May 27, 2026 – Capital Improvement Planning Committee – Video & Transcript
May 27, 2026 - Capital Improvement Planning Committee
It's 6.30 p.m. and I'm calling to order a meeting of the Capital Improvement Planning Committee.
We are in the Town Building Wayland Commons room, and this is a hybrid meeting, so we also have a Zoom meeting available.
This meeting may be recorded, and if recorded, will be made available to the public on WICAN as soon as possible after the meeting. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with federal law. You may attend either in person in the Wayland Commons room at the Town Building or on Zoom at the link available on the Town's website. When required by law or allowed by the Chair, persons wishing to provide public comment can do so in either location, as just mentioned. Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. And we just checked, and there was no one in our public comment.
So, we can move on to actually announcements. So, John isn't able to make it tonight. He just emailed me today at a work conflict that came up. So, he's not here. And everyone else is here. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. So, attendees are Liz, Brian, Brad, and Kelly, and we are all here in person. Therefore, we do not need to do a roll call vote. They're all in the room.
And let's review the agenda. So, 630, call to order. Review the agenda for public announcements. 635, public comment and members' response. 640, discuss comparison of the five-year plan from the annual town meeting warrant versus CIPC's recommendation in our report, including related questions. 7 p.m., discuss next steps to advance the CIPC report process improvements, including but not limited to. 8 p.m., review, potential revisions to the CIPC submission form, and project plan for the remainder of 2026. 8 p.m., discuss succession planning, finance and school committee designees. 8 p.m., review and vote to approve minutes of May 13th, if available. 8 p.m., setting times of next meetings. And 8 p.m., adjourn. Okay. Announcements. I said John's not here. I saw that there was no public commentary. And then I did talk to or did exchange emails with the planning director and the town manager. Neither of them were able to be here tonight. And so the town manager has committed to me that he should be able to come next Wednesday. And so the question is, are we available next Wednesday? More likely than not being D.C. And it's unclear if I'll be able to support after hours, probably. Understood. Yeah. That's June 3rd. Yes. I'm available. I'm available. Okay. And I'm available. So what I'm going to propose we do is go ahead with that meeting because we have a quorum. Understandless, if you can't support, but I've had such a hard time. Oh, no, I don't want to build up the conversation at all. I don't want to get the conversation started. And so I'm going to move the meeting on the 10th to the 3rd. Especially, Brad, that saved you because I wasn't going to be able to be here the 10th. So I'm going to practice that in the 3rd. There you go. There you go. Sorry. I know that was later in the agenda, but I figured we could get it out of the way now. Okay. So no meeting on the 10th. And you'll post for the 3rd. Post for the 3rd. And so hopefully we can get both of them in here, but I... Was there a room available or we'll have to check with you? We'll have to check. That's my next... Actually, remind me before... We're going to go check with her while you're... Yeah, that would be great. So keep going. Because otherwise I'll forget.
Okay. And so hopefully we can get the ball rolling. Do we have a close time? Is it 6.30? We would say 6.30. Okay. Yeah. I would say 6.30 depending on what Brian comes back with on whether or not there's a room available. Just so that we keep it consistent as much as possible. Okay. All right. That's announcements. And I want to wait for Brian to get here so we can talk. Hopefully it probably jinxed us and keep the meeting relatively short tonight because I really want to wait until... I don't want to spend too much time. But while I'm... Actually, while we're waiting, I did send a note to the town manager. I have not gotten a response back yet on... Meeting with Kelsey. It's okay. But I sent them a note saying, hey, in accordance with our report, what we said we wanted to do in our report. So, I will let you know as soon as I said... I would say, should we ask for forgiveness afterwards or proceed ahead or... Give them a day. Okay. And I'll... Yeah. Ping me tomorrow if you haven't heard from me. I'm hoping I get an answer quickly. Okay. So, that's on your project. Yep. On... So, is there anything... I know I now got... Brad, I got your question, which I've added in to the questions for town manager and finance director, which I will send tonight slash tomorrow, now that I have everybody's. And I do have a release. Yes. So, I did decide, Brian, to go with your recommendation and just put all of the questions into sort of the spreadsheet along with yours, because I think that was the best way. It was a little difficult. Like, everybody's questions were out of context, except for the ones that were in the spreadsheet. So, I moved them all into the spreadsheet. You didn't see. I just took my spreadsheet we had been using, which has line-by-line project, and I just made room for a comments section where I put my question on it. Kelly could just... Yeah. Some of them were overlapped, so that's why I ultimately did put them together in the spreadsheet, because it was, not surprisingly, similar questions from multiple people on the same thing. And I think, Brad, you had a really good question on just sort of putting the process, which I think I intended to do anyway, but I put that up front in a general section, along with some questions that Brian had on just sort of general overarching, getting at how we're going to work together, right? And putting it in the questions versus for a separate discussion, sort of upfront tab of how are we doing this? So, I reworded yours a little bit to be more direct at asking the question of how are we going to operate this year?
Since I haven't seen, we haven't seen each other's questions, what I did is I went through, and if it was strictly a timing issue, but we both kind of recommended just in a different period, I just labeled that line item timing. And from my perspective, I didn't really care. Maybe there's one or two that I was curious about as to why they did the timing they did. And then there's a bunch of them that we agreed, same year, same amount. Maybe the funding source is different, but even on funding source, I wasn't too concerned about that because we really didn't have all the information. And ultimately, I think we would defer to the finance director. Yeah. So that, in my, what I sent Kelly, that took out, took off, sort of off the list, a whole bunch of them. But I know at the last minute, I heard John mention, you know, he may have been questioning a number of timing issues. He did, but I, and I put those in, I included those only because, I think you have, particularly where there were some that got pulled a few years, it goes back to our rating of, like, priority. Like, is it in, is the timing, and the answer may be a blanket statement across the board, which I think when I've asked him before, it is. Because that's what was in the plan before, they asked for it the same year, we left it at the same year. But I still think we want to drive home, well, but right, but what's, why is that the priority? Because it was in the plan last time, or because it truly goes in front of, you know, XYZ other project? So I think it's fair to still ask that, but. Yeah, I think my concern was, given the number of projects that were in there for the five-year plan, actually four years since, again, I also highlighted the fiscal 27, where there were differences, but we have to accept what town meeting approved. Right. So I kind of color-coded those just to acknowledge that, you know, we were different, but we'll have to match up with those. But my goal was to skinny the list of specific requests that we were looking for responses for. Otherwise, I was concerned, you know, how long it would take to get the responses. Well, what if I do it this way, then, when I send it over, is sort of put the, I can categorize them, right, and I can color them if I need to, sort of by priority, right? And so the timing questions can be less on them. Something like that, or if it's purely timing, maybe just put a general question that addresses the timing one. So that knocks out, you know, 20 or 30 capital requests. Yeah, and I don't think that, at least from what I remember, what John asked, I don't think there were that many. I don't think he questioned every single timing one. So I hear you, Brian, I can... Whatever you wanted. Yeah, and I didn't necessarily take them each word for word if, like I said, if they were seemed duplicative of each other, I might have combined them so that it was not, we weren't asking the same question in a different way or, yeah, same question in a different way. Yeah, so I'll try to keep it as straightforward as possible. I'll give it one more of it. We'll send it over to my slash team battle and send it over.
Any other discussion you want to have on the differences in the plan?
Not at this point. I think it's better to finance. Again, just get a general understanding and then we can go from there. I'm sure we'll have tons of questions, but, yeah, I agree. All right, did you, back to the meeting on the 3rd, did you say the finance director would also be there? He has not said he would be there, yeah. Okay. But the town manager said he's... Finance director is maybe. Yeah. And Jalen confirmed we could have this room on the 3rd. So are we in the books? Yeah, I didn't tell her it high, but I'm assuming she put 630. Okay, but we're in the books. I don't need to email Abby. Correct. Yeah, thank you for doing that.
Okay, so moving on. Brian, you missed me saying, and I'm likely jinxing us, but I hoped we could make this a quick meeting.
CIPC, yes, yes, yes. The CIP form, I have made some progress on the edits to that and just cleaning up the formatting. It created a general tab. Sorry, yeah, a general, so an instructions tab, which I haven't filled out yet. A general tab, which is meant to put the long-term questions, and I think we had a couple other questions, in that general tab, and let them sort of pre-populate department name, department manager, so that then it feeds into the project form. And they can copy that project form as many times as they want, and it'll have those couple of things pre-populated for the department. And they can fill in their project information as we laid out, and just finishing cleaning up the formatting on that, and then I can bring it back around. But I was hoping to get that to you guys this weekend. And then hopefully we can just do a soft launch with, I'll send Michael a note, but do a soft launch with that when we meet with him next week to get his sort of general thoughts around it. But I think it's coming together and looking better. The only thing I wanted to ask so far was, we've heard on there historically boards and committees that are involved. There's a line item for boards and committees, and quantum of vote, and I know not everybody has experience with this, but does that really need to be on the CIP form? Is that of any value to us?
Maybe it's of value to somebody, to a town manager. I think to the extent that we, in the Board of Public Works is the primary one, they are typically asked by the DPW director to vote, to approve his proposed capital budget anyway. I don't know if they approve the following four years, although I think he probably shares that with them. And I guess it was probably there because if, in fact, we want to be sure that what we're seeing is a definitive ask, if the DPW director doesn't have the authority unilaterally to submit without ultimately getting the Board of Public Works vote, I think what he's done historically is he submitted and then, after the fact, provided what he submitted to the Board of Public Works and that could be applicable to the Conservation Commission, maybe.
CPC, to the extent we had CPC articles, he'd want to know that they voted. So, I think it's still relevant that we have. I'm trying to remember with the sample forms that you guys sent, whether that was even checked off or I can't even. Well, so, that's why I questioned it because often it's not, but often it doesn't apply. So, it doesn't necessarily, yes, find it a lot on Tom Holders, but it doesn't always apply. Yeah, like the school committee is another big one. I mean, they, a lot of their requests are submitted by the building director and for the town. And, again, it's, the school committee is kind of seeing these, it appears that they're seeing these things of late after the fact, but they still formally are asked to take a vote. And, presumably, to the extent that they question something, either that's not on the list or want to remove something, I think it'd be relevant for us to know that definitive action, if it's required. So, I think the question should say, is board or committee approval required as part of your submission? If yes, please indicate when that board voted. As to the quantum of vote, I'm not sure that's, is terribly relevant. It'd be available in minutes and things. Yeah, I, what it said was, right, board, committee, stakeholders, boards, or committees. And so, it's, it's not as defined as board or committee that needs to vote, because often there's, and I think historically I've seen where a whole bunch of boards and committees get listed, and actually they might be stakeholders, but not necessarily need to vote on it. And then dated quantum of vote. And the reason I asked was because given the process, we follow the process and we're done by October 15th, none of them will have voted, right, if they've even seen it. So, I think, Brian, if I'm hearing you correctly, you know, I think it would be good to ask the question of, you know, are, is any board or committee, names of any boards or committee that approval is required for to proceed with this project. I don't know that I need to leave it at that, because it's going to be a bunch of blanks. I'm trying to avoid blanks, right, and get complete forms. Well, and then continuing down that thread, I mean, is, would our, the impact to us be if they say they don't have approval yet? Do we still just go through the process anyway of racking and stacking, or do we shoot it back to them and say, well, we're not going to approve anything? I think we have to proceed even without, because they won't have had approval, but I do think as we get to that end stage we talked about of kind of the loop back final amended before we're, before town meeting, did those things get the approval that they were supposed to? And we've seen, I forget which project it now was, no, Brian, it was Holiday Road, right, where that changed at the 11th, at the 11th hour, but that's, that's the only reason. Yeah, so the report, the initial report could just have some disclaimer language acknowledging once we get the information of which boards and committees might need to be giving approval. I just have a disclaimer that subject to receiving, you know, authority, we've put together this recommendation, and as Kelly said, to double back, you know, in whatever amendment we do, I think that makes sense. I mean, it's unfortunate because, you know, I mean, I think of the ball field, for example, again, I don't think the school committee was in the loop on that until fairly late in the process, and it would have been helpful if they were aware of, if they were aware of it and had had some dialogue at their meeting, some meeting, before we got that request or in the month or so afterward, just so we could better understand how significant an ask that was. But having said that, you know, we have ex-officio members, and that's part of the process question. And, you know, I'd like to know, when the working group got together, you know, did they really expect the ex-officio members to be more active than they've been as ex-officio members? Because if Kirsteen Patterson, who meets for the school board every school committee every couple weeks, is, you know, happens to attend a meeting here, we ask questions that are school-related, she can go back to the school committee, you know, in their next meeting and bring it up, but if they're only coming as part of the submission process, I'm just not sure what purpose they're serving. Well, that was sort of the question I had in terms of process, because I guess it had been my expectation coming in that there was going to be a lot more dialogue with the various, you know, boards and committees and people requesting money. So, that's why I asked the question about the process, you know, what is the, what's the expectation?
You can ask that question next week. Okay, that's the simple question, and then I wanted to touch it. That's okay.
Just putting a note down here so I don't think about. Just don't, just don't put the, the ranking system on your general page so they can fill it in only once. No. Have it auto-populated. Don't worry, don't worry, I'm not.
My hope then is to, we'll see, once I get it cleaned up, I really am hoping that there's a, I may run it through an AI tool or two to see if I can get it turned into something easier to use than Excel, like a Google form, which I think is easier to use, but I'm going to be wrong.
What do I, never mind. Don't ask me. All right, anything else on the CIP form?
So on, Brian, while you were out of the room, I had let Liz know that I did send a note to the town manager to confirm it's okay for Liz to reach out to, and confirm it. Except Kelsey should reach out to if he hasn't responded yet, but I did also copy our select board liaison on that per her request. So, because I believe there's supposed to be capital, outstanding capital project update being done quarterly, or at least that was the expectation for the select board. And she didn't have, because I asked her first if she had anything that she could share. Looking forward to the report, so when we did it last year, we had that data in November, and that's from, that's the information I used to create the tables for the memo. And if people found that form rational, and want to do that again this year, I think I sent a spreadsheet around, so you- Remember the list that she sent? Yeah, it's not a spreadsheet that had a bunch of tabs, but ultimately it had the table that went into the report. So, the only question is, well, as of what date do we, if we're looking forward to a 10-15 report completion, but probably a mid-September, pretty good draft. I would like to use the June 30th, because it's the clean end of, that's my recommendation, it's the end of the fiscal year, it's clean, right, and you're not going to have the 9-30 in time to do a 10-15 report. You could try to do an intern, but I don't want to create another, I don't want to request that they do something in between, if they're, if they can get on a quarterly cadence. So then, when you do use June 30th, that goes in the initial report, and then you could use 12-31 as a follow-up, and if there's any substantive- Yeah, if it's a substantive change. You know, we could just, in that addendum, update the table and say, yeah, presumably it'd be progress that's been made, does that make sense? Yes, and I think the, I really, those are a couple of, you know, some of the favorite tables in the report are those. One, because it lays out, you know, outstanding pretty well, but also it shows progress. The additional pieces of information, though, Liz, that we didn't get that I'm looking for kind of going forward is, when are the projects, right, what's the expectation to finish the outstanding, right? And that's what we're looking for in our form as well for new projects. Can we start to set expectations on what's left, and not just measure, well, how much did we get done since the last check-in, but how much did we get done relative to it? So the quarterly report didn't really just, this is what was budgeted, this is what's been spent, and here's the to go. But there's no- There was a quarter, one quarter, there was a report that we used as, I think it's the one we used as the basis, Brian, right? Was the November one we used, or was it a different one? Yeah, I think the former assistant town manager had gone back and gotten an update on each project, and with that, I think that's in that spreadsheet, sort of far out to the right. We had, like, you know, a little, like, sentence or two about what was happening there, what was given back, potentially. Yeah, but I didn't, we didn't get that updated last November, so we, you know, I was only working with dollars. So straight, straight out of the accounting, you had straight out of units, right? Yeah, and before I forget, when, assuming the first thing you receive will be what comes out of the town's accounting system, newness, which shows all the various projects, and then it shows the dollar balance of the appropriation that's left. You just need to be careful, because unless and until the finance director goes in and plugs in authorized borrowing for various items, you know, you very well will see items that have negative balances. Okay, because they're spending in anticipation of getting the debt, either borrowed or, you know, put on the books. And I think one of the first versions we got last fall, it was in that form, and they had to ask the finance director to go back and sort of update it for all the anticipated debt borrowing. Yeah, because otherwise the negative balance will skew. Yeah. It's not, it's not accurate. We didn't overspend. We just haven't populated the... Legally, they can't overspend, so I just alert you to that, but the first version you get may show a bunch of negatives. Yeah, okay. So not only Kelsey, but you may need to be communicating with Brian and Kevin.
So let's see what we get for an answer and see what we get, but let's read. Yeah, but the move forward should be towards getting, if we can push forward towards getting expectation of when things are going to be done. And that, the reason that matters, and we put it in our report, why we care about that as a committee, is that needs to be, should be the indicator of whether or not particular department, particular effort, whether or not there's resources, not just financial resources, but human resources available to progress on the project, right? If there's a backlog in a given department, given project manager, then we have to ask the question of, well, in FY28's appropriation, you know, should that, should that happen on that to the department? Or at least ask the town manager that question.
Okay.
I think without violating our quorum rules, if Liz has any questions, could she direct them? That you think I might be able to answer for you before you get tied up inside, you know, the town manager's office? You can just send me your questions in an email and I can either talk to you on the phone or whatever. Yeah, I think as long as all you're doing is giving her the factual information that we used. Yeah, just the mechanics of form the spreadsheets. No opinions. And not say you have to use that spreadsheet. It's just, again, to the extent people thought the way in which the tables laid out in the report was useful, well, let's backtrack how it got to that point. It's just a bunch of grouping of plain ends, but the data ultimately is what's important. Well, I'm hoping that list will move last this year and that there was a number of needs to be posted out, giving money back, fingers crossed. And I know it's going to grow as well. Yeah, you're going to add to it. What I'm hoping for is that the aged, the significantly aged items have come off and that the things that have been added in the last couple of years are progressing. It's not that I need it to shrink to nothing. There should always be projects in queue. But again, I think that the hard, we don't have, we have a measuring stick against what was outstanding last year. We don't have a measuring stick against what was your goal. What did you think you were going to do? Weren't some of the old ones sort of COVID related, if I remember? That's what they said. We got behind, significantly behind during the first couple of COVID years. Yeah. I think they had made pretty good progress to get through that backlog. But it doesn't mean that the list didn't still have a bunch of projects in those years. And there weren't that many projects closed out by the finance director to help fund 27 budget.
Maybe 15 line items. So I wouldn't get your hopes up, but the list will be. I mean, but they'll be insignificant from a analytical standpoint. I mean, sure, we're adding stuff every year. We're adding stuff. So the list is going to grow. But it's just, there's like random things. And people are like, what is this even? Why is this on? Like even felt like it wasn't a good answer for some of the lines there. So hopefully that's. Yeah. You may see the numbers shrink, the dollars shrink quite a bit because of the community center being finished. Because is that all the way off yet, Brian? It wasn't. But yeah, there's probably, it'll probably still be a little bit of retainage or something there. Yeah. But that's a good example, though, of, okay, building's done. It's open. If there's a balance left, what's the expectation of that balance? Like, oh, well, you know, there's things everybody knows if you build something new, right, or renovate it, there's things that are going to come up. We expect, you know, X to be necessary for tweaks and Y eventually to get return, like something along, along those lines. But, you know, baby steps. First step is get the, get the data.
Small baby steps. Small baby steps. Small baby steps. Small baby steps. Small baby steps. Okay. All right.
Next, let me find my decision. Okay, that's all I had for that item. anybody have anything else related to future improvements no succession planning Brian do you have anything new on nothing new okay um and the only thing I have is that I did let our liaison on the select board know that I would not be re-upping just not happy with that answer but I did communicate the same thing I did to you that I could be convinced to hang out for a bit um while they find a replacement but that I'm not interested in re-upping um so no other meetings there okay all right did you uh catch up with um the vice chair of the fincom yet I didn't okay I'm just not sure who's who's going to take the lead looking for a person to fill your seat yeah I think that requires knowing who's taking the lead of fincom right yeah and I don't it didn't sound like that was ironed out yet of membership both membership and chairmanship of yeah I think I don't know if they're I assume they might meet again in June um so it might be useful for you to suggest to the vice chair who will be personally running that meeting that um include an agenda item for this you know topic so that whoever's whoever's left standing on the committee can uh understand you know what what they need to be involved with um looking for um quick process question I know the process for this committee was several months I think it was posted end of May and then I know things were delayed but the committee getting approved so I know that kind of throws off the norm if you will um but how does it tip how long does it typically take to post something wait to get applicants have a quick interview yeah right now or is this just we help people so no right now if you look at the town website um and I don't I don't know this is the case but typically around this time they have a uh tab you know volunteers and it has all the committees and typically they'll put in even if a member whose term is expiring has indicated they want to be reappointed they typically will post everything as available um and they typically will either have that I think they have that up now so I suspect Kelly's the one position on this committee will show that um and so the public to the extent they're looking at the volunteer page somebody may inquire uh and then typically once it's determined whether in this case it's a fincom designee whether the select board expects the fincom to if a volunteer just doesn't just show up which happens sometimes it'll just somebody will send you a letter of interest because they're invited to do so um it's going to be a question of whether the fincom and I suspect this year given fincoms in a state of flux uh probably in the select board are going to need to be reaching out to suspects that they think might be interested but in a perfect world yeah there'd be just general volunteers around two months well they try to get them appointed um do a bunch of appointments typically they do reappointments before the end of june um sometimes first week of july uh and if they have someone that's expressed interest um in this committee um it's conceivable they could be appointed and kelly wouldn't need to be agreeable to hang in there and keep serving um but they haven't if they can't identify somebody it will be empty until they find somebody and kelly will hopefully stick around at least closer to when the reports do and um i think they're i can do that but i've been seeing uh their priority is likely to be getting fincom yeah yeah i mean that they're it's going to be a challenge to fill all the all the seats in fincom at least that quickly but my hope is they'll get a couple filled reasonably quickly and then it'll be a slog because summer is not the best time to be trying to get people to focus and then all of a sudden it's a volunteer to sit in rooms and in their parts of the town building while kids are playing outside in the sun especially the fincom when you read the the uh on their on the appointing boards web page they invite them to go read minutes to get acquainted with the fincom so once you have the laundry list of minutes from january to march you saying yeah but um yeah i watched uh tape uh just um it it it it it's kind of a process fincom designee the fincom board when they're talking about their job their description of what they're looking for it's not in the in the written thing but they referenced that the fincom works with the budget-wise works with the town manager and the sipsy which isn't really accurate and i i haven't decided excited not to yeah that's not really change their understanding of that but um but having said that um i happened to talk to the vice chair of the fincom recently and um you know i was expressing asking if he had heard from kelly and expressing the need to hopefully find somebody with fincom experience and um expressing a little bit of frustration about the process and and that we some of us kind of felt that we did a fair amount of work and and not much of it seemed to have been you know officially registered in what got produced by the town manager uh he just wanted the rest of you to know um yeah a bunch of them really did read our report and did pay attention it actually did impact uh and i think kelly you said this at the last minute it did impact their deliberation even though you know we report to the town manager doesn't mean that our work product isn't public yeah information and to the extent that our report has rational thought in it um they you know they seem to have grabbed onto some of it so um you know how that you know i think one of the issues that they had and this again goes back i think you were in front of them at least two or three times during your tenure but um one of their issues was managing their workload from a time perspective and so uh i you know i said to him you know nothing says you can't read the minutes of that your members can't read the minutes of this meeting um and therefore you'll be following at least what we're aware of in terms of what the projects are obviously our this year our memo will be done by october 15th so you can read that and you'll have a pretty good head start doesn't mean that's what you're going to see you know in december if that's when you get the town manager's recommended budget uh but i think that's part of what happened last year everything got yeah i pushed into the first quarter right i agree right i mean if this goes the way it should the report will come out three months before it did last year right so that should alleviate some of that it won't alleviate all of it um if the recommendation from the town manager comes later but it it'll at least give them a head start before right and i think the key is before they have articles in front of them right because once they're into reviewing articles you know from being um it's it's pretty hard to manage the load so it should be better um but i do i said it before and i agree with what the vice chair said i i do think it influenced may not have been may not have been our recommendation that went to town meeting but it wasn't the initial recommendation from the town manager either so um i think it did influence where they ultimately landed um and decided to take to town meeting and based on my couple of meetings with them right and their questions like they had questions based on what they did right now so it's not all for not first time is always hard right okay minutes of may 13th anybody have any edits no i'm sure okay john was wondering how i was going to uh manage to get our somewhat lengthy discussion about the uh issues of town meeting into the minutes and hopefully you were okay with the way i did it yeah very much so i tend to use exhibits you don't see many minutes with exhibits on them but it's um it's a public document it's a it's a way to shortcut otherwise you get a bunch of verbiage that you got to stick in the middle so yeah anyway that's why it's there i thought it was fine yeah that was good appreciate it all right if there's no edits can we get a motion motion to approve second all in favor aye aye aye okay those minutes are approved 4-0-0 all right we already discussed time of our next meeting well i'll stop by and confirm with jayla that she put 6 30 down so there was a zoom we could do hybrid yeah yeah and we're still meeting tentatively we're meeting on the 24th June 24th yeah that's that week after right uh actually the welcome if you meet on the third the two weeks is the 17th i'm going to be no we're going to we're going to be on the we're going to stick to the 24th because that's what i have calendar out yeah yeah okay yeah i'm going to be out of the country that week anyway so the 17th yeah so you might want to um you might want to put on the agenda for the 24th or make yourself a note to put on the agenda for the 24th um sort of a board reorganization since you don't want to be chair i presume after june 30th i is correct we can all be thinking about we'd like to step up for chair so i won't be here on the 24th i don't want to be on vacation okay we know who we're voting for i know that whoa i made that easy didn't it sorry yeah brad i know i know you've expressed a little bit of consciousness about your ability to you know i have no doubt you can run the meetings as to whether you feel you've got the breadth of underlying financial capital whatever experience that's a different question um i also and john can speak for himself when we talk about it um uh you know he may have an interest but i know he's also got work right so that's the flip side of it that you know there's still some amount of administration so anyway the two of you can be thinking about it yeah next meeting we'll maybe mention it again john can be thinking about it yeah we could all vote for kelly and she would refuse to show up and remind me did you um did you reserved meetings all the way out through november the year it's all through the year we'll just keep plugging away i think there was one meeting in november the week of thanksgiving that needed to be approved but other than that there is every other week for the rest of the year okay um okay all right seeing nothing no one has anything else no we don't have a generic not anticipated category anymore so i can't even do that um all right so motion to can i get a motion to adjourn at 7 17 p.m to move seconds all in favor all right that is sorry motion passes four zero zero
This meeting may be recorded, and if recorded, will be made available to the public on WICAN as soon as possible after the meeting. Pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, this meeting will be conducted in person and via remote access in accordance with federal law. You may attend either in person in the Wayland Commons room at the Town Building or on Zoom at the link available on the Town's website. When required by law or allowed by the Chair, persons wishing to provide public comment can do so in either location, as just mentioned. Public comment should be limited to two minutes per person. And we just checked, and there was no one in our public comment.
So, we can move on to actually announcements. So, John isn't able to make it tonight. He just emailed me today at a work conflict that came up. So, he's not here. And everyone else is here. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. So, attendees are Liz, Brian, Brad, and Kelly, and we are all here in person. Therefore, we do not need to do a roll call vote. They're all in the room.
And let's review the agenda. So, 630, call to order. Review the agenda for public announcements. 635, public comment and members' response. 640, discuss comparison of the five-year plan from the annual town meeting warrant versus CIPC's recommendation in our report, including related questions. 7 p.m., discuss next steps to advance the CIPC report process improvements, including but not limited to. 8 p.m., review, potential revisions to the CIPC submission form, and project plan for the remainder of 2026. 8 p.m., discuss succession planning, finance and school committee designees. 8 p.m., review and vote to approve minutes of May 13th, if available. 8 p.m., setting times of next meetings. And 8 p.m., adjourn. Okay. Announcements. I said John's not here. I saw that there was no public commentary. And then I did talk to or did exchange emails with the planning director and the town manager. Neither of them were able to be here tonight. And so the town manager has committed to me that he should be able to come next Wednesday. And so the question is, are we available next Wednesday? More likely than not being D.C. And it's unclear if I'll be able to support after hours, probably. Understood. Yeah. That's June 3rd. Yes. I'm available. I'm available. Okay. And I'm available. So what I'm going to propose we do is go ahead with that meeting because we have a quorum. Understandless, if you can't support, but I've had such a hard time. Oh, no, I don't want to build up the conversation at all. I don't want to get the conversation started. And so I'm going to move the meeting on the 10th to the 3rd. Especially, Brad, that saved you because I wasn't going to be able to be here the 10th. So I'm going to practice that in the 3rd. There you go. There you go. Sorry. I know that was later in the agenda, but I figured we could get it out of the way now. Okay. So no meeting on the 10th. And you'll post for the 3rd. Post for the 3rd. And so hopefully we can get both of them in here, but I... Was there a room available or we'll have to check with you? We'll have to check. That's my next... Actually, remind me before... We're going to go check with her while you're... Yeah, that would be great. So keep going. Because otherwise I'll forget.
Okay. And so hopefully we can get the ball rolling. Do we have a close time? Is it 6.30? We would say 6.30. Okay. Yeah. I would say 6.30 depending on what Brian comes back with on whether or not there's a room available. Just so that we keep it consistent as much as possible. Okay. All right. That's announcements. And I want to wait for Brian to get here so we can talk. Hopefully it probably jinxed us and keep the meeting relatively short tonight because I really want to wait until... I don't want to spend too much time. But while I'm... Actually, while we're waiting, I did send a note to the town manager. I have not gotten a response back yet on... Meeting with Kelsey. It's okay. But I sent them a note saying, hey, in accordance with our report, what we said we wanted to do in our report. So, I will let you know as soon as I said... I would say, should we ask for forgiveness afterwards or proceed ahead or... Give them a day. Okay. And I'll... Yeah. Ping me tomorrow if you haven't heard from me. I'm hoping I get an answer quickly. Okay. So, that's on your project. Yep. On... So, is there anything... I know I now got... Brad, I got your question, which I've added in to the questions for town manager and finance director, which I will send tonight slash tomorrow, now that I have everybody's. And I do have a release. Yes. So, I did decide, Brian, to go with your recommendation and just put all of the questions into sort of the spreadsheet along with yours, because I think that was the best way. It was a little difficult. Like, everybody's questions were out of context, except for the ones that were in the spreadsheet. So, I moved them all into the spreadsheet. You didn't see. I just took my spreadsheet we had been using, which has line-by-line project, and I just made room for a comments section where I put my question on it. Kelly could just... Yeah. Some of them were overlapped, so that's why I ultimately did put them together in the spreadsheet, because it was, not surprisingly, similar questions from multiple people on the same thing. And I think, Brad, you had a really good question on just sort of putting the process, which I think I intended to do anyway, but I put that up front in a general section, along with some questions that Brian had on just sort of general overarching, getting at how we're going to work together, right? And putting it in the questions versus for a separate discussion, sort of upfront tab of how are we doing this? So, I reworded yours a little bit to be more direct at asking the question of how are we going to operate this year?
Since I haven't seen, we haven't seen each other's questions, what I did is I went through, and if it was strictly a timing issue, but we both kind of recommended just in a different period, I just labeled that line item timing. And from my perspective, I didn't really care. Maybe there's one or two that I was curious about as to why they did the timing they did. And then there's a bunch of them that we agreed, same year, same amount. Maybe the funding source is different, but even on funding source, I wasn't too concerned about that because we really didn't have all the information. And ultimately, I think we would defer to the finance director. Yeah. So that, in my, what I sent Kelly, that took out, took off, sort of off the list, a whole bunch of them. But I know at the last minute, I heard John mention, you know, he may have been questioning a number of timing issues. He did, but I, and I put those in, I included those only because, I think you have, particularly where there were some that got pulled a few years, it goes back to our rating of, like, priority. Like, is it in, is the timing, and the answer may be a blanket statement across the board, which I think when I've asked him before, it is. Because that's what was in the plan before, they asked for it the same year, we left it at the same year. But I still think we want to drive home, well, but right, but what's, why is that the priority? Because it was in the plan last time, or because it truly goes in front of, you know, XYZ other project? So I think it's fair to still ask that, but. Yeah, I think my concern was, given the number of projects that were in there for the five-year plan, actually four years since, again, I also highlighted the fiscal 27, where there were differences, but we have to accept what town meeting approved. Right. So I kind of color-coded those just to acknowledge that, you know, we were different, but we'll have to match up with those. But my goal was to skinny the list of specific requests that we were looking for responses for. Otherwise, I was concerned, you know, how long it would take to get the responses. Well, what if I do it this way, then, when I send it over, is sort of put the, I can categorize them, right, and I can color them if I need to, sort of by priority, right? And so the timing questions can be less on them. Something like that, or if it's purely timing, maybe just put a general question that addresses the timing one. So that knocks out, you know, 20 or 30 capital requests. Yeah, and I don't think that, at least from what I remember, what John asked, I don't think there were that many. I don't think he questioned every single timing one. So I hear you, Brian, I can... Whatever you wanted. Yeah, and I didn't necessarily take them each word for word if, like I said, if they were seemed duplicative of each other, I might have combined them so that it was not, we weren't asking the same question in a different way or, yeah, same question in a different way. Yeah, so I'll try to keep it as straightforward as possible. I'll give it one more of it. We'll send it over to my slash team battle and send it over.
Any other discussion you want to have on the differences in the plan?
Not at this point. I think it's better to finance. Again, just get a general understanding and then we can go from there. I'm sure we'll have tons of questions, but, yeah, I agree. All right, did you, back to the meeting on the 3rd, did you say the finance director would also be there? He has not said he would be there, yeah. Okay. But the town manager said he's... Finance director is maybe. Yeah. And Jalen confirmed we could have this room on the 3rd. So are we in the books? Yeah, I didn't tell her it high, but I'm assuming she put 630. Okay, but we're in the books. I don't need to email Abby. Correct. Yeah, thank you for doing that.
Okay, so moving on. Brian, you missed me saying, and I'm likely jinxing us, but I hoped we could make this a quick meeting.
CIPC, yes, yes, yes. The CIP form, I have made some progress on the edits to that and just cleaning up the formatting. It created a general tab. Sorry, yeah, a general, so an instructions tab, which I haven't filled out yet. A general tab, which is meant to put the long-term questions, and I think we had a couple other questions, in that general tab, and let them sort of pre-populate department name, department manager, so that then it feeds into the project form. And they can copy that project form as many times as they want, and it'll have those couple of things pre-populated for the department. And they can fill in their project information as we laid out, and just finishing cleaning up the formatting on that, and then I can bring it back around. But I was hoping to get that to you guys this weekend. And then hopefully we can just do a soft launch with, I'll send Michael a note, but do a soft launch with that when we meet with him next week to get his sort of general thoughts around it. But I think it's coming together and looking better. The only thing I wanted to ask so far was, we've heard on there historically boards and committees that are involved. There's a line item for boards and committees, and quantum of vote, and I know not everybody has experience with this, but does that really need to be on the CIP form? Is that of any value to us?
Maybe it's of value to somebody, to a town manager. I think to the extent that we, in the Board of Public Works is the primary one, they are typically asked by the DPW director to vote, to approve his proposed capital budget anyway. I don't know if they approve the following four years, although I think he probably shares that with them. And I guess it was probably there because if, in fact, we want to be sure that what we're seeing is a definitive ask, if the DPW director doesn't have the authority unilaterally to submit without ultimately getting the Board of Public Works vote, I think what he's done historically is he submitted and then, after the fact, provided what he submitted to the Board of Public Works and that could be applicable to the Conservation Commission, maybe.
CPC, to the extent we had CPC articles, he'd want to know that they voted. So, I think it's still relevant that we have. I'm trying to remember with the sample forms that you guys sent, whether that was even checked off or I can't even. Well, so, that's why I questioned it because often it's not, but often it doesn't apply. So, it doesn't necessarily, yes, find it a lot on Tom Holders, but it doesn't always apply. Yeah, like the school committee is another big one. I mean, they, a lot of their requests are submitted by the building director and for the town. And, again, it's, the school committee is kind of seeing these, it appears that they're seeing these things of late after the fact, but they still formally are asked to take a vote. And, presumably, to the extent that they question something, either that's not on the list or want to remove something, I think it'd be relevant for us to know that definitive action, if it's required. So, I think the question should say, is board or committee approval required as part of your submission? If yes, please indicate when that board voted. As to the quantum of vote, I'm not sure that's, is terribly relevant. It'd be available in minutes and things. Yeah, I, what it said was, right, board, committee, stakeholders, boards, or committees. And so, it's, it's not as defined as board or committee that needs to vote, because often there's, and I think historically I've seen where a whole bunch of boards and committees get listed, and actually they might be stakeholders, but not necessarily need to vote on it. And then dated quantum of vote. And the reason I asked was because given the process, we follow the process and we're done by October 15th, none of them will have voted, right, if they've even seen it. So, I think, Brian, if I'm hearing you correctly, you know, I think it would be good to ask the question of, you know, are, is any board or committee, names of any boards or committee that approval is required for to proceed with this project. I don't know that I need to leave it at that, because it's going to be a bunch of blanks. I'm trying to avoid blanks, right, and get complete forms. Well, and then continuing down that thread, I mean, is, would our, the impact to us be if they say they don't have approval yet? Do we still just go through the process anyway of racking and stacking, or do we shoot it back to them and say, well, we're not going to approve anything? I think we have to proceed even without, because they won't have had approval, but I do think as we get to that end stage we talked about of kind of the loop back final amended before we're, before town meeting, did those things get the approval that they were supposed to? And we've seen, I forget which project it now was, no, Brian, it was Holiday Road, right, where that changed at the 11th, at the 11th hour, but that's, that's the only reason. Yeah, so the report, the initial report could just have some disclaimer language acknowledging once we get the information of which boards and committees might need to be giving approval. I just have a disclaimer that subject to receiving, you know, authority, we've put together this recommendation, and as Kelly said, to double back, you know, in whatever amendment we do, I think that makes sense. I mean, it's unfortunate because, you know, I mean, I think of the ball field, for example, again, I don't think the school committee was in the loop on that until fairly late in the process, and it would have been helpful if they were aware of, if they were aware of it and had had some dialogue at their meeting, some meeting, before we got that request or in the month or so afterward, just so we could better understand how significant an ask that was. But having said that, you know, we have ex-officio members, and that's part of the process question. And, you know, I'd like to know, when the working group got together, you know, did they really expect the ex-officio members to be more active than they've been as ex-officio members? Because if Kirsteen Patterson, who meets for the school board every school committee every couple weeks, is, you know, happens to attend a meeting here, we ask questions that are school-related, she can go back to the school committee, you know, in their next meeting and bring it up, but if they're only coming as part of the submission process, I'm just not sure what purpose they're serving. Well, that was sort of the question I had in terms of process, because I guess it had been my expectation coming in that there was going to be a lot more dialogue with the various, you know, boards and committees and people requesting money. So, that's why I asked the question about the process, you know, what is the, what's the expectation?
You can ask that question next week. Okay, that's the simple question, and then I wanted to touch it. That's okay.
Just putting a note down here so I don't think about. Just don't, just don't put the, the ranking system on your general page so they can fill it in only once. No. Have it auto-populated. Don't worry, don't worry, I'm not.
My hope then is to, we'll see, once I get it cleaned up, I really am hoping that there's a, I may run it through an AI tool or two to see if I can get it turned into something easier to use than Excel, like a Google form, which I think is easier to use, but I'm going to be wrong.
What do I, never mind. Don't ask me. All right, anything else on the CIP form?
So on, Brian, while you were out of the room, I had let Liz know that I did send a note to the town manager to confirm it's okay for Liz to reach out to, and confirm it. Except Kelsey should reach out to if he hasn't responded yet, but I did also copy our select board liaison on that per her request. So, because I believe there's supposed to be capital, outstanding capital project update being done quarterly, or at least that was the expectation for the select board. And she didn't have, because I asked her first if she had anything that she could share. Looking forward to the report, so when we did it last year, we had that data in November, and that's from, that's the information I used to create the tables for the memo. And if people found that form rational, and want to do that again this year, I think I sent a spreadsheet around, so you- Remember the list that she sent? Yeah, it's not a spreadsheet that had a bunch of tabs, but ultimately it had the table that went into the report. So, the only question is, well, as of what date do we, if we're looking forward to a 10-15 report completion, but probably a mid-September, pretty good draft. I would like to use the June 30th, because it's the clean end of, that's my recommendation, it's the end of the fiscal year, it's clean, right, and you're not going to have the 9-30 in time to do a 10-15 report. You could try to do an intern, but I don't want to create another, I don't want to request that they do something in between, if they're, if they can get on a quarterly cadence. So then, when you do use June 30th, that goes in the initial report, and then you could use 12-31 as a follow-up, and if there's any substantive- Yeah, if it's a substantive change. You know, we could just, in that addendum, update the table and say, yeah, presumably it'd be progress that's been made, does that make sense? Yes, and I think the, I really, those are a couple of, you know, some of the favorite tables in the report are those. One, because it lays out, you know, outstanding pretty well, but also it shows progress. The additional pieces of information, though, Liz, that we didn't get that I'm looking for kind of going forward is, when are the projects, right, what's the expectation to finish the outstanding, right? And that's what we're looking for in our form as well for new projects. Can we start to set expectations on what's left, and not just measure, well, how much did we get done since the last check-in, but how much did we get done relative to it? So the quarterly report didn't really just, this is what was budgeted, this is what's been spent, and here's the to go. But there's no- There was a quarter, one quarter, there was a report that we used as, I think it's the one we used as the basis, Brian, right? Was the November one we used, or was it a different one? Yeah, I think the former assistant town manager had gone back and gotten an update on each project, and with that, I think that's in that spreadsheet, sort of far out to the right. We had, like, you know, a little, like, sentence or two about what was happening there, what was given back, potentially. Yeah, but I didn't, we didn't get that updated last November, so we, you know, I was only working with dollars. So straight, straight out of the accounting, you had straight out of units, right? Yeah, and before I forget, when, assuming the first thing you receive will be what comes out of the town's accounting system, newness, which shows all the various projects, and then it shows the dollar balance of the appropriation that's left. You just need to be careful, because unless and until the finance director goes in and plugs in authorized borrowing for various items, you know, you very well will see items that have negative balances. Okay, because they're spending in anticipation of getting the debt, either borrowed or, you know, put on the books. And I think one of the first versions we got last fall, it was in that form, and they had to ask the finance director to go back and sort of update it for all the anticipated debt borrowing. Yeah, because otherwise the negative balance will skew. Yeah. It's not, it's not accurate. We didn't overspend. We just haven't populated the... Legally, they can't overspend, so I just alert you to that, but the first version you get may show a bunch of negatives. Yeah, okay. So not only Kelsey, but you may need to be communicating with Brian and Kevin.
So let's see what we get for an answer and see what we get, but let's read. Yeah, but the move forward should be towards getting, if we can push forward towards getting expectation of when things are going to be done. And that, the reason that matters, and we put it in our report, why we care about that as a committee, is that needs to be, should be the indicator of whether or not particular department, particular effort, whether or not there's resources, not just financial resources, but human resources available to progress on the project, right? If there's a backlog in a given department, given project manager, then we have to ask the question of, well, in FY28's appropriation, you know, should that, should that happen on that to the department? Or at least ask the town manager that question.
Okay.
I think without violating our quorum rules, if Liz has any questions, could she direct them? That you think I might be able to answer for you before you get tied up inside, you know, the town manager's office? You can just send me your questions in an email and I can either talk to you on the phone or whatever. Yeah, I think as long as all you're doing is giving her the factual information that we used. Yeah, just the mechanics of form the spreadsheets. No opinions. And not say you have to use that spreadsheet. It's just, again, to the extent people thought the way in which the tables laid out in the report was useful, well, let's backtrack how it got to that point. It's just a bunch of grouping of plain ends, but the data ultimately is what's important. Well, I'm hoping that list will move last this year and that there was a number of needs to be posted out, giving money back, fingers crossed. And I know it's going to grow as well. Yeah, you're going to add to it. What I'm hoping for is that the aged, the significantly aged items have come off and that the things that have been added in the last couple of years are progressing. It's not that I need it to shrink to nothing. There should always be projects in queue. But again, I think that the hard, we don't have, we have a measuring stick against what was outstanding last year. We don't have a measuring stick against what was your goal. What did you think you were going to do? Weren't some of the old ones sort of COVID related, if I remember? That's what they said. We got behind, significantly behind during the first couple of COVID years. Yeah. I think they had made pretty good progress to get through that backlog. But it doesn't mean that the list didn't still have a bunch of projects in those years. And there weren't that many projects closed out by the finance director to help fund 27 budget.
Maybe 15 line items. So I wouldn't get your hopes up, but the list will be. I mean, but they'll be insignificant from a analytical standpoint. I mean, sure, we're adding stuff every year. We're adding stuff. So the list is going to grow. But it's just, there's like random things. And people are like, what is this even? Why is this on? Like even felt like it wasn't a good answer for some of the lines there. So hopefully that's. Yeah. You may see the numbers shrink, the dollars shrink quite a bit because of the community center being finished. Because is that all the way off yet, Brian? It wasn't. But yeah, there's probably, it'll probably still be a little bit of retainage or something there. Yeah. But that's a good example, though, of, okay, building's done. It's open. If there's a balance left, what's the expectation of that balance? Like, oh, well, you know, there's things everybody knows if you build something new, right, or renovate it, there's things that are going to come up. We expect, you know, X to be necessary for tweaks and Y eventually to get return, like something along, along those lines. But, you know, baby steps. First step is get the, get the data.
Small baby steps. Small baby steps. Small baby steps. Small baby steps. Small baby steps. Okay. All right.
Next, let me find my decision. Okay, that's all I had for that item. anybody have anything else related to future improvements no succession planning Brian do you have anything new on nothing new okay um and the only thing I have is that I did let our liaison on the select board know that I would not be re-upping just not happy with that answer but I did communicate the same thing I did to you that I could be convinced to hang out for a bit um while they find a replacement but that I'm not interested in re-upping um so no other meetings there okay all right did you uh catch up with um the vice chair of the fincom yet I didn't okay I'm just not sure who's who's going to take the lead looking for a person to fill your seat yeah I think that requires knowing who's taking the lead of fincom right yeah and I don't it didn't sound like that was ironed out yet of membership both membership and chairmanship of yeah I think I don't know if they're I assume they might meet again in June um so it might be useful for you to suggest to the vice chair who will be personally running that meeting that um include an agenda item for this you know topic so that whoever's whoever's left standing on the committee can uh understand you know what what they need to be involved with um looking for um quick process question I know the process for this committee was several months I think it was posted end of May and then I know things were delayed but the committee getting approved so I know that kind of throws off the norm if you will um but how does it tip how long does it typically take to post something wait to get applicants have a quick interview yeah right now or is this just we help people so no right now if you look at the town website um and I don't I don't know this is the case but typically around this time they have a uh tab you know volunteers and it has all the committees and typically they'll put in even if a member whose term is expiring has indicated they want to be reappointed they typically will post everything as available um and they typically will either have that I think they have that up now so I suspect Kelly's the one position on this committee will show that um and so the public to the extent they're looking at the volunteer page somebody may inquire uh and then typically once it's determined whether in this case it's a fincom designee whether the select board expects the fincom to if a volunteer just doesn't just show up which happens sometimes it'll just somebody will send you a letter of interest because they're invited to do so um it's going to be a question of whether the fincom and I suspect this year given fincoms in a state of flux uh probably in the select board are going to need to be reaching out to suspects that they think might be interested but in a perfect world yeah there'd be just general volunteers around two months well they try to get them appointed um do a bunch of appointments typically they do reappointments before the end of june um sometimes first week of july uh and if they have someone that's expressed interest um in this committee um it's conceivable they could be appointed and kelly wouldn't need to be agreeable to hang in there and keep serving um but they haven't if they can't identify somebody it will be empty until they find somebody and kelly will hopefully stick around at least closer to when the reports do and um i think they're i can do that but i've been seeing uh their priority is likely to be getting fincom yeah yeah i mean that they're it's going to be a challenge to fill all the all the seats in fincom at least that quickly but my hope is they'll get a couple filled reasonably quickly and then it'll be a slog because summer is not the best time to be trying to get people to focus and then all of a sudden it's a volunteer to sit in rooms and in their parts of the town building while kids are playing outside in the sun especially the fincom when you read the the uh on their on the appointing boards web page they invite them to go read minutes to get acquainted with the fincom so once you have the laundry list of minutes from january to march you saying yeah but um yeah i watched uh tape uh just um it it it it it's kind of a process fincom designee the fincom board when they're talking about their job their description of what they're looking for it's not in the in the written thing but they referenced that the fincom works with the budget-wise works with the town manager and the sipsy which isn't really accurate and i i haven't decided excited not to yeah that's not really change their understanding of that but um but having said that um i happened to talk to the vice chair of the fincom recently and um you know i was expressing asking if he had heard from kelly and expressing the need to hopefully find somebody with fincom experience and um expressing a little bit of frustration about the process and and that we some of us kind of felt that we did a fair amount of work and and not much of it seemed to have been you know officially registered in what got produced by the town manager uh he just wanted the rest of you to know um yeah a bunch of them really did read our report and did pay attention it actually did impact uh and i think kelly you said this at the last minute it did impact their deliberation even though you know we report to the town manager doesn't mean that our work product isn't public yeah information and to the extent that our report has rational thought in it um they you know they seem to have grabbed onto some of it so um you know how that you know i think one of the issues that they had and this again goes back i think you were in front of them at least two or three times during your tenure but um one of their issues was managing their workload from a time perspective and so uh i you know i said to him you know nothing says you can't read the minutes of that your members can't read the minutes of this meeting um and therefore you'll be following at least what we're aware of in terms of what the projects are obviously our this year our memo will be done by october 15th so you can read that and you'll have a pretty good head start doesn't mean that's what you're going to see you know in december if that's when you get the town manager's recommended budget uh but i think that's part of what happened last year everything got yeah i pushed into the first quarter right i agree right i mean if this goes the way it should the report will come out three months before it did last year right so that should alleviate some of that it won't alleviate all of it um if the recommendation from the town manager comes later but it it'll at least give them a head start before right and i think the key is before they have articles in front of them right because once they're into reviewing articles you know from being um it's it's pretty hard to manage the load so it should be better um but i do i said it before and i agree with what the vice chair said i i do think it influenced may not have been may not have been our recommendation that went to town meeting but it wasn't the initial recommendation from the town manager either so um i think it did influence where they ultimately landed um and decided to take to town meeting and based on my couple of meetings with them right and their questions like they had questions based on what they did right now so it's not all for not first time is always hard right okay minutes of may 13th anybody have any edits no i'm sure okay john was wondering how i was going to uh manage to get our somewhat lengthy discussion about the uh issues of town meeting into the minutes and hopefully you were okay with the way i did it yeah very much so i tend to use exhibits you don't see many minutes with exhibits on them but it's um it's a public document it's a it's a way to shortcut otherwise you get a bunch of verbiage that you got to stick in the middle so yeah anyway that's why it's there i thought it was fine yeah that was good appreciate it all right if there's no edits can we get a motion motion to approve second all in favor aye aye aye okay those minutes are approved 4-0-0 all right we already discussed time of our next meeting well i'll stop by and confirm with jayla that she put 6 30 down so there was a zoom we could do hybrid yeah yeah and we're still meeting tentatively we're meeting on the 24th June 24th yeah that's that week after right uh actually the welcome if you meet on the third the two weeks is the 17th i'm going to be no we're going to we're going to be on the we're going to stick to the 24th because that's what i have calendar out yeah yeah okay yeah i'm going to be out of the country that week anyway so the 17th yeah so you might want to um you might want to put on the agenda for the 24th or make yourself a note to put on the agenda for the 24th um sort of a board reorganization since you don't want to be chair i presume after june 30th i is correct we can all be thinking about we'd like to step up for chair so i won't be here on the 24th i don't want to be on vacation okay we know who we're voting for i know that whoa i made that easy didn't it sorry yeah brad i know i know you've expressed a little bit of consciousness about your ability to you know i have no doubt you can run the meetings as to whether you feel you've got the breadth of underlying financial capital whatever experience that's a different question um i also and john can speak for himself when we talk about it um uh you know he may have an interest but i know he's also got work right so that's the flip side of it that you know there's still some amount of administration so anyway the two of you can be thinking about it yeah next meeting we'll maybe mention it again john can be thinking about it yeah we could all vote for kelly and she would refuse to show up and remind me did you um did you reserved meetings all the way out through november the year it's all through the year we'll just keep plugging away i think there was one meeting in november the week of thanksgiving that needed to be approved but other than that there is every other week for the rest of the year okay um okay all right seeing nothing no one has anything else no we don't have a generic not anticipated category anymore so i can't even do that um all right so motion to can i get a motion to adjourn at 7 17 p.m to move seconds all in favor all right that is sorry motion passes four zero zero