just, just, water infrastructure, senior property assessment credit. Like, I don't know what other ones there are that were had to. I think everything, most of the others are free cash. So, I just wanted, just so it doesn't sound like it's really open-ended, but I, I appreciate the sentiment, yeah, but the water, KK, the enterprise funds? Well, those are, I mean, that's like in your water rates, so it's, okay. It's, it is out of another pocket. Okay. But it's not part of the budget, the, the omnibus budget.
Is it considered, called water quality project? Yeah, which project? Is there one that you're writing out, is it called water quality? HH? Um, no. Um, I've been, I've been referring to it as the NWRA connection and happy holiday upgrade. Long-term water supply. There you go. That's perfect. No matter all that I said. Well, that's, I just looked right up. And that's why I'm like, I knew it wasn't called NWRA. I couldn't remember what it was. But in senior tax assessment, that's the other one. And then, um, and then near the end, um, before review and discussion of preliminary draft of the report, the, the two paragraphs before that. So discussion of capital budget continued. Mm-hmm. Um, I just thought in, from the second line, would like to see the review of building, buildings maintenance, HVAC particularly. I just say prioritized. I have sidewalks being done. I just say in FY27 versus in one year. It just, it's a little vague. And then I just suggested, would also like to follow CIPC recommendation, take out C1 year of, all right. So would like to follow CIPC recommendation on reducing the road improvements, expenditures to 431,000, then cross out down for a single year to, I'd say, modestly reduce borrowing and across that utilize funds most effectively too. And then, so it would be single year to modestly reduce borrowing and to utilize unused funds that have been rolling.
And then the next paragraph, I think I actually made the motion for the capital budget.
The next paragraph, C. Barnes, C. Barnes. Um, and then in the second to the last line there, your roll call vote and aim a thought seconded twice. Yeah. Sorry. That's me. Confidentation. That's okay.
Easy to fix.
Oh, yeah. Just following the meeting at the very end. Just last move to adjourn. Still part of the meeting. And then on the second page, um, you know, there's a series of questions that we were asking. And I think I agreed to track down the answers to those questions, but I need to anyway. Um, I think we should say that rather than just leave them open. I didn't. Okay. You can simply say C. Barnes agreed to track down the answers to those questions.
And this is more of a question, but since the end of the phrase, are these motions in the proper form for, I think they are, but, you know. We can, yeah, we should probably compare, um, just go back to last year. Let's see what was done.
Thank you guys. I, I, I think, yeah, I think it should be because it was kind of, as it was laid out, as Brian lays it out for the formal language, but. Right. Sounds good. I think that's all I had. Um, that's all I had. Questions with three of minutes as amended? Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye.
Perfect.
Everyone's on the outside. Yes.
Thank you, April. Um, next item on the agenda is to review a second request from the town manager. We, having talked about longer Monday, to transfer $45,841.95 from, from the reserve fund, reimburse the Department of Unemployment Assistance for approved unemployment insurance claims that have been paid by the department for former employees. And yes, this request really, there are two, one of which is that, um, several of the claims that were paid, at least have been actually paid in our, our responsibilities and talents to reimburse the, the state. Um, um, several of them came in much higher than our previous experience would indicate. So the town has been looking at reviewing those, um, those claims, um, without resolution debt, um, however, what happens is, um, the state charges interest and it compounds on the unpaid balance. So, so not paying the bills is actually increasing our costs. Second is that after the budget for that year was set, um, state changed the rules. And so instead of, it was, I believe it was 26 weeks, the state now, there's 30 weeks on insurance. And so that wasn't covered by the budget. So for both those reasons, um, the town's request, and the town doesn't have the money and enough money in the, uh, in the correct budget. And that's why they're asking for this now, um, once the claims are reviewed fully, uh, if it, if it's determined that, uh, the state is overcharges, uh, we would be looking for refunds, but, but paying them now will cut off the, the accruing interest.
Questions about that. I just, I, I, I appreciate paying the charge number, paying the fees due now. So we're not accumulating more interest on the, what's outstanding. Um, I don't, um, it just kind of looking at the numbers, um, I'm just trying to understand why would we would be in this position. We have 22 UI claims filed in 26 and we had 32 in fiscal 25. So we're down 33% somewhere thereabouts. Thereabouts, and they did say that the extension, it goes from 26 to 30 weeks. So that's sort of like a 15% increase, but we've had a 30% reduction in numbers. So I don't know if it's like a different base for different positions. So maybe they're more expensive claims. Well, according to, you know, what, what this says is that there are several, it was four claims, several claims that were much higher than we expected. They were allowed by state. I think we should pay it. I just, I'd like to hear a little bit more of an explanation as to what's sort of what the drivers are. Okay. And then I guess the other question is, are, have we adequately budgeted on insurance or unemployment insurance for the 27 budget? We'll let you know in 28. Yeah. Hopefully we don't want to go back.
Should I make a move to motion? Appreciate it. Okay. So I move to transfer for $25,841.95 from the Resort Fund to the Human Resources Budget to pay approved unemployment insurance for the second of that. We'll second. All in favor? Aye.
Thank you.
That's about the budget. We voted, of course, 48 hours ago or two to approve the operating budget. We went back. I went back to Michael and to Brian with the changes, the reasons that we did not support the capital budget and all of those changes were made. Specifically, just for the record, they, and if I forget the thing, please let me know. But they have taken the school fields project out of the budget. It's actually out of the entire fiber capital plan, which is another nuance, but we can talk about that separately in a second. They have advanced the $570,000 for the middle school HVAC system into this year. They have pushed out roughly half of the school sidewalk and road project into next year, which I wasn't concerned, April. I believe there was one more thing that I'm blanking on. The road improvements budget. Thank you. The road improvements budget. They dropped that. I think it was $300,000 to agree with SIPC's recommendation. So basically, they've done what we asked for. What I'm told is, like Ryan, and I asked him directly today, there is sufficient excluded debt being budgeted in the next couple of years that they're nervous about putting this field project back to the plan. And the words he uses, we want to revisit the whole thing sometime next year. So we have excluded debt. I think they have that in there for next year for the town building, their articles. And then I'm not sure what else looking out is planned. I think that's what he's talking about. Well, beyond that, I mean.
Well, if you look at debt by article.
So it would be excluded debt by article. And so it's separate from a, under his tab. It's a different tab. Thank you. Yeah. Next to the five-year plan.
I have to say for a project that is changing by the day, and I'm not concerned that it's not here. I think that it should be in the five-year plan. It was in the five-year. I mean, this has been going on since 2017. It was in the plan. It was pulled out of the plan. And all of a sudden, it was important enough to have been put in the plan and brought before us this year and moved up. To take it out of five years seems a little just sort of haphazard. I appreciate there's a lot going on. SIPC had reviewed it, too. I think they still had it in the five-year plan. They did. They had it in fiscal 29. So, I feel like, I don't know whether it's 29 or 30, but I feel like it should be in the five-year plan, which is, I mean, it's, it's probably debt by article because it sounds like the, the total should be. Couldn't it be put in next year if it's reevaluated and it can go back in later on, right? Well, the issue is that you'll hear Brian say, well, it wasn't in the five-year. It wasn't in the five-year, so I can't, we can't bring it forward next year. We do that all the time. Well, but as a practice, we should try to stick to, to something versus putting it in, pulling it out, and then we decide to put it in again. If we have a five-year plan and we have some expectation that we're going to be revisiting it in the next several years, it should be in the five-year plan.
I guess we don't know if we're going to be revisiting. I'm sorry? I'm not sure. I think that was the point they were making about revisiting means that we don't know if it's going to come back or not.
I think if we have, if there's an intent to rebuild this field, then we heard that it's probably something that needs to be, I mean, it's not a make or break, but I feel like if we have a five-year plan, we should try to stick to it. Maybe more intentionally is maybe, right, right now it's unclear to me if it's not in the five-year plan because we don't think we're going to do it in the next five years or if it's not in the five-year plan because we just aren't sure where in the five-year plan to put it, right? Because there's a world where the logic is, look, we've kicked this out for nine years already. This year, we had another project. There were opportunities for cost savings. We didn't do it this year. Like, let's be realistic. If we put it in 29, we're just going to kick it out in 29. And if, like, there was that assessment of, like, we're not actually going to do this in the next five years, then I think it could be out. But I don't think it should be out just because we haven't thought of it, if that makes sense. Where would you put the lighting? No, I think it should be in there. It's probably not 2.5. We should probably figure out what the number is with the lighting if you're going to do it, but now we've recognized or realized that there's a need for more than just what was initially presented to us, right? So that larger number, whatever it might be, with lighting or whatever the project really should entail. I don't feel we have enough information. You can certainly put it in as a placeholder, but I think it... Right. But I think it should be... Either way, it can go in now and be taken out later, or it can go out now and be put in later.
Two things happening. So here's the thing. You're absolutely right. It can go in either direction. However, the impact of taking something out versus putting something in, right? Taking something out is easy. Adding something in and finding $3.5 million is incredibly hard. So to Pam's point, and I think all that we're advocating for here, because I agree with you, Pam, if we were to look back at the original SIPSE plan, I think... Let me just speak for myself. Some of the issues I had with the original capital plan that's presented. Is that this new process, which includes SIPSE, they're taking a lot of time to really be very thoughtful of everything. Now, we have to vote also on a five-year capital plan. If they had a five-year capital plan that included this project, I would agree. I'm more in alignment at this point in time to make sure it's there, represented, even though it's not going to happen this year. Give them another cycle to go through right for next year for FY28. They're going to go through it again, and they're going to have this conversation with the town, with the town manager, with the directors to say, does the stair, does the scope? But then at that point, it's not under the gun. Quickly, we're taking it out. It may be moved later in the five-year plan. That to me feels... It's in there to have the conversation, as opposed to FY28, a month, two weeks before the capital's due. Someone says, I need this. It was in there in 2017, it was in there in FY27, and somehow it fell off, but there was no communication about it. This then at least allows for a purposeful conversation if it gets taken out, as opposed to us taking it out and it being forgotten about. Well, if that already happened, right? Right. If there was a conversation that happened and there was a choice to take it out, that's one thing, but that's not what it feels like. Do you know why they chose to take it out rather than delay it? Only what I just said, which I thought that email, I'm forward to that. If not, it simply says that they're going to revisit it, but I would, and I don't know this, but I don't believe that that is the result of the conversation with the schools or the facilities. I just don't think it was defined by that. Right. So it does seem like it was convinced that the two and a half belongs back in. I wouldn't put any money in for writing because that's not part of the project that was scope. They're making up these numbers. I think at this point, I mean, it's not going to change what we vote on. The excluded debt by article, which it will likely be, is not part of the five-year plan that we're looking at. So it, I think we just recommend that it be included as debt by article in the five-year plan. It's not going to change our five-year, do you know, does that make sense? The numbers that we're looking at and that we vote on do not include articles. That five-year number, for example, does not include the debt by article, the 5.4 million that we recommend that it be included as part of the five-year general plan as an excluded by debt or article by debt or debt by article. But it's not going to change the actual five-year number that we vote on. So it's a little bit of a technicality because it's, it's not a hard number that we're voting. We're just recommending it, that it be part of the five-year outlook. Fair enough. Would you put, would you suggest that in fiscal 29, your SIPC had it earlier? I mean, I think at this point I'd go with SIPC, but I, I would, I mean, I think my primary personally, my primary would be that it's somewhere in the five-year plan. And then the next step is where, if SIPC recommends fiscal 29, that sounds as good a place to start as any. Well, that is where it was in SIPC's plan. Right. So, so if it has to be, if we need to be particular, I'd say fiscal 29. And, and I can't remember, and I was going back to pull up, um, over with these breakdown. Did they have town building in there or did they suggest that a larger conversation needed to be had? I thought that, I think that was part of it for the town building. So it's like to have, well, we're rushing this project through, because I completely agree with you. We're rushing this height. They're trying to rush it through this year. To do it with the wastewater. It doesn't make sense in the current environment that we're in, but to do the town building next year, just, or in FY28 feels like they're putting town building priority, even though they don't know what they're doing with this building yet. And it doesn't seem to. It doesn't jive with kind of needs and what's been. And we're doing the repairs that are needed already. So investing in the town building when we don't know what we're going to do with this building doesn't seem proper. When we know what we could do with the fields. And that's been a project that's been pushed off for 10 years. Yeah. So would you, are you suggesting that we recommend that the town building repairs the mode out? I was looking for SIPC's recommendation to see what they would do, but I mean, from my perspective, I think we could vote on FY27 capital budget, but not on the rest of it. But I think, but that's what I'm saying. The rest of it doesn't actually include this category, this, this, like what would be in this tab, this debt by article? Mm-hmm. I think it's just our recommendation on what's included there. It doesn't, like this 5.4 million for fiscal 28 is not part of the five-year, the five-year plan that we vote on. I actually wonder if Brian, I forgot to have to do that.
It's by article. So it wouldn't, it's, it's how you present it. Mm-hmm. Um, because this really would be part of the, so you're saying then to put 2.5 million for the, in this tab, because it'd be split by article. Yeah. As I think it should be in there for the fields.
Um, and at least it's, it's in this general plan. Right.
And, and Bill, just so you know, I've always found that we get a estimate and then that estimate changes every single year. So the further out it is. I don't have a, I don't have a strong opinion. A hundred percent. But that's why I'm like with the lighting, I expect it'll probably end up when they finally go to finalize it. I think that they would actually have it as part of the thing. So that would go up. Yeah. I don't, I don't have a strong opinion. I mean, I think it's fine to put it back in. I mean, they're not here to defend why they took it out. I mean, we have an email, but. Yeah. I just. I'm kind of a closure person. So I'd like to get it done. So I'm thinking that Pam's suggestion is a very good one. They, they talked about. In talking to Brian today about this or emailing with him, he cited the amount of the excluded debt that was coming up. Actually he said next year. So he's talking, he's talking about the 5.4. Right. There's none. 5.4. In fiscal plan. He doesn't have anything else. So. Out there. I think that's where it belongs. And I, you know, like I said, you can, yeah, and I've said all along, I support what SIPC did. So that had in 29, I'm fine with them.
It's, it's kind of an add on. It's not part of, like I said, what we vote, but I think, um, I think we should just, I should make sure that it's, it's part of the outlook. Okay. Okay.
Because once things fall off, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's harder to bring them back on. Agreed. Good. Um, the other thing, I'm sorry, have we resolved that? Okay. So the other change, uh, um, that came up, um, is that, you know, and Bill, I don't know if you saw my latest email, but, um, the select one is not a proposition, a lot of foundational works through the debt forward. I believe based on both text, Carol sent me and the conversation that they're not going to, um, but they'll ask me to confirm that. And I think that's fair, fair, that being the case, well, what they're posing is to under the levy debt and pay for that levy debt through transfers from, um, that should really hit until 28, um, that's typically how it works is that unless they plan to borrow early, but. This is, um, would be. Brian had a whole packet for the select board. We can look at that because he did have exactly what you're saying. Cause he presented the select board. Yeah. Cause typically you borrow, it's approved at 26 ATM. They usually borrow. It'll be in fiscal 27 in November. And the first payment isn't until the following year. So that gets you into fiscal 28. So I don't, that, that was my question. I read that. I mean, I'm not against it, but it looked, it feels like we're looking to 28 to save it. Well, if you look at, you're probably to, to stabilize that because it would be a big bump in, in debt service in 28. If you look at the fiscal 27, uh, five-year, uh, proposed budget, uh, revenue budget. Okay. This is on his, um, yeah. In the, the latest version of the, uh, of the, of the capital budget. Of the capital or of the operating. No, capital. Sorry. He's got, he's got flat $100,000, uh, transfers. That's for the fields. So there's nothing here. So let's go back and look at the operating budget.
Yeah. It wouldn't be for, it's not, it wouldn't be for 27. That would make sense. Because we're looking at a, the, uh, 300,000 reduction in debt for fiscal 27 or death service. But we were, I guess.
Yeah. Unless they are early. I mean, that's how we've always done it historically, that it's, it's actually sort of two years, hence from the, from the, from the ATM here. That's easy. Easy enough. I can't do that. Let's see. How do I, sorry. So yeah, it would hit in 28. So this is if he did. So he proposed two options. He proposed doing a 4% 20 year loan and paying it out of calf stabilization, or he proposed a just a hundred percent funding through calf stabilization, which would draw down the fund. But I mean, yes, but the amount would still allow it to be able to. Um, over the next, whatever, five years, four years. Replenish. Replenish. And then. Caps stabilization. I think the select board had mentioned in their meeting as well, that right now we're funding it at 250,000. But if we needed more funds, we could increase the cap stabilization from 250 to 400. If it was getting too low and would throw off our rating. So that was one of the reasons that they were looking at. So it looks like it would be a 28 fiscal 28. Yes. Do we know this is really more of a discussion with Carol and just to find out what the reasons were for not moving ahead with her. Uh, I mean, there's part of me that, and I'm not that familiar with excluded debt and how all that works. I mean, I'm not sure what the downsides would, sides will be. They must've had some downsides or they wouldn't have approved it. Uh, but if it's something that we as a committee feel is important, uh, then I would lobby for it. You know, I would, you know, I, I don't have time. Yeah. I think part. I hear you on, we did make our recommendation to select board. And I think that's, I think if we had more time, we, there might, we might be able to have that conversation, but at this, I mean, this is an entirely different thing, but I mean, when we hired a sustainability manager, the select board wanted to make it a halftime position. So I personally called on the select board and they ended up making it full time. So sometimes at a minimum, a conversation with, with, uh, Carol, but yeah. Wouldn't necessarily think we have to call the select board members, but I would basically call her and say, how come? And we really feel strongly. Is there any way to get this, you know, reconsidered? And if she says, no, we're final, we have good reasons for doing it, we're no, then fine. But I, I think that's part of the conversation. They don't have to re-vote it or should be, they'd have to meet Monday to do that. They are. They are. They are. They are. So anyway, again, if it's not important to us, then, then fine. But I'm just hypothetically saying, if it's important, we shouldn't give up.
I think you also need to pick your battles. And if this is important to a majority of the many, that's, that's fine. But it's, it's not one I want to take on.
Okay. So I think based on the conversation that I heard on Monday, they, um, they want to know alternative options outside of the state. I think that their concern is, is bringing another vote to the floor on something on top. I don't know this for sure, but I would expect because of the 38.6 million is like one of the concerns. I think I was starting to write, when I was listening to this, I started to write a note to Pam on this, about this whole discussion. And there's still a vote that happens on the floor, but I can't remember what they were talking about, but there was like a two thirds vote if they do capital is stabilizing. And then I think it's majority if they do the debt.
I like to take it out of cap stabilization to take it out of the cap stabilization fund. And then you might need a two thirds vote. It's probably in the article itself. What the required vote is.
I can't remember exactly, but I remember the wording. So it's all about like how, I think they were, they were considering and they took no position in the meeting on Monday and expect to vote it. I assume on next Monday. When you say voted, now you actually have the benefit of listening to the meeting. Yes, I listened to them. I watched it yesterday to hear what they had saved on Robinized articles because there's still a lot going on with that for sure complex, but they took no position. So when he, when Brian did this presentation, I was like, oh, interesting. We haven't seen this yet. We didn't even, we didn't know. And they had asked, has this been brought to finance committee yet? And they said, no, because it was a request of what are other options do we have to fund the wastewater treatment outside of excluded debt?
So, and then they took no position on either way after that, after reviewing, not think about excluded debt and not about that. It's interesting, that's not the way I interpreted your email, but, you know, thanks to Bill, I've got a direct question going back. Are you, you know, are you going to, are you going to vote this? You know, are you saying you're not going to take a position on excluded debt? Because we'll find out tonight or tomorrow. Yeah, I don't know if, if, if they, they didn't take a vote on it at all. And they did ask the question about the whole ruling on isn't, um, excluded debt for projects more than five million. There was a comment made about that. So because it's back in Brian's budget, I feel as though he's making a different recommendation than, like his capital budget has now, than what it originally had. Um, it, right, it does, right, because he didn't have it. Yeah, he had it as excluded debt. That, because they were trying to run them. Right. So that seems like in his view, they decided not to do excluded debt, but I don't, I guess we just want to confirm that that is. I mean, yes. Ask and answer, as the litigators would say, I'm happy to do that. Um, I think, I think I know the answer, but, um, Bill's convinced me earlier today to ask the very direct question, you know, not, you know, some of those emails I get are not real clear. So, sorry, back on the cap stabilization. Appropriations from the cap stabilization fund to support capital expenditures require a two-thirds majority vote. So, I think that must have been just the discussion, is if we do decide to fund, you know, the increase in the fiscal 28 spike in, um, debt service with the cap stabilization fund, we will need a two-thirds vote. I think, I don't know if it's at town meeting. Yeah. At town meeting. So, I've got a proposal, um, and correct me if my premise is wrong, but I think this is the only open question on the capital budget. And so, we can get a definitive answer as to what they're intending to, if they're intending to take a vote on Monday, we can get a definitive answer to that tomorrow. Um, if the premise is right, and that's the only open question, I think we could defer this to Monday, to our meeting on Monday, and plan to just get it done in a matter of minutes. Yeah. I had the two and a half million for the high school, or articles. I mean, it would be an adjustment to, like, the capital file, right? It's just, yeah, it's the file, and we're recommending that be. Yeah, but that's not a select board question. No, no, no, no, that's not. It's a Brian, Kevin-y question. Yeah, I've got that one. If we're going to vote on capital, I guess, on Monday, then it, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, related to capital, though, so I just forwarded you all of the, response from Nick Lombardi from the fourth. My apologies. That includes the breakdown of the capital request he sent in. It also includes the file that I'm assuming, I believe he's using for his own master budget. Um, sorry. I just, I'm sorry. Who is this? Nick Lombardi is the IT director. Yeah. And, um, I, I think when I was comparing the amount that was originally proposed from Brian Kevney, um, which is what's, which is what's listed in the ask from Nick Lombardi for FY27, you can see sort of the breakdown of that. So that five, six, 60, right? They asked for essentially six 60. One of the things that's kind of interesting here, just to note is that the office 365 migration, the windows server upgrades are included as part of the capital ask. So a little bit, I just have to say like the hundred grand addition, which we were told were for the licenses for Microsoft and office looks like it's being asked for as part of the capital. Now, those numbers no longer are included in the capital budget that Brian most recently sent back to us. I was then comparing what we got from Nick here to what Brian most recently sent. And it looks like I go back, um, you can see that the cybersecurity remediation modernization has dropped down to 47,000 and change. The public safety and the cybersecurity were left in line with what Nick had asked for. So the 47,000, I think it's just funded by capital closer. Oh, I see. Well, then I have some questions. I'm sorry. If you could break it down to that file that I had sent, which was what I was going to go back to. But I think it just begs the question of like, what's the hundred grand in the operational? Yes. Didn't he send an email? Didn't Brian send an email? He did send an email. So I will read you the email that he sent, which is from the IT director.
So the IT operating budget increase justification. The town IT department has historically procured perpetual software licenses as a cost containment measure for going regular technology refresh cycles in favor of extended platform life cycles. While this approach reduced short-term expenses that has resulted in a substantial accumulation of technical debt that now represents both operational security risk. A clear illustration of this is our continued reliance on Microsoft Office 2016, which remains in use today. Running at data platforms has constrained our ability to adopt modern cybersecurity controls most critically. And then he goes on to talk about MFA. All that's fine, right? I think it's just tough because then when I see sort of the request, the windows, right? The Office 365 migration looks like it's being asked for as part of this $250 in cybersecurity remediation and modernization because it's listed and the price is listed actually for both Office 365 and the MFA is $50,000. And so I think we still don't have clarity on what the $100,000 increase in services was from the operating budget. And my apologies, I should have caught this a week ago when we got this email applied, but I don't mean to be persnickety, but like... That's a good question. I think what we just want to make sure is that they haven't double counted. That's it. I'm not at all suggesting sort of malfeasance on anyone's part, but I just want to make sure we haven't double counted the money.
So would it be helpful?
Should I reply to Brian and Nick and ask? Yes, I will do that. I will do that. Yeah, I'll do that first thing tomorrow.
So it's not the firewall replacement. So if you look at... Because it looks like that's part of the... Oh, it's listed capital project activity. Right. But then firewall replacement additional funds is listed under capital. So everything he put in that email is listed here under capital. So as far as like what I'm not clear on is he hasn't said, here's the projects, enumerated them, and then said these projects are listed under capital and these projects are the $100,000 in the operational fund increase. So therefore, as far as I can tell, I can see very clearly what's been requested from capital. What we're actually lacking is where did the additional $100,000 in services come from on the operational side. And then we asked that question, if I recollect, we were told it was software licenses. But as far as I can tell, in this FY27 capital ask, these software licenses are included here, unless they're different software licenses, which they absolutely could be. And for what it's worth, the things that add up to $100,000 here, the Windows server's upgrades are $100,000. So there are items that are $100,000. It could be that. It could be that it's being... Well, but it's part of the capital ask. But then it doesn't show up in the capital. Doesn't... That part's not in our capital budget. Isn't the capital amount $250 for cybersecurity remediation? Yeah. So then it's part of that. He's actually broken it down in the email he sent me. $160,000 is what I have for capital. $160,000 for cybersecurity remediation and modernization? And the emergency system $150,000. Uh-huh. And the firewall... $100,000. Where are you seeing $160,000? Yeah, where are you seeing $160,000? That's the BIP that I have. Okay. But that's not in his budget. Yeah, I'm going to be at by... There's $250,000, $150,000,000, and $100,000. Okay, and so I still haven't... So this is what was given to me at the original... The CIP requests. And the CIP requests. So that's how it's broken out. Do you think it's... Do you think it... Never mind. We can take this out. Do you think it's possible that that $100,000... I mean, if it was originally $160,000, and all of a sudden it went up to $250,000, and then the services went up $100,000, like, is it possible they're moving that money around? Between capital and the operations budget... Operating budget. Yeah, it's... I mean, as possible as possible. All right. Anyway, I will take the fall. But you see what I'm saying, right? I think we... Okay.
Again, anything else on capital for tonight?
Not here. No, I appreciate them taking our suggestions. It seems like it gave them an opportunity to reflect on the budget as a whole, or certainly the capital budget. Obviously, they made some other changes. I think I'm encouraged to, and certainly what we heard from Kelly and others, that this was their first time going through this process, and I think I'm encouraged to see, hopefully, they will have figured out the changes that they want to make to that process. So in the future, my hope would be that the capital budget that comes to us is more closely aligned between Subsea and the town. I hope it will be. I also think that one of the recommendations that we... I think this was your idea, Pam, but the idea is we need to be involved earlier, too. Yeah. Yep. And we can help drive that process, you know, so that we can help better align them. And Subsea may not be right on everything. I understand. But we can... The earlier we know what they're doing... Yeah. Right. I think their draft is due in October, normally, I think I have heard. I think that's... I think that it's in part of the... It was an article last year, so you can find it. In the write-up, yeah. But that... So it should be part of the process. And historically, like, capital has been a part that FinCom has started to look at, like, in the late fall. So that would align. And so once they finish, we can, you know, they talk with FinCom and can always start getting into that budget earlier.
Yeah. And as we... You know, another recommendation. This is not new information, but again, I don't... You know, we've got one line item for the schools in that budget. And I think one of the recommendations is that we see a much more robust town-like budget in the schools so that we can... Right. And they... What we get in the budget, like, there's the school's budget book is typically what we would get. It would be nice to see it sooner. Well, seeing it sooner, but honestly, a lot of that is qualitative discussions about... Yep. And there's... I mean, there's a lot... There are points of view. ...pensities in the back. But I think, yes, in the past, it has been more of a Q&A and an interactive process. You know, iterative and interactive process between the schools and... And they come just to better understand. May for you. And interact. All right. Well, thank you.
Articles. We got a bunch of them.
Sharan's Bridge. There's a lot. I know you put your heart and soul into this. So, mine are so complex, they're still being true. So, I actually wonder if we should wait until Monday when all the... I mean, we can vote and we can give you a synopsis of them. But if you want final wording on all of them, we can wait till Monday and I think they would go fast. But... They'd have to if we do it on Monday. But there's still tweaks being made and how they're written up.
I mean, I'll figure those tweaks there. It's more of not article content. It's more of how the wording is in what the passage of the article will do, not what it won't do. It's kind of the best way. And then there's more on more research being done on the big one of the Sherman's Bridge Neighborhood Agreement. a lot of details where you asked about that when it's in.
Maybe? Yes.
So we can talk through them if you want.
I'm just giving all these answers. Why don't we go through the articles that we're ready to and then if we don't have time at the end we can go back. Makes sense to me. And if they're going to change substantially maybe we... Sorry, the Sherman's Bridge was for saying? Yeah. That's what I'm asking. If you think they are then maybe we wait. But if you think they're kind of what they're going to be. Right. I mean, I'm speaking for myself right. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the articles call for things to be done that the town cannot do. So there's this sort of mix of like what actually happens if the town votes for this thing that says we should do a thing that we can't do. I think it's going to change a lot. But yeah. And the thing is doing a lot. Select board and all of them select board whether to fail to adopt a motion to recommend. Yeah. And even that wording was changed. Okay. I wondered I hadn't seen that before. It was in one of the write-ups that was given to me and then it's being changed. So like I said there's something like they voted not to recommend. All of them. Yeah. Right. Well, so that's that's not I question that language too when I saw it. But it's not substantive. Right. We know how the select board voted.
Not that we even need to know that to form our own opinions. But I would I would really like to go through these articles vote on subject to review if things change materially. But I do support the argument of let's do that last not the ones that are easy and if it's 11 p.m. maybe until Monday and if hopefully not if you take sure there aren't that many. because we already started talking about it last week. Article B is paying prior debts is I think exactly the same as last year with the exception of new numbers. Did you send that one around? I was reading from last year earlier. Oh yeah I think
the only added I made was there was a typo that I fixed. I said article thought previously. The one question we had was about $10,000 to keep technical.
That is a question of how that interacted with the other vote. The other vote was for current year. This was an outstanding debt from prior year. I did not get a clear answer on
either some accounting issue on our side or theirs but that $10,000 is a real bill that needs to get paid independent of the other vote we took.
I get that. I just I'll still vote on it. I just as I recall last year there was I thought the actual spending at the end of last year for or what we thought was the turn back and what the actual was considerably lower than budgeted but then I guess it wasn't that number so I'm just wondering why it took why there was
appreciate that Brian actually summed this out in another thread that went to all of us anyway though yeah so so any is is this the $5,468 940 one no there was $10,537 and 50 cents for Keith technical school that was a fiscal year 2025 liability to be paid using a fiscal year 2026 appropriation then did we find out why we did not find out why we did get an answer but yes it is a real bill distinct the
answer was no this was not part of that that was for 2026 bills that were higher than expected and this is the 2025 bill have not yet gotten an answer on why this was not paid in 2025 or why wasn't it paid in 2026 right shouldn't shouldn't the 25 bills have
so i'll move to recommend article b second i did that because i had put you down a second in the surgery here to make things easier for you april just the enterprise fund article that's a nice meaty one and actually as i'm saying this sorry i'm just looking at it that's sorry something totally separate um just someone from the stations i just want to make sure there were no changes or what it works um so this is the enterprise fund budget i
this is the total for all three of our enterprise funds the water wastewater and transfer station yes so the total is nine million five hundred fifteen thousand six hundred thirty two which is the total for all three um so you can see in the little table just part of the article water fund
um wastewater one million and the transfer station just over six hundred thousand so in and then so that's for the operating and then below that the capital um looking at some capital expenditures for the water enterprise fund excluding everything else we're doing for the long-term water supply um and then the
i first say that um this article funds the operating expenses of the town three enterprise funds and this year it includes the capital that hadn't always been done so this year everything everything related to the enterprise funds is all in one article and then i went through and talked about each fund their operating and their capital and i'll just walk through the first one the water fund the operating budget is the six million two hundred forty six thousand an increase of one point three million or twenty eight percent year over year and then i went through and talked about the primary drivers so debt service one point one million contractual service up two hundred thousand salaries up eighty thousand supplies up twenty thousand and then slightly offset lower utility expenses down by fifty three thousand when you add those together it gets you most of the way to that delta that one point three six two and then i just so i kind of changed a little for my by trying before i kind of brought all
water water meter and pfos charges and likely to approximate at least thirty percent over twenty six levels and i just noted here water rates will continue to increase significantly in twenty eight and twenty nine with the incremental one point three seven million they're adding on and significantly from the debt from the MWRA i guess i really should use the wording from that
or long term water i would do that since you're referencing the article yourself i also don't know if it feels like we should say some form of you know if we
go up additional i don't love that because it kind of mwra connection i don't think is that's not going to vote right it's out funded the authority to borrow the money but not necessarily so it's like yeah people say no we don't want you to borrow the money then the town can't proceed right like then they have to pick something else something less costly or path or whatever or do a better job with education and have a special town meeting correct right the only thing that i was curious about is there's so many acronyms in here like COLA is not spelled out i
wanted to make sure because there's a lot of things that are defined but it wasn't defined in the article so
computer rate design rate increases for other services supervisory control on data positions yeah wastewater wastewater yeah sorry for the first okay does it give anything descriptive of what scouting is maybe i can just use that i don't know how much process controls system used to monitor and control industrial processes remotely if i kind of just do a generic monitoring and control versus data services i think that would be better for the water enterprise fund capital why it's $230,000 than projected last year yeah i said that
this capital bush it's like well my bad that's okay second observation is but you can say that you should do the promotion does have any other questions or comments no i mean the bulk of even with the steps and lanes and everything the bulk of the the bulk of the increases that we're seeing which are pretty substantial jumps are really because of debt service right so would you agree with that statement i mean that's what it looks definitely for water right um waste water it is higher debt service cost right 108 and then transfer station is really the um it's the new um indirect cost has has not been there before so you get all the change for all at once fair enough but with the exception of that it's really the debt service that has already been approved for right like now it's just time to pay to bill so um exactly super minor points given that
is there a reason you put listed contractual increases before debt services in your list of drivers um probably because it came when i looked at the super minor no that's a good point i'll just swap it yep um it's probably when i looked at the income state the way they presented it um do we think we should explain the indirect expense at all for the transfer station enterprise
sorry i was finishing that change with that again um enterprise fund i'm sorry the transportation you mentioned the new indirect expense but like it's very unclear what that um i guess most people don't understand what that is okay maybe this where the fund is being charged for a higher percent than this covers um it's kind of the allocation yeah for the town resources that are allocated to like like brian's time and yep um so i'd just maybe i'll put that in like the clause you know the new indirect expense amount comma which represents you know the fund being charged for the time of town employees yeah i can look at that yeah right and just above that 81,000 we just need a dollar in salaries salaries are going up by 37,000 who knows what that could be 37,000 peanuts i wish everything came out no i'll move to recommend article enterprise on the budget second all in favor nice job it's a tough one i have another one that's also not really ready um article dd the holiday road um we can talk about that uh it's a similar industry where we can't did you send that one i know you talked about it i sent i sent it and i sent an updated version today okay updated income comments for article dd so just to kind of remind us all we're talking about so this is the article for these design and engineering studies of 25 holiday road um this is proposed by the select board to study the potential uses of the site the site is currently in the care and custody of the school committee and i think has been for about 70 years it is represented in the school committee it is a possible site for a new school in the school committee's long-term facilities plan that they just published this year um this select board put this forward there was understandably a bunch of feedback saying why is the select board doing a study on the school committee's land so there has been um an effort to get kind of a joint uh an effort to get an article that both the school committee and the select board are happy with putting forward um you know that they're both aligned on so i think there's still some my understanding of the current state of play is that there's still some back and forth on the wording but there is expectation that this will end up being you know something of a joint effort between the two groups to have one study that efficiently covers the multiple possible use cases for the site um so the draft that i sent out has the original wording that does not reference any school committee collaboration but all of my comments assume that there will be school committee collaboration i have seen a couple of drafts of new language of the article that reflect that but i was asked not to share them yet until they're actually agreed between the school committee and the soft board i had one clarifying question here just in your write-up so 25 holiday road 13.72 acre parcel land acquired by the town is it actually acquired by the town because you're correct when you say that it's under the purview of the schools so my understanding is that it was purchased by the town but then given to the schools i believe so okay all right i just wanted to do you know when that heard yeah sorry i thought i actually had that in i think it was like 1952 although we was in the 50s but i actually thought i had that date in there i thought you might have too maybe that was it might have been a prior you said it has been utilized for about 70 years just to kind of 1952 is the number that stick in my head but i actually thought i had that in there so in the arguments in favor it's been a while you finally i should include that reference when you think about putting the dollar amount in the first sentence of the comments the purpose of this article to appropriate $20,000 and then the next paragraph i think i would in the second sentence i would delete the word recently since one of those things that happened was in 2017 i'm not sure that qualifies as recently anymore i kind of yeah that's fair over a 70 year period that was kind of in the grand scheme of um but yeah no i buy that also i'm genuinely in support fewer words somewhere early on in this process i remember hearing somebody say and i have no idea who it was that the town shouldn't spend the $200,000 at all they should just sell it to somebody by his bidder presumably and let them figure it out i'm not necessarily in favor of that but is any is that argument coming up that we shouldn't spend this money at all that argument hasn't come up okay uh for many of the people who have voiced an opinion i suspect part of that is because the many of the people who have voiced opinions probably have a preferred outcome of nothing ever happens with the site ever and selling the site to someone is probably not a good way for nothing to ever happen with the site i also think frankly because it's in consideration with the school committee i think even if the select board weren't proposing this now odds are pretty good the school committee would be trying to find a budget to do something similar rather than selling but and the 200 grand for this comes from where what's the funding source there has not been a particular funding source so is it possible that this gets added into tax rates i don't think it's from someone else's budget but i think select board has a budget and i'm just going back to see what that is okay select board has a budget of 33 000 so that's not going to do it in the town office there's purchase of supplies i don't know sometimes they do studies like through your particular town department and that would be there's town office they have got purchase of supplies at 180 but that's it yeah i think it's clarifying because this could be another article that like if it voted if it hasn't already been accounted for i'm sure i'm sure right but like i would i would like people to be aware whether or not it's already yeah yeah the article itself and this is language you've seen a bunch of times is the cart launch correct taxation transfers correct borrowing right but but i guess i guess my larger question is um has it already been included in the numbers we've seen or or has it not um or is it another or is it another mwra here's another article that's totally separate and and i think i would like to know that i would too yeah right so are we gonna hold off on voting on that one or do we i don't think we the article text is okay gonna change when the school committee and select board have a meeting of the minds so if there are other your write-up shouldn't change much yeah and that's i don't think well i mean unless the school committee and the select board changes a lot but yeah that was kind of what i thought bring it back for another vote right like so just to be clear just because we vote once it does not mean that that has to be that that's a final vote that's final you could bring it back if there's substantive changes yeah but the article itself is going to change substantially so this does not in any way address the school
well are we voting my write-up or are we voting the whole thing so that we were voting the whole thing we do vote the whole thing you've sort of explained what you expect right i mean i guess it depends on what we i guess if it turns out between now and monday that the school board is super not on board i would want to see it again for sure yeah but in the absence of like something that start changing this seems like you've done okay unless you really disagree like it seems to me like you've done enough here to get us to the heart of the issue the pros and cons the cost isn't changing yeah so i i'm fine either way my expectation was we'd review this we'd get these comments and questions i'd come back and say on monday and say hey everybody nothing you know here are the six words that change yeah yeah either way is fine unless anyone feels like they can't vote without knowing the funding source i'll move to record article dd as amended second all in favor i vote no i vote no as well okay so if i were to find out that that $200,000 is already in the budget i might vote differently on monday but not knowing i would agree with that statement sorry which is why i asked because for me it does make a difference like i think it's in there but i think we need to find out yeah still passes though anything non-chairman's bridge anything well there's article o which i can give you an update on it i'm not sure again if it's ready to vote or not but that's to make some changes to the personnel bylaws and wage classification plan mostly i think dealing with non-union employees minimum wage employees and so forth and i think it's really to bring some of the increases that are inherited in the labor contracts into the people who are affected by the labor contracts carl did all the work basically to write up the pros and cons and the description we've struggled to get final numbers i pressed really really hard for both brian and the fire department to have numbers by tonight the fire department did a job and got it to me and then brian told me it's going to be two days before you can process it so i'm not able i sent you the numbers that i got from the fire department but they are unaudited by brian so again i wouldn't anticipate any changes it's basically sort of editorial you know fill in the blank in a couple places where there's numbers but it's not final so again we could do a provisional vote major changes between now and monday we voted i don't think the article is going to change i don't think the pros and cons are going to change but we don't have final numbers so just so i understand so the unions negotiate in three year increments all of their cost of living
the whatever those are valued at and then also how people move through steps and lanes so that's all and then we have a series of positions of course that are also non-union positions those people without this article would get no cost of living increase there's nothing in our bylaws nothing built in
we generally give a cola based on inflation there's nothing at all the only reason i ask is because i remember in 25 we gave we voted on an article where it was a 3% increase but that was on top of the 3% cola that they were already getting and that necessitated an article to give the 6% total raise i was just trying to make sure i think there was an adjustment like they did some study and i realized that some people hadn't yeah and that's one of the arguments opposed is that they really haven't done a study they've really just wanted to tie it to the labor didn't they just do a study and i think they just reviewed it was one of the in one of the select word packets yeah we funded it a couple years ago and i think they just presented it so but those have it doesn't and probably not in this the other thing that held it up a little bit was the fire department contract it's retroactive so they had to figure out how much was in 24 25 and 26 and then also whether or not they were going to include employees who had left in the interim and i guess michael mccall decided they were not going to include those employees and as soon
should mention that or in the write-up if we should mention that there was an independent study done but this article and the recommendations here do not take into account right because like people
totally reasonable i need to check that out okay good point thank you right on there's one blank right cola blank for fiscal 27 this is non-union positions right other than that i mean we have cola right below right above the personnel board recommendation there's there's some percentage increases there right those are the only numbers i mean are those subject change or is it literally wrong only for the blank to be filled in i'm well my educated guess would be those numbers are not subject to change but i
okay so all right sounds good so anyway we can i was trying to get it done today so because i will not be here on monday and i wanted to believe borrow of having to or other people on the committee of having to pick this up so we can certainly vote in provisional or we can you know kick it to monday but i will not be here on monday i think that's right this this must be in the 27 operator there's there are assumptions built into the 27 operating budget i'm assuming i mean they have some reserves i think yeah so they're in the reserves or maybe the non-emons are already in there i think that makes sense because we had some increases that said he'd said we're cola so okay i'll go either way my understanding here is that that the select board the liaison is carol martin she's okay with this language she is i don't yeah i don't think there's much we can re-vote it on monday if something changes i think i got most of oh i was gonna say i would like to wait i would like to see just the inclusion of like hey like just the answers about the study whether or not this is actually taking into account the study or not and and by monday you'll have the numbers anyway so we'll actually see a final write-up and then it should be a pretty quick vote if that's okay okay that's fine my sense is that study's probably not important we should that would be my assumption too but then i guess so let's walk down that path so if the study's not done so this is a request for this year does that mean if the study hasn't been included in the sort of recommendation here then it's not the 27 budget right so then so then we're sort of potentially either having we're gonna see it next year i'm sure the study will likely apply next year to him and they will do it for this i also have a silly note um in the last uh paragraph of your comments you use uh m dashes i think to separate the amounts from the groups um do you think those colons because the first glance looks like the
issues you mean okay that's for monday apologies for not being able to wrap it up today stop apologizing either go to chermans bridge or um this was really we've been out of senior email but but um i received from the board of public works a fairly long uh really article hh which would is trying to explain how the deck would be repaid the 38.6 million um let's see i'm so sorry before we go there can i make one last comment about of course oh i'm so sorry i one more comment on article oh to pam's point whatever numbers that brian keveny sends you back it would be great to just confirm that that number is already assumed in the fyi operational budget right like yeah we should just that would be just it would be great to say yep he already accounted for that um just while we're we're asking him questions anyway right while we're asking final questions i think that's an important one because if for whatever reason the cola asked is either higher or even if it's lower right it would be good to know in either direction if there's an impact to the operational budget i guess that's what i'm trying to say okay thank you that's all yeah we'll have to figure out some of the informational logistics because if i don't get it tomorrow then i'm out of pocket until okay tuesday but i will i will ask all the questions immediately thank you thank you thank you all right go ahead hh so they were reacting to a comment i made and i tried to be um try to explain the first time through this i believe it was 70 nothing to support the article um second time filled out and uh but it was a much closer vote and that was because we didn't have any information on how they're going to read how are they going to find the repayment right um i didn't ask for this that they came up with a two paragraphs that purport to explain that um my you've got it whether you've had a chance to look at it or not sense of this is what they've given us is four options borrowing over 20 years or 30 years and then a an amortization schedule that either is a level payment a principal interest more or less like a mortgage or one that has uh level principal payments where your interest is going to fluctuate um my sense is that four options is way too much and that this kind of this kind of information is going to take people's eye off the ball and that we've focused on so again i'm not asking you to look at the like do we say um you know does it approximately go there or not i'm looking for do you think information like this is hopeful or or not i think for me at least well one i think it feels more like two options to me you're right that implicitly there are four options there for them that is two um i i feel like this information is helpful because i feel like it puts a little more into reality of kind of numbers we're talking about and especially i mean maybe i'm wrong about this it feels like the last paragraph is describing to some extent directionally what this would do to water rates is that a fair assessment like we're proposing this is paid for by water rates what i think so it's still tough though i assume maybe carl some of your hesitation is like we just don't really know how this is going to play out right so we're adding a bunch of essentially contingencies about how this could play out and and i agree with rob that that is absolutely helpful information to know and have i also appreciate your comment on the fact that if you haven't been as clued in onto sort of what's been happening this is it's a lot of what could happen and not what's going to happen and i think that's tough i think it's tough to um i think in certain transparency this is the information we have and so if people can get a better sense of what's going to happen to my water rates based on this and i think that's ultimately people's questions like okay well what am i going to pay how much more am i going to pay um and it kind of gives you a sense of that you know there's some parameters on it versus just like i have no idea how much more it's going to be i think for me the last paragraph maybe even like a slimmed down version of the last paragraph i don't know that i agree with the plethora of options it's a lot because it's already complicated right but but if we think the real state are like directionally three financing paths that might happen one is we are able to get the state revolving fund on appeal one is we do the 30 year fixed payment one is we do the 20 year fixed principal to my mind i almost want to like just the last paragraph to say the water fund
which would you know which would likely increase the water fund budget by between you know x percent and 5 percent i think you could even slim it down even more though i think you could say there are three options option one is an appeal if the appeal is successful water rates go up 74 percent option two is you know a 20 year loan if we pursued with option two water rates go up 80 percent and option three a 30 year loan and if so water rates ultimately now i know i know this is being reported but i think they're making these numbers up they don't those aren't fair enough great so then in that case the direction is fine but um and i don't mean to be pejorative well i mean there's a 30 there's a 30 year out of four percent you know i think they're yeah they don't know where things will ultimately be funded but it puts some yeah i mean carl i sent an email and in my email i said i don't think i'd send carl an email because i thought i would be late for this and i have said not to include any of this because i am concerned about the same thing of how brutal are these numbers and i guess is there not an opportunity for the board of public works to speak at town meeting if they wanted to do some sort of handout or something else that they could like to me this feels like the kind of this feels like the kind of detail that i think again you could maybe make and i'm all for adding perhaps one line around directional right but other than that the amount of detail and to your point how much of this is accurate how much of this are we representing as income vetted numbers which we should not right because they are not right and to that end i would they have between now an annual town meeting almost two months to figure this out and this is the kind of stuff that will get figured out in the next two months and i think it's more appropriate that they opt to present or opt to do a handout or something else and we leave it at regardless of the options pursued you should expect water rates to increase at least this or in the neighborhood of this amount i agree i think one sentence that says depending water rates could increase between right initialize depending on funding source depending on funding source or financing or whatever right done between a and b yep funding terms right how about that carl i think it's fine i think um having said that if we say depending on the funding source a or b it'll be between a and b wouldn't any rational person say pick the funding source that gives you a so it's a little bit more funding terms because that's it's all td yeah then maybe you don't say between this and this maybe you say at least this and then you know there's we've we've identified that there's a floor we haven't identified a ceiling and and gets across the same point there's a number for people to react to and they know that it's the lowest number i think having a big number is i don't know for me having a big number it's more or just a little more transparent to that point right because we say by at least 15% and then it's like 70% talking about that it's already going to be much higher than that right we're talking about the difference between 74% and and something higher than 74% presumably they have 37% and then 59% they're saying 37 and 59 because this is i think you're talking about i'm talking about the total right but and i guess the main degree is this is 37 and 59 but if we actually got the revolving fund it would be might even be as low as like 20 for this i think 20 something i don't think so that original 74 included the estimation of the revolving of the of the loan at the 0% interest so if you take out the 37 from that 74 that 50 something increase that was or 40 something increase that was for the rest so i hear you but i would if i can come up with a rational figure or if you could come up with a rational figure i'd be happy to put something in there but seems like every time i turn around numbers change and we have almost two months to your point and i you know i'm hoping that they can come with a you know not just ranges but a proposal for the town you know people are going to ask do we have something in there about the terms of the loan no are still largely to be determined i think we just need to have something in there that says yeah we this is unknown we're looking into it but we don't know yet and there's people are going to ask why isn't it in the write-up and it's like it's not just because we didn't choose to include it's because we have no idea and there are a lot of there are a number of options out there again i i think it's it's really up to you i i'm very supportive carl of you making minimal modifications to your existing write-up for hh i i think we all recognize you've been put in a tough spot that's that's that was my point on a couple of other things but if we can improve something that's really important i'm all over it i'm happy to do that but i just think this is the wrong approach right with things that aren't substantiated i agree yeah but i guess the alternative to estimates or substantiative estimates is we don't know as a comment right um right so i i yeah something in one of the arguments i think that was something for that fact already but um i'll give you a other shot okay but i appreciate this very much really i i think we all ought to be on as close to the same page as we can on something like this the other piece that i i read to you about is just that i think in your write-up because i read it all because i thought we thought we had the final um but it wasn't clear from the write-up why we couldn't continue with just the happy hollow wells and have mwra is like a an ad hoc contention if we needed that so i think we just need to put something about that i think it's like happy hollow would only provide about 85% of the total peak demand so just to include that to ward off that question all right thank you sharon's bridge you want to do your weight on that article or my weight if anyone needs a little that's the harris whiskey in the part well we can go to the bottom well yeah i can go get it real quick um so i guess it makes sense to start with one one way of the so i'm sorry what's the return especially um i guess we have there's a zz and the uu oh i thought you had my life i have zz and yy okay uu is april's article submitted by a petitioner about putting away from around the bridge and zz is my art so you want to start with yy sure i'm sorry i'm sorry i was saying zz oh okay let's start with zz that's fine do you want to start with uu because i think uu you have more detail about the broader sherman's bridge project is uu the first sherman's bridge project article in the world okay can we start with tp do you think we're all subject to change understood well okay so tt bears the request for a second pedestrian walkway and the proposer feels that we're in the middle of a front bridge needs repair and the repairs that are being done mass dot is spending about a million dollars to do these repairs and it has been a project that has created has in the way that they put this together they have gotten a lot of people on both sides from both towns because this bridge is between Sudbury and Wayland so whatever we do still needs to be approved by Sudbury for the most part before it
now they there's there's many things from this bridge so the articles will get jumbled but I won't go into that part of it sorry they want to add a second walkway to address pedestrian safety and to be able to view from the other side of the bridge where
for preserving the lifespan of the bridge so they do not want wish to fund a second walkway specifically because it takes away from the lifespan of the bridge it's digressing from preserving the lifespan of the bridge which means it actually makes it less functional sorry I would interpret it not that it's more costly per use over the same amount of time but it gets more costly because the amount of time that we can use the bridge all of sudden is reduced I think that MassDOT is looking
would adding a second walkway jeopardize the existing DOT funding do we think or is it just that DOT said we're only paying for this part you want the rest it's on you so DOT so basically before any change happens they
they're they're not saying that they would remove funds or not move forward if there were they're saying they would not pay for the second walkway but possibly we could pay for that and still have DOT pay for the other things potentially maybe but it's not committed in the research timelines and there would be a delay okay yeah and the proposer is also saying that he thinks the cost could be under a hundred thousand Tom Holder is working on getting a breakdown but it's more in the figures of five hundred six hundred thousand for a second walkway so it's a significant increase but he's trying to get a actual reconstruction of some how on the other side he's getting an actual thing to be able to add to this article about how much that additional walkway could cost and it's not as stated of minimal cost at this point in time and if there was to be an additional walkway who pays for it is one of the other considerations there's no sidewalk on that side of the bridge so from a safety standpoint I don't see the safety part of it because there's already no sidewalk on that it would be people crossing the bridge to be able to look over the other side of the bridge the walkway is on the same side of where the current walkway is the sidewalk if used the same in each direction that's true I think that right is it for proposer's comments yes I have proposer's comments with this he this is where he says with over a million dollars about to be spent on vehicle centric renovations to
recreational value and user safety is the million dollars all funded at this point by dot okay yes right so it's really going from zero for the town up to whatever 100 or 500 okay correct but that alone doesn't get us there the funding alone doesn't get us there because we also need alignment and approval from Sudbury so we get appropriate funds for this and it still could not get done and DLT would also need to approve it I guess they don't get this right that last line before the program is there they will not fund work that digresses from preserving the lifespan so does it need to be the lifespan or from preserving the bridge the lifespan kind of confuses because it doesn't say that adding the second walkway is going to change the lifespan I guess that may make it rather than digresses that does not contribute to preserving the lifespan of the bridge it's not about the lifespan of the bridge though well I mean all the gulam stuff the million dollars is about the lifespan right the million dollars is the replacing the better trying to make the
so DOT's money is basically they're saying they're putting money in so this bridge lasts longer preserving the lifespan right or prolonging the lifespan yeah from there it's fine I think it's open to interpretation a little bit more it's how it's how
prolonging the life it's fine it's the word digress well digress is from what exactly it's not really it's digressing I guess you can make an argument it is digressing for preserving the lifespan you have a second period on your third arguments of
change because what's going to change the other cost now this will change because so one of the comments that I got just prior coming into the meeting because these articles are so complex how I say the passage of this article alone does not guarantee it's kind of saying what it won't do but it's not saying what the passage of this article will do so I need to reword it that's going to be the only substantive change that I would say except for if Tom Holder can provide a quote in time for what a second walkway would actually well if it's five or six hundred thousand where's the money coming
I think with the edits that you're talking about April those edits are just to make the point of the article more clear I don't think those actually change and for me personally the amount here does not change right because none of the money is
appreciate you'll you'll need to make some modifications to make it more clear and incorporate the feedback you perceived but otherwise I'm prepared to vote on it me too the third argument I posed I think the last could it the additional substantive changes to the bridge design and construction could that jeopardize the mass DOT funding that we're already getting right or not I asked that question because that's a strong point against to included that's true I think that mass DOT at the end of the day has a final say so it
concern I said they said that allow a second walkway based on the current it's basically what I said that DOT that mass DOT language came directly from Tom Holder I just feel like that's a strong point that maybe should be like you could jeopardize mass DOT funding or mass DOT has the final judgment on design well I do think given that and that's where part of this comes in I think the committee comments at least say you know mass DOT even the article so we've used best efforts not like to get rid of the results but I do think the point about like jeopardizing funding so critics are about an additional substitute change to bridge design and restriction at this stage to jeopardize timing and funding of this project I personally keep everything you have and then I just put another pause at the end that says to jeopardize you know roughly one million dollars of DOT funding currently expected or something yeah I have somewhat philosophical question the arguments in favor feel potentially very optimistic they were all from the proponer proposer's comments as I kind of like took a lot of what the proposer had in there to and I guess my question sort of with the exception of the third one because I really don't sorry except with the exception of the third one because I need a third one to balance yeah I guess my question is sort of like some of them don't necessarily seem realistic or make a lot of like the third one like how is incorporating a second walkway going to minimize environmental impacts because if they're if they're doing it during the design stage it would be less impact to the ecosystem that's underneath the bridge if they were to have to redo it so basically you're saying doing it as part of this project does it both okay yeah and maybe just kind of into final design yeah that's why I said into the final design would be cost effective and I guess it sounds like maybe it was for me it'd be a little better sake into this project as opposed to as a second project later it sounds like that's really what we're saying the choice between put a bridge put one on now project or do this and then do it in a couple years and then it all makes sense okay so into the current project is what I put instead of the current project would be cost effective yeah yeah I might I had that I said into the current project instead of as a second project because like the second walkway I think there's objectively worse on all of those things than no second walkway because it'll be more expensive and higher more environmental impacts and more disruption it's just like doing it now is better than doing it later for those things although worse than just not doing it is there any context on the safety concerns that's what I have I would that that first line I would take out several major because I don't know which ones they are how major they are but I just say safety concerns yeah which I'm not sure what they are but if you can yeah I was going to suggest that too yeah or we can say what the safety concerns are so like I don't know there really are several major safety concerns that are addressed maybe he said it and says adding the second walkway would address also address several major safety concerns right but we've never heard what they are just say safety concerns which yeah maybe there are some but um well if you're walking I guess if you're on one side right from subway to wayland so it's sounds like between the sidewalk could you be facing traffic on the left right if you're walking right yeah right of course and you have to cross the road there to be safe but I it's a safety concern but I think we get rid of the word of nature yeah and then the next one April I would I just skidding that down and say recreational value for the direct for the user or the recreational users of the bridge and not talk about hundreds per week yeah yeah I didn't know really I'd be dead I'd be surprised if there were hundreds crossing but it was my thinking as well people fish from it they uh they originally didn't have the proposer's comments in here so I was trying to utilize this wording in the arguments I don't think I have the proposer comments in the draft I saw um I have it on I sent it out I sent it out um later this afternoon oh okay I guess there's been so many of you sorry all right yeah sorry I yesterday's I'm so up to date last thing you pulled for me and it's pretty minor but in the first paragraph of your comments you referred them as DOT about three or four times yeah and then only in the next paragraph do you say what that is yeah so I just swap that up to say in cases where the department of transportation or in mass DOT funds municipal bridges and then just make the conforming change in the next paragraph and then I had in that paragraph also just near the end um the second to the last night Wayland and Sudbury must agree on the change I'd just say any proposed change before it is submitted um sorry um yeah most agree I think I was first just thought and then I guess I had a question in the next paragraph um two-thirds of the way through as the funding would be available during fiscal year 26
well then so we need to work rapidly so it's will not it not be available after June that's what I have to clarify from driving to him to work that part up sorry maybe we should just put the funding would be available during fiscal 20 years it just sounds like it's only available during 26 but I don't know if it that's what it sounds like it sounds like to me too which means ending with any delays would yeah any delays even you know that we've only got three months to it was done and then it jeopardizes MassDOT so it literally ties right in anything else motion to approve vertical TT as amended second okay you want to say that okay IHCB okay all in favor opposed that's what I'm going to pass around to do you want another no I'm good hey Brian who you're lying with you I'm just looking at UU since that comes after T it turns out oh yeah and I'm just kind of comparing what you have for UU to what I have for ZZ okay Carol sent me I think that one so one second Kelsey sent me mine um yeah this is a like a very complex um but the one I have is uh so I guess I guess Carol changed my wording on it so that's why I wanted to sorry yeah I guess one question UU and maybe let me check that I have the right UU so maybe so I can send out the UDRAP 1104 I mean I probably just pulled out the wrong one in my email and I'm going to send the UU so yours is much slimmed down I feel like we should probably just standardize the article I got from the draft I got from Kelsey and Jalen included much more content so UU I did slim down after talking to Carol tonight because the original version that Doug had had all the background information again so I saw that the version I have for ZZ has a lot more context on how what would actually have to happen to put the five time to put a wait moment into place if that makes sense and I don't I don't know if we want it at all right so yours sort of says passage of the circle does not so what happened I just flipped you the new version because Carol has adjusted this the version that I had had originally and so now it says passage passage so to back up UU is um a request from a proposer again to um add a five ton permanent weight limit on all vehicles using the Whelan side of Sherman's Bridge between Whelan and Sutherland um so passage of this article will establish a five and sorry the one part that I missed online and I apologize um is so on the Whelan side that would be in addition the select board shall impose a permanent 20 mile per hour traffic safety zone between the boundary of number 55 and number 61 Sherman's Bridge Road and Sherman so there's two things it's five ton weight limit and a 20 mile per hour zone so the passage of this article will establish a five ton weight limit on the Whelan side of the Sherman Bridge which is jointly owned by Whelan and Sudbury it will also require installation of three weight limit signs along Sherman Bridge Road and impose a 20 mile per hour traffic safety zone between 55 and 61 in Sherman Bridge imposing a 510 bridge weight limit on Sherman Bridge would prohibit both buses school buses and commercial as well as emergency vehicles fire trucks fire engines and heavy rescue vehicles most commercial trucks large construction heavy duty pickups the bridge is a major route for students and families traveling to Lincoln Sudbury High School high school particularly those coming from Lincoln the speed limit of the Sudbury side I don't have this girl just added this I have to get the speed limit on the Sudbury side of Sherman Bridge to understand if there's a discrepancy there the town has had no indication from the town of Sudbury that it tends to change a speed limit additionally in Massachusetts when a bridge is jointly owned by two towns both municipalities are responsible for ensuring it is low weighted according to mass mass dot and federal national bridge inspection standards mass dot has ultimate jurisdiction over bridge safety standards in the commonwealth the speed limit is based on an oral agreement and not mass dot and federal bridge inspection standards so if i'm understanding that correctly we can't put a weight weight limit on the bridge mass dot has to do that and so the passage what gives us the chance to ask mass dot to impose a weight limit if Sudbury also so this so the step before that is so basically passage of this gives us the opportunity to ask Sudbury if they are willing to consider imposing at their annual town meeting in 2027 if they will consider the same weight limit to then be able to jointly take it to mass DOP so the only thing like really that Wayland could do immediately is the speed limit adjustment is that correct or what's the process for that
there's our article i say let me direct you okay sorry okay no that's that's okay um i mean i like i said i didn't catch that in my article so i'm glad for article why why um which is about increasing safety reducing fear and reducing fear for residents and vulnerable road users of sherman bridge road and bridge um they want to establish a 20 per mile hour speed limit on sherman bridge road and onto the bridge add a crosswalk replace and augment signage to work drivers to blind drives poor sight lines of school bus stop wildlife crosswalk in presence of vulnerable road users constructing keep minimally four feet away from all vru so is the i'm i'm so sorry to cut you off but the 20 miles per hour speed limit is that in your article this article or both both okay yeah understood there are two different petitioners who each has multiple overlapping this is this is weight and uh now so we each so and then that's the april's is weight and speed limit right and i have one that's everything else okay thank you um so this this leper couldn't get them to combine them evidently it is a thing gotcha
understand um so excellent idea yes um so according to calcine jordan passenger this article alone may not impose the requested speed limit on sherman's bridge road according to massachusetts general law the select board has the authority to regulate speed limits within the town on non-state routes however the published guidance from massdot and the manual on uniform traffic control devices states that speed limits should be established after an engineering traffic study a traffic engineering study would measure how fast most drivers travel under normal conditions and typically the study would focus on the 85th percentile which is the speed at or below 85 percent of drivers are traveling sometimes the effect of such studies can actually increase the speed limit of the road research also shows that artificially lowering the speed limit without taking into account studies of the typical traffic travel behaviors of those who use the road can actually increase the likelihood of crashes because it leads to increased driver frustration passing and tailgating they've actually found that to be true isn't that what they argue about the autobahn right there's no speed limit on the mode because everyone's driving responsibly and figuring out and going how they want to go right like it's not the other and the other i have this in one of my arguments against you know people already don't obey the 25 mile an hour speed limit do we really think they're going to go slower right i mean i don't know if they necessarily go faster because it says 20 but right well they're going to do it if some people do go 20 and some people still go 40 then so if am i understanding correctly in your write-up that the select board can just change the miles per hour it's just in this case that the process within which they would typically exercise that authority is usually based on a study having been conducted am i understanding that correctly that's my understanding that is my understanding um it's basically you'd have to go against the published guidance and the manual on uniform traffic control devices sure um but essentially i think what i'm hearing is there's a way for the miles per hours to be reduced that isn't this petitioner's article it it's also just through and again an available authority that the select board has when i think that's the article is requesting that the select board do that but we don't or we notionally require the select board to do that um to me those are two distinct things is it requiring the select board to do that or is it asking i'm sorry oh that's fair i i i don't think it is clearly framed in there oh no sorry it's requesting that the select board establish yeah okay so it's requiring well what does request mean um and what is what is the passage of an article because because is it a request and then the select board could still take a vote and just choose not to do it because to me a request is you could say no to request i'm so sorry i'm saying no this is why why anyway anyway uh thank you for clarifying all that i i appreciate it i i no no you clarified because we're really looking at you you you clarified because i asked about the speed limit which is how we sort of got here is there more i i'm sorry we sort of moved off of your article is there more you want to say about you um i recognize that things may change within the article that being said i assume it's the same as with tt where it's substantively like the request itself is not going to change even if some of the particulars do is that right okay i'm prepared to take a vote on that okay who wants to motion i guess that so just to be fair essentially we're voting on here because i think the write-ups might change none trivially right but i guess what we're saying is that we're prepared to vote on whether the finance committee thinks this is a this recommends this article for approval kind of independent of the exact word
if it's changes if it changes so that much bring it back we can come up we'll come back i mean if there's minimal changes then right on correct if there's something substantive yeah i'm with pam i guess my point is i don't see a reason to hold off on monday we've got things we have to do on monday and this feels like something where let us if people are prepared let us take the vote let us move on and if you feel like there have been substantive changes bring it back and we can do another vote and another pass through but otherwise i think that what i understand is that the processes cannot change right the processes of actually implementing passage of the article aren't changing between now and monday and probably the arguments for and against aren't really changing between now monday even if some of the details do change so i'm comfortable with what i understand right now yeah so you want to make a motion sure uh motion to approve as amended article you you second all in favor all opposed okay thank you my apologies do we need to be saying the name of the article when we make the motions okay all right well you should say i was just i was just going to say yes so yeah i just realized i didn't actually say it so my apologies okay so yeah exactly sure well if you wouldn't mind sending i'll look at your language too and i'll probably add it i'm sure i'm going to have sure yeah and i think we that's i think basically we should kind of standardize right you're just if one of them has a whole bunch of programs about the details um so why why um i think there so we went through yy a bunch um where were we um talks about the act to reduce traffic fatalities which talks about who vulnerable road users are in an effort to simplify the process by which municipalities can make or amend and amend speed limits and restrictions this is however mass thought approval is still required the act only removed requirement also receiving approval from the rmv um residents want to explore ways to adopt lower speed limits or some mechanism the general laws the lot of towns do so mgl 17c allows a municipality to opt into that provision of the law reducing the statutory speed limit thickly settled over business districts from 30 to 25 miles an hour um whale and sam rick community subway framing hamilton west and wall adopted this provision however this only applies to roads and ways that meet the definition that we settled and it's not clear that sherman's ridge road sherman's bridge road feeds fits this criteria um lastly there's an option to establish regulatory 20 mile an hour safety zones however since this creates a regulatory speed limit the mutcd requires an engineering study prior to the establishment safety zone and should conform to the guidance found in the mass thought procedures for speed zoning um you know should be noted that any change to speed on within town needs to conform to mass guidance municipalities cannot unilaterally change speed limits without supporting studies in consultation with mass dot in their surrounding communities especially if they're open as one town to another um arguments in favor supporters may argue that slower traffic and increased signage would increase safety pedestrians and other road users supporters may argue that ordering the speed and will just incentivize pass-through traffic from using the road to increase to increase travel time um and supporters may argue that while passing the article will not immediately lead to all the requested changes it could further a dialogue with relevant stakeholders that may eventually lead to some or all of the requested changes arguments pose or speed items cannot be arbitrarily changed without guidance from mass thought without conducting engineering traffic studies sports low limits the municipality does not unilaterally enforce a change to a roadway that connects one town to another it is important to collaborate with suddenly before making changes that affect the neighboring municipality and opponents might argue that lower speed homes may contribute to increased accidents as drivers become frustrated with speed limits not reflect the travel conditions of the road increased accidents also endanger the vulnerable road users we are most trying to protect that last one i just just to say that lower speed limits are going to contribute to increased accidents just doesn't i mean i you might just say have no effect on driver behavior yeah like i it just seems illogical to say you you do a lower speed limit and people are going to drive faster you have more more
accidents right i guess that correlates to my comment with it i mean you have sometimes the effect of such studies can actually increase the speed limit of the road and then you see research also shows that so on and so forth i guess if you're going to cite research you're going to have to put noted there say you know where did you get that information from so both of those sentences i would i would agree with that it needs a source yeah yeah i can try to so that language came from kelsey and jalen i can ask them what their sources and include it i think just like i mean it makes the point like you can have the speed limits and it might it might not affect driver behavior at all like it may be just like it is without saying that it's going to make it worse yeah well i think if if there are sources that a lot of it will make it worse yeah that's worth including and i think if there are you know i just said could yeah you just might yeah if there aren't sources i wouldn't even include it i would just figure it out all right yeah but if you have a good source yeah because the source won't go to the source if there's not it doesn't surprise me actually that this could be true i mean i'm just thinking that if you're driving along at 20 miles an hour and i'm used to going 30 miles an hour you're gonna go 40 now no but i'm i might i'll be off the road you know i mean right i might not expect you to be going 20 but i might hit you i'm not saying it's yeah you know that we can be responsible yeah we i think we're sourcing it yeah i think in one of our meetings somebody one of the uh people in the audience cited that the 85 percentile was 42 miles an hour which if you use that it would say you know hey we're gonna have like 35 mile an hour speed limit so that's that's the point i think that they're making about it could increase it yeah to that point then i think that the accident point is just you know again if there are people who still go 45 miles an hour and some people do go 20 and then right you know that's that's where you might increase but i'll look for a source of the source i agree i'll be honest when i read that i thought that it could use a source and i just i got all this this afternoon so 100 thought for the sourcing question um the other thing i guess i should clarify is i agree that it is a little unclear just kind of reading through it again if this is a thing we can do or not because the language alternates a bit between saying we should do all these studies versus we are required to do some of these things um so i'll just double check that those things are accurate in that second article proposed
i don't think that first sentence is really quite right based on the way you wrote the last paragraph of the above is that municipalities can't be allowed you can't be unilaterally changed feelings without supporting studies in consultation um here it makes it sound like we can't do it at all
um what would you well i think so i think you either have to you can change the second sentence of that argument of those it's important to collaborate it's not just collaborate with sundry it's it's um you know getting the supporting studies in consultation with dot too yeah we can add
should be a sect well i i think maybe part of the part of the reason i don't think that's there is that i think if you'll do arguments opposed the first one says we should have the studies and the second one says we need sudbury on board that makes sense so it'd be a little duplicative to say we need the studies in both of those maybe nobody else is concerned about it i can let it go but i just think that first sentence is not correct without yeah i had the same yeah reaction yeah and there needs to be agreement well it should be affect a fact i may bring this to be an a i'll be honest i thought that was wrong and then i always get that wrong so i didn't second guess myself unless a is the verb i think you're gonna have plenty others so i'm gonna move to recommend article yy as amended um increase safety reduce fear for residents and vulnerable road users of sherman bridge road and ridge i'll second that all in favor all opposed okay moving on to zz sure um so zz ban heavy commercial vehicles so this is excuse me uh this is the request is may the town vote to request the select board to take the necessary actions to ban heavy commercial vehicles on sherman's bridge road as permitted by and in cooperation with state regulations and as needed with adjacent towns ban doesn't affect vehicles such as school buses those servicing residents government and emergency vehicles etc which is not i would argue the clearest description of what the goal is but i mean the intent is clear right um you know there are petitioners comments this is again um just something that we can't do by ourselves so the finance committee comments are largely about that right passage of this article and will not impose the requested weight limit on sherman's bridge weight limits also refer to as heavy commercial vehicle exclusions so i guess i don't i don't think there is such a thing as a a commercial vehicle ban as such right i think the implementation of that is as a weight limit as opposed to a ban of certain kinds of vehicles so if you need i've seen signage that sort of says no commercial vehicles in particular right so i don't i'm not an expert in this i've just seen signs so i'm not sure that it's not possible the vehicles you mentioned if you need emergency services would all emergency service vehicles have to be rerouted as so as to this says the ban does not affect oh i see okay thank you but i think the other one the other article did not have that exclusion the other article did not have that exclusion um um but again i think the and i i can kind of dig into this the feedback from kelsey and jalen was basically like in practice this would be a late amendment sure and then in terms of a process does this also require the select board to go to the town of sedbury to get their buy-in yes okay um which again the article does not and the article kind of references that right it references um requests the select board um to do the things in cooperation with state regulations and as needed with adjacent towns and so that's it's the same thing right it's not entirely our bridge in order to impose any restrictions on the bridge we need approval from massdot and the approval from massdot uh they will we need subbury to sign off on for massdot would approve anything um in order to submit the application to massdot we need to include an engineering study um that shows why it's required um be showing either that they're reducing safety or capac that there are large truck volumes reducing safety or capacity or that the uh condition of the bridge is is such that further heavy loads will will revolt result in severe deterioration um an alternative route needs to be identified um that either lies wholly within the community or that is endorsed by the community the alternative route is in uh this notes that separate has not indicated that it would support any change the current uses of sherman's bridge um yeah uh also says that massdot has asserted they will not support granting any sort of weight restriction or height or hcve um
heavy commercial vehicle exclusion on sherman's bridge um so arguments in favor um implementing a ban on heavy commercial vehicles will improve quality of life for residents children and wildlife um reducing the daily high stress load will increase the functional life of the bridge um supporters may argue that while passing the article will not immediately do a change it could further dialogue with relevant stakeholders that may eventually lead to a change right so i put that in both of these as sort of like sure this is not going to happen right away but if it's a thing you want to eventually happen um humans opposed are pretty similar right later sessions cannot be imposed unilaterally and must be applied for and granted um owners may argue that restrictions on traffic over the bridge may result in increased traffic on other roads in town unfairly burdening them uh and bonus may argue that massdot imposes weight restrictions based on structural analysis rather than just to limit truck traffic right so massdot generally doesn't support this just for purposes of wanting fewer trucks on your road you need you know need a structural um or safety concern you've got um extra space between argument one and two in both in favor and opposed just well that might be true yeah he he's got extra space there's extra lines he needs to reduce oh yeah sorry it's very minor but no that's okay yeah um so well just so you know carol has changed the select board does not recommend approval amendment is how it should be listed instead of the soil he's been changing that online so i know we got that from someone else so just as an fyi so five nothing the same vote zero five zero they're just adopting the language that we had pulled right my finance community does not recommend or recommends against approval that that was the language recommends against approval select board does not recommend approval exactly how she's wording it interesting i pulled ours from an old warrant but that's fine they may be going back to another generation they may have used that's fine too like i don't know i think in your second argument in favor you could say um may are you reducing the high stress load the functional life of the bridge and road can be extended that's fair but we don't really know if this is doable or not it's just sort of a recommendation that they would like uh i mean and that's so this similar to the last one right like it is possible to have such a restriction we cannot do it just by passing this article for in practice what this article would mean is it would it would it would request that the select board try to do it right so talk to sudbury talk to nasa it kind of sounds like the select board has already talked to sudbury and mass thought and they kind of said no already but you know
yeah and that's what we're kind of the first yeah the second sentence right it says passage of this article one will not impose the restricted requested on the bridge and then most of it is explaining why and what would actually need to happen to um to make the restriction other questions comments or concerns i move to recommend article cc as amended i'll second that around 10. now i think i have you already listed so we're gonna go next after this
he was still on sherman's bridge can we do a vote and then uh call the question i'm sorry okay we'll move to approve okay zz ban commercial great so all in favor all opposed i'm gonna abstain okay okay we're down to i believe yes the fun ones okay so let's go to review renegotiate the sherman's bridge um
so i just sent you did i send you guys the so you did no no you just said you just sent a new one at 908 okay thank you i want to make sure because that one's a new write-up carol's been um working on that so she has some additional information in here um so basically what this article is is that the petitioner is would like to direct the select board to recognize an agreement and the terms and conditions of an agreement that was done in 1971 um and they want the select board to direct it or they want to direct the select board to enter in good faith negotiations as quickly as possible with current residents of sherman's ridge road towards a new agreement that will better serve all parties the newly renegotiated agreement will allow the town to take some date monies for current and future work on sherman's ridge and sherman's bridge road so the proposer has stated that there is a 1971 agreement from the town that would prevent the town from accepting state monies proposed on sherman's bridge road additionally the town has been in breach of that agreement requirements um with the weight limit that they have increased since it had been supposed uh a two and a half two but isn't the weight limit by the dot okay thank you there's some contention and i have no details of this have it has been said that there used to be weight limits lens on the bridge um approaching the bridge that just disappeared understood okay i i'm just making sure i understand today who who manages that based on the other articles it's dot okay thank you i think dot manages it there's a question in the past about was there a special thing yeah so the so basically i'm going to go into comments now carol just added this the proposer advised that the town has advised that the town had an oral agreement from 1961 1971 exists that restricts the town from accepting state funds for road and bridge repairs passes through the article directs the state select board to recognize 1971 sherman bridge road neighborhood agreement and then subsequently renegotiate said renegotiate said agreement which will allow the town to accept state funding for future work on sherman's bridge and sherman's road however and i don't have however in here but based on a complete and thorough review of town records there is no such 1971 written agreement found pertaining to sherman's bridge or sherman's bridge road nor has the proposer produced the original agreement part of the town council even um if town officials had voted or verbally agreed to do something in 1971 there is no evidence of such a vote or verbal agreement that has been found towns council town council has advised that future road commissioners would not be bound by the prior vote or verbal agreement we also had in 1992 repairs that were made to sherman's bridge so in my next article it goes it talks to that so basically um the a lot of the language that i put is like what's the role of select forward and some of that has kind of been wiped out but select board generally does not have a strictly law location to engage in back and forth discussions and negotiate with residents regarding roadway changes i had had the message here the meeting law where which requires public meetings for discussion decisions and discussions and public comment is allowed at these meetings harold wiped all that out so i'm not exactly sure okay the reason why um but i also also had found a note that in massachusetts the attorney general must review and approve all local zoning bylaws so if this was to say in this neighborhood we have a restriction it'd become a bylaw and that would have to go through the attorney general in order so any questions on this renegotiation i do have arguments arguments in favor and arguments against um in favor it would be does the article uh passage forces select board to talk to these people like help me understand like passage is what exactly because i thought you sort of just said okay here's all the background but so they you can't force select board to talk to them and well i think it's like they want select board to recognize this 1991 agreement um which seems to exist but right that there's no there's no written record as to whether or not that exists and even if there was the bridge repairs that were done in 1992 most likely nullified that agreement if there had been one um because there were that's what is also written there and so basically the argument one of the big arguments is since there is no agreement there's no renegotiating there well and recognizing the agreement is problematic if you can't find it so right exactly so do we want to go through the arguments for your arguments opposed or i mean this is still being worked on because this is this is one that i felt that i had held off on a lot because i wanted town council to weigh in because there needs to be a in my opinion it's more legal yeah review of all of this than it is someone directing the select board to do something that is out of scope in some in some ways if it's not a legal obligation i think we said like i think we opted to do the write-up because there's stuff to pull apart here right and and explain even though like obviously there's no like actual monetary impact here i mean there actually is right because if this if this article would require us to not take the million dollars of um nasty of nasty
yeah i mean it seems like there's a lot and my apologies but like is the petitioner saying that they were in they were part of this meeting or they're just aware that they believe that a meeting occurred they believe a meeting occurred but they were not there this is not no one was there okay so this is not someone must have found this letter right my guess would be that like this is something about i just want to make sure this is not a first-hand account okay letter it was kind of even the petitioner will say it was an agreement at a bar in the back room somewhere there's no written agreement to this for sure i can appreciate no written but also like they're not saying i was there and i bore witness to it but they're saying that there was an agreement yeah with the residents of recorded november 91 it says 91 uh they say it was a 91 letter that referred to the 71 agreement got it yeah but there's they can't find any actual agreement from 71. yeah is that is that letter like available that in the 90s that references a 71 agreement but it is a letter in the whelan historical commission archives okay but there's no record in 1971 that they can do that understood there's no there's no primary source understood for an agreement but there's a secondary source that references an agreement okay that's what i understand yeah okay that's fine thank you and i just want to make sure i understood i appreciate it i will say i think a very important argument opposed to include is precedent because the town agreeing to be bound by things like this is probably not really a precedent we want to set it so i said formal recognition of one group's concerns risks appearing to prioritize localized opposition over town like leaves i guess i'm more thinking like basically the precedent of the town agreeing to be bound by agreements that the president of the town accepting being bound by agreements that have no sourcing that i clearly didn't follow real town procedures but i don't even think they can right like you can't you can't um i don't think you can't break the law even if you're a town and decide you want to pass a law to break the existing law right like you can't do that so like it is that's the part that like is a bit odd here is the bylaws stuff right suggests that even if they could quote unquote renegotiate they the select board cannot violate massachusetts state law right and if bylaws are their purview anything that is on the quote-unquote negotiation table cannot violate law right like they can't just say the same thing with the hud right like same thing with the um the i'm sorry what is it the you can have an an adu on your property right like we can amend and have local zoning specifications but they cannot be in direct violation like we can't pass a law to say we don't want that here right we have to follow mass state law and and i assume that the city would apply here where the town and the select board is bound by massachusetts state law for me the biggest thing is we lose a million dollars in state funding because if you abide by the 71 agreement that is in the letter even though it's a secondary source it says no state funding so you potentially lose a million bucks yeah they're saying that they would renegotiate to allow it but that's a yeah and i think it just sort of goes down the line it's worth having to comment you know it jeopardizes it right we don't lose the million but but but an argument yes may right yeah yeah
i think one of the i guess where i'm like still is like if there's no agreement and you're saying that in the comments how do you address that there's an agreement that would be opposed do you know what i mean like well i i i think and this is a stretch because but you know they probably say abide by the what was in the letter in 91 which close what was in the agreement in 71 so i mean that's legally i think a stretch which is what our account council is saying but i didn't think if i were a petitioner i would say yeah i don't have the 71 agreement but i have this letter please follow what's in the letter again i'm making their argument i'm not agreeing with it no and i agree and that's why i'm like i'm hard with the arguments favor arguments post if you recognize that there's a great because you'd have to recognize that yes the agreement existed that's right to oppose it and that's the hard part that i'm having no i think you could have an argument opposed that just says we don't believe that an argument exists existed and therefore there's no need for this article done yeah and i i guess that i think that is where i was trying to go which is that i think if by approved by approving this right that it is sort of implicitly endorsing that you know this agreement existed and that the town can be bound to to comply with agreements that you know cannot be proven to exist and didn't follow the proper procedure right so like because that's what the art of the argument you know voting for this right is is essentially endorsing that yes you believe that this existed in the town i i think that's correct like the i guess in my mind the logical way you vote yes is you believe that that original agreement existed and should find the time i don't know about fine but like and the town should acknowledge and there should be more discussion conversation about how to move forward with sherman's bridge whether or not like to there's there's some legality around then wouldn't the work in the 90s have sort of yeah i mean just hated the illegal agreement right like so so i don't think it's currently binding as much as it is do you believe it existed and what are you asking for what you're asking for is let's have a talk about what happens with sherman's bridge in which we the locals get an opportunity to voice perhaps more thoroughly our opinions give them a ton of leverage to basically get everything else they want the path the uh the speed limit and everything else that would be their negotiation
and then i think yeah arguments opposed are you don't think this agreement existed so they're thereby nullifying sort of the article itself and then hey even if it did i'm not in favor of a renegotiation yeah i just like there's no evidence to support the existence of the 1971 agreement therefore you know this article yeah or no renegotiation is necessary i mean it's just it's kind of
there's a slightly softer way to say that but well and in one draft maybe it's here too but did you um tell council say that even if there was an agreement it would be nullified because because of 1992 the future road commissioners it was taken directly from town council but carol rewarded that a little bit so i need to understand the why and how or understand that i understand it because it's basically said that future road even if there was like an agreement the future road commissioners wouldn't be bound by it um legally the why was the part that i was asking doug like so what's the why like why wouldn't they be bound by it i think i guess i think the leading this right i think what it's kind of saying is that so per town council council even if town officials voted to or verbally to do something in 1971 no evidence in the minutes such a voter verbal even has been found and i guess that to me is it right which is that like if if proper procedure was not followed because if proper procedure was actually followed there could be some right like if we take a vote until we show up in the minutes and there's no evidence to be voted like did the tree tree really fall at all um i think that's kind of what it's saying right is that like the town can't be bound by agreements reached not following proper procedure and if this isn't written down anywhere apparently didn't follow proper procedure maybe that's how i interpret it but i'm not a lawyer so
shall we take a motion for me yeah is there more conversation to you had should i take a motion yep go ahead okay i move to what am i moving to to accept recommend to recommend thank you article as amended article vb renegotiate sherman's bridge road neighborhood agreement i'll second all in favor all opposed okay okay ww so let's see which did not come in your latest it came earlier it came earlier i think it came earlier i have not touched ww
it's kind of the same request neighborhood agreement number two exactly so the title of this one could potentially change this is more of requiring that sherman's bridge itself be forever maintained as a purely wooden structure in keeping with its historical character um and they have all sorts stipulations on natural and not engineered wood um the proposer references the 1971 agreement again um and so again this language has to change because of the way it's worded of the passage it does give the history again in this one because i felt like it was a key purpose our insight is that the bid the bridge was built in restructured in 1992 so it was they they talk about 1743 but it in it being reef and constructed in 1992 it's definitely it's technically not a historical bridge any longer um in that respect it is inspected every two years by mass dmt mass drt is doing a major um improvement putting in a million dollars worth of materials for this has worked with sudbury as well as wayland and the number of evidence from both towns to determine a um acceptable product um again it's a million dollars they're putting into this bridge um the underlying person their product repair project is to replace the bridge's timber deck with a more durable aluminum material which is a southern yellow pine um and install crash tested steel backed wood and railings the results will be great new stem service of the bridge um while also enhancing safety for recreational users and litterists and reducing noise and vibration because apparently that was the thing point in time the enhanced bridge will also better protect water quality in the sudbury river can you clarify i wrote if i'm so sorry about um the request here is just in the future use all wood the mass d ot project that's going forward it sounds like they are using wood they are is a glued laminated timber is highly innovative construction material it is engineered oh it's stronger than steel and has greater strength and stiffness than fairly sized dimensional lumber but is it like the difference you're putting a laminate versus hardwood floor on the um in your house yes like lvp versus but it's more durable than the current wood and so nasty ot has because like treated wood chosen it's still wood but i think laminate is plastic that's made to look like this looks like they showed one picture where when i first brought it up it looks like it's probably like southern yellow pine and then there's like yeah metal or something in between layers and then maybe to reduce moisture and yeah if you look up southern on gluem southern yellow pine you get a better description of what they're using do you consider this wood it's technically engineered it's engineered it's not purely wooden but it's engineered wood as opposed to it's not like engineered it's made out of wood wood and other things yeah it's sort of been like a plywood kind of family the plywood is also like it sounds like okay plywood is all wood right oh it's still engineered it's an engineer yeah because it's kind of heavy and glue and stuff like that mostly of wood it's just wood that has been kind of torn apart and reconstituted with additives and can reduce the warping sure yeah normally bread wooden bridges have so like the moisture content and so they are i mean and shockingly i think i mean a couple of the issues you may have covered obviously it might be more costly to maintain the wooden bridge but i think my bigger concern would be anything that's permanent like this is something that will be in place forever is that laws and standards can change the state in 50 years could say we no longer allow wooden bridge in which case you'd have to close it uh and i don't think you want to get to the point that you might have to or you have to that that's another article yes right but but assuming it says forever so yeah and then of course that's also just the surface i mean i i'm not sure it's at all true that dot and this million dollars isn't using other um yeah okay thank you that was it for me so i also think i'm going to add um another argument opposed of um renegotiating this would jeopardize current dot fundings and asking the two fundings because um and i don't know if they're jeopardized like i think jeopardize it might be understating the case i'd maybe you know would likely result in the um are there other questions and comments okay i'm going to make a motion is that okay april yes
number two all right um motion to approve as amended article ww renegotiate sherman's bridge road neighborhood agreement number two that's second thank you all in favor all opposed okay good work folks um i know we all want adjourned but i want to i want to ask one question um and this doesn't apply to you bill because i know where you'll be monday i think the amount of work between now and monday on a lot of these articles is still there's work to be done but i think it's unlikely i think they were going to spend a lot of time on monday we have the report which else you'll see tomorrow sorry i couldn't get it to you today um we have a final vote on the capital budget article are we missing anything yes article well yeah i don't think i have a lot of good work on yeah but yeah you're right yeah i'll do some work on that um um yeah thank you so i was going to suggest or ask i should say whether we wanted to try to convene earlier than seven o'clock um i guess i'll throw that out there although now that i've been piecing together what our agenda is i'm not sure it's gonna be necessary yeah i think that's all that's remaining i think it's fine seven seven is fine for me so can you also add um i will send out a revised i know we're we haven't finalized capital budget but i have to send it in the cip write-ups on all of that so that's going to be something that will come around so you guys can do look at that word document again i'll send the final version um and just edit for yep sure um let me just look on i just want to look at our tracker for um particles too many things over here okay so i think we've counted for everything but uh so um there is a rna is submitted but there was apparently someone's passing uh um there'll be another person okay but we've so but our our piece is done yeah they can change yep um a and b i just need someone to send yeah i will do a i think went right directly to the time i don't think we will offer you the final okay okay all right so b you'll send me yeah i need to send you yeah i will finish and submit um fellow trade vehicles and do we we sent it and then they sent us another one i think they just need to i they just need to add up because like we've done our part so like i was not i didn't send anything in did you send it to them directly no i sent it to you okay
rescind debt unissued debt that was officially full okay thank you and bylaws we're going to get we're working on uh s and g we voted on those right on monday i just need to send you yeah i mean okay formatting and final comment companies sorry pam on article l their reason why they replied is because i sent it to you and cc them the final article and then they replied and said oh we've got more article uh more vehicles but but frankly you could i actually wrote them back and asked if they could add it to the final version because like we're done yeah we don't yeah it's not going to change right okay um no time s t okay you're gonna send me those dean holiday road we'll just wait to confirm some questions right um i'm waiting for you to actually write the article what's that i'm waiting on the actual article okay that's right like whatever weather's gonna be approved everything but you know yeah cpa i'm just waiting for i don't know if i'm going to get the number of um outstanding the dollars and number of outstanding projects that more than three years then somewhere in that piece um water supply hh i'm going to revise that in at least two different ways and i'm not sure sure that's what it is you know total cap i don't think we're going to want to re-vote it i would agree with that
and there is article h which is actually a budget article yes yes it's sort of a formality because we will be we have voted on the we've done half of it and we'll do the other half but you know it's a separate article yes i have one that i found out today i know i already submitted it i just want to bring it out article 00 the multi-family housing route 20 west subject sub-district i did learn today that the reason for that zoning bylaw was that the setbacks were a lot more um for the 50 building clients i don't know if we i can get that exact information i just don't know if you guys wanted to re-vote it if you stand where your vote is now or if you would feel like we should re-vote it and i can get that information for monday it's done is the issue that the 58-foot building could be a lot closer to the road because but it's also going to be considered down a hill right because so it can't be that so it's it would still be in compliance with what they did for river's edge or the setback for river's edge i believe was a little bit but they're smaller yeah i believe there's from my understanding is there's smaller buildings in front and then the higher buildings are behind it okay and there's a setback and wouldn't necessarily this could be more frontage is 50 feet in this one so setback is 30 feet from the front of the building which is what river's edge is so that's the one piece that i can i can clarify if you guys feel as though we should re-vote it that vote two is select board was uh there was one four and the rest were against okay so sorry so they were against they're taking they're taking that they're taking the 50 foot offset reducing it down to 30 feet no um 50 foot is the minimum frontage for all projects that did not change the setback did not change 30 feet um where they were changing it is back maximum building height at 58 feet um from my understanding is that the setback wasn't where they approved the 58 feet the setback was more where it was approved for 58 feet in height understood so they're extending the setback if there's 58 full buildings i think they're doing the opposite they're moving they're extending the 58 from 35 to 58 but not not incurring that same setback from the zoning bylaw that they had with the previous one that they had set they'd given 58 compliance to so in the previous one you you know the building was further 30 feet back you could be up to x feet and 50 feet back to be up to y feet and here is just 30 feet back you can be up to y feet so essentially the tall part can be closer to the road oh i understand yeah yeah it's kind of more aggressive like i i think we should re-vote that that's not what i feel like in the original article because that's not yeah that's not what i understood either i thought it was just yeah being the same height as what we'd already done it yeah but they're saying that all all that sounds like all the octo what is that where they're saying because i thought that was i think they're saying that there were two parts the 58 feet like they're already at 58 feet but april's saying that they kind of staged it so that it's like sure it's it's right there's some stuff that's has the same 30 foot setback but that's lower and then you go back and it's 50 feet so here this could be is this aren't they changed because i'm looking at the only things that i saw in the version that you voted on no you know nothing changed i just learned about that so there was more information that was brought to light as select board was digging into it more that setback part of it in the zoning board appeals but that's not part of the article correct okay so i don't know if they would if there was a normal if they expanded the set down that it would create they would allow the 58 or that's the part that i i can't exactly but but isn't that a zoning change i think they required it in that appeal to get to the 58 feet in that section of the building and that's why they got the 58 feet so this is so they got some kind of a variance from the resulting exactly so we're not changing the by the zoning bylaw in this article it would change the zoning bylaw only in terms of height and and numbers of units the correct but but you're saying sort of the background is they got this variance which is not discussed here and might affect the way that the buildings appear no the reason for this bylaw from how i understood it was the previous alta oxbow has height from 53 to 58 they've got approved through the zoning board process during the project so it was kind of like updating the zoning law to allow this for future developments what i was not aware of is according to the information that i have to find out more is that the reason they got that zoning bylaw appeal was because they adhered to a larger setback so there were smaller buildings in front of that so it wasn't as like we said close to the road and because this is going to be they consider it the gateway to whalen from sudbury um that it would be the representation of whaling as you come in so do we want to have that height of uh do we want to change that bylaw to be that close and be that height
so this allows for this would allow for more than what more than than what else right is now because of the yeah because of the the yeah the the size of land that they're sitting on and the setbacks right let's let's talk about it on one day then let's yeah but i i'm really confused because that's not what this does so there's some i need i need to understand what you're right you know what's going on behind the scenes yeah i'll get more information so monday it is yeah okay um i'm going to leave it first motion to adjourn i have one super quick thing hopefully um do we where can i find our schedule of meetings because the calendar's broken on the website and i lost track of when we're actually expecting to meet over the next month it's going to be ad hoc i don't know that we have well i mean i think the meeting on monday are we meeting on wednesday next week we need to talk about that okay but i hopefully will not be meeting with you guys on wednesday i don't know why we would right i think we could all use a break we haven't everything in as long as everything's in and so i think we need to talk about that um the rooms are reserved because we didn't know i didn't know but um i think we need to kind of think about and maybe that's one of the topics for monday calendar for right now monday and then a vast expansion we're not making us until we stay in question i think if you look at the excel spreadsheet that was our calendar it still has it might have question marks but it's got us down from mondays and wednesdays for the peace for civil future but i i think that should change yeah i'm just fine i'm glad you're wondering thank you so you motion to adjourn i did i'm gonna completely understand it